Digital Expansion 101 | Why to Expand Business Digitally in 2022

Digital Expansion 101: Why Your Business Needs to Go Digital in 2022

Expansion is the key to growing a business and increasing its profitability. Once your business has been established and is generating a high profit, you are most likely ready to expand your business.

When we talk about expanding a business, there are two ways to achieve this objective: traditional expansion (expanding at new physical locations) and digital expansion (using the latest tech advancements to expand digitally).

Let us tell you that digital expansion is the latest and the most prominent trend among businesses looking for growth. This approach is faster and more cost effective than traditional business expansion. Let’s take a closer look and understand what digital expansion is.

What Is Digital Transformation?

Digital expansion, also commonly referred to as digitalization, is a popular trend amongst businesses. The investment in digital technology is promising and has a great future prospect, making it the top choice for businesses.

Digital expansion essentially refers to the curation and implementation of digital technologies to make a business’s services/ products offering available to a wider audience. Naturally, here a business is not expanded physically but to the digital world. Speaking factually, the market for digital transformation is valued at USD 1.3 trillion as of 2020.

This makes digital transformation a considerable investment, especially for already established businesses that have experienced tremendous success during their course of physical business operations.

However, what exactly is the benefit of digital transformation? How can a business gain from going digital? Let’s find the answer to this question in the upcoming section of this blog.

5 Benefits of Taking Your Business Digital

Higher Revenue Generation

One of the primary reasons for a business to expand is to generate a higher revenue and achieve market success. Digital expansion is tested over time to aid this need and increase a business’s revenue.

When a business expands digitally, it gains access to numerous new markets at once to explore and penetrate. This objective is challenging to achieve in the traditional expansion where a business’s reach is merely limited to the new location’s geographical area.

Moreover, digital expansion is known to cut down on various operational costs that a business would otherwise have to incur had it gone for traditional expansion. This makes digital expansion an excellent source of increasing a business’s cost efficiency and revenue.

Access to Data-driven Consumer Insights

Analytical consumer data is one of the most critical aspects of business growth and is of high value. Having an understanding of consumer behavior and trends allows precise strategic planning and facilitates high-end decision-making in business.

However, it is commonly known that gaining insights into consumer data is a challenge in traditional businesses. Moreover, this task is even more difficult if you are a large-scale business with a diverse market.

However, by expanding your business globally, you can seamlessly get access to data-driven consumer analytics. This data is a result of advanced digital technology that enables online businesses to understand and analyze consumer trends with ease.

Moreover, by implementing technologies like AI (Artificial Intelligence), you can further use this data to enhance your decision-making. We have discussed this aspect of technology in detail in the last section, so make sure to read the blog until the end.

Decreased Human Error

Human errors are an inevitable part of business operations. This is especially the case in traditional businesses, where most of the processes are conducted manually. Moreover, when a business plans to expand traditionally, it has to manage a larger workforce, which increases the chances of human errors.

However, when a business opts for digital expansion, it can significantly reduce the chances of human error. This is because a part of digital expansion is to eliminate human involvement from everyday operations.

Since most of the everyday tasks are conducted by machines, the results are highly precise and are free from human error. This feature of digital expansion is highly crucial for businesses where preciseness and accuracy are a must.

Automation of Business Processes

In the present time, it is essential for businesses to be efficient in their operations. However, with manually conducted processes, this objective is challenging to achieve.

Moreover, with traditional expansion, a business further diversifies its scope of operations, further reducing operational efficiency. However, this is not the case in digital expansion, where businesses benefit from process automation.

Process automation is a part of digital technology and is a highly popular concept for business efficiency. By automating business processes, a business can achieve efficiency and generate quick and reliable results. Automation is practiced in various fields of business, such as finance management, inventory management, customer relationship management, etc.

Enhanced Customer Experience

Delivering a high-end experience to the customers is every business’s objective. However, very few businesses are actually able to successfully achieve this objective.

