Every now and then there are some services or phenomenon that dominate the market and become the need of the hour. With the domination there are certain words or industry jargons that gain popularity in the market and become what we call the buzzword in the market.

With the advent of the digital era and uprising of cloud and web technology, there are certain buzzwords that have gripped various industries and businesses across the globe. If you are a business dealing in conventional manner and are trying to bring changes to your business, services and processes to bring them online, you would have heard words like digital transformation, digitization, digitalization or other such words.

You know that all these things mean the same right? Well, that is one misconception that is circulating the market. Actually speaking, although most people in the market feel that all these words mean the same, all these words mean different and have their specific roles and functions that they cover.

To help printing businesses understand what these words mean and why they are integral for their seamless digital transformation business, here this blog covers the generalized meaning of words:

• Digital Transformation
• Digitalization
• Digitization
• Digital Disruption
• Digital Evolution

Defining the integral digital transformation jargon:

1. Digital Transformation:

To enhance a business’s capabilities and to increase the efficiency and value of its offerings, businesses adopt certain technology solutions in all aspects of the business. All the essential functions of the business are conducted digitally and all these solutions are designed, developed and integrated to create an IT infrastructure that helps businesses in achieving their goals.

This transition or transformation that a business makes from a traditional business to a business equipped with a personalized IT infrastructure is called digital transformation. All the jargon that will be covered after this will come under the bracket of digital transformation.

2. Digitization:

Digitization is usually the first process of digital transformation. Digitization word means converting any document of a physical image, paper, bill or any other such audio and visual resources into digital format. When businesses undertake digital transformation, all the data that company has generated in the past in manual or physical format must be made available to the technology solutions.

Thus, businesses must endorse this task to convert all their data into digital formats and feed it to technology solutions for various purposes. Digitization of the data can be done in various ways both manual and automated but it requires precision as wrong or corrupted or dark data can either lead to wrong assessments or incomplete analysis.

3. Digitalization:

Digitalization is the introduction of new processes, business models or new value propositions that businesses gain from the introduction of digital technologies. These business models or value propositions are determined based on the business goals which the business is willing to attain from digital technologies.

Digital technologies when integrated with different business aspects bring different benefits with them like automation, analytics, real-time processing and other such capabilities. These changes or benefits can be different for all different business functions and can also be personalized based on the benefits that businesses wish to reap from digital technologies.

4. Digital Disruption:

When digital technologies are implemented in a business, certain changes happen in the traditional processes, people and functions of the business. These changes can also come in the customer experiences and the value propositions of the business offerings. All these changes are the disruption that has been caused by technology and are thus known as digital disruption.

These changes are essential for a business to ensure digital transformation and to optimize the returns on investments that organizations have made in digital technologies. But, these changes can also result in some resistance to change from the employees of the organization and thus they must be reduced to the minimum to ensure a seamless onboarding and hassle-free digital transition.

5. Digital Evolution:

There are certain add-ons or digital technologies that can be integrated into the business but they do not demand or require any changes in the business processes of the organization. Such digital technology when it brings any changes or benefits to the organization without any need for change is called digital evolution.

For instance, in the printing industry, there is digital technology called web-to-print solutions that can be used to automate the designing process of the printing business. These web to print online designer are not only used for design automation but also for streamlining the order management process of the printing business. Integration of these solutions delivers various capabilities to online print stores but does not require any functional changes of processes.

Although some many different jargons and terminologies are associated with digital technologies and digital transformation, these are the functions that hold utmost importance in digital transformation and are also the terms that confuse non-technical people or businesses when they embark on the digital transformation journey.

 Now that the fundamental differences between these terms are defined, let’s understand the benefits that they bring to a printing business.

Benefits of digital transformation in the printing industry:

1. Increased productivity:

With access to real-time data and perpetual access to data with mobility solutions, printing businesses can use digital technologies to increase the productivity of resources as they would have a complete understanding of their tasks and functions.

2. Reduced turnaround time:

With solutions like web-to-print solutions and other such process automation and process streamlining solutions, online print stores would be able to accelerate their business processes and reduce the overall turnaround time of deliverables.

3. Personalization and curated customer experiences:

With digital solutions like web-to-print and customized e-commerce platforms for the customers, organizations can deliver personalized suggestions, products and experiences to the customers and ensure that they have streamlined checkout and satisfactory user experiences while accessing your digital platforms.

4. Streamlined processes:

Right from customers accessing digital platforms or online print stores for placing and surfing the printing services to managing the order, design, payment, shipping delivery and post-sales services, all these business functions can be streamlined with digital transformation.

5. Increased profitability:

With digital solutions comes access to the global market, increased brand visibility, new revenue streams, new business models and increased sales opportunities. With optimum utilization of IT infrastructure that a printing business has created with digital transformation, they can increase the profitability of the business in the least possible resources, efforts and time.

6. Data centralization:

Digital transformation is not just about creating digital solutions and digital data points for different business functions, but also about connecting them all and creating a platform where all the data is centralized.

With centralized data, decision-makers of the organization can get a holistic view of all the functions at a glance and can connect with all the resources, stakeholders and customers across the globe.

7. Access to actionable insights:

With the cognitive intelligence that businesses introduce with digital transformation, an organization can get access to data analytics and dynamic report-generating capabilities that can help decision-makers identify challenges and get actionable insights for strategic planning and business growth.

8. New and improved revenue streams:

Digital solutions and digital transformation does not only improve the current revenue models of a printing business but can also provide new revenue streams. For instance, web-to-print solutions can provide design self-service options where customers can order new products without the need for design proficiency.

Apart from that, the introduction of multi-vendor platforms, print-on-demand and other such capabilities can create new business models without the need for preliminary expenses. With this new and improved revenue, streams businesses can execute their expansion plans effectively and that too while mitigating the risk to the minimum.

Digital Transformation brings the future to your printing business:

Digital is the future of the world as not just the printing business but all the major industries as well as the last two industrial revolutions were driven by technology. Embarking on the digital transformation journey is inevitable; the only question remains when a business will embrace the inevitable.