8 Successful Digital Transformation Examples in Business

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Digital transformation examples in retail

Retail businesses are fighting to meet customer expectations due to the massive push towards ecommerce in the market. Even Walmart has undergone a transformation to keep up with Amazon and other grocery stores turning to things like online ordering and delivery services.

But Walmart has taken it farther than that to stay ahead. Their latest digital transformation success: voice ordering. Not only have they shifted to allow their customers to shop from the comfort of their homes or their jobs (or anywhere else), but they can now do so using voice command devices such as Google Home.

They’re also adding a visual delivery service, providing customers updates on their deliveries, and allowing visual connectivity so you can see them putting the order away in your kitchen.

Furthermore, the Walmart mobile app now offers visual search, allowing customers to type in the item they’re searching for and locate it on the store map. No more flagging down a store associate for help.

Examples of digital transformation in healthcare

Healthcare often lags in digitization on the patient side, but we’re starting to see digital innovation initiatives like e-portals for patients, real-time health monitoring, and virtual health visits. The innovation is improving the patient-institution relationship and leading to better health outcomes and engagement in healthcare decisions.

Where much of the healthcare industry suffers, especially certain niches such as senior living, is in managing prospective patients that come in and the proper documentation that goes along with it. Many digital marketing departments in senior care, for example, rely on referrals as many of their patients are coming from hospitals or other care facilities.

Atria Senior Living in Kentucky solved the prospect management issue by building a customer relationship management (CRM) system, complete with all the features they needed to track prospects on their website — how often they use the word “need” with chatbots; flagging actions for the sales team; and identifying how prospects interact with their various communities.

They also built an engagement app that allowed families to connect and communicate with their loved ones throughout the pandemic. On top of this, they launched a care management app for more efficient time management and treatment of their patients.

Digital transformation examples in marketing

Marketing technology, or martech, is a crowded business arena, with more than 8,000 product offerings. Between 2011 and 2020, product growth in the space reached 5,233%. Martech happens to permeate just about every other industry.

Now, it’s a landscape of platforms that includes digital asset management (DAM) and product information management (PIM), as well as marketing resource management (MRM) and content management systems (CMS). There’s marketing automation, personalization, and CRM solutions.

In terms of SEO, there are web crawlers and analytics tools, as well as rank trackers and AI-based optimization grading tools.

5,233%

The martech space grew 5,233% from 2011 to 2020

chiefmartec.com

The list of martech options goes on and on, and these software solutions are having a positive impact.

Take Terakeet, for example. We’ve grown significantly over the years with a business that is largely run online and through digital processes. The technologies we use to assess the competitive landscape were developed internally and are completely unique in the industry. Management of projects is digitally based. The tech platform we use to manage a database of more than 9 million publishers for strategic outreach is also something that we created when we recognized the need.

In many senses, Terakeet is just as much a digital technology company as it is an organic search company. 

Digital transformation strategy examples in transportation

Tesla pushed many car manufacturers into a new type of competition. With the rise in concerns over global warming and the world’s overreliance on oil, the automotive sector has recently embraced a move towards electrification and autonomous driving. 

Taking it a step further, technologies such as by Smart Eye deliver AI-based driver monitoring systems and automotive interior sensing solutions. These technologies make driving far safer by detecting when drivers are distracted, falling asleep, or otherwise putting themselves and their passengers in danger.

Other shifts in automotive digitization include autonomous fleet vehicles, the electrification of fleets, CO2-neutral trucks, and holographic overlays.

Clearly the automotive industry is reshaping itself to improve operations, performance, and customer experience.

But then there’s also the emergence of entire businesses built on digital transformation, like Carvana. They started with the ability to buy a car completely online, from start to finish, delivering the car to your home and giving you a trial period to test it out. But they still found ways to innovate further, with Carvana vending machines — essentially unmanned towers of cars where consumers can pick a car and drive away with it.

Another example is Hyundai, which recently acquired Boston Dynamics, a robotics company. The intention is to take their cars into the metaverse and become a trailblazer based on new, advanced robotics capabilities.

Examples of digital transformation in insurance

Insurance is an industry with a lot of tradition. However, we’re now starting to see innovation in the insurance market like never before. This includes significant technological changes related to the customer experience. 

Online portals are driving most of the change, such as telematics driver behavior monitoring, the ease of document access, and the ease of filing a claim solely from your phone. 

While a lot of the changes are incremental, maybe even standard, there are a few companies blazing a new path forward.

Root is entirely run through its app. You can get started within new insurance in minutes. Root uses your mobile phone to measure your driving behavior, with automatic savings applied to your account when the system detects you driving more safely.

Kroodle, a Dutch insurance company, interacts with its customers entirely through social media. Customers use a Facebook app to file claims, get quotes, and request services. 

Farmers Insurance is now using drones to conduct risk and damage assessments, roof inspections, and more. Since the drones are connected to the company via cloud computing using the Internet of Things (IoT), they’re able to transmit data analytics instantaneously for much faster assessment results.

Examples of digital transformation in foodservice and supermarkets

Another push towards digital transformation may simply be to make things more convenient for your audience. 

Take Dominos for instance. In 2011, Domino’s set out to make it easy for an individual with a smartphone to order a pizza within the 17 seconds it takes for a traffic light to turn green. From that moment, Dominos transformed from a pizza company into a tech titan.

They created an app for their customers to place orders and watch their order progress from placement to delivery. What’s more, they’ve invested in countless additional digital initiatives, including delivery by autonomous vehicles and electric bikes. The innovations resulted in digital sales now making up the majority of all global retail sales for the pizza chain.

This type of digitization of operations and customer engagement helps to separate Dominos from the competition. It also helps to delight customers at the same time.

Wegmans, the supermarket chain with more than $10.8 billion annual revenue, is a perfect example of digital transformation. Their customers can scan and bag their own groceries through their app while they shop. Then, customers pay at a kiosk on the way out to finish the purchase.

This reduces checkout time, and offers the brand deep insights into shopping behavior (like how long customers spend in the store, and which items they scan in which order, etc.

What these examples have in common

The common denominator with all these transformations is the shift towards efficiency through increased digitization. This translates into convenience and cost savings for customers and companies alike.

The digital transformation examples above feature a consistent reduction of friction in operations, product development, training, customer engagement, marketing, sales, and support. This is generally accomplished by streamlining clunky, disjointed processes, eliminating waste, and making new connections fast.

Learn from these examples to transform your own business performance.