Digital transformation (DX) is creating change on par with the significance and impact of the industrial revolution, and embracing that change is an increasingly vital journey for businesses across all industries.

Today, organisations across the board are becoming more reliant than ever before on digital systems and processes. There has been a move away from physical assets to an increased focus on digital resources and the data they contain.

Innovative companies need to invest in new technologies and processes to effectively engage with customers, partners, or employees and to hold their own against competitors.

Digital transformation can be best described in these categories:

Digital experience: This refers to the way customers interact with the organisation. In today’s digital age, documents are moving away from their origins as paper-based artefacts. Now we are transforming to digital, fully connected processes that are omni-channel and mobile-first, meeting customer expectations for a digitised, connected experience.

Digital operations & organisation: Gone are the days where your desk was inundated with paper and post-it notes, leading to confusion and chaos. Day-to-day operations are digitised and processes are interconnected, allowing whole teams to work more effectively and efficiently. There are now a multitude of technologies that have the power to support the strategic decisions of C-level executives, and translate innovative ideas into the daily workings of an organisation.

Digital data benefits: Thanks to digital transformation, companies now collect more data than ever before, and more data than any person could ever analyse. Having systems in place that will analyse, interpret, and integrate business data is what creates insights that can lead to a competitive advantage and create real business outcomes.

Business drivers for digital transformation

With businesses and industries across the board becoming increasingly reliant on digital systems and processes, what exactly are the key drivers of DX and what needs can it fulfil?

Many businesses are undergoing digital transformation because the benefits it provides include adding overall value, strategic acceleration, security and stability, as well as fundamentals, such as reducing costs and improving customer experience.

DX leaders embrace intelligent business applications and a move to cloud

What differentiates the leaders from the laggards in digital transformation? According to 451 Research’s “Voice of the Connected User Landscape” survey, the key differences include:

• The adoption of AI and machine learning for intelligent business applications (53 percent for leaders, 29 percent for the laggards).
• Enhancing the ability to innovate through DX (35 percent for leaders, 21 percent for the laggards).
• Prioritization of shifting applications to the cloud (34 percent for the leaders, 18 percent for the laggards).

Conga is leading the way in intelligent business applications. Through the delivery of a highly intelligent suite of solutions, Conga helps organisations digitally transform documents and contracts.

In business for over a decade, Conga’s powerful enterprise applications, superior support, and industry expertise have been leveraged by 10,500+ customers and 700,000 users in more than 80 countries.

Its solutions drive powerful productivity by streamlining traditionally time-consuming tasks and eliminating friction points that slow business.

Among Conga’s extensive product catalogue are solutions for contract automation, document automation, and systems to revolutionise sales and support.

As a leader in the industry, Conga has adopted the key attitudes related to DX success: machine learning, empowerment to innovate, and the shift towards the cloud.

Machine learning

While most companies commend the virtues of machine learning, few actually have integrated products to utilise it. But when leveraged, machine learning can create many valuable advantages.

These include the automation of data discovery, the ability to extract deeper insights from data, the ability to measure and guide intent and context, and the elimination of error-prone, human-driven investigative processes.

Conga’s suite of solutions includes Conga Contracts, which automates the entire contract lifecycle management process, greatly simplifying the unique and complex challenges of sales and legal teams.

Machine learning capabilities are integrated into this solution, helping contract managers to track clause usage, manage risk, ensure better compliance, and gain greater visibility.

Moving to the cloud and empowerment to innovate

Over the past few years, Conga has added an array of features to its enterprise applications that help upstream processes around document and data management.

Conga Composer is one of the most popular applications on the Salesforce AppExchange, and streamlines the process of document creation.

With a single click, you can generate and deliver branded, professional documents, including sales reports and presentations based on executive summaries and data you have entered in Salesforce.

This handy solution also combines this data with marketing materials about the company, and merges in relevant terms and conditions based on factors such as the product, the service, and the country where the customer is located.

Additionally, Conga solutions can be extended with the company’s electronic signature tool, Conga Sign. The progress of documents like contracts, NDAs and memoranda of understanding can be expedited with electronic signatures, right from inside Salesforce, or operating as a standalone product.

The next five years

How can we expect to see the sales space evolve from now until 2023?

Well, firstly, we will see businesses prioritise intent-driven engagement. This refers to the leveraging of live information about the behaviour of your audience, harvesting powerful data relating to their preferences, their needs, their tendencies when taking action, and ultimately their intent to make a purchase

Through intent-driven engagement, businesses are able to build deeper connections with their audience, recommending to them the next best actions as well as creating more contextually-driven interactions.

In order to create a “story” or customer profile for each individual, businesses require information that is constantly updated.

This customer identity can then be turned into prescriptive insights by using algorithms which will discover customer opportunities as well as determine the best way to engage across multiple channels and devices.

It is expected that within the next five years, 40 percent of B2C companies will embrace intent-driven sales strategies which are hyper-personalised. With less than 15 percent of B2C companies today using hyper-personalization, this will definitely raise the bar.

What does the digital transformation revolution mean for businesses?

Businesses can begin to phase out tiresome paper-based processes as a basic first step; these are often prone to errors and consume vast manual effort.

By automating many of the everyday tasks of a sales team, more time can be put aside to focus on creating real, meaningful connections with customers. The further digitization of business processes enables companies to access information that allows them to be more immediately responsive in the age of the customer.

With this in mind, it is becoming crucial for businesses to invest in new technologies and solutions to streamline their processes and therefore enhance their productivity and the customer experience.

As a company’s digital transformation strategy evolves, it can ensure that data and insight are woven into each intelligent business process.

Automation solutions such as Conga’s drive business productivity and increase sales. In order to start optimizing your investment (in your CRM, in your customers, and in your people), click here to get in touch with a representative from Conga in your area to learn more.