Any organization that fails to become a digital enterprise jeopardizes its future success; hence, it is critical for all businesses to embark on the digital transformation road.
A digital enterprise is an organization that completely integrates digital tools and technology into all aspects of its operations in order to increase productivity, create a better customer experience, and improve the efficiency and effectiveness of business processes.
A digitally modernized enterprise utilizes cutting-edge technology to stay relevant and provide excellent service to clients in unexpected ways. Technology has an impact on every important activity, from customer experience to enhanced operational productivity. Digital technologies help businesses identify and implement new capabilities.
The things we consume in our daily lives present major challenges for businesses all over the world, from personalized production to mass-producing items and bringing new products to market with lightning speed while remaining secure and flexible to deliver exactly what the customer wants with consistently high-quality at affordable prices while always looking for new ideas to generate more business.
This implies the establishment of a truly digital enterprise in order to modernize and enhance its business model, respond to changing market demands, and provide extraordinary products or services to better serve its clients.
What is a digital enterprise?
Organizations can improve their productivity, competitiveness, and creativity by making greater use of digital technologies. The growth of digital technology presents both opportunities and threats to many enterprises.
A digital enterprise is one in which any firm aligns the use of digital technology across all activities, people, and processes in order to do business digitally, allowing for more efficiency, agility, and better response to market changes.
Consumers nowadays are increasingly willing to buy products or services through the usage of digital channels. In fact, the newer generation expects a higher digital experience from any companies that they want to do business with.
One example of a digital enterprise is Netflix, which has a brilliant business model, a strong focus on content, a unique digital culture, and remarkable technological capabilities. Because of that, they were able to expand their business so far and revolutionize the movie rental business model in such an innovative way.
What are the benefits of a digital enterprise?
A digital enterprise is a company that has a successful online presence and uses the internet to achieve its goals. There are many benefits of digital transformation, some of which are mentioned below.
Digital enterprises have the potential to grow faster than traditional businesses because they can reach more people on a global scale. They also have the ability to produce content in real-time and use it instantaneously as opposed to waiting for months or years for it to be published in print or broadcast on television. This means that they can react much more quickly and take advantage of opportunities as they arise.
They also provide a better return on investment because they don’t need to spend money on physical stores, printing copies, or manual repetitive tasks.
How To Become A Digital Enterprise
Almost every firm is striving to become a fully digital enterprise in order to provide the most creative service to its clients. However, there are several challenges in the digital transformation path that, if not addressed, may restrict the company’s operation and profitability.
Organizations that successfully overcome the challenges and evolve into digital, innovative, and agile enterprises will be well-positioned to become industry leaders.
To become a digital enterprise, you need to:
1- Align Business With IT Teams
To realize the full potential of a digital enterprise, business and IT teams must coordinate their strategy and develop a well-defined digital transformation plan. Changes from IT teams need cautious preparation, which is why it is critical that they operate at the same frequency to limit the chance of failure.
2- Develop an Agile Mindset
Resilience and agility are essential for sustaining profitability in today’s continuously changing market. The capacity to work with an agile mentality, where any projects or initiatives should be performed in cycles, with each cycle having a well-defined result, is a critical component in the success of transitioning into a digital enterprise.
By employing agile project management approaches, firms may deliver better-aligned outcomes and detect any incorrect approach as soon as feasible in order to optimize and re-establish the project’s success track.
3- Change Management
This is one of the most critical aspects of running a successful digital enterprise since organizations frequently encounter a lot of opposition to any changes made to the way we operate.
As a leader in any company, your primary responsibility in this initiative is to achieve stakeholder buy-in and understanding of the additional benefit of having a digital culture. Because people are accustomed to doing things in the same old ways, you must ensure that all concerned stakeholders are willing to accept and adapt to change.
You would not believe how many unsuccessful digital initiatives we had because employees refused to change how they do business on a daily basis.
This should start at the top, with CEOs and CTOs outlining clear futures and paths for company change.
4- Access Current Status
It is critical at this stage to determine your organization’s current state of transformation into a digital one. Do you rely on digital information and digital technology already? Are internal operations automated or still carried out by hand? Are there information silos in your organization?
This is a critical phase since the results will assist you in developing the necessary digital enterprise plan and vision, securing the budget, and evaluating the effect.
5- Hire Tech-driven Talent
If your company lacks the necessary digital savvy, you must employ them as quickly as feasible. When Subway began its digital transformation journey, it employed around 150 individuals with high-tech backgrounds to assist them in this goal and accelerate the process.
These highly experienced specialists will assist you in accelerating the digital program and will play a critical role in its execution.
6- Digitization & Digitalization is a MUST
Any digital transformation program must start with digitizing your information and automating your organization’s internal procedures.
Both digitization and digitalization are necessary yet difficult to attain; nonetheless, without both, you have no hope of becoming a fully digital business.
7- Set Technology As Core Business
We must accept that technology is invading and will continue to evolve and that we cannot function without it now. As a leader, you must prioritize technology in your firm.
Nowadays, every company is a tech company, even if it does not sell or provide technology-related services because all businesses must invest in core technologies in order to run successfully.
8- Plan IT Systems Adoption
To become a digital enterprise, businesses must implement various systems throughout all departments. It is critical to carefully pick these technologies and how they integrate with one another in order to give your employees a smooth digital experience.
