Digital Transformation: how you should carry it out in your company

This important process of digital transformation will influence your business model through different activities that we will develop below:

• business functions

The area of ​​marketing, operations, human resources, administration and customer service will be the bases you need to be able to get out of this transformation process on the right foot.

Each of these departments must have the necessary resources to continue operating without interruptions while changes occur within your company; Likewise, areas such as human resources must know and inform in advance, everything that the other teams will require. 

As for the customer service department, it is essential that they can offer offline and online services during the transition and that an emergency protocol be established so that users can migrate digitally together with your brand.

For this, a communication campaign is important both internally and to your public so that they are aware of this transition. 

Once this first step is done, you must continue to nourish your team with valuable information about the digital world. Courses, training, motivational talks, showing success stories from other companies is part of what you should always communicate to your team. 

We know that it is a world that is moving very fast, that is why you must always be constantly updated on trends and get on them in order to advance in your company. 

• business ecosystems

Along with the changes generated by the digital transformation, the networks of allies, partners and clients must also be part of this process to achieve a uniform evolution of all those involved.

Developing a contingency manual or a guide that establishes the new rhythm of work, the processes and how they will influence each area will help you keep everyone aligned inside and outside the organization. This is essential for the correct progress that your company will be going through. 

Just as we talked about in the previous point, these manuals must be updated in very short periods of time, in order to catch up with the pace of the digital world. 

• business culture

This step may take a little more time as it is not so automatic, however, it is essential to successfully complete the transformation. Once you have developed your goals, mission, vision and digital values, it is time for everyone within your company to make them theirs as well.

Adapting to new tools, new communication channels and even new storage spaces, collaborators can bring a certain resistance to change; however, once everyone involved knows the benefits and is open to innovation, they will see how digital transformation is the way to go. 

Now it is time for all this theory to allow us to share with you some real examples of companies that have succeeded in their digital transformation process.

They are ready? 

American entertainment company that operates worldwide distributing audiovisual content through a streaming VOD platform, born in California in 1997. 

Currently, Netflix participates in the production and creation of pieces from the creation or acquisition of the product until its death on its platform worldwide. 

In a matter of a few years, we went from consuming series and movies through CDs or DVDs to having hours of audiovisual programming on our digital devices, with endless options that you can access anywhere in the world, even without internet because Netflix allows you to download series and movies.

Netflix focused on the most important thing: people. This saw the need to make this form of entertainment more practical, to offer more than one episode a week of that series that was so popular and to be able to be everywhere.

This is how it decided to go completely digital, invest in its platform and currently even has a large amount of its own content based on the preferences of its users.

El Corte Inglés, is a global distribution group based in Spain, whose main format is sales in department stores, and secondly, sales over the Internet.

This company with more than 80 years of experience, managed to reach its customers in a multi-channel way and with impressive innovation: they went from traditional magazine-format catalogs to tablets.

They have organized their malls with checkout islands, which are several concentrated checkout boxes instead of one old checkout counter.

The electronic payment system is part of the options that your customers have when making purchases.

They have created digital product sheets, so that customers can have first-hand information.

And they have renewed their website and with the creation of their app sales have been on the rise thanks to this fast and convenient shopping system. 

• It is not a writing technique for advertising (copywriting). They are not sales pages or brochures.
• It is not the sale of a product.
• It is not a promotion, it is a way to generate trust and credibility with the public. This allows you to establish yourself as an authority on the subject, which will lead to less resistance with future clients when offering your products.
• It is not the publication of any type of information, it is quality content relevant to the user.

Company founded in the 1960s by Tom Monaghan, who five years earlier had opened a pizzeria in Michigan, currently has more than 15,000 establishments, second only to its biggest competitor Pizza Hut. 

Domino’s Pizza is established in 89 countries and territories around the world. 

They are a totally different example because although the content of Netflix is ​​strictly digital, you cannot eat a pizza through your cell phone or your TV.

However, in addition to what we mentioned earlier about leaving paper and landlines behind, Domino’s created its app and website to provide comfort and security to its users.

Even if you can’t eat the pizza digitally, you can create it to your liking and choose all the details with which you want to receive it: from the type of dough to how long you want it at your door.

In less than 5 years, Domino’s has increased its value by 500%. Digital transformation sounds great, doesn’t it?

In 1933, what we know today as MAPFRE was born, a mutual insurance company of the group of rural estates in Spain, with the aim of insuring the workers of agricultural operations. 

But in 1955, when the foundations of the entity were laid, it began to bet on car insurance, a product that at that time was not of interest to most insurers and that, over time, has been the hallmark of of MAPFRE and one of the entry routes in many countries where they are. 

Currently, one in five vehicles in Spain is insured by MAPFRE .

If you remember the days when you had to phone to make an appointment, go to the insurer, take a number and wait for an agent to answer you, probably to bring you back later with some papers, you understand the wonder of digital transformation.

Seeing this problem, the insurer Mapfre decided to invest in its digital transformation and use technologies that streamline and make processes more flexible, both for clients and for the organization.

Now it is omnichannel, it has an active listening algorithm and it even promotes projects in the area of ​​innovation and technology, thus diversifying its sources of income.

Achieving the digital transformation of your company does require financial investment and time, but if you do it right, this will give you a much higher return on investment and it is proven, not only by the companies we mentioned, but by many more.

The digital transformation of a company goes far beyond having a website or being on social networks. Rather, it is about integrating tools into your internal processes that allow your teams to work, for example, remotely without compromising their performance.

Likewise, the use of digital tools will allow you to: automate marketing and sales processes, measure the efficiency of your processes, identify business opportunities through data, create repositories of lessons learned from certain strategies, among many other benefits.

There are many tools, here we tell you the most used:

g–suite

Google has developed multiple tools and resources for your digital transformation to be successful. Google Drive is a great resource for storing your files in the cloud.

In addition to this, you can create Word documents, Excel documents, Power Point presentations and many more digitally, where all your teams and clients can access and even edit and annotate, all in real time.

Likewise, you have the Gmail platform that allows you to have your emails, contacts, calendar, notes and much more so that you can organize all the relevant information for the company.

Hub Spot

It is a software platform specialized in digital marketing and inbound marketing , one of the most recognized worldwide for its effectiveness and how friendly it is for new users.

With HubSpot you will not only be able to implement and develop strategies for your company, but you will also be able to train and educate all your teams through its academy.

RD Station

Like HubSpot, RD is an inbound marketing platform. From RD you can automate emails, social networks, see the history of your contacts, which page they entered, where they clicked and thus plan actions to connect with your potential customers.

Slack , BaseCamp , TeamWork and Asana

These are all platforms that will help you with the management and optimization of work within the company. They are designed so that teams can communicate, deliver their tasks and carry out digital planning.

With these tools, you can monitor and evaluate the performance of each of the people who work within the company. Also, you can assign tasks, organize meetings, transmit group or individual information and, most importantly, everything is recorded digitally.

As well as these, there are many management tools and platforms for companies, it is up to you to evaluate which characteristics are best suited to your organization and your objectives to choose the ideal one.

With the passing of the years, the digital and the technological continue to grow by leaps and bounds, it is time to move forward with society and take advantage of all the benefits that your company can achieve through digital transformation.

The world will continue to change and it will be increasingly difficult to adapt to the new if you don’t start now. So we invite you to get to work and take into account all our advice for your digital transformation.