7 KEY STRATEGIES FOR IMPLEMENTING A SOLID DIGITAL TRANSFORMATION IN YOUR BUSINESS
With the right Digital Transformation strategy, your business can weather almost any storm & become positioned for long term success.
Kelly Idehen
So how do you bring about Digital Transformation for your business, whether new or old? Below I will share with you 7 key strategies you must consider.
7 KEY STRATEGIES
1. Don’t be afraid of New: Don’t be afraid to try something new outside the old traditional way of doing things. Phones were supposed to be designed for call alone, but one day somebody decided to put a camera in a phone. Today, a phone without a camera cannot be considered as a phone, today, a phone is rated by the power and quality of its camera. So, to succeed at digital transformation you must first remove fear, learn to break and decouple things. Learn to try out new ideas and explore new processes.
2. Re-align Your Business Model: Most businesses are currently operating without a dedicated business model. Many business owners don’t even have an idea what a proper business model canvas should look like; this is dangerous. If you want to have a safe and successful digital transformation, then you must ensure you first develop a well-structured, flexible and modern business model. Develop a clear view understanding of all the small important moving parts in your business, only then can you properly plug-in digital transformation into it.
3. Shift from Survival to Thrive Mentality: A lot of businesses are merely ‘just’ existing; hoping that someday things will miraculously get better. This is a very dangerous hope to assume. For some business, all they can think of and plan towards is how to survive the current month and pay their workers salary. With this kind of mentality, your business will not go very far. Do what you must to move away from the survival mentality, reinvent your business in such a way that the general attitude and focus is how to thrive and blossom instead of merely surviving. Innovation is the key to beat this stagnancy where many businesses lie and wither away.
4. Retrain, Retool & Re-kit: Many businesses are stuck with the workforce and mindset of older generations. They still use outdated technologies and operate in the same ways and models since the company was founded. In this fast paced and easy to disrupt business environment, every business must ensure they are stocked with a dynamic, creative, and well trained workforce. They must always be on the search for tools and technologies that can give their business the additional advantage.
5. Float like a butterfly, Sting like a Bee: Most of the successful business in Silicon Valley used this strategy. The strategy of lean operation, the strategy of accepting and learning from failure. In fact, failure was almost celebrated as a culture. This attitude, coupled with lean and flexible operational models allowed for different kinds of iterations which helped many Silicon Valley businesses grow fast, and grow fat. So to succeed at Digital Transformation follow the Muhammad Ali model of floating like a butterfly and stinging like a bee. Make your business operation lean, be flexible enough to iterate on new models, strategies and tools. Move fast, fail faster, but most importantly develop a structure that can allow easy scaling of your business.
6. Go Beyond Customer Management – Deepen customer experience and customer relationship: As the competition becomes stiffer and profit margins become tighter, customers will be the ultimate deciders for whether your business thrive or not. To remain relevant, every business will need to find creative ways to add value for their customers. The best way to achieve this is by deepening customer relationship, fostering customer engagement and optimizing customer experience. In a world where the United States president can without protocol, Tweet at anyone and in a world where a dissatisfied user can bring down your brand reputation with a viral Instagram video; every business needs to understand the importance of making themselves available for active engagement on digital platforms. The goal is to by whatever means, ensure that the customer knows and see that your business is always willing to listen to their concerns and that you care deeply about their unique challenges. Don’t just build a customer base, build a loyal customer community.
7. Keep your eyes on the horizon – Develop your own emerging technology strategy – R&D: In the year 2007, Nokia had over 50% of the market share for mobile phones. They were the undisputed champion when it came to the phone market, but by 2013 (less than 7 years later) they only had about 3% of the mobile phone market which was now being dominated by the Apple through their IPhones and Android phones from SamSung, Sony et al.
Today, technological platforms like social media has disrupted print advertising, crypto-currencies are threatening old financial institutions, ecommerce platforms like Amazon, Alibaba and Jumia are threatening physical shopping done on brick & mortar stores. As the cliché goes, “The only thing that is constant is change”. Preparing your business for change before it happens is the smart way to go.
Every business needs to have an emerging technology strategy; your business needs to be active in research and development of new service channels or products that will add value for you and your customers. You need to explore possible ways in which emerging technologies like AI, Blockchain, Virtual Reality, 3D printing etc. can be integrated into your business processes to optimize value for your product or service offerings.
To survive the business landscape of the future, you will need to have a digital transformation strategy. I have shared 7 key points you should take into account if you want to make your business resilient and digitally sturdy to weather the storm of disruptions that will come upon every business now and in the future.
