The Ultimate Guide to Digital Transformation

The definition of digital transformation is just a starting point, concretely, digital transformation is a unique journey for each institution, and its path is largely determined by the culture of the workforce and its flexibility in adaptation and experience, digital transformation is one of the most important innovations that have occurred in our time and we will talk about this topic at length because of its very great importance for all sectors and institutions.

What is meant by digital transformation

Digital transformation is the action taken by an organization or company to integrate digital technology into all areas of the business, fundamentally changing the way an organization delivers value to customers.

Companies are using innovative digital technologies to drive cultural and operational transformations that are better aligned with changing customer requirements.

Here are some examples of digital transformation:

Companies are starting to build digital solutions, such as mobile applications or an e-commerce platforms.

Migrate a business from on-premises infrastructure to cloud computing (online storage spaces).

Companies rely on systems that manage processes within companies, for example, CRM systems.

Elements of Digital Transformation

Digital transformation contains a number of elements, and below we mention some of them, which are as follows:

Setting digital transformation goals

Everyone who is interested in digital transformation must avoid points of failure related to it, and one of the most important reasons for the failure of digital transformation is the presence of a few goals, and there is also the use of some modern technology tools under the pretext that they are popular or modern, and not because they achieve the goals set for digitalization.

Transformation strategy, and all this can lead to the use of technology that is not integrated with the rest of the IT infrastructure, or does not support business objectives, or leads to increased costs, or may not even achieve a balance between the needs of different departments such as marketing and information technology, so clear and specific goals and plans must be set.

Building an integrated strategy

Operating systems depend on a network of business systems and applications in addition to the components of the information network infrastructure, so the more these systems, applications, and systems integrate with each other, the better, so most companies are looking for digital transformation, which is basically aimed at integrating data and processes across systems, organizational towers, and multiple departments, and the same concept applies to the systems that customers use when they interact with certain services or products provided by the company, so Integrate many elements with each other, such as web applications that display a product, chat gateways to ask questions, payment gateways, and many more.

Obtaining the approval of executive and middle management

Departments should be merged with each other to help them in digital transformation, and they should all agree on a digital transformation plan. If they disagree, you will end up with some of them using different digital software than the others, as well as some services that do not use any digital software, resulting in a decrease in performance. As the business progresses, there needs to be a great collaboration between the information and marketing teams to get the most out of digital transformation.

Create a resilient system

Striving to maintain resilience is another element of successful digital transformation. Legacy on-premises systems need to be transformed into microservices-based, location-based systems. One of the most common ways to increase flexibility is to rework native application code.

Microservices networks running in the cloud, allow more flexibility, scalability, and autonomy of the site, helping to add, remove and remove new services and various features from it. Update, expanding its reach in the simplest and fastest timeframes and affordable.

Recruit and train the right skills

People with talent and skills that help in digital transformation should be sought, as tech employees need to understand and assimilate a range of advanced technologies, what is best in different use cases, and where to go. A shift in technology.

The concept of digital transformation

Digital transformation is defined as the use of technology to improve business performance or reach, a theme that appeals to businesses around the world: customer relationships, internal processes, and value propositions.

Although the goal of digital transformation is to use technology to solve traditional problems, it is not just about technology, when you look at it from a broader scope, digital transformation is about changing the way your organization operates and better positioning itself within the market.

How did Egypt become a hub for digital transformation?

A study by the Egyptian Center for Strategic Thinking and Studies. Developing the communications infrastructure, modernizing the digital and information services of ministries, and building human capacities are one of the most important projects of the state.

The Egyptian Center for Strategic Thinking and Studies has prepared a study on Egypt's success in becoming a starting point for digital transformation within 8 years, through several axes, including the development of telecommunications infrastructure and postal services, the development and modernization of digital services and information infrastructure for ministries and government agencies, the axis of building human and national capacities, activating the axis of digital citizenship and the axis of developing the information technology industry.

The digital transformation process in Egypt aims to build a knowledge society in which the digital divide is reduced so that all its members can access information sources by increasing Internet penetration rates in areas where it is lacking. In recent years, there has been strong growth in this sector, and as part of the process of building trust in online transactions and encouraging citizens to use electronic services, digital identity management falls within the cybersecurity system.

