As a business owner, your business is your livelihood. But if you aren’t constantly innovating your business, it’s going to go up in flames.
Digital transformation is one way to innovate your business and face off against your competitors. Plus, the digital sphere is a hotbed of customers, so evolving your business digitally can increase your leads, which is an excellent advantage.
So, digital transformation is a force for good. However, according to several industry experts, it can also be a force of bad. But is that true? Can digital transformation actually harm your business? What’s the truth? Let’s find out.
What Is Digital Transformation?
Digital transformation happens when you integrate new technology and innovative processes into your current business practices. Simply put, it’s the evolution of your business process. And just like any and every transformation, this type of evolution doesn’t have a clear endpoint.
For instance, conducting a digital transformation means using project management software to automate tasks instead of using Excel. However, your usage of PM software doesn’t end with automating your tasks. Instead, you can use the software to stream timelines and more.
Therefore, digital transformation means continually finding ways to improve your business practices, employee experience, business culture, customer experience, and goal achievement by using specialized software, big data, or artificial intelligence (AI), improving internal processes like paystub generation, etc.
7 Myths About Digital Transformation
Just like any specialized business improvement process, digital transformation is associated with lots of misinformation. Let’s bust these myths one by one:
Myth#1 Digital Transformation Is Essential for Every Company
Though digital transformation is at the heart of constant innovation, can reduce business inefficiencies, and help you remain competitive, it isn’t essential for every company under the sun. However, implementing it doesn’t hurt.
For instance, if you’ve already automated tasks and payroll, focusing on removing time inefficiencies and attendance discrepancies can make business processes, systems, and workflows smoother.
Moreover, a digital transformation will allow your business to stay at the top of every problem that comes your way, be it customer service- or vendor-related.
Myth#2 Digital Transformation Centers Around Technology
No, it doesn’t. Digital transformation revolves around bettering your business process than they were the previous fiscal year, quarter, month, or week. It means resolving inefficiencies in business processes, workflows, and systems.
In a nutshell, digital transformation focuses on improving the following:
- Customer Experience – It allows businesses to establish connections with their customers, use technology to increase customer satisfaction, and increase organic leads.
- Operational Processes – It helps businesses innovate internal processes by using software and digitization strategies, such as providing employees with tools that make their work easier, collecting data using AI, and using task management software to reduce task inefficacies.
- Business Models – It can enable businesses to scale to the digital realm by using digital tools and services, offering digital products, and utilizing tech to provide global services.
So, while digital transformation does revolve around technology, it’s not all about it.
Myth#3 Digital Transformation Busts Your Budget
The term “digital transformation” can easily be associated with “expensive” and “budget-busting.” But in reality, it’s anything but. Digital transformation is actually not heavy on the pocket.
For instance, there are dozens of free digital platforms, such as Loom, Grammarly, and Asana, that you can use to automate and streamline your internal business processes. Plus, even if you go the premium route, many digital platforms are cheaper than doing everything manually.
Remember: hiring and paying three employees to innovate task management is always going to cost much more than a thousand-dollar-per-year project management software. Paying a thousand bucks sounds better than 30k per year, right?
Myth#4 Digital Transformation Means Using Innovative Software
Most companies think that digital transformation brings with it a bucketful of software. That’s not true. If you’re a company that mostly works in the physical world, e.g., manages catering, performs construction management, and more, you most definitely don’t need PM software.
But that doesn’t mean you can’t innovate your business. For instance, instead of juggling accounting, management, and logging in a spreadsheet, you could use payroll software to automate payments, manage all your tasks on task management software, and use a tracking tool to find out which tasks are critical.
Remember: conducting a digital transformation doesn’t mean going high-tech. Instead, it means using software and innovative processes to make your business process smoother and more efficient. If that can be accomplished with fewer software solutions or none at all, it’s great.
Myth#5 Digital Transformation Always Improves Things
To be honest, digital transformation can always improve things but not necessarily for the better. Let’s look at an example.
If you aren’t a technology fan or don’t learn how to navigate specialized software, digital transformation is going to be a headache for you. For example, let’s say you begin using PM software for automating tasks. Unfortunately, PM software has a steep learning curve, so if you aren’t willing to put in the work, it isn’t going to work for you.
Similarly, if you’re using customer service management tools and think they’re going to work perfectly without customer representatives, you’re in for some thinking.
Think about this: AI is brilliant, but it isn’t human. And most customers like to talk to a human service representative when wanting to solve their issues because people understand each other better. So, AI will only make your leads fall.
The Takeaway
Digital transformation can improve your current processes, making them more efficient and helping you remain competitive in your industry. It helps you evolve, and without evolution, your business is in danger of falling behind.
However, you can’t implement digital transformation without knowing what it exactly is. We hope this article helped you differentiate between the myths and realities of digital transformation.