What is Digital Transformation?
13 min readNov 5, 2020
- By Thomas Ross, Founding Partner SSHQ
If you can’t measure it, Don’t Do It!
- Why Digital Transformation is critical for your business
- For all businesses, the key consequence of the COVID-19 crisis has been a dramatic uptick in the use of digital technologies that greatly reduce or eliminate face-to-face interactions
- These digital technologies include consumer-facing applications such as grocery and food delivery services, as well as business-to-business e-commerce applications.
- In addition, applications such as video conferencing that have completely taken over our consumer, business, and not-for-profit worlds.
- Google searches for terms such as, “Contactless” & “Virtual”, have increased by over 10 fold in the last 9 months.
- While the stocks of technology companies aligned with our now 100% online digital world have skyrocketed.
- In fact it’s been a great time to invest in many of these stocks!
- So, in discussing the COVID-19 pandemic with many senior executives, a recurring theme has become clear.
- Just how quickly and severely it has affected organizations, forcing many to respond with extraordinary speed and focus.
- “Slow & steady” does not work, given the dynamics of a pandemic and the immediate need to stabilize revenues and customer needs.
- By contrast, prior waves of digital transformation had provided more opportunities for experimentation built around scalable, but carefully planned, pilots
- In some sense, the current rush to Digital Transformation by many organizations can be compared to how a Triage is set up to deal with a sudden influx of medicalpatients.
- First up, you have to stabilize the patient then you need to address the bigger issues which may involve further prioritization and or more radical changes to allow the patient to both survive but once again move forward.
- The key is to recognize and address those changes that are here for the long term and not just try to put Band-Aids on more critical injuries
- The digital revolution has been coming for a while, but now it is here for good and requires immediate attention!!
- While COVID-19 represents an acute disruption today, it may recur or become a more chronic disruption over time.
- This increases the challenge for executives who are trying to lead their organizations through complex digital journeys.
Why is Digital Transformation so misunderstood?
- In part because It’s been hijacked by so many industries to represent their own interests!
- For example
- The Cloud-based service industry has hijacked the topic in order to suggest that when you move your business to the cloud you are Digitally transformed!!
- Is this true? NOT NECESSARILY!
- SaaS (Software as a Service) industry, have done likewise as they help companies streamline their software solutions online, they too have made similar claims.
- IT service organizations have also suggested that by using their services you are digitally transformed.
- Now, Add the ERP (enterprise resource planners) and CRM (customer relationship management) and you have more than enough to create a complicated confusing picture that now seems much more scary and unreachable than it should.
- So what does it mean when we say a company is digitally transformed??
- To start with, this is not about a product or a service you are providing or using.
- A complete digital transformation can cover all aspects and areas of your organization from,
- Executive management and across every department or business unit.
- The internal communication and seamless way information needs to move instantly across all your teams should be one of your primary objectives.
- But It starts with a mindset and an understanding that the old ways of communicating and working internally and externally are over.
- This mindset needs to flow across your teams, not just across department heads and leaders.
- Next, it’s critical to understand where your customers are today.
- The key understanding required is around how your organization now communicates with all of its stakeholders.
- As well as customers and prospective new customers.
- Employees and prospective new employees.
- Suppliers and vendors.
- Media and PR channels.
- Social media.
- Partners, resellers, and distributors.
- Etc, you get the picture…
What do customers want?
- This slide helps us to understand that our customers have changed!
- Customers no longer care about our brands or corporate advertising.
- NO, now their number 1 concerns are CONVENIENCE and EFFICIENCY.
- How fast can you solve my problem and get me what I want!
- Further, if I have a problem how quickly are you in getting back to me?
- This is why Covid-19 has accelerated digital transformation by an average of “6” years!
- Again, Up until very recently, we could get away with still being all or mostly analog and getting back to customers by email.
- This in large part because of one of the strongest economic cycles in history, we simply did not have to change because business WAS great!
- SO What do I mean by analog…?
- Basically using technologies, systems, processes, and communication methods that were common before the digital age.
- email, landlines, standard office phones, fax machines, voicemail, snail mail, etc.
- So, as our economies and industries were growing and doing well over the last 10 years this was not seen as important as we continued to grow anyway
- Along comes, Covid-19 and those not able to quickly adapt have suffered badly.
- Funny how the first thing most companies have successfully changed is how they communicate internally and with most of their stakeholders…
- Meetings are now all done over zoom or other video conferencing tools while much of our communication is done over “Slack”, “Teams” or others.
- Those that quickly recognized the changes required have been able to continue but have not yet done enough…
- Now, think about what changed with our customers
- With so many people working from home and so many businesses working remotely our old analog ways no longer work.
