In the past, creating your very own product may have seemed like an unattainable dream. There was ample work and fortune involved in building and marketing a product. But not anymore.

In today’s world, anyone can create a digital product and earn money. One of the biggest perks of creating a digital product is that you create it once and sell it over and over again. These products are cost-efficient and can generate tons of money.

Let’s take a look at a few stats related to popular digital products (podcasts, e-book, and more):

• As per Statista, 191 million e-books were sold in the United States in 2020.
• The e-book market was valued at USD 18.13 billion in 2020. It is expected to reach USD 23.12 billion by 2026, at a CAGR of 4.9% (2021-2026).
• In 2020, an estimated 100 million people listened to a podcast each month, and it is expected to reach 125 million in 2022. 

• As per industry reports, the global podcasting market is expected to grow at a CAGR of 27.5% between 2020 and 2027, reaching $60.5 billion.
• WordPress powers around 27% of all websites with a 76.4% share of the CMS market. The potential for selling WordPress related digital products is huge.
• Video is an engaging form of content with 8 billion video views per day on Facebook alone.

The above stats are enough to prove the huge potential of digital product creation. But like any other business of true value, you will not achieve overnight success. You’ll have to put in plenty of hard work first. And once you create a great digital product strategy, there’s no stopping you. So, here are my ten steps on how to build a digital product that sells: 

How do you create a digital product?

Here are a few steps to create ideas for a new product:

1. Brainstorm, brainstorm and brainstorm:

‘’Brainstorming is the nexus of ideas.’’ – Asa Don Brown

Well, the first step is to brainstorm innovative product ideas for the right digital product. You may have many ideas for a new product, but only the most impressive one should go forward. Create a digital product that solves customer’s pain points. This can be done by researching the market and listening to customers.

You can also conduct a brainstorming session among your teammates to generate more digital product business ideas in a short span. Once the brainstorming session is done, analyze the ideas and come up with a digital product that’s irresistible to the audience.

Like Kevin Systorm once said, ‘’Great products sell themselves.’’ So, if you have a brilliant digital product idea, you will build a great reputation, word will spread, and you will see quite a nice payoff come your way.

2. Do in-depth customer research: 

It’s vital to do in-depth research on customers and market before you launch your product. If you don’t understand your customer, it will be very difficult to sell the product. The research consists of three incredibly important questions:

• What are the potential customers’ biggest pain points?
• What will push people to seek out information in your niche?
• What changes do they anticipate to see?

Answering these questions will help you come up with opportunities that lie within a niche. This will also enable you to create more targeted marketing strategies and tailor the product specifically to their needs. 

In the words of Mike Gospe – ‘’Whoever understands the customer best, wins.” 

Below are a few research tips: 

• Research on forums – Be it any niche, there will be forums around it. Forums are communities of people searching for information and solutions. You can find these forums through quick search on Google. You can also search for the niche on Facebook and select groups and pages.
• Ask questions – It’s a good idea to ask questions to customers for digital product creation. People like speaking about the problems they are facing, so listen carefully. There’s always something to learn from customers.
• Study other successful products – Analyze other successful products for product ideation. You can easily learn and benefit from them. Study these products, but NEVER copy them. Take inspiration from other ideas and spin it to make it unique.

In the end, the product must solve customers’ problems. If the product solves a problem, the customers will want to buy that product. 

3. Prototype solves most of your problems:

With the help of a prototype, you can put your creativity in one place and organize all your ideas. In case you have missed something in digital product design or any improvement is needed in the product, a prototype will help you exclude or include changes accordingly.

Building a prototype will also give you a rough estimate of the cost of the business. The prototype will determine the productivity and performance of the developed item. Additionally, your product will be taken more seriously among the competitors.

4. Make a visually appealing product: 

That’s right! Your digital product should look impressive enough to buy. Consumers buy with their eyes; if your product looks appealing, they are more likely to buy it. 

‘’Great design will not sell an inferior product, but it will enable a great product to achieve its maximum potential.’’ – Lee Iacocca

According to a study, when a product’s design is powerful and impressive, consumers are less sensitive to its price. So, make sure you invest time in creating aesthetic digital product designs. You can even hire digital product design services to create better experiences for your customers.

5. Complete your product: 

Once all your innovative digital product ideas (2021) are compiled, you can work on completing your project. For this, you can hire a product development company or a development agency. This will speed up the development process in an efficient manner. 

Write the technical documentation so that you know how to insert banners, images, edit relevant sections, etc. All pages should be developed according to the digital product concept design and technical document provided. Your product should be compatible with all browsers and devices.

6. Detailed quality assurance is a MUST:

Detailed quality assurance is crucial before launching the product in the market. QA engineers must ensure that all the functions of the digital product are working in accordance with product experience design and technical requirements. There’s no better person to judge the quality of your product than a QA manager.

7. Marketing and launch plan: 

Well, we all have heard this quote like a zillion times – ‘Customer is the King. And so, your customer and his preference should be the centre point of all your marketing strategies. You should be able to gain their interest via your marketing plans.

With several marketing platforms such as digital media, print media and television, you can make your brand recognizable. However, as mentioned above, your product should be visually appealing. The advertisements should be catchy and impressive enough to attract customers.

8. Incorporate feedback and tweak your product: 

‘’We all need people who will give us feedback. That’s how we improve.” – Bill Gates

If you want to succeed as a digital product creator, listen to your customer’s feedback. It is much easier to upgrade a digital product than a physical product. Your customer’s will appreciate receiving updated versions. If they will continually see you adding value to what they have purchased, they are most likely to buy your next product.

I also recommend you to offer some of your biggest fans the chance to preview your digital product. Collect their feedback before the final launch and incorporate the changes, if any. By getting constructive feedback, you can ensure you’re putting out a digital product that’s best.

9. Collaborate with strategic launch partners: 

Make your digital product launch a big event. It’ll get your audience excited and the hype will bring both higher conversion rates and more new customers. Involve social media influencers, brands and bloggers in your space. Imagine your outreach if you partner with someone who has a larger audience than yours, and they’re interested in the same topics.

If you can manage to partner with someone in your industry, it’s a win-win situation for the both of you.

10. Launch and then scale up:

What I mean to say is once you launch the product, it’s time to scale everything upwards. Set up a sequence of newsletters or emails to build anticipation with your existing audience. This would help increase conversion rates and bring in new audiences. 

Now would also be the time to get started with paid advertising on Facebook and Twitter. You can also indulge in direct selling from Facebook, if you have a sizable audience. 

Final Note

Well, we hope this blog answers your questions on how to make digital products and how to get new product ideas. In a nutshell, whether you want to generate new ideas for digital products or improve a current product, you need to create a systematic approach towards product creation. You can hire a creative product development team that will help you create something that would be a success. 

Inventing something out-of-the-box requires hard work and effort. The products we use on a daily basis are the creation of hardworking minds. These products have been proved useful and thriving in the market. If you also try hard enough, then you can also turn your idea into a successful product. The above-mentioned steps will help you in doing the same. 

The post 10 Smart Ways To Generate Ideas For A Digital Product appeared first on Appinventiv.

Coronavirus was a random economic test that no one could have fully anticipated and as social distancing, lockdowns across the globe and work from home rules became common around the world; companies that had seen the writings on the wall became accustomed to the digital age and were the first winners. In this article, we will be discussing in detail how digital transformation in financial services is accelerating the change in Fintech. You can also know the ways financial services are rethinking their security approach with SaaS growth.

Startups and small and medium enterprises (SMEs) have had to reorganize their digital transformation strategies and look to the lending regulatory agencies for quick funding to restart and adapt to the digital ecosystem. 

Fintech is not just limited to startups; as its business model forces large, well-funded enterprises to continue to compete and innovate if they want to stay afloat. Fintechs creates new ways for customers to access and deliver financial services, with simple ways to make payments on investments with quarterly advice and create a personalized budget with the help of the app. To bring difference using digital transformation, a plan with a strategic approach is required that helps to tackle digital transformation without downtime.

Professor Anne-Laure Mention, Director of the Global Business Innovation Enabling Capability Platform at RMIT University, Melbourne, Australia, in her 2019 paper- “The Future of Fintech” highlights the ways Fintechs are disrupting the industry with their faster, cheaper, and attractive service models that are inviting interest from the regulators.

Rapid Growth in Fintech Brought By Digital Transformation

While we know that the financial services industry has a traditional perspective and takes time to adapt to innovation, the pandemic has created a different picture. It has accelerated tangible change by adopting rapid physical and digital transformation, which requires the fintech industry to meet the challenge of equipping businesses with powerful computing systems. 

Changes can also be attributed mainly to the rapid change in consumer behaviour and new emerging patterns set by the clear will of cash-less and contact-less activities.

Some stats below describe the rapid adoption of digital transformation.

