November 15, 2021
According to an article in "De Tijd" in the summer of 2021, data-driven companies attract new customers more easily. It was the conclusion after Ipsos did a survey with 300 Belgian companies. The survey also shows that half of Belgian company leaders see digitization primarily as the digitization of administrative processes. Barely 2 to 3 percent are thinking about big data or AI applications. 'Too many CEOs still think they can just keep current processes in place, as long as they pour a digital sauce over them.'
Nancy Rademaker, partner at Nexxworks, says the following about how you should go further: "You have to make a clear distinction between digitizing processes to make them more efficient and cheaper, and a real digital transformation. Only then can you as a company better respond to new customer needs and offer them a better service and experience. At the same time, this facilitates the search for new business models and markets." She points out that it is now more than proven that data-driven companies attract new customers more easily and manage to retain them better. CEOs who see digitization primarily as a cost factor will eventually price themselves out of the market.
How best to tackle this transformation? Many managers ignore the expertise of their own employees. Let them think along, experiment and give them the opportunity to gain new experience externally. I have noticed that a lack of knowledge and know-how - certainly at C-level - is often an inhibiting factor.'
Another striking result from the survey: 62 percent of business leaders expect that the further digitalization of their company will have little or no impact on company turnover.
'This exposes some crucial thinking errors,' says Pieter Ballon, director of the SMIT research group (VUB/imec) and last year a member of the Flemish government's relaunch committee. 'It is a misconception that digitizing your back office and administration is a pure efficiency exercise. Of course you will become more efficient and a bit more competitive, but this back office will primarily develop into a source of qualitative data.
That data will allow you to be more responsive to your customers. This does not only apply to software or internet companies. It applies to all services, sectors and models. We now know that the companies that gain the most value from digital transformation are precisely those that innovate their business models and dare to respond creatively and flexibly to the market. But you don't have to be a technology leader to do that. Technology does facilitate access to those new business models.'
There is a difference between digitizing processes and a true digital transformation.
There are work points, but the survey also shows ambition. Over 90 percent of business leaders who acknowledge that their company is not yet at the desired digital level say they want to do something about it.
What they shouldn't do is reduce digitalization to a new, flashy website or some extra hardware," says Pieter Ballon. I recommend thinking mainly in terms of data. Data are the raw material of digitization. What do you know about your customers and your own basic processes? What data do you already have? Can you share that data? Can you experiment with it or get more value out of it? Such an approach always leads in the long run to a more creative and more flexible attitude. In addition, you will interact differently with your network: suppliers, but also other companies within the sector and even competitors.
Just about every sector today has a few large platform companies, which are gaining more and more power thanks to the huge amount of data they have. For smaller companies, it's now or never: only by unlocking more data themselves and collaborating with other companies can they remain competitive.'
