6th March 2025
Digital transformation is one of the latest business buzz phrases. What it involves is the introduction of technology into all areas of a business’ operations in order to streamline the way in which it operates and enable it to deliver a better and more cost-effective service to its customers.
It’s about changing the way in which the business works and the way in which customers interact with it. In many cases, this involves the use of cloud and software-as-a-service (SaaS) technologies because these provide the flexibility and features needed to drive effective digital transformation projects.
There is strong evidence that digital transformation is effective too, with companies that have embraced it seeing profitability over 25 per cent higher than their competitors that haven’t. [1]
Agile environment
One of the prerequisites for successful digital transformation is an agile business and technology environment. This means not only having the right tools in place but also making sure that you recruit the right team; people who understand and can drive forward the changes required to make the transformation work effectively.
The cloud is a major factor here because it offers the ability to dynamically scale projects and respond quickly to changes in requirements and demand. By using SaaS technologies, firms can exploit the flood of information that is now available about their customers. In addition, they can use big data techniques to extract valuable insights, allowing them to respond far more effectively to customer requirements, spot trends and deliver a better experience for the customer.
Customer experience
Ultimately, digital transformation is about improving the customer experience. People increasingly want their interactions with business to be personalised. [2] This means businesses knowing them by name, understanding their purchase history and being able to use this to recommend products that they might like to buy in future.
This requires the presence of a good customer relationship management (CRM) system and again the rise of SaaS solutions helps businesses to compete here. Thanks to SaaS, smaller businesses can have access to the same tools as their larger competitors without needing to make a huge investment in systems and software. With effective CRM, you can deliver the right message to your customers at the time and via the medium which ensures it will be most effective.
Which brings us to the other essential for digital transformation; the ability to exploit multiple communication channels. Thanks to mobile devices, people are more likely to be connected all the time. This means that they expect a faster response to queries. It also means that they are likely to communicate in different ways, be it via an app or on social media as well as via more traditional channels.
In responding to the challenge of meeting these demands, businesses are increasingly turning to the use of cloud and SaaS solutions. Using these, and with the right team in place, they can deliver faster deployments and respond to changes without the need to wait for infrastructure to catch up.
[1] http://ide.mit.edu/news-blog/blog/digitally-mature-firms-are-26-more-profitable-their-peers
[2] https://betanews.com/2019/08/06/hyper-personalization/