How digital transformation supports business performance and strategies
The objective of this assignment is to assess your understanding of the following learning outcome(s):
· Discuss and critically evaluate how digital transformation supports business performance and strategies.
· Appraise the impact of digitization on transforming operations management.
Demonstrate various techniques to model processes, identify opportunities, and capture value in digital transformations
Digital transformation is the process of using digital technologies to create new — or modify existing — business processes, culture, and customer experiences to meet changing business and market requirements. This reimagining of business in the digital age is digital transformation.
It transcends traditional roles like sales, marketing, and customer service. Instead, digital transformation begins and ends with how you think about, and engage with, customers. As we move from paper to spreadsheets to smart applications for managing our business, we have the chance to reimagine how we do business — how we engage our customers — with digital technology on our side.
For small businesses just getting started, there’s no need to set up your business processes and transform them later. You can future-proof your organization from the word go. Building a 21st-century business on stickies and handwritten ledgers just isn’t sustainable. Thinking, planning, and building digitally sets you up to be agile, flexible, and ready to grow.
As they embark on digital transformation, many companies are taking a step back to ask whether they are really doing the right things. Read on for answers.
Not so long ago, businesses kept records on paper. Whether handwritten in ledgers or typed into documents, business data was analog. If you wanted to gather or share information, you dealt with physical documents — papers and binders, xeroxes, and faxes.
Then computers went mainstream, and most businesses started converting all of those ink-on-paper records to digital computer files. This is called digitization: the process of converting information from analog to digital.
The process of using digitized information to make established ways of working simpler and more efficient is called digitalization. Note the word established in that definition: Digitalization isn’t about changing how you do business, or creating new types of businesses. It’s about keeping on keeping on, but faster and better now that your data is instantly accessible and not trapped in a file cabinet somewhere in a dusty archive.
Think of customer service, whether in retail, field ops, or a call center. Digitalization changed service forever by making customer records easily and quickly retrievable via computer. The basic methodology of customer service didn’t change, but the process of fielding an inquiry, looking up the relevant data, and offering a resolution became much more efficient when searching paper ledgers was replaced by entering a few keystrokes on a computer screen or mobile device.
As digital technology evolved, people started generating ideas for using business technology in new ways, and not just to do the old things faster. This is when the idea of digital transformation began to take shape. With new technologies, new things — and new ways of doing them — were suddenly possible.