Much has been said about Digital Transformation and its potential for unlocking value. Business leaders, however, must clearly understand what opportunities and threats digital transformation presents and whether enough is being done to maximize and hedge respectively.

While some organizations proactively embrace the digital transformation journey, others only evolve when no other options remain. Interestingly, there are sufficient cases of profitable businesses on different points of this digital transformation scale. A fair assessment of whether you are over or under-investing in digital transformation is critical to remaining a going business concern.

A good starting point is understanding the digital transformation journey in simple terms.

Step 1: Digitization

Digitization involves moving your business operations, particularly data recording, data management and presentation, from paper-based to digital formats. Many tools exist to help businesses with this. A common issue hindering businesses from making this shift emerges when they need to move large amounts of existing data and records from legacy systems into more potent and efficient tools. While most businesses can manage this transition, we see two categories of businesses which often require professional support in this area.

First, small organizations needing expert advice in selecting the right tools and guidance to make the most strategically apt decisions for the long term. Second, organizations with significant amounts of legacy data that needs migration.

The best solution for these use cases is to get a competent technical partner to guide the business through this initial phase. Intelbyte has a track record of helping businesses make this transition and can connect with your business to work out a solution. Where standard solutions are unavailable or unsuitable for your context, bespoke solutions can be built and scaled as required.

If your business needs to commence records digitizing, it should be given high priority to ensure you remain competitive.

 

Step 2: Process Optimization and Automation

Once significant portions of your business run and are tracked on digital tools, a world of optimization opportunities becomes accessible. Businesses lose a lot of time on repetitive activities required to transform data from one format to another, carry out varied levels of processing and computation, and, in some cases, transfer data and information across different systems. This is a crucial area where businesses are not fully optimized.

It is also an area where inefficiencies and errors can be reduced. Eliminating these inefficiencies translates to lower operational costs, faster speed of execution, and higher accuracy. But there is more!

Businesses can begin to create “attack” strategies in this space. Real competitive insights and advantages emerge when businesses try to eke out the realizable gains from process optimization and automation. Intelbyte is experienced in bringing these strategies to life for businesses, and we can do this for yours. We have worked with businesses across different sectors, including energy, construction, finance, logistics, freight forwarding, and more. We have helped these businesses optimize and automate key processes in the areas of inventory management, customer relationship management, Occupational Health and Safety, invoicing and account payables among others.

Two approaches can be taken to achieve this.

Procedural changes:

By changing the mediums and ways data, information and records are captured and handled for your business, the nature of your operations can be enhanced. There are gains to be realized by just looking at your operational steps, questioning the relevance of the existing steps and looking for improvement opportunities.

Process Automation:

Repetitive transactional tasks cannot be eliminated from businesses. They are usually the core of operations. The hack is to automate these processes. At Intebyte, we help businesses deal with this in two ways:

First, we automate processes – more technically accurately referred to as Robotic Process Automation. We transform your business operations by automating and optimizing routine tasks with advanced smart digital solutions. The upsides to this are immense.

Bespoke Solutions:

Next, where required, we develop end-to-end tools to help you digitize and automate your processes. This offering is particularly useful for businesses with unique operating systems and processes. The advantage to the Intelbyte way of doing this is that we ensure the solution developed is built to meet your current context and scalable to whatever future technological and operational situations your business may have.

 

Step 3: Policy Changes

Businesses need to have the required policies and governance structures to drive any digital transformation programs. Often, the digital transformation journey requires time to deliver its full benefits. Consequently, businesses require the right leadership framework to allow the full delivery of digital transformation roadmaps. This will include business strategy formulation, resource provisioning and management support for these programs to thrive.

 

Way forward

A fair assessment of your business’ current digital transformation journey should be conducted. Then, an assessment of whether your current positioning is optimal considering the competition and your operating environment should follow. With these two areas clearly understood, a feasible way forward can be developed.

Irrespective of where your business is in its digital transformation journey, there is room for further value to be unlocked. At Intelbyte, we are passionate about ensuring we help bring the best possible digital transformation solutions to businesses and deliver value via our strategic partnerships. Get in touch today and let us co-create value for your business.