9 Signs Your Business Needs a Digital Solution

“Normality” as we know it, in terms of business methods or client expectations has changed dramatically in the digital era. 

Times are more competitive, especially when digital native startups appear on the market and promise to revolutionize it with innovative ways of doing business. With this abundance of new digital services, combined with clever digital marketing techniques, you may want not to be left behind, but stay competitive and efficient.

Likewise, your clients expect you to meet their needs with a click of a button.

In other words, If you are a business owner or responsible for someone’s business development processes, you might want to check these points below which indicate signs that your organisation needs a technological change as part of the digital transformation process.

Your Customers’ Behaviour Has Drastically Changed

The first sign you need to pay attention to is your customers’ behaviour.

If you notice that you can’t reach your customers as easily as you used to, and they don’t get in touch as often, it might be a sign that their behaviour has changed.

This can either be because of the customer experiences related to your business or due to the drastic changes that the last years have brought upon the private and public sector.

During the Covid19 pandemic, we, as customers, shifted our consumption behaviour: we almost exclusively ordered things online (groceries, food, clothes, etc.), and we avoided public places or travelling.

The pandemic restrictions changed how businesses see and use technology.

Such a dramatic change in our behaviour made most businesses shift their brick-and-mortar business solutions, towards digital and online alternatives. One of the most universally noticeable examples is restaurants switching to online menus and delivery-only sales cycles.

The pandemic doubled the demand for food-delivery apps.

When your customers’ expectations go through such a sudden change, you should listen to their needs and adapt your business strategy accordingly.

Human Errors Are More and More Frequent

When the team is growing, it’s a good sign that the company is scaling. 

But sometimes under this pressure of expanding, human errors begin to happen even more frequently in daily tasks. Human error is natural, but it can be prevented. 

With processes multiplying, and workflow needing reorganisation, you need to evaluate your work methods. 

Making changes like using automation for repetitive tasks that no longer need a human touch or manual processing.

Digital business solutions like process automation remove the often-unpredictable human variable in order to make your operations more efficient and reliable. It eliminates manual tasks, reduces errors, and frees up staff to focus on higher-value tasks. Automation can also improve accuracy and consistency, boost productivity and performance, and save time and money. tools.

Your Internal Processes Became More Complex

A larger team determines the management to create new departments and new procedures. This leads to more complex and interconnected business workflows.

If the information flow is not clear or divided between different tools of communication, the tasks often fail to be completed in time. No one likes to wait for more than they have to.

Considering this, connecting all operations to a single source, like bespoke software, could be the best technological solution for any responsible business.

This can be achieved through the use of automation tools such as workflow software, task management software, and business process automation software. These tools can be used to streamline processes, reduce costs, and improve efficiency by automating repetitive tasks. Additionally, custom software can be used to integrate various systems and applications to streamline data exchange between departments and facilitate data sharing between different stakeholders. This can help increase collaboration, reduce errors, and improve the overall productivity of the business.

A Lot of Your Work Is On Paper

Sometimes scratching ideas on paper never gets old, we have to admit that.

But if you are a mid-size business, that keeps all the operations on paper, we think it’s safe to say that at one point data is going to begin missing and piles of files will suffocate your space.

Searching for information, creating reports can really take infinitely more time than doing them with the help of an application. 

Free data storage solutions like cloud storage, object storage, database storage can do the trick. But having a dedicate app for your business is a management solution key component.

Apps are fast, smart, and easy to use. Employees can have easy access to information, and you as the owner can track everything more efficiently. 

You Never Have Time to Implement New Ideas

You probably have an agenda or a spreadsheet full of ideas meant to grow and improve your business… but they never see daylight because you are too busy with operational tasks. 

That could mean your business lies too much on your shoulders and you need to transfer your knowledge into a system where everyone can have access to it.

An automated solution can free you from endless meetings and operations that now depend on your presence. Custom data center apps can store information but also organize it.

Having the information easily accessible to everyone will also raise transparency and trust among employees and facilitate teams communication.

Just One or Two Employees Know Essential Workflows for Your Company

In every company, there are a few key employees that probably have been there from day one and own a lot of information and insights. 

This is manageable as long as the business is small and the work is divided between a set of certain people.

But the moment you bring new members onboard, the old employees will be busy transfering knowledge to the new employees, instead of actualy doing their job.

So the solution is to create an internal platform where you could gather all the procedures and information that is part of the internal communication process.

This type of management solution can the core of your business transformation.

You’re Losing Ground Before Your Competitors and Can’t Tell Why

Did you ever find yourself wondering how your competitors manage to launch new products, have a bigger volume of clients and balance everything? 

They might be a step ahead by incorporating digital technologies to their business processes.

Market shifts can dictate the next steps your business should take.

A market crash or even a pandemic can dramatically change the workforce behaviour and the economy itself.

Your competitors might foresee these changes and prepare and adapt their business through the help of technology.

Automation and custom software systems tailored for your business needs could make a lot of difference – bring progress in the workflow as well as help you deliver faster services to your clients, new and better products.

You Haven’t Changed Anything in your Business for Years

Logic dictates that if something is working well, why change it, right? This is also called the comfort zone and most of us are caught up in it.

While it might seem logical to not change something that works ok, this doesn’t apply in the digital world.

Technology, unfortunately, gets outdated rather fast and even if it’s easier to keep the old tech for short-term profit, it can turn out to be quite a black hole in the long run.

Changing the mindset around technology can be difficult. But it’s better to step outside of your comfort zone in order to bring up an organisational culture based on growth and innovation.

A simple technology audit will tell you what’s old and you can start your research for adopting modern, fast technologies from there.

Application modernization is an important process for businesses to stay competitive in the marketplace. Modernizing an app helps businesses to keep up with the latest technologies, improve user experience, reduce development costs and time, and ultimately increase customer engagement.

You Don’t Leverage Business Metrics to Their Fullest

If you are running a data-driven business, you have a lot of data on your hands for sure.

If you find yourself in the odd situation of not knowing what to do with all that data (except storing it), then you might lose a lot of valuable information about your business.

Being unable to leverage all the metrics you collect can be easily fixed with Machine Learning or AI solutions. 

Smart dashboards, for example, can aggregate large volumes of data, collected from various places and therefore give you a comprehensive overview of your business’s current status.

Moreover, as visionary companies try to predict future outcomes using predictive analysis practices, it’s safe to say that by extracting information from data sets it’s getting easier and easier to determine patterns, trends, or just enhancements to future human behaviors or business activities.

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If your business has at least a few of these “symptoms”, you should think about enhancing some of the traditional methods and make some changes to keep up with the digital evolution and get better results. 

Don’t know where to start? 

You could ask for an expert’s opinion and for a quick analysis. Fabrit’s technical business analysts could advise you and give you some ideas of how to enhance your existing IT practices to accommodate your digital vision and make it agile.

We can help you identify new tools or technologies that you may need to invest in for digital transformation while striking a fine balance between traditional and digital business models.