Digitalization, what should I understand?
Digitalization in my own field of expertise
In past five years I have worked in field of digital marketing and the changes have been huges in field of sales and marketing. Today I teach marketing and sales in university of applied science. Digitalization have changed ways to do marketing and sales and the coronavirus pandemic have accelerated the changes. In this blog I consider what we should understand about the changes and how digitalization can affect to companies.
Sales and digitalization, what should we understand?
The coronavirus pandemic accelerated doing sales online and of course how to do business in area of B2B-sales. Millennials for example are natively fearless and flexible about the possibilities of B2B sales methods. (Ibexa publish time unknown)
Buyers autonomy is changing the role of sales approach from pushing the product to guiding the buyer along his or her journey. This means that nowadays we must make an effort to digital customer experience rather than hard selling using for example phone. How we can do this smartly? Today the answer is digital sales funnels and nurturing. Digital sales funnels gives all the information to customer and guides to do decision to buy. (Linturi & Kuusi 2018.)
In the future AI helps us to do routine purchasing decisions and we focus on to do decisions about experiences. We can already use AI to do routine purchasing decisions for example using smart refrigerators. Smart refrigerators can make already automatically orders to get restock the fridge. (Linturi & Kuusi 2018.)
Digital transformation
New digital generations means new ways of doing business. This means new platforms and new ways to communicate with customers. In the near future we have to also make new ways to use data for understanding better new digital generations buying habbits and their way to do decisions. If companies want to understand better their customers, they have to start already analyzes their data. I have seen that part of companies have already started to use data to get better impact to their customers, but mainly companies don’t use their data to improve their sales. (Ilcus 2018.)
In the future, I believe that artificial intelligence will help more companies automatically do customer profiling and thus sales forecasts for customer segments. Also, in the future AI will automatically inform customers for example that their products are low and askes if they want to order to refill the stocks. (Linturi & Kuusi 2018.)
How we response to the risks of open digital society
In the era of digital world, we have witnessed the increase of use of AI to solve problems. If we trust to much about algoritms and AI decision making system, is it also a risk? For example, if we let AI to make lifechanging decisions, there is lots of questionmarks about data trade-offs and implications for economic, technical, social, legal and environmental. (Elliott, Price, Shaw, Spiliotopoulos, Ng, Coopamootoo & van Moorsel 2021.)
Privacy and security are todays and the futures keywords. AI is everywhere and have access for example to investigate health data to bank accounts flows. There is lots of risks that we can manipulate data and use it wrong intensions. General Data Protection Regulations (GDPR) defines how companies should handle information. In the year of 2021 The EU co-created standards of AI Regulation. In our digital society have already boundaries but it’s important that we control those now and the future. (Elliott etc. 2021.)
Corporate Digital Responsibility (CDR) is new way to inform good digital corporate actions and digital sustainability. CDR codifies how social responsibility has been noticed in AI and using the data. (Elliott etc. 2021.)
What I have learned?
It was interesting to investigate materials and read articles about digital society. It was very educational to search material especially about how this could affect on companies’ sales and what should understand. The CDR was new to me and the new regulation about AI. GDPR was familiar to me, because that was very important to me to understand how it affects to digital marketing and sales. This task gave me opportunity to stop to think, how AI has affected to us and what we should understand better in business life and as a normal person. I can’t say that now I am an expert in this matter, but now I now where I can find the information about it.
Commented blogs:
References
Elliott, Karen, Price, Rob, Shaw, Patricia, Spiliotopoulos, Tasos, Ng, Magdalene, Coopamootoo, Kovila & van Moorsel, Aad 2021. Towards an Equitable Digital Society: Artificial Intelligence (AI) and Corporate Digital Responsibility (CDR). Society (2021) 58:179–188. https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s12115-021-00594-8. Viitattu 27.5.2022.
Ibexa, publish time unoknown. The Three Pillars of Successful B2B Digital Transformation Businesses need Digital Experience Platforms to respond to change, and to invent the disruption of tomorrow. https://www.ibexa.co/resources/ebooks/3-pillars-of-successful-b2b-digital-transformation?success=true.
Ilcus, Magdalena Alina 2018. Impact of Digitalization in Business World. Review of International Comparative Management Volume 19, Issue 4, October 2018. DOI: 10.24818/RMCI.2018.4.350. http://www.rmci.ase.ro/no19vol4/03.pdf. Viitattu 27.5.2022.
Linturi Risto, Kuusi Osmo 2018. suomen sata uutta mahdollisuutta 2018–2037. Yhteiskunnan toimintamallit uudistava radikaali teknologia. Eduskunnan tulevaisuusvaliokunnan julkaisu 1/2018. https://www.eduskunta.fi/FI/naineduskuntatoimii/julkaisut/Documents/tuvj_1+2018.pdf. Viitattu 27.5.2022.