What is digital transformation?

Digital transformation is the integration of digital technology into all areas of a business, fundamentally changing how you operate and deliver value to customers. It’s also a cultural change that requires organizations to continually challenge the status quo, experiment, and get comfortable with failure.ย 

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Many different paths lead to digital transformation and each organizationโ€™s journey will be unique. For example, a company might introduce AI or cloud computing to enhance its customer experience. Or it might redesign its supply chain to make better use of machine learning. A company can even make spot-on predictions about the products customers would want in a few monthsโ€™ time, then shift production to meet demand.ย 

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In every case, though, starting a digital transformation journey requires a new mindset. It is a chance to reimagine how companies do things, often from the ground up.ย 

Two concepts related to digital transformation are digitization and digitalization.ย 

  • Digitization is the process of translating analog information and data into digital formโ€”for example, scanning a photo or document and storing it on a computer.ย 

  • Digitalization is the use of digital technologies to change business processes and projectsโ€”such as skilling employees to use new software platforms designed to help launch products faster. While digital transformation might include digitalization efforts, it goes beyond the project level and affects the entire organization.ย 

How will Digital Transformation impact the Future of Work?

The workplace, as we know it, has undergone significant change because of digital influx. The skills needed for employment are evolving as businesses increasingly rely on technology to boost output, save costs, and improve the customer experience. Here are some of the ways through which digital transformation is impacting the future of work for employees:

Automation and the rise of Gig Economy

Automation is a key driver of digital transformation, and it is transforming the job market. As technology continues to advance, many jobs are becoming automated, leading to a shift in the skills required foremployment. While this may cause job losses in some areas, it also creates new job opportunities, particularly in areas like data analysis, software engineering, and cybersecurity.ย 

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At the same time, the rise of the gig economy is changing the way people work. Gig work refers to short-term or freelance work, often facilitated by digital platforms. It offers greater flexibility and autonomy, allowing people to work on their own terms. This shift is largely driven by the increased use of technology, which has made it easier to find and complete gig work.ย 

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New Job Opportunities

While automation is changing the skills required for many jobs, it is also creating new opportunities. According to a report by the World Economic Forum, by 2025, automation could create 12 million new jobs worldwide. These jobs will be in areas like AI, robotics, and data analysis. Additionally, the rise of the gig economy is creating new opportunities for freelancers and entrepreneurs. For example, gig workers can find work through platforms like Upwork, Freelancer, and Fiverr, while entrepreneurs can start their own businesses using e-commerce platforms like Shopify or Etsy.ย 

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The need for Upskilling and Reskillingย 

With automation eliminating some jobs and creating new ones, upskilling and reskilling are essential for workers to remain employable. Upskilling refers to the process of learning new skills to stay relevant in one’s current job, while reskilling involves learning new skills to switch to a new career.ย 

According to a report by McKinsey, up to 375 million workers worldwide may need to switch jobs or acquire new skills due to automation. This highlights the importance of upskilling and reskilling in the digital age. Fortunately, there are many resources available to help workers develop new skills, including online courses, boot camps, and vocational programs. Companies can also play a role in upskilling and reskilling their employees by providing training programs and investing in their development.ย 

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Promote DEIย 

Digital transformation has the potential to promote diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) in the workplace. By leveraging technology, companies can reduce unconscious bias in the hiring process and create more diverse and inclusive workforces. For example, AI-powered recruitment tools can help identify qualified candidates from a diverse range of backgrounds and remove bias from the recruitment process.ย 

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However, there is also a risk that technology could reinforce existing biases or lead to unintended consequences. For example, if algorithms are not designed with diversity and inclusion in mind, they may perpetuate biases or discrimination. It is crucial for organizations to be mindful of these risks and take steps to ensure that their digital transformation initiatives promote DEI.ย 

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Read more about how digital transformation is the future of workforce in our article about the various nuances of it.ย 

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3 Key Components of Digital Transformation

MIT Sloan Management Review highlights three key areas of digital transformation for enterprises:ย 

Customer Experience

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This area talks about working to understand customers in more detail, using technology to fuel customer growth, and creating more customer touchpoints.

