Technology is developing at such a fast rate that it’s scary! Driverless cars are just around the corner, a lot of us can unlock our smartphones with our thumbprints, and smart homes are poised to become the norm in a few years. With all this feverish development, it can be easy for businesses to fall behind the curve. If you’re worried about this, here are some key steps for modernising any business.
Understand the Customer Journey
Over the past decade or so, technology has warped the customer journey beyond recognition! As businesses and consumers have become more and more focussed on digital technology, the way people interact with businesses like yours has been totally transformed. The average customer has become used to having access to multi channel solutions in the buying process, and being able to communicate directly with a rep through social media. Understanding these kinds of standards is essential to the success of any modern business. Do some customer journey mapping for your business as it is, and identify any areas of obsolescence.
Point Out Opportunities and Threats
Once you have a clear idea of your customer base’s experience and expectations, your next step should be analysing the situation further, and figuring out the best way to respond. This is mostly just identifying opportunities to improve your customers’ experiences, and gain a competitive advantage, all the while keeping an eye out for potential risks that can bring down your level of service, and in turn lose revenue. Having done this, rank opportunities according to how much potential they have, and risks according to how severe they are. This will make your next steps much easier to plan.
Prototype, Test, Act, Repeat
Change is essential for a business’s success, but as I mentioned above, it’s also fraught with risk. It would be a very bad move for you to rush into any big decisions without any kind of hard data to back them up. Fortunately, modern tech offers us all kinds of channels for gathering the data that matters, and makes building and testing your products significantly less expensive. If innovation has been lacking somewhat at your company, use the tech you have at your disposal to encourage a culture of experimentation. Continuous prototyping, testing, and action will ensure that you can carry on adapting to the ever-changing market.
Formalise your Changes
After all this transformation, you need to make sure that it reaches every single facet of the company, and is formalised in a way that will carry your business into the future. As outdated policies and procedures get phased out, you should be bringing new ones in and making sure that all your staff realises they’re set in stone. This will be easy enough for you and the higher-ups in charge of modernisation, but may prove to be a little more challenging for your base workforce. Keep on monitoring the shift for as long as it takes.
If you’re afraid your business was becoming outdated, follow these steps to carry it into the future.
(Photo Credit Max Pixel)