FACT CHECKED
Adopting technology breakthroughs has become an everyday occurrence.
We live in an age of constant technological progress; we expect that tomorrow a new digital accelerator will be rolled out to ease our lives even more.
From personal lives to business matters, these trends hold true. Successful enterprises always try to be on the same page with their customers and today’s page has digital implementation written all over it.
According to We Are Social and Hootsuite’s report on how people use digital devices and the internet around the globe, 67% of the world population is using mobile phones and 57% is using the Internet daily.
Let’s put that into perspective: more than half of Earth’s population rely on online services to some extent to facilitate their lives.
For enterprises today, it’s digital adoption do or die. The Internet has become the most attractive way for an average consumer to spend money. If enterprises want to prosper, they must prioritize digital adoption now.
For companies, it’s now a matter of accepting the challenge or becoming extinct.
Fatal disadvantages of the lack of digital adoption
The first pressing reason why “digital adoption do or die” is a true statement for today’s enterprises is this: the losses they would incur from ignoring digital adoption are just too big.
Implementing technology gives a boost to process optimization. At a very basic level, when a company refuses digitization, it drowns in paper documentation and hard-to-decipher handwritten notes. This slows down work processes.
In the meantime, their competitors are conveniently using a cloud or common server to store and search for their valuable data.
Similarly, avoiding communication technology creates a gap between negotiations and achieving the desired result. But having the right communication and task management tools makes working with international teams possible.
Keeping things conservative and ignoring digital accelerators will form a “digital laggard” or luddite image of the workplace, drastically reducing its overall appeal.
Poor digital adoption can have a negative impact on a company’s brand name — from both a potential employee’s perspective and a customer’s.
Potential customers seek out enterprises that can provide services in the most convenient and accessible way possible. Simply put, they want to be able to use digital means to enhance and improve their business dealings.
Therefore, overlooking the creation of a well-designed website or mobile app with functional UI means lost business. In addition, potential partners will see such an enterprise as stagnating, nonessential, and frozen in its development.
Who is the first to become extinct?
Is digital adoption do or die? Yes. It’s essential for every enterprise’s survival, be it a small family business or a big conglomerate.
This is easy to see in retail. In 2018, a survey done by Creditcards.com showed that only 14% of US citizens are willing to pay for products and services in cash. Credit cards are now the next on the chopping block, due to the rising popularity of mobile payment methods.
Some countries, like Sweden, are willing to become completely cash-free in the upcoming decade. For retailers to ignore updating payment methods means dooming themselves to extinction.
If they upgrade their payment schemes to online possibilities or even cryptocurrencies, they can attract a bigger audience of buyers.
The age of the Internet brought forth the rise of e-commerce, which enabled anyone to start their own business easier and faster. Smaller companies have to contend with the rise in competition and do their best to adopt new digital trends from the start.
The fact that the way of doing business has changed means that new players on the market will come forth with improved digital-based business strategies.
According to IDG’s 2018 State of Digital Business Transformation, 95% of start-ups have digital business plans. Newer companies are posing a serious challenge to more mature enterprises when it comes to productivity, accessibility, and potentially, profits.
Digital adoption do or die: where to start
Since digital adoption is essential for survival in the market, everyone wants to know where and how to start.
A wise first step is to create a digital adoption strategy, resulting in a digital adoption framework.
Here, you will need to analyze the market to identify the niche and resources available for your company in the industry.
Microsoft, in their report, stated that more than 90% of customers expect companies to have an online customer services portal. So a safe place to start might be to digitalize your customer support.
If you have a retail store, aim to adopt e-commerce strategies with mobile-oriented UI, since 79% of consumers purchase things using their smartphones.
The next pretty simple step is making sure that your company has positive reviews on the web. It is crucial for a brand name because 80% of customers look for reviews before visiting even physical stores.
Working with a team and communicating in a fast and efficient way can be a struggle. Such communication and project management tools like Slack and Trello can become a gamechanger for your company.
Consider other SaaS tools depending on your industry, as they will help your employees to manage their workflow more effectively; moreover, they will help with the onboarding of new members to your growing team.
Final words
Technology transformation cannot be ignored or even postponed by modern enterprises that want to stay profitable and competitive. So, in the face of “digital adoption do or die,” it is crucial to remain calm and proceed with awareness.
At the end of the day, for successful digital adoption, enthusiasm and openness to change has to be supplemented with wise planning and careful execution for a company to truly benefit from digital upgrades.
