What is Digital Transformation?

In a world now defined by rapid change, digital transformation is giving businesses the foundations for fast, continual, and competitive innovation. But what is digital transformation and who is involved?

In this post, we’re going to answer these questions and give you the fundamental knowledge they need to apply digital transformation initiatives in their own businesses.

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Digital Transformation overview

What is the digital transformation? In essence, it’s the collective effort of an organization to incorporate digital technology across all processes, operations, products, and services to continually improve customer experiences and adapt with emerging innovations.

It’s a coordinated initiative among all stakeholders, which often requires an overhaul of company culture and current practices.

As we covered in our ‘Less Tech, More Impact’ presentation during the Inspired Business Media CMO Summit in London, we discussed how companies undergoing digital transformation should focus on the outcomes of marketing technology rather than its features, and how investing in training and change management maximizes the effectiveness of their marketing tech stack.

Watch the full ‘Less Tech, More Impact’ presentation here

Why Digital Transformation?

Why bother? In our highly competitive digital age, if you’re not anticipating your customers’ needs and delivering hyper-personalized experiences, you’re not only missing revenue opportunities, you’re being left in the dust or innovation.

Industry experts warn that without digital transformation, businesses risk falling behind, or disappearing entirely.

What are Digital Transformation services?

They’re solutions that help businesses take advantage of technology to fundamentally improve all aspects of their operations. These services are usually delivered by consultancies like Bluprintx and include a combination of strategy, technology integration, process redesign, and change management.

What Digital Transformation is not

The longer the term ‘digital transformation’ makes the rounds across the business landscape, the more diluted its definition gets. To clear up some confusion, digital transformation is not simply the digitization of business processes. It does not mean going paperless, nor does it refer to the automation of erstwhile manual tasks, although all these things are certainly part of it.

To fully understand the true scope and impact of digital transformation, we need to look beyond the mere application of digital technologies and think of it on a much larger scale:

How can adopting modern technologies inform the next phase of your company?
What data-driven processes can you incorporate to make your customers’ lives easier and their experiences better?
How can technology transform and even disrupt the status quo, much like what cloud computing did for Netflix, Airbnb and Uber?
When it comes to digital transformation, think holistic rather than specific.

Is a Digital Transformation framework the same as a Digital Transformation strategy?

Although these two terms are often used interchangeably, they are not the same.

A digital transformation framework is the structured approach or method, it’s how digital transformation is achieved.

The strategy is the goal of digital transformation, or in other words, the what (and even the why).

Defining your strategy and framework together at the outset of your digital transformation journey gives you both the destination and the direction of travel.

Challenges of using Artificial Intelligence to drive Digital Transformation

Leveraging AI effectively to transform your business processes can be a complex and mammoth task, which is why it’s essential to plan and strategize.

Let’s take a look at some of the challenges companies face with implementing AI for digital transformation:

Data governance & regulatory compliance

There’s no denying that digital transformation requires due diligence to ensure regulatory compliance. While there are some industries that are more heavily regulated than others, all companies must adhere to applicable data privacy regulations.

Ensuring data integrity, quality, and compliance throughout may seem too daunting to overcome, but the reward will be worth the effort, and your company will remain a brand your clients and customers can trust.

Data protection and privacy is automatically built into AI-powered business platforms like Salesforce Agentforce, so you don’t have to worry about data protection on your own.

Establishing ethical standards for AI

Closely related to the topic of regulatory compliance is the question of how to maintain responsible AI development during the digital transformation process.

As AI becomes more prevalent in business systems, organizations must build policies and frameworks around the ethical use of artificial intelligence.

Adobe, for example, states that Firefly is the most creator-friendly GenAI tool in the industry, and boasts a human-first approach to GenAI.

Implementation & integration strategy

Integrating and implementing these advanced digital technologies require strategy, organizational buy-in, and a clear understanding of business objectives. Investing in the proper infrastructure, managing large volumes of data, and deciding how, when, and at what rate to start implementing these changes can be challenging, which is why working with a trusted digital transformation specialist is often the first port of call for companies.

The seamless integration of AI is about building a connected ecosystem where data flows freely across departments and processes to fuel real-time insights and decisions.