Supporting Sustainable Development through Digital Transformation in Egypt

The digital transformation process in Egypt also aims to support the sustainable development process by adapting ICT tools and working to improve basic services that guarantee a decent life for citizens in the fields of education, health, and the environment by ensuring that support is provided to those who deserve it in order to achieve three basic goals, namely poverty reduction: Improving the standard of living, developing infrastructure networks and ensuring that local communities take ownership of the services developed by involving them in assessing the quality of these services and by restoring trust between the government and the citizen in the targeted communities.

Objectives of Digital Transformation Science in Egypt

The science of digital transformation aims to support and develop education using communication tools and information technologies, as education is one of the most important pillars of development in Egypt. In the next stage, this will be implemented through the use of computers and the deployment of high-speed Internet in schools, in addition to establishing a quality insurance and accreditation system, and digital transformation aims to improve health services in remote and marginalized areas that lack health services, in addition to improving the support system by activating Digital system. Identity in different state systems.

One of the most important objectives of the digital transformation process is to strengthen the national economy by developing the knowledge economy and increasing the contribution of the ICT sector in contributing 50% of the state's sovereign revenues and achieving growth rates in the sector ranging from 7% to 10%, in addition to strengthening Egypt's position on the world map in the field of outsourcing services, by increasing the number of technology parks to reach 20 zones in different governorates. In addition to attracting more foreign investments to Egypt by raising awareness of Egypt's competitive advantages in the field of investment.

The role of digital transformation in promoting financial inclusion

The great potential and opportunities that can be achieved by improving financial inclusion to support inclusive and sustainable economic development, meet the challenges of unemployment, and achieve social justice.

There is no doubt that the current developments and the negative repercussions of the spread of the Corona pandemic have clearly highlighted the great importance of using modern technologies for the purpose of financial inclusion, as well as the need to improve digital financial services and educate their users.

The pandemic has increased the demand for digital financial services and made the need to accelerate digital transformation and improve digital financial services an important political and economic issue in the Arab region.

Available statistics highlight the great opportunities inherent in the development of digital services, as almost 85% of adults in the Arab region have a mobile phone, 48% have a mobile phone and can access the electronic network at the same time, 7% have mobile bank accounts, and about 33% sent or received digital payments last year, compared to about 44% globally.

Digital Transformation and Artificial Intelligence

Digital transformation is one of the most important drivers of how companies deliver value to their customers in a competitive and rapidly changing business environment. The process aims to leverage digital technologies to create or modify user experiences and business processes, responding to changing user and market needs.

AI is now recognized as a key enabler of digital transformation in many industries. AI can help businesses become more innovative, agile, and adaptive than ever before.

Many think it's a futuristic technique and there is still a long time to talk about it.

But quite the opposite AI is already being deployed cost-effectively in many companies, accelerating productivity and competitiveness, while helping to accelerate digital transformation.

Here are three examples of how AI-coupled digital transformation can achieve the best results:

A comprehensive view of customer needs

AI helps businesses, especially the marketing industry, understand customer needs and preferences. The success of every digital transformation depends on acquiring an accurate buyer persona and discovering the audience. Gaining a comprehensive understanding of the customer early in digital transformation is essential, and AI is well suited to the task.

AI helps detect consumer behavior trends, purchase history, and digital channel sharing to create an in-depth view of the buyer. Today's buyers expect personalized experiences throughout their journey. AI is key to quickly unlocking consumer insights to create and improve these personalized experiences. In this way, companies can gain a competitive advantage by increasing customer satisfaction, increasing customer loyalty, and increasing the effectiveness of marketing campaigns.

Dynamic Analysis

As mentioned earlier, collecting useful data is essential for a digital transformation strategy. However, what makes the strategy successful is how it leverages this data. AI processes thousands of data points to gather insights and identify trends in real-time. This is how companies can accurately anticipate consumer needs rather than respond to consumer actions.

With this information, companies can create highly personalized experiences for buyers and make data-driven decisions to develop more effective marketing campaigns. Success translates into significant savings through budget allocation and more cost-effective media and advertising purchases.

Growth and profitability

AI is helping businesses take advantage of their digital transformation by increasing operational efficiency, mitigating risk, and accelerating growth and innovation. For business leaders, marketing, sales, and customer service are the top three areas where AI can have the greatest impact. According to Accenture, AI could increase profitability in many industries by an average of 38% by 2035. And in the same year, AI will increase additional revenue by $14 trillion!

