Digital Transformation for the SMB as a Transition to Greater Operational Security

Although we have been talking about Digital Transformation for years now, the resistance of some businesses is a sign that, in fact, real change must be made starting from the top. Indeed, entering a change management perspective, and starting on a path of true renewal, means devoting effort to optimizing processes, but also security in terms of return on investment.

Leading your business to success means, over time, consolidating a whole range of practices and processes. Over the years, the SME has codified a kind of unwritten "instructions" on operations, based on decades of practice and analysis of previous results. Like all procedures, however, this one also needs innovation; that is why working on Digital Transformation becomes not just a mere possibility, but a concrete need, apt to improve both our presence as a brand and our operational efficiency and security.

Digital Transformation as a Transition of a Mindset

Moving to digital-based business management involves more than just adapting one's systems and procedures to today's technologies. The bigger step involves a complete revolution of one's way of conceiving business, working on the habits that have been metabolized by now and performing a kind of "Copernican revolution" of established practices.

Resources, tasks, but more generally the entire organizational set-up must undergo a process of internal revision; everything must be put under the scrutiny of technological and managerial novelties, setting a target that is exponentially more consistent, precisely because of these changes.

This is not a "black hole" revolution, however; each strategy must undergo a painstaking study of data, trends and precise procedures, ranging from the choice and implementation of different on-demand services, to the corporate organizational structure, to the application of the latest and most favorable corporate and human policies.

What to focus on?

In applying the digital transformation paradigm to one's business, one must keep the focus on three pillars: technology, business and people.

The first point should be referred to by the company's entire IT system, which must certainly adapt to the digital innovation race of the moment; while looking for cutting-edge digital tools, services and products is extremely important, it is equally crucial to focus on the professional figures most in line with this kind of innovation.

Here, then, is where a people-oriented corporate approach first invests the HR sector; looking for appropriate talent means ensuring a corporate ecosystem that is attractive, both in form and concretely. Especially in recent times, when practices such as job hopping are becoming more and more common (and especially among new recruits), creating a work environment that focuses on employment branding is the winning weapon for those who want to make long-term investments in their employees and internal retention.

It goes without saying that in a well-designed and digitized work environment, these kinds of practices are also reflected in the customer. The H2H (Human to Human) approach embraces a whole series of initiatives and actions that can have an interesting return both on the brand and corporate side, resulting in the natural growth of business.

The technologies needed and some related trends

It is clear that we are therefore talking about a project that is not simple and not subdued; it is a continuous and perfectible transition, and more than 60 percent of companies today still consider themselves dissatisfied with the result achieved in the digital transformation process (McKinsey data).

Technology trends certainly include cloud services, and everything related to the mobile internet (the latest focus also favored on the mktg side). Big Data, Small Data and related architectures, which have seen the development across the board of specialists in data analysis, now increasingly oriented toward paths contaminated by programming and growth optics. Internet of Things, Design Thinking, and RPA (Robotics Process Automation) are the vanguard in digital transformation, because these are multi-channel and multi-source approaches, in which the landing of skills from different digital and technological fields, but not only, come together to have increasingly surprising and growing results.

Artificial intelligence (AI) finally, and machine learning, open the door to human-machine development on parallel and complementary tracks; the growth of our understanding of machine reasoning mechanisms and their potential, as well as the precision and updating of new languages and related technologies, open the door on technological development that, if applied smartly to our business strategies, can catapult a fairly receptive business very high.