5 Steps To Digitizing Your Business Processes

Illustration by Hurca!™ via Dribbble

Change is the only constant thing in life. Only those who’re willing to change their personal life, business, career, or relationship can survive the prevailing times. Digitizing your business is one such change.

Since the introduction of the internet, mobile phones, and other modern technologies like machine learning and cloud security, there has been a progressive digital transformation. Businesses have been digitizing their internal and external processes to meet customers’ demands as per current market trends and needs.

So, what does it mean to digitize your business, and why is it important? How do you achieve the digital transformation of your business? You’ll find out the answer in this article.

Digitizing Your Business Process

A business process involves a series of activities done by different people to achieve a common goal, such as producing goods or delivering services to meet the market demands. Digital transformation, on the other hand, refers to the process of making business processes and activities digitized. These business activities include:

Recruitment
Training
Researching
Product development
Invoicing
Customer onboarding
Accounting

Thanks to modern technology, most of the business processes are being digitized to help save money, time, and use data to make impactful decisions for the business.

Digitizing your business is no longer a preserve of top-performing enterprises. Even start-ups are quickly embracing this process to give them a competitive advantage. Customers today prefer digitized processes with a seamless, user-friendly experience to traditional methods of transactions. Therefore, if you’re looking to thrive through the competition, you must adopt and integrate this modern technology into your enterprise.

Here are other ways your business could benefit from services like BlueFort digital transformation consulting and other experts in the industry.

It Reduces Cost of Running the Business

Digitizing your business process helps you save on time, money, labor, and other resources. Using applications, websites, and artificial intelligence will significantly reduce the human workforce needed to run your business.

Moreover, by automating the production process, the machine can warn you of predicted hitches. In turn, you can run maintenance on it beforehand, helping you save on the downtime that would have otherwise occurred when relying on traditional production methods.

It Helps Enhance Security

Making your business paperless is part of the digital transformation. It means that all your business documents are in digital form, from the business plan to clients’ bank details and invoices, to mention but a few.

One of the robust benefits of digitalization of business is that it offers state-of-the-art cloud storage. Companies providing cloud storage have invested in systems to protect your data and information from cyber security attacks making it safer to store your data on the cloud than have it filed in an office.

It Helps Businesses Adapt

The modern world is constantly changing to fit new technologies and innovations. It helps when a business is equipped with the right tools to continue being beneficial to the public. Therefore, digitizing your business processes will help your business adapt to the advancement of technology. This makes every process efficient and effective.

These are just some of the major advantages of digitizing the business process.

Five Steps of Digitizing Your Business

Now that you understand the primary benefits of this process, here’re steps to follow for the digital transformation of your business.

Step #1: Visualize, Research, and Plan for Your Business

The process of transforming your business to become digital starts with conceptualization. What would your ideal digitalized business look like? Will the transformation have more pros than cons or vice versa?

While conceptualizing your business, put your idea into writing for reference. Once it’s documented, research what you would need to bring the concept to life. Keep in mind that as much as you’re trying to catch up with modern trends and competition, this transformation should enhance your business and not expose its weaknesses.

Step #2: Decide on Which Part of The Business Needs Digitization

The business process is divided into operational, managerial, and supporting processes. The operational process involves manufacturing and delivering products or services to customers. The process would use digitization tools such as robots, AI, and machine learning.

The management process oversees every employee and sees to it that the goal of the business is met. It could use some tools to make it more streamlined such as using employee alignment software by Spider Strategies that helps make clear to your employees what they’re responsible for so everyone sees how their roles contribute toward big-picture goals.

Finally, the supporting process is the back-end of the business. It involves activities like recruitment, training, office administration, customer complaints, and technical support. The supporting process can also be digitized using tools such as websites and applications.

Each of these processes will require different tools for their digitization. You must decide on which part of the business you wish to digitize to determine your budget and the types of services you would need.

Step #3: Prioritize the User Experience

Now that you’ve figured out which part of the business requires digitization, consider implementing user experience when your transformation plan. How the customer interacts with your business can make or break it. Therefore, you want to ensure that they have a user-friendly experience with your application, website, or software of choice.

The easiest way to create a user-friendly experience is by keeping your target audience in mind. Consider the tool they need and incorporate in your business. If not, what digital tool would they rather have? To get an idea of what potential customers want, you can look into your competitors’ digital strategy and come up with an original concept from it. A user-friendly experience means that customers can easily navigate the website, even first-timers. It also means that they can access services and get a prompt response to their claims.

A digitized business is more or less the face of your business to netizens. It would be best always to strive to create a renowned first impression.

Step #4: Document the Process and Use Cloud Storage

As aforementioned, always document the three steps mentioned above. Cloud storage is part of digitizing your business, but you need it before using other tools. It’s recommended you store all these documents on the cloud. Cloud will be used as a reference point during the implementation of the transformation.

Step #5: Review the Process with Your Employes and Existing Customers

Imagine digitizing your business only for it not to be useful to your employees or not fit your customers’ needs. What a waste of resources that would be. That’s why you must consult your customers and employees during the development of the transformation process.

You can create a form where they can add suggestions and recommend some emissions considered in the process. You can then weigh their input and integrate it into the final decision-making. Remember, a digitally transformed business process should have more benefits than disadvantages.

Wrap Up!

Digitally transforming your business is one of the best ideas you can implement for your business. It won’t only give you a competitive advantage, but it’ll also streamline your business performance. Consider the steps listed above before hiring a guru to help with your digital business transformation.