The digital transformation revolution and how it is applied!

The new disruptive business model

Throughout the years, marketing campaigns have been the first partner of the new technology. First it was the TV, with its invention, the new age of video commercials increased the consuming markets. Several years later, Internet came to our homes and it was the time for having a company website, some sort of “digital showcase” where companies reached worldwide audience for a very fair price.

Not long ago, thanks to Facebook business model consisting in basically, “selling likes” for your page, we had the “social media marketing boom”. Every company that is not on the social media, just does not exists and many of them are really asking themselves if maintaining their business website is worth it, transforming them mainly into a “nice to have” to keep a good image.

Then, mobile devices took control of the world, giving us an app for everything, and a lot of them competing for the same market. If a company has an app, then it is better seen by the public, creating great impact worldwide or only in the countries of their interest, to the segment of their interest.

Finally, and still unclear when it started happening, companies changed their traditional business model to a digital one, transforming themselves from product or services companies into IT companies. Probably, the most known examples are banks. At some point, banks realize that having people doing physical transactions in their premises was an expensive cycle to keep. They offered us online banking web and mobile apps. Did they do this because they were super cool and because they decided to lead technology? No, of course no! They did it because they realized about something: they needed a bigger space in their premises to receive all the people, they also needed a lot of employees in charge of customer service, they needed a lot of physical money, security guards, security control systems like cameras, enough cleaning employees to have a clean business premise, etc. The more people you have, the more expenses you need to cover.

How did banks reduce their expenses then? First, one of them invested in technology, having secure systems that can be shared with its customers to access to their own information from home, or anywhere around the world. After some time, they didn’t have many people in their premises, so they moved to a smaller place, with a cheaper rent, less employees, less cleaning staff, and so on. The first bank doing this created a huge impact in its clients, reduced costs and encouraged (or well…forced) other bank to go for a similar approach.

The reduction on the costs has been so extreme, that nowadays we have online banks, with no offices, no employees to meet customers face to face, no need for cleaning staff at all, no great electricity bills, etc. Banks became just a website. From a business point of view, they stopped being banks to become IT companies, the new “cloud banks”.

As the world works today, most of the companies are migrating from the traditional business model to the digital one and those ones who do not go for it, just disappear. Remember Blockbuster and what happened to them? They refused to buy Netflix, because they didn’t see it as an opportunity to perform their same business in a digital manner. I am sure former Blockbuster’s shareholders still regret about that.

Digital transformation can be applied to any company size and sector. The challenging aspect is that managers, CEOs and company owners make the decision, because they are not familiar with the software processes, language nor scope. For these cases, Software companies that offer digital transformation services work hard in offering a contained training into the tech world, something that makes people lose the fear in the new and unknown modern practices.

Personally, I have had the pleasure and challenging experience of working in a company that not only offers digital transformation, but also partnership and different kinds of training to its clients, probably the most important one happens during the sales process, where we follow a set of guidelines based in coaching activities to give clients the confident they need to make the final decision and transform their company.

Together with this company, I have worked in several digital transformation projects as a developer and business development analyst, the role where I learned the most of the successful digital transformation business model. The client’s sector does not follow a pattern, we have worked with banks, transportation, food, insurance and retail companies.

At this point, I’m sure you are wondering how is it that a food company ends up being an IT company. When a restaurant decides to develop an app to accept orders online, its complete business change. Now customers will go to the restaurant, but also book in advance what they want to eat, or buy takeaway food that they will pick up, or that the restaurant can offer through Uber eats. The payment can be perform through the app, using the traditional methods like cash or cards, but also customers can split the total with their friends, pay using the customer’s bank wallet app, Apple pay, Google Wallet and even cryptocurrency! Don’t forget the possibility of having vouchers, discounts and a loyalty program to create customer’s and employee’s engagement.

So, the traditional restaurant now supports more orders, new modern payment methods that makes the accounting easier, traceability of sales and stock, business expansion through delivery companies and more. How do they maintain the new software that disrupts their traditional model? The answer will shock you: they do! They are a proper formal IT company, they have a product or a service and they offer it through software. There are no fair reasons for them to continue working with the 3rd party company that made the digital transformation for them. They are now the owners of their complete digital business.

The question now is: how? It’s simple. Not every software company implements correctly the digital transformation process. It requires a lot of steps and working closely with the client as a partner is the key to success. Additionally, the company being transformed needs to hire people, those people need to be well prepared to develop potential new features to implement, maintain the code, understand the business context, but mostly, those people need to be trained. Nobody will offer a better training than the experienced software company that is in charge of the digital transformation, it knows everything about the software development process but more important, they have the trust of the transformed company and have a complete knowledge about the context where the software runs and about its users.

If you have a company and are looking for a digital transformation, the answer is: go for it. The software company that will assist you must provide you with a complete set of tools for you to experience the process in the best possible way. Don’t look for a company, look for a partner. A company that works side by side with you and that is transparent during the complete process.

If you have a company and are looking for improving your current digital transformation process or for starting offering it, make sure you have the right people to understand your client’s needs and that you will be your customer’s BFF until the software product is delivered, the people correctly trained and the client’s company starts working correctly in the digital world.

Finally, if you are a professional from the IT sector, or a curious mind and want to go for the roles related to digital transformation, work hard in your interpersonal skills. No matter if you are a developer, a manager, a sales representative, a designer or a product thinker, you need to understand the client as much as you can, being aware that he will be exposing his all life business to a huge surgery and that he does not have any clue about what the result will be. He will be nervous, anxious, worried, happy and asking himself if this is the right thing to do. He will feel all those emotions at the same time! I encourage you to work on your empathy, be in his place, feel as he feels and always be aware that the client in this process is facing the unknown, and that’s scary!

Gaining the knowhow to apply this process takes some time and it is an iterative practice until you understand it perfectly. All i can say is that it is totally worth it!

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