“Digital transformation.”
Two words capable of making a fairly straightforward IT conversation sound like you’re about to rebuild NASA.
It gets talked about a lot, usually alongside diagrams full of arrows, clouds and the word “ecosystem” but what does digital transformation actually mean if you run a 10, 20 or 50-person business?
In simple terms, digital transformation means using technology to improve how your business works. It might mean replacing an inefficient process, connecting systems that don’t currently talk to each other, making information easier to find, or removing repetitive admin. You don’t need robots, a seven-figure transformation budget, or a flowchart with 48 boxes on it.
What does digital transformation look like?
It often looks surprisingly ordinary. Replacing a paper holiday form with an online approval. Moving files off someone’s desktop and into a shared company workspace. Automating an email that somebody currently sends manually every Friday. Bringing your phone system into Microsoft Teams. Giving employees secure access to the systems they need when they’re working away from the office. Swapping three different spreadsheets for one process everyone can actually follow.
None of that sounds particularly futuristic and that’s the point. Good digital transformation solves boring, expensive problems.
Start with the problem, not the technology
This is where businesses often get it backwards. Someone sees a new piece of software, it looks impressive, it has dashboards and AI, there is probably a free trial. Six months later, nobody is using it.
Before buying anything, it’s worth asking where your team actually wastes the most time, what customers regularly have to chase you for, where people are entering the same information more than once, which processes rely heavily on one particular person, what’s still being done manually “because that’s how we’ve always done it,” and where mistakes happen most often.
Now technology has a job to do.
Example: the innocent-looking spreadsheet
There’s nothing wrong with spreadsheets. We like spreadsheets. But every business eventually acquires that spreadsheet. It’s saved somewhere mysterious. Nobody knows who built it. There are eight tabs. One formula appears to be holding the entire company together, and Sarah must never, under any circumstances, go on holiday, because only Sarah knows how it works.
That’s the kind of process worth reviewing. The answer might be automation through SharePoint, Power Automate, your CRM, or something you already have within Microsoft 365. Digital transformation doesn’t necessarily mean adding more technology, sometimes it means finally using the technology you’re already paying for, properly.
Digital transformation can make every day work easier
Think about a typical employee’s day. They log into their laptop, check email, open Teams, look for a document, ask someone where the latest version is, download it, change it, email it to someone, get told that’s the wrong version, swear quietly, and start again.
Technology has technically been involved throughout but it hasn’t made the process particularly good or efficient.
Digital transformation looks at the whole process, rather than simply digitising each individual step. Maybe everyone works from one live document instead, now you’re using technology to remove friction rather than simply moving the friction online.
What areas should a business look at first?
Communication is a good place to start: are calls, chat, meetings and email fragmented across different platforms, and could your team communicate more easily whether they’re in the office, at home or travelling?
Documents and information are another. Can people quickly find the right file, or is there one version of the truth versus nine copies called Proposal-FINAL-v4-USE-THIS-ONE-Revised.docx? We’ve all been there.
Then there’s repetitive admin, the tasks people do again and again, like moving information between systems, sending standard emails, approving requests, building the same report, or chasing information that should already be to hand. Some of it may be suitable for automation.
Customer experience matters just as much as internal efficiency. Consider what happens when a customer calls, submits an enquiry, books something, needs support or asks for information, where do delays happen, and where are they forced to chase?
And underpinning all of it, security. Better digital systems shouldn’t simply be faster; they need to be secure. Access, devices, permissions, backups and cyber security should form part of any technology change from the beginning.
What about AI?
No article about digital transformation gets very far these days without someone asking, “should we be doing something with AI?” Fair question and the honest answer is that for most small businesses, AI isn’t a separate project bolted onto everything else, it’s already sitting inside the tools you’re using.
If you’re on Microsoft 365, Copilot can summarise a meeting you half-listened to, draft the first pass of an email, or pull the answer out of a document instead of you scrolling through it. That’s not a robot taking over your business. It’s the same principle as the spreadsheet and the holiday form, using something you’re probably already paying for to remove a bit of friction from a normal working day.
Do you need to transform everything?
No, please don’t.
Trying to overhaul an entire business at once is a fairly reliable way to annoy everybody. Start with one problem, fix it, see whether it works and then move on to the next. You may find that a handful of relatively small changes make a noticeable difference.
A simple digital transformation test
Pick one regular process in your business and ask: does this process involve unnecessary manual work, duplicated effort, delays or avoidable frustration? If the answer is yes, ask whether technology could remove any of it.
Congratulations, you’re doing digital transformation.
Where Noventre fits in
Technology should fit your business, not the other way around. Noventre works with businesses to understand how they currently operate, where technology is getting in the way, and where better use of IT, Microsoft 365, communications, cloud services and automation could make life easier.
Sometimes that involves a major change and sometimes it involves discovering you’ve been paying for the answer for three years and nobody knew it was there. Both count.
FAQs
What is digital transformation in simple terms?
Digital transformation means using technology to improve how a business operates, communicates and serves its customers.
Is digital transformation only for large companies?
No. Small businesses can benefit from relatively simple changes such as cloud file sharing, workflow automation, better communications and more efficient use of Microsoft 365.
Does digital transformation mean buying new software?
Not necessarily. A good first step is understanding whether you’re making full use of the technology you already have.
