Suppose that in 1999, the CEOs of Tower Records, Blockbuster and Kodak, (all millionaire companies at that time), could have looked into a crystal ball that predicted their future. What they would have read would be exactly the message in our title: \u00abYour company is about to disappear.\u00bb Between 2004 and 2012, the 3 giants were forced to declare bankruptcy.<\/p>\r\n
In the same 1999, on the other hand, Amazon, Google and Facebook, 3 of the most valuable brands in the world today according to Forbes, did not even exist or were still in their infancy, what made the difference between the success of some and the failure of the others?<\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n
Success and Failure in the Digital Age<\/p>\r\n
From how we pay for electricity, to how we communicate, to how we get and serve new customers, new technologies have changed everything. There is not a single field that has not been transformed by digitization. Today, printing photos, renting movies and buying discs is totally obsolete. Kodak, Blockbuster and Tower Records paid dearly the price of not betting on innovation and for their lack of vision in the face of the magnitude of the digital age that we currently live in.<\/p>\r\n
The reality is that you are betting on the digital transformation of your company at this very moment, I can tell you with complete certainty that you are signing your death warrant. Today, digital transformation is not just a fad, it is a vital necessity to stay in business.<\/p>\r\n
But let’s look at the positive side: like any \u00abrevolution\u00bb, the digital one carries risks, but also presents spectacular opportunities for those who know how to take advantage of them. New technologies can give you an impressive \u201cboost\u201d in efficiency, save costs where you least imagine it and give you competitive advantages that exceed your expectations and those of your customers.<\/p>\r\n
A spectacular example? Let’s review the BBVA case. Banks in general face an increasingly young market, which hates standing in line at branches. The option? Provide them with digital solutions to carry out their operations from their smartphone, avoiding as much as possible going to the physical bank. BBVA is the only banking institution that was able to respond to the demands of the millennial market and achieved its digital metamorphosis just in time. Its app is intuitive, efficient and, if that weren’t enough, aesthetically beautiful. Everyone who uses it gets hooked. This maintains them as the number one bank, and an example of a company that despite its large size and complexity, has overcome the threats of the digital age very well and was able to turn them into a competitive advantage. Meanwhile, the digital presence of its competitors is clumsy and slow and therefore, they lose more and more ground in front of the very agile (and very technological) Fintech.<\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n
Companies that take their permanence in business and even more so their success seriously – very seriously – must start taking firm steps now to achieve their metamorphosis into the digital world. And we are not just referring to having an e-commerce or a website. Of course it is a priority these days to have a solid digital presence both in Google and Amazon and in social networks, which generates trust and communicates the strength and DNA of the company in the best way. But digitization goes much further.<\/p>\r\n
Digitization can completely reinvent an organization through technology as in the case of BBVA. Although there are no magic recipes, here are some steps that will help you in the digital transformation of your company:<\/p>\r\n
1 Evaluate how your organization works. Make a conscious process of self-analysis and where you detect inefficiencies, high expenses or bottlenecks, it is almost certain that there is an opportunity to innovate in the process through technology.<\/p>\r\n
2. Be realistic. Make a plan with time and resources that can be invested in the transformation of your company.<\/p>\r\n
3. Foster a culture that overcomes resistance to change. Surely many of your employees and your closest people are happy with things as they are and will be the first to oppose different ways of doing things, your organizational culture must take a step forward.<\/p>\r\n
4.- Involve a team of passionate, committed and talented people and hold them accountable for the transformation. They will be the creators of the new era of your company, as \u201cagents of change\u201d they have to be people up to the challenge.<\/p>\r\n
5. Know your customer’s expectations. But above all, think of a way to overcome them. Steve Jobs used to say that a company cannot just ask people what they want, simply because they don’t know. When the resistant Nokia as a partition dominated the world of cell phones, if you had asked people what they wanted, they would have answered \u00abI want an even stronger cell phone.\u00bb But Steve Jobs gave them the iPhone, one more example of how the digital age wiped out companies like BlackBerry or Nokia.<\/p>\r\n
These are just a few tips, but our message is: adapt, ride the digital wave and don’t let your business disappear. Think about how to start your business transformation today and as they say in the middle: don’t let the Kodak take you!<\/p>\r\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Suppose that in 1999, the CEOs of Tower Records, Blockbuster and Kodak, (all millionaire companies at that time), could have looked into a crystal ball that predicted their future. What they would have read would be exactly the message in our title: \u00abYour company is about to disappear.\u00bb Between 2004 and 2012, the 3 giants […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":3407,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[121],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3182","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-digital-business-es"],"yoast_head":"\n