Digital Transformation begins with People first and then Technology
This is a crucial moment for business in the world, since for any given business, not reinventing itself is no longer an option. People are more and more connected and are looking for heightened quality and ease of using products and services in any kind of business. These behavioral changes dramatically affect how companies work and relate to their customers and even their employees.
The exponential growth of technology and the fast speed that information reaches people nowadays generate a new challenge for companies of any size to follow these changes and to meet the new needs of people at all points of contact with their business.
To keep up with all this evolution, companies need to undergo constant transformation in their business and culture.
The consumer experience is what drives the new world of business.
For a long time, companies have offered technologies, new features and incremental improvements to maintain or improve their competitive advantage over their competitors. However, the advantage of investing only in these variables has come to an end. Technology has become commodity. Today, what really matters and creates a real competitive advantage for business is the experience they bring to people when these people use their products and services.
The key to being successful at the present moment of transformation in which we live is fundamentally changing the way you relate with customers. When we stop thinking about customers as customers and begin to think of them as people, it will open up a world of possibilities and opportunities to understand and meet their real needs and desires.
Digital transformation is the realignment of new investments in technology, business models and processes, to generate greater value for people to compete more effectively in a constantly changing digital economy.
Every process of digital transformation must begin with a clearer vision of the problems that people have in their daily lives.
Although the major focus of most companies is directly linked to the use of technology for digital transformation (just look at the audience of CIOs, IT professionals and technology companies at events on the subject), the subject is much broader than that and involves a cultural change and / or even a change in the business model.
The success of digital transformation is not determined by the amount of technological investments. Technology alone does not transform a company.
The main motivator of digital transformation must be linked directly to the point of contact with people, facilitating their lives.
There are 3 elements of digital transformation:
• Customer Experience Transformation
• Operational Processes Transformation
• Business Model Transformation
To better understand our customers, we need an approach that will help us in a way that goes beyond the outdated laboratory of usability, quantitative research, and human factors. Creating customer empathy adds much more value than months of usability testing or quantitative research that drives more of a result than showing real problems and needs.
Many approaches are focused on delivering features and new technologies rather than focusing on what really matters: the experience!
Because it is an exploratory approach that uses a lot of empathy research to understand the real problems of people’s everyday lives, Design Thinking fits in perfectly to identify possibilities and opportunities for transformation.
At TOTVS, we have created an innovation laboratory focused on user experience, UX LAB, where we have applied these concepts since 2013. We believe in this transformative “force” and, from then on, we have been applying several UX approaches, like Design Thinking, to solve complex problems and to transform our products and services.
I believe that the real purpose of technology is to increase and amplify human capacities, not to replace them. Technology should ultimately help us to “function” better and improve people’s lives.
Fabio Miranda
Head of UX LAB @TOTVS
