9 Skills Your Business Needs to Drive Digital Transformation
Businesses have been aware of the phenomenon known as “digital transformation” for a considerable amount of time. Enterprises have been among the first to recognize the core benefit of digital technology, which is speed, ever since personal computers began making their way into workplaces.
On the other hand, the benefits of digital transformation in the 21st century are absolutely amazing. The simplicity, power, and variety of digital technology now have an effect on a wide range of topics, including interactivity and accessibility, making speed no longer the only advantage it provides.
As a result of the lightning-fast pace at which technology develops, organizations are racing forward thanks to the adoption of digital transformation. The workforce that is equipped with knowledge and digital talent will be the one that is able to drive success and capitalize on innovations like these to achieve a competitive advantage.
In this article, we discuss the kinds of things firms should be doing, as well as the digital transformation skills that are necessary, in order to boost performance, increase consumer engagement, and increase revenues.
1. Digital Literacy
It really shouldn’t need to be said, but companies must never take the principles of digital for granted.
According to the findings of a recent study titled “The New Landscape of Digital Literacy: How workers’ uneven digital skills affect economic mobility and business competitiveness, and what policymakers can do about it,” one in every three workers in the United States lacks foundational digital skills. 13 percent of people have no digital skills at all, while 18 percent have very limited skills.
In light of this, it is not an unreasonable assumption to make that some prospective employees do not have adequate digital literacy. Many people may be familiar with using social media for basic posts, but many may not know how to perform advanced tasks on those channels such as creating a paid ad or analyzing performance. While the majority of people may be familiar with using social media for basic posts, the majority of people are not.
In addition, your company requires employees who are proficient in the use of various online tools, such as the business communications hub Slack, the video conferencing platform Zoom, or content creation software such as Photoshop or Illustrator, as well as analytics software such as Google Analytics. It is not prudent to operate under the assumption that every employee in your firm is capable of using these applications interchangeably and without much or any trouble.
There is perpetually the development of fresh software, algorithms, programming languages, internet standards, and communication protocols. Make sure that your employees is aware of the newest and most significant trends in digital marketing so that they know what to focus their attention on.
Your organization can also look into ways to recognize and commend employees who make strides toward improving their digital literacy skills. This might be as straightforward as offering staff quick courses in topics such as digital marketing, the successful completion of which earns the employee a professional certification. In a highly competitive corporate climate, ignoring technological advances might result in losing ground and becoming irrelevant.
2. Protection of Information and Digital Assets
According to the annual study published by the Identity Theft Resource Center, the number of data breaches increased by 68 percent in 2017, making it the largest number ever recorded. This increase is the result of high-profile hacks that targeted everything from the largest oil pipelines in the United States to firms like T-Mobile, putting the personal information of millions of customers at danger. While the process of ‘hardening’ a building with security cameras, excellent locks, and of course, security guards, is all that is required to ensure the facility’s physical safety. But how can you safeguard not only your data but, more critically, the data of your customers?
Are you familiar with the procedures to follow in the event that a data hostage situation arises and your information is taken hostage? Do you know whether someone has broken into your system and is monitoring your activities or perhaps copying sensitive research material or private data? If so, do you have any idea who might have done this?
Cybersecurity, also known as cyber resilience, is a major issue of concern for businesses and organizations all over the world. To predict incoming attacks and create defenses to combat them demands a high level of leadership, as well as technological expertise, specialized skills, prioritizing within business goals, and effective management.
This should be of the utmost importance to businesses like healthcare and financial services, which deal with sensitive data or consumer information on a regular basis. Always make sure that someone in your company is knowledgeable about digital security and is responsible for it; otherwise, you run the risk of leaving your clients and your company open to a major data breach and theft. Your company saves a lot of information online or in digital databases, and you need to make sure that this information is secure in order to maintain the trust of your customers, as well as your reputation and the future of your company.
Any contemporary company worth its salt needs its employees to be proficient in digital marketing. In addition to the fact that we still live in a world where people pay attention to traditional forms of advertising like billboards, displays on the sides of buildings, radio ads, and television commercials, we now have to compete with the digital world.
