Reasons why Analytics is the key to Digital Transformation
Digital Transformation is changing the way people and businesses operate across the world. It has become a board-level mandate in organizations around the world. Major players like Nike, Nestle, and Apple, which are well-cushioned as brands, are now shifting their focus to the technology they leverage. Since the opportunity for real growth lies in Digitalization, the driving force behind many such established enterprises is to invest in data-centric business models so that new and digitally savvy companies don’t get ahead of them. This is where systematic education in Digital Marketing in the form of a Digital Marketing Certification comes in. International Data Corporation (IDC) estimates that over the next five years, there would be a growth of up to $20 trillion in this domain. However, for every technology, the heart behind success lies not in the collation of data, but its analysis – analytics.
The widespread digitization of business processes has led to the dramatic evolvement of data and its importance in the current world. Data is generated in astonishing magnitudes through our day to day life; whether we are searching for a nearby restaurant, paying bills, navigating through an unknown city or merely “liking” a photo online. A Digital Marketing Certification equips one with understanding these ambiguous activities. However, only storage and collation of data will not add any value to businesses. Unless businesses can analyse data for actionable real-time insights, this data is a small figure.
Analytics enables one to investigate past business performance to gain insights and drive better business planning, and hence results. It includes all the necessary skills, technologies, practices required for continuous iterative exploration. The central idea is the integration of data that has been generated through traditional business practices with Business Analytics to create an ecosystem which can enable a business to develop new inputs while operating on its existing knowledge.
Big brands like Amazon, Apple or Disney, have recognized the power of analytics and have encapsulated it within business processes to understand their customers better and provide them with an unmatched experience.
As we move into the future, digitalization is seen as a core competency and a service qualifier rather than innovation or a service winner. Customers are no longer satisfied when they are treated as a group of people, with little regards for their likings and lifestyle; they expect individual attention and highly customer-oriented service. Deployment of advanced analytics in each interaction, transaction, and process with the customer is surfing the next wave of productivity and growth.
Analytics is playing an indispensable part in the digital transformation of businesses. It’s now an accepted fact that data analysis drives business value. Analytics enables the company to be proactive and make factually correct decisions by providing various trends in their processes, which can be easily missed but are however caught by analytics. Analytics makes all of this possible via forecasting, optimization, predictive analytics, and text mining.
Benefits of Analytics
- Proactive Approach: Deploying analytics to various business processes enables businesses to take an active and premeditated approach towards multiple problems that they might encounter.
- Delivering relevant product/ service to customers: Effective data collation and analytics help companies know the nerve of the customer and hence stay competitive. Analytics facilitates the anticipation of what the market may demand and provide the product before it is requested or required.
- Optimizing & Improving Customer Experience: Application of analytics in business is cross-functional. It allows design, control and optimization of various business operations like supply chain, distribution, marketing, etc. together. It leads to efficiency and effectiveness in meeting customer expectations and achievement of operational excellence.
- Mitigating Risk & Fraud: Analytics ensures optimum levels of fraud prevention and overall organizational It detects potentially fraudulent activities and tracks perpetrators to protect all physical, financial and intellectual assets from misuse by internal as well as external threats
The question no longer is – ‘Why Digital Transformation?’ The digital transformation was set to become the corporate strategy by the end of 2017, and it very well has.
Digitalization is no longer an innovation. It has become a core competency. One of the main reasons for Digital Transformation is Customer Experience. With the help of Analytics, service businesses like Disney, Uber, Amazon, etc. understand their customers and provide highly personalized and individualized customer experience Guests can order bands ahead of their visit, which enables them to make payments, manage reservations, access hotel rooms and facilitate staff to deliver a highly personalized experience. This results in a smooth experience that eliminates multiple tickets, reservations or payments, or simply, any hassles.
Analytics is the key for businesses to transform into a digital platform by:
Faster and Better Decision Making
It helps in responding quickly with a clear strategy for the industry. It also enables one to decide whether the actions taken are appropriate or not. Using analytics, companies can make better and wiser decisions.
Competitor Analysis
Any information available about the competitor may help in doing the SWOT analysis of a business’ competitor. This will assist the firm in analysing how it is performing concerning other players in the market.
Internal Audit
Analytics can help find which vertical in the company is doing great, which is not, and which is the underdog. Many times, secondary product/service may be more profitable than the primary product/service and analytics can easily help figure all of this out.
Increasing Business Opportunities
Retailers are becoming competitive with online sellers through omnichannel sales. This way the consumer can purchase items in-store or online. Specific merchandise can also be purchased through a combination of online and offline retail. Digitally connected channels produce data that is helpful in leveraging brick and mortar stores to run business and at the same time helping the company survive in the online market.
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