At its core, digital transformation is exactly what it sounds like:
“The process of integrating newer and more sophisticated examples of digital technology across all areas of your business, thus fundamentally changing how things operate for the better along the way.”
But at the same time, it’s also so much more than that. It’s a unique opportunity to not only streamline engagements but eliminate manual processes in favor of automated alternatives as well. It also helps to create the most important benefit of all: empowering you to create a better customer experience with a free flow of information on demand to customers, typically for the first time in your history.
Of course, getting to that point requires you to move beyond digital transformation itself. Once your technological evolution is complete, the next step involves sharpening the tools you’ve acquired to fully unlock all of those benefits outlined above. Getting to that point isn’t necessarily difficult — but it does require you to keep a few important things in mind.
Empowering Engagements, One Step at a Time
As you move beyond your digital transformation, maybe the most important area for you to focus on has to do with how you and your people are actually engaging with your customers. The tools are officially available for you to do this in a better way than ever before. Now, it’s up to you to actually put them to good use.
Your business will have a new level of mobile capability coming out of digital transformation, for example, which absolutely should be utilized to your advantage. Not only will it be easier to share information and insight between departments, but all of that data can also be accessed from any location on Earth with an active Internet connection. This includes via not only desktops and laptops but smartphones, tablets, and other devices.
This means that your employees now have the tools needed to better engage with customers on-the-go or at THEIR location, not yours. This type of purpose-driven technological shift doesn’t just create better engagements with your clients on a day-to-day basis. It also makes your professional services firm far more valuable to your client base as well.
The Power of Automation in the Modern Business Enterprise
One of the major reasons why enterprises go through a digital transformation in the first place often comes down to the idea of automation. Rather than paying high-value employees to focus on routine tasks like data entry or document management, you can turn those jobs over to artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning (ML) powered solutions to handle everything on their behalf.
Think about it like this: every minute that one of your employees is focused on these everyday jobs is a minute they’re not supporting and empowering your business’ relationship with your customers. AI, on the other hand, is perfect for examining large sets of data and extracting the most meaningful insights in a way that humans could never match in the first place.
From that perspective, automation doesn’t just once again create an opportunity for you to provide a better and more personal level of care to your customers. It’s also an incredible chance to eliminate manual, repetitive and error-prone processes in a way that allows you to become more efficient as a business with far less overhead at the same time.
A Bold New Customer Experience Begins Now
Finally, we arrive at what is perhaps the most important driver behind digital transformation for many professional services firms: enhancing the quality of the customer experience they’re able to offer.
A rock-solid information management system can absolutely act as the foundation between your professional services firm and your customers — but that doesn’t mean that it won’t require a little additional work on your part after the transformation is complete.
Here, you’ll need to focus on two core areas, including:
- Removing any and all obstacles that prevent personnel from serving the customers in the best way possible. This means making sure that information about customers is available to anyone who needs it, whenever and wherever they need it, no exceptions. This enables them to not only make better decisions in the heat of the moment, but to avoid the duplication of documents and requests as well.
- Reducing friction (and costs) to focus on delivering your critical services. As outlined above, you should absolutely be using your digital transformation as an opportunity to digitize and automate as many of those menial administrative processes as possible, all so that your actual human employees can devote the majority of their attention to those tasks that truly need them.
If you’d like to find out more information about the many ways in which professional services firms can reap digital dividends as we collectively move beyond the concept of digital business transformation, or if you’d just like to discuss your own needs with someone in a bit more detail, set some time aside with us.
Source: https://www.m-files.com/blog/3-ways-professional-services-firms-can-reap-dividends-as-we-move-beyond-digital-transformation/
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