Like the bible story of the 10 virgins, 5 were wise and brought extra oil for their lamp, the other 5 were classified as foolish, they didn’t think it important to come prepared with extra oil. At midnight when light was most needed, only the 5 wise virgins were prepared with lamps burning bright.
This analogy fits perfectly into the business clime today, the question is, will your business start the preparation today to add in the much needed extra oil of digital transformation?
Or you want to wait till the midnight of crisis and run around in panic looking for extra oil? This is the great call for every business today.
In my book, 2020s & The Future Beyond, I share some very revealing insights on what the future for business will look like as the fourth industrial revolution (#4IR), Artificial Intelligence, Robots and other emerging technologies bear down on us. Click here to learn more.
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2020s & The Future Beyond, is a book that dives deeply into what the future of this decade and the ones that will come after will look like; especially as it relates to the development of AI and other emerging technologies. Click here to learn more.
- Published in Business & Economy, Digital Transformation
MAJOR TRENDS FOR THE 2020s – BUSINESS & ECONOMY SHAKEUP, MASSIVE INDUSTRY SHIFTS & GLOBAL DISRUPTIONS
Surviving in a new world of smooth global economic shifts require that the individual understands how the simple flapping of butterfly wings can lead to a tornado thousands of miles away, or better still: how the outcome of a board game such as Go, can redirect the fate of billions of people globally.
Technology has broken down borders across nations, cultures, and ideologies. Globalization and identifying as a global citizen is now an ideological norm for many people, especially those of the millennial generation (and generations after them).
Through the Internet and, more recently the Internet of Things (IoTs), the web of our vastly interconnected world has become more susceptible to the idea of the butterfly effect. One computer program or technological breakthrough can lead to massive global disruption reaching down to people and communities who are naturally hard to access physically.
With information moving at the speed of light, policies from one end of the earth can affect millions of people at the other end of the earth, whether they want it or not. The stock market is now more volatile, easily susceptible to 280 character tweets from people such as Donald Trump or Elon Musk.
One successful business model can quickly come out-of-the-blue to become cancer that eats away the livelihood of millions of people all over the world. For example taxi drivers worldwide have no response to Uber’s malignant encroach into their domain. Furthermore, Uber can confidently do this without owning a single car while sitting at their corporate headquarters somewhere in Silicon Valley. On another hand, companies like Air BnB without owning a single building or hiring any hospitality staff can confidently give hotels all over the world a run for their money.
New job roles such as user experience designer, millennial generational expert, drone operator, driverless car engineer, wearable app developers, cloud service specialist, social media managers, etc. will continue to gain more traction even as some older jobs like taxi/truck driver, teller/cashier, sales reps, call center operators, etc. become slowly deprecated. Surviving landslides at such a global level will require that you and I approach updates and events all over the world with the keen eyes of a futurist.
The ability to pay attention to seemingly insignificant changes and updates will matter (remember the butterfly effect), even if this means paying attention to the tweets of Donald Trump or progress report from a small startup company like NeuraLink (a company owned by Elon Musk – with a mission to connect the human brain to computers). In this new age, to be forewarned is to be forearmed for survival.
China is one country that seems to have understood the zeitgeist of things for our world today. Since their Go champion was defeated (discombobulated) by Google’s Deep Mind AI, they have, as a nation, charted a new course for the ship of their country. Their destination is to land on the shores of global AI dominance. Losing one simple board game has pivoted the Chinese economy into cashing big in the AI sector – An industry projected to reach a valuation of $3.9 trillion by the year 2022 according to Gartner. This bold shift by the Chinese towards AI will not end in China. It will have a ricochet on another AI leader, the United States. Another very prominent example is the US-Huawei saga.
Whether for fear of technological dominance or fear of national security, the clash between the US and Huawei, which is a clash between the US and China will have indelible ramifications on the global economy and will filter down to everyone, even in the remotest part of the world. As these two superpower economies clash, the splinters from this clash will filter down into many other economies and nations. Overall this will have significant impact on the shape of humanity’s destiny.
Surviving in a new world of smooth global economic shifts require that the individual understands how the simple flapping of butterfly wings can lead to a tornado thousands of miles away, or better still: how the outcome of a board game such as Go, can redirect the fate of billions of people globally.
This cosmopolitan view of the world is needed in order for you to understand how you may be affected by the proliferation of technologies such as self-driving cars, augmented and virtual reality, nanotechnology, blockchain/cryptocurrencies, etc.
