What is Digital Transformation? - Alexandra Morehouse
Digital transformation - a trending topic in the boardroom - is essentially the process of using digital technology to create or modify processes, customer experience, and organizational structure to meet industry requirements.
Alexandra Morehouse, a highly effective transformational strategist, was recently interviewed by Howard Brod Brownstein for a Women in the Boardroom Podcast. They delve deep into the trends of digital transformation and how it impacts different industries.
“Digital transformation has become such a buzzword today. It is so commonly used yet not widely understood. At a board level, it is important to understand what digital transformation really consists of. It is imperative to understand what digital transformation is. The simplest explanation is that it takes paper processes and moves them into a digital space.
“The best example comes from airlines. Previoulsy, when we used to travel, agents would physically go to the airline or we would have to call them to make a reservation. Over time, they have collected all their back-end data, frequent flyer numbers, seat locations, and so on — and digitized all that information. Digital transformation essentially aims to make life easier for the customer so you can in turn increase your revenues.
“I spent the first half of my career in banking - the goal was to remove the teller and introduce ATMs. Now being in health care, the goal is once again to move administrative tasks from people-centric to the digital realm. Digitization of health care is taking old paper records and turning them into electronic medical records. Digital transformation is slightly different- it is changing the people and processes and taking expensive people out of the equation. For example, moving the doctor's appointment scheduling process to a digital platform. It's almost like OpenTable for making a doctor's appointment — that's an easy example to use when explaining the digitization of health care. This change allowed our company 68% net new patients, and reduced costs by over 75%.
“It is essentially growing revenues, making things easier for the customer, and reducing operating costs by reducing expenses that involve expensive administrative transactions. All this is enabled by technology.”
