The first email ever sent was way back in 1965. Since then, new technological and digital phenomena have swept the corporate world in which the businesses that are intent on not just surviving, but thriving will adopt.
Historically, the UK has been actively pursuing digital transformation initiatives across various sectors, including government services, healthcare, finance, and education. Initiatives like the Government Digital Service (GDS) have aimed to make public services more accessible and efficient through digital channels.
The digital imbalance
However, despite the UK’s digital transformation industry sizing up to $35 billion in 2022 and expecting to reach $46.6 in 2023, this industry has largely focused on larger corporations over SMEs. Small businesses still perceive digital transformation as a distant wish rather than an immediate requirement.
Progressive digital transformation can start small, and can be prioritised to target your most inefficient and undeveloped business areas. It all starts with the symptoms, this guide will help you prioritise those undeveloped areas by revealing the signs that your business is in need of digital transformation.
Five signs that indicate your business needs digital transformation could include:
- Staff spending time on low-value tasks
- Poor customer reviews
- Slow & multi-level decision making
- Lack of global reach
- High fixed costs
1. Staff spending time on low-value tasks
Digital tools and technologies streamline processes, automate tasks, and enable employees to work more efficiently. The desired result is that staff can spend time on higher-value tasks that often require a specific set of skills, which keeps them focused and challenged throughout the majority of their day.
What are low-value tasks?
Low-value tasks can generally be defined as those that do not contribute significantly to the overall goals of the business and require few skills or expertise to complete. These tasks tend to consume time and resources without yielding substantial benefits and can often be automated.
Some common example of low-value tasks include:
- Data entry
- Email management
- Scheduling and coordination
- Formatting documents
- Simple desk research
- Routine social media management
- Frequent status meetings and stand-ups
- Customer enquiries & support
- Manual expense tracking
- Proofreading for basic errors
At least one of the tasks above will be evident in any UK business can be replaced with digital transformation.
How to reduce low-value tasks
The answer is simple – automation. There are now more affordable AI tools and task management tools that can speed up document formatting, proof-reading and data entry.
Similarly, with communication such as social media management and customer support, chat bots can be integrated affordably into both websites and social media platforms.
Finally, expense tracking and accounting can easily be sped up and automated using accounting software such as Xero or ExpenseIn.
2. Poor customer reviews
Customer reviews can be received from all angles, not just from customers on platforms like Google My Business and Trustpilot but also from employees on platforms such as Glassdoor.
It’s easy to get complacent and assume customer expectations are too high, or that your business simply can’t afford the resources to manage every customer’s issue to a high standard. However, this is far from the case thanks to data analytics and insights.
Improving customer reviews with digital transformation
Data analytics and customer insights can be gathered, analysed and actively implemented into new experiences with your business.
When it comes to gathering those insights you could consider using:
- Google Analytics – to track conversion rate and problem pages.
- Google Search Console – to identify which pages your customers are finding on your website.
- Surveymonkey – to gain qualitative and quantitative feedback from customers.
- Hotjar – to produce heatmaps on which areas of your website customers use most and how far they need to scroll.
Use this feedback to make improvements to your website, online shops and customer management systems with a targeted approach at the most problematic areas.
3. Slow & multi-level decision making
Decision making can be a slow and arduous process, and often its speed and efficiency can be hard to measure. That said there are key symptoms that indicate that your business is making decisions slowly, this include:
- Staff don’t feel empowered, particularly lower down the hierarchy
- Your company is often behind on new adopting new technologies
- Your company lacks competitive advantage
- Shareholders feel the company is ‘slow-moving’
- High staff turnover
Any of the above could indicate that decisions are requiring multiple emails, meetings, reviews and calls before being signed off and actioned.
Introducing data-driven decision making
The solution is simple – data-driven decision making. Digital transformation generates vast amounts of data, which when analysed, can provide valuable insights into consumer behaviour, market trends, and operational efficiency.
Data-driven decision-making helps businesses make informed choices and refine strategies, and can often increase the speed at which decisions are made without an increase in errors or mistakes.
4. Lack of global reach
Not just using digital platforms, but being highly effective at digital platforms, enables your business to reach a global audience without the need for opening a physical presence in every location.
In fact, as a small business or SME, you’re in a uniquely strong position to achieve global expansion without needing to make heavy and arduous investments in infrastructure and buildings much like your larger and older competitors would have.
Identifying a lack of global reach
Identifying a lack of global reach often starts and ends with some of the platforms already mentioned in this guide.
Use the geography data from Google Analytics, Google Search Console and your eCommerce dashboard and compare with the overall market data of your industry. If there is a disparity between your company’s global activity and the markets, you’ve got a lack of global reach.
5. High fixed costs
Often overlooked during an accounts review by small businesses, fixed costs can often be difficult to reduce. However, during economic recessions or when appealing to potential VCs when raising investment, reducing fixed costs using digital transformation can literally spell the difference between success and failure.
There are many fixed costs that can be targeted by digital transformation. I’ll explore the two most common and most effective below.
Staff salaries
Replacing low-value tasks with automation can often give way to a reduction in staff required. Especially when over 50% of staff time is spent on low-value work.
Whilst this may seem like a negative approach to take, perhaps consider whether some redundant staff could be retrained to roles where more high-value work is being completed.
Servers
Even today, only 34% of companies use cloud computing. Meaning there are still a huge amount of companies using physical servers either themselves or via a third party. This is not only extremely costly but also far less sustainable than the modern cloud alternative.
Speak to your network or speak to a digital transformation consultant about cloud computing. You’ll be saving costs in no time.
I hope this guide has empowered you to feel more confident in spotting the signs of a lack of digital transformation and that you feel able to make your business more sustainable and cost-effective as a result.
Written by Aled Nelmes on behalf of the digital transformation consultants Fuse Group.