Operational Processes

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These processes involve improving internal processes by leveraging digitization and automation, enabling employees with digital tools, and collecting data to monitor performance and make more strategic business decisions.

Business Modelsย 

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This component of digital transformation consists of transforming the business by augmenting physical offerings with digital tools and services, introducing digital products, and using technology to provide global shared services.

Digital transformation strategy

Driving big changes in any organization is too difficult to pull off without a plan. There are five major areas companies must address for this, often in parallel.ย 

The 5 Domains of Digital Transformation

Digital Transformation is not just about technology but also about business leveraging the technology and their mode of reasoning. The first thing that pops up in most people mind about digital transformation is how they think of it as technology. However, while technology plays a vital role in the transformation, it is not just about technology alone. David Rogersโ€™ book โ€˜The Digital transformation Playbookโ€™ describe how digital technologies can change how we bond and generate standards with our customers and how we need to think about the competition and the procedures the business transform.ย 

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He stated five vital domains of digital transformation plan which is: customer, competition, data, innovation, and value. Even though these essentials are well-defined, the transformation isnโ€™t simple. There are several challenges, as well as the right management and idea to initiate the change, defining values of innovation, leveraging data, adjusting to technology change, expecting customer desires, and tracking outcomes.ย 

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All through these five domains, digital technologies are redefining several basic principles of this plan.ย 

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One vital part of the digital transformation is to elevate the entire customer experience. Rather than aiming at attaining efficiencies of scale through mass communication and mass production, utilizing digital transformation to customer system, customers are strongly connected and relating in a manner that are transforming their relationships with the business.ย 

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Digital technologies change how businesses bond and make significance with their customers. The relationship turns out to be much more synergistic: the interactions and assessments provided by customerโ€™s place them as greater influencers than advertisements. Furthermore, the active involvement of customers must turn out to be a vital driver of business success. They are connecting and manipulating each other in influencing business statuses and brands. Their use of digital tools is transforming how they see, assess, acquire, and utilize products and additionally, how they communicate, relate, and stay attached to brands.ย 

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Gradually, business gets challenging not just with competitor companies from within their own productions, but also with firms from outside their businesses that are taking customers away with their new digital skill. In this digital plan, external firmโ€™s that present competing worth to our customers will eventually turn out to be our major competitor if that firm starts attending to our customers openly.ย 

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โ€ฏA great example of this strategy is the policy of business models, which allow one business to generate and take numbers of value by simplifying the connections between other businesses and customers. Uber, for instance, is creating a business whose significance was made basically by its partners, with its platform performing as the key connection point. We possibly will find ourselves competing aggressively with an established competitor in one area while at the same time leveraging their skills by collaborating in a different sector of the business. Progressively, the competitive resources may no longer exist within their own business; rather, they may be controlled in a system of partners that come together to create looser business affiliations.ย 

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In a long-established business, data was costly to acquire, bulky to stock, and used in administrative storage tower. Managing this data require the acquisition and upkeep of huge IT systems. However, in modern business, data is being acquired at a unique rate not just by firms but by everyone.ย 

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Furthermore, cloud-based systems for keeping data are gradually becoming cheap, freely accessible, and simple to use. The resulting data was applied mainly for assessing, predicting, and decision-making.ย 

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Today in the digital world, most data accessible to businesses is being made in unparalleled quantities from every discussion, dealings, or procedure within or outside these businesses. With social media, mobile devices, and radars on every item in a firmโ€™s supply chain, every business now has right to use to a stream of shapeless data that is produced without preparing and that can progressively be exploited with new logical tools.ย 

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These โ€œbig dataโ€ gears let businesses to generate new kinds of expectations, discover unpredicted outlines in business pursuit, and unravel new sources of value.ย 

