Gearing your digitisation efforts towards your consumers

Whatever products or services your company provides, any digitisation efforts should be directed towards addressing the needs of your consumers. Keeping this in mind is more crucial than ever, considering how the Internet of Things (IoT) is developing rapidly in Australia.

Research from digital consulting firm Ovum predicted that there will be around 47 million smart devices in Australian homes by 2022. In a nutshell, IoT connects every smartphone, smart watch, speaker, appliance, or any other smart device in existence through the internet.

For business owners, this means that there will be more efficient digital channels with which you can reach out to your consumers in the future.

The many ways to approach digitisation can also lead to choice paralysis for business owners afraid of getting left behind in the wave of digital transformation. You can avoid this from happening by keeping your consumers at the heart of any and all future digitisation efforts.

Apart from understanding your consumers’ most immediate concerns, this also involves understanding what IoT-enabled digitisation is capable of.

The potential of IoT digitisation

The Australian Council of Learned Academies’s (ACOLA) report on the potential impact of the IoT highlights the different ways in which smart devices can improve both businesses and lives.

“The ACOLA IoT report examines how we can improve the way we live through using technology. It also shows how industries can grow by facilitating better processes and automation,” details Australia’s Chief Scientist Dr. Alan Finkel who commissioned the study.

“Reflecting on the challenges of 2020, IoT could help us monitor environmental disasters, support pandemic management and enhance the delivery of services to regional and remote populations. The IoT can also be useful to track and demonstrate sustainability in supply chains, such as low emissions products, and will assist industry to create a greater trust in data.”

This is exactly how the IoT is being used in the digitisation of today’s logistics industry. Verizon Connect’s guide to fleet management systems discusses how today’s GPS vehicle tracking software is not only improving consumer trust but also overall productivity in trucking companies.

These modern systems allow fleet managers to instantly monitor and communicate with delivery or cargo vehicles, which ultimately allows packages to arrive at customers’ front doors faster.

Combined, GPS tracking technology, onboard vehicle diagnostic computers, and the digital software that ties it all together are improving customer satisfaction and lowering fuel costs at the same time.

In the realm of finance, digitisation is being geared towards consumers in different ways. Global auditing and taxation firm KPMG in a survey of 70 finance executives found that the majority of financial firms want to upgrade their software primarily for cost-cutting purposes.

“An increase in the adoption of technology, digitisation and cloud-based solutions to support finance teams is a top of mind priority,” said KPMG partners Nicola Davis and Pete Trace in the report. “Now they are focused on cementing business recovery through cost management and cost reduction activities across the organisation, leading the way through finance systems rationalisation and simplification.”

These are just some of the ways in which two-thirds of the CEOs of the world’s 2,000 global companies are focusing on using digitisation to improve the customer experience.

With emerging cloud technologies, IoT-enabled systems, and other software that can simplify the role of consumers, there are countless ways to gear your digitisation efforts towards the people that matter to your business the most.