Digital Business Transformation: Strategies and Opportunities
Digital Business Transformation
Digital business transformation: Significant changes to organizational processes, structure, and systems implemented to improve organizational performance through increasing the use of digital media and technology platforms. Two key opportunities of digital transformation open to most businesses:
1. Inbound Marketing
The consumer proactively seeks information for their needs, and interactions with brands are attracted through content, search, and social media marketing.
2. Content Marketing
The management of text, rich media, audio, and video content aimed at engaging customers and prospects to meet business goals, published through print and digital media including web and mobile platforms, which is repurposed and syndicated to different forms of web presence such as publisher sites, blogs, social media, and comparison sites.
Search Marketing
Companies seek to improve their visibility in search engines for relevant search terms by increasing their presence in the search engine result pages.
Social Media Marketing
Monitoring and facilitating customer-customer interaction and participation throughout the web to encourage positive engagement with a company and its brands. Interaction may occur on a company site, social networks, and other third-party sites.
There are different types of social presence. We recommend the following categories:
- Social Networking: The emphasis is on listening to customers and sharing engaging content. Facebook tends to be most important for consumer audiences, and LinkedIn for business audiences.
- Social Knowledge: These are informational social networks like Wikipedia, where you can help an audience by solving their problems.
- Social Sharing: These are social bookmarking sites like Delicious (delicious.com), which can be useful for understanding the most engaging content within a category.
- Social News: Twitter is the best-known example.
- Social Streaming: Rich and streaming media; social sites for sharing photos and videos.
Mobile Commerce
Electronic transactions and communications conducted using mobile devices such as smartphones and tablets, and typically with a wireless connection.
Mobile Apps
A software application designed for use on a mobile phone, typically downloaded from an app store. All smartphones support the use of apps which can provide users with information, entertainment, or location-based services such as mapping.
Electronic Commerce (EC)
All electronically mediated information exchanges between an organization and its external stakeholders.
Digital Business
How businesses apply digital technology and media to improve the competitiveness of their organization through optimizing internal processes with online and traditional channels to market and supply.
Kalakota and Whinston (1997) refer to a range of different perspectives for e-commerce:
- Communication Perspective: Delivery of information, products, services, or payment by electronic means.
- Business Process Perspective: Application of technology towards the automation of business transactions and workflows.
- Service Perspective: Enabling cost cutting while increasing speed or quality of service delivery.
- Online Perspective: Buying and selling products or information online.
Sell-Side E-Marketplace
E-commerce transaction in which one company (supplier) sells either standard and/or customized products to qualified companies (customers). B2C, looking for the highest price.
Buy-Side E-Marketplace
A private e-marketplace in which one company (customer) makes purchases from invited suppliers. B2B, looking for the cheapest price from familiar brands.