Having simple-to-use yet effective systems in place will allow your employees to work more efficiently, innovate, and think of new methods to reach the company’s goals.
9- Train, Train, & Train
Ensure that employees have the knowledge they need to make the transition to a digital enterprise as smooth as possible. Train your important employees first, and then these individuals may offer internal training inside their divisions to help this program move further.
Create a rewarding environment based on various credentials that employees may obtain from the providers of the technology systems used.
Digital Skills That Can Make Students Instantly Employable
- Social Media
According to a recent study, there are 4.2 billion active social media users worldwide. Of these, 4.15 billion are active users on mobile devices. These figures show a 13.2% increase in the number of global social users in just a year with no sign of slowing down.
The ability to understand and use social media effectively is a core and valued skill that every professional should have. Social media marketing goes beyond posting a tweet or Facebook update; it is about understanding the dynamic relationship between brands, influencers, and consumers. To put it simply, businesses need to reach out to customers in ways that will drive traffic to their website—or product—for potential conversion. It now also plays a key role in providing good customer service as many consumers take to social media to ask questions or make comments.
Educators who recognize social media’s influence should understand the intricacies of each platform from YouTube to TikTok marketing and its potential to maximize community engagement to provide graduates with valuable and applicable skills.
- Search Engine Marketing (SEM)
Beyond social media, Search Engine Marketing (SEM) is one of the most influential disciplines that marketers have come to rely on. To put things in perspective, 81% of internet users search online for a product or service to buy, with Google accounting for 70% of that traffic.
Students with SEM experience can increase the visibility of a company’s website on a search engine (e.g., Google or Bing) primarily via paid advertising. By doing so, the business will attract valuable web traffic from the search engine results page.
By using SEM, students will be able to capture precious organic search traffic results. That’s why marketers, content managers, and webmasters spend a great deal of time optimizing websites, particularly for mobile and ad campaigns to ensure the highest conversion rates possible.
Most companies are in the business of selling products or services and want to outshine their competition to be easily found online. During the Covid-19 pandemic the number of customers going online to purchase led to a spike in e-commerce transactions. According to Statista, in June 2020 there were almost 22 billion visits to retail sites up from 16 billion in January. Plus this online behavior shows no signs of slowing down post-Covid.
This means that jobseekers with a working knowledge of search marketing will be very valuable to organizations to ensure they are searchable and visible.
- Data Analytics
During Covid-19, many marketers reverted to mass communications to target customers rather than using data-driven precision marketing. This was a mistake. According to McKinsey, one consumer goods company predicted that demand for beauty products would increase as people came out of lockdown. By tracking re-openings and using data, they focused their media spend and saw a double-digit increase in sales.
The lesson? Data can provide your students with a wealth of information that – if used correctly – can result in effective marketing campaigns that drive conversions, sales, and revenue.
Peter Drucker, a leader in management education and often described as the founder of modern management, has this to say:
“If you can’t measure it, you can’t manage it.”
Data analytics essentially allow students to make educated and data-driven decisions to drive better business insights. Numbers define whether a campaign was successful and by what percentage. The key is knowing what data to collect and measure to improve the next campaign. Companies don’t want to waste valuable marketing dollars based on trends or gut instincts. It’s about maximizing each campaign’s effectiveness and optimizing the return on investment.
Analytics go hand-in-hand with SEM so these skills work together to ensure a business understands what consumers want, and how to attract and retain their attention.
- Content Marketing
Content comes in many forms – blog posts, videos, podcasts, infographics, and even social media status updates.
Marketers may spend their time optimizing keywords and advertising campaigns, but content is still king. After all, a website or social media page is driven by its content and without it, customers have no way of understanding the benefits of a product or service.
Content is crucial in driving brand awareness and can establish brands or influencers as thought leaders. Therefore new hires need to understand the importance of creating not just content, but content that is relevant to keyword research and optimizing them in a strategy. With experience and knowledge in content marketing, students will have a valuable and employable skill that will set them up for a career in any industry.
- Email Marketing
One of the best ways to obtain and retain leads is via a tried and tested method: email.
Email is one of the oldest forms of direct marketing and still packs a punch in customer acquisition and retention. From startups to multinational corporations, a great email marketing strategy helps launch successful campaigns.
An experienced digital marketer knows that each funnel stage has to be carefully planned. From the signup page—including its placement on a website—to the welcome email, every step needs to be optimized to attract users and build engagement.
People may change social media accounts or home addresses, but people aren’t prone to change their email addresses. That’s why professionals that understand the power of email marketing to connect directly with consumers are in high demand.
Educators should not see email as an old-fashioned tool but challenge students to rethink ways to use email in their roles – current and future.
- Mobile Marketing
According to We Are Social and Hootsuite’s Digital 2021 report, mobile connectivity continues to grow, with 97% of the world’s population using mobile phones, and 96% of all active connections coming from smartphones. Since smartphone traffic now exceeds desktop traffic (64%), mobile-first indexing is now used by Google when crawling pages and prioritizing content.
To comprehend the impact of this change, we need only look at Google which has created a mobile-friendly web app designed to test the usability and speed of mobile websites. Using mobile-friendly content can enhance your search presence amongst consumers who don’t have access to desktops.
Job seekers can use this knowledge to their advantage by optimizing campaigns using the latest developments in mobile search and user experience.
