Digital transformation means more than just digitalizing individual processes. It is a chance to fundamentally change how you deliver value to customers, solve business problems, and support your employees.
Rethink and redesign existing processes or create new business models to sustainably increase revenue, reduce costs, and enhance efficiency.
Keller Williams is the largest real estate franchise in the world (more than to 190,000 agents), also one of the largest privately held global residential real estate brokerages. In 2015, KW started to reposition itself as a tech company.
The company invested heavily in its own software, the cloud, and AI. It has created its own Labs division, KW Labs, which works in a similar fashion that Google or Amazon do. One of their signature products is Kelle, dubbed as ‘Siri for the real estate industry’.
Kelle is an AI-powered personal assistant that helps agents manage their deals - answer questions, manage referrals, check their progress against career goals, and much more. We are proud that Netguru is a part of Keller Williams’ journey.
Adi Pavlovic
Digital transformation is the integration of digital technologies across the entire organization to create a fundamental change in the way the business operates. It is a chance to define new ways of working, optimize processes, introduce new business models, and reimagine the customer experience. For digital transformations to be successful, they require a shift in organizational culture. Employees should be empowered to develop fresh ways of solving problems and given the freedom to allow innovation to flourish.
When successful, digital transformation has the power to significantly increase efficiency, reduce costs, enhance customer experience, and create a sustainable competitive advantage. Businesses can also take advantage of opportunities that exist in the market with the creation of new business models and through digital disruption.
Digital transformation can be a complex process, but if done well, it can give companies a huge advantage over their competition. Take these transformation initiatives for example:
Keller Williams (KW) is the world’s largest real estate franchise. The company’s sales results and the number of units sold make it the no. 1 real estate franchise in the USA. Keller Williams’ digital transformation journey started in 2015. That was when KW decided to build proprietary software on their own, which diminished the need of depending on third-party solutions. As a result of this decision, an innovation hub – KW Labs – was launched in 2017. It was dedicated to transforming Keller Williams into a tech company.
KW owns a huge collection of data and the company uses it to help agents all around the world make informed decisions by empowering them with AI-powered apps like a virtual assistant (a Siri for real estate agents), CRM system, or brilliant property search engine. These solutions support agents in their daily work and enable them to do their job the best they can by providing hyper-local market analysis, suggesting right offer parameters, or estimating the probability of closing a deal.
Unilever is one of the biggest providers of household goods and groceries has 2.5 billion daily customers. Unilever employs 161,000 people, runs 300 factories in 190 different countries, and owns 400-plus household brands. Their digital transformation started when the company realized their customers become more and more tech-savvy, and they expected the brand to meet their expectations by moving presence, attention, and communication into digitized channels.
Unilever decided to build data analytics infrastructure and an advanced platform to facilitate communication with its consumers and make it easier to build connections and relationships by conversations. To make sure this process was effective and efficient, the company needed to gather a vast collection of data – in 2019 it amassed 900 million individual consumer records, up from 200 million the year before.
Then, Unilever leveraged machine learning technologies to segment consumers based on their preferences and use programmatic, data-driven marketing to target them with a relevant message in digital channels.
The Home Depot – In 2017, the largest home improvement retailer in the United States committed to a bold digital transformation strategy. It planned to optimize its in-store and online shopping experiences, creating a seamless experience for customers across all channels. The company employed 1,000 new IT professionals to complete the transformation and leveraged data analytics to gain greater customer insights.
In two years, Home Depot’s revenue grew by over $17 billion, and the company was able to make cost savings by analyzing local trends and optimizing inventory levels.
Microsoft – Increasingly aware of the competitive pressure from its rivals, Apple and Amazon, Microsoft transformed its business from the ground up. The company implemented a customized data analytics solution, Microsoft Sales Experience (MSX), to help sales representatives calculate the probability of winning or losing an account. This allowed employees to tailor their offers more effectively and focus on the most promising accounts. The data from MSX was also integrated with the company’s CRM system, providing insights to departments across the business.
Nike – When the sports giant felt it was losing its competitive edge, Nike implemented a range of transformation initiatives. The company made changes to enhance its supply chain, improve its brand, understand its customers better, and strengthen its company culture. Data analytics provided the insights that led to the opening of concept stores, improvement in customer experience, and the creation of more membership opportunities. In two years, Nike’s stock price had risen from $52 to $88. Over the same period, the company’s revenue increased from $33.5 billion to $39.1 billion.
Developing a digital transformation strategy is a vital and basic step to take before any decisions can be turned into reality. However, business leaders may find it difficult to know what to focus on.
To create an effective digital transformation strategy, a company needs to find answers to the essential questions of Why, What, and Who. That’s what enables creating a compelling vision and plan for change.
As McKinsey’s data indicates, a well-planned digital strategy and a good change story make transformation efforts more than three times as likely to be successful. Illustrating the vision helps present three most frequent reasons for a digital transformation failure: failing at employee engagement, having too many priorities, and losing clarity.
A digital transformation strategy should also answer the questions of Where, When, How, and How Much. This should be done at the execution level, creating a plan for successful execution.
Developing a digital transformation strategy is an exercise in bridge-building. The authors of change should know how to “sell” this vision internally and present the desired outcomes honestly, but also in a positive light.
The story for change links the current state with the desired long-term vision of the company – it also connects the current employees’ fears with their ambition.
The answer to this question depends on whether you have the necessary skills, expertise, and experience in-house. If not, engaging a digital transformation partner is a valuable investment in the success of your project. A good partner will be able to provide support in these areas:
Partnering with experts who have successfully facilitated numerous digital transformations can add immeasurable value to your transformation initiatives.
Netguru is experienced in helping organizations across a range of industries integrate new digital solutions into the very core of their business.
Working according to the industry’s best practices, our experts will help you leverage digital technologies to transform your business processes, customer experience, and organizational culture.
One of our clients wanted to help employees navigate the office space, boost productivity and enhance collaboration after moving into 6,000 m2 of unfamiliar office space . They chose to build an enterprise mobile app that uses beacon technology to help employees find their way in the large space.
We helped the client create a truly modern work environment which makes employees happy (employer branding goal) and encourages the team to make full use of the office (productivity management goal).
We built native apps for iOS and Android to provide the client’s employees with crucial information about their workspace. The app has a fully interactive office map at its core. Employees can use it to quickly find their own location and reach the right people and places.
Marco Deseri
Hima Mandali
Steve Shillingford
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We understand that every project is different and requires an individual approach. That is why we offer a free consulting session with an experienced digital transformation consultant. During the session, you will have a chance to find out where should you start with digital transformation and what working with Netguru may look like.
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Radek Zaleski
Radek has been a consultant in over 100 projects. He has worked with such industries as travel, fintech, entertainment, media, construction, and many more.