Today, the growth and evolution of companies are strongly dependent on the integration of digital transformation. To keep up with the competition and thrive in the increasingly demanding market, digitalisation is a top priority for businesses in nearly every sector, from healthcare to transportation, from banking to engineering.

Companies must adapt quickly to meet the ever-changing needs of their customers. However, digitalisation means changing the habits, values, and beliefs of the entire workforce. Thus, company culture can be the most critical factor in the success of digital transformation, encouraging employees to embrace new technological innovations.

After all, What is Digital Transformation?

The business world began seeing a digital transformation in the 1990s. Since then, technology took over the world and changed the way businesses operate.

Digital Transformation  can be described as the process of using digital technology to change how a traditional and non-digital business operates. It allows the creation of new business processes and customer experiences to meet a business’s needs or modify existing ones.

It can be defined as the reimagination of how we do business and how we engage our customers with the aid of technology, according to the evolution of the market and customer expectations.

Why Do Companies Need Digital Transformation?

Digital transformation has become essential for businesses to remain competitive in today’s ever-changing technological landscape.

Digital transformation integrates new technologies, such as artificial intelligence and machine learning, in all aspects of a business with the main goal of driving business growth and streamlining existing operations. From systems, processes, and workflow to company culture, digitalisation changes the way an organisation operates in order to deliver more value to the customers.

Its main benefits? Enhancing customer expectations, improving efficiency, keeping a competitive edge in the market, cost savings, and increasing business agility.

Company Culture: The Most Challenging Part of Digital Transformation

Corporate culture represents how employees act, think, and feel. As more and more companies are investing in digital transformation, integrating the digital mindset into the culture of a company can be quite challenging. To adapt to the digital era, companies need the help of their employees.

Hand in hand with digital transformation, there must be a change in corporate culture. However, the restructuring of the beliefs, values, habits, and experiences that define a company is one of the greatest challenges in the digital age. If employees don’t embrace the digital culture, the implementation of digital transformation might not succeed.

Here are some of the reasons that can affect the implementation of digital transformation:

• Lack of commitment to the digital transformation strategy: Leaders must share the plan with the entire workforce so they can be receptive to the transformation.
• Lack of digital skills: Although the employees use computers, tablets, laptops, and other tech devices, they may lack the skills to master the technologies included in the transformation.
• Fear of change: Along with the lack of digital skills, most employees fear change because they are afraid of trying new technologies that they don’t quite understand.
• Lack of leadership: Through effective communication, leaders must encourage the change of mentality and values within the company culture to adapt to digital changes.

How to Adapt Company Culture to Digital Transformation?

The first step to adapting corporate culture to digital transformation is through employees. The workforce must acquire digital skills to face digital transformation. Here are some tips to successfully implement digital transformation in your company’s culture:

• Define clear goals and objectives: Companies should identify specific goals they want to achieve through digital transformation. It’s important to make them clear to the entire workforce, especially when it comes to the corporate culture.
• Set the example: Effective leadership is necessary to convince employees of the advantages of change. A company’s management must believe in digital transformation and encourage it to the rest of the workforce, as well as set an example: they should be the first to add new tools, promote the implementation of new technologies, and keep track of the digital transformation progress.
• Embrace digital skills: To ensure a successful digital transformation, companies must pay attention to their employees. It’s extremely important to organise training to develop digital skills and help them adapt more easily to the changes within the company.

By doing this, your employees will be more receptive to digitalisation and it will be easier to adapt the company culture to the digital transformation in progress.

How Digital Transformation Impacts Company Culture

By treating digital transformation as a cultural change, organisations can help their employees focus on the aspects of their work that can be streamlined. Thus, digital transformation can have significant impacts on company culture. We will now present you with some of them:

• Cooperation: Promoting collaboration is one of the main benefits of digital culture. It encourages employees to come together as a team and optimise processes, which leads to an increase in efficiency. Having a strong organisational culture helps leaders gather employees around a shared vision so that everyone is contributing to the business’ growth.
• Consumer-oriented: With the rise of new technologies, companies have gained access to advanced analytics that gives insights into customer behaviour. By leveraging new technologies, you can provide seamless customer experiences and enhance communication with customers.
• Innovation: It’s essential for companies to take advantage of digital transformation to drive innovation. Consumers crave new technologies and so it’s crucial to create a corporate culture where innovation is fostered by encouraging employees to think outside of the box and understand the benefits of the use of technology in creativity.
• Adaptability: In today’s increasingly competitive market, adaptability is crucial for a company’s success, and it must be part of the corporate culture. By integrating digital transformations, your company will have more power to adapt to the changing demands of customers and the challenges imposed in the future.

Following new technological trends and embracing digital transformation is essential for businesses to remain competitive and stay ahead of their competition. If you are looking for an IT partner to help you along the way, talk to us!