Talking about digitising a business sounds pretty vague. Or even irrelevant.
But understanding what it means and how to apply it in the business can not only accelerate growth but increase the value of your business.
The benefits are clear enough: improved customer engagement, increased operational efficiency, better decision-making, higher productivity and lower costs. Every aspect of the business can be improved by using technology in a more strategic way.
Here are a few examples of how using digital technology can support growth and value :
📌 Operations. Most SMEs have operational systems in place that work pretty well. Some even function without the shareholders needing to get involved. But ask yourself the question, how many processes are in place which is fully automated, without human intervention and how many interact with other processes independently? This can speed up almost every part of the business and free up management time for taking bigger steps.
📌 Management. Another area which can suffer from overly low-tech systems is the art of decision-making. I recently helped a client introduce a highly flexible digital tool which helped make sure that key decisions taken at management meetings were robust and increased the odds of better outcomes. The tool also proved a winner for delegating decision-making with confidence.
📌 Creating digital assets. Beyond merely upping your visibility and engagement on all the usual digital and social media channels, it’s important to create an identity that will resonate online plus a service offering that will rival a more traditional or offline interaction… or form part of a seamless online-offline experience. Often there will be a simple trade-off between physical versus digital assets based on costs. But I’ve seen even ‘local’ businesses able to scale more effectively by making the decision to invest time and effort into digital rather than physical assets.