• According to a survey by ZDNet, 70% of companies either have a digital transformation strategy in place or are working on one.
• Another report by PTC and CorporateLeaders states that 60% of companies which have undergone a digital transformation have created new business models.
  
• The IDG’s Digital business research includes the top industries for digital-first business strategies with services (95%), financial services (93%) and healthcare (92%) being at the top.
  

How is Fintech Digital Transformation Making SMEs Efficient?

Greater lending flexibility

In the current system, traditional lending models make themselves ineffective because they are not designed to measure and therefore, seem to impose a barrier on SMEs to earn money. Legacy systems are more expensive compared to fintech companies, which boast a reduced performance model designed to reduce costs. There is also a lack of flexibility in this system. 

This is where a cloud-based lending approach can make a difference. Creating an application programming interface (API) that will integrate seamlessly with asset systems and provide an awesome and sustainable digital model that can drive a well-designed lending solution.

Channelling digital fintech offerings

With the increasing pace of digital platform acquisition during the pandemic, digital payment platforms and digital wallets and credit cards have seen a rise in demand in SMEs’ transactions. Additionally, SMEs and startups from across the globe have started taking advantage of the digital profits and loans available through simple, fast and secure fintech solutions backed by robust infrastructure processes. By informing high-end consumers and warm-hearted SMEs they have come up with the idea of ​​using fintech solutions to drive their financial operations.

Processing data for operational efficiency

With innovative digital lending platforms, such as knowing your customer (KYC) and personal identity or KYC based on social security, financial consultants can easily access customer data and get their approval, thus ensuring better efficiency. Data Analytics can be used to improve the understanding of customer portfolios to enable better credit processing. Another useful area where data can be used to detect fraudulent detection, where customer behaviour is recorded and used to analyze potential fraud. 

Digital Transformation Trends in Financial Services 

Among all industries affected by the pandemic and changed by the digital transformation wave, the finance sector experienced one of the most drastic changes in its transformation. Fintech being one of the industries completely dependent on manual work and person-to-person contact, the road to digital transformation and fintech has been a new journey in this sector. The evolution of digital transformation in finance industry has become a business imperative to improve customer experience through development of new products and services.

According to Binder Dijker Otte (BDO), 97% of financial services firms are putting their resources into digital transformation after reshaping their business models to stay competitive in an evolving sector. 

Growing enterprise agility

After the numerous experiences gained from the previous financial crisis, an organization’s ability to expand its agility has become a vital trend in the industry. However, to support the type of constant advancement and improvement that shapes the foundation of agility, financial organizations need quick, reliable access to growing amounts of information without making tedious manual work processes.

Increasing mobile banking

The worldwide pandemic has seen customers rushing to mobile services for their financial requirements and bringing digital transformation in banking industry. While mobile banking is not a new concept, but as the first lockdown was imposed, according to Fidelity National Information Services (FIS), that works with the world’s largest banks, said that there was a 200% rise in new mobile banking registrations in April 2020; while mobile banking traffic rose 85% increasing the need for digital transformation in banking.

The universal utilization of smartphones in our day to day lives has increasingly shifted our choice to digital banking for everyday banking services like electronic bill payments, shared payments and instant transfers. 

Increased collaboration

As entrepreneurs and business leaders across different industries embrace the team structure as an operational model and acknowledge the democratization of information, there is nowhere required to work together as solidly as in the financial sector. Since, financial enterprises need to adhere to administrative guidelines that implement a siloed way to select business units. But for other business units, the ability to effectively communicate and work can mean the difference between getting to the end goal first.

Risk assessment

The collection, storage and analysis of big data is extremely important to financial services and digital transformation consulting firms. For instance, the quick and perfect finish of a due diligence process before a huge merger and acquisition can make great differences for the financial investors, organizations and employees influenced by it.

Mobile pay utilities

A decade ago there was a time, when mobile wallets were a totally new concept to the people. As times are changing, thus, so are the methods of putting away riches and making payments. Mobile wallets have become the rule of the payment, be it merchants, shopping malls, and other sellers like to utilize mobile payments versus traditional cash and checks. All thanks to the comfort, security, and ease of availability have provided a route to digital development in finance sector over the years, which keep on developing as the time goes on.

Challenges Faced In Fintech Digital Transformation

The first challenge they face is how to present investors and other stakeholders with a clear view of their proposal, especially if their offer is not in a certain way in the existing markets, and is not allowed by a certain number of customers. These difficulties present challenges in raising funds for commercial investors. These participants will want to see clear evidence that fintech digital transformation is innovative, capable of measuring and mitigating its risks as much as possible.

Fintechs faces a major hurdle in building relationships and trust within clients working with traditional financial services providers. Fintechs needs to fight the myth that their new invention calls for security and data management.

Fintechs needs a very supportive control framework that aligns boundaries, to be able to scale globally with minimal collisions.

The fourth digital transformation challenge comes in the form of international action; 95% of Fintech firms failed when trying to scale up. The reasons for this is that Fintechs are failing to operate beyond regional and national regulatory limits, and are failing to reach customers at critical times.’

Conclusion

Financial innovation presents an important opportunity that exceeds its impact on financial services firms; the whole economy can benefit. It embraces changes in the supply of banks, insurance companies, investment funds and other digital strategy financial services firms, as well as the transformation of internal structures and processes, management systems, new ways of communicating with clients and distribution channels. emerged as the cornerstone of new financial institutions.

Digital strategy consulting firms and Fintech provides new ways for customers to access and deliver financial services, with simple ways to make payments on investments with quarterly advice and create a personalized budget with the help of the app. Fintechs brings corporate thinking to the forefront while also increasing competition, customer focus, and collaboration. These fashions bring clear benefits to consumers in the form of competitive pricing, as well as new and easier services to manage their finances.

After getting to know the growth of fintech through digital transformation, now it is time to select the appropriate digital transformation companies to reach your goals. For any information or query you can contact us at Appinventiv- a known digital transformation consulting services company.

The post Digital Transformation: Accelerating The Change In Fintech appeared first on Appinventiv.

From an option to a necessity – the trek of the digital transformation journey has always been full of obstacles and problems. When advanced technologies started having a significant impact and transforming the way people communicate, interact, and collaborate with a business, the majority of CEOs realized that it’s a matter of survival in the ever-evolving corporate landscape.

A survey conducted by Tech Pro Research Center in 2018 revealed several interesting facts. Out of all the respondents, 70% admitted that their business heads are either working on a digital transformation or already have one in place. Moreover, the survey also revealed that the budgets for IT transformation have been increased in the past couple of years by senior-level executives.

With the acceptance of C-LEVEL executives, every businessman knows that digital solutions are crucial for the success of an enterprise. However, the percentage of businesses that invested in a digital transformation strategy is surprisingly less. What’s the major contribution to such a low adoption rate? What’s hindering you from adopting digital transformation solutions?

The last ten years of information technology have been about changing the way people work. The next ten years will be about transforming your business!

A lot of CEOs are afraid that they’ll have to stop their business process while they undergo digital transformation. However, with proper planning and monitoring, you can easily conduct digital transformation in your company while keeping your business running. 

Here’s a list of stats that’ll help you decide by yourself:

•     A report by Adobe & E-consultancy stated that companies with a digital-first approach are 64% more likely to achieve their business goals than their competitors.
•       According to a case study conducted by Deloitte, 45% of companies tell people that digital transformation has a positive impact on their business and reported higher net revenue growth.
•       A published article by PwC stated that 52% of the companies plan to cut their defer investment amid the rise of COVID-19, while only 9% are likely to do the same with digital transformation’s budget.

As the statistics suggest, businesses that have adopted digital transformation strategy not only have an edge over their competitors but also allow them to get a higher revenue growth. In this article, you’ll know about five assured ways to tackle digital transformation without downtime. However, before we start, let’s get back to the basics and understand the correct meaning of digital transformation.

The Main Issues of Downtime

For most digital transformation services company owners, downtime is the single biggest reason behind the loss of production time. According to research by Vanson Bourne Research Study, 82% of companies have experienced unplanned downtime at least once over the past three years. Aberdeen’s Research further includes the cost of a company that can go as much as $250,000 an hour. Not just the production, but companies are also facing issues related to productivity, IT, and customer service due to the downtime.

The study by Vanson Bourne also revealed high levels of asset estate ignorance across organizations, wherein 70% of companies lack full awareness due to equipment maintenance, upgradation, or replacement.

The same study also reveals another issue that occurs due to unplanned downtime is that the unplanned downtime results in loss of customer trust and productivity. This loss resulted in a 37% loss in production time and 29% inability to support equipment for production.

When unplanned downtime occurs, no value is generated but the cost of digital transformation grows constantly specifically around overhead operations , which in parallel impacts a company’s bottom line.

The unplanned downtime is the real issue that is pervasive and finding a solution for this downtime gap is a primary step in an organization’s digital maturity and an essential role for a transformative journey.

