First off, we'd like to address the title of this article. Why do we have "business drivers" and "digital workplace" in the same statement? That is because we believe in an opinionated approach when it comes to the business drivers used to measure the effectiveness and value of a digital transformation strategy. In our opinion, most, if not all, business drivers can't be transformed digitally to unlock business value without a digital workplace. So in a digital transformation strategy, "business drivers" and "digital workplace" are two sides of the same coin.

In this article, we will discuss and explain the 10 business drivers introduced in the previous article. And expand further on the digital workplace framework and its guide.

The 10 Business Drivers

Reiterating what was said by Deloitte and in the previous article in this series, to realize these benefits, your digital workplace must address existing challenges and provide business value. Your employees need to know what is in it for them.

Deloitte lists 10 key business drivers that we will explore further to gain a better grasp on how best to implement a digital workplace strategy. These drivers are the why and how a digital workplace strategy can provide value to a business.

1. Increase revenue

Whenever we think about any business application that can help a business and its employees increase revenue, a customer relationship management (CRM) system is what comes to mind.

And there's no better and cheaper (basically free, really!) CRM out there than Zoho's CRM free edition for any small business looking to get started. Based on an internal survey by Zoho, their CRM can offer your business a 300% improvement in lead conversion rates and a 41% revenue increase per salesperson.

2. Reduce operational costs

For better or for worse, working from home is here to stay. But from our perspective, it's for the better. A digital workplace not only enables efficiency, innovation, and growth. It also reduces operational costs.

Furthermore, if we look at employee working styles, "virtual offices" are a must as Bloomberg reported the trend of employees quitting their jobs instead of giving up work from home. A survey done by FlexJobs found that "not having a commute" (84% of respondents) and "cost savings" (75% of respondents) were the top benefits for remote workers.

If a reduction in operating costs and employee retention, amongst other factors, is what your business needs, then we recommend both Microsoft Teams and Zoom. Obviously one or the other will be all you need so you will have to choose which one best suits your needs. Forbes made a Microsoft Teams vs. Zoom comparison that can help you make the right decision.

3. Accelerate time-to-market

Adapt Methodology, a digital transformation framework developed by Evolution4All, defines Time to Market (TTM) as the duration needed to bring a product to fruition, which includes steps on the generation of an idea for the product; its whole design cycle; development, and launch on the market. The weight here lies in investing in the right product management tools for any or all of the steps to bring a product or service to fruition.

Almost all digital tools can aid in accelerating a product or service's TTM. You should explore this topic further. As a starting point, communication, collaboration, and connection between employees from different departments will almost always accelerate your business' TTM.

Slack for communication and Asana for task management are 2 of many tools you can use.

4. Enhance innovation

As developers of digital technologies, open-source software (OSS) has been a shining example of the effectiveness of innovation through the open community. Companies and technologies, such as Microsoft, Android, Linux, and web applications built with the LAMP stack and JAMStack with Gatsby, are dependent on inputs from the community to help better their technologies and drive business decisions.

Open source platforms, like GitHub, have enabled anyone and everyone to build and deploy any kind of software they can imagine. Some software ideas may be complex and require a team of expert developers, but none is impossible anymore.

GitHub for centralized software development and building innovative communities is a great start for any digital business with digital products. In addition, all products and services offered by businesses can use the same open-source approach to create with your community via forums, blogs with comments, and other mediums that foster two-way communications.

5. Improve the customer experience

This may seem backwards, but businesses that win at customer experience (CX) start with their employees.

There’s an important connection between empowered employees and happy customers. Think about it – you’ve been speaking to a customer service agent for 10 minutes and you ask for a discount. The agent wants to resolve your issue, but they need to approve it with their manager. You’re already tired and just want to be finished with the conversation. It would be much easier if the agent could use their judgment, approve the discount (or take other appropriate action) and solve your issue on the spot.

Find out what's blocking your employees from providing a great customer experience through pulse surveys, build a more customer-centric company culture, value your employees' ideas through the use of an employee suggestion box, and adopt an omnichannel experience design. With Zoho's CRM offering Sales Force Automation, Sales Process, Omnichannel, Analytics, and AI, you can start empowering your employees to move more quickly and sell faster. We've already mentioned Zoho's CRM free edition above but it's so powerful and cheap for a small business that we had to mention it again.

6. Increase agility and flexibility

As a business, you exist to sell a service and/or a product. All your data, statements, and documents about your mission, vision, strategies, business processes, company culture, blog articles, videos, images, contacts, social media data, and employees are there to satisfy the main goal of selling. We consider all of this "content".