Conventionally, innovation was costly, high incentives, and limited. Testing fresh concepts was demanding and costly, so businesses depend on their executives to define the most feasible possibilities to be created, tested, and detect in the market. Innovation was faced with a particular concentration on the completed product because market testing was difficult and expensive.โ€ฏIn the present day, digital technologies have allowed constant testing and investigation with an intensity of complication that would have been unimaginable in the past.ย 

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Samples can be made for changes and concepts tested rapidly by user groups. Continuous understanding and the fast duplication of products, both before and after their launch date, are turning out to be the norm. However, digital technologies have made it simpler and quicker to test concepts, and gain a market response from the very commencement of the innovation process, all the track to launch, and even subsequently.ย 

To succeed in the rapidly changing digital era, every business must be prepared to adapt early, and to continually re-think how they can create value for its customers. Digital transformation is required to bring more real and insubstantial value. Given the obvious changes, this should be easily materialized. However, the changes come with some certain costs and risks.ย 

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In the digital age, businesses should ponder to concentrate outside their present business model and how they can best provide value to their customers as new technologies restructure chances and desires, or it may mean generating a decent means to occupy a businessโ€™s customers while they are still devoted to it. It is thus important to understand the opportunities and potential challenges surrounding value creation in digital environments for the various groups.ย 

Examples of Digital Transformation

Digital transformation is occurring across all industries and job functions. Here are a few examples of organizations which implemented digital transformation in their operations.

Overview of the digital transformation initiativeย 

Amazon Business is an example of how a consumer giant transitions to the B2B space to keep up with the digital customer expectations. It provides a marketplace for businesses to purchase from Amazon and third parties. Individuals can also make purchases on behalf of their organizations and integrate order approval workflows and reporting.ย 

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The Approachย 

  • Amazon created a holistic marketplace for B2B vendors by offering over 250 million products ranging from cleaning supplies to industrial equipment.ย ย 
  • It introduced free two-day shipping on orders worth $49 or more and exclusive price discounts. It further offered purchase system integration, tax-exemption on purchases from select qualified customers, shared payment methods, order approval workflows, and enhanced order reporting.ย 
  • Amazon allowed manufacturers to connect with buyers & answer questions about products in a live expert program.ย 

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The Valueย 

  • Amazon could tap the B2B wholesale market valued between $7.2 and $8.2 trillion in the U.S. alone.ย 
  • It began earning revenue by charging sales commissions ranging from 6-15% from third-party sellers, depending on the product category and the order size.ย 
  • It could offer more personalized products for an improved customer experience.ย 

Overview of the digital transformation initiativeย 

Like the video rental company Blockbuster, Netflix also had a pay-per-rental model, which included DVD sales and rent-by-mail services. However, Netflix anticipated a change in customer demand with rising digitalization and provided online entertainment, thereby wiping out Blockbuster โ€“ and the movie rental industry โ€“ entirely.ย ย 

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The Approachย 

  • In 2007, Netflix launched a video-on-demand streaming service to supplement their DVD rental service without any additional cost to their subscriber base.ย 
  • It implemented a simple and scalable business model and infused 10% of its budget in R&D consistently.ย 
  • The company has an unparalleled recommendation engine to provide a personalized and relevant customer experience.ย ย 

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The Valueย 

  • Netflix is the most popular digital video content provider, leading other streaming giants such as Amazon, Hulu, and YouTube with over 85% of the market share.ย 
  • Netflix added a record 36 million subscribers directly after the start of the COVID-19 pandemic.ย 

Overview of the digital transformation initiativeย 

No digital transformation discussion is complete without acknowledging the unconventional ideas implemented by Elon Musk. Tesla was a huge manifestation of digital transformation as the core motive was to prove that electric cars are better than their gasoline counterparts both in looks and performance.ย ย 

Over the years, Tesla has innovated continuously to improve its product, make itself more economical, and reduce its carbon footprint.ย ย 