Road Towards Zero Downtime

As organizations create and invest in their digital transformation business strategy, we are soon entering a time where  zero tolerance and zero unplanned downtime will turn into a norm. The key to this is an understanding of and interest in field service management and asset performance management.

As indicated by Vanson Bourne, eight out of ten organizations have effectively perceived that digital tools can improve the visibility of assets and eliminate unplanned downtime. Around half of the organizations confirmed their intent to invest in field service and asset management in the following three years, while 72% claim that zero unplanned downtime is presently the focus of priority. 

One of the significant barriers to digital modernization is the challenge to replace systems while maintaining business continuity. To build a strong customer base, and empower employees with modern technical skills, there is a strong need to increase the uptime and follow digital transformation maintenance to bring digital and IT transformation strategy in the business. Let’s look at the ways businesses are overcoming digital transformation challenges and adopting digital business transformation strategy.

5 Ways To Conduct Digital Transformation Without Missing Business

Digital transformation is a sure-shot way for large and successful organizations to stay ahead of their digital-only competitors. That’s why these projects are usually large in ambition and scope, but there are always some chances of risk. With that said, let us take a look at some of the handiest tips that allow you to undergo digital transformation without any downtime

1. Phase-wise Approach

Instead of following the traditional “rip and replace” methodology, you need to approach transformation in a more efficient way to prevent the risk of downtimes. Consider taking a phased approach to reduce the risk in your transformation. You can release a minimum viable product (MVP) into production early to get realistic structural and operational criticism. This phased approach lets you focus on each stage to make changes and develop a customer centric product. 

To tackle the digital downtime, the first phase should always be to create and deploy a front-end proxy. The proxy will provide the data. Only after getting the data, you should move to now comes the time for the second phase which includes the replacement of the old stack.

2. Identify Problems Earlier

As downtime can be caused by a native problem, for example, a software glitch in a workstation, remote server, a major event, or any other reason. Thus, for a major transformation phase, you need to build an early warning system to validate and test things in each phase, so that not much time is wasted in detecting the issue and then resolving it. 

Identifying problems earlier also helps in having a solution right there, so when the problem occurs then it is easier to correct it without affecting any productivity. With a little bit of testing, iterating, and assessing, you can easily manage traffic to the new system and identify any potential problems earlier.

3. Plan For Accuracy and Reliability

While undergoing a digital transformation, you must visualize, collect, and alert on in-depth operational metrics. It’s better to have a dynamic plan to ensure functional accuracy and operational reliability to minimize the chances of errors and move towards the next step. The plan can involve the right management. Then comes the skill development to streamline standard operations, decrease downtime, allow quick decision-making, enable employees to attain the skill effectively, and improve brand reliability. 

The accuracy provides a convenient digital strategy framework to identify important components within the system and reliability helps in decision-making which is meant to upgrade the system availability or reduce the mean duration of system downtime.

4. Establish A Multi-Layered Fallback Mechanism

Multi-Layered Fallback Mechanism helps to reduce the use of the old system while decreasing the impact and elegantly degrading in case of problems. The mechanism helps in a way that the issues arising in one service do not harm overall operations.

During the transformation, you need to make sure that your team gets familiar with the use of new systems to prevent the product or service quality from degrading. That’s why it’s always a good idea to plan for multiple layers of fallback to keep your back covered.

5. Keep Everyone Involved in the Plan

One of the major issues is the skill gap in what needs to be transformed and what is there in the workforce. Thus, to make everyone in your organization understand the process, recognize the process, and agree that it will be worth the efforts, it is important to involve everyone in the plan. Involving the team in a plan helps to track the progress that is being made towards the goal. It helps build trust within the team and provide employees a chance to come up with approaches that they think will work in a way. Also this helps in getting out-of-box ideas from different members, preparing business transformation strategies, and there are chances of not wasting much time in finding a solution or explanation. 

The After-Transformation Effect

Although DT is filled with numerous revolutionary technologies, the top ones are the internet of things, cloud computing, artificial intelligence, and big data. However, it’s more than just the use of technology – transforming corporate culture and business processes are also an integral part of the digital transformation process.

While it’s easier to manage the disruption created by technology to your business, you also need to make sure that your people can cope up with the changes – and it’s more than just technical skills. It’s more about embracing the change and being resilient and resourceful enough to make decisions faster and better.

If you have any business transformation challenges in your organization, you can partner with a digital transformation agency like Appinventiv to take care of the migration and adoption needs. We are a well known brand that builds digital products and processes to help teams get acquainted with changes through the shortest learnability curve. We have served digital transformation companies across the globe including digital transformation companies in USA and parts of the globe.

The post Five Ways To Tackle Digital Transformation Without Downtime appeared first on Appinventiv.

The above-shown statistics will help you understand the global digital transformation market revenue from 2017 to 2023. By inculcating a digital business transformation strategy, you will experience a cultural shift towards more agile and intelligent ways of doing business, powered by technologies such as advanced data analytics and artificial intelligence. 

Digital transformation for business growth in the current landscape is more a matter of necessity than a matter of choice! 

How Are Businesses Going To Function Post Covid-19?

There is no denying the fact that the current pandemic has drastically affected the way an organization works. Let’s pay attention to the current truth of the business world, shall we?

• Increasing operational efficiency and transforming the existing business are the most important business initiatives
• 63% of organizations believe that delivering excellent customer experience as measured by customer satisfaction scores defines success as a digital-first business
• Improving customer experience and increasing cybersecurity are also essential initiatives considering the pandemic

Can Digital Technology In Business Help in Cutting Unnecessary Expenses?

If you want to keep your budget in control then without any doubt your biggest ally is technology! Digital business transformation solutions as a whole cover three major sectors – operation, strategy, and management. In the operations sector, one can start with processing data in the cloud, digitizing business processes and documents, and optimizing processes. 

Digital transformation strategy changes the way business functions by focusing more on customer experience and needs. In the aspect of management, it revamps the entire business model of a company further taking advantage of the commercial and productive opportunities created by the current digital trends. 

How digital maturity drives revenue?

If you completely understand the importance of digital transformation in business then you know how investing in technology can lead to higher revenue by providing your consumers the well-deserved value. A pattern that held true across all industries was that higher-digitally mature companies in this year’s sample were about three times more likely than lower-digitally mature companies to report annual net revenue growth and net profit margins significantly above their industry average. 

7 Benefits Of Digital Transformation In Business

1. Revenue growth 

Companies that implement the digital transformation business model see an improvement in their efficiency and profits. Let’s talk numbers!

• 80% of organizations that have completed the digital transformation report increased profits.
• 85% say they have increased their market share.
• On average, leaders expect 23% higher revenue growth than competitors.

2. Increased efficiency

Software development companies open up the possibilities of what is working fine and what can be improved. Constant efforts are being made towards reducing the time of execution. 

With the help of digital tools, companies can not only see efficiency in their workflows but also in their supply chain by integrating those tools at each stage of development of a service or product delivery. This process can be as simple as tweaking an existing process by including a digital checkpoint or as advanced as automating a process and remote monitoring the output at each stage via IoT devices.

The traditional ranges of productivity and efficiency have now indicated an increased possibility of cost improvements to about 25%. Not only this but incorporating practices like remote monitoring, robotization, and optimizing the entire workflow improves the labor costs in percentages above 60%.

3. Increased consumer satisfaction

DT drives customer experience towards ultimate brand resonance. This is not a secret anymore. Businesses across numerous sectors are using digital platforms for gaining insights into customers’ needs, using technologies to communicate directly with their customers, and inherently transforming customers’ touchpoints. 

Here are some of the ground-level ways that digital transformation solutions entail for their consumers:

• Personalizing the customer journey 
• Seamless omni-channel presence
• Embracing automation to keep customers updated. 

We simply cannot deny the fact that organizations that are able to leverage design thinking into their current structure will see a significant advantage in customer experience!

4. Improved data collection and analysis

Data collection and analytics have opened up new windows for digital businesses. Data analytics tools make it easier to collect and analyze customer data and further result in making informed decisions. Data can be securely hosted on a cloud-based system, which will further allow you to save up to 50% when compared to traditional data management systems. It is one of the best ways to enhance your strategies by studying the online habits of your target audience.

5. Increased flexibility and scalability

The impact of digitalization on business is such that it allows you to explore scalable alternatives. It breaks you free from the processes that come with old technology that accept manual inputs. Modern software and processes allow one to integrate various business parts, further making it more flexible. Tasks like service requests, providing support, or connecting the data can now be automated without manual intervention.

6. Enhanced reliability and reduced risks

From a technical point of view, the old technology cannot back up, maintain and protect the data of your company as well as of your customers. This will certainly make your business an easier target for cybercrime. Hence, as your organization will grow, the technology and processes have to evolve. 

