Three opportunities with digitalisation

Sara Lindström works as a digital travel manager at AddPro. She guides companies and organisations on their journey towards digitalisation. The journey can start in strategy or inspiration on how new technological solutions can be used for efficiency and business development. In a workshop format, Sara helps organisations to see opportunities and overcome challenges on their journey. Here she shares three examples of opportunities with digitisation.

Option 1: Streamline internal cooperation

One of the biggest opportunities of digitisation is to improve internal collaboration, which helps companies become more efficient. One of the keys is the new version of Microsoft Office 365, including the collaboration tool Teams.

When we talk about improving efficiency, Teams are often mentioned. What knots does Teams untie?
- It's mainly email, meetings and document management. Many people get so many emails that efficiency is lost in an overcrowded inbox. Others spend far too much of their day looking for documents. Microsoft Teams allows you to keep projects separate, making it easier to focus on one thing at a time. Chat and document management help make it easier.

What are the expectations when a customer starts with Teams?
- They're curious and usually impressed - people don't expect a Microsoft product to be so smooth and fun to work in. They may have been running Windows 7 and had Outlook for many years, then they see Teams and "WOW!". Expectations are usually exceeded.

What are the most common barriers to getting started?
- The biggest barrier is that few people know about the possibilities of Microsoft Teams. Most of the time, it's just a matter of making up your mind. Take your next project and start it in Teams - it's that simple. Then you almost become addicted. You don't have to email attachments back and forth. And you don't have to search for documents and wonder who wrote what.

Do you have a successful example of a Teams implementation?
- A good example comes from an energy company. One department started using Teams. There were some power users whorealized that Teams could make their daily life easier. They started with simple things like collaborating on documents, producing presentations and planning their projects. After using Microsoft Teams for a while, other departments took notice, got curious and wanted to try it out. Teams is a good representation of digitisation in general: it only flies if people see their lives getting easier!

Opportunity 2: Developing the customer journey and the customer relationship

Another opportunity that opens up is to develop the customer journey and improve the customer experience. This involves both understanding the customer better through data and using these insights to simplify the buying journey and improve customer dialogue.

How can digitalisation improve the customer journey?
- Digitalisation enables an improved customer journey, precisely because we can capture the customer and help them along the way. Marketing automation is one way to get information out. E-commerce with smart assistants makes it easy to buy. A customer service portal where the customer can register support cases, see order history and find invoice information are other examples of an improved customer journey.

How to improve customer understanding?
- Today we have a lot of information about customers. What products have they bought? How long have they been customers with us? How have they interacted with us in the past? Then we use different tools to compile this data and visualise it in a good way.

One example is a housing company where we analysed data collected from their tenants. We looked at what types of people tended to be interested in different areas. It's valuable to know who might want to move in when new housing areas are planned.

Opportunity 3: Data and technology drive business development.

A third possibility is to use the benefits of digitalisation to develop new products and services using new digital technologies and advanced data analysis.

What other opportunities can digitisation create?
- Another area that is getting a lot of interest right now is the Internet of Things. The company sees the opportunity to get data about its products, which can then be used to inform data-driven decisions. Data can provide insights into the ability to offer new services to their customers. For example, real-time information from products in the field can open up new types of preventive services.

Another good example of business development is the Max app. The customer orders her burger in the app with the desired accessories, in which restaurant she wants to pick it up and when it should be ready. She then pays directly in the app and picks up her burger. Max has worked on its flows and streamlined the business a lot by shifting some of its work to the customer. In turn, the customer appreciates the setup as it is both easier and faster to order a burger than it was before.

Who initiates the business development work?
- Business development is normally on the agenda of the management team. With digitisation, the initiative can come from a variety of sources, although management buy-in is of course a key success factor. When we implement new technology in a company, we often don't work at management level but in the purchasing department, for example. When the department sees what is possible with the help of technology, they can raise it to management for a business development discussion.

Are there any pitfalls?
- There are many pitfalls. Going into digitisation without being connected to any technical experts. Getting caught up in the technology and thinking "now we've got an app and therefore we're digital". Or digging into the Internet of Things without thinking about what it can be used for, technology for technology's sake. The challenge will be to keep multiple thoughts in your head at the same time. It has to be business-driven and benefit the customer, while at the same time leveraging technology in a value-creating way.

---

Are you curious about more possibilities with digitalisation? In our Digital Travel Management workshop, you and your colleagues will get half a day of practical advice and tips on what digitalisation can mean for your company and what business development opportunities it can bring. Read more and book the workshop here!