When a business expands traditionally, it aims to target a wider market and, therefore, more customers. However, it is often challenging to manually manage a large customer base and deliver a consistently high-quality customer experience.

On the other hand, digital technology can efficiently achieve this objective. With the latest tech advancements in customer relationship management, businesses that go for digital expansion can deliver a high-end experience to their consumers.

These were the top 5 benefits of going for digital expansion. Now that you are aware of why digital growth is better than the traditional one, you must be wondering, what are the mediums to grow digitally, right? Well, here are the top 4 technologies of 2022 for digital expansion.

Latest Technologies for Digital Transformation

Artificial Intelligence

Earlier, we had discussed the ability of artificial intelligence to utilize data for better decision-making. Artificial intelligence is one of the most promising and widely popular technologies in the tech sector at the present time.

The technology is based on machine learning and is known for being a digital brain capable of quick and precise decision-making. To elaborate, AI learns by feeding on data (known as Big Data) and uses the information to predict patterns. These patterns are then useful for automated decision-making and human interaction.

AI brings a tremendous scope of digital expansion and growth. By integrating AI technology, a business can benefit from process automation, quick decision-making, precise strategy formation, and high-quality customer service.

Internet of Things

IoT (Internet of Things) is a technology that combines digital and hardware technology to deliver top-notch results. IoT is a highly advanced and popular technology that has numerous business implementations.

From efficient human resource management to inventory tracking and operational management, IoT has taken over almost all aspects of a business. This technology is now being implemented in numerous sectors such as healthcare, agriculture, retail, automobile, hospitality, etc.

Moreover, there are numerous businesses that are now offering IoT-based solutions to their customers. Some of the most prominent examples of this concept are fitness watches and smart security systems. This makes IoT a promising investment for digital business growth and expansion.

Mobile App Development

Mobile applications are undoubtedly one of the most prominent technologies at the present time and are widely preferred by not just businesses but also consumers. Due to this factor, various established businesses are going for enterprise app development for their digital transformation.

Speaking factually, the market for enterprise app development was valued at $238.36 billion for the year 2020. Developing an app for business expansion brings various benefits.

A business can use the app to manage operations, provide customer support, sell online, and do a lot more. This makes app development a popular and a highly considerable idea for businesses planning to grow digitally.

Cloud Computing

Cloud computing is the future of digital transformation and is highly popular at present. Cloud computing enables businesses to efficiently store large quantities of data and utilize it whenever required.

This technology is highly useful by itself for business growth and can be integrated with other technologies like AI to increase business efficiency. Cloud computing enables businesses to streamline its operations and increase their efficiency, therefore aiding quick and seamless expansion.

This technology is especially promising for businesses that operate on a large scale and want to benefit from centralized data storage and processing. Owing to this, various on-demand service and retail businesses have already shifted their operations to cloud computing-based solutions.

These were the top 4 technologies for a business’s digital transformation and growth. You can choose a technology based on your business’s requirements and scope and take your operations online. Once you have selected a technology for digital expansion, it is the time to implement it. The development process for a tech solution varies from one technology to another. However, the basics still remain the same. Let’s find out the complete process of technology development in detail.

Step-by-step Process of Digital Transformation

Planning

Here, you have to plan your business’s digital growth. ‘How do you aim to enter the new market and deliver your goods and services to the new customer base?’ is a important part of the planning business expansion.

This step is the founding stone of business expansion and is highly critical. However, numerous businesses often end up overlooking this stage. This results in faulty expansion plans that result in massive losses.

Here, you essentially have to analyze your business objectives and choose the right technology for business expansion. This will enable you to understand the market gap and will enable you to fulfill it while working on your business’s growth objectives.

Market Research

This stage involves studying the target market and its requirements. Here, you have to analyze and understand your new market to know what the consumers are looking for.

Market analysis will determine the core objectives and characteristics of your digital platform. For example, if you are planning to develop a mobile application, analyzing the market will enable you to find relevant app features.

