Digital transformation
Digitising business processes with web applications, integrations and the cloud to save money, reduce duplication and improve efficiency.
Digital transformation projects involve advising on and developing software to digitise business processes. By creating web applications, digital services or system integrations, you can use the power of web technologies to save money, reduce duplication and improve efficiency.
Digital transformation (you will also see it written as DT or DX) is the use of digital technology to solve business problems and improve business operations. It usually draws on web technologies, cloud computing and web-based third-party software known as Software-as-a-Service (SaaS). The aim is to automate processes that people currently perform by hand, reducing the manual burden on staff and often freeing those individuals to focus on higher-value tasks and more creative work.
Businesses commonly build up internal procedures using Excel spreadsheets or other offline systems. Over time, and as a business scales, these processes become unreliable and unwieldy. Bespoke web applications can replace these kinds of systems.
What upgrading a process looks like
Take a small wholesaler that takes orders by phone and email. A member of staff writes each order onto a spreadsheet, checks stock against a second spreadsheet, then keys the same details a third time into the accounts package to raise an invoice. Every step is manual, every step can go wrong, and the person doing it spends their day copying numbers between windows rather than talking to customers.
Upgrading that process might mean a straightforward web application where an order is entered once. It checks stock automatically, sends the customer a confirmation by email or SMS through a service like Twilio, and pushes the invoice straight into Xero over its API so that nobody rekeys anything. The spreadsheets fall away, the figures reconcile themselves, and the business gets a single reliable record of what has been ordered and what is in stock.
The change does not have to happen all at once. It usually starts with the single most painful step, the one everyone complains about, and replaces just that before growing outwards as the value becomes obvious. A spreadsheet that four people email back and forth becomes a shared web form; a nightly manual export becomes a scheduled job; a report that took a morning to assemble by hand becomes a page that is always up to date.
Digital transformation services
- Technology landscape mapping, technology auditing and system interrogation
- Integrating financial software like Xero into current business operations
- Replacing Excel spreadsheets with web applications
- Designing and developing bespoke web-based software to mimic existing business processes
- Advising on and implementing third-party software solutions for digital transformation, such as Twilio, IFTTT and Zapier
- Advising on how to utilise cloud computing such as Amazon Web Services (AWS) as part of your digital transformation projects
- Integrating existing systems by building bespoke APIs
- Database creation, data cleansing and de-duplication