By upgrading to digital tools, you’ll see improvement in the efficiency and effectiveness of current risk- management approaches. Also, remember that digital risk initiatives can reduce operating costs for risk activities by 20 to 30 percent.

7. Increase agility

Business transformation makes organizations more agile. You can improve speed-to-market pace and adopt continuous improvement and continuous deployment strategies. This will not only make innovation happen fast but also increase the rate of adaptation while providing a pathway to improvement. Also, let’s not forget that business transformation consulting firms will keep you at the top of your game among your competitors.

To Sum It Up

I have listed above the reasons such as automating tasks for improved efficiency and effectiveness, enhancing customer experience, increasing flexibility, scalability of your business, and reducing risks; but the most important thing is to keep your business objective in mind!

Below listed questions like – 

• What do you want to achieve via digital technology that you can’t in the present scenario? 
• What value addition do you want for your customers to experience that your current technology and processes are not allowing?
• How do you plan to collect the data and use it for your target audience?
• What manual tasks can be cut off by the introduction of digital tools?
• What revenue growth do you expect if you invest in new technologies and tools?

In order to start the evolution process of your company, contact a digital transformation solutions provider now to transform your business journey strategically and as smoothly as possible!

The post How can digital transformation reduce business costs? appeared first on Appinventiv.

Digital business transformation post Covid-19 is at the center of today’s economic development debate due to its widely increased usage. As per a survey done by Statista on how will the Covid-19 pandemic affect the overall economic situation of the digital economy, the opinions were mixed. Let’s see how business transformation in digital economy is assumed to shape up according to the survey:

• 33 percent of surveyed international digital decision makers believed that the digital economy will benefit after the pandemic
• 25 percent believe that number of business players will be reduced while the major corporations will emerge stronger than even once the pandemic is over
• 24 percent think that the digital economy will have to endure a long-term revenue loss like the overall economy
• 16% of the people who were a part of the survey believe that no predictions or forecast is possible at the moment 

Is Covid-19 Really Accelerating Digital Transformation?

Yes, we have seen a drastic shift of consumers towards online channels, companies are coming up with digital business transformation strategies to stay in the game. Let’s look at some stats to get a clear picture, shall we?

The pandemic has accelerated digitalization in business. Many companies have accelerated the process of digitization of their supply-chain, customer interactions and internal operations by three to four years. Not only this, companies have also accelerated in adding digitally enabled and efficient products in their portfolios by seven years! 

The above data clearly shows that global digital adoption has accelerated by 7 years. This is a great leap that companies took by introducing business transformation solutions in such a short timeframe. 

How Digital Transformation Benefits Your Business?

• Increased efficiency: DX will help streamline operations and automate the manual processes. As a result, you will get better speed and enhanced focus on revenue-generating techniques and activities.
• Reduced cost and enhanced productivity: Optimising business technology and operations around digital technology means cost-per-transaction savings and increased sales. Also, since employees are already working remotely, their focus is on leveraging collaboration technology and tools to maximize workforce productivity and maintain the company culture.
• Increased profits: Companies that undergo DX improve their profitability. Let’s talk about the results reported by the SAP Center for Business Insights and Oxford Economics:

• Improved agility: Due to software development, businesses can increase their agility with DX to improve speed-to-market and adopt Continuous Improvement (CI) strategies. This allows for faster innovation and adaptation while providing a pathway to a much improved version of what was.
• Enhanced customer experience: Customers have gotten used to having endless choices, low prices, and fast delivery. DX manages to keep the consumers happier than ever.

Accenture reports that customer experience has emerged as the key driver of sustainable business growth. They found that even a slight rise in the customer experience count can bring millions of dollars growth annually.

6 Ways Businesses Can Make The Most Of Digital Transformation Market Opportunities

Let me walk you through the key elements of digital transformation for your business model. So, without further ado, let’s begin!

1.  Omnichannel commerce

Centralising customer experience is one of the most important strategies to ensure that we are engaging the customers and at the same time making it easy for them to find the answers that they are looking for. Due to the unfortunate turn of events in 2020 all the physical business locations are shut down and as a result consumers have no option but to go online for their basic needs. 

For example: we can choose groceries online, pay online, track our order, receive items on our doorstep in a contactless form and leave feedback all on one convenient app. It is important for the businesses to blend the physical and digital aspect smoothly and create an integrated channel. 

2.  AI and machine learning

Last year an IT Ops and Security company Splunk announced its “Data to Everything” campaign, and I couldn’t agree more! Data is obviously everything but data without the technology to analyze it becomes obsolete. AI and machine learning are exactly the key elements we need right now. All data to be captured, analyzed, managed, enhanced and visualized in rapid succession.

3.  Operational agility

Digitization of processes lowers the amount of resource and time needed for maintaining operations and innovations. Companies are enabling workers with digital tools and platforms for improving collaboration on the go, while using digitization tools for streamlining their operations through data capture and analysis automation. 

4.  Embracing automation

Did you know 84% of the consumers preferred interacting with computer automated systems. Especially in times like these, such DX in business can go a long way! Computer based systems increase the customer digital experience. In case, you have not used automation as a part of your business transformation strategy then I suggest you start now! 

It will help you save time since automated responses engage and provide services faster than human advisors or customer care services. It will also increase efficiency, because the time spent by team members on basic processes like follow-up emails and ticket prioritization will be automated.

5.  Cloud strategy

The organisations who are still pondering over the idea of migrating onto the Cloud needs to accelerate the action in this area post the Covid crisis. The logical starting point could be setting up a site on the cloud that should be regularly tested as part of the routine drills.

6.  Information security

Last but not the least key element of DX is securing the data of your organisation and customer. Such sensitive information should be tackled with utmost security. In recent times, a surge in security breaches has increased mainly due to substantial increase in usage by working remotely. 

Recently, security concerns were highlighted in Zoom, where their executives acknowledged that the online communication platform was not designed for a sudden surge in the app usage. So, your focus should be on making the ‘Information Security’ an integral part of the overall design of your organisation. An equal emphasis should be given to securing the IT assets – Servers, Desktops, Smartphones, etc by integrating the best-in-class security tools.

In order to leverage DX post pandemic, I strongly suggest to adhere to the key elements mentioned above. 

Help Your Business Adapt To The New Normal

By 2023, 53% of all investments in information and communication technology will be in digital transformation. That represents increased spending by more than 50% from 2019 levels. Well, in my opinion DX is the need of the hour during this crisis, even post Covid-19, the business world will be completely digitally transformed. Confused? You can always go to digital strategy consulting firms.

What can’t be cured must be endured! Business transformation has crossed the stage of being a trend, it is now a necessity that cannot be ignored.  It has now become a mode to win a competitive edge. I hope that I have helped you view gain perspective as to why DX is essential for your business. In case you want more guidance, reach out to our digital transformation strategy consulting team.

The post How to Leverage Digital Transformation Opportunities Post-COVID-19 appeared first on Appinventiv.

But with organizations broadening their digital transformation efforts with emerging technologies and connected devices, their risk vulnerability changes with a greater risk of new cyber threats. And a lack of consistency among enterprise security initiatives only worsens these risks – an event that can be avoided by merging digital transformation and compliance. 

In this article, we are going to discuss the need of adding digital transformation for the risk and compliance in addition to diving into the many compliance challenges that a business faces, plus the ways to boost the compliance management plan in the global enterprise governance market.

Table of Content

1. What is Enterprise Compliance?
2. Benefits Of Enterprise Compliance Digital Transformation
3. Digital Transformation Challenges in Compliance
4. Ways to Encounter Digital Transformation Challenges in Audits and Compliances

What is Enterprise Compliance?

Enterprise compliance spans around various businesses, organization units, and nations. In the digital transformation era, it is increasingly becoming a business goal for organizations to act ethically and keep the compliance risks in control. When you look into full-spectrum compliance, you will find it to be made up of three core components: environment, execution, and evaluation. 

All three components showcase the effects of digital transformation on internal audit and compliance.

Benefits Of Enterprise Compliance Digital Transformation 

The impact of digital technologies on internal audit expands beyond businesses achieving a safe space on the legal platform. It ripples down to improved operations, effective alignment of insights, and business strategy, amongst other spaces. Let us look into the benefits of digital transformation and internal audit and compliances in some detail.

Lowered legal problems

The biggest effect of constant compliance adherence lies in decreased risk of fines, penalty, work stoppage, and lawsuits. Inability to meet compliance requirements, in suppose advertising methods or manufacturing procedures, can open your business to several expensive lawsuits. 

Improved operations

Following compliances can make handling business operations efficient. Take for example HIPAA or GDPR compliance – they are designed to make digital interactions secure for all the involved parties through several data and software related guidelines.  

