We bring ideas, strategy and a wealth of experience to every IT project we work on, helping you prepare your Digital Transformation strategy.
Our clients choose us because of the value we provide every step of the way. We treat your business like it’s our own and we want to produce the very best results for you.
Our professional team of technical experts will guide you through the process: from scoping your requirements, navigation of the design process, risk analysis, Integration and deployment, soft landing and support. The process we follow is outlined in the four defined stages illustrated below.
Digital transformation is the adoption of digital technologies, including software and hardware, throughout a business to increase its efficiency, competitiveness and to provide more value for its customers.
With digital transformation reshaping our world, companies that fail to adapt will face a battle to survive. But rather than being a scary thought, the benefits of digitalisation include the huge swath of possibilities and efficiencies to catapult your business to success.
Broadly speaking there are three different strategic approaches to pursuing digital transformation.
Defining a roadmap for your digital transformation will help you increase the likelihood of program success. It will also ensure the strategy you develop meets the changing requirements of your company for many years after completion.
Outline Your Goals
What are your core business objectives over the next two-five years and how do you expect digital transformation to help you achieve them?
You may be targeting customer experience as a main priority or perhaps you are trying to maximise working efficiency or streamline remote working/management.
Budget analysis at this early stage will directly impact the mix of technology you’ll be able to integrate.
Discovery
What systems do you currently have in place which are causing sticking points and inefficiencies or bottlenecks in productivity?
Analysing processes and workflows at this stage is key to the next steps in your digital transformation journey.
Highlight and Develop
Time to identify your priorities.
More often than not the bulk of the development will happen behind the scenes, robust, high-speed infrastructure and connectivity, especially if your company has a topheavy online presence. Robust connectivity is key to successful online businesses.
Budget analysis is also important at this stage, funding for what you can afford to do when needs to be considered when planning project timelines.
Implementation and Training
Once you know your budget, have identified your areas for improvement, highlighted your priorities it’s time to start implementation.
The replacement of legacy systems will take the form of a phased approach for all businesses to minimise downtime and stay operational during this critical stage of the digital transformation journey.
Digital Transformation encompasses a wide variety of technologies, strategies and processes. Three key concepts underpin this.
Legacy System Replacement
Replacing legacy software and hardware systems can be a highly time-consuming and costly process. This is largely dependent on the size of your business, and how entrenched these systems are. Some systems may be superficial and operate largely independent of critical infrastructure or interact with any outside systems. Others maybe responsible for key product functionality, which inevitably makes them much harder to replace. Bigger companies, with older, bespoke systems often struggle the most when it comes to replacing legacy systems. However, this process can be carried out incrementally to reduce pressure on your business.
Despite the challenges associated with upgrading legacy systems, the benefits are significant. Legacy systems can be expensive, with higher operating and maintenance costs. Additionally, they have significantly poorer bottom-line functionality and flexibility than modern counterparts. Businesses should weigh up the costs and benefits of existing systems and potential new systems when considering their own digital transformation.
The three factors you should assess are:
This analysis should consider costs, capabilities, and an assessment of future compatibility across a 10-year period for current systems and replacements. Any investment you do commit must keep pace with industry standards and be viable for upgrades as your business model and transformation strategy matures. In the vast majority of cases, upgrading existing systems will return a significant net positive gain in comparison to maintaining the status quo.
Strategy Shift
To accommodate new digital technologies, it’s essential to update and adapt business strategies too. Conventional wisdom about the best ways to build strategies around modern digital systems is accumulating. But the sheer number of software combinations and different business models out there mean that no two businesses will have the same requirements. As a result, successful digital transformation strategy relies a lot on a business’s ability to incrementally improve strategy based upon current performance.
Automation
Digital transformation also allows businesses to achieve various levels of automation. 1 in 10 marketers spend over 80% of their time managing, analysing, and presenting data.
Modern software allows businesses to automate internal processes like logistics, marketing sequences and financial forecasting. Automation isn’t just for the Manufacturing market, you may not be aware, but automation is being adopted by companies small and large all over the globe, streamlining those mundane tasks, analysing, and simplifying the harvesting of data. For a lot of businesses, the data they hold is more valuable than the business itself! Using this data to maximise sales and advertising is the key to a successful business in this new digital age.
Research by Snaplogic directly linked automation to a 5-7% increase in business revenue — the equivalent of adding $195 billion per month in enhanced productivity in the US.
Going forward, a key area of promise for automation is AI, which uses neural networks, machine learning and other technology to perform tasks that are usually carried out by humans. Nowadays, AI is commonly used in targeted advertising, chatbots, to give customers life-like customer service interactions and save businesses money. It’s also used to build complex models of user behaviour to improve customer experience and recommendations. Considering how automation fits into your tech stack is a key factor driving digital transformation.
If you’d like to talk to us about Digital Transformation for your business, get in touch at sales@microcomms.co.uk or call us on 03300 020 000
