The era of digitisation is now fully upon us, whilst it continues to accelerate at a blistering and slightly bewildering pace. Despite its immense promise, this is causing some issues for small businesses, many of which are struggling to leverage digitisation as a way of driving business growth.
This refers to the process of collating and converting information into a digital format, in a bid to create greater efficiency and connectivity within businesses of all shapes and sizes.
In this post, we’ll explore this content further, whilst asking how digitisation can be applied to improve the efficiency and profitability of your business venture.
Manage Your Planning More Effectively
The word ‘planning’ is often frowned upon by entrepreneurs, who are often proactive in their nature and like to act on instinct.
However, there’s no doubt that planning management is central to the long-term success of any business, with the convergence of production and planning data having a direct impact on your bottom line profitability.
Thanks to concepts such as big data (which have helped to revolutionise a host of business practices during the age of digitisation), it’s now possible to plan in far greater detail whilst also taking into account a number of external factors that can influence your venture.
Logistics offer a relevant case in point, with digitisation capable of enabling businesses to plan routes in finite detail as a way of reducing fuel consumption. This type of planning also makes it possible to identify the best possible delivery routes in real-time, which also boost efficiency and can create more profitable trips.
Creating More Efficient Customer Order Management
Digitising customer orders can also have a positive impact on your business, and there are a couple of key reasons for this.
Firstly, this allows businesses to collate and present customer data through a single digital interface, which key stakeholders throughout the venture retain access to. This improves the consistency and quality of data sharing, which certainly helps firms to make quicker decisions.
Secondly, the convergence of operational technology data and IT systems affords you the opportunity to intuitively detail information in the context of each order.
This enables you to appraise the true profitability of each individual order, before making a truly informed decision about how to proceed.
The Effective Management of Resources and Assets
Resource and asset management are also central to any successful business, particularly when it comes to optimising profitability.
In terms of the former, the process of digital transformation offers you access to systems that deliver comprehensive datasets in real-time, making it easy to review waste associated with production and logistics.
When it comes to asset management, the connection of products assets also enables entrepreneurs and key business stakeholders to optimise their full value.
Such assets are also far easier to maintain and safeguard during their lifetime, primarily because the intuitive nature of digital technology allows you to identify faults and repairs these before long-term damage is incurred.