Getting lost in the digital world? You’re not alone. If you are a small business or an entrepreneur you’re aware of the difficulty to keep up with the changing tech environment. The digital economy connects us to what we want and need, providing convenience and choice. But with the digital market comes risk. The COVID-19 pandemic has not made it easy for organisations to rapidly adapt or transform along with these times. So if you’re in a position much like most companies right now, you’re trying to locate yourself in this digital economy and navigate these new waters. While South Africa has made a concerted effort in its 5-year digital economy plan, according to 4IR, failure and business disruptions have been inevitable. A major reason for this is the lack of finance, support, and knowledge of how to navigate the space. The other challenge is that there is no comprehensive understanding of the country’s digital economy, which makes it challenging to quantify its nature and size.
The digital economy affects consumption and production patterns. This includes the way goods and services are marketed, traded, and paid for. It is imperative now more than ever to understand the digital economy in order to succeed as a business. The Conversation elaborates how vital it is to understand the dynamics of a digital economy because of how integrated into ordinary life it has become. By understanding what makes up the digital core, businesses can now implement and incentivise their processes and strategies to accommodate where they are in the digital market.
The 4 Transformative Areas Of Industry In The Digital Market Are:
- Physical technology production
- Transformative tech applications
- Digital platforms
- Digitally traded services
The skills required to accelerate an organisation to keep up with the digital economy are influenced by your position within the current digital market. How innovative your company is and its ability to adapt to change determines the transformational process your company needs to go through. The ability to adapt to change is a key factor to keeping up with the digital economy and the risk it holds. The pandemic was a prime example and opportunity for businesses to take a step back and determine their position in the digital market. For some, it was a win, but for others, it was a major loss.
The 5 Enablers To Accelerate The Growth In The Digital Market And Economy Will Be:
- Digital inclusion
- Skills for work
- Responsive governance
- Innovation and competitiveness
- Digitising traded services
When you use the right technologies for your business, you not only achieve your short-term or long-term goals, you also help position yourself within the digital market contributing and transforming your countries global economy. In comparison to offline businesses, SMEs that integrate digital technology can diversify their customer base much more quickly by:
- Increasing revenue
- Providing access to a higher customer base
- Increasing operational efficiency
- Enhancing customer experience
To be a digital leader within the current digital economy cannot be done in silos. Partnering with key digital partners will be the gold that keeps you winning. Understanding the needs and gaps in the digital market can better position you in your reach and influence. The need for digital transformation within the economy can only start from within. Playing a role in facilitating the momentum and growth of this need potentially helps expand your customer base and sets you apart from the competition.
Due to COVID-19’s unprecedented disruption, the importance of agility, adaptability, and transformation has increased. The next ten years will see a 70% change in value being created in the economy due to digitally-enabled platform business models. However, 47% of the world’s population remains unconnected to the internet. By locating where you are in the digitally enabled spectrum, you are more likely to take action and accelerate the rate at which you implement the necessary change.
The 5 key areas where businesses can accelerate their digital transformation lie within the following:
1. Think ‘virtual first’
Determine how the physical can be replaced with technology and what cyber strategies are needed to support a predominantly digital workplace and workforce. Investigate where technology can enable a more human-centred workforce despite going digital. A great deal of progress has been made in using video and audio visits with providers because of the pandemic. This not only saves costs on infrastructure but also creates new budgets for more digital investment. Until tried, no one thought it was practical or efficient. Look at key areas that can be technologically enhanced or influenced. This also motivates employees to adapt to the digital times and become more familiar and comfortable with technology.
2. Take advantage of the cloud
With cloud capabilities, businesses are able to move at the pace of their markets. This is good news for staying at the top of the digital market. With cloud migration, organizations can increase their standardization, automation, and scalability while gaining a much greater degree of agility. The cloud helps improve the transport of data more efficiently and the security behind running systems through the cloud is a big differentiator. This is one of the main reasons to shift over to the cloud.
3. Whenever possible, automate decision-making
In a world where data and information are in excess, data overload is possible. Automating decision-making can benefit organisations greatly. The majority of businesses operate in high volume, incurring significant costs, but requiring little supervision by humans. In addition to putting thresholds in place to flag each input requiring human intervention, AI/ML technologies allow organizations to automate the rest of the process. Automated decision-making does not prevent mistakes from happening, but it can greatly streamline the process of identifying and addressing problems, allowing early detection, automated correction attempts, and improved recovery time when necessary.
4. Increasing innovation in products/services
Team members and staff can now use AI and data analytics to enhance discovery, modelling, and prediction, allowing them to develop prototypes and test products and services faster while reducing risk. In a digital market, this type of process is vital in achieving success. To understand and investigate if a product or service is thriving you need to establish its position in the digital market. Innovation is key in a digital economy which is why products and services need to constantly be improved on and evaluated in the market.
5. Drive acceleration
What is key for a successful business in a digital economy is how agile, innovative, and resilient it is. However, no matter how innovative and futuristic products are, the key members of the organisation and their traditional thinking can often hinder the fruit of how well in the digital market they last. In order to drive acceleration in a digital market, one has to. Become an accelerator. Driving digital transformation comes with forward-thinking, innovative products and services, as well as a key understanding of the digital market and economy.
Investing in digital transformation not only helps enterprises keep up with today’s technology–it also allows them to easily add new capabilities onto their existing technology stack. Currently, a digital economy strategy is essential for any company wanting to survive and thrive in a competitive online environment. This is what we offer our clients. We at DigiRev make technology work for you. Click here to get in touch!
Recent Comments