In today’s technologically advanced culture, we interact with the virtual world of social media and other forms of online information on our smartphones, desktops, and laptops in the same way that we interact with physical objects and environments. Statista projects that by the year 2025, the total number of people using social media around the world will have increased to 4.4 billion. This is a very large number of people who are active across all social networks, and in order to engage and convert them, your business needs to have the appropriate talents in-house.
It is imperative that marketing departments are now eager to investigate the interactive and analytic opportunities that arise from the utilization of digital media to educate and interact with target audiences. The one-way, unengaged experience that marketing used to be for an audience has been completely transformed as a result of digital transformation.
Digitally aware marketers who are able to comprehend and take advantage of the amount of involvement given by digital marketing stand the best opportunity of creating an impact with consumers. The following are examples of effective digital formats and channels: social media; email; search engine optimization and search engine marketing (find out the how you can make SEO and SEM work together for great impact)
Websites, Paid Search, Display Advertising, Marketing to Influencers, and Affiliate Marketing (consider affiliate marketing as a new revenue stream)
Because digital marketing is such an important part of a digital transformation skillset, it is imperative that your company either recruits employees with experience in this field or provides existing employees with further training in it.
4. Data Analysis
According to a well-known proverb, “information is power,” and one of the most valuable things that digital technology can give to businesses is enormous volumes of data that can be put to use. However, this is only the case if your company is able to recognize and make use of that data to gain greater insights.
After all, how will you know where to direct your organization’s marketing and creative dollars if you don’t know who your target demographic is, where they like to shop, or the devices used to research and browse? If your organization doesn’t know these things, then how will it know where to direct its dollars? If your teams are unable to locate the analytics tools or comprehend the data that they produce, your company won’t be able to determine whether or not your campaign is worth sponsoring.
If a company has the personnel with the skills to find software, interpret data, and formulate useful insights that can be acted on, data can be an invaluable tool that helps businesses spot areas of weakness or capitalize on strengths. However, this is only the case if a company has the personnel with the skills to do so. Every company needs to be willing to look at the massive amounts of data that are available from its customers and clients, in addition to the data that is generated internally by their everyday operations.
This is of utmost importance in light of the fact that Google will stop supporting third-party cookies in 2023 and businesses will be forced to seek out alternative methods to collect user data. Both first-party data and zero-party data provide businesses with efficient means to gain access to data that is specific to their operations and was voluntarily provided by customers.
Employees who are able to assess vital data, come to significant conclusions, and put those conclusions into action through new policies and plans will be of great value to businesses. The collection and analysis of data and web traffic may not seem like the most exciting tasks, but they are extremely important to the digital transformation competence of any firm.
5. Metaverse
The general population’s awareness of the metaverse skyrocketed with Mark Zuckerberg’s announcement that Facebook would be rebranded as Meta. However, what exactly is the metaverse?
To put it another way, it is a network of 3D environments in which users can engage in an immersive manner. This typically involves the utilization of virtual headgear, and titles such as Minecraft and Roblox are currently available in this space. It is going to become a new marketplace where people can sell, buy, and mint things on digital platforms, and research conducted by a technology company called Wildbytes predicts that during the next five years, seventy percent of the main companies will have a presence there.
The advent of the metaverse has made digital goods, avatars, and virtual reality increasingly significant for use in business, as well as presented an opportunity for firms to interact with their customers in new ways. This will require specialist knowledge in artificial intelligence as well as an adaption of your marketing and sales plan to include more than just social media and paid advertisements.
Your staff will require the skills necessary to make the most of this new metaverse reality in order to compete with companies like Nike and Gucci, which are already active in the field. However, how the technology and platform will develop is still up for dispute.
6. DevOps
DevOps is a set of skills as well as a corporate philosophy that has gained traction over the past 10 years. DevOps or software development that focuses on cooperation, rather than isolation, is what the term “software development” refers to.
It’s a hybrid of product development and day-to-day operations. The personnel who were responsible for producing the software, namely the coders and programmers, were traditionally kept in a functionally separate location from the rest of the organization during the software development process.
People brainstormed ideas about what they wanted the software to be able to do, but they had no idea whether or not their ideas were even possible. The coding team was given the responsibility of putting that idea into action, and there was very little interaction between the operations team and the technical staff.
