In a Digital Age, What Is the Difference Between Innovation and Digital Transformation?
What technological transformations or innovations can add more value to my business? How can we deliver the best experience to our customers? With Innovation or transformation, how can we increase our operational efficiency? These are the questions you must be having while planning for digital updation or technological adoption in your business.
Basically, Transformation & Innovation both words are synonymous, but when we think of them in the digital world, they play vital roles differently. Most of the organizations (~89% businesses) have adopted digital-first business strategy, and emitting COVID-19 pandemic, it has been forecasted that at least 90% of new organization apps will insert AI technology into their processes and products by 2025.
So with the statistics, you can get an idea of where you are in the digital age and where this digital transformation & Innovation will take you to; at the end of this pandemic situation. Still, the terms sound synonymous, right?? But they are not.
If your dive deep into the analysis of digital transformation, you’ll find a result that can lead you towards Innovation. So here, you might have got an idea between two terms that adoption of digital transformation can add capabilities in your operational practices, and through technological advancements, you can innovate something for your business and empower your process for customer satisfaction. And if you genuinely end up with the initiative of innovating for your customers, you’ll find requirements of transformation in your digital operations to follow through.
An obvious question must have popped up to your mind; Where should you focus?? Transformation or Innovation?
Here the answer will depend on your existing technology and application teams along with operational vision and business mission.
Digital Innovation depends on
- The new Idea you drive for your business growth,
- Method you swift from traditional to digital,
- Your offerings (product or service) evolute for the end customer satisfaction,
- The modifications of processes to achieve all of the above.
In all cases, the end motto behind putting financial and operational efforts is to improve the solutions that meet the needs for the creation of something disruptive, be it a product, service, or the shifting process for your overall paradigm.
Innovation is about adopting technologies or upgrading the processes and about the results of all your efforts. The efforts could involve technological advancements or updation in operations to find the best suitable solutions to your pre-existing problems in an advantageous manner.
On the flip side, Digital Transformation depends on
- The implementation of an innovative process to fundamentally upgrade your way of your offering’s delivery,
- Implementation of new roles, software, operational automation, hardware, and agile processing through combinational work model,
- Modernizing technology that you have or are using traditionally.
The motto of doing all the above changes in the business is performing business audits. Evaluating the overall work model becomes easy for more satisfactory delivery to the customers and stakeholders.
Another differentiating factor is the speed of implementation. Digital Transformation takes time in motioning from one functional mode to another in operation. Digital Innovation refers to a sudden fragmentation or inventiveness & the leading emergent actions to implement all those novel & innovatory business strategies.
An implication of straightforward steps to start something productive, Innovation requires,
- Encouragement
- Interruption free Communication
- Continuous Collaboration
With all the above efforts, implication results in transformation, and the process of implementation follows the first fragment of Innovation.
A vital step to digitally transform or innovate is acknowledging your business goals and recognizing the obstacles or issues interrupting the movement. Through the usage of transformation or creation of Innovation for smart and upgraded digital products and operations aims at streamlining the business model. In the end, you grow further via digital journey surprisingly, delightfully, and satisfactorily. Such attempts lead to substantial business profitability and market perforation.
As mentioned above, in this digital age, most businesses look forward to transforming or innovating their operations; it is dominant to have clarity on your goals for transformation. Your team must be prepared and enthusiastic to accept digitally upgraded tools and work models to reach individual goals successfully. The journey of success and growth includes the entire organization's efforts, and it must come with self-participation at each level.
Businesses that did not prepare any plans before transforming digitally may have faced failures and have reported negative reviews. Still, any technology leader can find the flaws of their loss where more than 70% will point out lack of planning. The exercise of defining potential obstacles needs depth research in our process, and none of the departments highlight their flaw, which gifts them failure in return.
Digital transformation is a proven successful approach for all industries. If it's utilized with prior planning, it can boost the returns of your business, and to do so, consulting technology leaders is more preferable to adopting techy solutions directly. Consultation of familiar technologists can lead you to the best suitable solutions that too cost-effectively.
Author Bio:
I’m Austin Joy is an IT Consultant at a leading Microsoft Partner firm called Bitscape. He helps businesses with digital Transformation Consulting Services on behalf of Bitscape in the USA and Canada. His enthusiasm & customer-satisfied expertise in assisting individuals for Digital transformation makes him considerable.