Digital transformation is a buzzword that everyone talks about. It is something we can hear in different segments of life – government departments, school systems, and businesses. Even our kids probably heard about it.
So let’s see what this means for your business and your organization and what you should expect from a consulting company that is your guide to achieve the next steps.
The purpose of digital transformation is to help your organization in the:
- becoming organized by using digital tools, online solutions, software products
- managing your daily work to achieve higher efficiency
- allowing your team, employees or organization automate simple repetitive tasks
- allowing your customers’ easy access to information, your service
- allowing you faster manage your payment process
- allowing your organization to focus on what it does best, while digital solutions can do the rest.
People often think about digital transformation as your company needs to implement a “Minority Report” drag & drop application and robots will drive around your office. Well, perhaps this is what some companies are planning to do.
Let us think of a few scenarios that are much down to Earth.
Scenario 1 – Switching to CRM or chatbots?
Are you in a position where you are communicating with your customers only by using a phone and an email? So if you are online, your customers cannot reach out to you. What would happen if your web page would implement simple things like a chatbot to answer the most commonly asked questions?
Would that help your customers get a quick and easy answer? For sure.
How about the Customer Relationship Management (CRM) solution where you can track your communication with each client, and partner across your organization? Right now, you keep all your communication within several email accounts, however, what if all client communication would be stored in one place? So, you can know:
- What was the last communication with the client
- Who replied to the key customer?
- What was the last quote you sent to the client?
Scenario 2 – Online ticketing and reservation systems
You are managing a cinema, yet your customers are purchasing tickets in line. The product you are selling is a simple one. Or you are offering unique walking tours around your city but people cannot pay online because you are not using any booking system.
So each sale is done on-site, you cannot charge money up-front. And guess what, another cineplex is taking payments online. And your competitor is taking tour reservations online. So what are you waiting for?
How should your digital transformation consultant help you?
Companies and consultants know to forget what is the purpose of digital transformation. Let us keep it simple. We want to achieve one or two of these goals.
- Help your prospects become your paying customers
- Help you become efficient – more productive or optimize your costs
The goal IS NOT to implement a new software because you need to implement it. You want to implement new software because you want to work better and not worry about small details.
This is something your digital transformation consultant MUST keep in mind. They need to understand your business and ensure new solutions and ideas to implement in those goals. However, the digital consultant should provide you with ideas for the next steps to ensure you do not have to build everything from scratch. Otherwise, again it will be a waste of time.
The purpose of a digital transformation consultant is to help you build your company, and your organization and provide you with a roadmap for how your company can grow using digital solutions.
Let’s see what this looks like in a basic and super cool example.
Scenario 3 – CRM – a basic example
Let’s say someone told you a CRM is something you need and you have to implement. So, there your sales team will need to type in all client information, and manually upload all files you sent to your B2B clients.
That sounds like a plan. Or just a starting point. However, if you stop there, you will give your team only additional work without providing additional value. Let’s go one extra mile.
Scenario 4 – CRM – a super cool example
The purpose of CRM is not just to record client information, but to help you make future decisions. Let’s say you are getting customer requests through email, the office, and a website. Here is what you want to do.
- Every email should be automatically recorded and stored with client information in your CRM
- Every website email or chat should be stored and placed in CRM with the same person
- You should be considering handling newsletter and GDPR details within the CRM so your marketing can use this prospect or client base
- Your sales and marketing should be able to categorize all your contacts through CRM so that later on, you can know who your targeted groups are.
- Imagine you have 1.000 contacts in your CRM and you wrote some comments about their needs. Do you need to use CRM to add tasks about the next steps with those clients? Can you add reminders 3 months in advance?
- Did you set SOPs (standard operating procedures) on how to handle client communication to ensure EVERY employee knows how to continue with the discussion?
- And last but not the least, do you know how much time this will save your team within the next 12 months? And do you know what is the cost of using this CRM vs. the cost in 12 months?
Implementing any digital solution must bring additional value to the business, ensure the improvement of performance and support potential additional steps to drive your business or organization forward.
Let us take a look at one more example.
Scenario 5 – Introducing a booking engine for a tour agency
So, your food tour company around Berlin was using email, Facebook chat, and a phone to get booking enquires. You are also listed in GetYourGuide.com, where you were charged 30-35% commission, but they were driving you guests. Still, the commission is eating your markup and still, those guests are not your guests, but a customer of that OTA.
You want to switch and start using a booking engine or any option of the online booking system.
Booking engine – the starting point
- You need to pick an online booking system and place it on your site
- You want to pick a local or global payment gateway to process your transactions
That sounds about right, right? Well, let us go deeper.
As we said earlier, the goal is to streamline your business – improve and optimize it, help your clients and generate more revenue. Let us think about more details
- With every booking, you should receive a notification about the guest and about the booking. Also, a guest should receive a confirmation. Now, who from your staff will be getting those email notifications?
- Does the booking system has a channel manager so you can connect OTAs like a GetYourGuide to ensure there will be no overbooking?
- We talked about CRM. Does your booking system has a CRM component so you can see who are your best customers? Or does it support integration or export to other CRM systems?
- With every booking, you create an invoice. How will you provide this information to your accounting and bookkeeping?
We need to keep all these ideas in mind. If we don’t, introducing an online booking system will reduce your customer acquisition costs, however, it will increase your operational costs, not to mention the impression the digital transformation process you implemented was just a fake.
Let’s go one more step forward. You just created and automated a new online sales channel where tourists can pick one of your tours, the number of guests, and book right now. It means it is easy to get people from any place in the world to click on a link and book a tour. However, they cannot find you online because your website has a low Google ranking, and you were not investing in marketing.
So, you must plan your marketing budget. However, with the online travel agency example above, we learned not to put all eggs in one basket. For sure, you must invest in SEO and online marketing and plan that budget wisely, but our question is – is there any way to drive guests from other places to your site? Here are some ideas:
- Connect with local hotels and B&Bs to drive guests to your site
- Ensure your booking system and your website can track booking referrers to ensure you can pay them their commission
That way, you can optimize your marketing strategy, and create additional sales channels that will have a higher conversion, because you and your partners know guests at the destination want to experience something local. And also, the agent/referral fee can be from 6-15%, far less than 30-35%. Not to mention, those partners will drive you targeted guests and will prefer you as a business partner.
Conclusion
You need to consider all these aspects to ensure you can build standard operating procedures that will manage all these digital changes. And your digital transformation partner MUST know how to guide you through all these details.
This way you can make small changes in your business, make it more efficient, and make your team members happy and looking forward to your organization moving forward. And yes, you do not need robots or Tom Cruise to help you.
So, if you need us to help you make those changes, feel free to reach out.
