After food, cloth and shelter, technology has become the fourth most essential thing to survive for humans on this Earth. The necessity and desire to constantly remain connected has become so essential that it has made its way to every aspect of life. In this process, a well-connected world is taking shape. It is intended to deeply influence every individual, organisation and industry. Today, for both developed and developing nations, the availability of powerful technologies such as cloud computing, big data, artificial intelligence, broadband, connectivity and the internet of things are redefining and reshaping the opportunities for the haves and have-nots. This digital revolution is now transforming the way people used to function or the way they used to get things done earlier on a daily basis. A world where everyone and everything is connected to each other. People to people, business to business, customers to businesses, customers to things.
New technologies promise extraordinary power to transform, empower, improve lifestyle, economic growth and social development. It is also empowering people and transforming communities. Now with this scenario, businesses are getting opportunities directly to connect to their customers through their products. They are also getting a chance to know them on a personal level and with this collected information, the owners are using their business growth to accelerate further. On the other hand, the customers are also understanding the products in a better way.
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To make this digital enablement more approachable, powerful technologies such as cloud computing, artificial intelligence, big data, mobile broadband, internet of things, and machine learning are used to its fullest capacity.
Why Digital Enablement is Crucial for Businesses?
Responding to Evolved Market Demand
With the coronavirus pandemic, the need to get connected digitally has surged. The pandemic is changing the manufacturing operations to a new degree. As organisations and leaders are seeking ways to safeguard the health and safety of their people, they are also reacting to supply-chain shifts as these shifts are affecting sourcing and distribution logistics. Supplier resilience is being brought into sharp focus. On the same side, labour shortages are bringing many production lines to a standstill. In order to resolve the crisis, eventually production facilities will require to move rapidly to respond to new sources of supply and shifting customer demands. It is because of these types of pressures that digital capabilities are so important.
Operating in a New Location
Digital Enablement also helps in providing flexibility and resilience manufacturers the need to mobilise and operate in an unknown territory. A digital enablement plan became more important for a business to leap on the digital transformation wave and achieve business growth in this pandemic time.
Reviving Enterprise Business Model
To make this digital enablement more approachable, powerful technologies such as cloud computing, artificial intelligence, big data, mobile broadband, internet of things, and machine learning are used to its fullest capacity. Digital enablement is helping them in a big way in achieving efficient business processes, engaging the workforce, delivering exceptional customer experience and reviving the enterprise business model.
How Digital Enablement Strengthens Business at The Scaling Stage?
What does digital enablement exactly mean? Digital enablement is all about influencing a business digital transformation journey through digitised business platforms. These platforms are achieving enhanced customer experience, and smarter business processes are leading to innovative business models.
Enterprises over the world are touting large-scale digital transformation as the foundation for a business transformation. This is making the enterprises scalable, agile and future-ready. Digitisation today refers to more than merely taking assets online or leveraging the cloud. Digital enablement is a key aspect when the enterprise reaches the scaling stage in business life-cycle. The venture focuses on smart consumption of digital assets in order to:
Maximise operational excellence
Implement intelligent processes
Monetise internal resources
Boost customer experience
With massive amounts of data that people are generating today, there is a growing demand for the efficient management of these data. Simultaneously, there is an intelligent way to use these data. This is the moment when digital business platforms and solutions that enable digital transformation come in.
Digital Enablement: Key to Long-term Profitability
Business owners today have started realising that random cost-cutting is only a short-term profitability solution. Instead, these leaders are focusing on holistic enterprise operational productivity as the key to strengthening long-term growth and profitability. While digital transformation continues to be the industry buzzword, the future-ready organisation has many pedals to pull. Traditional organisations need to retool operating structure, reimagine how business is done and overcome the technological debt of outdated systems.
Failure to innovate will result in reduced shareholder value, decreased customer satisfaction and poor employee retention. While technology will undoubtedly be the accelerator of change, sound methodologies will expedite needed process improvements, driving successful large-scale changes. Whether your business transformation aims to enhance customer centricity, tap into new markets, or scale up operations, digital enablement helps the owner to deliver long lasting benefits.
Digital transformation is the use of technology to radically improve the performance or reach of an organisation. In a truly digital business, new technologies enable process improvement, talent engagement, and new business models. Achieving digital maturity is imperative for companies to thrive in today’s tech savvy marketplace. Let’s discuss in detail the scaling strategies through digital enablement:
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Digital transformation is the use of technology to radically improve the performance or reach of an organisation. In a truly digital business, new technologies enable process improvement, talent engagement, and new business models.
