No other technology has changed human society as crucially as the Internet. Business processes become more and more automatized and interconnected: E-Mails, PDF files, mobile devices – examples of digitalization which already revolute daily working processes. Changed media usage of clients, colleagues and competitors connects the world. It never seemed so easy to expand your business. Mobile presence and digitalization of work processes is inevitable now for entrepreneurial success.
Adapt or die - technologies develop at fast pace and businesses have to cope with that challenging revolution. We talked with our CEO Christian about the fascinating topic of digitalization and named some of the chances and risks it conveys.
Christian, what does digitalization of the middle class mean to you?
Digitalization enables a new form of communication: It increases the inclusion of clients and colleagues into decision-making processes. Ideas and concepts are quickly and easily interchanged and feedback can be given immediately. Innovative technologies which collect and analyze company data enable quick updates and spontaneous task-distributions. The digitalization of business processes and business models heightens the involvement of the employees, which automatically brings more efficiency and productivity to the company.
What are the steps to digitalization? Which problems has the middle class to face currently?
Successful digitalization can only happen by the transformation to new structures, methods and decision-making processes. Traditional mindsets need to orientate more towards the innovative ways of thinking of startups. Only about 50% of the German companies have a central digitalization strategy. The other half shouldn’t miss the current market development even though digitalization at first means a major challenge for any business. No wonder – digitalizing a company can easily be put on the level of a culture shock. Employees have to expand their digital competences and intersection points of clients and partners also need to be integrated efficiently. Many companies rely on cooperation with startups for a successful network expansion and for the creation of new products and services. Such an intensive and constant adjustment can only succeed with a well-wrought digitalization strategy.
What do you think are the chances and the risks of digitalization?
Digitalization conveys optimization possibilities of processes and cooperative work. The big data obtained from digitalizing company data has to be used reasonably. It conveys profitable information and debunks a company’s strengths and weaknesses, which can then be easily visualized and analyzed. The interferences drawn from that help to plan and predict further developments and enable companies to compete in the digital world. Digitalization improves a company’s customer approach as it conveys more than just e-mailing. Restructuring and developing new digitalization strategies is time and labour-intensive but it’s worth it. By now many companies still have unused analog data which also conveys multiple possibilities to use that data for new business models with the help of digitalization. Digitalization = optimization. There are many benefits a company gets from digitalization: Heightened online presence, better catering for client’s needs due to direct communication, quick reactions, appealing to every target group thanks to facilitated social activity and better content production. When a company’s performance increases, so does the client satisfaction. To sum up, digitalization influences every business and this trend will definitely continue.