To kick-start things, let us establish some common grounds. Let us define the concepts of innovation and digitization.
What is digitization?
Digitization is the change from analog to digital. The transition of processes and structures from analog to digital formats.
Innovation, on the other hand, is creativity. It is the development and implementation of strategies to services, processes, or products. Innovation improves efficiency, effectiveness, and helps to attain a level of competitive advantage over another.
In today’s digital world, every information is codified into two binary strings of 1’s and 0’s that can be read by machines.
Put simply, the transformation of information into 1’s and 0’s is the digitalization process.
Technologies like cameras, scanners, and other devices digitize our content. The best part is, they work for almost all kinds of materials: sound, visual (motion picture), and documents. For clarity, the use of technological devices to change from analog to digital is digitalization.
How Digitization Affects Us:
Digitalization has changed the landscape of human endeavours. It has literally brought the world to us. Rare materials and/or relics that were made available to a privileged few are now easily accessed with no geographic barriers. Beyond the benefit of minimal geographic barriers, digitization has done a great deal for the history of man. It has saved rare documents in electronic formats for generations.
Digitization remains at the front burner. Institutions and organizations are now making their documents in electronic formats. This initiative covers past and present documents, newspapers, books, images, dissertations, and more.
Benefits of Digitization.
Although digitalization promises a lot, there are still some scepticisms about it. Truthfully, the process of digitization can be daunting, but the benefits outmatch the strains it presents. Let’s look at a few of the benefits of digitizing.
Accessibility with little, or no bounds: Today, accessing information does not require a mini-trip to some library or museum. From anywhere, at any time, you can get all the information you need with the help of
- information and communication technology.
- Speed: Gone are the days of sending messages through fax machines and the likes. With faster connectivity and bandwidths, sharing information is limitless.
- Another major benefit is the ease the digitalization offers. You can print out information directly from the web.
- No Re-shelving: The Internet is a vast library, and this library can take care of itself. No need for Re-shelving books or any other information you acquired.
- Never runs out of stock like ebooks.
Generally, the listed benefits are among the numerous ways digitization is affecting information. So, let’s look at specific sectors and see how digitization is impacting them.
Shipping and logistics: this industry is in constant need of real-time information. The importance of information in this sector is crucial as it helps improve their service delivery. Another benefit is the tremendous impact it has on revenue generation. Many of their operations are still non-automated, but the emergence of digitization ensures that any decision made is made with insightful data.
Another area where digitization has made a formidable impact is in the banking sector globally. The traditional queues and counter services have been replaced by digitized services that operate round-the-clock. By embracing digitization, banks are able to provide essential customer services at the convenience of the customer.
Digitization has altered the face of education, promising opportunities that may have not been feasible a decade ago. Digitized education can only get better in the coming years. It has taken out the stress for both students and teachers. Currently, students live in an environment that is dominated by screens, clicks, and loud music. As such, the traditional structures of teaching is no longer doable.
The line that once demarcated the real world from the virtual is blurring fast. Even the military and defence sectors are on the long list of industries and institutions that are embracing the digitization trend. Government and commercial bodies are throwing millions of dollars to scale military operations in terms of surveillance technologies, critical communication systems, navigation and more.
Recently, there has been increased funding of automated projects like Autonomous underwater vehicles (AUV), and we are yet to fully explore the potentials of unmanned aerial technology. The development of underwater vehicles is geared toward intelligence, inspection, repair, monitoring, and communications. To explain digitization in defence at length may require an entire article.
The healthcare industry is another industry taking giant studies in the digitization of its processes. Telemedicine and artificial intelligence-based devices are a few of the examples that digital transformation has left on its wake.
Unfortunately, some medical and pharmaceutical industries are yet to join the bandwagon. The motions they hold are understandable because the shift from the analog processes to digital can be quite challenging. Anyways, the benefits of digitizing these traditional medical processes and operations outweigh the hassles of the transit and can only get better.
With the digital transformation surge in healthcare, patients now get better treatments when they want with the aid of virtual reality tools and telehealth. Also, Doctors now possess better ways of streamlining their work with devices that are artificial intelligence-based.
The game change that digitization has brought has reduced human error margins. It has also increased patients outcome and lowered the cost of operations through web design wollongong and mobile user experience in Wollongong.
Digitization has earned its prominence in the economic structures of countries. It has provided the platform for connecting and marketing. Now, a 4-year-old can buy over the Internet with little or no supervision. E-commerce is picking up fast and may soon replace transactions made over the counter. This is possible with the rising improvements in data acquisition. Stores are able to acquire reasonable about of market data and translate that into product descriptions and any means of authentication to aid product orders. These days, people required convenience more and, making a few clicks seem like the easiest at the moment.
