Gain a Competitive Edge with Digital Transformation

Digital Transformation. The new way forward for businesses looking to succeed in the digital era. The challenge is to disrupt the market through constant evolution and agility or be disrupted by competitors. Companies must continue to discover innovative ways to improve overall strategy to reach the final check point: customer interaction. The laborious process of undertaking digital transformation to ensure the longevity of the enterprise, which yields higher levels of customer satisfaction, can actually become a lethal competitive advantage. How can companies guarantee their efforts in embracing digital transformation will result in the genesis of a new competitive advantage?

The digital era has seen the shift in power from the business offering services to the customer demanding services. Customer expectations have become the key in unlocking the potential formulation of a competitive advantage within digital transformation. It is imperative for the customer experience to be quick, easy, and useful to inspire loyalty in future interactions. With this in mind, companies embracing digital transformation must check off the following list: user interfaces must to be designed to be intuitive, content must be compelling, and experiences must be integrated across all platforms.  99% of companies believe that improving processes that expedite changes to digital properties was the most important part of their digital transformation efforts.* While a 96% believed that integrating all social, mobile, web, and service efforts and investments to deliver an integrated and frictionless customer experience were the most important. * The trends in the marketplace are indicative of the advantageous value of customer interaction.

Digital Transformation calls for a renewed focus on the entire customer experience. Instead of a customer’s first interaction being the moment they walked in the store, the beginning of the buyer’s journey starts long before. Consumers can read reviews online to gauge if the company can completely satisfy their needs before initial contact.  It is critical for companies to ensure that all touch points consumers have with their brand are impactful.  The customer experiences need to be simple, intuitive and personalized to meet individual expectations.  

A new architecture must be constructed for digital transformation, one that possesses a foundation of customer experience. This foundation will produce a future-proof infrastructure that will promise concrete support in the digital era.

The IBM Digital Experience Europe 2015 conference kicks off this week with a focus on digital transformation. Key sessions will advise attendees on how to transform through insights, studies, and skills training to ultimately utilize digital transformation to spark the creation of a new competitive advantage. To read more about the insights presented at the conference, please visit: ibm.co/DXEurope2015

If you would like more information on how IBM Digital Experience can aid your efforts in digital transformation, please visit: ibm.co/DigitalEXP

1 http://www.forbes.com/sites/jasonbloomberg/2014/07/31/digital-transformation-by-any-other-name/