Digital transformation can mean different things to different organisations. Some will be looking to move from manual working processes to more digitalisation and automation. Others are seeking new ways to differentiate their business and better meet the needs of users and customers. They may be aiming specifically to improve productivity, increase revenues or launch a new digital proposition.
Elsewhen, an agency specialising in digital transformation, has undertaken digital transformation projects for a diverse range of organisations. Here are seven examples that show the diversity of ways digital transformation can benefit your business.
1. Transforming manual processes to digital business
A common goal of digital; transformation is to move from traditional manual working processes to digitally-enabled workflows that enable efficiency and automation. One example is a financial services firm serving a lender to SME businesses. It has become a fast-growing alternative lender, serving more than 2000 business customers. The firm wanted to review its current processes and technology to determine the best approach to achieve its growth ambitions.
The business had launched with an attractive offering to customers but its underlying technology infrastructure was holding it back from its next growth phase. They brought in a digital transformation partner to help them architect a new streamlined customer journey for lending.
The project team worked closely to analyse and determine the critical pieces in a new technical architecture required to achieve the ambitious goals.
The business gained a complete action-oriented strategy to build its new digital platform. The approach ensured business continuity and minimised disruption during a safe migration of customers onto the new platform.
Digital transformation is enabling the path forward for the business to achieve its ambition of becoming the leading SME lender in the market. With the implementation of a new agile and scalable digital platform, it can give customers a best-in-class experience.
2. Improving how organisations interact with business customers
In the business-to-business space, many companies want to provide a higher quality of digital experience. They see the consumer-grade experiences provided by brands like Amazon and Netflix and want to bring that quality to the B2B environment.
One example is a leading satellite communications provider, enabling data connectivity to business customers worldwide.
The company wanted to replace its legacy customer ordering and provisioning process migrating customers to a new digital lifecycle portal. They decided to shift the lens and focus on enabling what the customer wants to achieve.
They worked with a digital transformation partner to redesign the entire customer journey. The aim was to create a new consumer-grade digital experience across the end-to-end B2B customer lifecycle.
The project team created a modern, easy-to-use, intuitive portal to enable self-service provisioning and improve customer satisfaction at scale.
3. Unlocking more business value from data
After this digital transformation success, the same satellite communications business embarked on a project to create more business value from its data. They wanted to enable customer insight with a self-service performance analytics tool.
Previously, if a customer wanted to understand the connectivity performance it receives, the provider would have to manually create a report from its various data logs, requiring cost, time and effort.
Working with the same digital transformation partner, they explored how digital technology could give business customers better and faster insights into the performance of their communications.
The project team created a new customer-facing online analytics tool, providing real-time and historical data insights on the connectivity experienced by each customer.
Now, customers can easily see and understand how factors such as location and weather conditions affect connectivity. They can also verify that their service performance is within agreed SLA parameters.
Creating a modern tool and API for visualising connectivity data enables the business to unlock new value for its customers. The benefits include reducing manual work required to resolve customer queries and improved customer satisfaction, loyalty and revenue.
4. Launching new propositions enabled by organisational assets
Digital transformation can enable organisations to exploit new opportunities and bring new propositions to the market. It can involve using technology to unlock the potential of existing assets, resources, skills and data that already exist within the company.
A recent example is when a leading independent private equity firm launched a new digital proposition for the SME market. The firm manages a portfolio of high-growth, sustainable businesses. It supports them with expertise and capital to drive growth.
The firm identified the potential for a new digital service targeted at SME businesses. They worked with a digital transformation partner on a proof-of-concept (POC) to explore how this service could work in terms of a value proposition, service design and technology strategy.
They identified a specific opportunity for a new finance management platform for SMEs, giving a clear end-to-end overview of cash flow and providing access to a full range of tailored financial services.
The project team built out a value proposition, service design and user interface. They visualised a prototype solution for a digital one-stop-shop for SME banking and finance. They also identified, assessed and shortlisted technology partners and financial service providers to enable the platform’s core functionalities
5. Opening new digital business channels
Digital transformation enables businesses to open up new dynamic channels to engage with customers. This is demonstrated by the example of a leading B2B provider of self-service beverage and food vending machines.
Until recently, most of its business customers were ordering equipment and supplies via phone or email. The company relied on a complex mixture of legacy technology. Recent acquisitions and a variety of regional divisions have added to tech debt.
Now the business recognised that its future must involve more self-service and that this is a significant revenue opportunity. They worked with a digital transformation partner to create a proof of concept (POC), demonstrating the opportunity to grow sales beyond the companys traditional channels.
The team specified the requirements for a new digital platform enabling business customers to order, configure and manage products. They determined that the best tech option in this case was a specialist SaaS platform ensuring fast development, excellent support and resilient operations. To ensure a great customer experience aligned with the corporate brand, the team evolved a design that utilised UX best practices and consumer-grade design.
In just 6 weeks, the team built a minimum viable product (MVP) of a digital self-service channel and overcame challenges from business complexity and legacy technology.
6. Driving competitive advantage from real-time data
The rise of mobile devices, social media and the Internet of Things (IoT) creates an unprecedented amount of data. Digital transformation can enable an organisation to gain a competitive edge by analysing this data and applying the insights gained.
In one example, a leading motor insurer for professional drivers decided to use data to enable a more competitive product. The insurer worked with a digital transformation partner, using telematics technology to identify and reduce risk for customers through helping them improve their driving behaviour.
The team recognised that app-based telematics presented an opportunity to better understand individual risk and significantly reduce the cost of claims. This would help the insurer to price its products and policies more fairly providing better outcomes for customers.
App-based telematics uses the sensors in a drivers smartphone to monitor driving behaviour making it easier to deploy than conventional telematics devices. However, many drivers are reluctant to install an app that monitors them, and see little incentive to improve their driving
The team worked to overcome these challenges building a strong business case for telematics and accelerating its app-based product to market readiness in a timescale of just ten weeks.
The new app enables customers to automatically share driving data, allowing the insurer to assess risk more accurately and consequently offer insurance products to drivers at a fairer price. During the products first month, customers bought more than 3000 of the new telematics policies, successfully meeting the insurers launch objectives.
7. Building a customer conversion engine
Digital transformation enables a business to gain new insights into every stage of its operations. It can identify where problems have occurred in the past and fix these fast to better meet the needs of customers.
An example here is how a luxury travel firm was able to identify why customers were dropping off the buying journey before completing purchases and turn the situation around with a digital engine for customer conversion.
The business worked with a digital transformation partner to create a native mobile app, ensuring a luxury brand experience and overcoming their customer conversion challenges.
While they needed new functionalities, they had to achieve this without disrupting the existing systems. Using GraphQL middleware, the team enabled API queries to be managed more efficiently, overcoming resilience issues and supporting the new app.
Click-throughs from listings pages to purchasing increased by 24.4%, while successfully completed purchases increased by 210%. The average lifetime value (LTV) of customers increased by 25-35% when using the new app.
Start your own digital transformation success story
By learning from examples of successful projects like these, your organisation can gain expertise and confidence for your digital transformation initiatives.