Collaboration is an essential part of the DevOps skill set, which is required so that an entire team can work together to conceive of and create the software that enables a business to function efficiently. To put it another way, the areas of marketing, concept, and programming are no longer compartmentalized.
They are not interested in using one another as competitive stepping stones to advance their management careers inside respective departments; rather, they are invested in working together to understand how one department can help boost the other.
7. Enterprise Mobility Management
The use of digital technology and processes in businesses has repercussions for the ways in which information is stored and accessed, as well as for the administration of their human resources. This was especially true during the epidemic, when offices closed and businesses were forced to find and rely on digital solutions (like Dropbox or WhatsApp, for example) to keep connected and continue their productive job.
When you can rely on a combination of automation or chatbots for low-level customer service and a remote workforce for the remaining human-level technical support, do you really need to create a call center? For additional information, please refer to our “Guide to Chatbots.”
We are fortunate to live in an age in which working remotely and collaborating with new clients, vendors, and partners does not demand our physical presence in the same city or even the same nation. Businesses today need to think beyond the traditional techniques, such as establishing physical locations and hiring full-time employees, in order to find the solutions that are both the most effective and the most cost-efficient.
Leaders that are capable of locating and managing digital solutions are essential to businesses. For instance, your firm might benefit from storing files in a hybrid cloud system for increased protection, or from deploying a tool that human resources or team managers can use to enhance employee engagement. Both of these options have the potential to help your company achieve its goals. Gain a grasp of the digital technologies that could enhance your company’s communications and efficiencies, and use that knowledge to improve your business.
8. Robotics, Artificial Intelligence, and Machine Learning Technologies
Automation is essential to the success of a company since it helps cut down on wasted time, effort, and money while also lowering the risk of errors caused by both humans and manual labor. This frees up more time for your firm to concentrate on important goals and results for the business. In addition, automation is having an effect across a variety of business sectors.
• Retail — Self-checkout terminals, self-scanning robots, inventory checking, and backroom unloading can all be automated so that workers can focus on other activities.
• Manufacturing — Robotics and remote operations can assist enhance productivity while lowering their labor.
• Customer service — Companies can now respond to customers through platforms such as WhatsApp utilizing bots and then route requests to the relevant department.
• Administration — Often bogged down with repetitive tasks, the cloud can be used for storage while software can create invoices, send emails, and schedule appointments.
• Automotive – Although automation is already widespread in this sector, the use of 3D printing to fabricate components, collaborative robots, and self-driving automobiles are on the cusp of becoming a reality.
Artificial intelligence (AI), machine learning (ML), and robotic process automation are the technologies responsible for making all of this a reality (RPA). An ideal place to begin is by either gaining an understanding of the procedures that lie behind each one or by determining the ways in which automation could improve the operations of your firm.
Businesses should place a primary emphasis on developing the skills necessary to develop AI, ML, and RPA software; alternatively, they should acquire staff members who possess these capabilities; or they should partner with businesses that specialize in this rapidly expanding sector of the business world.
9. The blockchain technology
The use of digital currencies is becoming increasingly significant in the world of commerce. The recent surge in the use of non-fungible tokens as currency for digital assets, which is based on blockchain technology, led to the sale of the piece of artwork known as “The Merge” for close to $92 million. And businesses are beginning to recognize the potential in this NFT trend by making use of technology platforms to produce assets that can be sold online or in virtual worlds.
However, blockchain is applicable to more than simply NFTs; the technology is currently being utilized in a variety of fields, including healthcare, banking, real estate, and insurance. Blockchain technology is utilized in these spheres because it facilitates the verification and tracking of transactions involving multiple steps, boosts transparency, and guarantees safety. Additionally, it lowers the expenses associated with compliance and speeds up the transfer of data.
As a result, there is a growing need for qualified experts in this industry, including blockchain architects, blockchain software engineers, and blockchain developers. It is altering the method in which businesses function and may be beneficial to your company, particularly with regard to the movement of data and security.
Initiate and Direct the Digital Transformation of Your Company
We are aware that providing your workers with the necessary digital knowledge and tools can sometimes be a difficult task to do. Our individualized training in digital transformation will improve the skills of your entire team, allowing your company to remain competitive and successful in the modern digital age.
