Digital transformation is not a new idea – it’s been around for a while. It dates back to the 1970s, evolving through the rise of the internet, e-commerce, social media and cloud technology to be an integral part of business evolution today.
As companies try to stay competitive in a turbulent global market, we have witnessed a heightened focus on digital transformation in the last five years, with searches for “digital transformation courses” increasing by +5000%. Although the idea is not new, it has recently become more prominent. With new goods and systems appearing every week, the necessity to include cloud-based digital transformation has become essential.
In this blog post, we’ll explore how digital transformation has evolved over the years while looking at the key drivers behind its upward trend and how businesses can make the most of it.
What is digital transformation?
While digitalization is the use of digital data to streamline processes and digitization is the first shift from analogue to digital, a step that the majority of enterprises have now made, digital transformation can be seen as the total technological evolution of an organisation’s operations.
The process of integrating digital technology into every aspect of an organisation, from internal business processes to customer service and value delivery, is known as “digital transformation.” A company’s digital transformation involves a cultural shift and overarching changes to their digital processes and systems. This comprehensive transition affects both customers and employees.
The phrase digital transformation was coined relatively recently but is now frequently cited as a necessary step for all enterprises. Despite being a crucial transition for a company’s survival, many digital transformation efforts fail because people misunderstand what it means and what it entails.
The digital transformation evolution
Over the past few decades, as companies’ digital aspirations grew with the introduction of automated operations, computerised procedures and connectivity, technology departments quickly needed to manage these new platforms. This prompted businesses to exploit digital data for their own distinctive organisational activities and experiences.
With this new capacity for collaboration and data leveraging, companies incorporated new digital platforms and approaches, hoping to develop more flexibility while remaining competitive.
The theme has undergone impressive development over the past ten years. The stock prices of many technology companies reached new highs at the start of the global Covid-19 pandemic as businesses sought to move a large portion of their operations online and integrate cutting-edge technologies into every facet of their operations.
Spending on digital transformational initiatives significantly increased in 2020 and 2021 as a result of the shift of workers to remote work, continued supply-chain disruptions, and the massive increase in online sales. Spending on these projects grew during the pandemic, sparking the next stage of digital transformation, despite overall cost savings in many operational areas.
To give you an example of the scale of this continual evolution, 41% of sales leaders say their customers now want to communicate digitally more often than prior to the pandemic.
Due to these changing technology and customer behaviours, digital transformation has become essential for all organisations to maintain their competitiveness. In fact, going forward, research suggests that by 2025, 70% of organisations will help drive digital transformation by implementing structured infrastructure automation to deliver flexibility and efficiency, up from 20% in 2021.
What makes a successful digital transformation in 2023?
According to research, fewer than 30% of digital transformation initiatives succeed on average, which is a persistently low success rate.
A McKinsey Global Survey conducted in 2018 sought to identify the factors that contribute to the success of digital transformations. A wide range of geographies, sectors, firm sizes, specialities, and tenures were represented in the respondents, who were questioned about any digital transformation initiatives they had worked on, either at their current or prior places of employment.
21 best practices were found among individuals who acknowledged success in the digital transitions they had participated in.
These qualities can be divided into five groups:
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Leadership
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Competence
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Development
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Worker empowerment
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Tool improvement
However, according to 54% of business owners, integrating all of these innovative initiatives and solutions into regular company operations is the biggest obstacle to achieving their digital transformation goals.
As experts in this field, we’ve managed many international projects and achieved successful digital transformations with bespoke strategies that address these areas.
For example, we supported Google with delivering a global workforce agility campaign to increase their internal capabilities with highly skilled individuals whose profiles and culture aligned with Google Cloud. This allowed them to achieve their digital goals, deliver impactful engagement projects across Europe and build sustainable success on the Google Cloud Platform (GCP).
How to conquer your digital transformation
In this digital age, consumers increasingly expect to buy cutting-edge goods from creative businesses. Business leaders must create new business models that integrate digital technology into their operational procedures in order to preserve survival and growth.
Chesamel’s Business Transformation solutions incorporate strategy development, delivery and scaling of operational change throughout a business by addressing core infrastructure, digital skills development, applications, culture and leadership.
