Guide to digitally transforming your business

The need for digital transformation was never so important as nowadays. The fast adaptation of digital technologies made all companies want to take a step forward to the digital world. Why? Because we are living in a new world! Even the last months forced us to adapt our routines, our way of connecting with others, and our way of connecting with brands. Digital passed from optional to something mandatory for companies that want to remain relevant and get closer to their customers.

But what is “digital transformation”? Digital transformation is not only doing a new website (but it could be included in the plan), is not only creating a Facebook page and post some photos. Digital transformation is not doing the same old strategies as the traditional channels on digital channels. No, please don´t do that! Before jumping to a process of digital transformation, read these steps and analyze what would be the best way to help your company on this digital transformation journey – because it will be a journey that needs planning, focus, and a specific goal.

To help you understand how you can prepare for this journey, I listed some steps to organize your plan and help your company to follow the right path! Exciting? Here we go then!

Change your mindset

The first thing you should think about is your customers, after all, they are the motive for this change. So your mindset can not be about your product but actually, it should be about your clients. What do they want? How do they want it? Where do they want it? And…where are they? The digital world has a lot of platforms, but that doesn’t mean that you should be in all of them. Instead, you should try to figure out where your customers are, define what they like to see and what could capture their attention.

Change the mindset from something focused on you, your company, and your product to something focused on your customer, their needs, and how to give them an experience they would truly enjoy. During this proceeding, you will need to understand who is in fact your client, who´s your target, and, of course, who are your personas. Only after you identify your target, will you be able to create a strategic focus on them.

Adjust your business model

Changing the mindset is one important step, but to go digital you will have to change your business model to adjust to the new mindset and to adjust to the new technologies that will be included in your business. You will need to analyze what type of technologies you already have that can be used during this transformation or what type of technologies should you include in this new business model.

This process is not only about introducing, for example, a marketing automation platform. No, this process is a lot more complicated. You should try to answer questions like:

• What do I want to achieve with these new investments?
• What´s the plan for my presence in the digital world?
• What kind of new tool do I need?
• How will this affect my operations?
• How will this affect my team? Will I need new knowledge to support this transformation?
• What is my unique selling proposition?
• How will I differentiate from my competitors?

These are not easy questions, but the answers will be the basis of your plan to go digital. So think them out wisely!

Choose the new technologies to adopt

After you analyze and define what are the new goals, what are the new tools that you will need for this digital transformation, you will get to the step in which you analyze the different solutions that are on the market for your needs.

In the past someone told me, when I was choosing a new computer, to resist choosing the “shiny one” and go for the functionalities, the practical side. In this topic, I can give you the same advice – resist the promotional side and really analyze the tool in contrast to your needs, your goals, and your team.

Now, why have I put your team in the mix for this decision? Because you will see that nowadays there are a lot of tools that in the end promise you the same functionalities. So what is the big difference among them, then? The knowledge that you need to have to use them, to optimize them, to personalize them, and the minimal number of elements to do their day-to-day maintenance.

In order to assure that you invest in the right technology, you should choose wisely. Try to think about these features during your decision:

• Give you data to work with – bid data on the digital world means everything and it´s one of the advantages in comparison to the off-line world.
• Cloud base – nowadays a cloud platform will be the right bet. This type of solution gives you enormous flexibility and will let you work anywhere with your phone or your computer.
• Connections with other platforms and solutions – the ability to integrate all data in one spot will be an important asset to you (trust me on this one).
• How easy is the adaptation process – this can be a major feature for some clients on the decision time.
• How well does that platform respond to your needs – it can be a platform to automize your email, a platform to host your new website, a platform to analyze data, a platform to manage your social network – at the end, you will need to understand how well it will respond to your needs and to your expectations for this new journey.

Reanalyze your business culture

After all these decisions and assessments you should already notice that your business, your brand, your way of working will change – right? So it´s time to stop and think about your business culture.

• How will my business culture reflect all this new process?
• Does my business culture reflect the new business plan I am creating?
• How can I align everything?

Don´t pass this step forward, stop and spend a little time analyzing what is your business culture and how will this digital transformation reflect it.

Invest in your team

One of the biggest steps you should take during this digital transformation process is to invest in your team. You will need to prepare your team for all the changes that will happen in your business, in the way you work, in the way your brand relates to your customers, both offline and online.

Showing that you are interested in investing in your team and allowing them to have an impact in this new digital presence of your business will give them motivation, will reduce the resistance to change and will give them the confidence to embrace this new phase. You will need to lead your team by giving the example and listen to their worries or their new goals, particularly because of the new job positions that may arise with this change.

Don´t forget that a business is made of people, so invest in your employee´s knowledge giving them training on these new tools and on the new business plan and culture. Making an investment in this digital transformation doesn´t mean an investment focused only on new technologies, but also an investment in people, your people, the people that represent your business – this will give a boost to your company productivity and efficiency.

Plan your measures of success

Every investment needs to have KPIs to measure the success of the plan, the adoption percentage, the reflection in business, and sales. So during all these phases, you should always be thinking about how you will measure everything.

The big advantage of digital is that everything can be measure, so think about that, inform yourself on how you can and how you should be measuring some areas, and in your plan always include the KPI that will help you understand where you can improve, what is going well, how, when, and where is the customer talking to you.

Only by measuring, analyzing the data, and making conclusions, will you be able to improve, adjust, and continue this journey of digital transformations. Because once started, this journey will never really end  – don´t forget that the digital world is always changing and improving, and so should you.

Words of caution…

The reality that we are living in today was a wake-up call for a lot of companies that tried to go digital from one day to the other. With this text, I hope I could show you that this is not really that easy and such a project should be a well-planned journey, in which the first step is always the hardest one. So, if you need some help to give this first step, know that Stellaxius is here for you, to help and guide you on the right path and give you all the tools and knowledge that you will need to make the right decisions!

Hope this article gives you the courage to start and don´t forget that you don´t need to do all this alone! You can contact us and we will be glad to plan this journey together with you. Until then, subscribe to our blog, Knowledge Center! 🙂