Making a digital transformation in your company’s operations can be essential to preserving your competitiveness. But, when done correctly, it can also pay unexpected dividends to your customer base. Just ask the people at Ngern Tid Lor.
In the competitive world of business, exploring new and untried ways to streamline your company’s operations is often the best way to save money. Nowadays, more and more companies are turning to digital technology to help them accomplish this streamlining.
But when Thai microcredit financial services provider Ngern Tid Lor started transforming a digital entity, they soon realized that it had two benefits. Not only did their internal operations become more streamlined and efficient, but they were also able to reach their target customers more effectively and engage with them more easily.
They found the digital transformation ideally suited both the type of services they provided and their customer base.
Creating a Unified Corporate Structure
Of course, in any new venture, there will always be those who resist. Managers and employees who have become comfortable with a particular way of doing things are the hardest to win over.
But with over 5,500 hundred employees all across Thailand, Ngern Tid Lor realized they needed to make their operations more cohesive and centralized. They also needed to create a unified corporate structure and understanding for employees of the values the company represented.
Digital technology presented the right tools and opportunities to accomplish their goals. With digital technology, the company could look at first digitally transforming facets of its operation and services that were suffering the most.
Value of Communication
They found that communication was the most vital tool in a digital transformation. By maintaining an open line of communication with all their employees, they learned valuable information that helped them form the operational concepts they would employ under a digital operations platform.
This communication also helped to create a corporate culture within the company. The employees began to think of their role as not just working at a branch in a city or village, but as serving the company as a whole.
Added Benefit to Customers
But what they soon realized was the most significant benefit of their digital transformation, was the increased access to their customer base.
Ngern Tid Lor provides insurance and financial services to mostly low-income customers. This group of people rely on their smartphones to stay connected with their friends and family, as well as local and regional entities. They are comfortable and used to the smartphone’s capabilities.
Placing more emphasis on communicating with their customers via smartphone, and less focus on the old school method of dealing with customers face-to-face made things easier for their customers as well as themselves.
Effecting a digital transformation was beneficial to Ngern Tid Lor as it created two distinct ‘win-win situations’, it streamlined their internal operations. At the same time, it improved the quality of the contacts with their customers.
This example suggests that every company should look into what a digital transformation may mean for their future success.
