There is no doubt that the beginning of the year 2017 witnessed a sneak peak in Digital Transformation trends. From the integration of sales with content marketing to the rise of AI integrated services such as Alexa (Amazon)and Cortana (Microsoft), 2017 emerged as yet another “digitally transformed” year of the business era. According to an article published on progress website, “85% of entrepreneurs now feel that they have a timeframe of two years to make significant inroads on their digital transformation before suffering financially and/or falling behind their competitors.”

“There is a strong urge among large enterprises to adapt new digital technologies rather than to evolve or depend on the existing ones to revamp their business model.”, says B2B business growth expert, Ian Altman.

So, why suddenly every business owner became more conscious and desirable to revamp their existing business model?

What is the need which made them to digitally transform their business model at the first place?

What are some Digital Transformation trends that change the face of business models?

Need of Digital Transformation – Key Driving Factors?

Due to change in customer preferences with time and increase in number of brands competing against each other, such type of digital transformation is inevitable. Trends in digital transformation evolve with the change in consumer and market needs. With the advent of this digital age, customers preferences are not only limited to traditional way but they have embraced technology in their day to day life.

Customers now like to shop through a mobile app rather than through a nearby shop. They are more inclined towards brands that provides them best consumer experience and a better solution to satisfy their basic needs. An article published on “flurry analytics blog” conveys that “90 percent of consumer’s mobile time is spent in apps”. Consumers nowadays are more digital conscious than ever.

Entrepreneurs or business owners that are well aware of this fact know the importance of digital transformation at this age. They are aware that in order to be competent in their business segment, they need to embrace digital transformation as a part of their business strategy.

Howard King, in an article published on the guardian website opines that “Three key factors that are likely to drive the urge of digital transformation for a business are change in consumer demand, change in technology and change in competition”. According to Howard, “Digital transformation is accelerating nowadays more than ever as the three key factors reached the tipping point. When the tipping point is reached, businesses have no better situation than to evolve digitally according to its consumers and market needs”.

Succinctly put, businesses transform digitally as it is the only sole method of survival in their market segment.

Digital Transformation Trends that took 2017 by storm

Now, that you’re well aware of the importane of digital transformation, let’s dive into some digital transformation trends that made 2017 a profitable year for businesses:

Prioritized Customer Experience (CX) – As more agile technologies began to dominate business world, customer experience had become a top-notch priority to establish a healthy business-to-customer relationship. According to the Gartner website, “By 2018, more than 50% of organizations will implement significant business model changes in their efforts to improve customer experience.” This means an improved customer experience is on the top of the trends in digital transformation. Artificial Intelligence (AI) and Machine Learning – Artificial Intelligence continued to draw attention in improving overall business performance. Major business analysts consider AI as the largest key differentiator in business competitive segment. According to them, Implementing AI technology as a part of the business model will make any business stronger than its competitors. Moreover, AI, when combined with machine learning, has an ability to solve complex problems in the real time. An example of AI is Alexa – a voice tracking system by amazon which has recently formed alliance with Microsoft’s Cortana to take the partnership to a next level. Internal Silos Breakdown – A massive breakdown of internal silos is another ongoing trend among important trends of digital transformation. Gone are those days where organizations need to rely on different siloed teams for operating any business. These siloed teams used to rely on the approval of their upper management to achieve common business goals which greatly hampered the performance of those Organizations. Digitization has eased such sort of complexity by breaking internal silos in order to make them collaborate directly for achieving common goals. Big data and analytics – Digital transformation has made organization capable of analyzing data that can further be implemented in a strategy in the form of technologies such as big data and analytics. Data in the form of customer feedback or traffic/ conversion has helped organizations to understand the needs of their customers. Organizations are now capable of taking bigger decisions on the basis of analyzing data in the form of conversions better than ever. Cloud Computing – With organizational environments depending on cloud technology more than ever, employees and staff members have the independence of working from anywhere and everywhere possible. 2017 witnessed the benefit of leveraging on cloud technology in terms of more productivity and reduced cost and expenses.

Final thoughts on Digital Transformation

Above mentioned trends in Digital Transformation concluded that it is not a mere buzzword anymore. In fact, it is now a reality that has made organizations capable of succeeding in their market segment.

1.5 (30.67%) 90 votes