By Jowell Shek @ Ooosh Coworking
What is Digital Transformation?
Is Digital Transformation just a fancy buzzword for moving to the cloud? In general, we would define digital transformation as the integration of digital technology into all facets of a business, resulting in fundamental changes to how businesses operate.
Why Digital Transformation?
Put simply: keep up or fall behind.
As digital technology advances and plays an ever-bigger part in our daily lives, businesses have to keep up - or be prepared to be engulfed in the waves of your competitors.
In face of the unprecedented Coronavirus Crisis, no one knows exactly what will come. But one thing is for sure - a rapid digital transformation is spurred. This message comes through loud and clear in every article, study, webinar, or panel discussion one may have come across about remaining relevant in an increasingly digital business world.
Now is the best time to equip yourselves for a market rebound: The expectations of modern customers are being driven largely by digital technology and innovations. They expect that from their business providers as well. As they become more receptive to adopting technology in their daily activities, (e.g.communications, bookings, purchasing, working, etc.) it is clear to businesses that a digital transformation is inevitable. Moreover, the digitally-connected world makes it easier than ever for customers to be informed of different alternatives they have, making the battlefield even more brutal for businesses.
Who needs Digital Transformation?
The answer is basically everyone.
In this increasingly digital age, digital transformation is essential for companies in every industry, big or small. Whether your business creates value by providing client services, digital media, or physical goods, using technological innovations to transform your production, distribution, and customer service is imperative for maintaining a competitive edge in the market.
How to achieve Digital Transformation?
Still sounds pretty vague? Worry not. Strap down your gears - as in this article we aim to provide some clarity in some specific, tangible steps your business can take to kickstart your digital transformation journey.
3 Major Aspects:
Operations
Sales & Marketing
Marketing Communications
1. Operations
Digital transformation involves the re-thinking and redesigning of daily business operations and integrating digital tools into your work processes.
In fact, there are many simple digital tools available that you can plug and play to make your business more operationally efficient. However, remember -- don’t introduce your digital tools all at once. Rather, prorate changes and gradually integrate the tools into your daily operations.
With that being said, here is a list of tools we use at Ooosh that we would like to recommend:
Internal communications - Video conferencing
Zoom: The new buzzword for web conferencing
Face-to-face communication is always preferred. However, in this digital age, where we might have to manage remote teams, remote collaboration via video conferencing is a no-brainer.
Just like Skype/Facetime was synonymous for video chatting, Zoom has become the new buzzword for web conferencing. Not all technology is made equal. After testing out several video conferencing tools, Zoom is one that we found ourselves going back to, and it has been a staple in our daily collaborations. The user experience is incredibly smooth and intuitive, and the video and audio quality is superior to the others we’ve used. Also, one thing is you can record the meeting, which sets Zoom apart from the competition.
Remo: Think Zoom - but with an extra layer of social interaction
Remo has been one of Ooosh’s most loyal tenants, and we have seen it grow from the very beginning. You may say we are biased, but trust us when we say we are their loyal users - we use Remo for all our team meetings at Ooosh!
Enter a whole new virtual social experience, where you can talk to people at a web conference by joining their "table", and see their Linkedin profiles. What’s more is their user interface, where you will see a top-down, 2-D map view of an event venue, virtual office, conference, or school, full of interactive “rooms.” Each room hosts an always-on video chat for occupants of a room, making it easy for collaborators to pop in and out of conversations with ease.
Internal communications - Messaging
Slack: Organized emails, but in chat.
Do you find it hard to keep track of your messages and conversations in workplace communication? You have one conversation thread on email on contract renewal and content marketing, and business development planning. Then, you have another on Whatsapp about onboarding lunch and investor meetings.
With Slack, we find that it integrates workplace communication smoothly in a single messaging system. Different conversations and teams are grouped into different “channels”, and your team can and share information and files promptly in an organized manner.
External communications
Mailchimp: Email blaster and CRM
Investing in digital tools that facilitate the communication between your business and your customers, investors, and partners is an important first step in digitizing your marketing efforts. But which tool should you start with?
We think Mailchimp is a no BS, basic email marketing service, where you can easily design emails and blast your marketing message with your database. We also like that for a good price, you can access all the basic features that are sufficient for SMEs, as it includes simple email campaign analytics and basic CRM functionality.
E-link: Content generator with links you saved
Ever seen a really helpful article or page that you wanted to save and share on your company newsletter, website/blog? You might be bookmarking a bunch of articles, resources, and links, keeping some in your Notes/ Evernote, some on your Google Docs and wanted a single E-link helps you save web links, bundle them and turn your weblink collections into email newsletters, fast website/blog content, single web pages and social media bio links
Project management
Asana: Task and project manager
Gone are the days where key dates, milestones, tasks, and person-in-charge of each project are written down in pen and paper and managed manually. The beauty of digitizing project management is progress is updated in real-time and everyone can collaborate simultaneously in a unified platform even when working remotely.
We love Asana and rely on it as our task management tool religiously on a daily basis. It allows us to improve team collaboration and work management and create projects, assign work to teammates, specify deadlines, and communicate about tasks directly in Asana.
Automating and Streamlining
Apart from integrating digital tools into your daily business operations, another question you should ask yourself is whether there are procedures and tasks that can be streamlined and automated to reduce the chances of error while increasing efficiencyTo kickstart your streamlining journey, start with digitizing your documents, have them organized digitally, then automate and streamline your processes.
Before implementing any specific digital transformation strategies, you are better off reviewing and baselining your core business processes. It can be an encumbrance, as you would need to take a microscope look into every daily routine, task, and process -- even minuscule tasks such as invoice processing, inventory reordering.
Zapier: Automating your workflow by linking all tools
We love this tool when it comes to integrating and automating workflows, as it basically does all the "talking" between all your work tools, including project management, lead generation and productivity tools.
Stay tuned with us for Part 2 and learn about how you can digitally transform your business on Sales & Marketing and Marketing Communications.