Better public relations

By keeping yourself updated with the compliances, you get the opportunity to tout them on your websites and marketing collaterals – something that can be a great publicity opportunity. For example, you can mention that your website is GDPR compliant or the payment system that you are using follows PCI guidelines.

Better insights and business strategy alignment

In a business, one can only manage what they can measure. A compliance management plan can help gain a better understanding of your business by giving your leader the information they need to directing and controlling your operations.

The analysis of a compliance plan can help reveal the hidden insights into your business while giving you the chance to put the actions in place for improving management and overall business efficiency.

These were the several benefits attached with internal audit digital transformation that the many experienced digital transformation consulting companies swear upon. We however cannot ignore the challenges of digital transformation in compliance and audits.

Digital Transformation Challenges in Compliance

When people come to us looking for digital transformation consulting services, the biggest issue that tops their list is how to make their compliance plan adoption and transformation friendly. However, the list of issues that digital transformation companies have to work around to make enterprises’ compliances transformation friendly doesn’t just end there.

1. Keeping up to date with regulatory changes

Business regulations are constantly changing. Several new regulations come up to help businesses and industries keep up with changing users’ trends and requirements. It can be very challenging for businesses to keep up with the compliances and ensuring that they are comprehensively met. 

Think of the 2018 General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) compliance. While at the first glance, it was an EU-centric regulation, but its effect was far-reaching as it impacted all the businesses who were processing EU citizens’ data. The regulation, which did not exist before 2018 brought a major change for businesses asking them to relook at their strategy for implementing the compliance requirements. 

2. Exhibiting constant accountability and transparency 

Accountability and transparency are the keys to several compliance requirements which include regulation compliance like the GDPR, industry-specific rules like PCI, and HIPAA or certification compliances like ISO27001. These compliances require businesses to show consistent transparency and accountability. To ensure this, businesses would have to have working systems in place in addition to methods around reporting, monitoring, and managing business processes. 

3. Constant advancements in technology 

Advancements in technology – and the openness they bring to the table – can make following compliances a little difficult.  For example, advancements like BYOD, IoT, and integration of APIs and third-party apps although beneficial for businesses can be difficult to manage on the grounds of security and thus can impact compliance adherence.

Additionally, as technologies evolve, businesses have to relook at their legacy system modernization needs, ensuring that their outdated systems are either replaced or modified. 

4. Growing instance of cyberattacks

In the current hyper-connected world, businesses are processing a high amount of sensitive data constantly. With business environments becoming overly multifaceted and complex, it is becoming challenging for businesses to ensure data protection for managing compliances and mitigating the risks. 

This has brought a sharp rise in the rate of cyberattacks across the globe. In such a scenario, businesses have the added responsibility to protect the data which they process not just for the sake of compliance but also for protecting their customers. 

Ways to Encounter Digital Transformation Challenges in Audits and Compliances

1. Build adaptable foundations

The primary act of adding digital transformation in compliance management should be to understand the present-day regulations and find the best framework and standard for data protection and management. While you work on the frameworks, ensure that they are flexible in a way that new changes can be mapped into them while keeping disruption to a minimum. 

Another point to note is that it is always well-advised to meet the technological changes. Revisit your legacy system, see if they are meeting your current business needs. If found to be invalid, think of technology adoption that would fit in the current market need and security infrastructure. 

The crux, when building an adaptable compliance management foundation is to develop a process and system that is scalable in nature and has scope for new technological adoptions. 

2. Due diligence on third-party service providers

Compliance does not work in isolation, meaning it can’t be designed to keep the internal business processes at the center. You should ensure that the compliance culture is carried in the third-party providers’ relations as well so that the potential vulnerability can be mitigated.

You should ensure that the due diligence which they follow is at a level that is acceptable by your organization. 

3. Make data protection a priority

Cyberattacks are one of the biggest concerns for businesses, across sectors. At every stage, you should promote data-driven protection with an additional layer of security approach addressing as many concerns as possible. You should have a process in place highlighting who can manage what, when, and how.

Moreover, you should have a disaster recovery plan which coordinates effective recovery plans through delegation of data protection duty to internal stakeholders. Doing this will ensure that you have identified all the problem areas and have a plan to rectify problems. 

4. Implement and monitor compliance policies

A crucial part of compliance management is ensuring that the policies and controls are enforced. 

There should be an efficient management reporting system in place which would ensure that the compliance guidelines are followed by your organization at all times. You can also think of incorporating technologies that would help your business to identify issues and address them in real-time to mitigate risks. 

Aligning compliance management with the fast-paced digital transformation needs is difficult for enterprises to manage on their own. It would take them to partner with someone who operates around current market trends to help them remain updated on what’s new and how the industry is moving in terms of regulations. 

We are one of the digital transformation consulting firms that have helped several enterprises like you take hold of their compliance needs. Get in touch with our team to create a roadmap of how to go about this crucial digital transformation aspect.

The post How Should Enterprises Chart DT-driven Compliance Challenges appeared first on Appinventiv.

In today’s world, organizations are focused on their digital transformational process and goals hence, it is important for them to deliver new applications and services. 

Continuous delivery enhances the ability and efficiency of an organization to come up with a faster high quality software product. Today is the era of digital transformation and with the help of continuous delivery we can achieve it easily. 

But now more than ever we need to focus on mitigating the risks that come with the quick paced lives our software projects have.  Did you know that about 84% of IT projects are doomed to fail? Let’s discuss the rate of failure in detail, shall we?

How Is Continuous Delivery A Business Transformation Process?

In a traditional manner, an end product is delivered only when everything goes as planned, the software has all the features and has no serious bugs in the quality check stage. The user further has to update the product at regular intervals.  However in continuous delivery the product is delivered at a much earlier stage of development, while the work on it still continues!

In other words, while the traditional software development techniques lead to additional development time, costs and customer dissatisfaction, DevOps bridges the   development and operations gap by overcoming the challenges associated with continuous software delivery.

Continuous delivery allows 360 degree digital transformation by enabling development teams to incorporate automation in delivering updates more rapidly and with fewer errors. It also facilitates the developers to roll out tested codes that are always in the production-ready state. 

In simple words, once a new feature or an update is complete, the code is instantly available for deployment. A software is constantly tested for production readiness and evaluation is done automatically whenever a change is required. The entire process can be portrayed through a cycle:

It can help take the customers wishes into account easily while minimizing the errors simultaneously. The digital first approach is anyway the best approach to enhance customer experience. The process of building, testing and producing software faster reduces both cost and time. Further, continuous delivery acts as a digital transformation accelerator.  

Fundamental statistics of continuous delivery as a digital transformation accelerator

Are you wondering how and why the continuous delivery market is expanding? Well below are a few reasons for this transformational process:

• Cloud deployed continuous delivery market is expected to have a major market share during the forecast period 2020-2025 owing to growing adoption of cloud based technology across industries. 
• Key market players such as Oracle and Microsoft have been helping towards significant market growth in North America.
• Increasing productivity standards of organizations along with fulfilling customer requirements are some of the major driving factors affecting the growth of the continuous delivery market.

Key metrics that define an organization’s performance 

• Deployment frequency
• The time cycle of implementation 
• Recovery time between failures

Above are the factors that define organization transformation and strategic change.  By now you must have understood that with continuous delivery your application is ready to be deployed, but what exactly is continuous deployment capable of doing for your business’s DX efforts? Let’s discuss.

What is Continuous Deployment?

Continuous deployment is a smart strategy for software products wherein any commit that passes the automated testing phase is automatically released into production deployment. It mainly focuses on minimizing the manual tasks and adopting a unified pipeline that will integrate and deploy tasks as and when they happen. 

The organizations that have higher deployment frequency, less time frame to go live, and less recovery time between failures, see significantly lower failure rates in their software projects. How an organization benefits from continuous deployment becomes the deciding factor between a high performing and a low performing organization.

How Does Digital Transformation Benefit From Continuous Delivery?

1.  Streamlined workflows

Continuous delivery accelerates digital transformation by automating workflows. It ensures that the tasks are completed and the workflows can be tweaked in case of unique requirements. This also boosts enterprise apps’ ROI and DevOps efforts. So, it is understood that efficiency as well as revenue increases. 

Here are a few numbers to give you an idea:. 

• Amazon deploys every 11.6 seconds
• Netflix’s rate of deployment is 100 times a day

2.  Happy teams

The workflow that the team functions on is so efficient plus it provides constructive feedback more often than usual. As a result, the team remains more aligned with the product or service that they are building. Automated processes handle the maximum workload while your team will be free to focus on the work that delivers business value. Ta-da! You have yourself a happy team!

3.  Decreased staffing costs

Since most of the manual tasks are now automated, you can balance out your team and obliterate redundant roles. Such cost savings are significant and don’t compromise on the quality of the end product.  

4.  Better quality and speed

Continuous delivery  improves the quality of software products, the problems get fixed quickly. With more testing and validation automated, the speed to market is way faster.

