The coronavirus wake-up call

As the world is witnessing the global coronavirus COVID-19 outbreak, one cannot help but notice the immense challenge of minimizing the economic impact of the pandemic. If ever there was a time to acknowledge the crucial role of digital business transformation, it’s now.

Digital business needs to be business critical

The effects of the coronavirus outbreak show how vulnerable we still remain when our chances of meeting face-to-face become restricted. New business opportunities face obstacles, and stock markets dive. This pandemic might be considered an example of a “black swan” – an extremely rare and unpredictable event with severe consequences, urging us to recognize it is a possibility for which we need to prepare and try to confine its effects.

In many industries, it would be beneficial to focus on growing the digital business and enhancing the excellent digital customer experience. This strategy would contribute to reducing risks such as the coronavirus outbreak.

Instead of phone calls and face-to-face meetings, various digital services (most typically, websites) should be embraced by the companies, and their potential should be utilized as lead generation and sales channels.

These digital services should enable an excellent customer experience through, for example, high quality customer service.

Correspondingly, the data-driven marketing should enhance lead generation and successful selling. The existing customer data should be used for better targeted marketing as well as for creating a better and tailored customer experience.

This integrity of digital services, digital marketing and marketing automation is apt to create growth and excellence in customer experience, which we refer to as a digital growth engine. Digital business has become business critical.

Honestly, is your company carrying out digital transformation because of growing the business, not because of brand image?

The full potential of the digital transformation should be reached better than what is usually the case in companies today, even though many of them are investing in their websites, digital marketing operations and communication with customers by means of digital systems. How many companies can assert, with hand on heart, that they do consider growing their business as the actual driving force behind their digital transformation?

All too often, measures related to digital transformation are carried out in a company simply because other operators in the industry are doing that, too. Digital marketing is often given a role as a support function for sales. The number of companies that see this differently is growing at an accelerating rate, but still there are too many, especially among B2B companies, who are clinging to old habits.

Grow your business with Digital Growth Engine

As far as the effects of coronavirus COVID-19 are concerned, the businesses now have no other alternative but to adapt to the economic impact as best they can. For the future though, it is necessary to estimate whether your company’s digital transformation has progressed far enough to enable minimizing large-scale risks such as pandemics.

While doing that, you may also find solutions to grow your business. The digital growth engine might well be one of those. If you are interested in building an engine of this kind to generate digital growth, we at Nordic Morning are happy to help.

This blog was originally posted in Kauppalehti (in Finnish) 13.3.2020. Read the original blog post here: https://blog.kauppalehti.fi/vieraskyna/nordic-morning-koronavirus-heratti-fyysisten-kohtaamisten-rajoittaminen-halvaannuttaa-yritystoimintaa-edelleen