Explaining the term ‘digital transformation’

With so many advances in digital technologies, businesses are struggling to stay on par, particularly older ones. In fact, some traditional business even regret that the digital world is advancing so fast!

That being said, a common term for staying on par with the digital world is – digital transformation. Although this term is commonly used, not everyone understands it.

Not about the TECH

What one needs to realize is that it is not always about the TECH. Digital transformation is not a type of technology like AI, Virtual Reality, Robots or Bitcoin. The value of bitcoin for example can be expressed by asking a crowd of people for a show of hands for whoever owns bitcoins. With digital transformation, don’t think about whether or not you have invested in digitalization, think about how it is influencing your customers – think about the people and how they feel.

By thinking about all tools available in technology, companies may fear that they have to be a part of everything. This however is not true – just keep it simple and work around the people, not the tech.

Companies might become paralyzed by the sheer amount of technology and fall under the temptation that they need to do everything. Goodwin said companies should, instead, try to keep it simple and work around the people, not the tech.

Not about patching up

Another misunderstanding that many companies have about digital transformation is that they feel that simply patching over an older solution with technology means they are on the right track. For example:

• updating your website with new technology but still maintaining old catalogs does not provide a personalized interconnected solution.
• Having a digital ordering service while using store employees to pick out the items.
• Digital billboards which have the same content that static billboards had.
• A software app that takes pictures of checks and deposits them.

It is about starting from scratch

Understand digital transformation – it is very much about delivering new experiences ‘from scratch’. Firms need to provide holistic experiences that look at a variety of elements. For example – modern behaviors, business models, expectations, and so on. Look at what is possible with technology and how you can build it from scratch.

In terms of digital signage experiences, a perfect example would be to deliver ‘relevant’ content to customers. Retail LED signs could make use of customer data (age and gender) to display context-sensitive advertisements.

Successful digital transformation also means looking at possibilities, not just used cases from the past. Hence companies must look at individual tools such as providers of high quality LED displays while also looking into a good digital signage system. LED Craft Inc is a reputed manufacturer for LED signs and can provide you with a complete solution for your digital signage campaign.

There is scope for more

While technology is advancing rapidly, there is still a lot of fragmentation. For example, retailers and restaurants are using about a dozen POS devices to accept different kinds of payments – this can be integrated into one device. On the consumer side, a home may be using many remote controls for different devices – integration is possible here as well.

Experts claim that we still need to completely figure out digital transformation and integrate it seamlessly. Soon we will move from front and center technology to more personalized and predictive technology. There will be an age where we will have made complete sense of this technology and it is indeed exciting to think about the possibilities in that era.