Digital transformation is integrating digital technology into all areas of your business to fundamentally change or ‘transform’ how it works, improving your customers’ experience. Good digital transformation transcends tech. It engenders broader change that challenges the status quo and is disruptive, upending industries, society, culture and communication.
Companies that embrace digital transformation can reap significant rewards.
A report by PTC identified the benefits of migrating to digital workflows and models, including:
- Improved operational efficiency
- Meeting changing customer expectations
- Improved new product quality
- Increased design re-use
- Reduced product development costs
- Introducing new revenue streams
However, according to Boston Consulting Group, only around 30% of companies navigate a digital transformation successfully – which is where hiring a digital transformation consultant can help pathfind your way to success.
Why hire a business consultant to support your digital transformation?
Given digital transformation potentially requires disrupting the status quo, impartial expertise is essential in assessing your organisation’s existing state, goals and digital objectives. A consultant can objectively evaluate digital technologies that can improve processes and guide on the best way to implement new systems.
Portevo can match the right management consultant to aid your digital transformation. Our platform provides access to a curated marketplace matching organisations with expert, independent consultants specialising in digital transformation.
Read our case study of how we enabled the creation of a digital app marketplace for merchant payment solutions providers, and watch a video to discover how Portevo works.
But what digital transformation trends should you look for over the next 12 months?
5 trends in digital transformation for 2023
Artificial Intelligence (AI) increasingly aids decision-making
AI can boost business profitability and help with UK economic growth.
A report by Infosys found that 98% of organisations that use AI to power digital transformation generated additional organisational revenue. It could add £630 billion gross value added to the UK economy, according to UK Research and Innovation (UKRI).
A business consultant can dig deeper into how this digital transformation trend can add value to your business.
Typical applications of AI include support with decision-making due to the ability to mine large data sets intelligently. Data is only as effective as the AI systems we use to manage, regulate and process it for insights; for example, data can give you a better all-round, 360-degree view of your customers. It can also reduce costs by automating resource-heavy and time-consuming activities such as customer communications, finance and operational functions, network monitoring, creating marketing and sales collateral and communications, and automating recruitment processes.
AI is already driving digital transformation across a range of sectors, says UKRI, including:
- finance to agriculture
- food
- health care
- criminal justice
- education
- environment.
Cloud Computing accelerates digital transformation
Cloud and digital transformation are intrinsically linked.
Research by Gartner predicts the trend towards cloud computing will see global spending on public cloud services reach $482 billion.
Meanwhile, a report by McKinsey argues that cloud services and platforms can accelerate digital transformation.
It found that it can accelerate time to market by enabling companies to release new capabilities daily to respond agilely to market demands. The cloud also offers the potential for sizeable off-site storage, which AI can mine. Putting data in the cloud makes it readily accessible to teams answering customer queries or for AI to mine the data and anticipate customer needs.
The cloud can empower new ways of working with a proliferation of services, which emerged during Covid-19 and the ensuing rush to hybrid and off-site working. For example, SharePoint and Teams can enable better remote collaboration and file-sharing, while video-conferencing enables remote communication.
In addition, the cloud centralises computing resources, infrastructure and platforms, allowing teams and sites to access computing resources, data and services on-demand, fueling global operations.
The metaverse harnesses virtual and augmented reality into transformative experiences
Should you believe the hype about the so-called metaverse? And what is it?
The metaverse blurs the lines between the physical and digital worlds, between actual and virtual realities. It is a network of 3D virtual worlds experienced with virtual reality (VR) and augmented reality (AR) headsets. The metaverse can potentially be highly disruptive, from reducing carbon emissions by substituting physical goods and meetings with virtual ones to replacing real-world presence with virtual interactions.
Coupled with blockchain-powered non-fungible tokens (NFTs), organisations are taking steps into the metaverse by providing virtual products, digital real estate and virtual events.
- Nike has launched Niketown on the popular Roblox platform, where customers can buy Nike-branded NFT virtual clothing to dress their avatars.
- Stella Artois launched Zed Run, where virtual visitors can buy, breed and race digital horses and has over 100,000 active users.
- Hyundai released its Hyundai Mobility Adventure on Roblox, a prototype vision that merges physical and virtual travel into a concept it bills as metamobility.
Possible metaverse applications to keep tabs on in 2023 include:
- Evaluating virtual 3D models of new products without creating prototypes
- Enabling potential home buyers to take a virtual tour of a property
- Employee training; for example, virtual health and safety training in the construction industry
- Experiential marketing to build more compelling relationships with customers
- Collaborative team-based work in virtual environments across time zones
- Virtual products and services sold to customers for use in the metaverse.
Big Data equals big digital transformation
Expect a continued push into Big Data as massive-scale datasets are harnessed with AI to transform organisations.
Big Data refers to the trend towards collecting and processing large data sets. However, you need to combine that with data analytics to turn data into knowledge; as Peter Sondergaard, senior vice president of Gartner Research, said: “Information is the oil of the 21st century, and analytics is the combustion engine.”
Big Data Analytics is an integral component of digital transformation and AI.
Tapping into this digital transformation trend will empower organisations to make meaningful, strategic adjustments that reduce costs and maximise results. By understanding the current behaviours of employees and customers, you can predict what they might do in the future and start adapting and changing your goals.
Specifically, Big Data can empower organisations to:
- Improve or change the customer experience
- Improve employee workflow for better productivity
- Identify customer pain points in the digital world for marketers
- Retain customers
- Reduce costs.
One of the benefits of Big Data is in personalising and flexing customer experience (CX).
It can enable organisations to build customer profiles and understand how customers interact with products and services. You can use this to enhance and tailor CX to narrow customer clusters, improving marketing effectiveness, for example.
Organisations are increasingly combining AI with Big Data analytics to, for example, automate decision-making processes such as fraud detection within the financial services market.
A better Employee Experience
While the spotlight has been on improving Customer Experience (CX) to drive growth and improve loyalty; the next digital transformation trend will likely focus on a better Employee Experience (EX).
According to Gartner, by 2025, more than 50% of IT organisations will use digital employee experience to prioritise and measure success, compared to fewer than 5% in 2021.
Mulesoft estimates that, in 2023, an increasing number of leading organisations will look at Total Experience (TX) as a means of improving the journeys of both customers and employees, particularly where they intersect.
Total Experience is critical to transforming business levels. A separate Gartner report claims that, by 2026, 60% of large enterprises will use TX to change their business models to achieve “world-class customer and employee advocacy levels.”
Plus, by 2024, organisations focusing on total experience will outperform competitors by 25% in satisfaction metrics for CX and EX.
The trend towards TX encapsulates the digital and business elements of digital transformation, underscoring the critical role of the business consultant.
