Digital transformation consulting: How it can improve your business  

Today, we experience a tectonic technological shift as businesses and consumers rapidly go digital. People rely on mobile apps, online activities, and AI-powered solutions in work, study, and entertainment. Companies try to keep up with such evolution. They offer tech-savvy experiences and modernize their workflow along the same lines. Onboarding novel approaches and methods is impossible unless the enterprise undergoes an in-depth transformation.  

Major reasons why organizations need to transform

Some managers may say that their business is doing well, so there is no need to improve what is functioning fine. But we live in a volatile world where black swans may come out of the blue and make business transformation an urgent necessity if not a survival issue. When does it happen? 

1. Meeting customer expectations. The consumer is always right. Companies that fail to create a customer-centric environment may experience failure. The only way out for them is to meet their clients halfway, no matter how much they need to rebuild their strategies.  
2. Improving agility. The cut-throat competition symptomatic of the current business landscape requires quick decision-making and prompt reaction to market fluctuations. Clinging to old-school methods will not let you speed up your workflow, so you have to revise them.  
3. Saving costs.  When you spend more than your rivals offering similar products or services, your survival, not to mention business growth, is precarious. Switching over to leaner practices requires substantial overhauling of the internal routine.  
4. Legacy software issues. Relying on outdated solutions and on-premises systems technologies is a surefire recipe for failure. Brands should keep abreast of the latest advancements in the realm and introduce them into their routine.  
5. Structural shifts in the industry. This is what you can’t fight against because old-school practices live on borrowed time. Indeed, they often take decades to peter out altogether (like the gradual dwindling of fossil fuel consumption in favor of renewables), but the overall trend is evident. It is better to own up to the prospects and try to adapt to the next normal with minimum losses. 
6. Market crises. They come in different guises. Some occur at relatively regular intervals but are always a shock when they arrive. Others are triggered by completely unforeseen events (like COVID), but aren’t less appalling. The first reaction of businesses to such events is to cut down on everything they can. But this is only a band-aid to weather the storm. If you want to keep functioning, you will have to take the new challenges in their stride and transform. 

Since this is the core of most business transformation endeavors, let’s have a closer look at it. 

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Use cases of digital transformation in business

Digital transformation is an umbrella term that refers to integrating digital technologies into an organization’s workflow to augment its efficiency, productivity, and overall sustainability. While somewhat of a luxury over a decade ago, it has become a vital necessity with the global pandemic outbreak that caused 85% of companies bent on staying economically viable to embrace IT.  

According to Statista, over two-thirds of businesses admit the facilitation of digital transformation as an aftermath of COVID-19, and the trend will intensify, with an astounding $3.4 trillion spent on it globally by 2026. What are the use cases where digital transformation is going to carry the day in the future? 

Custom web portal building 

In the age of global internet coverage, organizations can’t dream of going big-time without a digital footprint. Most of them enter the virtual world by creating a web-based platform that draws information from various sources and presents it on an intuitive UI. 

Whether it is an employee-, vendor-, customer-, or partner-facing web portal, it not only streamlines all shop floor activities but also shapes brand identity. Thus, organizations must ensure that their functionalities serve their specific needs.  

Mobile app development 

With the number of mobile devices twice exceeding the planet’s population, ignoring the mobile experience of customers and employees is a felony. To reach out to a wider consumer audience and optimize their workflow, organizations go for enterprise mobile app development on a large scale. 

Digital product creation 

In the contemporary, increasingly tech-savvy world, companies can’t hope to attract customers and enter the major league of business without developing and marketing disruptive high-tech products and services. Digital transformation enables organizations to implement artificial intelligence, machine learning, blockchain, augmented reality, Internet of Things, and other state-of-the-art know-how into their products, thus generating new revenue opportunities, improving current offerings, and standing out among competitors. 

Cloud transformation

Legacy on-premises solutions and infrastructure that many companies rely on can’t give them the security and scalability that form the bedrock of business success today. Realizing it, companies invest heavily in cloud-fueled technologies aiming to migrate assets there and leverage their power to propel brands to new commercial horizons. 

Analytics solutions

During operation, enterprises receive tons of data – both client-related and internal. Even when adequately structured and stored, raw data by itself is of little use. Companies harness analytics software to analyze both real-time and historical data and draw valuable insights for more knowledgeable planning and decision-making.  

Omnichannel customer engagement 

Alongside in-depth business intelligence and analytics, customer experience and satisfaction are the top priorities for brands that embark on the digital transformation journey.  

It is possible to drastically enhance these success components by introducing an omnichannel customer engagement strategy that relies on a single digital platform to provide a seamless transition between multiple touchpoints of interacting with clients. As a result, customer service and experience are improved due to the high degree of personalization that this strategy allows for.  

