If you run any kind of business in the U.S., then you’ve likely heard the digital transformation buzzwords. You may think it just means upgrading to the best tools for your IT department, and while that’s certainly part of it, the truth is that it’s about upgrading in innovative ways across all departments. It isn’t just about your technology either—digital transformation is also about the people at your company. You need leaders who can implement new technology quickly and employees who not only understand how to use it but also understand why it’s needed.
Many companies struggle a bit as they pursue digital transformations, which is to be expected, but a failure to commit at all means that your company will lag behind with legacy systems and approaches that simply don’t work anymore. Take a look at the latest Magic Quadrant Data Science report to see some of the greatest vendors in telecommunications, retail, manufacturing, logistics, and more to see what companies you should work with to modernize your business. A Magic Quadrant is basically a combination of findings from research publications about a specific market, so you can see which vendors are performing best in each niche.
Here are some of the most important areas to focus on for your own digital transformation.
Search and Analytics
As companies become more entwined with big data, they find themselves in an ever-greater need for reliable search and data analytics options. Enterprise organizations, in particular, tend to have unique needs compared to other companies since they often have thousands of webpages to run, not to mention customers and employees to keep track of. It doesn’t take a data scientist to know that you need a fast and accurate way to sort through all your data and glean actionable insights from it to improve your business processes. That’s where an artificial intelligence-powered search and text-analytics solution comes in.
Advanced analytics platforms that take advantage of AI and machine learning can simultaneously index data from multiple data sources and return relevant results for even your most complex questions in practically real-time, thus greatly cutting down on research time. Additionally, AI assistants can be deployed in the cloud, so you won’t have to worry about storage space or installing on-premises, which makes these great options for any technology users.
Software Development
If you really want to edge out your competition, then you’ll need custom software that does things they can’t do or does the things they can do but better. Fortunately, you don’t have to be a software visionary to get this done since you can hire another company to make your solutions for you or take advantage of developer resources to help you.
You may find that development companies are able to make something that you can integrate easier into your current solutions compared to off-the-shelf products. Custom software is also great if your company has really specific needs that are difficult or time-consuming to meet with typical software. You can even have custom mobile apps made to improve communication within your team or make it more convenient for customers to shop.
Customer Service
Speaking of customers, they’re the lifeblood of your business, and you need to offer them the best support you can. That’s why it’s a great idea to make a modern CRM solution a major focus of your digital transformation. These systems help your sales team pursue leads more effectively, and they make it easier than ever to store and recover customer information.
As far as creating a better customer experience, modern CRM programs let customers contact your support agents not just through phone calls, but they can use any digital communication channel they want including, text, social media, mobile apps, live chat, and more. Intelligent routing enabled by machine learning means customers aren’t placed on hold either and are quickly connected to the best agent for their concerns, thus alleviating a great deal of frustration often associated with call centers.
The full benefits of digital transformation are practically limitless. If you can find the provider that best matches you for each particular purpose, you’ll likely stand far above your competitors.