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The Approachย 

  • Tesla is the only auto manufacturer globally, providing automatic over-the-air firmware updates that allow its cars to remotely improve their safety, performance, and infotainment capabilities. For example, the OTA update could fix Teslaโ€™s overheating issues due to power fluctuation.ย ย 
  • Tesla launched an autopilot feature to control the speed and position of the car when on highways to avoid potential accidents. However, the user still has to hold the wheel; the vehicle controls everything else. This connected car technology has created an intelligent data platform and smart autonomous driving experience.ย 
  • Tesla further ventured into a data-driven future, and it uses analytics to obtain actionable insights from demand trends and common complaints. A noteworthy fact is that the company has been collecting driving data from all of its first and second-generation vehicles. So far, Tesla has collected driving data on 8 billion miles while Googleโ€™s autonomous car project, Waymo, has accumulated data on 10 million miles.ย 

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The Valueย 

  • Teslaโ€™s over-the-air updates reduce carbon emissions by saving usersโ€™ dealer visits. Additionally, these updates save consumers time and money.ย 
  • Tesla delivered a record 936,172 vehicles in 2021, an 87 % increase over the 499,550 vehicle deliveries made in 2020.ย 

KNOLSKAPEโ€™s Digital Transformation Courses

Future-proof your organization with

a Digital leap

This course helps you understand the new leadership practices for the digital age. It covers a basic introduction to the concept, an introduction to digital leadership, understand the 4 personas of a Digital Leader: Networked leader, Sense-making leader, Design leader and Agile leader.ย 

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BLUR stands for
Boundaryless organization
Limitless Digitization
Unbounded innovation, and
Relentless Iteration.

This course fills the gap by providing a handbook for navigating the strategic challenges of the digital age. It teaches leaders the dynamics of digital transformation and its impact on the business.
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This course consists of The Digital Transformation Champion simulation, which is designed to help learners discover, explore, and learn how to drive digital transformation initiatives through time-tested models and frameworks. It puts learners in the role of a leader who must win support for a digital platform among the ecosystem by taking actions that build alignment on strategy, culture, and capability.ย 

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The Digital LEAPFROG Strategy course helps leaders formulate exponential digital strategies and innovate on their existing business models. Using a series of structured frameworks and online toolkit, this course allows you to apply key learning in the context of your business.ย 

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Digital Transformation - KNOLSKAPE

Explore more about KNOLSKAPEโ€™s Digital Transformation solutions:

TAKEAWAY

Each industry & organization faces unique challenges while driving digital transformation initiatives. When implementing new technology, each organization must find a personalized solution. Their challenges can prepare you better for the potential roadblocks, but the specific solutions will need to be personalized according to your business requirements.ย 

Open communication with your customers and employees will help you spot potential issues early on, and you can use case studies like these as a starting point.ย 

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Want to learn more about digital transformation and how you can implement it in your business?ย 

explore more of KNOLSKAPE's digital transformation solutions


Leading in the Digital World

Introduction to Digital Leadership

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Leading in the Digital World

Networked Leadership

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Leading Digital Execution

Data Visualization for Informed Decision Making

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Leading Digital Execution

Clearing the Digital BLUR

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Leading Digital Execution

Digital Fundamentals

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Leading Digital Execution

Digital Selling the New Reality

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Leading Digital Execution

Data-based Decision-making

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Leading Digital Transformation

Driving Digital Transformation

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Leading Digital Transformation

Digital LEAPFROG Strategy

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Leading Digital Transformation

Digital Fault Lines

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About KNOLSKAPE

KNOLSKAPE is a global leader in experiential learning with a mission to help organizations and employees become future ready. Using a large award-winning portfolio of simulations aligned with 100+ competencies and cutting-edge talent intelligence, KNOLSKAPE produces stellar outcomes for more than 375+ organizations across 75 countries. Driven by research and thought leadership, KNOLSKAPE offers its products and solutions in a flexible subscription model powered by omni-channel delivery.

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