- In fact Gartner expects that by 2025 fully 80% of all B2B interactions will be online over digital channels
- Email and phone calls simply don’t get the responses they used to.
- This recent graph from, “Hubspot”, shows this dramatic shift very clearly.
- While marketing emails being sent since the beginning of 2020 have increased greatly, the response has fallen dramatically!
- Again, traditional ways of meeting and communicating with customers like trade shows, networking events, are no longer available.
- For those companies with resellers and distributors, this has become an equally challenging time for all these same reasons
What has social media got to do with my business growth and survival?
- So, how can Social Media help and how do we leverage it?
- Firstly, ownership and leadership teams need to understand the fundamental shift that has occurred, and not just because of COVID
- From a sales and marketing perspective, this is no less disruptive than when email took over from traditional snail mail.
- Now social media and online applications like zoom, slack, teams and many others have completely taken this over!
- Customers are no longer waiting for your return phone call or email, they have already googled the answer to their questions.
- Customer behaviors, expectations, and demands have radically changed with COVID simply amplifying this into areas not previously as affected / B2B.
- Digital Communication has become the new lifeblood of business with 95% seeking new ways to communicate with customers.
- This is where an even bigger shift has taken place and is why your sales may not be what they used to be.
What is the one thing that drives most corporations? “FEAR”
Disruption is not new!!
- In fact, watching the nightly news has shown us business after business that have closed or are now under creditor protection.
- This has been a wake-up call for many businesses whether retail or B2B.
- But this is not new!
- Since 2000 over 41% of the S&P 500 consumer-centric companies are gone!
- Further, it’s estimated this will grow to 50% over the next “10” years!
Traditional Sales & marketing methodologies are not enough!
- Calling people whether customers, prospects or even stakeholders can be a game of cat and mouse leading to voicemail jail.
- Emailing as we showed earlier has become the new digital junk file for most.
- Pay Per Click advertising has become so expensive and ineffective that your budgets have doubled with fewer results!!
- Many many companies are simply “STUCK IN A RUT”.
- Today there are simple steps we can learn to take in order to begin our true DIGITAL TRANSFORMATION.
- Educating instead of selling.
- Building personal as well as corporate brands in order to build enormous online networks.
- Leverage Employee Advocacy as well as brand advocacy to dominate your markets.
- Engaging constantly and in real-time with new and existing customers.
WHY Digital & Social Media???
- BECAUSE 49% of PLANET EARTH actively use social media all day long.
- If you want to really communicate with your customers you better find out where they are!!
Here are some fun facts in 2020
- There are 190 million LinkedIn users in North America.
- There are 292 million people in North America actively using text messaging.
- There are 120 million people in North America actively using Facebook messenger.
- There are 256 million users on Facebook in North America.
- 74 % of Facebook users log in daily.
- 52+% of North Americans get their news from Facebook daily.
- 87% of North American marketers use Facebook.
- 80% of North American marketers use LinkedIn.
- 46% of website traffic comes from LinkedIn.
- **Facebook accounts for over 80% of e-commerce site referrals in North America** WOW!
Recent data shows the following percentages of adults who use social media by popularity
1)YouTube at 73%
2) Facebook at 69%
3) Instagram at 37%
4) Pinterest at 28%
5) Linkedin at 27%
6) Twitter at 22%
So, why do you need to do a digital transformation while becoming proficient on Social Media?
- 38% increase in productivity and this value was calculated before COVID 19!!
- Lower costs
- Much improved internal communication
- Significantly improved customer retention
- Shorter sales cycles
- Amazing customer experience
- collaboration
- Innovation
- Improve employee retention and far less costly recruiting (in fact we have customers who have dropped their recruiting costs to zero!)
- Much more efficient organization workflows
Digital is efficient
- Slack at one time was the fastest-growing company in history! This was long before COVID-19.
- Companies were beginning to realize just how important seamless and instant communication is internally.
- Now they are doing likewise externally, you can too!
- That’s the kind of growth chart we all want and again this only goes to the end of 2019!
- Leveraging Digital through Social Media builds successful teams and breaks down silos!!
- Silos are one of the most damaging results of a closed culture and can effectively silence the voice of any company.
- Digital and social media eliminates these barriers and allows communication to flow.
Social Builds Successful Teams
- When we communicate with friends we do so instinctively and spontaneously through social media.
- Why can’t we do this with customers, stakeholders, employees, etc????
- This is not a physical barrier, it is a mindset that must be changed.
- Can you imagine how much better your customer service would be if you communicate with customers in digital time instead of analog time?
- Further, can you imagine how your customers will rave about your company when their experience is brought to that level?
- YES, it’s hard! If it wasn’t you would have done it already!
