Key Challenges of Digital Transformation for SMBs (Video)

SMB Group Co-founder & Partner Laurie McCabe discusses the challenges small and medium businesses (SMBs) face when taking necessary steps toward digital transformation in this clip from CRM Evolution 2018.

See more clips from CRM evolution in the CRM evolution Conference video portal. Learn more about CRM evolution here. 

Read the complete transcript of this clip:

Laurie McCabe: How are you gonna use this technology to change your business so you keep up? To keep up with the competitors and keep up with what the customers want, you may have to change your business processes. You may have to change your whole business model. Definitely, unless you’re a one-man barbershop in a little town--maybe you don't have to change.

But most of us have to change. The problem is that even though everybody gets that we have to change and do some stuff differently, only 23% think they have a really good strategy to do this. It's really hard. And it's hard to integrate. Sometimes decision makers haven't really figured out what's the most important thing we should do because we're a little company. We can't do everything at once. We can't be like Coca-Cola and boil an ocean.

Obviously, they don't have a lot of people to do this. The other thing and some of your guys are consultants, they can't even figure out what's going to work best. So once they figure, say, "All right, I know I wanna go into a new market. Where do I start to do that?" Like maybe, I'm doing only B2B now and I want to do B2C. Or I'm selling only in North America and I want to do Latin America or whatever. What do I need to do to set myself up? So it's very challenging, even when you know you gotta do it.

So what we try to do is peel back and say, "Where are you today and what are you gonna do to set yourself up for the future?"

We think there are a few key things. First, you have to automate your business processes. Next, you've gotta integrate at least your core stuff that the business runs on so that you can have a complete view, not just of the customer, but of your business. And then you have to have a way for everyone in the company that's involved in these different activities to collaborate easily.

So you make good decisions together instead of the sales guy saying, "We need to do X, the market is saying we need to do Y, while the financial guy is saying, what are you crazy? This is what I see." Everybody has to have the same kind of information.

So that kind of foundation is really necessary so that you can take the next steps and do things you need to do to evolve your business.