3 Signs Your Business Needs Digital Transformation Consulting Services
Businesses of all sizes and industries would like to achieve digital transformation—but too many of them, unfortunately, fall short of this mark. According to research by the Boston Consulting Group, 70 percent of digital transformation initiatives fail to attain their target objectives. The reasons for these failures are highly varied: lack of organizational alignment, slow internal processes, getting distracted by the latest shiny technology, etc.
When digital transformation goes right, however, the impact can be truly revolutionary for an organization. According to the same BCG research, companies with successful digital transformations were able to create 66 percent more value and meet 120 percent more of their targets than competitors that didn’t undergo such a transformation.
To give themselves the best chance at success at becoming a digital business, organizations should seriously consider digital transformation consulting. So what do digital transformation consultants do, and what are the signs that your business can benefit from using digital transformation services? This article will answer all of these questions and more.
What Is Digital Transformation Consulting?
Although it has become a bit of a corporate buzzword, the ideas behind digital transformation are rock-solid. Fundamentally, digital transformation represents the use of evolving technology and digital services and skills to modernize your business model and processes.
Digital transformation involves the application of digital technology to significantly alter companies’ operating models, changing their organizational structure, processes, and services at their core. Businesses that undergo digital transformation initiatives may have a wide range of objectives, from cutting costs and creating new revenue streams to becoming more agile and improving the customer experience.
The role of digital transformation consultants is varied and typically long-term:
- Identifying opportunities for digital business transformation
- Outlining a digital transformation strategy for achieving these opportunities
- Working hand-in-hand with the business to execute this strategy
Digital transformation consulting, then, is the use of a third-party consulting firm to help a business unlock its potential via digital technologies, tools, and platforms. A digital transformation consultant helps organizations adopt new digital capabilities and platforms. Digital transformation services typically involve and affect people across the organization, including employees, managers, key stakeholders, business partners, and customers.
Business Benefits of Digital Transformation Consulting
With so many organizations falling short of their digital transformation objectives, it’s hard not to see the value inherent in digital transformation consulting. Below, we’ll go over four explicit business advantages of using digital transformation services.
Changing your internal operations
Digital transformation consulting can help businesses transform their internal operations, identifying inefficiencies and roadblocks and developing strategies to improve them. This may include streamlining processes, enabling the deployment of artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning (ML), and automating slow workflows with digital-first technologies and platforms. These changes can lead to more informed decisions, higher productivity, and lower business expenses.
Improving the customer experience and increasing business value
With digital transformation services, businesses can create new digital platforms, products, and services that meet customers’ rapidly evolving needs. This can take on a variety of formats:
- Developing a new mobile app that offers new digital capabilities with a customer-centric perspective
- Releasing a customer service chatbot that can handle many basic queries and issues without the need to involve a human agent
- Installing a new customer relationship management (CRM) software platform to better track customers’ interactions with the business
- Understanding more effective ways of leveraging social media to connect and engage with customers
By improving the customer experience, digital transformation companies can improve customer retention, loyalty, and satisfaction, causing positive ripple effects for their bottom line. According to Forrester, companies that excel at customer experience have 5.7 times higher revenue than companies that lag behind.
Adapting to the times
The world of enterprise IT is constantly shifting: formerly cutting-edge technologies such as cloud computing have since become a best practice for companies of all sizes and industries. Most recently, new innovations in AI and machine learning have shaken up businesses worldwide.
Companies that fail to adopt these new developments risk falling by the wayside as their competitors continue advancing forward. Using digital transformation consultants is an excellent way to show clients and potential customers that you aren’t scared of technological change, and that your business can adapt to the moment.
Encouraging collaboration and innovation
Last but not least, digital transformation services can help businesses foster a spirit of collaboration and innovation. Digital transformation can help companies break down business silos, share information, and encourage closer collaboration between cross-functional teams.
Consultants help organizations generate new ideas and develop more effective long-term business strategies. For example, digital transformation consultants can recommend new collaboration tools and methodologies or help create an incubator for creativity within the organization.
3 Signs Your Company Needs Digital Transformation Consulting
Digital transformation services can undoubtedly offer benefits for any organization—but there are certain types of businesses that can especially profit from working with a third-party partner. Below, we’ll go over three signs that your company needs digital transformation consulting.
1. You’re stuck in your old ways
Is your organization struggling to keep up with the times? Do you feel stuck using your old, outdated legacy technologies and systems? These are strong indications that you should consider using digital transformation consulting.
While you may have a clear sense that modernizing your IT systems is necessary, you might not know what you should replace this legacy technology with—or how to go about it. A digital transformation consulting partner can help you develop strategies and roadmaps for implementing new technologies and changing your organizational culture to support digital transformation.
2. Your business is growing fast
On the other hand, your business might be a victim of its own success—growing quickly but not sure how to adapt to new technologies and processes to keep up with your competition. This makes it harder to meet the shifting demands of customers and stakeholders.
Here, too, digital transformation consulting can make all the difference. The right digital transformation partner can help your company scale more effectively by identifying bottlenecks in your operations; automating slow, tedious, manual processes; developing new technologies to support business growth; and more. Digital transformation consultants can give you tips on how to stay agile and responsive to quickly evolving market conditions.
3. You want to enhance the customer experience
Customers today are more demanding than ever before: they expect a seamless, personalized digital experience across all business channels. If you’re struggling to meet these expectations, or you want to catch up with your competitors, you should seriously consider digital transformation consulting.
Improving the customer experience is a crucial element of digital transformation. Third-party digital transformation consultants can provide guidance in a number of ways. For example, digital transformation services might help oversee the implementation of a new AI recommendation engine or natural language processing (NLP) chatbot for customer service. They can also help with solutions behind the scenes that indirectly improve the customer experience, e.g., by improving data privacy and security or the scalability and reliability of your IT systems.
What Can You Expect with Digital Transformation Services?
So far, we’ve discussed the advantages of digital transformation consulting and some reasons why it might be the right fit for you. But what can you expect when you first enlist the help of digital transformation services?
Digital transformation consultants start by taking a deep dive into your business operations, as well as your current technologies and resources. After helping assess your existing technology infrastructure, they’ll provide their recommendations for new tools and improved processes to help the business scale or evolve.
Once this initial step is complete, digital transformation services work to develop a comprehensive digital transformation strategy. This consists of an outline with specific goals, timelines, and milestones that the organization needs to achieve.
Next, digital transformation partners work with the client to put the new suggested technologies and processes into practice. Throughout this step, digital transformation consultants work closely with the organization to ensure that these changes are being adopted effectively. Digital transformation partners may also offer training and education programs to employees and even provide long-term support and maintenance for the new technologies on an as-needed basis.
KMS: Your Technology and Digital Transformation Consultant
As we’ve seen, there are many benefits of digital transformation services—and many companies who could profit from using it. The question is: how can you pick the right digital transformation consultants for your business?
KMS Technology is here to help. We have countless years of experience helping our clients implement emerging technologies such as AI and machine learning, cloud computing, and big data and analytics. KMS is a skilled, experienced digital transformation partner that can bring your business to the cutting edge of digital technologies.
Whether your business needs to develop a new product, implement an AI solution, or modernize legacy systems, KMS can assist you. Are you ready to get started on your digital transformation journey? Get in touch with KMS today and schedule a free consultation to discuss your technology needs or a technical assessment of your existing IT environment.
You can also check out our list of digital transformation success stories to find a client case study similar to yours.