A universal cliché going forward into this new era will be, ‘To be forewarned is to be forearmed for survival.’
To your success and mine in the coming months and years.
Note: This article piece is an excerpt from chapter 4 of my book, 2020s & The Future Beyond. Click here to learn more.
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2020s & The Future Beyond, is a book that dives deeply into what the future of this decade and the ones that will come after will look like; especially as it relates to the development of AI and other emerging technologies. Click here to learn more.
- Published in Business & Economy
DANGEROUS ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE – BIG BROTHER ALGORITHMS
According to statistics, people spend an average of 4hrs 25min of their time online, and at least over 2 hours of their time on social media daily.
As immersive technologies like VR and AR become more available, this number will increase.
A major aspect of our perception will undoubtedly be shaped by the content we digest from these platforms where we spend our time. The caveat here is that a majority of the content we see on our feed is determined by ruthlessly-efficient algorithms. Even the results we get on Google search are determined by independent algorithms.
Recently (sometime in 2019), Google’s CEO, Sundar Pichai was summoned before the United States Congress to explain why an image search for the word idiot will show picture after picture of President Trump. Many of the other congressmen also complained about the negative connotations that came up with their name search. The response of Google’s CEO was simple. There were robot algorithms controlling these results that even Google’s CEO himself could not tweak to favor the president of the United States. Even national issues such as a country’s election can now be affected by the way algorithms are made to swing on social media (Case of Facebook/Cambridge Analytical).
These algorithms were initially designed to keep us engaged, but as they get more efficient, our access to ‘non-masterminded’ varying sources of information becomes more limited.
You are targeted by marketers and ads that study your online behavior and know your location at every given time. You are recommended friends within a closed loop of former school mates, family members, similar interests, etc. You are inherently forced to live within a closed-loop or bubble of familiars.
For example, say you are struggling to come out of the habit of gambling but the majority of your friends on social media are still actively engaged in the practice. The social media algorithm that controls your feed will know no better but to do that which will reinforce the habit by showing content related to gambling and recommending you more gambling friends.
In the case of politics, if the majority of your friends are left-winged or members of a particular party, then the majority of the contents you would see will be biased. You may always end up having a partial or one-sided account on issues that need balanced dialectics. Issues such as one-sided or even fake news will continue to grow, fueled by algorithms that are smart enough to maximize engagement but not smart enough to discriminate against sentiments.
On a personal level, you and I must make conscious effort to systematically and occasionally weed out our online gardens (especially social media platforms). Periodically review your personal and business brand presence. Take cognizance of what appears when you or your business name is searched for online.
Be careful of the people you connect with, the groups you join, the nature of discussion you publicly contribute to; because the algorithmic big brother eyes of the Machine Learning Lord is watching you. Remember your digital presence and identity as a real person. People have fallen in love or gotten jobs worth millions online without any physical meeting. As technologies such as AR & VR gain more powers and become more ubiquitous, more premium and reality will be placed on the digital manifestations of ourselves on platforms such as social media.
Not to be as audacious as the ideas proposed by movies such as the ‘Matrix’, ‘Surrogate’ or the more recent ‘Ready Player One’ movie, we can say with some certainty that now and in the future, people will live two separate lives, one physical and one digitally virtual. Going into the 2020s and beyond, our digital life and realities will begin to take the ascendency over our physical lives.
It is essential therefore that you begin to cultivate and guard it jealously from the hands of a big-brother algorithm designed with one purpose only – to make profit off of your digital soul at any cost.
To your success and mine in the coming months and years.
Note: This article piece is an excerpt from my book, 2020s & The Future Beyond. Click here to learn more.
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2020s & The Future Beyond, is a book that dives deeply into what the future of this decade and the ones that will come after will look like; especially as it relates to the development of AI and other emerging technologies. Click here to learn more.
- Published in Artificial Intelligence, Futurism
POST CORONA ERA – LIFE IN THE FUTURE
Sarah could feel sweat begin to gather on her brow and spine as she swiveled on the chair of her GP2T work from home station, her SabiLens strapped on her face.
“Can you close a sale when you are under immense pressure?” the interviewer asked again, this time with something of an eerie smile formed across his face. Sarah knew the interviewer was an AI powered digital avatar, but even this did not erase that feeling of trepidation people face when they were in a job interview.
“Yes, I can Sarah answered”, mustering all the confidence she could into her voice and facial expression.
