As the saying goes, “if it isn’t broke, don’t fix it.” Yet innovation continues, and if you haven’t kept up, you could be left behind. Consider an elite athlete who is at the top of her craft, she continues to adjust, focus, change and adapt to developments in nutrition, exercise, and coaching to maintain her performance. Lack of adaptation will reduce her effectiveness, or worse, put her out of the competition altogether. The same can be said about business. Continual improvements in key areas of your business can assure that you maintain your competitive edge. And seeking a coach (like BDO Digital) to help guide the way can ensure that you are not alone in assessing the developments that can transform your business.

How to Win in the Digital Age

In today’s fast-paced world, new technologies are being introduced daily with seemingly unlimited potential to transform business. While the opportunities are endless, many businesses are facing the consequences of failing to respond to the rapid change taking place around us. Today’s successful businesses understand that true transformation is not just about updating a website or purchasing an application. The implementation of new technology can result in a fundamental change in how a business operates, how it earns revenue, and how it delivers value to customers.

6 Ways to Transform Your Business

In order to create the capabilities needed to fully leverage the opportunities ahead, business leaders must take a step back and consider the areas of their business that could use a refresh.

• Acquire & Retain Customers: Technology is changing the way we engage with customers and forge deeper, more personal relationships. Consider your public branding, how you maintain your position of relevance, how you drive new customers to your website, and how you manage your existing customer relationships and improve promoters.
• Automate Business Processes: In today’s fast-paced business environment, embracing automation has become essential to future-proofing your business. Analyze your business systems for ease-of-use and maximum productivity. How adapted are they for integration within your organization and with your partners? Are you embracing mobile for you and your customer base?
• Communicate and Collaborate: As a leader of your organization, one of the most important responsibilities is to provide employees with the tools they need to work effectively together. When was the last time you evaluated how well you’re enabling your users, clients, and partners to maximize their engagement? Is your productivity suite current? Do you have customer and partner sites setup for working and sharing info?
• Improve Decision Making: In a data-driven world, the use of analytics is now the way leading companies stay ahead and build a competitive advantage. Appraise your tools for decision-making. How are you leveraging data science to present qualified analytical trends? Do you have models for past results that direct future actions, and can you surface that information quickly through visualization?
• Secure Your Assets: With each passing minute, not only do the number of cyberattacks increase, but the sophistication and scope also intensify. As you evaluate your approach to combat modern cybersecurity challenges, don’t forget to think about data governance and identity management to meet today’s compliance requirements, or simply because you must ensure data is limited to only those who need it. And what about business continuity, are you ready for the unexpected?
• Optimize IT: IT is no longer just an add-on function of the business. It is the foundation of innovation and enabler of future growth. Have you explored the return on investment in your team by complementing it with managed services? Are you capitalizing your infrastructure through the use of cloud services? Are resources focused on tactical activities or strategic initiatives?

Despite the perception that digital transformation is far too radical for midsize organizations to take on, it’s entirely possible to scale your approach to build resilience and competitive advantage. Often, this means partnering with a group of experts who can provide a clear, often staged approach to digital transformation by focusing on real business challenges first, and then identifying which actions and technology investments will have the greatest impact.

If you’re interested in exploring some of the six key areas of focus covered in this blog in more depth, contact us to discuss your unique business priorities and needs.