Market research generally consists of three aspects: consumer research, competitor research, and industry research. When combined together, the findings of these researches enable you to understand what exactly your platform needs.

Choose Technology

Once you have researched the market and have found the exact market requirements, you can have to choose the technology that will be the most optimum solution for your business.

While making a choice on the technology, you have to consider your market’s requirements as well as your business objectives. Moreover, you can also see how your competitors are delivering similar services and use it as a guide to fulfilling your objectives.

You can choose either of the technologies or even multiple technologies we have mentioned in the earlier section of this blog. However, there are numerous other technologies out there to choose from. You must find the technology that is the best match for your expansion goals.

Choose Development Approach

Once you have determined which technology you want to develop for your business’s digital expansion, you have to choose a medium for development. There are numerous development approaches that a business owner can choose from. Let’s find out what exactly these approaches are in detail.

DIY Development

DIY Development, also known as self-development, is a concept in which the digital platform is developed by the business owner. Naturally, for this approach, one needs to have technical expertise in the complete development process.

However, it is not possible for a single person to know everything about the development process. Consequently, when you go for self-development, you will end up compromising on the final quality of the platform. Due to this factor, this approach isn’t recommended for your business’s digital platform development project.

Hiring a Development Team

It is always good to have a complete development team working on your project full time. This approach is known as in-house development and is preferred by businesses that operate on a large scale.

However, the cost of hiring and managing a complete team for platform development can be very high for some businesses. As a result, even though the results from a full development team are of high quality, this is not a feasible choice every time, ultimately limiting the scope of business expansion.

Outsourcing

Outsourcing platform development is by far the most popular and widely chosen approach out of all. Most of the businesses go for this approach while expanding their business.

Outsourcing development is preferred because of the low development cost, less project delivery time, and high-end outputs.

Generally speaking, there are two ways to outsource development: hiring a freelancer and appointing an agency. Whichever approach you choose will impact the final quality of your platform. We recommend working with a development agency to get the best results at a low time and cost.

Choose Location

It is commonly known that the cost of developing a platform varies from location to location. This is because the development rates are different in every country.

If you choose to outsource your platform’s development, this is a critical stage that can help you save a large amount of money. However, if you choose to develop your platform yourself or hire an in-house development team, you can safely skip this step.

Generally speaking, Asian countries like India and Indonesia are well-known tech hubs for delivering a high-end output at a low cost. With development rates as low as $15/hr, India is the leader in development outsourcing at present.

Testing & Launch

Once you are done developing the technology of your choice, you have to test it before finally launching it in the market. This test will ensure that you deliver a high-end and bug-free digital product to your customers.

Alpha testing and beta testing are two of the most popular forms of testing approaches for a digital platform. Agile methodology is another popular and efficient way to test a platform while it is still under development.

Once tested, you are all set to launch your platform and make it available to your users. This is the final stage of the platform development process.

Maintenance & Marketing

Once your platform is in the market, you will need to undertake regular maintenance measures to ensure that it is relevant and up to the mark with the latest market needs.

This is done by periodically researching the market and adding new features to the platform. This will not only add value to your platform but will also retain users in the long run.

Another important step is to market your platform to make your target users aware of its presence. Digital marketing is the latest trend and is highly popular amongst businesses. This will ensure that your platform has a high market reach and is generating an optimum return on investment.

These were the 7 steps of developing a digital platform for your business. By carefully following these steps, you can most certainly and seamlessly expand your business digitally.

Summing It Up

We hope that the blog provided you with clarity on why you should go for digital expansion instead of the traditional one for your business’s growth.

Overall, business expansion is the key to achieving great business success in the future. This future is even promising in digital expansion, which is known for its numerous benefits and promising growth potential.

By choosing the right technology for your business’s expansion strategy, you are certain to grow your business in the digital world with ease. Moreover, you must follow the complete development process and choose the right approach to get the best possible return on investment.