How to Improve Processes Using Digital Transformation

Its goal should be to fundamentally change the way the company operates, making the opportunities offered by technology part of the company’s new and improved DNA. Still, during such a major change it’s easy to become preoccupied with the fancy new digital tools and forget that internal processes need to be transformed as well.

Failure to optimize internal processes is often the reason companies don’t last. On the other hand, improving processes through digital transformation can help your business in multiple ways:

• Discover weak points in the workflow,
• Become more efficient and control the budget better,
• Make use of data and minimize waste.

You have to connect business ideas and the people implementing them with the processes that they follow to make a full digital transformation and add value to your business.

Map the process

Any transformation should begin with examining the current state of the company’s strategic processes with the goal of eventually automating and simplifying them. At Netguru, we start digital transformation consultancy with the Product Discovery Phase, during which we map the client’s internal processes.

Simply mapping the processes can allow the company to discover blind spots that they were not aware of and make small changes that will have a large impact. Mapping is a visual tool which can allow everybody across the company to see process development and clarify why the transformation is needed. Thanks to the client’s detailed insights, we’re able to propose a step-by-step plan demonstrating how the processes would ideally look.

Automate

Companies have been taking advantage of automation for many years, but it continues to be one of the top trends in digital transformation for 2020 as technology keeps improving thanks to the exponentially growing potential of Artificial Intelligence.

Now you can not only make processes more efficient by introducing scripts that follow predefined commands, but also make them flexible, as the robots continuously “learn” about the tasks they are performing.

These innovations are already being widely implemented in back-end operations, such as generating reports, processing invoices, and data collection. They eliminate the most mundane tasks and can process more and more complex data. There’s also still a huge potential to automate the client-facing functions. Processes like client onboarding, customer correspondence, and even sales can be improved by automation.

Improve Communication

Digital transformation is a change management program and should be treated as such. The importance of having a conversation with employees about upcoming changes in their company can’t be overestimated here. It is important to enable communication channels to allow for information to flow both ways so that everyone can feel heard. Traditional face-to-face channels are still as important as ever, but digital ones have recently proven to be key as well.

The COVID-19 crisis has proved how crucial it is for remote work to be efficient in the long term. Companies which were prepared to make the onsite-to-remote switch managed the crisis better and might come out of it even stronger than before.

Digital communication turned out to be an important element in their success. When the teams are not together at the office, the need for transparent and easily manageable digital communication becomes crucial. Introduce digital tools, starting from messaging software, and reporting tools to project management apps. This will relieve employees from slowdowns due to miscommunication, lengthy email exchanges, and let them focus on more valuable work. For better collaboration and connectivity, the same communication tools should be used by everyone at the company, and also be easily searchable.

Introduce Data Governance

Data governance is a set of solutions that enable organizations to manage their data. It helps you use the data you already have in ways not possible before.

It makes the data better organized and easily accessible, allowing users to quickly find necessary information. Data governance also includes tracking and analytics which shows which data are being used and how.

Every digital transformation should include digitizing a company's data and making it searchable through metadata. Data governance makes the workflow in your organization more transparent and time-efficient.

How to Get Started

Holistic digitization will transform the processes in your organization, focusing on those which drive performance and will significantly benefit the whole company.

At Netguru, we help companies embark on their digital transformation journeys while following the same mindset to continuously improve ourselves. For instance, we managed to improve the predictability of our own core business practices by 102%.

If you’re ready to talk about what we can do for your company, drop us a message.