Since the motive behind establishing a business is profit or to run more efficiently depending on whether it’s a for-profit or a not-for-profit organisation, a lot of measures put in place to run the business are usually determined by the size of the organisation’s budget.
If a measure does not seem to be generating enough ROI, it’s mostly abandoned by a for-profit organisation. This is where any startup’s decision-makers must bring their wealth of knowledge to bear. Digital transformation initiatives, incidentally, fall into this.
Digital transformation took centre stage with the COVID-19 pandemic. Research shows that more than 80 per cent of companies plan to accelerate their companies’ digital transformations, with 65 per cent expecting to increase the amount they’re investing, despite the downturn caused by the pandemic.
Due to the changes that businesses had to adapt as a result of the pandemic, it became necessary to integrate automation by manufacturers. Marketers resorted to using chatbots to replace human labour, which the lockdowns and social distancing kept away from workplaces.
It’s imperative for the success of your startup, before applying any new technology, to reach out to customers to find out if the solutions are really what the users need.
Digital transformation, which focuses on staying relevant in the eyes of customers, gaining an edge on the competition, streamlining internal processes, reducing overhead costs, and improving ROI, is the new approach of utilising a novel or existing technology that can help to improve or create a process, product, or experience which yields potential business desirability.
Your main objective must be how to improve customer experience by using technologies such as AI, machine learning, analytics, and self-service. While doing this, you must be able to measure your ROI.
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Is your ROI commensurate with your digital transformation?
When calculating ROI for a particular project, you have to take into consideration a lot of factors such as tear and wear, net present value, additional ancillary costs that may not be very obvious at the time. A good yardstick must include measures of baseline figures, track costs, and the proposed time frame of project completion.
You must also put in place metrics for calculating long-term success. Comparing your startup to already established organisations may be a way to understand what the competition is like, however, it’s more important to focus on measures that will enhance improvement with each new digital transformation initiative.
This will allow you to have a comprehensive view of your outcomes and leverage what you have achieved to support new digital transformation projects. Before doing this, however, you must have planned for a reasonable ROI.
The fate of your startup depends on the ROI; digital transformation initiatives you may embark upon are to make your startup relevant in the market, but you can’t survive the competition if you fall short of funds.
Even where you don’t have the actual figures yet, you can still make use of projected figures to ensure you track all the necessary metrics.
If you leave it till the end of the project, any mistake that you may have made cannot be corrected again. The resources you utilised are gone. Everybody in the organisation must be on the same page about your digital transformation initiatives.
Even your customers should be in the picture; they probably know your startup with a particular culture, it takes time for people to adjust to any novel idea, hence you must start very early to prepare their minds towards the new technology you want to adopt.
ROI is a game of numbers, the more people key into your initiatives, the more the ROI. There is also the need for aggressive consultation before initiating your project. You must not rush into things; take time to experiment things out.
Also Read: Why the TradeGecko acquisition by Intuit is a promise fulfilled by the SEA tech startup ecosystem
Even where others have failed, there is no reason why you should fail. What led to their failures? What can you do differently?
To understand why your startup must not go the way of others, you need to think outside the box. And this takes time, time is a resource that will translate into ROI.
Do you have an IT team on the ground? Is there a need to outsource?
Adopting new technologies is not what you do without a careful evaluation. Looking at your budget may be reasonable, but that does not mean that you should go for the cheapest option. Sometimes, what comes easy, goes easy.
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