The Digital Strategy
Line up your digital strategy with corporate strategy.
Set up the operating model for success.
Align talent, people and change strategy through digital enablement.
Develop Digital Leaders
Assess leadership readiness for change.
Define leadership attributes and create a plan to develop digital leadership capabilities.
Reconnect The Organisation
Understand digital culture attributes.
Develop a new organisation design to embrace digital culture.
Assess new capability needs to develop digital talent strategy.
Engage And Enable People
Evolve workforce to the new digital organization.
Build capability through learning, align performance metrics and plan to sustain.
Process Digitisation
Process digitisation is a powerful service that saves time and money when implementing robotic automation. This helps in identifying common mistakes in advance and eliminating them in actual deployment. Process digitisation enables a business to run numerous test cases in the virtual world, which is not possible in the real world as the hardware would be subject to heavy wear and tear. This rigorous testing also enables a company to establish critical process outcomes and validate all the safety interlocks.
Customer Understanding
Customer understanding is all about learning everything you need to know about your customers. This includes their needs, their pain points, the jobs they are trying to do, etc. This also includes their current experiences in order to deliver the end result they expect to do going forward. There are really three ways to achieve that understanding.
Listen
Don’t just ask customers about the experience, listen as well. There are a lot of different channels and ways for customers to tell you about their needs and desired outcomes and how well you are performing against their expectations. Understanding these expectations and identifying key drivers of a great customer experience are important outcomes of this exercise.
Characterize
Research about your customers. Identify the jobs they are trying to do. Compile key personas that represent the various types of prospects and customers that might buy from you or that use your products or services.
Empathise
Walk in your customers’ shoes to get a clear understanding of the steps they take to do whatever job it is they are trying to do with your organisation. Map their journeys to understand the current state of the experience.
Top-line Growth
Top-line growth is the surge in revenue or gross sales of a company over a defined period. It represents the financial strength of a business and its potential for growth in the future. It is usually measured quarterly, half-yearly or for a full year. Top-line growth does not accrue across periods, instead it is recalculated based on the performance of the business in a specified reporting period. It is a gross figure that represents economic inflows to the company, prior to the deduction of expenses or changes in equity contributed by the business owners or the investors. Top-line growth is often used as a metric for business growth potential and overall operating performance. In most businesses, it forms an integral part of their strategic planning and a means of assessments for such strategies.
Customer Touch Points
Customer touchpoints are the points of contact between a business and a customer. It can be through an email, call centre, and through a company website, etc. This doesn’t have to be directly instigated by the business. For instance, advertisements or third-party review sites are a form of customer touchpoints.
Employee Enablement
With employee enablement, the company is moving employees beyond the stage of just being engaged with its goals and their interest in the brand. Instead, the company is providing guidance and then empowering employees to continue to learn, develop, and get the necessary training to continue providing quality results. If your employees are not enabled, they cannot be expected to perform at a superior level. This is because they have not been provided the right tools, training material, resources, or even have the necessary skills. Many times, companies focus on employee engagement and wonder how employee enablement is different. The difference is simply: Employee enablement gives employees the ability to continue performing high level job functions, while employee engagement ensures your team is dedicated to the company vision and overall goals.
Performance Management
Performance management is an ongoing process of communication between a supervisor and an employee. This communication occurs throughout the year, in support of accomplishing the strategic objectives of the organisation. The communication process includes clarifying expectations, setting objectives, identifying goals, providing feedback, and reviewing results.
Digitally Modified Business
Digitally modified business is the process of using digital technologies to create new or modify existing business processes, culture, and customer experiences to meet changing business and market requirements. This reimagining of business in the digital age is also known as digital transformation. It transcends traditional roles like sales, marketing, and customer service. Instead, digital transformation starts and ends with how you think about, and engage with, customers. As organisations are moving away from paper to spreadsheets to smart applications for managing their business, they have the chance to reimagine how to do business? How to engage with the customers?
New Digital Business
New digital businesses use technology to create new value in business models, customer experiences and the internal capabilities that support its core operations. The term includes both digital-only brands and traditional players that are transforming their businesses with digital technologies.
Digital Globalisation
Digital globalisation is a new form of globalisation. It is bringing relevant changes regarding how business is conducted across borders, the flow of economic benefits, and broadening participation. The growth of data and information related to digital globalisation determines that global economic, financial and social connections increase through digital platforms.
