Its an over used buzz word but digital transformation is a legit thing. According to Bloomberg 96% of leaders say the pandemic will speed their digital transformation by an average of 5.3 years. What is it all about and how can your business transform? The simple answer is by adopting digital technologies that help you re-engineer, automate and infuse intelligence across key business functions. In this article my goal is to help you cut through all the buzz words and identify a few products that can truly help transform a business.
Sales and Marketing
User experience, customer experience or patient experience is a hot topic and something businesses are focused on. Let me give you an example of what I mean. Why is it that I can fly clear across the country to a city that I am not familiar with, pull up an app on my phone and within minutes have an independent contractor from Uber show up to collect me at the airport and take me to a predetermined destination with the entire transaction happening on my cell phone.
Yet, if I want to buy a car from my local car dealer it takes 3 hours and all kinds of paperwork? I mean its pretty much a math equation right? How much do you make, what is your credit score, what is your debt to income and whats the value of the car? All of that could be pre-determined thrown into an app and the entire purchase could take place in minutes. Its not like humans are doing anything other than type information into the computer to see what it tells them. That customer experience is horrible. What has technology done for the car business? Every hear of Carvana? They have the whole gimmicky car vending machine thing. You go on their website or app and choose the vehicle your looking for. The website has 360 degree images of the vehicle, you can open the doors and have a look inside and you can zoom in to see the interior and all its features. The website gives you way more information than you would be willing to listen to from a salesman and then at the bottom it gives you the price, the tax, title and registration fees and total. In another box it shows you the payment. If you don’t already have your own financing you can click a button, fill out their form and get instant notification of the financing terms they are willing give you. Once you’ve made your decision you use their app to scan your ID and upload any documents as well as track the shipping of your car to your home. Once it arrives you can test drive for up to 7 days and if it doesn’t check out you send it back. If it does, you’re a proud owner of new vehicle. The entire thing can be done from your computer or cell phone. That is what digital transformation can do for customer experience. Its all about eliminating the friction.
Another simple way to transform your customer experience is by communicating with customers where they are. All day long we text our kids, our wives our friends and even our business collegues. So do our customers, so why not allow them to text your business. Whether you’re in retail, professional services or wholesale supply all your customers are communicating on cell phones and would love to be able to text their supplier or favorite vendor for product, for appointments or to ask questions. With the right UCaaS phone solution we can enable you to text with your clients as well as traditional voice calls and even complex routing to make sure they get their questions answered. Check out our RingCentral offering.
Operations
Transform and automate business operations with intelligent asset management, monitoring, predictive maintenance and reliability in a single platform. Lets say you have complex equipment at your branch offices, fork lifts or maybe you have large warehouses with inventory. Enterprise Asset Management (EAM) is the combination of software, systems and services used to maintain and control operational assets and equipment. It is broader and more comprehensive than a computerized maintenance management system. EAM solutions are designed to optimize the quality and utilization of assets throughout their lifecycle, increase productive uptime and reduce operational costs. Asset data analyzed with AI provides insights that help businesses make better decisions, enhance efficiency, perform preventive maintenance and maximize investments in physical assets. Check out IBM Maximo. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3j807blj3tg
What about just keeping all the branch offices connected to P.O.S. systems, databases, servers etc? Many organizations depend on cloud-based applications for productivity nowadays. Resources in the cloud are essential for communicating with colleagues, deploying projects and managing workflows around the clock from anywhere. Organizational productivity is also dependent on WAN links. These links carry cloud-based traffic and also determine network performance.
SD-WAN stands for Software-Defined Wide Area Network. It can help you deliver effective network connectivity across your company. This technology has never been more relevant than now, in an increasingly remote workplace reality.
SD-WAN allows you to create rules as needed, giving you the capability to use broadband internet more effectively in conjunction with existing MPLS links. An SD-WAN deployment may also help you avoid last-mile bottlenecks. You can set it up to recognize congestion and steer traffic to alternate, healthier cloud connections. The technology can drive traffic around blockages by combining SD-WAN and WAN optimization to improve performance across congested links as well as high-latency connections.
With an SD-WAN transformation we can enable IT professionals to control application-driven infrastructures more easily because, with SD-WAN, you can connect all enterprise networks. These networks can, of course, include remote branch offices as well as dispersed data centers, all while using secure transport protocols.
Since SD-WAN is not hardware dependent, it is more agile and flexible than the more traditional WAN connectivity. You will be able to manage any application-based platform remotely, scale an overlay and run it quickly. SD-WAN is delivered as a fully managed service, offering the flexibility and agility that prevents the WAN from becoming a barrier to transformation. Benefit from real time reporting and network stats without going to 3rd party software. Gain the ability to set QOS down to the application level giving you full view and control over your entire network.
To Learn more
Today, companies worldwide realize that true transformation—making strategic, fundamental changes to an organization’s operations to increase effectiveness and realize significant gains in value—requires the proper alignment of business decision-making, operations and data. The goal is to anticipate and respond to sudden disruptions, changing customer needs and pivotal market opportunities in real time and continuously. Often, these business transformations take the form of digital transformations, which integrate digital technology into all viable operations. These are only a few of the many deep dive discussions we have to help your business transform and improve customer experience. Give us a call today and let us show you what is possible.
