Business digitalization means using digital tools and technologies to rework a company's processes, customer relationships and day-to-day work: paperless documents, automated tasks, CRM, ERP, collaboration tools. The goal is to gain efficiency, service quality and agility, provided employees actually adopt the new tools.
Key takeaways
- Business digitalization means bringing digital tools into a company's processes, customer relationships and employees' daily work.
- The expected benefits are more personalized customer relationships, faster processes, better collaboration and better-controlled costs.
- The approach follows five steps: audit the current situation, secure buy-in, map the processes, manage change and iterate.
- Without employee adoption, new tools stay underused: user support is part of the project, not an afterthought.
Yet, many organizations are still dragging their feet when it comes to the investments required for this digital transformation. Employee reluctance and a lack of visibility on return on investment slow down the adoption of digital tools.
Reasons to invest in digital
The shift towards digital offers numerous advantages to businesses. Let's further analyze the tangible benefits they can expect.
Enhance customer relationships
Showcase websites, customer portals, and mobile applications allow for a better understanding of customer interactions with the company. Thanks to advanced analytics, we can precisely identify their journeys, pages viewed, preferred communication channels...
Leveraging these insights, marketing and sales teams finely personalize the customer experience. For example, the website prominently displays content on its homepage that best matches the interests of each user profile.
Crucially, when a customer contacts customer service, the advisor immediately sees their past interaction history. They also access their contract details, allowing them to address any concerns effectively.
Similarly, in their personal space, customers can quickly find the status of their requests, invoices, scheduled appointments, and more. Depending on their profile and tenure, they may also receive targeted promotional offers.
Furthermore, chatbots provide personalized support to users. Thanks to artificial intelligence, they can handle a large share of routine questions on their own. For more complex requests, they transfer the conversation to a human agent. This chatbot/advisor duo thus combines efficiency and empathy in serving customers.
Used well, digital technology improves communication with customers and among employees.
Optimize and automate internal processes
Digitizing internal procedures saves valuable time for employees.
Now, optical character recognition, for example, automatically digitizes documents to integrate them into back-office systems. The result: processing time can fall from several days to a few minutes.
Also, validation processes are streamlined thanks to electronic signatures and automated workflows. No more documents lost at the back of a cabinet waiting for a signature!
Foster collaboration among teams
Another benefit is that online collaborative tools significantly improve internal communication.
Now, all stakeholders access a centralized platform to share all project information in real time. Everyone can view task progress, add comments, and submit deliverables directly online.
Furthermore, these new digital workspaces foster collective intelligence. Teams can more easily co-author documents and co-create new ideas through mind mapping or interactive voting features.
Reduce costs and develop new revenue streams
Digitizing processes eliminates the costs of storing and archiving paper documents.
In addition, SaaS and PaaS optimize IT spending by avoiding hosting infrastructure internally. There's no longer a need to invest heavily in ultra-powerful and expensive-to-maintain servers!
Moving forward, companies are adopting a pay-per-use and on-demand consumption model. They only pay for what they use through a flexible subscription that can be adjusted at any time.
Furthermore, digital technology opens up opportunities for additional revenue. Connected devices and marketplaces enable billing for new value-added services.
Finally, it's worth noting that the most digitally mature companies were up to 26% more profitable than their industry peers in 2012 (MIT Sloan Research & Capgemini).
What tools do you need to digitalize your business?
Tool choices follow from the processes you want to improve first. A few families cover most needs:
- Customer relationships: a CRM to centralize interaction history, marketing automation, an online customer portal.
- Operations and management: an ERP to connect purchasing, inventory, production, sales and finance in a single system.
- Human resources: HRIS software for payroll, time off, reviews and training.
- Documents and approvals: document management, e-signature, automated workflows.
- Collaboration: team messaging, file sharing, video conferencing, project management.
- Security: backups, multi-factor authentication, endpoint protection.
Piling up tools without supporting users has the opposite effect: scattered information, duplicate data entry and underuse. You are better off deploying a few well-adopted, integrated tools, then widening the scope step by step based on user feedback and on measurement of real usage. A short list of shared tools is also easier to secure, maintain and train people on.
Digitization vs. digitalization: what does business digitalization cover?
The two words are often confused, but they describe different levels of ambition. As SAP explains, digitization converts information into digital form without changing the process, while digitalization uses digital technology to change the process itself and, sometimes, the business model.
| Term | What it covers | Example |
|---|---|---|
| Digitization | Converting physical information into digital data | Scanning paper invoices |
| Digitalization | Redesigning a process around digital tools | A paperless, automated invoice approval workflow |
| Digital transformation | Changing the whole organization, its culture and sometimes its business model | New online services, a data-driven organization |
Business digitalization is therefore the concrete, process-by-process part of a digital transformation. You do not need to transform everything at once to benefit from it: each digitalized process can be measured, improved and used as a reference for the next one. Start where the gains are easiest to see, such as invoice approval or customer requests, and make sure the people who run the process help redesign it.