Access to skilled workforce

Digital transformation can yield significant value, but only if companies get their teams on board. Whether it’s investing in new AI applications or updating your workflows, employees need to be upskilled, supported, and kept in the loop from the very beginning.

Organizational buy-in is easier when employees understand the benefits of integrating this new technology.
Designing systems and workflows based on employee skillsets (such as

Bluprintx’s adoption services), training your existing employees, attracting more AI-savvy workers, and encouraging your staff to get curious about these processes will help improve the speed and quality of adoption and allay any resistance to AI adoption.

Mechanisms for Digital Transformation

When experts like McKinsey and Harvard Business Review talk about digital transformation, they often refer to mechanisms (or domains) of transformation, which are the areas of business companies want to change. Regardless of the domain you choose to prioritize, a strategy is always necessary to ensure you have the resources you need to achieve change.

A successful business transformation will touch on one or more of these domains:

Business Models

Netflix is often used as the perfect example of a company embracing the winds of change and adopting an entirely new business model rather than doubling down on the status quo.

When Netflix foresaw the sunsetting of DVD technology and the emergence of online streaming, it changed its business model to an online streaming service, completely abandoning what is now obsolete technology, and securing its position as the most successful subscription-based streaming services in the world.

Had it not embraced business model transformation when it did, Netflix would have likely gone extinct like Blockbuster, the old dinosaur of a different era that failed to innovate fast enough to compete with the services we all now use.

Like Netflix, a successful digital transformation strategy sometimes requires a fundamental shift in the way a company’s products or services are being offered, whether it’s to disrupt an industry in order to compete, to meet the evolving demands of customers, or to diversify revenue streams in order to drive sales (i.e., Amazon, Amazon Prime, and AWS).

Processes

What is process optimization and transformation? This is where AI shines and where the words ‘streamline’, ‘consolidate’ and ‘automate’ enter the chat.

Thanks to technology like cloud tools, artificial intelligence, automation, and machine learning, what were once siloed, slow, and manual workflows have now become rapid, accurate tasks that only require minimal human oversight.

Manual data entry, be gone.

Transforming how your company runs on a day-to-day basis may not seem as important as business model transformation, but it can reduce costs, improve the quality of your products and services, and help make your business more agile and resilient in the face of constant change.

Business process transformation can be anything from implementing IoT sensors and predictive analytics to automating expense reports, or even moving from on-prem to cloud storage.

Employees

A digital transformation strategy to improve employee experience is not something to overlook. In fact, digital transformation is only possible when businesses ensure their people are on board with the latest changes and feel like their positions are valued.

After all, it’s the people working for you who will be most affected by the implementation of these new digital tools, so change management strategies will be needed to ensure engagement and adoption throughout the transformation process.

How your employees respond to digital transformation will affect everything from productivity to retention, and even brand reputation.

Examples of transformation within the employee domain include:

Moving from legacy workspaces to cloud-based systems that allow for better collaboration and communication, e.g., Microsoft 365, Google Workspace, monday.com.

Making online and self-serve learning platforms available to give employees opportunities for continual skills improvement.

Using online platforms to gather real-time and anonymous feedback.

Customers

When done right, all digital transformation journeys lead to better customer experiences. In the end, digital transformation is essentially a journey to customer satisfaction and loyalty in a world where people are spoiled for choice and have no qualms about switching providers or brands at a moment’s notice.

Picture the world we all live in: every day, we interact with digital innovation to make our lives easier, from buying our essentials on Amazon and getting them delivered by drones within a few hours (or less), to ordering our morning bagel and coffee at the office from our phones, to speaking with a customer service bot on our banking app about a questionable charge.

Customers not only want, but expect, the brands they engage with to deliver valuable experiences and ostensibly endless options. And to avoid repeating Blockbuster’s mistakes, businesses must meet these demands to survive in their digital transformation efforts.

What could a customer experience transformation look like?

Using AI chatbots to offer 24/7 customer support

Offering an online banking app where customers can have full control of their finances right on their phone

Adding real-time GPS tracking and proactive SMS/email updates for deliveries.

Using AI to recommend products based on the customer’s browsing and purchase behavior.

Examples of Digital Transformation Technology

What technology is driving digital transformation, and what roles do they play?

Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning

Transformation, as we know it, would not exist without the constructive collaboration between AI and business systems. When we talk about speed, efficiency, and accuracy, we’re talking about AI’s ability to drastically change the pace of operations and day-to-day tasks. Like we said before, good-bye manual inputs.

The advent of AI and machine learning has helped to usher in a new era of customer service. With the ability to mimic human capabilities, AI can quickly create volumes of content with minimal human oversight (generative AI), as well as answer customer service inquiries (agentic AI), and other activities usually requiring a human touch.

Not only does AI speed up customer service resolution, but it also gives employees hours of time back to spend on more important functions.

For example, Adobe Experience Platform Agent Orchestrator uses agentic AI to engage with customers and deliver faster, better, and more personalized experiences with maximum impact to nurture leads and shorten sales cycles.

Digitization

Imagine we still lived in a time where every bank withdrawal required a trip to the teller and every bill payment required a check, a postage step, an envelope, and a balance book. Imagine we still had to wait for our statements every month to review our accounts.

Digitization has not only helped our formerly paper-dependent world move toward a more ecological paperless one, but it has also simplified how we find, store, retrieve, and remove information.

Having a digital-first mindset means focusing on the digital delivery of products or services and building a strong online customer service presence..

Digitization is at the center of massive overhauls in both the public and private sectors, e.g., healthcare and electronic medical records, online maps and GPS, libraries and digital surrogates of analog materials.

Cloud Computing

What is often considered the original digital transformation technology, cloud computing delivers essential business resources over the internet, like servers, storage, databases, and SaaS – paving the way for agility, scalability, and innovation.

Owning and maintaining physical IT infrastructure is no longer a barrier to company growth. Now, companies have access to scalable cloud platforms without having to deal with the logistical headache of on-prem storage or hardware.

Adapting to cloud computing means companies can access all the services and technologies they need on a subscription basis, which allows them to add or remove features when needed.

Automation

Leveraging technology to take over repetitive tasks and processes has saved companies countless hours of manual data entry. Unlike AI, where machines learn and adapt, automation, especially robotic process automation, is useful for carrying out tasks that don’t change or don’t require on-the-fly decision-making in a digital business environment.

How has automation changed digital transformation? Imagine having a software that can take care of tasks, workflows, and processes without you needing to intervene? Not only does this speed up your operations, but it also reduces errors and improves consistency.

Automation is prevalent in software that deals with multi-step business processes, human actions, and rule-based tasks.

Internet of Things (IoT)

This is where digital and physical tech converge. The evolution of IoT has made it possible to turn our everyday objects into smart devices that capture data, and learn from our behaviors in a way that allows us to improve our services and products.

From wearables like smart watches to self-driving cars, the real-time data captured in IoT devices can be used to train AI models and turn into hyper-personalized experiences.

Mobile technology

Business (and the world as we know it) has changed since our phones became powerful little computers. In just a swipe and a tap, people can make both small and big purchases and conduct business anywhere they want, opening opportunities for new business models as well as creating new routes to market.

Digital transformation requires more than just a mobile-first approach. Rather, mobile technology is embedded in all aspects of the user experience – from marketing to customer service to sales.

Blockchain

In the context of digital transformation, blockchain has completely reset the landscape of supply chain technology and information security. This relatively new technology allows businesses to store, verify, and share data from network to network without the risk of tampering, making it highly secure and transparent for companies needing tamper-proof digital registers.

APIs and Integrations

APIs and business integrations are knocking down barriers and creating smooth and platform-agnostic business ecosystems. Driven largely by API technology, which allows non-competing software to seamlessly communicate with each other, these partnerships are shaping the way businesses operate.

What are Digital Transformation benefits and business outcomes?

The benefits of business transformation and modernization are manifested in both small wins and large impacts.

Modernizing your business for the sake of being modern doesn’t necessarily provide long-term value, but what digital transformation offers companies – from SMBs to large enterprises – can be felt and measured across all levels and departments, from resource management to productivity, and from ROI to brand value.

Every digital transformation journey is different, but the most common benefits include:

Happier customers

At the risk of sounding trite, a happy customer is a happy business. Digital transformation has changed the relationship between companies and their customers by presenting new avenues for communication, engagement, and service.

Technology enables companies to nurture their customers across various digital channels and, thanks to powerful analytics tools, provide seamless and personalized journeys wherever they interact with your brand.

