10 key benefits of digital transformation for local authorities

The process of digital transformation is the amalgamation of technology into different business areas. It brings fundamental changes in the way any business works. Businesses across industries can enjoy the benefits of this process as it helps them to streamline legacy procedures, enhance workflows and make them efficient, increase profits, and build up strong security.

Nowadays, companies are operating in the cloud. As organisations are migrating their information to the cloud, much of what is done to duplicate the existing services in digital format. However, accurate digital transformation is much more than just the cloud.

Instead of migrating data into the cloud, hold up your digital transformation to optimise your process and systems. It ensures that they are flexible and interoperable to give strong business intelligence. In this article, we will see the benefits of digital transformation for local authorities. Let’s begin then!

What is digital transformation?

The digital transformation process is nothing but using modern digital technologies and techniques to fundamentally change how any organisation, business, and local governments function and operate. It is a new way of delivering business values and services to their stakeholders or customers.

This process also includes integrating digital techniques in almost all functions of the business like products, services, processes, culture, and customer operations.

The digital transformation process aims to leverage the power of modern technologies to enhance agility, innovation, and efficiency while updating the CX (customer experience) and building new revenue streams.

Ultimately, this process makes digital growth of the business because it helps customers to enjoy the services online without waiting for offline visits and much chaos.

10 Benefits of digital transformation for local authorities

1# Strong resource management

The process of digital transformation combines resources and data into a group of business tools. Instead of using different databases and software, this process consolidates the organisation’s resources and minimises vendor overlap. The average number of apps used in any enterprise business was around 900, in the year 2020.

Digital transformation integrates databases, apps, and software in a central repository for business intelligence. This process is not just a functional unit or department, it surrounds every business area and leads to innovation processes and efficiency across units.

Beginning from finance to sales & marketing and C Suite, digital transformation leverages every sensitive information.

2# Enhanced information collection

Many businesses are gathering a huge amount of customer information, but the advantage of digital transformation is optimising this collected data for analysis purposes for increasing business sales. Digital transformation develops a system for collecting the correct information for higher levels of business intelligence.

It develops a new way of developing various functional units within any organisation that can make raw data in insights from different touch points. This process produces a single view of operations, customer journey, finance, production, and business opportunities.

It is essential to assess how any customer information is collected, analysed, stored, and shared. When you are thinking of a tech stack, you want to ensure that any sensitive information flowing in and out of your CRM and other platforms is secured with SaaS encryption.

Customers nowadays are aware and concerned about how and where their information is used and collected. Businesses should show them some respect by adding strong privacy for their data and giving them the option of changing their decision of sharing their data at any time.

3# Enhances cyber security

The cases of cyberattacks on local government servers are increasing day by day because they are expensive to secure and manage. The huge expense is the reason why servers aren’t much secure and are becoming the common target of cyber crimes. Hackers use ransomware to gain large amounts of records or monetary expenses from the local government.

Instead, if the local government shifts their data to a cloud-based environment, records are backed up and stored securely, several times in a day. Security and maintenance costs are minimised and cloud service providers are responsible for providing cyber security.

4# Enhanced profits

Businesses that implement a digital transformation, improve their organisation’s profitability and efficiency. Here are some results that are reported by Oxford Economics and the SAP Centre of Business Insights:

• 85% of businesses say that they noticed an increase in the market share.
• 80% of businesses have completed digital transformation and increased their profits.
• On average, 23% higher revenue than competitors.

5# Good customer experience

You should know that this process of digital transformation unlocks team efficiencies, and delivers seamless user experience, and intuitive interface experiences for your users. This covers email communication, user portals, cadence for reaching out to new customers, and also other digital products.

Clients with high expectations of digital experience have to implement digital transformation for their business. Local governments applying digital transformation will serve the users with a high-quality user and customer experience.

The customer experience (CX) is a new factor of competition. Businesses that provide good CX can easily multiply their number of users in a smaller period.

One way to increase the CX and to make your business different from your competitors is- to demonstrate to your customers that you value their data security. Give them full control of their data being collected, and used, and also empower them with the feature that allows them to decide about their data themselves.

6# Data-driven user insights

Data is the key that unlocks customer insights. By understanding the customer and requirements, one can develop a more customer-centric business plan. Using structured and unstructured data, which includes personal customer informants, and strategies like social media metrics, one can make data-driven insights.

These insights will help the business to drive more growth in its profit and business values. The information helps strategies to give personalised, agile, and relevant content.

7# Promotes transparency

When workflows are automated, they promote transparency by notifying constituents automatically with the completion of each step in the local government process. Putting information in publicly searchable databases can also save time and money and promote open data requests.

8# Improves convenience

Customers in current society are habitual to easy shopping, travel booking, ordering food, and much more. They always expect to conduct their business online. Additionally, the paperless process provides them the constituents for on-demand access to apps, data, and other services. This can be done now with the local government websites rather than going to the city hall.

By carrying out the operations digitally, local authorities can effectively process various claims, apps, and license requests that result in higher customer satisfaction.

9# Enhanced productivity

Having an accurate technical stack and tools that are collaborative and work well together can easily streamline the business workflow. It also helps in improving the productivity of the organisation. By making the manual tasks automatic, and adding data throughout the firm, empowers the members to work efficiently. Ultimately increasing the overall productivity of the business.

10# Increased agility

The digital transformation process makes the business more agile. Borrowing from the software development world, organisations can improve their agile features and enhance their speed-to-market to adopt continuous improvement strategies. This process allows for speedier adaptation and innovation while giving a pathway to improvement.

Concluding words

In the end, the benefits of digital transformation for local authorities cannot be overstated. With an accurate approach and technical tools, it is possible to manage operations, enhance efficiency, and improvise the service quality given to citizens. By accepting and implementing digital technologies, local governments can get insights into citizen needs, foresee future trends, and accept changing situations quickly.

Moreover, the digital transformation process can help local authorities to develop stronger collaboration, reliable relationships with citizens, and develop a sense of community ownership. In essence, digital transformation is a primary driver of progress for the local authorities, and those who fail to adapt risk falling behind.