7 Steps On How To Implement Continuous Delivery?

• Set a process: It is always easier to keep a track of things once you have defined a particular process/ workflow. Make sure your development process includes peer reviews, UI/UX reviews and even customer success reviews. This will help you keep a tab on the quality and security of your software product. 
• Start small, think big: It is extremely convenient to ensure quality when you release small. If you launch a huge software product at once, the risk of your software product failing is higher than you could imagine. It is better to ship small chunks of codes that define the features of the software product everyday. 
• Set metrics and measure success: Setting proper work metrics will help you hit the bull’s eye.  
  • User story will help you define the requirements from a user’s point of view. 
  • Acceptance criteria will decide the details of the requirement and how well the product is doing in the targeted market.
  • Quality checklist will verify that all the development steps and automated tests have been executed.
• Include the top shots: Make sure that you include teams from user experience (UX), product managers and customer success in the review cycle. It is a good idea for them to monitor the features that are being worked on. The UX team will help improve the user experience before the product goes public. The customer success team inputs are critical since they already know best about customer’s expectations. This will prove to be the best decision to avoid unnecessary work after the product is launched. 
• Use feature switches: A feature switch will turn a particular feature on and off. Deploy and observe the needs of your customers and act accordingly. 
• Ensure a healthy work environment: Always remember that it is the team who is working on your superb product. Value them and create a blameless and flexible environment for them to work in. 
• Digital transformation consulting: One should never shy away from taking advice from the best digital transformation consulting firms. Digital transformation is not just about using technologies to make business tackle specific customer needs. It is about creating an interconnected ecosystem where the work that is done company wide is transformed for the better. Sometimes asking for help is the biggest favour we do to ourselves, so seek expert advice that can help your software product reach where it deserves to be!

Final words

In the beginning it might seem that continuous delivery is a daunting challenge, but it’s a journey worth taking! Continuous delivery is a series of small steps that you can take to improve your processes. There are solutions like digital transformation strategy consulting at your disposal, to make the entire process more smooth and manageable. 

With a little nerve and a lot of forethought, you can get started on a continuous delivery today! It will ultimately generate substantial benefits for you, your team, your company and your customers. It is a win-win for everyone!

The post What Makes Continuous Delivery Crucial For Digital Transformation appeared first on Appinventiv.

Out of the fear of getting irrelevant, businesses have started leaning towards digital transformation services without completely understanding the depth of the concept. Here at Appinventiv, we help businesses understand that digital transformation is a lot more than simple technological adoption. We help them get a grasp of how their customers have evolved, the digital journey their competitors are on. 

Here’s the in-depth guide that we pass towards our clients before we hand-hold them towards their digital business transformation. 

Table of Content

1. What is Digital Transformation (DX)
2. What Causes Digital Disruption?
3. The Key Elements of Digital Transformation
4. Appinventiv’s Three Step Digital Transformation Framework
5. Failure Stories of Digital Transformation a.k.a Learnings from Businesses That Tried
6. How We Measure the ROI of Digital Transformation-Directed Efforts?
7. Popular but ‘couldn’t be further from the truth’ Myths About Digital Transformation

What is Digital Transformation (DX) 

The definition of digital transformation, as opposed to what is known as moving businesses to apps and websites, is different for every business and industry. In generic terms, we can define the concept as integration of digital technology in every business area that changes how businesses operate and deliver value to their customers. 

When we look deeper inside, achievement of digital transformation goals can be seen as a cultural change that makes businesses get comfortable with failure or sometimes even let go of the business practices that they had been following traditionally, in order to welcome new-age practices. 

There are a number of benefits of digital transformation adoption – 

• Better customer experience 
• Reduced operation cost 
• Accurate segmentation of market 
• Greater access to data and analytics
• Launch of new products and services. 

In addition to these perks, there are several goals that businesses seek to achieve at the back of their digital transformation efforts 

Although the coronavirus driven fast tracked shift to digital is seen as the reason behind the growing focus on digital transformation trends, the causes started coming on the surface much before the pandemic.  

What Causes Digital Disruption?

Technical innovations: A series of technologies with obvious transformation abilities like AI, IoT, and Blockchain are the first cause of digital transformation for businesses. It is not these technologies that drive transformation but how they are being adopted by government, businesses, and customers to offer newness. 

Customer demands: Customers’ needs and demand are not wholly dependent on technical innovations. They can be driven by societal changes, new trends, changed way of interacting with a business, amongst a number of other driving factors. 

The fact that customers are at the center of business efforts and value offerings, their changing needs also becomes a primal cause why businesses seek digital strategy consulting firms.

Ecosystem changes: Companies are a part of much broader ecosystems – business and social. Demand from stakeholders for adopting, collaborating with transformational businesses are some of the examples of business ecosystems. Regulatory changes, political changes, natural disasters, or pandemics are a part of social causes that can demand businesses to digitally transform. 

The Key Elements of Digital Transformation 

Customer experience

Digital transformation drives customer experience towards ultimate brand resonance. This is not a secret anymore. Businesses across sectors are using digital platforms for gaining insight into customers’ needs, using technologies to communicate directly with their customers, and inherently transforming customers’ touchpoints. 

Here are some of the ground-level ways businesses are digitally transforming their customers:

• Personalizing the customer journey 
• Seamless omni-channel presence
• Embracing automation to keep customers updated. 

Operational Processes 

Digitalization of processes lowers the amount of resource and time needed for maintaining operations and innovating. Companies are enabling workers with digital tools and platforms for improving collaboration on the go, while using digitalization tools for streamlining their operations through data capture and analysis automation. 

Business Model 

Modification of business models also acts as a key element of digital transformation. While a number of traditional businesses are shifting to digital platforms to change their offerings, there are a number of other businesses which are simply adding new digital-centric models in their business offering. 

Knowing the elements where digital transformation can be seen at its peak is not sufficient for businesses seeking practical ways to integrate disruption. If we had to put a number to it, 80% of our digital transformation clients come to us seeking a framework that they can apply in their business to make digital transformation a journey for their internal and external stakeholders. A successful implementation of the framework lies at the center of defining the benefits of digital transformation.

Appinventiv’s Three Step Digital Transformation Framework 

Our digital transformation roadmap is designed to give business leaders a starting point. They act as a checklist of what needs to be done and a sequence of steps which have to be taken. If we had to list down the differentiating points between our framework and ones popularized by other digital transformation companies, we would highlight their role in:

• Helping executives see the bigger picture
• Drilling down the concept to a stage where we talk in tasks and sequences 
• Transformation of back and front office
• Being customized according to every business precise needs. 

Step 1: Understand Industry-Specific Digital Disruption Opportunities 

Digital business transformation solutions impact industries differently. Even though it creates opportunities that enable businesses to adopt alternative business models, every industry requires a different transformation approach.  

While we advertise digital innovation led by mobile apps, Internet of Things, AI, Blockchain, etc to every business, the use cases differ. For example, Healthcare can make use of digital transformation accelerating technologies to solve insufficient access, while manufacturing domains can use it for correcting the yield vs. labour cost differences and banking domains can use them for blurring geographical boundaries. 

Two key stages of our digital transformation consulting services: product discovery workshop and kickoff meeting starts with identifying the challenges that are unique to every industry and finding use cases for disruptive technologies to solve those challenges. 

Step 2: Create a Customer-Centric Business Strategy 

Beneficial digital transformation efforts begin with customers. They are, from their essence, built for delivering great customer experience. 

When we talk about putting customers-first, we make businesses understand how modern customers, loaded with the power of digital technology on one hand and wealth of information on the other, compare, shop, and share.

Our first step of action is to bring businesses on the platforms their customers are on and availing them with technologies that their customers are making use of. We create a framework for them to capture, analyze, and act upon the insights captured from customers’ data. 

During this step, we draw a line to where businesses overdeliver against their customers expectations or the point where delivering customer service blurs the cost at which it comes. We help businesses understand their customers and the speed at which their needs change. This helps us reduce the cost of over delivering while enabling businesses to create value that meets their customers’ needs. 

Step 3: An Enterprise-level Strategy Which Connects Back, Middle, and Front Office

Appinventiv professionals strongly believe that in order to fully realize the potential of digital transformation, it is important to not just add it in platforms which act as customer touchpoints but also in supply chain, IT, operations, finance, and human resources. 

Here’s how we translate into the front office – We help businesses identify the services, products, and business models which do not contribute to better customer experience. We incorporate tools and processes built on AI driven data capture and analytics for tracking and anticipating customers behaviour in real time while offering them personalized experiences and products. 

In the middle office, the transformation stage looks at delivering superior experience to employees. We use our enterprise app development expertise  to develop solutions that better connectivity, improve transparency and agility, and lower friction. 

Above all, we create digital solutions that connect the middle office with the front and back office. 

