Four hard facts: if you don’t digitalise your business, you lose money and reputation

Businesses that don’t keep up with digitalisation lose revenue year after year. It’s time to rethink and make the most of the advantages.

Your digital maturity decides the future of your business

According to a study by the German Association for the Digital Economy (BVDW) [1], most German companies have not got very far with their digital transformation yet. One in ten has not even dealt with digitalisation to any notable extent and has developed neither the first structures nor the skills. Just 16% have successfully set off and count as digitalised.

These figures are from 2016. That is quite alarming, considering how fast markets, customers and innovations have become. Yet in smaller businesses especially, people keep asking what all this fuss about digitalisation and mobile apps is actually for.

After all, you make a decent living, your regulars have been loyal for years, and with the new customers coming in you are well booked up anyway. And besides: where are you supposed to find the time to do this as well?

Anyone who thinks this way won’t do so for ever, because the world keeps turning, and with it digitalisation and everything we have taken for granted so far. This change cannot be stopped, so if you don’t want to be left behind, you should go along with it – and stay successful.

Save for a rainy day – and invest in digital structures

In this context I always think of the well-known saying: “Save for a rainy day.” If you start planning your digital path early, the rainy day won’t come in the first place.

Early means: do it now, because time is running out. Even if you see no obvious pressure to change anything in your business, your industry or among your customers: don’t forget that many forward-thinking competitors around you are moving on.

Think of taxi companies and the crisis that ride services such as Uber brought to the industry. Regardless of price, these services won over many customers with their digital service – because it was so easy:

A few clicks in the app – and the customer could see where the nearest driver was, when they would arrive, how quickly the customer would reach their destination and how much the ride would cost. Perfect. At the time, taxis still had no workable system to offer customers all this quickly and easily.

Still, it is not only about modern IT infrastructure and clever apps. It is also about agile methods, good service in real time, data-driven thinking and a digital company culture. Together, these help give a business the drive it needs to keep its customers happy and bring them real benefits in future too.

On this topic, we would now like to present a few facts that should give you a boost of motivation and get you rethinking.

Facts about digitalisation that will convince you.

A. Habits are changing

For years, people have been changing their habits – and moving more and more of what they do onto the internet. For some time now, they have been doing so mainly on the go, on smartphones that are easy to use always and everywhere. Impulse-driven searches [2] in everyday life in particular demand quick answers, and people equally want appointments, orders and deliveries, for example, handled promptly.

Searching the Yellow Pages is history, and these days recommendations are mostly made on social networks. If you and your business are not easy to reach there, you will disappear from the view of your existing and potential customers. Even unconsciously and passively, people will favour other providers over you as time goes on.

B. Making processes more efficient

Used correctly, the new technology gives you cost advantages in handling orders, enquiries and many other processes. Whether fully automated or partly, as support:

You can save a lot of costs – and time, which makes your products or services cheaper still. Being with the customer at the right moment and cleverly passing these savings on is a decisive competitive advantage in itself.

C. Keeping opportunity costs low

Thanks to digital possibilities, your potential customers now feel the urge at any time of day or night to ask for a service or a product and take the next logical step. With a (partly) automated process, you can support this even at unusual hours of the night.

That alone brings first-class service into play. Whether you offer instant appointment confirmations, pre-orders or information about similar products, for example: customers love being able to take such steps on the spur of the moment. If they can’t, most of them will look for alternatives.

D. Not being forgotten

Thanks to digital processes, upselling – that is, follow-up sales after the purchase – is becoming more and more effective. Digitalisation lets you find out and learn more about your customers faster and in a more standardised way. That makes it easier to offer customers relevant additional products tailored to them.

Whether by real-time push notification or data-driven email, whether right while the product is in use, a short time later or after a year or when the guarantee runs out: with the data collected, this can happen fully automatically – and mean a clear increase in revenue for you with little effort.

Mature along with it and secure your success for the future

The facts mentioned here are only a small part of the points that speak for digitalising as soon as possible. If you don’t digitalise your business, you miss out on revenue. More and more, and on an ever larger scale.

Digital transformation is not a one-off project, nor is it done in three quick steps. It doesn’t have to lead to a perfect result straight away, but from now on it should be a constant companion of your success.

Take small first steps that cost little time or money, and you will see: the first results and important feedback will come after a short time.

Let us share in these steps – we look forward to your comments and experiences, and wish you every success!

Links:

[1] http://www.bvdw.org/presseserver/DigitalReadiness/bvdw_digital_readiness_zusammenfassung.pdf

[2] https://www.appconfector.de/en/Blog/2016/07/auf-den-kontaktpunkt-gebracht/