The Citi Business Festival On-Air Series on Citi FM began on Wednesday, June 1, 2022. It featured IT Consortium Chief Technical Officer, Ebow Anamuah-Mensah, who spoke about transforming your business using digital technology.
His presentation outlined the benefits of digitalisation as well as ways to sustain the transition from analogue to digital platforms.
Businesses must leverage data insights
Digitising your business can give insights about customers that help with expansions.
“There is a lot of value in the data about your sale that can help you grow your business,” Mr. Anamuah-Mensah said.
These insights can help businesses design marketing solutions or loyalty promotions for their customers to get more out of their endeavours.
Create convenience for customers with digital
Convenience is considered value to customers, and creating convenience for your customers will bring you more business.
“If you don’t accept a digital form of payment, we probably will not be willing to do business with you and would opt for a different business that does it,” Mr. Anamuah-Mensah noted as an example.
He said digitising payments was important because payment is the backbone of a business.
Understand manual processes for business
Understanding the manual process you are digitising is important. Mr. Anamuah-Mensah advised businesses to pick a tool that they can use to digitise the selected process.
These tools may offer solutions running on USSD, apps or browsers.
“Once you do that, you have captured information on products and customers are paying electronically, you have digitised that process,” he said.
Cost should also not be considered a barrier to digitisation as there are affordable solutions that can begin the digitisation process.
“Some solutions grow as you scale and as you work on digitizing your business,” he said.
Research to find value-for-money digital learning tools
Mr. Anamuah-Mensah underscored the importance of making use of learning tools to research how to digitise certain processes.
“Gone are the days you needed an expert to advise you,” Mr. Anamuah-Mensah said.
Digital solutions are also simpler and no longer require technicians because they are designed for end-users.
Continuous learning to remain relevant
The learning tools also allow staff to stay abreast with digital trends and remain competitive.
“We are not now competing locally, but we are competing globally.”
Staff can take advantage of training opportunities online for free or paid-for learning management systems.
“We are no longer in the period where what you learn in school is what is going to take you for life,” Mr. Anamuah-Mensah said.
