In a World, That is Fastly Digitally Transforming, Why You Need a Potent Digital Strategy


In a World, That is Fastly Digitally Transforming, Why You Need a  Potent Digital Strategy

The COVID-19 pandemic put a lot of pressure on the shoulders of CIOs, the changes that brands had to adopt were clearly up to the responsibility of CIOs. Hence, when 77.3% of Fortune 500 CIOs say that digital transformation is their top priority, you must understand that there is a great need to buckle up.

But then, plunging into digital transformation without a digital strategy is worse than not embarking on digital transformation in the first place, and trying to carry out too many ideas at once is a recipe for failure. According to studies, a whopping 70% of digital transformations projects hit the brick wall.

Incidentally, some organizations involved in digital transformation failures will not outrightly say they did not know what the problem was, they just didn’t have a good digital strategy. The business world is no longer the same again, customers now have great avenues available to them to express their views about a product or customer service.

There is the need for brands to become more consumer-centric, and all these calls for digital transformation. Any brand that still wants to remain relevant in the face of global competition must go through the process of reimagining, which is what digital transformation is all about.

The driving force behind digital transformation is usually to improve customer experience, and this you do by re-strategizing how your brand leverages technological advancements, employees, and business processes to ensure customer satisfaction and improve ROI.

What is digital strategy?

Digital strategy is the blueprint of the process you want to implement; it involves new technologies, software systems, legacy systems you must revamp, apps, digital cultures that must be changed, and employees that you need to hire, retrain, or tasks you must outsource. A digital strategy will enhance the smooth sailing of your digital transformation with the view of allowing for scalability in your business operations and goals.

It must outline in detail how you ensure a greater supply chain efficiency, better collaboration among remote employees, product fulfillment, gathering customer reviews, and improved customer experience.

A comprehensive digital strategy is a roadmap and must include the following:

  • Maximizing cloud services to mitigate cyberattacks.
  • Sentiment analysis, based on data-driven customer reviews and prediction of individual
    customer behavior.
  • Web analytics to enhance profound knowledge of the competition.
  • A customer relationship management (CRM) platform that will enable your brand to store
    current and potential customer data, track interactions and eliminate churn.
  • Metrics to monitor and measure progress and results based on KPIs.

Organizations know it’s important to have a digital strategy, however, the problem with most brands is where to start. According to Harvard Business Review, you can use the following questions to guide you on the way forward for your digital strategy.

  1. Is there any way digital technology has positively or negatively impacted your business?
  2. Are you looking towards digital technology to improve the way value is added to your
    business operations?
  3. Who is your target customer? Can you leverage digital technology to effect changes?
  4. How can digital technology affect the value proposition to your target customer?
  5. What aspects of your operations can digital technology serve as the differentiator in
    enhancing competitive edge?

You mustn’t do it because others are doing it, your brand has its peculiarities, and you must focus on those. Where some organizations that have gone through digital upheavals will have ready-made answers to these questions, it may not be the same for others. Answers to these questions will help you to formulate a digital strategy that will ensure you focus on digital transformation initiatives you have to implement. It will allow you to focus on the changes you must introduce and know exactly what to do to become relevant.

It’s the opportunity you have to understand where you have to fine-tune, what specific values you must concentrate on, where to fund better, and what the foundation of your strategy should be. A potent digital transformation strategy is the key to ensure that you completely understand your company’s purpose.

It strategically places your brand on the right footing, you avoid wasting time and resources by embarking on technologies that do not add value and do not enhance new competitive advantages.

What do you do stand to gain from a digital strategy?

Choosing the right leader

Digital transformation is a holistic project, it is all involved. A digital strategy enhances success, and there is no way this can be possible if you don’t have the right leader.

When you have the right person, the technologies fall in place, digital cultures can easily be overhauled. The very first step is to ensure that the CEO is all in for the digital transformation, once this has been assured, it becomes easy to onboard all other employees.

It can’t be the business of the CIO alone, your digital strategy takes care of this all-important factor. The CEO’s commitment determines how every other department keys into the project.

Understanding your potential threats

A digital strategy is a pointer to the potential threats you must have to overcome and according to McKinsey & Company, it’s a guide to how you can categorize your potential threats and opportunities in digital business, and then compare these against your digital strategy. It gives you a working plan on whether to be proactive or defensive in your digital transformation initiatives.

Metrics to measure success

A digital strategy creates room for you to measure how well your digital transformation program is going. External success depends on the net promoter score (NPS), consumers’ degree of satisfaction, and some other feedback loops that provide a good set of KPIs.

Internal success can be based on the measurement of flow efficiency, mean time to repair, and mean time to detect. Your digital strategy must include these useful KPIs.

User lifetime value, hours you can save by integrating new technologies, are part of the KPIs your digital strategy must specify. These KPIs will enhance your ability to promptly discover if your approach is complementing your proposed business growth.

If the new technologies you are adopting seem to be failing you, there is no point in investing funds, you must be cautious in your approach. A digital strategy and the ability to measure your progress are indicators of whether you should proceed or wasting resources on initiatives that are not your priorities.

Standing the test of time

It’s digital transformation, organizations have seen the need and are making the necessary changes to ensure relevancy. Is this what you must be doing every year?

A digital strategy ensures you can look into the future. Are there likely technologies that will disrupt what you have in place now? What programs do you have for  revamping legacy systems if they become obsolete?

What digital strategy means is having a blueprint for transformations, the ability to meet customers’ expectations, and adopting new technologies as they surface. A digital strategy must be dynamic enough to ensure that you don’t stagnate when other brands are moving to the next edge and exploring new opportunities.