Change is coming. Change is already here. If you’re accessing this content on a digital device, then you’re already actively engaged in using digital tools.
The Digital Revolution has already begun as stated in the recent Deloitte Insight report, The Industry 4.0 manufacturing revolution. But is your business taking full advantage of the digital opportunities or are you still considering the options?
When it comes to embracing digital technology you’ll probably discover you’re proficient in some areas and weak in others. Consider conducting a digital audit and make some improvements to your business by introducing or enhancing your digital strategy. The quick checklist below aims to give you a basic framework to review and identify how you’re using digital technology in your business.
What is a digital audit?
We hear a lot about this digital revolution that’s currently underway. What does this digital revolution actually mean? Well, you can look at it in a number of different ways. We’re seeing the introduction of artificial intelligence, the Internet of Things (IoT), nanotechnology, biotechnology.They’re all having an influence on the way in which we do things, operate, and obviously the way in which we do our work.
In my view, one of the things that we need to consider is having a Digital Audit inside our businesses to actually understand what’s going on with our digital assets and our digital activity. But also to understand if we are preparing in the right way. It doesn’t take long to do a Digital Audit. The main thing is to ask yourself three or four simple questions.
#1 Do you have a digital strategy?
Well, it’s obvious to you inside your own business whether that exists or not. The key point of a digital strategy is it sets out for you as business leaders, your staff and your customers where you’re going with your digital output, and how you plan to integrate new digital tools to help run your businesses.
Having a digital strategy is the first step to ensuring that you are adapting and compliant with the opportunities that are going to arise in this digital revolution.
#2 How does your business use digital marketing?
If you think about the way in which you currently engage with media, the way you consume content, it’s often useful to understand what things you are engaged with and where your audience lives. Having a really good digital marketing strategy will help you connect and engage with your customers in a way you might not have planned.
Digital is still just a channel so you still need to create good content but it’s really helpful if you can have a plan that allows you to identify which channels are going to work best for you in that digital environment. From here you identify what content you need to engage with your consumers and how best to execute that, perhaps with an agency.
#3 Are you embracing a digital workplace?
How are you engaging and using digital tools inside your workplace? For example many people use tools like Xero or MYOB to help them with their accounting. There are a whole host of other digital cloud-based programmes that you can use to support the operational activity in your workplace.
Things like DocuSign, Dropbox, Trello; there’s a whole host of different tools that you can use inside your business to embrace this new digital opportunity.
#4 Do you have a digital security plan?
Data protection issues are becoming more relevant, and you need to make sure that you protect peoples data irrespective of how you collect it.
Making sure that you are compliant in this area is one aspect, but you also need to make sure you have a really solid disaster recovery programme in place. As we begin to embrace an increasing number of digital tools, you will need to quickly recover lost files, access what you need and allow work to continue.
