How to avoid the trap of digital transformation?
It’s amazing how many myths the concept of “digital transformation” has gathered around it. The most common (and this is often how they try to sell a digital product to the client), is this: digital business is cheaper and more efficient in terms of savings. You automate everything there, make a website, a mobile app, and you already have AI instead of a “shelf” of employees. And you will also earn 1000 times more… That’s not true, of course.
The secret of digital transformation and generally the use of any IT technology in business is its expediency at the moment and for a particular company. Here is an example. You have 50 employees in your call center. They work well, and their performance is high. But then the opportunity arises to replace them with a voice assistant with artificial intelligence or other new technology. The temptation to use is great. The voice assistant does look a lot like a live person. But it costs a lot of money to implement the technology. And it needs 10 developers, who cost as much as the call center employees. But that’s not all: the dissonance of customers, when communicating with a “robot” is great, as a result you have to return 10 employees to the call center, because some refuse to communicate with a faceless system. As a result, some customers are put off by the new approach. Sales drop. And costs don’t decrease, or even increase.
This notional example shows how mindless use of new technology can be detrimental. Many people buy cheap alternatives, but we must remember: IT and technology are expensive! If you take a cheap analogue, you have all chances to blow (even if relatively little) money down the drain. Since such a product won’t be effective for business at all. There are exceptions, of course, but they are few and far between, and usually you have to pay for the comfortable cost of the product.
What to do. Plan, calculate and analyze. Every IT decision separately and all together as a whole. Focusing only on yourself and your business, rather than being trapped in a dogma: “the competitors have implemented, so we should too. Then both digital transformation and individual digital systems for your business will be truly effective and bring many benefits. By the way, this doesn’t just apply to different SaaS services and automation systems. A website, a mobile app, or even a simple webpage should be approached in exactly the same way.
More stories on https://en.artofdigital.ru/
