What is business digitalization and what are its advantages

The recently approved National Recovery and Resilience Plan (PNRR) provides for investments of over 40 million euros in programs related to corporate digitalisation, now seen as key to the development of businesses. The need to start or complete the company digitalisation journey is therefore undeniable. In the next lines we will answer the question of how to do this.

First of all it is good to remember what digitization entails; in short, it can be said that the transition to digital allows you to simplify and save money by exploiting the state of technological advancement and therefore abandoning traditional (so-called analog) tools, making the entire workflow more streamlined and fluid.

Choosing to digitalize your business helps to dematerialize physical places making communication and sales constant: in short, you can always be anywhere without limiting your potential. To give a quick example, the use of social networks with company accounts that represent the brand allows you to monitor customer sentiment and intercept their opinions and trends, helping to improve products and services or create new ones. Upon closer inspection, an analogue tool does not allow these results to be obtained quickly and with low costs, but digitalisation does, in particular through technologies such as Machine Learning and Artificial Intelligence (AI).

At this moment, in particular, there are many sectors - specifically SMEs - that are poorly digitalised and require realignment with corporate innovation, i.e. Logistics, Production, Human Resources, End customers.

However, before proceeding with the digitization process, some preliminary phases are necessary to prepare for the transition from analogue to digital. It is in fact essential to clarify priorities and objectives on the basis of the problems encountered and the sustainable goals of the company; by way of example, it is possible to find in some companies the presence of old, isolated IT structures: in these cases it is convenient to migrate these structures to new systems rather than establishing new ones. Only subsequently is it possible to proceed by planning the new renewed business model together with professionals and on the basis of well-measurable KPIs.

The support of specialized professional figures and the choice of measurable KPIs (and therefore evaluable in performance) is essential to create an innovation process designed on the specificity of the company. In fact, it will be possible, in this case, to choose solutions suitable for specific and accessible needs on company devices but above all scalable solutions, i.e. flexible enough to be valid and functional in the evolution of the company, capable of adapting to growth in a simple, fast and economical way.

What has been stated would allow, in particular in those sectors that are still poorly digitalised such as Logistics, Human Resources, Production, end customers, to fluidly manage all processes but above all to automate part of the activities while also being able to control them via a centralized archive that is always available. It is also essential to remember how the progressive digiThe implementation of these sectors has positive impacts on compliance with security protocols and data protection, making the company compliant with the legislation (see GDPR).

In conclusion, it is possible to state that the process of digitalisation and corporate innovation certainly entails a number of advantages far greater than the costs to be faced: in fact, given an expense in terms of customization and implementation of the digital solution as well as in terms of security and compliance, the advantages for companies in terms of automation of activities, dematerialisation, immediate communication, commercial visibility would be undeniable.

To do this, however, and not miss the opportunity to participate in the investments also foreseen by the PNRR, a commitment on the part of the entrepreneur and the choice of professionals capable of accompanying the company in this process is necessary.