4 Trends for Successful Digital Transformation
By George Bermudez, Market Executive of Business Banking for Bank of America
Technological innovation is integrated throughout the daily operations of companies across industries, including many throughout Miami-Dade County. According to a recent Accenture report, “future-ready” organizations – those that are resilient enough to survive a disruption – are twice as efficient and three times as profitable as their peers.
As Miami becomes the next tech hub, companies have doubled down on their digital transformation. In fact, the global pandemic prompted entire industries to rethink their strategies and implement digital innovations to stay connected with customers, employees and facilities.
While the future is bright, it can also be blinding for the Miami companies that made transformative changes over the last year. With so much innovation moving so quickly, local businesses must see clearly enough to create their own digital roadmaps. We have identified four “megatrends” from a recent Bank of America report that will help Miami companies navigate their digital transformation:
1 – Moving to the Cloud
AI, automation and the cloud are more than technological trends, they are key forces to organizations looking to adapt to digital transformation. Cloud computing also makes the Internet of Things (IoT) possible, which is quickly becoming the Internet of Every Thing. A Juniper Research study found that the number of global industrial IoT connections will more than double to 36.8 billion in 2025, primarily because 5G connections and cloud computing will make real-time data transmissions made possible.
2 – Reinventing Marketing
Successful businesses value and nurture their customer relationships, especially in a post-pandemic world where people are reevaluating and redefining their interactions. Forrester notes that more marketers are realizing the mistake of separating customer acquisition from customer retention. Merging them is not only critical but in some cases requires reinventing the entire marketing function.
3 – Collaborating to Make it Work
Whether large or small, companies should encourage their teams to drive innovation through collaboration. Business leaders can get caught up in concepts that seem innovative but have no real ties to their priorities. The goal of collaboration should be to solve challenges and create real value.
Companies can create impactful collaboration by aligning internal resources like IT and information security to integrate solutions or evaluate new technology to save time and money. The focus should be on solving for needs.
4 – Looking Beyond Your Organization
External partnerships are just as crucial as internal ones, especially during periods of long-term transformation, intense change or crisis.
Digital transformation is a marathon, not a sprint—as such, these initiatives require input from all relevant sources. McKinsey & Company offered this advice: Look beyond the boundaries of your own company across enterprises to include your channel partners, vendors and suppliers. Chances are they are willing to collaborate and share data and learnings to help ensure everyone thrives.
Miami business owners should determine if they have the right mix of external providers. It is important to manage the costs and benefits of moving your data and avoid getting locked into a long-term contract.
Ultimately, whether it’s the cloud or AI, customer data or collaboration, digital transformation must be grounded.