Related article: Customer engagement in insurance: Top strategies and tools

Automating workflows via chatbots

AI successfully replaces human personnel in spheres where the routine is standard or repetitive. AI-powered chatbots are highly instrumental in automating such tasks as pulling leads, data parsing, pushing notifications, and replacing search strings, to say nothing of streamlining customer service.  

In a broad sense, digital transformation is not only about onboarding high-tech tools across the company. It is also about overhauling approaches to managing an organization and its pipeline in general, known as agile transformation. 

What is the value of Agile transformation?

Being initiated as a philosophy of fast and efficient development of high-quality software, Agile methodology has eventually evolved into a comprehensive approach to business management as a whole. It is based on leveraging interdisciplinary teams, unhindered communication and collaboration, swift response to new information, and acceptance of change. Onboarding of this methodology presupposes adopting Agile values and principles as the basic tenets of managing an enterprise.  

Usually, it is implemented within a separate department or – on the company level – when it is a startup just beginning its big-time campaign. If large companies with an established workflow decide to embrace it, we speak of Agile transformation. It is a tectonic culture shift for the enterprise since it requires a complete overhauling of approaches and practices across all the organization’s sectors and departments – notably its executive leadership.  

Agile transformation covers three major domains. 

• Governance. Unlike the hierarchical structure of most enterprises, Agile organizations rely on self-governing autonomous teams supervised and coached by middle management. Top executives in this architecture are responsible for setting up the operational framework, such as project schedules or resource management.  
• Pipeline. An organization that opts for Agile transformation must abandon the traditional waterfall method when each new item on the business plan isn’t approached until the previous one is completed. Instead, projects are broken into smaller functional parts dealt with in work sprints. Such a system enables the stakeholders to react promptly to any change request and introduce corrections once the feedback is received and analyzed. 
• Culture. The essence of this change is switching over to a communicative way of working with rapid iterations and releases, as well as quick response to market fluctuations and customer demands.  

All these changes take time and often encounter objective obstacles or even outright resistance. But once completed, Agile transformation ushers in some weighty benefits. 

Benefits of Agile Transformation

1. Increased visibility of project progress. When a larger job is split into smaller tasks, it is easier to keep track of what has already been done and what is still unfinished. 
2. Better control over projects. Having an opportunity to observe the micro- and macro-level progress, managers can assess the performance and introduce the necessary changes in no time.  
3. Fewer risks. The reactive principle of working on a project allows employees to shape their course of activities in accordance with the new information they receive. Thus, long-term planning is constantly tweaked and updated to bypass roadblocks and pitfalls.  
4. Higher quality of products and services. When the feedback is analyzed and integrated throughout the development process, the quality of the outcome increases manifold. 
5. Incremental tangible results. Digital transformation projects are long-standing endeavors, often lasting years. When relying on a traditional approach, stakeholders enjoy the outcomes only when the task is completed. The agile framework, consisting of consecutive sprints, allows employees to feel the difference while the project is still in progress and observe value-add regularly and continuously.  
6. Enhanced collaboration. The success of digital transformation initiatives is conditioned by the joint work of multiple teams. Their seamless synergy improves enterprise-wide visibility of processes, promotes transparent communication and frequent feedback exchange between employees, and fosters a shared vision across the organization. 

To start reaping benefits from embracing both digital and Agile transformation, you must know how to go about it. 

Factors affecting the success of digital transformation

Having participated in numerous digital transformation projects during the dozen years of our presence in the IT market, we at DICEUS know that the positive outcome of the endeavor rests on four pillars. 

Strategy 

Unless you have a clear vision of the goal ahead and a well-thought-out plan for achieving it in place, all your attempts to digitize your organization are a lost battle even before it starts. Successful transformation relies on a detailed roadmap of actions where desired outcomes, KPIs, resources, and timeframes are outlined, and the ways of reaching the goal are described. Besides, it should consider such relevant aspects as market trends, existing competition in the niche, and customer needs.  

Read a related article on digital transformation in insurance.

Technology 

It is crucial to choose the right technology. Whether it is Big Data, AI, blockchain, or cloud computing, each tool and technology should align with the transformation objectives defined in the strategy.  

Scalable operating model 

Across-the-board digital transformation impacts shop floor routines throughout the company. That is why the transformation team should include representatives of each department who are well-versed in the workflows their sector handles. Performance coordination and effective collaboration of such a large task force are impossible without robust operating models. As a rule, organizations choose between the product and platform model, the enterprise-wide agility model, or the digital factory.  

Data availability 

Accurate, relevant, understandable, and complete data is mission-critical for successful digital transformation. Moreover, transformation team members (especially data scientists) should have constant access to all records the organization utilizes in its business processes. To provide such a capability, enterprises should have an efficient data governance mechanism in place, ensuring the quality, transparency, compatibility, security, and regulatory compliance of the information employees operate with. 