A part of what digital transformation makes better for users is the expansion of the customer service landscape; you’re no longer hedging your bets on a single email campaign or website, but rather engaging customers through several touchpoints.

Operational efficiency

We’ve mentioned this throughout the post, but it deserves its own section. Leveraging digital solutions with AI, machine learning, and automation features will significantly improve the speed, efficiency, and accuracy of your day-to-day operations.

Using digital solutions like AI has given businesses their time back. Why pay your brightest minds to take care of menial, mundane, and rudimentary tasks, when you can program your SaaS solution to do the work for them? The result is more time to focus on strategy and creative thinking.

Employee engagement

And, speaking about employees, digital transformation drives workforce engagement by providing your people with the newest technology that allows them to learn, experiment, and develop creative solutions without being encumbered by obsolescence.

Stronger engagement means higher performance levels, more sales, and a better ROI. Investing in the technology your workforce uses every day (and equally important, training them to use it), increases morale and lowers churn.

A mindset of innovation

When we embrace technology, we start to think of how it can affect our business goals and push us to the forefront of innovation. Companies like Netflix, Uber, Tesla, Amazon, and Microsoft used the challenges of the COVID-19 pandemic to embrace digital change and innovate not only their services and products, but also how these offerings are delivered.

Transitioning to cloud infrastructure and adopting an agile mindset sets your developers up for rapid and continual change.

Greater agility

And, speaking of agile, when your team embraces technological innovation, it also makes your organization more flexible, resilient, and better prepared for whatever the future hits you with, e.g., changing customer tastes and demands, market fluctuations, and technological breakthroughs.

When the next opportunity presents itself (or when a new competitor swiftly threatens your market share), digital transformation allows you to act quickly.

A stronger security posture

As cloud computing and digitization have evolved, so too has the industry of cybercrime, the unlawful access to and exploitation of people’s sensitive information, bank accounts, medical records, and other personal data.

Sophistication rises on both sides: as threats and cyber attacks become more insidious, the latest cybersecurity technology helps weed out issues with legacy software and outdated practices to help avoid or mitigate attacks.

How to measure Digital Transformation ROI

A better ROI is another benefit to digital transformation, but how do you measure it? It’s a question we tackled in an earlier post called ‘How to Measure the ROI of Digital Transformation’.

To understand how to calculate ROI, you first need to define the goals of these digital initiatives. Revenue growth seems like the most obvious objective, but it’s not always the only target.

Using data and analytics to measure past performance, you can measure your returns in the following areas:

Customer satisfaction

Cost savings

Employee productivity

Business growth

More accurate reporting

Overcome these challenges to accelerate Digital Transformation

What are the roadblocks to look out for on the path to digital transformation success?

Lack of clear business goals

Before investing in the latest technology, it’s essential to define your company’s goals and ensure your choices align with specific business outcomes, whether that’s revenue growth, cost savings, or better customer experience. Adding tools to your tech stack without a clear purpose can create confusion and lead to poor adoption..

Cohesion, communication, and clarity across all departments and management levels are needed for a successful digital transformation.

Underused technology

When organizations are sitting on tools (e.g., CRM, automation platforms) that are only being utilized to a fraction of their capabilities, it’s often due to a lack of training, management buy-in, or even poor integration.

Making sure your technologies are integrated builds an open tunnel through which data and insights can flow freely across your business to maximize your technology and ensure a single source of truth.

Resistance to change

Lack of transparency and communication can worsen employee anxiety about change, even if that change is an obvious improvement in systems, processes, and technology. Making sure your employees feel involved in the change process by looping them in from the very beginning of the transformation journey and listening to their needs and pain points can help smooth over the culture shock and lessen resistance to change.

Investing enough time and resources in training and upskilling your staff will also lead to a significant increase in engagement and technology adoption. As your employees look to your management team for guidance, ensuring early acceptance from your business leaders is essential.

How Bluprintx is Driving Digital Transformation

The digital transformation experts at Bluprintx are helping organizations across numerous sectors unify their technology, data, and customer experience strategies into measurable outcomes.

As top-tier Adobe and Salesforce partners, we specialize in mapping and integrating complex tech stacks that enable AI-driven personalization, real-time analytics, and smarter decision-making in digital transformation projects.

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