Professional Documents
Culture Documents
Summary Digital Transformations in Businesses
Summary Digital Transformations in Businesses
Summary Digital Transformations in Businesses
Over the past two decades, digital technology has spread across the world like wildfire. It has influenced
numerous companies and consumers alike. As more and more consumers enjoy smartphone usage, some
companies’ entire businesses have become deeply dependent on the growth of digital technology. One
business facet that is largely affected by digitisation is marketing. With social media enjoying a great deal
of customer inflow, companies have started promoting their products online.
Digital marketing has been the buzzword for some time now; so, it is crucial to understand why this is so
and also get an idea of the impact digital marketing will have in the future.
The three main advantages of digital marketing are as follows:
Reaching and targeting the right audience:
It is very important for a marketer to understand who they are selling their products and how to reach
them. Digital marketing offers two distinct advantages in this regard:
1. Larger reach
2. The right target audience
© Copyright. UpGrad Education Pvt. Ltd. All rights reserved
ROI
As a marketer, it is important to understand the business impact of your marketing efforts. This can be
done by measuring the return on investment, i.e., the net profit generated divided by the total investment.
Digital marketing has two distinct advantages over traditional media when it comes to ROI:
1. Better measurement
2. Higher ROI
As a result of customers’ increasing movement to online platforms, Coca-Cola saw a decline in its sales as
most of its products were sold in brick-and-mortar stores. To remedy this decline, the company launched
the ‘Share a Coke’ campaign, where it printed the most common Australian names on Coke bottles to
engage with its customers. It also launched an online platform where people could customise Coke
bottles with their names. The brand-building strategy that started in Australia increased the company’s
sales volume by 2.5%. Since the campaign saw such huge success Down Under, today, it has expanded to
more than 70 countries across the world.
In 2002, an online file-sharing platform called Napster was launched. Within a year of its launch, it saw over
two million downloads. Since the platform negatively affected the sales of record labels, several lawsuits
were filed against it, and it was declared illegal. Although Napster was shut, Steve Jobs saw huge potential
in offering music online. He approached leading record labels to get them to venture into online music
offerings, and they eventually came round. As a result of these collaborations, Apple launched iTunes — a
platform where individual tracks, which were previously available only at the cost of entire albums, were
made available for purchase at a mere 99 cents.
With the expansion of digitisation, smartphones have become commonplace. GSK used this to its
advantage by offering mobile applications that helped it boost its brand equity among customers. For
instance, it launched Aquafresh Brush Time, which helped parents teach their kids how to brush. Brush
Time received over five million downloads. Another app, Flumoji, helped customers get information on
the
As customers spend lesser time in brick-and-mortar stores, retail is one industry that is affected
significantly. In response to the limited time its consumers spend in stores, the UK retail giant Tesco came
up with the concept of virtual stores where its customers could purchase products by scanning QR codes
using their mobiles. These stores were installed at railway stations and in subways in South Korea.
Another example of innovation in digital transformation was displayed by the fashion retail company
C&A. It is common knowledge that customers generally take opinions from others before buying
clothes. Taking a cue from this observation, C&A came up with special hangers that displayed Facebook
likes on an outfit. This gave its customers an idea about the outfit’s popularity.
You then saw how Dixons Carphone observed that its customers were irritated because even after they
researched online, they had to start from scratch when shopping in physical stores. As a solution to this,
Dixons Carphone came up with Wishlist, which was hosted on Cami. A Wishlist was something that its
customers could prepare online, and when they visited Dixons’ stores, the store representatives would
simply need to pull out information from these Wishlists. This offered personalisation and saved a lot of
the customers’ valuable time.
Finally, you saw the example of Huawei. The company started as an end-to-end ICT solutions provider in
the B2B space in 1987 in China. Since then, it has experienced a huge expansion internationally. Some of
the primary reasons behind this international expansion are its strong resolve to establish thought
leadership and an always-on communication strategy. Over the past 10 years, the company has seen huge
growth. From being ranked 83rd among the Fortune 500 companies to seeing a boost in revenue by over
$200mn in just three years, Huawei has clubbed its always-on communication strategy really well with
its widespread social media usage.
When a company takes digital transformation to a level that pushes the entire industry to transform,
this is called disruption. If the existing companies can’t keep pace with the digital disruption, they
eventually fail.
© Copyright. UpGrad Education Pvt. Ltd. All rights reserved
Apple’s iTunes was one such disruption. Netflix is another such example in the television industry.
Google is also a disruptor in digital marketing as it brings ads to publishers’ pages that are visited by
users through display marketing. It also displays ads on its search pages, which is known as search
marketing.
One of the major disruptors in the retail space is Amazon, which beat every traditional retail company
when it came to selling things online. Starting off with just books, Amazon, as we know it today, sells
almost everything online. It is the first choice of people who shop online.
Although Apple’s iTunes was a disruption in the music industry, this industry was further disrupted by a
change in the pricing strategy. While iTunes sold tracks at 99 cents, Spotify came up with a subscription
model where users could enjoy a huge collection of online music at a flat fee. This is the pricing strategy
that was later adopted by Apple too, as it launched Apple Music for iPhones.
Similar to the disruption in marketing, retail, and music, the telecom and transport industries have
also seen major disruptions. For instance, WeChat, WhatsApp, and Skype have shaved off over
$380bn of revenue from traditional telecom players. Similarly, in transport, Uber, Lyft, Ola, and
TranZit, through their mobile apps, have completely changed the way people commute.
Despite fintech being a highly regulated market, the disruption in it and the emergence of technologies
such as blockchain now have far-reaching consequences beyond just the notoriety of Bitcoin and other
cryptocurrencies. Blockchain has brought digital disruption to the heart of this industry. Banks are now
eager to harness the power of blockchain, which is estimated to save up to $20bn of costs by 2022, as per
a Santander report. It’s also believed that the technology will disrupt disruptors such as Uber and Airbnb.
Blockchain is based on the concept of a distributed ledger versus a centralised authority or custodian of
information. As a result, it is impossible to tamper with the records as they would be replicated across
the ‘block’ that contains them.
Banks face a major threat from digital disruption today as it opens doors for fintechs to begin offering
products and services that only banks used to offer. For instance, SOFI is a digital platform that provides
a lending marketplace in the US and has raised over $2bn from investors. It has also applied for a new
bank charter to offer FDIC-insured products to consumers.
One of the most commonly cited use cases of blockchain is in the remittance space, especially
cross-border.
All in all, when fully automated, blockchain can enforce consistency in execution, assist with dispute
resolution, increase accountability, and deliver end-to-end transparency — all of which can help
make better business decisions.
Disclaimer: All content and material on the upGrad website is copyrighted material, either belonging to
upGrad or its bonafide contributors and is purely for the dissemination of education. You are permitted to
access, print and download extracts from this site purely for your own education only and on the following
basis:
● You can download this document from the website for self-use only.
● Any copies of this document, in part or full, saved to disk or to any other storage medium may only be
used for subsequent, self-viewing purposes or to print an individual extract or copy for
non-commercial personal use only.
● Any further dissemination, distribution, reproduction, copying of the content of the document herein
or the uploading thereof on other websites or use of content for any other commercial/unauthorised
purposes in any way which could infringe the intellectual property rights of upGrad or its contributors,
is strictly prohibited.
● No graphics, images or photographs from any accompanying text in this document will be used
separately for unauthorised purposes.
● No material in this document will be modified, adapted or altered in any way.
● No part of this document or upGrad content may be reproduced or stored in any other web site or
included in any public or private electronic retrieval system or service without upGrad’s prior written
permission.
● Any rights not expressly granted in these terms are reserved.