The era of the Internet boom, digital transformation (Digital Transformation) was born and has become popular in recent times. If effective, this activity will completely change the way a business operates, thereby helping to increase cooperation efficiency, optimize work performance and bring value to customers.
The essential role of digital transformation in businesses
Reports of major market research companies such as Gartner, IDC…all show that digital transformation really brings a lot of benefits to all aspects of business operations: from executive management to research, to business. business…
Digital transformation helps businesses:
- Create a new product/service or a new service
- Reach more customers, remove physical boundaries in business
- Eliminate many intermediaries, optimize business processes, save costs for businesses and bring benefits and convenience to customers
- Helping businesses manage better thanks to a richer and more systematic source of management information
- Make decisions faster and more accurately thanks to a transparent and timely reporting system
- Improve labor productivity thanks to technology leverage
Digital transformation really brings a lot of benefits to all aspects of business activities
3 typical limitations for small and medium enterprises when applying digital transformation
Digital transformation is a trend all over the world, but in Vietnam, many businesses, especially small and medium-sized enterprises, do not seem to be ready for this process yet. Therefore, they face limitations such as:
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Low level of science, technology and innovation
According to VCCI, currently Vietnam’s small and medium enterprises account for about 97% of the total number of enterprises, the level of science, technology and innovation is still low, with 80% to 90% of machinery used in Vietnamese enterprises. are imported, nearly 80% are old technologies from the 1980-1990s.
In April 2019, Cisco released the report “Digital Development Index of Small and Medium Enterprises in Asia – Pacific”, covering more than 1,340 enterprises in the region as a whole and 50 enterprises. Vietnam in particular. In Vietnam, SMEs are facing barriers in the digital transformation process such as lack of digital skills and human resources (17%), lack of a strong enough IT platform to enable digital transformation (16.7%), lack of digital thinking or digital culture challenges in the business (15.7%),…
In Vietnam, SMEs are facing barriers in digital transformation
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Lack of alignment between the benefits of digital transformation and business goals
Convincing each department in the enterprise to accept the change of habits and cooperation is not an easy process for technology managers.
For example, in order for the Marketing department to transform digitally, CIOs and CTOs must understand and talk to Marketing personnel in their own language, must connect with representatives, managers of these departments, or initially establish a digital transformation committee to find consensus. Only then, will the process of digital transformation be non-discrete between the technology department and other business divisions as is common in enterprises today.
Convincing each department in the business to accept changing habits and cooperating is not an easy process
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Lack of investment boldness from leaders
In addition, this process is equivalent to changing most of the working processes, culture and operating methods, this change requires a large amount of investment capital as well as resources to complete. This makes many businesses still ponder the uncertainty of the results after applying digital transformation and the risks if it fails.
In addition, information technology experts also said that the digital transformation process in Vietnamese enterprises took place quite early but at a slow pace because many business leaders were too cautious and considered risks. For example, in the period of 2013 when the problem of big data began to be mentioned, many Vietnamese businesses thought that it was “still a distant matter”, but only a few years later big data appeared everywhere. business areas.
The process of digital transformation in Vietnamese enterprises took place quite early but at a slow pace
The fourth industrial revolution with digital transformation as the basic solution should be seen as an opportunity on the last train. If we miss this train, we will go further behind developed countries. Therefore, leaders and managers need to be smart and subtle to grasp the limitations when deciding to apply digital transformation in their businesses. This not only helps companies and corporations shorten the distance to success, but also avoids many unexpected risks and losses.
Source: ocd.vn