Chat Bot Automatic Customer Service Powered by Artificial Intelligence

Digital transformation involving AI is redefining and revolutionizing the end-user experience in countless ways for B2B and B2C organizations. New AI-powered customer service conversation RPA capabilities can automatically resolve 65% of user requests, reduce problem resolution time by 90%, and improve customer satisfaction scores by 80%. Industry-leading workflows integrate AI and RPA technologies to automate customer workflows in product support, upgrades, troubleshooting, case management, and more. The prospect of new sources of revenue cost reduction, and productivity is virtually limitless.

Digital Transformation and Human Resources

The digital transformation of human resources is one of the important topics for many HR professionals due to the ability and potential of technology to change the image of HR operations that all companies and organizations know from their side. Today. Simply put, HR digital transformation is the process of changing operational HR processes and functions to make them automated, technology-driven, and data-driven. The process of digital transformation is related, on the one hand, to transforming the performance of human resources, and on the other hand, to transforming work teams and work methods. The transformation process involves the organization or the work as a whole. And it's not just a transformation in human resource management, and that's if we're looking for a successful digital transformation process. HR digital transformation is the transformation of HR processes and functions, using data to drive all areas of HR such as payroll, benefits, performance management, learning and development, rewards, recognition, and recruitment.

What are the types of digital transformation?

Digital transformation is not a huge entity. Companies are often fully focused on organizational transformation and ignore the fact that there are four types of digital transformation. As a result, it is limited to taking full advantage of everything the digital transformation has to offer.

Basic Transformation Process

From data, analytics, APIs, and machine learning to other technologies, the enterprise environment has focused primarily on new ways to reinvent business processes to reduce costs, improve quality, or reduce cycle times.

Examples of a successful transformation of the process include companies such as Domino's Pizza, where today customers can order from any device. They have completely redesigned the food ordering process. This innovation helped them outperform their competitor Pizza Hut in terms of sales.

Other companies have implemented RPA technology to streamline back-office operations with companies and organizations, including legal and accounting departments, for example. Turning a process into great value can lead to a company.

Changing the business model

The process transformation focuses on limited areas of business. Business model shifts target the building blocks of how value is delivered in a particular industry. Essentially, companies are using digital transformation to change traditional business models. Examples of this type of business model reinvention include redesigning Netflix for video distribution and reinventing Apple for streaming music: iTunes.

Domain Conversion

One notable example of how domain conversion works is the huge online retailer Amazon. It entered a new world in the market with the launch of Amazon Web Services (AWS) and is currently the largest cloud/infrastructure computing service in a field previously owned by giants such as IBM and Microsoft. AWS is a clear example of how new technologies are redefining products and services, blurring industry boundaries, and creating entirely new groups of non-traditional competitors. Transforming the field currently provides one of the most important opportunities for business growth.

What is the digital transformation strategy?

The question is: how do you bring together the elements of digital transformation (such as changing IT culture, realizing business stakeholders, and linking transformation to business vision) this part is the biggest puzzle in digital transformation.

What is the digital transformation strategy?

Digital Transformation Strategy

A constructive digital strategy can help give digital transformation the best chance of success.

Here is a quick set of indicators that will help you transition to your digital transformation:

Think and create a compelling digital strategy

The first step is to brainstorm, engage everyone, and find out what DT's digital transformation means for your business and what it can do for you.

The goal of DT's digital transformation is to create value.

When employees understand the meaning that digital transformation can bring to a DT company, they can participate quickly and lead the change they need.

Aligning digital transformation with business goals

Once you've created your digital strategy story, aligning it is key to a successful transformation. The approach is generally top-down.

As an executive, you need to communicate the movement and determine the right results as well. Digital transformation cannot come from IT alone – you need to align it perfectly with the organization's vision, mission, goals, and values.

Continuously document risks

There can be risks associated with digital transformation, and many companies are aware of this. When deploying a new internal application, there may be risks.

It's a good idea to discuss, analyze, and document risks as well so you can track threats over a specific period.

Run beta tests

Once you've defined your plans, analyzed challenges and technology, and documented risks, it's time to test the technology.