- The challenge is “YOU” not technology, which is actually on your side.
- The only risk…. is continuing to miss out on the biggest opportunity you and your organization have today.
- Now, how do we make this happen?
- Where do we start?
- Start by creating a “Digital” plan and road map.
- This plan is based on the priorities that you identify for your organization.
What are your priorities?
- 1) New customer growth
2) Existing customer growth
3) Brand presence
4) Online presence
5) Employee Advocacy
6) Recruiting
7) Lower costs
8) Increased internal efficiencies and communication
9) Amazing Customer Experience
10) Amazing User Experience
DIGITAL TRANSFORMATION CAN ACCOMPLISH ALL OF THE ABOVE!
- Once your priorities are in place, you can now begin to put a detailed plan in place to meet it.
- For example, your current organizational chart may not have changed in decades.
- It may be time for a Re-Org of your old analog chart to a new Digital Org Chart!
- The idea is to go from this old analog approach which tends to be siloed :
To this updated Digital approach with communication flowing across the entire organization
- This is what we are striving for!
- The key question to ask here is how deep your connection with customers is?
- Gone are the days when we only needed one or two contacts with any customer (depending on their size).
- Think about that…how many contacts do you have with your key customers?
- For optimal customer management and growth we can now have dozens of active contacts.
- This is not generally achieved by any single team or person but rather by a combination of all teams.
- If this is not yet true in your case, it may well be time to consider changing up your organizational chart.
What Does Your Organization Look Like Today?
- This may be what your organization looks like now with as many as “8” to “12” roles all working to accomplish the same goals.
- What if you could combine many of these old outdated roles into today’s digital world allowing for a much more streamlined and focused team?
- For many companies, they can now combine what used to be departments and siloed roles into a much more streamlined and proactive Customer Experience approach.
- This is a dramatic change but one that could potentially drop your costs dramatically while increasing revenues and customer satisfaction and retention.
- The first step is to identify the goals of each role and then look closer at where there are overlaps and synergies with others…
- For example, traditionally outside sales teams are out in the field physically developing new customers based on their own efforts and skills.
- Meanwhile, Inside sales are upselling customers, and following up leads from marketing and websites in order to bring new prospects forward to outside sales to close.
- Customer service tends to be responsible for managing customers day to day needs and supporting the service or products they have purchased.
- In addition Business Development and Marketing are responsible for developing leads and market opportunities by way of marketing and targeted campaigns programs that can be followed up and closed by Inside and or outside sales teams.
- In this new digital online age, many of these activities can now be combined to make for a much more streamlined and effective process.
- All of this while leveraging digital tools and social media to make it all work.
- Once you have made these changes, getting your teams successfully transitioned is the next step.
- This is not as difficult as you might think!
- In fact, most of your teams are a lot more proficient with the skills they need already.
- This is because everyone, including YOU and your executive team, are already proficient to some degree with communicating online as soon as you leave the office!
- Now, you are ready to truly become digitally transformed while growing your business with Virtual Business Development.
Welcome to the Digital Age!
What’s in Your Pipeline?
- Here’s an example of what a digital sales and customer pipeline can look like today all based on a complete digital transformation
- The key to this transformation in your sales & marketing process is realizing its all done step by step using social media and digital communication
- Is it as simple as this, of course not, but following a regimented and planned out a strategy like any other process, works!
- So a very real and defined process that gets results needs to be developed, refined, and continually improved based on results.
- How do I know?
- Not only do I do this myself with our team but we have many customers and clients doing so as you read this article.
MEASURE EVERYTHING!
- Last but not least, you must, you must, measure and track absolutely everything!
- For those interested we have an App we put in place before we begin anything, this to measure where they are as well as to measure the results of the digital transformation.
- If you primary goal is customer experience and interaction, we measure this.
- If your primary goal is employee advocacy or brand advocacy we measure this.
- If your goal is recruiting, we measure this.
- If your goal is new and growing sales revenues, we measure this by those activities that drive them.
- If your primary goal is to improve marketing results, we measure this too!
- Whatever your main objectives are by way of the digital transformation, MEASURE your progress against your key metrics as we do.
Review & Recap
- 1) Digital Transformation goes across your entire company.
- 2) Customers demand digital, online and immediate results.
- 3) Digital Transformation and Social Media are interlinked.
- 4) Social Media is our new reality, YOU HAVE TO BE THERE!
- 5) Start with your priority DON’T DO ALL AT ONCE!
- 7) Everyone used to be in sales, now it’s “Customer Experience”.
- 8) Everything on digital is measurable, if you don’t know how, just ask me!
- 9) What’s stopping you? “You” might be your own worst enemy!
LET’S GET STARTED! REACH OUT TODAY!!
