Imagine you are sailing on a ship with your whole crew. The journey was going fine, but suddenly there appeared a huge iceberg in a way.
And now, it seems tough to continue sailing further. You no longer have a smooth journey.
Something similar is happening with the businesses that haven’t yet embraced digital transformation.
Your digitally empowered competitors seem like that huge iceberg. To move forward, you need either crush this iceberg or quit the journey.
You definitely want a strategy to crush this iceberg. Digital transformation can help you overtake your giant competitors and revert the journey to smooth.
Do Small Businesses Need Digital Transformation?
For once and all – Yes.
The very basic definition of digital transformation is – a strategic process of changing business processes, operations, and culture using a set of tools and technologies, and practices.
Machines take up the manual tasks, workloads are reduced, and everything goes digital.
Small businesses tend to grow faster when they adopt digital tools and technologies to smash their goals.
The benefits of digital transformation for small businesses can be summarized as-
- Better decision-making with real-time data
- Improved customer satisfaction
- Increased performance and profitability
- The lessened workload with streamlined processes
With robust digital tools and technology, you can outrank your big competitors faster.
Super 7 Digital Transformation Strategies for Small Businesses
Though digital transformation involves making changes at every level of the organization, you cannot take a big leap suddenly. Small businesses have limited staff, technology, and assets.
So, go step-by-step. You will not become digitally advanced overnight. First, eat the piece, not the entire cake.
Look at the areas that can give you high returns with limited investments. Adopt the technologies you can afford to invest in and your team is capable of operating with.
Here is the actionable digital transformation roadmap, especially for small-sized businesses.
1. Tweak Up Your Website
Having a minimalist website would not suffice. You need to have some cherries on the cake.
Below is the list of things you can implement to take your website to the next level-
- Work up on SEO
- Make it mobile-friendly
- Integrate a chatbot to engage visitors
- Place an easily accessible contact form
- Create a high-converting landing page
2. Build a Strong Social Presence
Social media is the fuel that can supercharge both B2B and B2C businesses.
For B2C, creating and posting content consistently on Facebook and Instagram will do wonders. If you are in the B2B landscape, create meaningful content on platforms like LinkedIn and Twitter.
Social media is a goldmine to capture quality leads that power up your business. To win the social media game, the most-needed thing is ‘valuable content.’
Create it the right way and attract customers towards you.
3. Set SMART Goals for Transformation
SMART goals mean goals that are Specific, Measurable, Attainable, Realistic, and Time-bound.
Set clear and targeted goals. What you want after successful digital up-gradation.
Be specific, not general. How much ROI are you aiming for, and how much time.
These goals must match the existing capabilities of your team. Don’t try to be super ambitious. Having unrealistic goals simply burdens you and your workforce.
Lastly, your goals must have a fixed deadline. In any case, don’t keep deadlines for longer than five years.
Set goals that will be achievable within the next 5 years. If not, move on and come up with another goal.
Move gradually but move smartly!
4. Prioritize Customer Experience
The customer is the king. Focus on them, and they will build you a kingdom.
As a small business, your budget is limited. Invest wisely in highly rewarding areas.
One such area is customer experience enhancement. There are plenty of tools and tactics that enable you to be a customer-centric company.
Such tools and tactics are-
- Use a powerful Customer Relationship Management (CRM) software
- Outsource customer help desk support to resolve issues at the earliest
- Deploy data analytics tools to collect 360-degree information about your customers
- Engage with your customers on social media
- Build up a buyer persona
5. Automate Repetitive Tasks
To make your business highly successful, make your employees highly productive.
Do you realize that carrying out the same boring and monotonous tasks daily rob off the productivity of your employees? They have no time to innovate.
Automating some of the tasks like tracking sales, generating invoices, sending emails, etc., can take you a long way. Organizations with workflow automation tend to be more agile, generate more revenue, and witness more growth.
6. Switch to Cloud
If you are serious about digital transformation, then the cloud has to be a crucial component of your strategy.
By the end of 2020, 78% of small businesses moved to the cloud. What’s more, they encountered delightful results. Your company also deserves the same. Right?
Cloud technology is developed to favor small businesses in every way. It is a cost-effective, scalable, and flexible solution to free small businesses from the burden of purchasing massive physical infrastructures, expensive storage tools, and costly on-premise servers.
The Pay-as-you-go model allows you to save money by paying only for the tools and features you use. You can pay more as you start using more tools. This is really beneficial for small business owners.
7. Hire an Adept Agency
You don’t always have to hustle alone. Consult a reliable agency that specializes in providing digital transformation services to small and medium-sized businesses.
A good agency will guide you through the transformation process by analyzing your existing infrastructure, locating vulnerable points, and giving insightful inputs
PROPER ICT is among IT Companies in Kosovo that is helping businesses get adopted to digital culture and accomplish their digital transformation goals.
Final Thoughts
Covid-19 pandemic has forced every company to become a tech company. You have to leave behind traditional tactics and embrace digital transformation.
If you want us to join hands, we are just a message away. Come, let’s transform and empower your business digitally.
Get, set, and smash that iceberg!