Lastly, in case of back office, our efforts in back office digital transformation revolves around bettering automation, abandonment or modernization of legacy systems and creation of a more scalable IT system that is built on the cloud ecosystem. Most importantly, we concentrate on making back office an enabler in offering real-time data which supports predictive actions.

In addition to these steps, we take measures to help our partners understand that digital transformation is not a one-off step but a continuous journey. And although our role as one of the trusted digital transformation consulting companies ends here, their’s continue in the face of helping their employees understand the need of digital transformation and bringing a change in the work culture.  

After everything’s said and done, when working on these steps, we always keep ourselves on our toes to ensure that our clients do not become one of the failure stories of digital transformation. 

Failure Stories of Digital Transformation a.k.a Learnings from Businesses That Tried

There is no surprise that digital transformation comes with challenges – one that goes beyond outsourcing digital transformation. There can be organization wide resistance towards change, uncertainty in terms of what customers need, presence of legacy systems, focus on process optimization keeping business model innovation on the backseat. The list can go on for ages.

There are many well-known businesses with the best digital transformation consultancy agencies at their disposal that have today become some of the biggest failure lessons of the world. Let us peek into what went wrong for them and what learning we can draw from their mistake. 

1.  Blockbuster – CEO John Antioco, as a response to Netflix’s growing demand, funded a challenger service known as Total Access. The board thought of the move as an expensive one and fired John Antioco while reversing his changes. 

Lesson: Ensure your board has your back in a digital transformation project. 

2.  Xerox – With its main platform falling in the pit of low demand, the company came up with a new secretarial machine designed to be automated, which was way ahead of its time. 

Lesson: Focus on the timing. 

3.  Kodak – When the brand’s revenue magnet – developing film – lost demand, the company which was once at the top of the photography equipment industry filed for bankruptcy in 2011. 

Lesson: Realize the digital capabilities and transform before the business model dies. 

A key lesson that we draw from these failure stories is the need to have a measure set up for measuring the return on investment. But it is a lot easier said than done. 

How We Measure the ROI of Digital Transformation-Directed Efforts?

In order to validate digital transformation success, we always ask our partnered business leaders to quantify the returns on investment. We understand that the nature of digital transformation is to be evolving and ongoing, which means that traditional business calculations and financial governance methods can be less effective. But quantifying success is mandatory for continued investment. 

Here’s Appinventiv advice on how to approach measuring digital transformation solutions success – 

When gauging how the digital transformation investments are performing, take a portfolio view in place of a project view. Imagine yourself as a venture capital firm and look at the overall performance for determining how things are going in place of noting the difference project-by-project. In addition to this:

• Set the initial level metrics before applying digital transformation changes 
• Build micro-metrics for an agile environment
• Add in business outcomes like LTV, time to market, operational effectiveness, and cost benefit analysis. 

Up until this point, we have looked into digital transformation adoption in a business context from multiple facets. However, the one thing that can put all these efforts into vain is believing popular myths that surround digital transformation. Let us look into what they are as a parting note for today. 

Popular but ‘couldn’t be further from the truth’ Myths About Digital Transformation 

1.  Business transformation is all about technology

Although technology plays a massive role in making a company a digital brand, the DX process is an endless mix of user-specific process. At its crux, it is about bringing businesses to a point where they understand their customers’ needs and market in a  way that they are able to benefit from trends before their competitors. 

2.  You will have to launch a new product 

Businesses don’t necessarily have to launch an app or create a new website to make their digital customers fall in love with them again. They can also revisit their offering and marketing communications, ensuring that they are aligned with the modern day customers. A simple tweak in certain business aspects can also play a huge role in offering impactful user value.

Digital transformation has crossed the stage of being a trend. It has now become a mode to gain competitive advantage. I hope that this guide helped you view the complex process as actionable steps. In case you want to learn more, reach out to our digital transformation team.

The post Appinventiv’s Guide to Shaping Your Digital Transformation Strategy appeared first on Appinventiv.

There are two prime elements which businesses need to focus on when planning to digitally transform their workflow and workforce: adaptability and portability. And by bringing their processes and communications on mobile apps, they are able to hit both the targets in one go. 

Here are some statistics looking into why enterprises need to count mobile application in, in their digital transformation strategy –

Although the above graph should be a reason enough to take mobile app development seriously, there are some other numbers as well. 

• 57% of the digital media use comes in through apps.
• On an average, any smartphone user has over 80 apps out of which they use 40 apps every month.
• 21% of millennials visit a mobile application 50+ times everyday.

While the statistics establish the rising growth of mobile apps, what we intend to cover in the article is the pivotal role mobile applications play in digital business transformation. 

In fact it is proven that companies who adopt digital transformation definitely improve the efficiency and profitability of their businesses. Take a look at these findings from the SAP Center for Business Insights and Oxford Economics. 80% of businesses that have completed digital transformation say their profits have increased, and 85% believe their market share has increased. On average, leaders anticipate a 23% increase in revenue over their competitors.

Merging mobile app capabilities with digital transformation outcomes 

The role of mobile applications can be introduced in all the areas which are also often the key areas of digital business transformation challenges that an enterprise faces. 

1. Technology integration 
2. Better customer experience
3. Improved operations
4. Changed organizational structure

When you partner with a digital transformation consulting firm that holds an expertise in enterprise mobile app development, they work around all these above-mentioned areas in addition to shaping their digital transformation roadmap around technology, process, and people.

In addition to a seamless integration with the digital transformation strategy of an enterprise,  there are a number of reasons behind the growing need to adopt digital transformation across sectors. Ones that encompass and expand beyond the reasons to invest in enterprise mobility solutions.

The multitude of reasons, cumulatively, makes mobility a prime solution offering of the US digital transformation solutions market.

Here’s how mobile apps are playing an active role in an enterprise’s 360 digital transformation. 

How are mobile apps playing a role in advancing businesses’ internal digital transformation efforts?

1.  By utilizing AI in mobile apps 

The benefits of using AI for bettering customer experience is uncontested. For marketing transformation, businesses have started using AI for developing intuitive mobile apps using technologies like natural language processing, natural language generation,  speech recognition technology, chatbots, and biometrics. Employees will enjoy additional intelligence and capabilities as a result of AI-powered enterprise mobility applications, which will excite them, make them wiser, and increase their productivity. AI doesn’t just help with automation of processes and with predictive, preventative analysis but also with serving customers in a way they want to be served.

2.  An onset of IoT mobile apps 

The time when IoT was used for displaying products and sharing information is sliding by. The use cases of mobile apps in the IoT domain is constantly expanding. 

Enterprises are using IoT mobile apps to operate smart equipment in their offices and making the supply chains efficient, transparent. While still a new entrant in the enterprise sector, IoT mobile apps are finding ways to strengthen their position in the business world. 

3.  Making informed decisions via real-time analytics 

In the current business world, access to real-time analytics can give you a strong competitive advantage. Mobile applications are a great way for businesses to collect users’ data and engage with them through marketing transformation messages designed around the analytics based on their app journey. 

You can use real-time analytics to know how your teams are performing, analyze their productivity, and get a first-hand view into the problems they are facing in performing a task and how it’s impacting the overall business value. 

4.  Greater portability 

Portability in an enterprise ecosystem enables employees to work as per their convenience. While it shows less impact in the short term, in the long run, it plays a huge role in how productive a team is. 

By giving employees the space to work as per the time and location of their choice, you give them the space to boost their creativity and productivity. One of the results of using software that enabled our employees to work according to their terms and conveniences for us was greater business expansion ideas and an increase in overall productivity of the workforce. 

Tips to consider when making mobile apps a part of the digital transformation strategy

If at this stage, you are convinced that a mobile application is a key part of digital transformation framework, here are some tips that can help your strategies for increasing the ROI on your enterprise app – 

Adopt mobile-first approach – the key factor that separates enterprise apps that are winning is how they don’t treat apps as the extension of their websites. Their software development process is strictly mobile-only. This in turn shapes their entire design, mobile app development, and testing processes.

Identifying the scope of mobility – the next tip that digital transformation consulting firms would give you is analyzing the operations and workflows for understanding which teams, departments, or functions would benefit from mobility the most. You should not start reinventing a process which works okay, you should look for areas which can be streamlined, automated, or valued through mobility. 

Outsourcing digital transformation efforts – when we were preparing An Entrepreneur’s Guide on Outsourcing Digital Transformation article, we looked into several benefits of outsourcing digitalization to a digital transformation strategy consulting agency. But the prime benefit revolved around saving businesses’ efforts and time which goes into solving challenges like – absence of digital skillset, limitations of the agile transformation process, or the inability to let go of the legacy systems.

Summarizing

In the short term, developing and implementing a digital transformation strategy would be very costly, time-consuming, intricate, and in some circumstances ineffective.

