In today’s fast-paced digital era, businesses in India are increasingly embracing digital transformation to drive growth, enhance efficiency, and deliver exceptional customer experiences. However, embarking on this journey can be complex without a clear roadmap tailored to the Indian business landscape. In this blog post, we will explore the key steps involved in digitizing your business in India and provide you with a comprehensive digital transformation roadmap that takes into account the unique challenges and opportunities of the Indian market.
Plan
Planning is the most important part before jumping into it. Digitisation is not hard, but it is Plan-Consuming. Digitisation is not a big deal, but planning will help you go smooth. Let us divide this section in different steps.
Benefit and Objective to Achieve
First decide what benefit you are looking for to achieve. Its always better to decide your goal. It helps to choose the right path. The benefit you are looking for may be to manage workforce, improve customer experience, faster processes, and/or achieve better quality. Whatever the goal is, digitisation can help you in everything and give you an efficient experience.
Process
First of all, ‘don’t do anything, just because you can’. First decide what benefit you are trying to achieve. That means, you do not need to apply all the digitisation processes, neither you need all your processes to be digitised. Take small targets at a time. Additionally, there must be clearly defined reasons behind every process you follow. It gives clarity to everyone involved.
Cost Analysis
Cost is a big thing of concern before going for anything. Same goes for digital transformation as well. It is always a great idea to analyse the cost benefit earlier itself. A proper cost analysis may tell you that certain operation are while doing physically (offline) rather doing digitally (online). For example, Ashneer Grover choose physical salesmen over digital marketing for Pharat Pe, which became a great success. Therefore, cost analysis is a must.
Compliances and Risks
Always be aware of the compliances as well as risks associated with it. Digital tools comes cheap, but doesnot come for free of cost or compliance free. There’s always a compliance associated to it. Regular updates, subscription renewals, etc. are part and parcle of all digital tools or softwears. They come with risks to. Improper handling of such digital tools may leads to safety concerns.
Core of the Business
And lastly, never change your core of the business, just because of some digital modification in the ecosystem. Remember, digital transformation is to help you, not to change you. So, never loose your core personality, digitisation will help you according to your needs, not the other way round.
Data Handling
Many people ignore it but its a very important step. Data is the Oil of Digitisation. Once the process starts running, the data will start flowing in. You must have a proper setup for proper data handling. No data handling means no digital benefit.
Dedicated Team
A dedicated team is a must. You may be a small or a big organisation, but a dedicated team or may be an entire department has to be created to conduct all the digital related works. It is to make sure that the work gets completed on time, no additional burden on day to day operation, and most importantly, a pool of professionals who are being trained everyday over experience will do the task efficiently. If you are an individual, than dedicate a proper time slot for all digital related tasks.
Customer Centric
Customers are the most important element for you. Always keep customers at the centre. A customer donot care whether you work digitally or physically, customer deserve high quality service or product with reasonable price. Therefore, do not take customers for granted. Your digitisation journey should only improve the dedication to the customers, and not the other way.
Accept Change (Transfer of Culture)
Belive it or not, any change is painful, more or less. When a lot is going to change due to digitalisation, a lot of hustle is ahead. Be prepared for the changes. A transfer of culture will be seen inside the organisation. The leadership must take all together in the journey, because in the long run, digital transformation is beneficial. People of the organisation will now be adopted to the new digital culture, just give some time.
Avoid Tech Debt
At the end, don’t do anything in the name of digitalisation which leads to more trouble than ease. Avoid unneccesary technical tools and softwears. Avoid inefficient processes. Don’t subscribe to anything just because it looks cool. Judge anything on the basis of improving efficiency only, not anything else.
To conclude, Embarking on a digital transformation journey requires careful planning, a clear vision, and a systematic approach. By following the digital transformation roadmap outlined in this blog post, you’ll be better equipped to navigate the challenges and capitalize on the opportunities that arise during the process. Remember, digital transformation is an ongoing journey, and adapting to the ever-evolving digital landscape will be key to your long-term success.