Motivated employees 

It is the company management who should be the chief transformation driver and sponsor, ready to invest significant resources and efforts into it and support the process throughout its implementation. CEOs should promote a digital-first mindset, foster a culture of innovation, and encourage continuous digital skill improvement and training. 

Besides, employees themselves should be receptive to innovation since the digital switch-over involves changes to systems, processes, and approaches across every team and department. Without tight collaboration between the IT crew and non-tech employees on all levels, the outlook of digital transformation effort is bleak. 

Competent consulting 

Without a qualified guide to direct the process, digital transformation will be much harder to implement, if at all. Let’s find out how professional consultants can facilitate digital transformation. 

Key benefits of digital transformation consulting

By hiring a qualified digital transformation vendor who will provide recommendations and help in the planning, organization, and monitoring of the process, companies will obtain the following perks.  

• Transformation support. Digital transformation often spells the radical dismantling of the previous system and building a new one instead of it. A consulting agency can promote this switchover and engage stakeholders in the process, which can be streamlined via bespoke communication tools that will facilitate collaboration between departments. 
• Enriching technological knowledge. By hiring qualified consultants, the company paves the way to expanding the theoretical expertise and hands-on skills of its workforce in conventional and innovative digital technologies (artificial intelligence, virtual reality, Big Data, cloud computing, IoT, etc.), encouraging employees to acquire new competencies and embrace continuous learning. 
• Assistance with automation. Consultants analyze the existing workflows and tap automation opportunities. Moreover, they will offer a set of tools to automate marketing campaigns, data reporting, customer support ticketing, or any other mission-critical activity for your organization. 
• Resource management optimization. Two more things digital transformation consultants will dig into and assess are your current capabilities and resources. Then, they will suggest measures and tools (as a rule, a custom ERP will handle it perfectly) to make their usage more efficient.  
• Stepping up workforce management. Personnel is the most valuable asset of any organization. Bespoke solutions can optimize the distribution of tasks among the workers and make sure employees with adequate qualifications are allocated to certain jobs. 
• Augmenting customer management. By analyzing your target audience, digital transformation consultants will discover new digital ways of satisfying their shifting needs and delivering seamless customer experience. The ultimate tool to handle this task is a custom CRM solution tailored to serve a specific customer group.  
• Envisaging long-term scalability. When you randomly onboard tools and technologies, they can bring value here and now. Competent consultants have a more systemic perspective and will recommend onboard cloud-based solutions that have scalability potential with an eye to the company’s expansion.  

Evidently, digital transformation consultancy is a second-to-none instrument for facilitating an organization’s change process. Here is a real-life example of how DICEUS helped in implementing the digital switchover.  

Driving digital transformation: DICEUS expertise

Our client, an insurance company UNIQA, wanted to transform its digital environment. The organization had already initiated replacing paper red tape with electronic forms and launched several internal software products. One of them was a mobile app that was underperforming since customers mostly avoided using it but preferred to address their queries to the call center or utilize a Telegram chat. UNIQA needed our expertise to figure out the reasons for their clients cold-shouldering the app and enhance customer engagement by revamping it.  

We embarked on the discovery phase, where we clearly understood the client’s business logic and learned everything about their buyer persona by conducting a thorough business analysis and research. DICEUS UX experts conducted many interviews with users to clarify their needs, habits, expectations, and frustrations. The collected data was employed to create buyer personas and user journeys.  

As a result, we outlined a revised concept of the app integrated with other UNIQA professional solutions and upgraded along the lines we recommended. On top of that, we improved the app with some new capabilities, including the option of buying insurance online, making an appointment with a doctor, and even checking users’ symptoms with a special self-diagnosing tool.  

Thus, by executing meticulous preliminary research, we pinpointed areas of improvement and opportunities for growth, which are the overarching goals of any digital transformation efforts. Our consultants mapped user journeys, created user portraits, and outlined app remodeling strategy that has brought value to our customers. 

Read a full case study: Discovery phase and mobile app development for insurance company UNIQA

Key takeaways

As Industry 4.0 penetrates all spheres of our life, far-sighted entrepreneurs and CEOs can’t ignore the global digitalization drive and introduce software products into their pipeline routine. By launching professional web portals, mobile apps, or chatbots, moving to the cloud, leveraging analytics solutions, and embracing Agile practices, they step up the company’s workflow and augment the customer experience of the clientele. 

Being one of the top imperatives of our IT-powered age, digital transformation isn’t that easy to implement, though. Utilize state-of-the-art technologies, and enjoy universal buy-in among stakeholders. Most importantly, you should be able to rely on the guidance of qualified consultants who will help your organization outline and implement a comprehensive digital transformation program.  

DICEUS provides consultancy services on digital transformation,  so we’ll be happy to help you. 

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