What's the Digitalizations Role in Business Growth
Businesses have made a lot of new ground in the past few years, facing frightening uncertainties and new opportunities. Now that business operations and how people work have changed so rapidly, digitalization is a direction to consider for your own company and could be an essential one. According to a study conducted by the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, majority of small business owners use technology in their business, and 87% of them say it helped them grow in challenging conditions. Here we’ll discuss how digitalization plays a role in developing a business and keeping it afloat:
Incorporating technology into your business model
Digitalization isn’t just about using technology in only some parts of the company’s operations; it also involves integrating it throughout your business. Amazon took advantage of the growing e-commerce market early on and transformed itself from an online bookstore into the ultimate retailer. As author Brian Dumaine notes in Bezonomics, Amazon has become one of the most efficient wealth-creation machines in history, with more than 2% of U.S. household income spent on the company’s nearly 500 million products shipped from warehouses in seventeen countries. The company’s business model has effectively changed the retail industry and cloud computing, and its reach has spread to media and advertising. Besides commissions and fees, they earn through subscription models like Amazon Prime, the Kindle reading device for ebooks, affiliate programs, and more. These diverse sources of revenue are all made possible with the use of technology.
Filling a need
Having a means of tracking trends can make sure your business can be the first and best provider in a potential market. As pointed out by Alibaba: The House That Jack Ma Built author Duncan Clark, China’s shopping culture valued e-commerce over traditional establishments like shopping malls and supermarkets. Alibaba was able to capitalize on that way of life by having many products available to order on the website, allowing customers to save time and money by keeping their shopping in one place. Awareness of current culture and tastes can give business owners the information needed to adjust how to market the company, improve products or services, and address the needs and wants of consumers. Digitalization can help your business be the first or best to address a need by making your business more accessible and easier to navigate.
Understanding your customers
Knowing your customers' behavior and interests can allow your business to stay updated without getting lost in the shuffle. In a recent Composity blog post about the biggest problems small business owners face, we talked about how a business's online presence need not be limited to expensive or hard-to-maintain websites, but tapping into social media platforms offer plenty of opportunities. The fast food chain Wendy’s reached out to a younger demographic through social media. Rather than go a more traditional marketing route, they posted memes and roasted other brands and even their own on their Twitter account, garnering them millions of followers. According to an article from Better Marketing, this even translated to an almost 50% growth in net income for Wendy’s. They knew that there was a massive number of potential customers who used social media regularly, were able to understand the humor they enjoyed, and combined the two to grow their business.
Digitalization is a great way to grow your business and help it adapt to the changes in the world. Though customers’ needs and behavior might change over time, Composity’s CRM software wants to help your business meet them where they are.
exclusively written for composity.com
by Ronni Jane