Small and medium businesses (SMBs) are an integral part of an economy since they employ most of the workforce. According to the U.S. Small Business Association (SBA), there are around 33 million SMBs that account for 99% of all businesses. Each year, there are more and more people starting new small businesses. And new tools and technologies like Chrome Developer Tools, DevOps, and Taplio are just some of the many out there that are helping businesses expand their operations at a massive level. But if these new SMBs want long-term sustainability, then they need to incorporate digital transformation. That way, they can optimize their operations to increase productivity and efficiency.
When we talk about digital transformation, we simply cannot underscore the importance of data. It plays a major role in helping you identify issues within your workflow. Besides that, you can also understand your customers’ preferences to provide them with better services. Let’s discuss the ways data can help you with digital transformation.
1. Provide New and Innovative Products With the Help of Digital Transformation
Offering the same products or services as your competitors means that you won’t have anything that helps you stand out from the competition. What you need is a USP (Unique Selling Point) for your business and that is where digital transformation is needed. You can leverage the data you have to come up with something innovative.
Consumer preferences, periodical trends, psychographics, and buying behaviors are just small examples of the data available to businesses that they can analyze in order to understand gaps within the market. Innovation often begins once consumer needs are derived from these gaps. And data can help us understand these better.
2. Improve Customer Experience
Another important role that data plays in digital transformation is improving customer experience. In a hyper-competitive world, customer experience is of paramount importance. Businesses should prioritize giving users the best experience. Knowing about customers’ behaviors is vital for businesses in order to remain competitive. Previously, brands relied on qualitative data such as surveys and interviews to understand their target audience’s preferences. But today, businesses have access to immense amounts of quantitative information because of data analytics.
By analyzing data through CRM, reviews, and other sources, businesses can know about their customers’ needs. This will also help businesses in developing long-term relationships with their customers.
3. Automate your Operations
Business process automation (BPA) refers to using technology to automate some of the repetitious duties performed by humans. Automating some of your operations can be beneficial for your business in many ways, such as increased efficiency, fewer mistakes, and so on. Furthermore, your workforce would be free to focus on other important tasks.
But one thing that you small business owners might struggle with is determining where to start. Also, there is a chance that business automation might take more time than expected, disrupting the entire workflow. At this point, business owners can use data and analytics to understand the tasks that are taking the longest. And from there, understand which ones would be better off being automated. Consequently, businesses can save valuable resources through automation while ensuring that they continue on the road to expansion.
4. Tracking KPIs
These days, data-driven results are what is helping so many businesses succeed. And when it comes to tracking performance, data is playing a role like never before. KPIs can be in any shape or form; within teams to monitor their performance, or even on higher business levels. Using metrics like growth, output, revenue, etc. is what businesses use to see where they currently stand, how well they’ve progressed, and what goals they should set for the future.
The answer to measuring these metrics can be answered only through data. Previous data compared to current data will provide a crystal-clear picture of how well a business is progressing. Through this data, businesses can also identify trends; periods of higher revenue, or more expansion, for instance. And fortunately, it doesn’t just stop there. Data will also answer where these trends are emerging from. Whether it was due to the implementation of a new system, or due to deploying more resources.
Final Takeaway
These are just a few ways of many out there to give you a clear understanding of the role data has in digital transformation for your business. Digital transformation is becoming more of a necessity for businesses today and data plays an imperative role in it. By analyzing data, businesses can improve customer experiences, develop innovative products, and grow at an accelerated pace.
