The history of digital transformation can be traced back as early as the 1940s when Dr. Claude Shannon published A Mathematical Theory of Communication, which is the theory behind the creation of the internet. Then addition of the microchip and semiconductor transistor, invented In the 1950s, established the foundation for digital transformation.
Since then, the capabilities of machines and digital technology have grown exponentially, and they have fundamentally changed ways our society operates. Businesses who embrace these innovative digital tools and solutions typically find that it gives them a competitive edge in the market and helps them to stay relevant to consumers.
What is digital transformation?
Digital transformation is the process of an organization incorporating and embedding digital technologies across products, services, and operations. Gartner states, “Digital transformation can refer to anything from IT modernization (for example, cloud computing), to digital optimization, to the invention of new business models.” The goal of digital transformation is to stop using legacy products or processes and start placing services online and optimizing business operations for efficiency, resulting in foundational and lasting change.
Why is digital transformation important?
It’s important to keep up with the changing trends, consumer behavior, and innovations to adequately meet the demands of business markets. In an increasingly digital world, it has become a necessity to transition many, if not all, aspects of a business into a digital form.
While digital transformation is important to stay current, it also offers organizations a host of benefits. It’s no wonder why 70% of organizations are either working on a digital transformation strategy or already have one in place.
What are the benefits of digital transformation?
The advantages of digital transformation and incorporating technology into your business show just how beneficial it can be for an organization. Here are some of the major benefits of digital transformation:
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Improve efficiency
Digitally transforming processes and operations allows them to become streamlined and, in some cases, automated. This cuts the amount of time that employees spend performing tedious manual tasks and frees up their time to address larger issues or create innovative solutions.
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Increase profits
Businesses that undergo a digital transformation can also expect to increase their monetary gain. In a report from the SAP Center for Business Insights, supported by Oxford Economics, it was found that 80% of companies that embraced digital transformation increased their profits.
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Track metrics easily
With technology integrated more deeply into your business, it makes data collection simple so you can easily generate reports and get a birds-eye view on the internal workings of the business. This enables your organization to make effective and timely data-based decisions.
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Increase agility
With digital transformation, it enables your business to quickly react and change strategy based on market conditions. You’ll be able to anticipate whatever may come and make the necessary preparations in your organization for those challenges.
How to help your organization embrace digital transformation
Many businesses or employees may struggle to adapt to the necessity of digital transformation within the organization. To increase your chances of successful digital transformation,
here are four strategies to help your business embrace the changes:
1. Outline the end goals for digital transformation
What does your company hope to accomplish through digital transformation? Begin by outlining areas of your business operations that could benefit from being digitized. From there, create defined goals your organization can strive for with the help of a digital transformation. When business members see that there are clear end goals associated with the digital transformation, they are much more likely to see the value in it.
2. Determine what digital technology you will be using
Deciding the specific technology your company will use is a key decision, and one that can greatly impact how well digital transformation is embraced. Spend the necessary time researching and comparing technology solutions to figure out which ones will fit the needs of your business.
3. Create a solid implementation and management strategy
Form a plan for how the new technology can be implemented in the organization and become integrated into business processes. Create a management strategy that can be enforced after implementation, and inform all major stakeholders who have a role in the management of the systems. To avoid miscommunication about potential digital issues in the future, establish a business hierarchy specifically for digital technologies.
4. Cultivate a digital culture within your organization
A digital transformation will bring about many new changes, and you should prepare members of your organization for these. Digital can impact productivity, sales, revenue, and more, and your team needs to learn how to use these changes to their advantage.
You will also want to make sure that it is well-incorporated by business members. Forbes shares a few points of advice on how to introduce new technologies in your business, such as giving everyone time to try it and allowing for good failure.
IT management is slow in digital transformation
One of the challenges of today’s world is the transition to a remote and distributed workforce, and digital transformation is one way to address that.
Most users, whether they’re in accounting, finance, sales, marketing, etc., are using cloud-based productivity suites and end-user applications for day-to-day tasks. Unfortunately, when it comes to IT management, IT teams are lagging behind. They’re still using on-prem tools and solutions for patch management, endpoint management, identity management, and more.
Though traditional on-prem and network-based IT management do a great job serving workers that are in the same location, these solutions are prohibitive and costly in a world of remote and distributed employees. This lack of digital transformation in IT management means that IT is not able to effectively keep up with today’s modern distributed and hybrid workplaces.
Use NinjaOne to simplify digital transformation for your IT management
NinjaOne is a cloud-based unified IT management solution that allows you to support remote and hybrid employees. With an intuitive interface and all features available within a central dashboard, your IT management can become more efficient. Start your free trial to see how NinjaOne can help your business take a step toward digital transformation.