For a small business, a headless content management system (CMS), like Sanity, along with a CRM system can enable your business to manage most, if not all, of your "content" from a cloud-based, centralized location. In other words, you can get an overview of your business which can be accessed and updated in real-time while also allowing employees the same abilities.

7. Heighten staff satisfaction

Location flexibility is one of the perks of working remotely. But as telecommuting becomes more of standard practice, data security becomes more of a concern. Business leaders and their employees need to accept equal accountability in doing what they can to protect their organisation's information.

To start, leaders should educate employees about data security and how everyone is responsible for protecting it. Furthermore, using tools "closer to home" for employees such as Slack, Zoom, Zoho CRM, and other cloud-based solutions can enable your business to create connected workspaces within each solution through the use of a single work email.

Remember to keep your passwords strong and establish a cybersecurity policy that all employees can easily adopt.

8. Raise productivity and efficiency

A business process management (BPM) application is a tool that monitors, measures, and analyzes your existing business processes and provides an analytical report to improve the overall efficiency and productivity of the organization. This is a tool that can and should be used by all organization sizes.

There are many BPM tools and technologies out there, such as Microsoft's Dynamics 365. But for small businesses and early adopters, we understand how cost can become a hindrance. This is why we suggest you start with Zoho Creator's free edition and move up the pricing tiers as you gain an understanding of the benefits and increased usage. According to Zoho, their Creator product can provide you with 10x faster development, 65+ fully-customisable business apps, and over 430 prebuilt integrations. And all of this while enabling 95% of their customers to deploy within 30 days.

9. Strengthen talent recruitment and retention

Found in the SA Journal of Human Resource Management, a recent study of practices employed by companies considered top South African brands on talent attraction and retention through brand building found that corporate brand building dominated talent attraction and retention, with talent lured by the commercial success of the brand and drawn to purpose-driven brands.

Furthermore, the study provides a theoretical framework that highlights key constructs and relationships between brand building, consistent branding, and a coherent and strong brand.

In brief, as a business, it is important that a strong brand is built through great company values, vision, mission, and other branding initiatives; all key stakeholders are aligned with the brand and remain consistent at communicating the brand internally and externally.

To this end, all technologies and tools that enable brand consistency in the work environment will ultimately lead to a strong brand which, in turn, improves talent attraction and retention. There are quite a few tools for this:

• Digital Asset Management System: Pics.io, Lytho, and Sanity offer best-in-class solutions.
• Workflow Tools: Again we recommend Zoho Creator for its free edition as a start, but you can try other options such as Asana or Monday.
• Brand Style Guide: A brand style guide includes, but is not limited to, your brand's voice, logos, typography, colour palette's, and media creation and placement do's and don'ts. It really just describes the look and feel of your brand and how to use it.
• Branded Email Signatures: Email signatures are an important part of email communications. They let users customize their contact information in a personalized format that doesn’t need to be manually entered every time an email is sent. Zoho CRM allows users to configure their email signatures. Once set up, this will automatically be available when sending an email. But most other email clients also allow for email signatures to be used.
• Branded Links: The actual URLs you send out into the world can also help drive home brand consistency. Use a tool such as Rebrandly. Rebrandly provides up to 500 custom domain branded links on their free tier.

10. Improve employee experience

Rather than focusing narrowly on engagement and culture, many leading organisations aim to improve the employee experience as a whole, this was found by Deloitte in an employee experience article about culture, engagement, and beyond. These leading organisations are supported by a multitude of pulse feedback tools, wellness and fitness apps, and employee self-service technologies.

Some examples of businesses with great employee experience:

• Accenture: They offer a free digital personal assistant system where you can get help for your personal life.
• Old Mutual: They give employees access to online Harvard tools and an online learning platform where they can book learning workshops.
• Salesforce: They offer employees Volunteer Time Off (VTO) and Employee-Inspired Giving through their citizen philanthropy and strategic programs, which allows employees to take seven days of paid leave to give back to causes they care about and matches up to $5,000 in spending towards this cause.

With Zoho People Plus you can deliver exceptional digital HR experiences to your employees while managing the entire employee life cycle on a single integrated platform. But you can also choose to use one or more of the available solutions instead of the whole platform as a starting point.

So Which Business Drivers to Focus on?

All businesses come in different shapes and sizes and have different strategic business requirements. As such we don't see a one-size-fits-all approach being applicable here. Some businesses struggle more with employee experience and would look to solve that with the right tools while others struggle with innovation and time-to-market. It is on the business leaders to decide which business drivers to focus on and invest more in those. The best way to do this is by first harnessing an effective digital workplace strategy.

As we've already explained in the previous article on 4 steps to digital transformation for a small business, data-driven business decisions are an important hallmark of a digitally transformed business.