Healthcare

With an ever-tightening budget and strict standards over patient care, healthcare is an obvious candidate for digital transformation practices. There are many ways digital transformations can aid both of these goals. Firstly, digital transformation enables healthcare providers to automate appointment scheduling and medical records management. This helps to reduce wait times for appointments and better organisation around scheduling for the most efficient timetable. Calling medical records up faster enables medical professionals to get to the root of an issue quicker and gives the patient treatment with greater accuracy.

Furthermore, improved collaboration and communication, combined with automated vendor supply requests can create a steady, efficient flow of medical equipment. Meaning healthcare organisations are never out of essentials and can quickly calculate, order and track what they need.

This all amounts to a streamlined workflow, reducing inefficiencies and improving cost-effectiveness for the health care provider, but importantly, creating a smooth and satisfying experience for the patient in what could be a stressful time.

Manufacturing

Similarly to healthcare, manufacturers are also facing tightening cost margins and rising customer expectations. This creates a lot of pressure of creating the best products for as little as possible. Calculating, analysing, monitoring, and scouting vendors manually would be nearly impossible tasks with inaccuracies and complexities. However, digital transformation makes this possible and has positive implications across the supply chain, including the day-to-day manufacturing and customer experience.

Vendor onboarding software can be used quickly to scout out, engage with and maintain relationships with essential suppliers. Automation capabilities in this software mean when the stock of an item drops to a certain level, more can be automatically requested, reducing pressures on inventory management and logistical timings.

With the development of Internet of Things (basically sim card-carrying devices using 4G to communicate), machinery can be monitored in real-time, optimised to sweat assets efficiently and rest them when pressure or heat becomes too high. This can also predict when break downs can occur, reducing downtime and helping manufacturers budget for maintenance issues.

On the customer-facing side of operations, the development of AI and machine learning has opened up automation potential around customer queries. Ai can be used around the clock to catch customer queries whenever they come in. They provide a cost-effective way to maintain a good customer experience, with defined flows of conversation.

Farming & Agriculture

Facing unprecedented financial pressures and unpredictable changes in weather due to global warming, farming is harder than ever to maintain stable supply to supermarkets and customers alike- let alone make a healthy profit from it.

Digital transformation is just one strategy farmers' agricultural organisations are combating these challenges. Internet of Things is being utilised to optimise farming, including equipment maintenance, crop and soil monitoring and irrigation can be measured in real-time. With access to accurate, real-time data, farmers can make better decisions about crop selection, planting & harvesting. This gives them the opportunity for better yields, less waste and healthier profit margins.

Relationships with customers are greatly enhanced by block chain technology- making tracking from farm to table simple and effective. Being able to call this information up on demand speeds up the process to get the food on shelves, overcoming many security gates from supermarkets.

Finance

Financial organisations- particularly in the Fintech and banking sectors have already undergone a large digitalisation with the likes of internet banking and online services replacing branches on the high street. The physical branch may be disappearing, but the customer service standards are kept high- partly due to digital transformation. To keep up with customers, financial industries like banks have adopted digital transformation strategies to improve customer service experience with biometric security, fraud detection and smart-phone wallets.

Emerging technologies such as Big data, the cloud and Machine learning are also enabling financial companies to identify better investments for customers and engage with them on a personalised basis.

Process

Digital transformation is all about helping to optimise business processes. When done manually inefficiencies and problems can arise causing issues further down the line. By automating and defining workflows, these issues can be mitigated and easier to carry out.

Technology

Technology is the means to the end in digital transformation. The tools to grow and scale a business at any level. It can unlock untapped areas of a market, help improve colleague experience, improve customer loyalty, inform strategic decisions and get the most out of assets. The modern enterprise which utilises these emerging technologies has an immediate competitive edge over those still running manual processes.

Data

Data is the lifeblood of a business. It’s central to decision-making and needs to be as accurate as possible. Being able to ensure that accuracy, as well as being able to access and interpret that data in a meaningful way is the basis of good strategic decision-making. Digital transformation makes data work for an organisation, giving it the answers it needs to make the next move.

People

Perhaps the most important driver in digital transformation is people. Digital transformation has implications that reach down into the heart of a company's culture. It can improve user experience, helping colleagues to do their job and enjoy it at the same time. This in turn aids colleague retention and helps to keep a workforce highly skilled.