Effecting digital transformation for its own sake is never a good idea—84% of companies digital transformation efforts fail. Every change process in an organisation should begin with the realisation that there is a problem. But, too often, leadership takes the quickest and easiest route to a remedy.

Digital transformation requires a deeper understanding of an issue as well as the time and effort that brings radical improvements in the performance of your business over time. But why go it alone when there are digital transformation specialists that can bring decades of experience to bear on your project, maximizing your chances of success? Proforma has been partnering with companies to create digital marketing solutions that deliver excellent results. Their experience spans 36 years and 750 locations.

Their focus has been on process digitization which is automation that allows your workers to focus on innovation instead of repetitive tasks. In addition, process digitization produces streams of data that are critical to making the right decisions and placing information at your fingertips that is needed for accurate forecasting. What follows are three of the most important goals of process digitization. Deliver on these three objectives—transforming the customer experience, operational process, and business models—and your business will achieve digital transformation success.

 1. Transform the user experience

The experience of people who use your system or a company interface has moved far beyond providing an attractive portal or intranet. Today, the user experience has become a business necessity—the reason a particular product or service takes off and thrives, or crashes and burns.

Managing the branded merchandise program using telephones (there’s no record of this interaction), emails (can be deleted, lost, or misfiled), and Excel (for clumsy reporting that provides no forecasting insights) is far from ideal.

An optimal user experience should be: useful, usable, findable, credible, desirable, accessible, and valuable. By switching to digital merchandising, you have at your fingertips: real-time stock control 24/7, easy online ordering, authorisation management, a secure artwork library, budget tracking, pre-approved lists of suppliers, customized reporting, and data mining for business forecasting. With free setup of your system and a fully customizable interface, you can be sure that your online company store will transform the user experience for all those involved in your branded merchandise program.

 2. Transform operational processes

The user experiences may be the most visible aspect of transformation, but companies are realizing the significant benefits of empowered workers and enhanced performance, when internal processes are digitally transformed.

Imagine this scenario: It’s just gone six, the evening before a bank holiday. The building’s emptied but Madison is at her workstation. She discovered an hour ago that there are just 50 of the 500 golf shirts she thought were in the company’s branded merchandise stock. Seems the other branches drew the stock and failed to let her know. It’s five days until the company’s annual golf day and she’s frantic. She’s made a couple of calls and found two suppliers who will put a rush on the job for a price. She doesn’t know if she’s broken the budget, but at least they’ll deliver the shirts in time. Or so she hopes.

This scenario plays out in organisations, big and small. But there is an alternative to the stress and confusion that so many branded merchandising programs fall victim to. An online company shop provides the best of user experiences by providing Madison with real-time inventory. In this alternate scenario, she would have been automatically alerted to the decreasing stock of golf shirts. This would have allowed her to get sign-off for her order with the online company shop authorisation management system, send through her order electronically to a pre-approved supplier with a pre-existing SLA, guaranteeing that she’d receive her order in good time. She would also be able to customize her system for easy reporting and her manager would be able to make sound business decisions using forecast data.

The story of Madison’s experience of your online company store operational processes, ends with a happy employee who would like to stick around and keep servicing your company for years to come.  

 3. Transform business models

An important aspect of digital transformation is being able to scale the way functions interact with each other; the aim being to evolve your company’s activities and boundaries. Typically, this happens in three phases:

• digital modifications to your business
• the creation of new digital businesses
• digital globalization

In practice, transforming your branded merchandise program into a digital company store, enables you to create new digital business features like an employee rewards program that allows your employees to convert reward points for products on your online company store.

In addition, digitized merchandising allows you to globalize your program, giving login permissions to stakeholders for easy access no matter where in the world they may be.

Embracing digital transformation as a business necessity is the only way to ensure your company will grow and thrive in today’s technology-driven world. Investing in an online company store for your brand, enhances your digital transformation efforts and presents an excellent opportunity to gain important customer insights that will shape your company and the future success of your branded merchandise program.

Proforma Durkee is the online company store expert. Their best-in-class workflow technology platform and more than 500 contracted partners, continue to ensure that 40,000+ online company stores get the most out of their branded merchandise programs for as little time and money as possible. If you’re ready to discuss creating an online store for your company, please contact us and let's chat.

For more information about the benefits on an online company store, you can download our free infographic, The future of corporate branding is digital, that explores topics like easy reporting, brand consistency, inventory control, automated workflow, and budget control.