We are committed to exploring the significance of rapid digital innovation to large traditional companies. In the past two years, we have studied more than 400 companies and found that most large enterprises have taken action. Large enterprises use social media, mobile, data analysis and portable devices to change customer participation, internal operation management and even business models. But few enterprises have the ability to obtain real commercial benefits. Our research points out that enterprises that can do this have a real "digital advantage".
The advantage of digitalization comes from the overall operation concept of enterprise taking customers as the center, and the enterprise operation mode of fully realizing customer experience optimization by using emerging technical means.
The development of enterprises benefits from digital advantages.
In order to understand the relationship between digital advantage and financial performance, we analyzed the financial performance of 184 listed companies after industrial adjustment. The level of digital advantage has a great influence on the financial performance of enterprises. As long as enterprises have digital advantages, they can outperform industry competitors in all aspects of financial performance.
The advantages of digitalization are divided into two latitudes: digitalization intensity and transformation management intensity. According to the intensity of transformation management and digitalization, we divide the research objects into four categories.
Our research shows that in terms of profitability and market value, enterprises with strong transformation management intensity are higher than those with weak transformation management intensity.
Whether it is manufacturing or high-tech industries, enterprises in every industry have begun to benefit from digital transformation. It will take many years for digital entry-level enterprises in any industry to catch up with the digital advantages of digital elite enterprises.
Application scope of digital transformation
In order to gain the advantage of digitalization, enterprises need to adjust their own operation mode, which is called digital transformation. A journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step. Digital transformation is not only the application of digital automation in an enterprise, but also its connotation lies in opening up the internal operation process, so that the front desk (customer-oriented, marketing and sales) of the enterprise can be closely integrated with the back-office services. The overall concept of customer-centered determines that the planning, decision-making, operation and service of enterprises are closely related to customer experience and customer-related information management, including customer information collection, customer information storage, customer information analysis and mining and customer information application. And customers include not only existing customers, but also potential customers.
It is worth mentioning that the digital transformation of enterprises contains the main hot topics in the market at present, 1. Mobile application (customer data collection); 2. Cloud computing applications (data storage); 3. Big data management (data analysis and insight); 4. Social media applications (customer data applications).
How to realize digital transformation
Enterprises expect business expansion, operation optimization and digital advantages, so they need digital transformation. In this transformation process, the overall digital strategy of enterprises is very important. The overall digital strategy of enterprises determines the development goals and main development measures of enterprises, and determines the direction of digital development of enterprises. In practice, the main ways to realize digital transformation are nothing more than three different paths.
1) enterprises rely on the transformation of the front desk to drive the digital operation of the background. It is reflected in the digital transformation of sales, which drives the enterprise to change and realizes the transformation from the front desk to the back desk.
2) Enterprises rely on the integration of their own background to promote the digital operation of the front desk, so as to realize the transformation of the front desk driven by the background, that is, the marketing optimization transformation driven by service optimization.
3) Based on the requirements of digital strategy, enterprises take the lead in adjusting the organizational structure of enterprises to promote the realization of digital applications.
These three modes have their own advantages and disadvantages, and are applicable to different enterprise management and control modes. The first model (foreground-driven background) is more suitable for enterprises with decentralized management and control, strong sense of independence of marketing team and outstanding demand for change of front-office business personnel. The second mode is suitable for enterprises with centralized control and background actions to drive the development of sales business. The third mode is special. For example, after completing large-scale mergers and acquisitions, some European enterprises have made primary adjustments to their organizations to meet the needs of future mergers and acquisitions, and on this basis, they have completed the transformation of digital transformation.
In the process of digital transformation, the enterprises we investigated, especially the B2C-based enterprises in the financial field, mostly adopted the second model, which was based on the integration of the back office and used service aggregation to drive the transformation of marketing. On the basis of aggregated services, the management and operation processes in the background are integrated, and the reform of enterprise sales model is adjusted on the basis of improving internal capabilities. Through digital transformation, the background service of the enterprise will be automatically presented to customers, and finally automatic and intelligent sales will be realized.
Enterprises first aggregate back-office services, complete customer information collection and data quality optimization, form a unified customer view, then gain insight into customer needs through data analysis, and finally move the results of these analyses to targeted marketing and sales processes. For example, in the sales process, the salesman can automatically present the basic information of the customer, the past purchase behavior of the customer, and even get the future purchase tendency of the customer through data analysis to guide the salesman to carry out targeted promotion. And customer claims, quotations and other services can also be automatically completed in front of customers through mobile terminals under the background operation and process integration. In fact, this model is to present the operation of the enterprise to the customers completely, automatically and quickly complete the sales and service of the enterprise to the customers, and optimize and improve the customer experience.
Log in through the mobile terminal.
Due to the maturity of mobile technology, many digital applications are realized on mobile terminals, including mobile applications on clients, sales mobile terminals used by salespeople and service mobile terminals used by employees in the company. With the improvement of emerging technologies, customers have a higher quality experience.
At present, most client applications are based on Android and iOS platforms. Many enterprises are committed to developing mobile sales portable devices for salespeople to support marketing activities.
The accelerating pace of technological change has attracted the attention of leaders from all walks of life, who are faced with the choice of how to use data to create more value. We found that no company can avoid digital transformation. However, the person in charge has received various opinions on the method of realizing digital transformation, and sometimes even contradictions or mistakes appear. In two years' investigation, we found that many common views about digital transformation actually fell into a misunderstanding. These unfounded statements may mislead the person in charge of the enterprise to make wrong and costly decisions.
Fortunately, through the global survey of nearly 400 large companies and in-depth interviews with 157 executives of more than 50 large companies, we can get the results based on facts. First of all, the advantages of digitalization cannot be ignored; Second, no company can avoid digital transformation. Every company in every industry has its own competitors, who have become one of the digital advantages. Because it takes time to gain digital advantages, executives in various industries should immediately take active measures to think about the opportunities and challenges brought about by digital transformation; Finally, once the decision is made to take action, enterprises can formulate digital transformation strategies according to the common transformation modes of enterprises with the highest digital advantages listed in this study.
The future is not far away. Start now and create your own digital advantage.