The first step in understanding which areas will be impacted and what the effects of digital transformation on your business will be, is to understand on what basis this changes the way you run the business and interact with your audience, your collaborators and partners.
Thus, 3 pillars stand out:
1- Customer Experience Digital Transformation
An example that has already become classic is the customer who questions the seller within a physical store if he can discount certain merchandise because the customer has just seen on the internet that the competing store sells the products cheaper.
Thus, sales channels, ways to advertise products or services and attract and engage consumers, points of contact, language and even prices and product and service attributes are affected by digital transformation, as the public, increasingly, becomes immersed in the virtual universe and feeling very happy inside of it.
2- Operational Process Transformation
This is another point that many forget. Digital transformation is not just about providing a better customer experience through virtual shopping channels and agile customer service, integrated with social networks.
Process modeling should be able to deliver increasing value at each stage of the chain, and this can be achieved through a better flow of information, collaboration and teamwork, elements in which digital transformation can assist in a very practical and assertive way.
3- Business Model Transformation
The sum of the two pillars above may help to be attentive to business model transformation, not only in the sense of changing the very way in which your organization produces and delivers value to the market but also to what the competition can do in that sense, using digital transformation for this.
A whole vehicle GPS industry was virtually dismantled with Waze, and the hospitality and urban transport sectors were strongly shaken by initiatives such as AirBnB and Uber.
Your company may even want to generate “disruptive innovation“, but, in addition, it must be attentive to the steps of competition, mainly indirect, and defend itself against threats.