3 tips for your company to start the digital journey.

14 Oct 3 tips for your company to start the digital journey.

THE DIGITAL JOURNEY AND THE IMPACT ON BUSINESS

The new reality that companies face is just one: either they adapt to new consumers, business models and processes and technologies, or they will disappear.

Digital transformation didn't start yesterday. It comes from a long process, resulting from rapid technological evolution and life models increasingly “online” and connected. People started consuming little internet a few years ago. Today they don't disconnect even when they sleep. A large volume of information is dumped on us all the time. On the subway, work, home, restaurants, bars, streets, stadiums, cinemas and more. The ease with which we find Wi-Fi virtually everywhere is clear proof that the digital age has arrived.

If we look at this transformation from a corporate perspective, it becomes clear that companies need to understand that their consumers are part of this change, and that the ways in which they consume what is offered also undergoes changes.

There is a developing ecosystem, constantly changing and evolving. This ecosystem involves some factors already known as:

Mobile computing (with the boom in 3G and 4G traffic plans),
Cloud (with home use of the cloud for gdrive/onedrive/dropbox, etc.)
Interactivity (with the increasing use of social networks)
Data collection (With the Internet of Things being integrated into household appliances) and so on.
Regardless of whether you sell products or services, the concept presented below will apply to your business model. After all, understanding the behavior of this new consumer is not a necessity to increase competitiveness in your segment. It is rather a necessity for your company's success in an age where the old rules no longer apply.

In this new scenario, only one factor will be decisive: is your company digital or not?

3 TIPS FOR YOUR COMPANY TO START THE DIGITAL JOURNEY

1. There is no magic recipe, only relevant customer experiences
   The first tip, of course, involves the customer and their experiences with your company. Understanding how to really add value to him can be the difference between keeping him or losing him faster than he managed to. Understand well, keeping it doesn't mean a long after-sales contract. Contracts break, relationships cool, and he's sure to forget about you. Generating real value for him is about understanding his business with a 360º view, and in this case 360º within the digital. Understand how to maintain a relationship with him, where he is almost 100% of the time, on the internet. Social networks, creation of personalized and unique content, webinars. These are just a few examples of how to keep your customer close, always delivering something interesting to him. As it says at the beginning of the topic, there are no magic recipes for the customer to always remember you when they need something, but there is an environment where the two of you transit (digital environment) and that can help your company to maintain close contact with your customer .
2. Modernize the old and replace what no longer makes sense
   With the new behavior of your consumers will come new revenue stream opportunities, but modernizing your process can be very difficult to deal with. You can handle different systems within your company (CRM, ERPs, Bis), at different levels of use and update. Alinha-lô may be a complicated option, so it would be more practical to modernize the old systems, replacing the ones that no longer make sense for new ones. Some managers may not see this investment as necessary, but in the long run they will understand that with the consumer changing, the processes and the interaction approach must change together.
3. Use data and technology to make strategic decisions
   This is a tip that all managers already know, but it is worth mentioning even more when we talk about the digital environment. Everything we do, all the relationships we have on the internet, leave traces. Whether personal (person-person) or professional (company-customer) relationships, the traces are there in the form of data. Understanding the importance of this data for decision making and creating relationship strategies with your customer are necessities within your digital journey. See what data works best for you, filter it and use it to your advantage.