Business in the digital era provides many new challenges and opportunities, how can you respond and deal with them?
Business in the digital era is certainly different from business in the past. There are lots of new things that you need to pay attention to in order to increase the company’s competitiveness with competitors, especially with those who have been technology-oriented from the start.
And indeed the fact is that there are many companies that are threatened with being ‘evicted’ in this era of the industrial revolution 4.0. One of the most obvious examples is the retail business against e-commerce. You can see how retail entrepreneurs have to rack their brains in order to compete with emerging e-commerce brands and continue to innovate day by day. They have to leave their comfort zone if they want to continue to survive.
In this article you can get a little information about changes and adaptations that you can do to be more competitive in the technological era. What about?
Business Service Speed in Digital Era
Especially if you are a businessman in the world of FMCG ( Fast Moving Consumer Goods ). You really have to make sure that your customers can easily make purchases with just the touch of a finger.
For that, you have to start adapting by opening a virtual store or online store that supports instant order completion. So your customers can directly make purchases from home in minutes. You also need to eliminate the gap between product information and your customer’s expectations.
If the budget is still not sufficient, you can use a third-party e-commerce platform first or by utilizing social media that is equipped with online shopping features such as Instagram and Facebook.
Business Adaptation to Digital Marketing in Digital Era
Digital marketing has become a new marketing trend today. Many brands are vying for influence in the digital world, especially on social media to get the attention of their potential customers.
And of course you can’t stand still and you need to adapt to new marketing methods. Learn where your customers are and what their habits are, then start executing your digital marketing plan to gain new market share or to maintain relationships with old customers.
In addition to promotional needs, digital marketing is also useful to show the existence of the company. Customers are certainly much more trusting of brands that have active social media accounts, compared to those that don’t.
Proximity to Customers
Still related to digital marketing, brands that can maintain closeness to customers will certainly be much more in demand than those that don’t.
In the era before the digital era began, perhaps establishing a direct relationship with customers one by one could not be done easily, or even impossible. Of course, considering the large number of customers compared to the customer service team you have. It is impossible to reach customers one by one every day.
But with the digital age, anything is possible. You can use email, WA broadcasts, social media, or other channels to continue to provide value to your customers. That way, communication will continue to be maintained and not only occur when a purchase or there is a problem. Brands will become more personal.
Operational Cost Efficiency and Automation
Given that you may not be able to control the amount of traffic that comes to your company as a customer, then you need to do some automation to make your customer management easier.
One of them is by automating processes that can indeed be done automatically, such as updating stock or answering common customer questions. You can take advantage of a chat bot or bot assistance that can answer automatically, without the need to burden customer service performance .
Enterprise Digital Transformation
In addition to the company’s external relations, you also need to improve collaboration between teams within the company. For example, by implementing digital transformation in the realm of company administration.
One of the most widely used examples is the use of CRM to monitor collaboration between sales teams in dealing with customers. CRM or Customer Relationship Management can provide information for every customer and can be accessed by every division. So no more time wasted just waiting for time-consuming problem escalation.
At the manufacturing industry level, there is such a thing as ERP or Enterprise Resource Planning. ERP software can help companies monitor production processes, machine maintenance, and relationships with supply chains .
Conclusion
After reading the above, of course you now know how the digital era affects business. What is clear is that building and maintaining a business in the digital era cannot be done in an obsolete way. You need to make changes if necessary, in order to increase the competitiveness of your business against current competitors.