The software reviews and selection platform Capterra India, a Gartner subsidiary, conducted a survey of 435 respondents from SMEs and enterprises and noted that 88% of them said their firm has a digitalisation strategy in place. This finding highlights the growing importance of digitalisation and the reason why the majority of respondents said they have an operational digitalisation plan.
The first step in creating an effective digitalisation strategy is to create a transparent digital transformation plan that supports the corporate goals of SMEs. This process may include adoption and the desired outcomes, identifying key areas for digital adoption, and developing an implementation strategy.
For instance, if a retail company wants to create a digitalisation strategy, they may want to outline which steps in the sourcing and manufacturing of fabrics they want to digitise, how much it would cost, and how it would affect overall revenue, according to the survey report.
Between May 25-June 7, 2023, the survey was rolled out to a group of managers, senior managers, or CEOs/founders. For 82% of SME decision-makers, digitalisation is extremely important or essential to the expansion of their company, compared to 17% for whom it is just moderate and 1% for whom it is not at all significant.
Among different business sectors, 46% said they want to use digitalisation to enhance customer service and satisfaction, 40% said they need to streamline operations and workflows, 36% said they want to look into new business models and revenue streams, 32% said they want to reduce human error, and 32% said they want to use digitalisation to ensure compliance with data security laws.
The use of chatbots could be one of the best examples of digitalisation used to enhance customer service. The report added, “The introduction of specific classes of generative AI tools may also potentially contribute to this shift in client query catering through chat windows driven by artificial intelligence (AI) instead of conventional approaches.”
Increased efficiency was cited by 42% of respondents as one of the main advantages of enhancing or implementing digitalised processes, along with improved customer satisfaction (41%), higher profits (34%), improved employee satisfaction (33%), improved cyber security (32%), and more.
