How to maximize profits with digitalization

Change is inevitable, change is necessary and if you don’t cope with it, you might be sacrificing your business growth. So staying up to date with new technology helps you stay ahead of your competitors and have great revenues and happy customers. Outdated legacy systems are the biggest barrier to your business growth as they slow down your business processes. Digitalization of your legacy systems helps you to prepare for future challenges.

So what is a legacy system and how is it affecting your business?

Legacy systems outdated or old systems are still in use. You can identify that your business is using an outdated legacy system by considering the following points.

1. Slowing down your whole business process.

2. Difficult to integrate with other modern technologies.

3. Your competitors have a better system and satisfied customers

Now let’s talk about how this outdated system is affecting your business.

Integration problems with other systems

Outdated legacy systems are often hard to integrate with new technology due to their incapability to adapt to new changes. But in order to successfully run your business processes, your system always needs to be flexible enough to integrate with other technologies.

For example, nowadays most companies integrate cloud services into their systems to provide their customers with capabilities to access data anytime, anywhere. With outdated legacy systems, will leave behind your competitors and may lose many customers.

So a flexible system that are easy to integrate with other new technologies in the market is necessary if you want to keep pace with your competitors.

Lack of mobility

Mobility has become a must-have functionality in most businesses. Mobile devices have changed the way we work. Being able to access information available on mobile at any time increases productivity.

The outdated legacy system can’t accessed from mobile devices. So to access the information you always need to be in the office, in front of your computer which will eventually result in less productivity.

Lost Customer Satisfaction

Modern technologies consider customer satisfaction as an important factor.

Digitization helps in providing better customer services.

For example, better communication methods will help customers to have real-time conversations.

Another example could be providing mobile functionality so that customers can access services at any time, anywhere.

Your outdated legacy system will not be able to provide a digital experience to your customers. It will result in customer unhappiness and will eventually affect your business growth. You will left behind, all because of your legacy systems.

Data inconsistency

Data is considered key to any business process. Most of the decisions wrapped around data. So it is important to ensure high data maintenance.

Legacy systems do not provide strict data maintenance which results in inconsistency and redundancy of data.

For example, some of the legacy systems use spreadsheets to store data which may result in inconsistent spellings of names.

Maintenance expenses

Legacy systems are generally outdated so they often go under frequent failure. As a result legacy systems need to be repaired frequently.Legacy systems need more resources and manpower to maintain them which will result in increased operational costs.

So if you want your business to succeed in this fast-evolving world, the Digitalization of your legacy systems is necessary.

So What all digitalization mean?

Digitalization simply means using digital technology in business processes instead of old traditional ways. In today’s world, customers want a quick and easy digital experience in day-to-day work. So modernizing your business process is important to improve customer experience.

During this pandemic, we have clearly understood how important it is to have remotely available services and contact-less deliveries. Digitalization of your businesses will help your business to get remotely available to your customers and offer a safe environment for the customers to avail your products and services. For example, tools like Cloud-based ERP allow data to be available in real-time and remotely.

Digitizing your business may seem like a lot of work but it is important because if you don’t opt for new trends it will surely be an advantage to your competitors and you may lose a lot of customers.

Different areas where digitalization can help

Inventory management

Digitized inventory systems keep inventory optimized. It will help you in managing your inventory in the following ways.

1. Keep track of products at warehouses and evaluate how much stock is needed automatically.

2. It also helps you forecast future demand and helps you prioritize orders.

3. Ensure there is no wastage of the products.

4. Track real-time location of products.

Customer Services

Still spending hours talking to your customers on the phone? Digitalization has changed the old traditional ways. Customer expectations are increasing daily, they now expect to get answers to their queries instantly.

If you digitize your customer service system, it will help customers to have real-time conversations and keep them updated.

Tools like CRM(Customer Relationship Management) help in collecting and organizing customer information, tracking customer interactions, and help your business to grow.

Hence by digitizing manual customer service, a company saves a lot of time.

Demand Forecasting

With outdated legacy systems, it is difficult to predict customers’ demands.

As a result, too much material is left in inventory resulting in extra storage costs.

By using relevant data to predict demands, companies can optimize inventory.

Nowadays technologies like AI and IoT can be integrated with ERP systems to provide high accuracy in demand forecasting.

Invoice digitization

Invoice digitization will reduce the time and cost involved in paper-based invoicing. Using invoice digitization, you don’t have to manually enter the data for creating invoices, it will automatically be fetched and updated. Also, you don’t have to print and mail it which will take days to reach out to customers. Instead, all these processes can be done in seconds.

How one should approach digitalization

Set your target and make a strategy

The first step should be setting up a meeting where all the managers should come up with their vision about what they want to achieve with this digitization. What new technologies are available that can be integrated into existing systems and how it will benefit the organization.

Choose a right service provider

While including a third-party provider may seem like including extra cost but choosing the right provider can really help you smoothen your whole business process and gain more profit. When choosing a provider, make sure they have expertise in your industry and you both share the same goal so that they can help you with implementing the digital solutions you want.

Keep your customer experience in mind

The digitization process must include employees from different departments so that they can give you feedback on how digitizing is helping in improving existing business processes and how it will improve customer experience.

Conclusion

In this article, we understood how digitalization can help your business to grow. Digitalization of a Business opens opportunities for innovation and provides competitive advantages. It improves the efficiency and quality of the processes.

Also, check “The leader’s guide to business transformation through technology” to know more about the digitization process.

Should you need more information or assistance with Digitization in your business, feel free to contact us and we promise to give you the best advice and resources that will help you in taking your business to the next level.