Digital Transformation in Business: How to Drive Your Business Growth by Leveraging Technologies and Business Process Automation

Business digitalization: how, when and who needs it

Digital transformation is a comprehensive implementation of digital technologies across all business processes. To foster growth, it is essential to understand the current level of digitalization in your company. Here are the different levels of digitalization:

• Level 1: Business operations are paper-based, but you have initial considerations for digitization;
• Level 2: Paper-based operations are transformed into digital formats;
• Level 3: Online presence is established through an application and/or e-commerce website;
• Level 4: Automating processes within individual departments;
• Level 5: Implementing innovative solutions such as cloud computing, artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning, the Internet of Things, and more.

Digitalization brings a multitude of benefits to businesses, including increased team productivity, cost reduction, improved customer interaction, decreased flaws, minimized risk of document loss, enhanced coordination between departments, and shifting to a more advanced management approach. If you aspire to scale effectively, it is worth exploring the latest technologies and crafting a strategy for their integration into your processes.

However, business digitalization may bring about a range of challenges, including the following:

• Employees may find it challenging to acquire new skills or adjust to new processes;
• Lack of clarity regarding the purpose of specific technologies adoption;
• Unclear management approach and lack of top-level support;
• Resistance to specific aspects, or the overall digitalization strategy;
• Competency gaps within the team.

For this reason, it is essential to focus on training programs and foster a culture of open communication and feedback within the team. Additionally, seeking the support of an experienced IT company would be beneficial.

How to accelerate business growth?

Modern technologies and business are mutually supportive and complementary. They facilitate growth, entry into new markets, innovation in product offerings, and elevation of the customer experience. We invite you to explore several popular tools and discover the benefits you can gain from their implementation.

The Internet of Things

The Internet of Things (IoT) technology encompasses the utilization of interconnected devices to collect data and enable informed decision-making. IoT serves as a solution for a variety of business needs, such as improving productivity, saving resources, ensuring security, and establishing effective customer communication. Examples of the IoT practical application:

• Equipment monitoring;
• Employee tracking: Implementing "smart" helmets with built-in GPS sensors;
• Productivity enhancement and task optimization, creating a safer working environment in a "smart" office;
• Patient tracking to assist with medical diagnoses;
• Collecting data on weather conditions and soil quality in the agricultural industry;

Artificial intelligence

Artificial Intelligence is a modern assistant in routine tasks. With its help, you can do the following:

• find new ideas and solutions, conduct brainstorming sessions;
• create template reports;
• collect a lot of information from different sources and analyze them;
• analyze large amounts of data and make decisions based on them;
• improve the customer experience.

Customer service is one of the areas where artificial intelligence is extensively used for automation in business processes. It finds application in chatbots to quickly process simple queries and complaints from people, which increases their satisfaction and frees up the support team's time to address only complex issues. However, we do not recommend fully relying on AI as it can provide outdated information and misinterpret facts.

Automation systems

Automation of processes simplifies business workflows and improves overall effectiveness. This cutting-edge digitalization tool minimizes human error, enhances internal collaboration and interaction with clients, aids in process and employee monitoring, and more. Consequently, businesses reduce costs, achieve higher operational efficiency, and experience faster growth.

 The fdForge system by FreshTech is a multifunctional low-code platform. It has no limitations in configuration, seamlessly integrates with other systems, and is suitable for both mobile and web applications. The system is modular, allowing you to select only the necessary functions, which saves time and money during implementation.

With fdForge, businesses can implement flexible automation and develop customized, complex solutions for various tasks, including:

• improving online communication with clients;
• streamlining document flow and report generation;
• enhancing logistics and supply chain efficiency;
• setting up a marketplace powered by Marketplace Kit;
• simplifying and accelerating interaction with business partners using the PRM Kit toolset;
• seamless integration of external and internal web applications, services, accounting and other systems into a single unified platform using the Integration Kit.

A few years ago, we successfully implemented several fdForge features for Metro Cash&Carry, a network of professional wholesale stores in Europe, Asia, and Africa. New technologies have accelerated document verification and processing, standardized their format, automated various reporting forms for accounting and analysis, and identified all conflicting and duplicate files. We created convenient user accounts for both customers and managers, designed with a thoughtful user experience tailored to specific roles and equipped with relevant functionality. As a result, the company was able to reduce operational costs and minimize flaws.

How to implement digital transformation successfully?

The adoption of digital technologies is a gradual process. It can be roughly divided into several stages. Digital Transformation Institute (DTI) distinguishes four stages:

1. Customer experience analysis.
2. Engaging employees – shaping a corporate culture, communication and training, as well as ongoing feedback.
3. Building an effective operating model – redefining processes and upgrading applications, restructuring core architecture, implementing new systems/
4. Creating a fundamentally new business model or adjusting the current one.

FreshTech will help you automate processes, elevate management practices, and implement innovative technologies.  This will facilitate business growth, keeping it up-to-date and enhancing its competitive edge.

Our fdForge-based PRM and Integration Kits enable you to swiftly launch an MVP in just 2 months, leveraging pre-designed modules and effortless integration. This is 4 times cheaper compared to starting development from scratch while allowing you to tackle tasks of any complexity and scale. You will experience convenience, ease, and security in managing your business processes.

If you're considering digitalizing your business and don't know where to start, which tools would be beneficial for you, and how to implement them, feel free to contact us. We will explore your needs, take the time to review your business processes, analyze your tasks and challenges, and discuss the benefits and possibilities of FreshTech products. Based on that, we will offer you a tailored solution to digitally transform your specific project.