She continued, “While working as a physical sales agent for my previous employer, I often had to deal with complex situations and close deals under different scenarios… I believe I can transition these same set of skills into my work for your company as a virtual sales agent.”
There was an awkward pause, the interviewer’s face looked lifelessly blank; it appeared it was searching through its program files or source codes or whatever it was that made it seem human, for the next appropriate query for Sarah.
“You will now be trans-morphed to a simulated scenario where you have to deal with Mr. Okoro, an angry customer in one of our virtual malls” the AI interviewer responded, finally finding its voice.
Before Sarah could process the fact that she was going to experience her first taste of what selling to customers, albeit simulated, unreal and angry ones; the walls, the chairs, the tables and everything that made up the interview room she was just in seemed to dissolve around her.
In its place, what appeared to be a typical shop materialized, complete with people moving around and engaged in activities that would have passed as a typical day in any mall, only, this was virtual and simulated.
For Sarah, this was her first virtual interview. From her GP2T station in her small apartment in the suburb of Lagos, she could travel the world, go on virtual dates, attend virtual classes, hang out with friends, and even have sex with a virtual companion.. in fact, life in the virtual world was almost limitless.
Like many who had embraced this new reality, all Sarah needed to do was put on her SabiLens, connect her vital points to each node from the device, and viola! she was automatically transported into a digital virtual world where anything is possible, including as in her present case, have a live interview with an AI agent that looked human by all standards.
Since the pandemic of 2020, companies had embraced technologies that helped them automate their processes and limit inefficiency caused by humans. HR processes and Interviews were now carried out remotely and virtually. Companies utilized AI agents like the one Sarah was now dealing with in this interview.
As Sarah focused her attention on the new virtual scene, there by the counter, she noticed the Mr. Okoro, a short middle aged man, speaking to the one of the other sales agent in a high-pitched and dissatisfied tone. Sarah knew this was her cue, if she must get this job, then she must be able to with her emotional demeanor and choice of keyword, calm Mr. Okoro down, and make sure he made a purchase before leaving the shop.
‘The work and life of a sales agent’, Sarah mused. Customers will always be customers, she knew all Mr. Okoro needed was a bit of pamper, and the reassurance that she was on the same side as him. Sarah could feel the smile from her face in the physical world transmorph unto the face of her digital avatar.
Once assured of her plastered smile, she mentally guided the walk of her digital avatar towards Mr. Okoro who was diligently playing his part in this unreal and scripted world.
“Hello Mr. Okoro” she greeted.
***********Not To Be Continued***************
This is a fictional story, where I paint a picture of a world years from now. A world that has learnt many lessons post the Corona epidemic. A world where the power of Virtual & Augmented reality is brought into all aspect of human life as a way to reduce human to human contact and limit the possibilities of future pandemics. Not just that, companies are also realizing that they can save cost and boost profit by creating virtual shopping experiences for their customers. But even in this, they realized that human to human touch and communication, also, the empathizing of the customer’s feeling by sales agent, led to better conversion and higher sales.
‘The human touch’, as the phenomenon became known as, was the one area where AI avatars, even with all their sophistication and cold efficiency were still unable to conquer.
In the new economy, are lot more jobs and gigs in the digital space. Jobs like Virtual sales agent, virtual instructors and coaches, virtual entertainers and even virtual sex service providers were all possible in this new reality.
Nevertheless, before we jump many years ahead of us, there are some pertinent changes which we will likely deal with after we get past this dark global pandemic cloud.
I believe it is crucial for everyone and even businesses to position themselves favorably for this new world that would ride on the high speeds of 5G connectivity, decentralized ledger systems of blockchain, efficient AI algorithms, unlimited virtual realities and more.
Things may not all be rosy and progressive, we may also have to deal with a reluctant global economy, psychological trauma and social aloofness borne out of distrust for people who are not in our circle of trusted family and friends. We will have to deal with quickly disappearing middle class and greater economic divides. There will also be the issue of data and privacy intrusion not only from big tech companies, but also from government institutions.
As we prepare to go into this new world. The momentum and mindset with which we enter it will determine what becomes of us in the coming decade.
I am putting together a more detailed brief of these possible changes we would have to meet and deal with post Covid19. If you would like to receive this resource as a free .pdf , then send me your email via this Google form link.
To your success and mine in the coming months and years.
2020s & The Future Beyond.
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I recently released my book, 2020s & The Future Beyond, which dives deeply into what the future of this decade and the ones that come after will look like especially as it relates to the development of AI and other emerging technologies. Click here to learn more.
- Published in Futurism
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