In today’s society, access to digital information sources has reduced the cost of maintenance of physical materials. Look at digitized information sources like e-journals, consortium, and other online sources. It had made it economical for creators, distributors, information seekers, and users.
How Digitization affects economies.
The adoption and usage of digitized processes by an economy is largely reliant on certain factors such as price, reliability, level of literacy, speed, and more. Despite the obvious fact that digitization has the capacity to reduce unemployment, boost productivity, ensuring efficiency and transparency in government and improve the lives of the citizens, the wide gap in adoption remains among some countries.
The economic structures of these countries are responsible for the disparity that exists as regards adoption and usage. While developed nations are making applaudable progress, emerging economies are still years behind and could catch up if infrastructures are placed to ensure that digitization thrives.
Alright, let’s focus on how digitization can help you grow your business.
Now we understand that digitization is disrupting many sectors rapidly, but what does this mean for your business? Good or Bad?
Well, the answer to this is simple and rather obvious. Digitizing businesses– that is the structures, and mode of operations– means your business has a higher chance of staying afloat and avoiding setbacks to growth and profits.
In business terms, we’d define digitization as the strategic use of technology to streamline business models and in-house operations for accelerated results.
How digitization affects every business: we have discussed many benefits of Digitization is many sectors, but it is important we see how it impacts our models and frameworks. Here is an outline of how digitization helps businesses.
- Revenue increase
- Reduction in operations cost.
- Customer satisfaction
- Optimization of operations
- And more.
Look, when you change the whole manual processes (okay, maybe not all), you enjoy so much convenience as the operator of a business and, the same is applicable to your customers. In today’s world, people don’t like to get their hands dirty: they like the magical life of waving wands and having everything. TADAA!
To integrate your business to suit these lifestyles, many digital options come to mind, like websites Despite the tons of websites on the Internet, you can still rise above all the “noise” and make your customers aware of you. Some platforms offer free web Creation tools, but there is just so much they can do for your business. Hire a Digital Marketing Company Wollongong. They can help you set up your site from start to finish. But to really stand out, your website would require the services of the Best SEO companies in Wollongong to help with your online strategies and ranking.
Websites are not all you need: you can consider getting video content, ranking on Google maps and, many other ways to pass information of your business to hungry information seekers. This would increase sales and overall user experience.
In reality, the Internet market is no different from a regular physical market. Like physical stores, your business needs to stake out and hold unto the most profitable sections within the market. However similar they may be, the Internet provides better opportunities to penetrate a wider and more specific customer group without boundaries. The Internet is like a vast ocean(market): It is big enough for everyone with loads of fish(customers), but not everyone is a skilled fisherman.
Quickly, let’s understand that simply bolting on technology to your business operations can work but for a short time. The key to successfully run a business that adopts digitization processes is to have a mind change. Businesses need to embrace the possibilities of technology replacing their manual processes.
Here is the point: Anyone can design a website for a business but, not everyone knows how to make the website and its resource easily available. The same way certain files go into certain cabinets in a manual system, your business needs to do the same with its digital information and do it better.
Going digital with your business is, no doubt, a step in the right direction. Businesses taking this route of digitization are recording impeccable results in performance, and productivity of their business. For instance, businesses understand that communication with customers and employees is crucial to its success. Digitization enables speedy communication making it easier to relay information in real-time.
Importantly, digitizing your business’ data ensures it is safe and secure. Unlike the physical documentation with its vulnerability, digitized data is secure from damages. Also, restrictions can be added to confidential information or making it available to some personal.
Final notes:
Come to think of it. You are probably reading this on an electronic device, right?
Anyways, one final note for you to consider when undertaking a digital transformation of your business:
Dear reader, you are aware that you don’t have to travel to see a friend. You are also aware that we live in a century where we are more connected than ever.
Here are a few areas you can focus on if you want to digitize your business:
- Over half of the global information search is made on mobile devices. This has made it easy for customers to transact, communicate, network, and more all on the go. So, if you want to digitize your business either through websites or blogs, whatever it is, think mobility.
The whole point here is whatever format you choose to pass information to customers or employees, ensure that it is mobile friendly. Talking about mobile, a good place to start is with mobile applications.
- Get rid of bottlenecks: To digitize your business processes, you’d need to identify bottlenecks that may stretch the process for years. Of you are short on hands, outsource the task to a digital company with a track record of doing similar projects.
- Digitization is highly dependent on your customers and their demands. Analyze the market, see what your customers are saying and create a feedback mechanism to facilitate information gathering. This would guide you in putting the right processes in place and remove assumptions.
This is not an exhaustive list but should give you a jumpstart into digital transformation.
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