Written by Sergio Flores

Photo by Ben Kolde on Unsplash

Digital transformation is the process of applying computer technologies in their various forms to the processes of a given organization, with the goal of improving a set of outcomes. The term gained popularity because it conveys well the diversity of options that exist within the realm of digital technology and also conveys the custom nature of the solution: since every organization is different, and their operational problems are different, it’s pretty much impossible to package a digital transformation solution as a recipe or ready made purchase. Instead, you need to engage the services of a digital transformation consultant, who is somebody with the technical experience to look at the organization issues, look at the available technological tools and offer a custom implementation to match the organization needs.

A digital transformation solution can incorporate packaged apps, SAAS subscriptions, custom software development, cloud migrations, and mobile apps and devices, among other things; also, very often the solution will require some rethinking of existing processes as well.

Why do we need to change an existing process, you ask? Well, the problem is that when those processes were designed, the technology we have now was not available, and so we need to review them in light of the new tools that can be incorporated to the operation, and make sure they’re still suitable, or propose adjustments.

With that said, I’d like to talk to you today about my top five signs that tell you that you need a digital transformation solution:

1. Your people are doing weird stuff with packaged apps. For example, I once did a project for a company in the insurance sector, and when I asked one of their employees how did they create a proposal, I got a response along the following lines: “Right, so first we write it in Word, then separately, we have an Excel file with some formulas, so we have to fill in some cells, get the results, copy-paste them to the word file, then we save it to PDF and email it to somebody for approval; often the email bounces though, so we have to send it multiple times, so we get back the approved one, and…”

   I think you get the point. If your employees are engaging in these types of maneuvers to make things work by forcing existing software to fit a given process, well, there’s an opportunity for improvement there.

2. You are not getting enough information to make decisions. Imagine that you’re the manager of a supermarket that operates a home delivery service, and at this point, it has been working well for a while; people call you by phone or use an app and request some things on delivery; however, you do not keep separate data collection on home deliveries, so while you do know that every week you’re selling X liters of orange juice, you do not know how many of those go to home delivery and how many of those are bought on the store. Now, what happens is that you are always missing your inventory targets; some weeks you order too many orange juice cartons and some go to waste and some weeks they are completely sold out, which sounds good…but is it, really?

   So, let’s look at some of the things that you don’t know, but that you could know if you had proper data collection in place:

   • Sergio, your home delivery customer, buys 5 cartons of orange juice every Thursday.
   • Furthermore, he always buys a jar of Goober too.
   • In the colder months though, he buys less orange juice and more chocolate milk.
   • In the past 6 months, Sergio has had 6 instances of not finding enough orange juice to buy; since he did not buy any substitutes, he is likely to have bought it somewhere else.

   Data can be presented at various levels of abstraction, from wide, whole operation numbers, to cohorts classified by whatever makes sense, all the way to the individual customer, as above.

   Now, looking at the new insights, we can tell that our “sold out” weeks could be making more money, and we can also reduce waste by better predicting demand; furthermore, since we now know our customer preferences, we can offer him interesting deals (Don’t offer Sergio organic lettuce, he likes Goober) and so on.

   With a bit of a stretch of the imagination, I’m sure you can apply the above ideas to a wide variety of scenarios in your own environment.

3. Your personnel is overwhelmed. Let’s say you are an university, and your call center is receiving hundreds of thousands of calls each month to handle admissions; how can we keep or increase those numbers without incurring in unsustainable hiring or operator burnout? Well, in this case, the development of digital channels, such as a web and mobile app, and a chatbot for Facebook Messenger or Whatsapp would be appropriate. Chatbots, in particular, when designed correctly, are very helpful in guiding the users to the solutions that the organization can provide and enable transactions without the need to install an app. The important aspect here would be to analyze your existing call center operations to have some measurements that can guide the development of the new channels. For example, if most of the calls are about course inscriptions, then that use case can and should be offered first by the chatbot.

4. Nobody knows anything and files are all over the place. I’m sure you’ve seen this happen, and it may be happening at your organization right now, and it’s a sure-fire sign that some technology is missing. “Nobody knows anything” happens when the person who knows the process leaves or is unavailable, when new employees don’t know where to find answers on how to do their jobs, or even who to ask, and when different departments have different ideas on what the proper procedure is, while “Files all over the place” happens when some documents are in a file server, others in Google Drive, others in somebody’s computer, others on the website…you get the idea. And both of these conditions can be cured by an internal cloud solution which generally handles files, messages, a knowledge base, shared calendar and other features; we just have to implement it.

You need to engage the services of a digital transformation consultant, who is somebody with the technical experience to look at the organization issues, look at the available technological tools and offer a custom implementation to match the organization needs.

5. You are using disjointed apps and services. Now, this is a tricky one; normally this happens, because in the growth process of a company, tools were found and added as needed, and now as operations have become more complex, and also more “unique” to the company, people are feeling the friction of having to switch between apps, move data manually, repeat procedures and otherwise engage in various efforts to keep everything in sync. These situations have to be analyzed on a case-by-case basis, but in principle, it’s generally viable to use vendor tools to automate the syncing among various apps, or choose one as the central hub, and customize additional tools around it. For example, you might choose to center everything around Hubspot CRM, and then we build integrations around it using their API and/or existing marketplace apps. In some cases, a complete bespoke solution is warranted too.

So those were my top five signs that tell you that you need a digital transformation solution. I hope this information has been useful and thank you very much for reading. See you next time!

Are you interested in learning more about this technology or explore how could it be applied to your particular needs? Please send me a message using the form below, for a no-commitment, exploratory talk about your problem.