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Why Digital Transformation is Pivotal and Vital for Small Businesses?

The COVID-19 pandemic introduced the world of business to a fresh concept—the digital transformation. The shift to digital platforms proved highly beneficial for businesses (small or large) to continue their operations amidst a crisis. Thus, digital transformation became the new buzzword of the business world. Like any other buzzword, it was, similarly, a bit tricky to grasp and comprehend. However, the trend towards digitization is clear. Moreover, due to technological innovations, currently, businesses have several smart tools that can improve one’s business.

Digital transformation necessitated the incorporation of smart technology. Especially for small businesses, the use of smart technology can help save time and money and reduce the time employees spend on redundant tasks. Still, when we look at the numbers, we see that only around 7+% of companies managed to undergo complete digital transformation. Shifting digital is not frequently a success for companies as many digital transformation implementations fail. The trick, however, is comprehensive knowledge about digital transformation and how and when to implement it.

That being said, why is digital transformation still so high up on everyone’s list of priorities? When it is done right, digital transformation comes with a multitude of benefits for both the company and its employees. Moving forward, small business processes are going to be more tech-oriented until we reach a point of no return to the non-digital ways of doing things.

Is Digital Transformation different from Digital Adoption?

One of the major reasons behind the failure of digital transformation is the way it is implemented. In many situations, management centralizes their attention to the technology and how it can be used to optimize workflow. During the entire process, it seldom pays attention to the employees or the team involved and as a result, they fail to understand how the system will help them achieve results.

However, there is a solution for this concern. Digital Adoption Platforms or DAPs are software platforms designed to help organizations and users engage with technology. DAPs also help get a better understanding of how digital transformation can improve a wide range of business processes. In addition, DAPs help reimagine and redefine how learning is done in an organization and help save time with onboarding and retraining. DAPs are not designed as a replacement to interactive training provided by experts, but they do help provide detailed tutorials and give users a sense of what’s going on with various systems.

You can find both business-to-business and business-to-consumer platforms. Nevertheless, not all solutions are built the same. Hence, each organization needs to find the best that caters to its varied needs.

Does DAP Work for Small Businesses?

That being said, even small businesses have to worry about digital adoption and resistance to change. Be it an e-commerce business or brick-and-mortar stores, the digital age is a great push towards change. Digital transformation for small and medium-sized businesses may be a bit easier compared to what a large corporation has to go through.

However, resistance to change is possible (and likely) in all types of organizations but digital adoption plays a crucial role. In such scenarios, DAPs use smart algorithms powered by artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning (ML) to customize the learning process based on an individual’s needs.

How can a DAP help promote digital adoption?

Following are a few ways a DAP can help promote digital adoption:

  • Automate employee onboarding or certain repetitive aspects of the process;
  • Collect and analyze usage data to provide the organization with a sense of understanding when it comes to people’s reactions towards the system;
  • Help users get answers and support without waiting for input from a superior;
  • Provide on-the-job and in-app training;
  • DAPs work in a similar fashion to customer feedback tools;
  • DAPs also gather data and compile reports for the management.

How can Small Businesses use DAP for success?

For any organization (be it large or small), employees are the driving force. They are the main element behind its success as well as its technological advancements. Therefore, implementing DAPs can help mitigate the transformation process.

  1. Harboring Culture of Acceptance

To scale success, small businesses need to be attentive towards their customer’s needs and cater to their latest requirements. New technologies are not always intuitive and their benefits are not always obvious to people who are habituated to doing things in a certain designated manner. It is imperative to be mindful that employees do not have the advantage to envision the bigger picture.

In such scenarios, the management should ensure a smooth transition by educating the employees about the changes involved throughout the process. This helps to see how the technology will impact and benefit the workforce. It also helps to explain why these changes are necessary and how they will make things easier for the leaders as well as the employees in all segments of the organization. Moreover, it will help them open up regarding future discomforts (if any).

  1. Drive Innovation at the Right Speed

As business technology changes at a dizzying pace, so does the training methodology. Organizations no longer have to do things in a specific order. Due to advanced DAPs, organizations can start their digital transformation and have the right training program in place to upskill their employees on the new technologies they will be using. Businesses no longer need to rush through innovation only to reach a point where they can’t move forward because the training program is not catching up.

That being said, DAPs help organizations everywhere rethink their implementation speed and the way the information is disseminated at an internal level. The right DAP helps reduce the burden put on IT support, which can be quite heavy during such massive changes.

Conclusion

Digital transformation is indeed a vital key to success. However, it will require major investments (both monetary as well as voluntary). While the process of digital transformation implementation may require funds from a long-term business loan, it is worth the effort. However, if you want the implementation to succeed, you will need a DAP to help out with the process. Moreover, DAPs help lower user resistance to change and allow them to gradually get used to new technology that may seem scary at first. Due to data collection and analysis, the system provides management with deep insight into what works and why.

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