How to digitalize your business in 5 steps
1 - Audit the existing situation
The first step is to conduct a comprehensive assessment of the information system and internal processes. This involves analyzing database sizes, applications used, procedures in place in each department, customer journeys, and more.
This phase allows for a precise evaluation of the digital maturity level of each part of the company. It helps identify priority projects for the future company-wide transformation roadmap.
2 - Gain buy-in from management and teams
The initiators of the digitalization program must then present its full scope to internal stakeholders. The objective: to secure the agreement of decision-makers regarding the substantial investments required.
It also involves overcoming the resistance to change that may emerge among teams. To do this, project leaders highlight the expected benefits in terms of working conditions and employability. They present digital transformation not as an end in itself, but as a means to tangibly improve employees' daily lives.
3 - Precisely map the processes to be digitalized
Based on the audit results, project managers define the scope of digitalization. They precisely identify the processes to be prioritized for optimization according to their digital maturity level.
They model the future end-to-end journey step-by-step, integrating the new digital solutions identified. These "blueprints" allow for simulating expected gains and sizing the necessary resources.
4 - Manage change
Change management plays a crucial role in the success of a digital transformation program. Without internal team buy-in, even the most sophisticated technological solutions will remain unused.
Therefore, project instigators must redouble their educational efforts to win employees over to the digital cause. First and foremost, it involves protecting them from two symmetrical pitfalls: technophobia and technophilia.
On the one hand, front-line managers allay employees' legitimate fears regarding job security and the cognitive overload caused by this inevitable paradigm shift.
They show them, with concrete examples, that the advent of digital technology does not inevitably spell the end for traditional professions. On the contrary, it creates new needs in skills and can support their future employability.
On the other hand, they warn against the overly optimistic rhetoric of self-proclaimed experts. These individuals, intoxicated by the excitement of the latest innovations, often underestimate the inertia of habits and the need to support stakeholders.
However, without a gradual upskilling of users, the most sophisticated tools will remain underutilized.
To achieve this, a comprehensive training program is rolled out before launch. Video tutorials and step-by-step operating procedures are made available on a self-service basis via the company's social network. Employees can thus find illustrated instructions for their new digitalized tasks with a single click.
Thus, thanks to this multi-faceted support, each employee progresses at their own pace towards the mastery of new tools. From then on, digital technology, once perceived as an imposed constraint, gradually becomes a significant ally in the smooth accomplishment of everyone's tasks.
5 - Adopt an agile approach: test, listen to feedback, and improve
Rather than deploying all technological components simultaneously, iterative approaches are favored. The goal: to quickly launch initial versions of the future target system (MVP) to gather feedback from end-users.
They evaluate the solution and share their pain points or ideas for improvement. This continuous field feedback allows the solution to be enhanced with each version, ensuring it best meets the teams' expectations.
Conclusion
Ultimately, digital transformation provides tangible benefits to all levels of the company. It optimizes the customer experience by responding more precisely to their changing expectations. It also increases team productivity by automating tedious internal processes. Most importantly, it sustains the company's economic model by opening new avenues for growth.
Certainly, like any major transformation, the technological shift is not without its bumps and breaks. But the added value created in the medium term largely outweighs the initial inconveniences.
Therefore, rather than dismissing digitalization as a passing trend, companies should see it as an essential step. Savvy leaders approach it with clear-sightedness, but also with healthy ambition. They make it a driver for continuous improvement in customer service and for employee fulfillment at work.
Knowmore supports you throughout your digital transformation. Our business expertise and innovative platform support the lasting adoption of digital tools by your teams. Boost your growth by leveraging the latest innovations!
Frequently asked questions
What is business digitalization?
Business digitalization is the use of digital tools and technologies in a company's daily operations: document management, customer relationships, internal processes and team collaboration. It goes beyond scanning paper documents: it redesigns processes to make them faster, more reliable and easier to share, with employees trained on the new tools.
How do I digitalize my business?
To digitalize your business, start with an assessment of your most time-consuming processes, your existing tools and what customers and employees expect. Then pick one or two high-impact projects that are easy to measure, such as paperless invoicing or a CRM. Involve future users in choosing the tool and plan their training from the start.
How much does business digitalization cost?
The cost of business digitalization depends on its scope: SaaS subscriptions, integration, data migration, training and user support. The most underestimated items are post-launch support, double data entry during the transition and unused licenses, which are the hidden costs of a poorly adopted digital transformation.
Do you need outside help to digitalize your business?
Outside help is useful when you lack the time or expertise to scope a business digitalization project, choose tools and train teams. Depending on your needs, it can come from a consulting firm or a software integrator. Either way, keep ownership of the key decisions and plan user support from the start.