Pilot testing helps you identify impacts on your business and culture as you move forward with a solid plan. The test will ensure that your stakeholders are ready for the next digital transformation journey and that your organization and employees know how to execute the project effectively.

Similarly, any digital transformation strategy will be very useful when you do a deeper analysis. These steps will help you run your business smoothly.

Get ready for a change of culture

The most important element is the cultural aspects The biggest mistake is overlooking the cultural change in the digital transformation journey. Put special attention to the cultural aspects of transformation, because it is a challenge for people.

Preparing for cultural change is a key element of a digital transformation strategy. Let's look at this aspect in more detail.

What are the three approaches to digital transformation?

Waiting for a Guide to Digital Success

This first approach will help organizations that focus on empirical results and do not believe in the risk factor to enter the competition race from this door.

The difficulty with this approach lies in the enormous risk of sitting idle until digital transformation takes hold.

This gives competitors a clear advantage if their digital success happens faster than yours. Since most organizations have a mix of digital and non-digital solutions, this first approach is usually the first choice for most businesses.

Developing a global digital strategy

This approach aims to make the strategy as comprehensive as possible from the outset, this requires a strong long plan and the focus of a comprehensive digital transformation strategy on cultural change and rapid implementation of innovation.

But usually, this is a very expensive approach with many risks.

Gradual delivery of digital skills

This approach focuses on delivering benefits as the business moves towards a potentially changing digital destination after setting an initial goal and roadmap. But as the organization progresses, lessons learned are taken and this approach focuses on delivering a rigid and flexible strategy that can evolve as the industry changes throughout its life.

What kind of digital transformation is right for you?

The digital transformation strategy will vary from company to company, industry, customer location, and many variables that determine the stages of digital transformation.

Digital transformation varies greatly depending on the company's industry and the specific challenges and requirements. But the only constant is that as technology evolves, companies will have to adapt.

Thanks to your wide industrial reach with digital methods, you can achieve the digital transformation you want. You can build a database and conduct experiments to prove what works and what doesn't in your industry. Companies seeking digital transformation will benefit from results and achieve greater success than those that do not.

Based on the explanation of "what is digital transformation" and the types and strategies of this transformation, we can conclude that digital transformation technologies are technologies that allow organizations to transform the way people interact with each other and with their environment for reasons.

Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning

Artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning have opened up many possibilities for organizations by accelerating the exponential increase in access to data and data, as well as the computing and connectivity power of businesses. In this way, these digital transformation technologies open up new approaches and propose more feasible solutions to unanswered questions.

Thus, AI and machine learning represent billions of dollars in profitable investments by governments and businesses over the years.

Countries of first places in digital transformation

In this context, we have analyzed the evolution of countries' digital competitiveness over the past three years. In the new edition of the ESCP Europe Business School Digital Riser Report, we analyze the digital competitiveness of 140 countries and provide a global ranking comparing them in their regions. We show which countries have lost their status as well as which countries have performed well and improved compared to their peers. We also highlight what can be learned from the best and analyze the policy actions that led to the success of Digital Risers.

Within the Group of Seven major industrialized nations, Canada managed to make the most progress in its relative digital competitiveness between 2018 and 2020, making the country one of the best-performing digital countries in this group; on the contrary, Japan and Germany fell further within the G7. Italy managed to improve its position in the Group of Seven, climbing from last place the previous year to second place in 2021.

Within the G20, the ranking reveals a strong dynamic also regarding the two global digital superpowers: China gained digital competitiveness, while the United States lost during the same period, mainly due to the dimensions of the ecosystem of our ranking. China tops the list of the three most dynamic G20 countries, followed by Saudi Arabia and Brazil. India, Japan, and Germany came last.

Conclusion of Digital Transformation

Overall, nowadays, the advantages of the above digital transformation technologies are undeniable. For long-term impacts, companies are wise to incorporate the right technology or hybrid technology into their operations to do business successfully and outperform their competitors.

The ones mentioned above are just some examples of digital transformation that your companies or businesses can consider role models in the digital age.

To achieve these goals, the program plan for digital transformation, how to diagnose the current market situation, maintain leadership in the world of digital disruption, explore transformation opportunities, build an innovative and balanced profile, reshape consumer value and establish a future relationship with customers. Contact us at Farouk Group to request a free consultation.

If you have any other questions, please contact us and we will reply to you with a practical answer to your problem.