What kind of impact does digitalization have on business growth?

Digitalization has found its way into almost every business today. If you aren’t leveraging the digital technologies, chances are your business isn’t going to succeed.

But what does digitalization stand for?

It’s often misunderstood and mistaken for digitization and digital transformation, but there are some key differences.

We’ve been working proficiently on digitalizing various companies with a goal of improving their business results — and we’re pretty good at it! We’re a professional Pimcore development agency, specialized in digitalizing companies. And we’re also Pimcore Silver partners!

So, if you want to talk more about digitalizing your company, reach out to us and let’s discuss some of your future plans!

Anyways, let’s jump right into the article and see what we have prepared for you!

Digitalization — is it just a buzzword?

There are a lot of buzzwords circulating, and digitalization sure isn’t one of them!

As Gartner describes, digitalization refers to the use of digital technologies in order to change a business model and provide new revenue and value-producing opportunities.

All processes and activities that are executed via digital technologies are parts of the digitalization process of the company.

Many companies have already decided to digitalize their business processes and have experienced some serious benefits. They have improved the efficiency of their operations and even successfully automated a large number of processes.

Thanks to the accuracy of digital technologies, there are now fewer human errors, hence operational costs are reduced.

Technology plays an important role in the digitalization process. It has reconfigured the entire business world and changed the way we do business.

Paperwork and manual processes are now things of the past. Storing data has also met a new standard. Thanks to cloud computing, companies are now storing their data on the cloud.

Even we emphasize on the use of cloud storage, as it has proven to have a massive impact on team collaboration and productivity. Not to mention, cloud storage is one of the safer ways of storing your data.

Data loss is prevented and you can easily backup your data.

As we said, digitalization has brought many positive changes and we’ll go through them, so stay with us!

How did the digitalization impact customer behavior?

This is probably one of the most important changes caused by digitalization.

If you’ll remember, the shopping process 10 years ago looked a lot different than today. If you compare it to today’s shopping process, you can see a lot of differences. A lot more use of digital technology.

GE Capital Retail Bank’s study says that more than 80% of consumers are conducting their research online before they even head out to the store. Not to mention, the trend of online shopping is continuously increasing.

To find everything they’re seeking for, customers are now using digital technologies. They are comparing your goods and services not only with the ones of your competitors but also with the products and services offered by other industries.

They are continuously pushing companies forwards, allowing companies to reach new heights!

Digitalization impacts our sources of knowledge and information

As soon as digitalization became the new normal, our sources of knowledge have been heavily impacted! You, as a business owner, should be aware of the knowledge that lies beyond the traditional boundaries of information.

Now is the time to bring together collaborative groups in a way that it contributes to both the development and delivery of additional value!

Besides that, relationship management is of key importance. Establishing relationships with external communities is important, as it is to own and manage your own elements of business processes.

To sum up, digitalization brings a variety of groups together, connects IT and non-IT departments with the goal of impacting the way a business creates additional value.

Reduced transaction costs

Just 10 years ago, running low-cost experiments was unimaginable at the scale as it is today.

Today, it’s easier to reach new goals as you can test every goal in a low-risk environment. It gives you more agility and insight into the future directions of your business.

Furthermore, you’ll decide easier if your strategies are cost-effective or not.

Startup owners already have a grasp on this topic and their businesses are based upon continuous testing of new methods and strategies. To succeed, they test and then they test again.

Their success depends on their agility and capability of adapting to their customers.

There is an interesting quote saying:

“In the new world, it’s not the big fish which eats the small fish, it’s the fast fish that eats the slow fish.”

- Klaus Schwab, Founder and Executive Chairman of the World Economic Forum

Today, technology is advancing rapidly. Much faster than we’re aware of. It’s important to stay up to date with the latest trends and adapt accordingly.

Now that you have a grasp on what digitalization is, let’s discuss more about some of the benefits you’ll experience by digitalizing your company.

How are you going to benefit from digitalizing your company?

As we said earlier, there are many novelties brought by digitalization in business. Many of them impact your business in an extremely positive way, so let’s go through them, shall we?

Here’s a list of benefits brought by digitalization:

• Increased efficiency
• Fewer human errors
• Thorough data analysis
• Safer data storage (cloud storage)
• Reduced operational costs

We’ve mentioned some of these benefits earlier, but let’s try to connect all of them to view the digitalization process from a different perspective.

Thanks to the implementation of digital technologies, your employees are now making fewer mistakes. Their workflows are streamlined and every action they need to take is already taken into account.

Thanks to these streamlined workflows, operations are executed more efficiently, saving you both time and money. Meaning, operational costs are reduced, as efficiency is improved.

Not to mention, all of the data used by your teams is safely stored in the cloud. This greatly improves efficiency, as there are no more data silos and all of the data is present in one place. Thus, team collaboration is elevated to a higher level.

Data analysis has greatly benefited from the implementation of digital technologies. Today, we have a vast array of tools available for analyzing huge amounts of data.

Google Analytics is one of the tools often used for web analytics. It has the ability to analyze data gathered from a large number of sources and in some cases, gathered data may be coming from over a million different customers!

Without such tools and technologies that we have today, we wouldn’t be able to make the decisions we are making today.

But let’s move on and talk more about some of the benefits of digitalization!

Increased digital presence

This is probably one of the most important benefits of digitalization in business. Just 20 years ago, offline channels were mainly the peak of the company’s presence.

Today, companies have a large number of communication channels at their disposal to choose from.

For example, if a company is present on social media, has a website, and is listed on online business directories — it’s visibility is certainly multiplied.

There is a large number of companies today that have an exclusively online presence, meaning they are only leveraging digital channels in their communication.

An incredible shift in communication in just a few years!

Now, let’s talk some more about communication channels.

A new age of communication sponsored by digitalization

As we already mentioned, digital technologies impacted much more than just the company’s digital presence.

In the crowded online world, many new communication channels emerged and successful companies have already decided to use them in their everyday communication.

Emails, mobile applications, and social media channels are some of the “newly-formed” communication channels, used by both businesses and customers.

A business can leverage every single one of those channels and successfully use them to boost sales and increase customer loyalty.

But bear in mind that with great power comes great responsibility! You, as a business owner, should come together with your team and develop strategies for each single communication channel.

It’s important to emphasize on the quality of communication, rather than the quantity. Some businesses built their fame and fortune by using not more than 5 communication channels, but they did so with great persistence and high-quality communication.

Digitalization is a prerequisite for innovation!

Does innovation happen without digitalization? The headline above gives a quick answer.

As technology is advancing more and more rapidly, new groundbreaking solutions emerge on a daily basis. In need to adapt and overcome your challenges, digital technologies encourage you to act and innovate!

And when you start, it’s not so easy to stop. Continuous innovation allows you to not only follow new trends but to create new trends and have others follow them.

Now, when you have a grasp on what digitalization is, it’s good to say what digitalization isn’t!

Stay for a little longer and find out how to differentiate digitalization from similar terms!

Digitization vs. digitalization vs. digital transformation

We’ve come to an extremely important chapter of the article.

When you Google “digitalization in business” or “example of digitalization”, you probably won’t find exactly what you’re looking for.

That’s due to the fact that digitization, digitalization, and digital transformation are often considered to represent the same term.

We’ve discussed that in-depth in the article about digitalization on our website and we’d really like you to read it.

You’re just one click away from an important piece of information, so you know what to do!