The Covid-19 pandemic has changed the way we run businesses forever. After long periods of quarantine and social distancing, companies and consumers are now finding the digital space a viable alternative to interact with one another. It’s now made clear that businesses have to go online to adapt to the new normal.
The digital space opens up many possibilities for businesses. This includes:
- Increase outreach to potential customers/clients
- Potential to increase revenue with a large customer base
- Ability to track and analyse business data to improve profitability and productivity
- Have better work-life balance with hybrid work structures
Are you prepared for digital transformation?
However, making the digital shift can be uncomfortable for businesses that have relied on physical operations to generate sales. Whether that is having staff on-site to manage plant machinery, or having a brick and mortar store to sell products, both employees and consumers have had to take their activities online since the onset of Covid-19.
As operations and sales activities go online, businesses also have to deal with a new set of challenges unique to the digital space.
Digital Marketing There are many skill sets required to generate leads and sales online. The digital marketing spectrum consists of content creation, advertising, public relations, lead generation, and many more. In fact, having a social media page alone is not enough these days. Businesses have to build a digital marketing ecosystem that can reach out to audiences at different stages of their decision making process.
One key component of digital marketing is having timely interactions with your customers. Sending them messages and reminders of your latest updates can help to keep your brand at the top of mind of customers. Business can employ automation tools to help them interact with customers promptly.
IT downtime When Gmail suffered a 7 hour global outage on 20 August, users were not able to access their emails, storage, documents and video-conferencing tools. This severely inconvenienced business operations at a time where many users were relying on their digital tools for everyday activities.
For small to medium businesses, it is equally, if not more important that IT downtime is prevented at all costs. Downtime not only results in a loss of revenue, but it can severely impact the company’s brand image and reputation in the long run.
Cybersecurity Having an online business also means that customer information, business operation statistics, employee identity and other important data are stored online. Cybersecurity is of paramount importance, and it’s crucial that businesses keep on top of any potential breaches to prevent their data from getting compromised.
Having the right tools to manage operations and customers remotely is an essential component for every business today.
How to manage your digital assets effectively?
It is more essential now than ever to ensure that our online business assets are well built and well protected.
Issues such as IT downtime, a failure to respond to customers promptly, and cybersecurity issues can cost businesses thousands of dollars. As we enter the new normal where there will be a greater reliance on digital products and services, it is inevitable that every business will have to upgrade their systems to match the current IT advancements.
Curious to learn more about digital transformation for your business?
