Digital transformation starts with your own personal commitment to digitize your personal and professional data to eliminate paper. This is important first to show your commitment to ‘walk-the-walk’ and second to help you to experience both the benefits and challenges from the digital transformation. I have personally committed to digital transformation for all of the reasons expressed for your business and market transformation, however the key reason for me is the ease of maintaining my personal records. The first time that you quickly find an electronic receipt or a reference to a business question that was discussed in a meeting a month ago will turn you into a convert!
Look at one example; the My Lowes customer account. This is not a typical rewards card, or account, because you do not receive discounts or accumulate points for rewards. What it does provide though is a digital record of all your purchases and most importantly purchase details for future ease of reference. A couple of examples of the benefits I've realized are elimination for a need to maintain receipts for returns and ability to purchase the same paint tint for a repair after I've disposed of any physical record and the most valuable example for me is the ability to return products without receipt. Don’t get me wrong, rewards are an important feature of store loyalty programs, I think that these features provided by the Lowe’s program provide a pretty compelling encouragement to join.
A major challenge to any digital transformation initiative is the start-up effort to build out the framework and foundation of infrastructure to support the transformation. Any transformation is difficult and the initial start-up must provide a reason and incentive to commit to starting the journey. Digital transformation, whether personal or professional, is no different and requires the commitment to work through the initial challenges in order to benefit from the improved capabilities. A personal commitment to digital transformation provides the basis and background for you to evangelize a professional business transformation.
Fortunately for this movement, the tools currently available, along with the personal experience and acceptance of the digital age delivered by personal computing tools make the commitment a little more palatable. This is a good thing for business digital transformation because it encourages people to question ‘why not’ and push for business digital transformation. Every major successful transformation in my memory was driven in large part by the consumer interest and pushing business to change. It really comes down to expanding and providing the average consumer the encouragement and incentive to embrace the change, once this initial hurdle is overcome the next step is business transformation.
We are at a crossroad now in the digital transformation journey. Consumers are now embracing the tools and technology provided for personal use and opportunity. I know that my own personal use of these new tools has dramatically increased as new capabilities have increased to the point where I too am pushing to extend transformation in my business activities. The pandemic lock-down has also added to my push as I increased digital and video interactions in my work.
The decision and action points are all converging into an increasing wave of disruption in the market. The opportunity now is for us in business to embrace and encourage the embrace of these capabilities. It is important now to review and revise your business strategy to support and implement a resilient and flexible framework that can respond quickly to the changes. Do not make the mistake in thinking that you have time to respond to these changes!
Tom Brouillette
Contact: tbrouillette@ncspartners.com
@ncspartners
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Tom Brouillette discusses supply chain trends and provides strategic business & technology advice to his followers and companies.
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