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Table of Contents
Introduction
Since the Covid-19 pandemic, the world has entered an era of economic and geopolitical uncertainty. The pandemic threw into sharp relief just how vulnerable our systems are, and how unprepared we are for the next one.
However, with the lessons learned from Covid-19 still fresh in everyone’s minds, companies are searching for ways to meet changing consumer and market demands.
It’s not easy – inflation is surging, consumer spending is down, and resources are limited. Hence, organizations cannot afford to invest in a digital transformation strategy that doesn’t deliver the kind of value that they need.
So what approach should they take? According to KPMG, economic factors such as inflation and interest rates, as well as pandemic fatigue, are the largest concerns for CEOs today.
As the costs of digital transformation rise, so will the levels of accountability around tech investment. Hence, there will be a bigger focus on value for money and return on investment.
What Does Tech Investment Offer to Companies?
Digital fluency covers the capacity to discover, use, and evaluate technology both ethically and effectively.
It can enhance organizations’ resilience by improving certain attributes, such as scalability (meeting sudden decreases or increases in demand), nimbleness (quickly responding to new changes or threats), optionality (leveraging other companies’ strengths) and stability (maintaining efficiency while rapidly scaling or pivoting).
The Next Steps to Digital Fluency
Through digital investment (or tech investment), companies are working towards becoming digital businesses suited for the modern world. An example of such tech investment would be CrushErrors, which facilitates faster and more accurate bank and credit card reconciliation. Instead of meandering with manual reconciliations and burning yourself out, you can save hundreds of hours with this AI-driven solution.
Organizations without the digital fluency required to navigate the “new normal” (and future “new normals”) will struggle to survive, let alone thrive.
Building a resilient business means, at least in part, using optimal digital capabilities and agility. These will help companies succeed regardless of the kind of disruption.
But what are the key building blocks for this strong foundation? Here are some of them:
An iterative approach to continuously improve what the organization delivers to its customers and society at large.
Adapting to any kind of change with a frictionless operating model.
Decision-making driven by intelligence.
A platform strategy that helps organizations lead change as well as adapt to it.
What Needs to be Avoided
For an efficient digital transformation strategy, certain things should be generally avoided:
Focusing on adopting bleeding-edge innovation and high-potential tech without a clear idea of what that technology will do to help their business achieve its goals.
Constantly comparing their digital investment to what their competitors are doing; what’s right for your competitor is not necessarily right for you, even if you do operate in the same market.
Being overly ambitious from the get-go and trying to achieve digital fluency too quickly. If this is the case, the business transformation you hoped for might not come to fruition.
Instead, companies should focus on the immediate needs of their customers and themselves.
Innovation Amid Uncertainty
For the foreseeable future, it appears that uncertainty will be the norm, especially considering the increase in frequency of climate-related disasters. For an effective digital transformation strategy, some measures will be needed to ensure both short- and long-term success:
Mitigate risks, fill in capability gaps, increase speed to market, and reduce costs by integrating and managing suitable third parties. Working with partnerships helps to drive value.
Start with your customers and work backwards. Crafting a compelling customer experience requires an outside-in view.
Digital investment is one thing – using this investment to its full potential is another. Organizations need to ensure that their employees know how to adopt and use new technologies.
Conclusion
The conditions driving today’s digital transformation are similar to those that drove prior transformations. However, rapidly advancing and accessible tech has pushed us – and continues to push us – into a new digital era.
For many companies, the massive shock of the pandemic revealed flaws and weak points that leaders had not focused on before. Yet many companies rose to the challenge, with tech and digital fluency playing a key role.
Everything from the cloud to audio-video tech was used to enable or strengthen remote work, data security, and automation. Speaking of automation, one of the most tedious and burdensome tasks for any business is reconciling data – this can be amended with NextGen Accounting’s services, which are powered by our patented technology.
We offer credit card reconciliation services, bank reconciliation services, reconciliation automation, financial consulting, financial reporting, and audit and anti-fraud assurance. Our services are specially tailored to firms with vast amounts of data that are extremely difficult to reconcile.
To give you the fastest and most accurate reconciliation, we use our patented software CrushErrors, which you can also obtain as a product if you’d rather conduct reconciliations in-house.
NextGen Accounting’s management team has decades of experience and includes former executives of Barclays Bank, Bank of America, and ICBC. Contact us today for reconciliation services or book a free demo if you’d like to get CrushErrors!