COVID-19 was an eye-opener for businesses and it forced us to reinvent our traditional, fixed, tried, and tested way of working. Now a rapid digital transformation is taking place at a large scale globally, as business models, processes, and operations are evolving to make way for the new wave of digital innovation.
For businesses, now is the time to bring a digital revolution in the organisation. Because careful planning and implementing a robust digital strategy is the only way to ensure that your business thrives after COVID-19 is over.
The rapid migration to digital technology driven by the recent pandemic will continue far into the future. In this piece, we will discuss how to accelerate your organisation’s digital capabilities to keep pace with the rapidly transforming corporate world.
Using Digital Strategy for Recovery and Growth
Nowadays, many companies have already migrated toward digital solutions. Employees are already working remotely, and teams are agile to some degree. Here’s how to utilise digital strategy to ensure your company’s recovery and growth after this pandemic is over.
- Align Digital Transformation with Evolving Customer Expectations
Nowadays, businesses and companies are digitising at a rapid speed to keep up with the ever-evolving customer demands and expectations. In this digital era, online businesses are flourishing and are now interconnected across all functions and operations like marketing, merchandising, warehousing, etc.
Considering the ongoing digital revolution companies should refocus digital efforts to align with ever-changing customer expectations and demands. C-suite professionals should consult their business leaders to assess how their most valuable customers’ needs and behaviours have evolved to reap benefits and profit from the evolving demands rightly.
Aside from working on digitising, companies also need to focus on creating interactive and reimagined customer journeys. CEOs should work on evaluating how the needs of customers have evolved and how to align the digital overhaul to fulfil their clients’ requirements.
- Apply Artificial Intelligence to Optimise Business Operations
Organisations and businesses make hundreds of operational decisions on a daily, weekly, and monthly basis. Using traditional and obsolete methods to perform these operations and processes is often redundant and time-consuming. Modern companies have developed several AI-based forecasting and planning models to guide such operational decisions, which help them optimise business operations for cost reduction and performance.
To take your business to the next level, and create a digital transformation based strategy, try to validate AI-based operational models in your organisation. Empower data and analytics teams to leverage data sets to optimise your operations and processes for the future.
Real-Time Learning and Growth
- Translate Learning Business Scaling and Organizational Growth
Scaling what you learn is always tricky in digital transformation. Learning plays a significant role in your ability to scale your digital initiatives. Work on converting learning and research into organisational growth by piloting new digital initiatives.
Companies need to increase their rate of metabolic learning, and they need to translate what they are learning into at-scale responses quickly. The rapid transition to full-scale transformation brings forth challenges and opportunities. Evaluate and keep track of what’s working in your organisation to develop an optimised strategy for growth.
- Evolve and Work on Growing Your Business Portfolio
Economic downfall, global crises, or pandemic like the one we are facing now is one of the best opportunities to evolve and grow your business portfolio by targeting previously unexplored target markets. Mergers and acquisition are one of the best ways to speed up company growth and business scaling. Look into mergers and acquisitions to accelerate and cultivate your business portfolio.
Explore Bold Ideas and Potential Avenues
- Pilot New Digital Initiatives to Avail New Market Opportunities
With so much change happening at once, this is the best time to go for new opportunities and take some bold digital actions. Pilot new digital initiatives and deploy design thinking and technologies like artificial intelligence (AI), cloud computing and data analysis at scale across your business.
- Reinvent Your Business Model to Incorporate Digital Transformation
Redesign your core business model to bring forth rapid and massive digital transformation changes throughout your organisation. Do an end-to-end evaluation of your business and operating model to find weak points and areas of improvement. Commit to large-scale transformational changes to ensure rapid results and work on making your supply-chain transparent and flexible.
This is something that is tried and tested by IDMA as we help organisations implement design thinking to accelerate operations and growth.
How can IDMA Help?
Planning a digital strategy in a time of COVID-19 should involve the identification of areas where digital transformation is required. At IDMA, we create digital strategies for organisations looking to prepare and reinvent their operations for the evolving future. Our goal to facilitate leaders by helping them create a robust digital strategy that will help their business grow and thrive.