Despite the fact that the number of users, whether employees or consumers, is in the thousands, you must select the most appropriate model for your specialty, sector, and business plan. Every benefit of including mobile apps into your digital business transformation, but the cost of implementation should be reviewed briefly before beginning to plan.

The post How can Mobile Apps Advance Your Enterprise Digital Transformation Efforts appeared first on Appinventiv.

According to Seagate, two-thirds of global CEOs will start focusing on digital strategies to improve customer digital experience. The net global spending on the digital transformation journey in 2018 was approximately $1 trillion. This number is expected to increase to more than $2 trillion by 2022.

‘Digital First’ Approach for Customer Experience

In this day and age, everything starts with digital, so ‘digital first’ means approaching any new opportunity or even problem with the assumption that the solution should be as digital as possible. International Data Group (IDG) says that more than 44% of companies have already started implementing a digital-first approach to business processes, operations, and customer engagement. Digital technologies like mobile devices, apps, machine learning, automation, and more allow customers to get what they almost want exactly at the moment they need it. These new digital technologies have caused a shift in customer expectations, resulting in a new kind of modern buyer. Let’s discuss the state of the ‘digital first’ approach:

• As per a report by ClickZ, 19% of organizations are integrating processes, thus executing changes throughout the enterprise
• The same report says that 18% of companies are executing their digital strategies and making processes on a business unit level. 
• 7% of companies are in the maintenance phase, which means they have fully implemented their digital first approach, the report adds.

Image source: ClickZ

A study at MIT found that companies that have embraced the digital transformation process are 26% more profitable than their peers. 

“Every digital transformation is going to begin and end with the customer.”

-Marc Benioff, Chairman and Co-CEO, Salesforce

Digital Transformation Trends that are Enhancing Customer Experience

1.  Personalizing the digital customer journey

According to Accenture, 75% of consumers are more likely to enjoy the digital customer service if companies provide any of these three services:

1. Being recognized – 56% of the consumers are more likely to shop online if they are recognized by their names.
2. Being offered relevant recommendations – 58% of the customers are more likely to spend money online when provided suggestions based on their previous purchases or preferences.
3. Being remembered – 65% of buyers are more likely to purchase if the company knows their purchase history.

For example

Netflix is an online streaming application that focuses on personalizing the digital customer journey and enhancing the customer experience. Once you open the application, below are some features that are tailored out by keeping the customer in mind:

• It greets you with your name
• Records all the history of what you have watched and analyzes your interests and tastes
• On the basis of your interests and the history recorded, Netflix further provides recommendations to their customers

2.  Consistent customer journey via seamless multi-channel

Technology has provided customers with the luxury of multiple channels. According to Accenture, 65% of customers get frustrated because of inconsistent experiences. Sometimes customers feel that a new interaction on a different platform is a new journey. However, customers usually want to feel familiarity so that new interactions on different platforms are an extension of the same journey. One can overcome these challenges by providing a seamless multi-channel as it leads to:

• Consistent Customer Experience: When you provide a consistent customer journey through seamless multi channel it results in customer satisfaction and loyalty, says McKinsey.
• Lower Cost to Resolve Issues: A good seamless multi-channel experience leads to customer satisfaction, which results in happier customers! Happy customers mean less volume for customer care/service channels, which aids the cost to resolve issues. 

Companies are connecting business silos, harnessing the potential of their customer data, and driving ongoing improvements to serve the customers with relevant and consistent experience, irrespective of channel or device. 

3.  Embracing automation

A survey done by Accenture shows that 84% of the consumers preferred interacting with computer automated systems. These automated systems are available any time, these systems are less biased, and fast. Thus, these systems increase the customer’s overall digital experience. In case, you have not used automation as a part of your digital customer experience strategy, then we suggest you start now!

Let’s discuss the advantages of embracing automation:

• Saves Time: Waiting for a response can be time consuming for a customer. Automated responses engage and provide services faster than human advisors or customer care services. Since, in today’s age and time, customers expect service response within one hour irrespective of the time or date.
• Mitigates Prejudice: Sometimes, customers feel that human advisors are being rude or biased. By embracing automation, you are mitigating this risk, since the communication cannot be biased and will be polite at all times!
•  Increases Team Efficiency: In order to increase efficiency, the time spent by team members on basic processes like follow-up emails and ticket prioritization should be automated as well for a better digital customer experience transformation process.

4.  Improving the user experience by efficient app onboarding practices

Customers always expect to navigate easily through your applications. If the customer is not able to do so, it is likely that they will neither use nor recommend your application further. When we develop apps to aid an enterprise digital transformation effort, we give focus to app onboarding. App onboarding is a systematic process that allows users to comprehend the app and its functions. You can include on-screen guidelines with an interactive virtual assistant providing step-by-step demonstration, further enhancing the customer digital experience. The benefits of enhancing the user experience are:

• When an app is guiding its users it means the application is customer centric.
• It focuses on providing value to the customers and making their life easier.
• An easily usable app results in a great customer experience.
• A satisfied customer is your best brand ambassador and marketing agency, all in one.
• It helps in establishing credibility with the customer. 

5.  Keeping the customer updated

Keeping your customers in the loop is an integral part of providing a great digital customer service. Keeping the customer updated about what is going on with the product is no rocket science! It comes down to automated processes and real time tracking. 

For example:

Amazon is a digital platform that keeps customers updated at all times.

• The application keeps giving updates to customers when an order is reviewed and placed; the payment is complete, when the order is expected to reach your doorstep, etc.
• It also provides real time tracking of a customer’s order so that the customer is updated all the time.

6.  Keeping it human

You should always keep in mind that your customers are human, and you need to keep the human element alive in this age of digital customer experience. Human experience will help you in creating long-term relationships and genuine partnerships with your customers. I am sure that a question is popping up in your head, how can we add a human touch to our application?

• Every brand has a story! Start by telling that story to your customers via videos or blogs. Share the history, mission, values and vision your brand stands for.
• Incorporate AI for the feedback! It is always better to get feedback from your customers and work on them. This improves the digital customer engagement and your application will keep evolving.
• Personalized content is the key to keeping customers engaged. It enhances the customer experiences because it is tailored just for their use.
• Invest your time and resources into technologies that will help you learn how, when and why your customers do business with you.

So, what we are saying is: 

The potential of digital technologies like artificial intelligence (AI), chatbots, big data analytics, cloud computing, machine learning and virtual reality (VR) keep the transformation experience as human as possible. 

Getting Started with Digital Transformation

Everyone is talking about the digital transformation trend but it is more about business transformation, which is not as easy as it sounds! Without any question, the use of digital technology increases, but at the end of the day, it is more about a new way of working and thinking!

Let’s talk about the elements that will help you kick start your transformed business landscape, exceed customer expectations and enhance customer experience.

a) Uninterrupted Experience

Users prefer an uninterrupted approach regardless of the channel they are using. Providing a seamless digital channel to the customer by integrating all channels together leads to a better customer experience.

b) Personalized Experience

Customer relationship management software is very helpful to evaluate a consumer’s purchase history and behavior. It assists a company to give a more personalized experience to the consumer since they expect just that.

c) Cloud Technology

Cloud solutions provide an agile and flexible environment to fulfill customer demands swiftly. This technology enables companies to be fast and dynamic, giving them the ability to test new projects that are cost-effective and low-risk. For instance, connecting SaaS applications such as Salesforce enables businesses to collect all information on customers, prospects, and leads within a single online platform.  Not only this, but cloud solutions also offer automated notifications to the customers regarding the latest features so that they are never behind their game!

d) Bring Everyone on Board

The foremost reason for the failure of digital transformation is employee resistance. According to a report in Gartner, when everyone works collaboratively and understands the goals, businesses progress twice as fast with digital transformation.

Benefits of Digital Transformation

If you have continuous innovation and enhancement on your mind, you can achieve all the benefits that are offered by digital customer experience transformation. You have to make sure that you have digital transformation solutions handy in case you have to tackle the challenges. It’s best to be well-prepared! 

Digital transformation consulting firms help you achieve high-level benefits:

• Digitalization of business operations
• Immense customer insights
• Establishment of digital services
• Efficient resource management
• Enhanced customer experience
• Promote digital culture
• Opens the door to globalization
• Reduces cost
• Better employee engagement and culture

It’s a Wrap

Digital transformation experience is crucial for businesses that want to grow, evolve and be more successful than their competitors. Digital transformation and customer experience go hand in hand. Let’s be honest, these days customer expectations are sky-scraping, and without fulfilling them your business will not thrive or dare we say, even survive! 

So, if you want to exponentially flourish, you should find the perfect team to come up with digitalization consulting and customer experience strategies. As long as you are finding ways to integrate new technologies and introducing creative ways to keep your customers engaged in spending money on your application, you are good to go!

The post How is Digital Transformation Shaping Customer Experience appeared first on Appinventiv.