Business Strategy

There is some confusion regarding whether digitization is a part of building a digital business.

Lack of some level of digitization (and automation) of existing processes and the digitization of data from paper carriers is necessary to build a digital business. Without it, you may not be ready for any significant change in your journey to become truly digital in your business.

What is sometimes called digital change is sometimes “just” digitization (turning paper into electronic information into processes). You need digitization in order to optimize your digital business but digitization of processes does not equal a digital business. What matters is the combination, strategic and prioritized interconnecting initiatives. The actions you take to achieve business goals through digitization and digital projects gets you on the journey.

Digitization occurs mainly in back office processes. Most true digital initiatives are on the front end and customer facing while taking advantage of great digitization.

Customers get frustrated with business where we’re forced to use paper, the phone or channels we really don’t want to use anymore. One very prominent investment firm still forces me to print out transfer instructions, get them notarized and then fax them to the company. It is very time consuming and clearly out of synch with customer expectations in today’s digital world. They aren’t changing though. That is the way it has always been done.

Back office digitization needs to connect to the customer goals. It also has an impact on employee engagement even if it is internal facing.