Digital Transformation For Your Business

Interview by Vanessa Santos published on Medium for Authority Magazine. Written by: Jason Hartman

6-min read. Excerpt below. Read full article here. 

Optimize your operational processes and reduce the lag time in bringing solutions or offerings to market. This could mean streamlining your internal communications and file sharing with your employees, this could also be leveraging the cloud for data hosting to reduce your costs on physical servers, this could also mean integrating with apps or API’s to provide a more robust product offering to your customer. Additionally, protecting your customers data & credentials and being transparent about how you are safeguarding that information will absolutely position your business as one worth doing business with. Preventing data breaches should always be top of mind and there are various cloud solution companies such as Box.com for example that have simple solutions to have security controls in place to ensure you minimize digital threats to your business.

For the benefit of our readers, can you help explain what exactly Digital Transformation means? On a practical level what does it look like to engage in a Digital Transformation?

During the height of the pandemic in 2020 almost all businesses were closed to the public, this included pharmacies. I have family that lives in Ecuador where a great deal of business is conducted the “old fashion” way. Cash is highly prevalent and locals enjoy that in-person customer service for their day to day errands. My uncle needed to get his medication refilled and had a really hard time getting through to the pharmacy whose only phone was ringing every second. People were scared, they needed their medications. The pharmacy who has been in operation for decades belonged to an older couple who also enjoyed the personal touch they could offer their customers. However, they faced a real dilemma. Not only did they worry about staying afloat with their business being closed and not being to manage going house to house to deliver the medications to the people who needed it most. They also worried about not getting the medications in time to those people who were in dire need. The pandemic forced many businesses who were mainly brick and mortar to adopt digital solutions to replace the manual process of filling and delivering prescriptions.

Digital transformation is the adoption of digital technology to aid and even replace manual processes with digital technology. In the case of this pharmacy, they were able to adopt the Uber Eats like model to enable their customers to order via a QR code or an SMS link to fill out their prescriptions and then use a 3rd party service to get their medications delivered. This ensured that their business continued to meet the needs of their customers and because they didn’t have loss of revenues, they were able to stay on top of their household bills. Digital adoption exponentially increased especially across more traditional markets like Latin America where cash and in-person transactions are very much part of the socioeconomic culture.

Which companies can most benefit from a Digital Transformation?

Digitization has made way for disruption across all industries, allowing companies to expand their reach specifically in tech. Digitization has also created an explosion of new business models and companies that are focused on servicing segments that were traditionally brick and mortar. There is no time like the present to get yourself and your idea out there. Competition is everywhere. Competition is not new. What is new is your idea. Digital Transformation has enabled anyone with a mobile phone to be an entrepreneur. Companies across the food service, pharma, retail, and anyone in the business of customer service can benefit from Digital Transformation. The transformation exists in optimizing the customer experience to create stickiness with your loyal customers, gain new customers and in turn make customers happy and increase revenues.

We’d love to hear about your experiences helping others with Digital Transformation. In your experience, how has Digital Transformation helped improve operations, processes and customer experiences? We’d love to hear some stories if possible.

As a startup advisor and also as a digital strategy executive for a global company, my career would not be possible had it not been for digital transformation. Every company is looking for a way to stand out, be seen, grow their customer base and make sales. Digitization of your assets and processes can support the growth of your business to retain and attract new customers. I’m advising two entrepreneurs in the wellness space, Brittani Feinberg and Natalia Maldonado of Warrior Life Code. Before the pandemic, their largest revenue driver was live events (coaching, yoga and meditation classes). The pandemic has since forced for them to adapt and craft their narrative in the digital space. Anxieties are at an all-time high and for many people meditation is a strong cure for calming one’s mind and these two women had a growing community that they could not let down. I worked with them to build an online presence where they could stream and host their classes, share transformational stories, and engage consistently through email in addition to their social media channels. As part of my work with them we also crafted their digital persona, to ensure that the vibrancy of their personalities and their brand doesn’t get lost. By creating this online community and infusing their stories in the digital narrative they are now able to deliver their meaningful content and continue to impact the lives of their customers in a positive way. You can now visit them at warriorlifecode.com

Leaning on my corporate expertise, my team and I were working with a global brand who wanted to enhance the customer experience with their line of refrigerators. You are probably thinking, how on earth can one use digital technology to enhance my experience with a fridge? Through testing and analysis, we found that a fridge purchase is a big one, an emotional one, and also one that happens maybe every 10 years for some people. So, we knew we had to think outside of the box to create stickiness between the consumer and an appliance that stores your food at a perfect 37 degrees. Through our field research, we uncovered that other than putting something in the fridge and taking it out when you needed it was as deep as that relationship got. We also uncovered that many folks use the fridge as a way to communicate with those they share the home (sticky notes to let them know they were going out for example). Finally, we also uncovered that some people hated the chore of the unexpected trip to the grocery store when they realized they were out of milk, eggs, etc.

Leveraging this data, we thought of creating a digital hub on the fridge door which consists of a tablet within the door that allows you to communicate with your loved ones, order groceries right from your refrigerator and through a companion app and some cameras inside the fridge have the ability to know what you need to pick up from the grocery store without having to go home to find out. This is another instance of digital transformation, leveraging existing technology and replacing it with much newer technology.

Has integrating Digital Transformation been a challenging process for some companies? What are the challenges? How do you help resolve them?

I think the pandemic forced the hand of many companies who were hesitant to adopt newer technologies for fear that it would interrupt their business operations or make their operations costlier which in turn they would have to pass on to the customer. What they have come to realize is that digital technology has improved their operations, reduced costs due to manual processes, ensured that they are able to be where their customers are and be more accessible which has increased profitability for many of these companies. Digital transformation is essential for the continuous growth of any business, empowering them to adapt and provide faster response times with their solutions. For companies who are hesitant to adopt technology to digitize or improve aspects of their business, who are hesitant on adopting digital solutions to secure their business from cyber threats and attacks, I would remind them that they are in the business of offering the best and most secure service to their customer. Besides being in the business of making sales, they are in the business of building trust. Digital transformation has created higher expectations from consumers. Consumers even in developing countries are more tech savvy than ever before. Your customers expect a certain caliber of service, they expect to be able to connect with a customer service rep at any time when they have a problem with your product or service. They also expect for their card credentials to be securely stored and not have their data exposed to fraudsters. Without adopting these digital tools, you are hurting your business from capturing share, market value and trust from consumers. Especially for small businesses, in order to compete with the global giants, digital transformation needs a place in your P&L.

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