In 2020, the coronavirus pandemic showed the importance of the businesses’ ability to respond rapidly to unpredictable industry changes and made industry players find new ways of effective digital transformation in a crisis. It became especially critical to offline retail, healthcare, and education.
According to the COVID-19 Digital Engagement Report, around 79% of respondents said the pandemic has increased their budget for digital transformation, and around 97% of enterprise decision-makers highlighted acceleration of digital transformation due to the COVID-19.
Last year, shifting to digital primarily involved the implementation of crisis-resistant software solutions that are able to address current and unforeseeable financial consequences and can include changes in communication, marketing, data analysis, business management, customer service, and other tools that you can use in your workflow.
Based on the experience of our decision-makers, we have created a guide of 6 simple steps to create an effective digital transformation strategy and navigate the economic downturn.
Simple steps to shift to a Digital Business Model in times of a crisis:
- Identifying business needs
- Searching for industry trends
- Identifying a budget
- Selecting a reliable IT partner
- Adopting a software solution
- Improving continuously
Step 1: Identifying business needs
Before you make an investment in digital technologies, you should identify your business needs and your customers’ needs. A clear understanding of your needs helps to focus on the business goals you want to achieve and evaluate the efficiency of new software implementation.
Remember that keeping your strategy customer-centric will help you to increase revenue in the future: the more value you provide for your audience, the higher increase in sales will be.
Step 2: Searching for industry trends
Analysis of trends and predictions will help you to understand the strengths and weaknesses of your business processes in the current period, compare them with your competitor on the market, and identify opportunities to increase profit.
This way, you can more easily determine your business digital maturity based on the evaluation of digital intensity and transformation management intensity and understand the potential for your business improvement.
Trends research also helps you to learn more about digital technologies you can choose for the implementation of your solution. It will help you to be well prepared for discussing development options with an IT partner or the engineering team, even if you feel confused about making a decision on the technology stack.
Step 3: Identifying a budget
When you are ready with solution requirements, it’s time to determine your budget and prioritize software solution features. As an option, you can share your idea and digital transformation action plan with investors to get additional resources. Moreover, experienced stakeholders can help you to accurately evaluate risks that can appear while implementing new technology.
Step 4: Selecting a reliable IT partner
In times of crisis, it is extremely important to establish new business relationships and strengthen partnerships to stay afloat, get support, and increase value with co-innovation. Collaboration with technology professionals helps to define your digital vision and transform it into a quality software solution.
You can find an outsourcing partner or hire a skilled in-house team depending on the planned budget. Keep the development process flexible to provide continuous software improvement and achieve the best results.
Step 5: Adopting a software solution
If you are only starting with the digital transformation of your business, make gradual changes. You can start with a working prototype or MVP and continue with fully-featured solutions for marketing and specific business needs.
After your software is ready to bring competitive advantages for you, you can integrate it into your daily business processes. Remember that a digital shift should be transparent for all your team and include staff training if needed.
Step 6: Improving continuously
Continuous digital improvement will help you to breed a culture of change that ensures staying competitive on the market and well-prepared for unexpectedness.
Keep track of your company performance and use the obtained data for decision-making on further steps for expanding your IT infrastructure. Define the KPIs for your business and stay open to new ideas on workflow improvement from your team.
Make confident steps towards your business digital future
You are all set to start your digital transformation journey and become a digital entrepreneur creating a powerful software solution with competitive advantages during the economic downturn.
Exposit Team creates cost-effective quality solutions to help you keep impressive business performance and easily adapt to business disruptions. Contact us to start the digital transformation that will help you keep impressive business performance and easily adapt to business disruptions.
