For the small business, the top benefits of digital transformation include:
Increased efficiency
Saving costs
Enhanced customer experience
Essentially, digital transformation leads to higher ROI and decreased expenses.
The best time to start with digital transformation is when the business is still small because the bigger a business becomes, the more complex the transformation process.
What is digital transformation?
Digital transformation is the shift to adopting technology to improve operational processes, culture and customer experience.
It is the interconnectedness of business functions, processes, assets, models, and
activities.
It is not a once-off thing; instead, it will involve improving how a business does things on an ongoing basis.
Small business goals for digital transformation
For the small business, the goals to work towards include:
1. Centralising all your data. Using technology such as the DataGrows Database Builder allows you to create one central place to store and access data that the whole organization can use. This phase is your foundation, and other technologies may be placed on “top” of this layer and plugged into this hub. Book a meeting with DataGrows to find out more.
2. Collecting data. Once you’ve centralised all your data, it can be used to continually improve the business, for example, by improving workflows and gaining data-driven insights into consumption and loss.
3. Automating repetitive tasks. Automating tasks saves time and money by making workflows faster and reducing human error. It also improves consistency which is critical to the customer experience, and increases efficiency and productivity.
Steps to digital transformation
Now that we’ve covered the goals of digital transformation, here are the steps to transforming your business:
#1: Identify the captain
Who will drive this project? There needs to be someone to keep on top of things. In a small business, this role may be allocated to the owner.
#2: Centralise data
Centralise the data that you have. If you only have customer data, use a Customer Relationship Management (CRM) and Practice Management system.
If you already have a lot of data throughout your business, you’ll need a database. Setting up a database can be costly and time-consuming. DataGrows aims to make this process easy and cost-effective.
Request a meeting to learn more about the DataGrows Database Builder and how we can help you transition.
#3: Look for quick wins
As a small business with limited resources, you will want quick wins.
Ask your teams what their greatest pain points are, and find out if there is a technology that will simplify things. A few examples include:
Expense reporting
File transfers
HR processes
Social media scheduling
Generating reports
Email automation
Start transitioning to technology that will make the most impact in the shortest space of time.
#4: Keep going
Now just keep going.
Keep making improvements and finding better ways of doing things.
Never stop.
What now?
Many small businesses find it challenging to transition from an Excel spreadsheet to a database management system, but the DataGrows Database Builder comes with an experienced team to help you get started easily.
Request a meeting to start saving costs, get intelligent insights about your business, and transition to a central, secure hub for your data.
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