CommunityDevOps ExchangePartners
Articles
7/19/2022
10 minutes

Digital Transformation vs. Digitization: Creating a Customer-Driven Enterprise

Written by
Copado Team
Table of contents

Originally published by New Context.

Today, digital transformation vs. digitization is a common topic of discussion. It’s not uncommon for the terms to be used interchangeably, though this is technically incorrect. Digital transformation is a broad concept that applies to all aspects of a business. Digitization, on the other hand, is a process that helps to drive the transformation. When both operate in tandem, it’s possible to create a more customer-driven experience.

A big part of this is data. The ability to use data in a way that’s seamless and collaborative while also ensuring its protection isn’t exactly straightforward. Baking data security strategies into the process can help enterprises enjoy the benefits without the risk. In this article, we’ll describe the difference between digital transformation and digitization, how they relate, and how to apply them securely.

Digital Transformation vs. Digitization

Global spending on digital transformation efforts could reach $2.3 trillion by the year 2023. Digitization will become a vital part of these initiatives. As a result, it’s crucial not to compare digital transformation vs. digitization as apples to oranges. Instead, we must understand how the two complement one another.

Digital Transformation vs. Digitization - Copado

Digital Transformation

Digital transformation is an overarching strategy that will impact all parts of the business. It centers on replacing old, outdated manual methods and procedures with technology-driven ones. Typically, a digital transformation will target business processes, models, domains, and culture. By addressing all these components, leaders are far more likely to have a successful transition. In other words, we are transforming how the business operates: legacy processes are altered or completely removed as a consequence of bringing new technologies to bear. The efforts result in a combination of increased speed or efficiency, reduced costs, greater versatility, and/or improved customer satisfaction.
 

Digitization

Digitization is a critical component of digital transformation. It is the process of converting hand-driven manual information into a fully digital format. A standard example occurs when old client files are scanned into a computer system and organized with software. Anytime you see an office full of filing cabinets removed and replaced with a computer-based interface for the same information, you have witnessed data digitization. 

Digitization can also refer to converting manually intensive or human-oriented tasks into automated or semi-automated computer processes, such as using chatbots and artificial intelligence to rapidly respond to inquiries, instead of making customers wait for a human representative. 

Combining Transformation and Digitization for Data-Driven Strategies

Firms across industries are targeting customer-focused strategies to improve services and offerings. This new focus is possible through the vast availability of data generated from digitization and digital transformation efforts.

Data provides empirical evidence—rather than speculation—that helps companies plan processes and predict customer behavior. Consider traditional A/B testing. Actual users receive multiple options based on the same concept. The data collected during this experience will tell the firm which option resonates more with its intended audience. The empirical evidence allows the company to guarantee a more positive customer experience.

However, there is a major hitch in data collection that could limit its effectiveness. That problem lies in customer trust. Almost half of Americans have had their private data breached some time within the past five years. Trust barriers limit connections with consumers who’ve been burned before by the bad data storage practices of companies. Any company that wants to take a customer-driven approach must adopt practices and principles that guarantee the safety of this private information. These security measures not only protect you against a breach but also become a strong selling point to your audience, loudly stating: “We respect you and the trust you place in us.”

 Digitization for Data-Driven Strategies - Copado

Overcoming the Risks in a Data-Driven Strategy

Customer experience improvement is a common goal in digital transformation. Thirty-five percent of organizations report that meeting customer expectations was the primary driver in their transformation strategy. However, all those efforts go to waste when the plan exposes personal information and breaches trust. It’s vital to incorporate security at the deepest layers of the program to protect the integrity of data while also harnessing its full potential. Here are just a few ways to manage this:

It’s essential to be transparent about security measures in any digital transformation or digitization program. Customers must trust an organization to share their data. Having clearly established security protocols builds that confidence. Transparent security helps companies to take advantage of a customer-driven strategy while maintaining system integrity.

  1. Security as Code: Security as code adds protective measures into the very foundation of the program. Developers code in things like tests, gates, and other security checks to allow for continuous monitoring and improvement of the system. Security as Code creates a scalable solution ideal for controlling ever-changing data; security as Code is not some grandiose process, and shouldn’t add complexity to your development process or tooling stack. For example, if your test suite includes assumptions that test an input to ensure it is hardened against SQL injections, you’re writing security as code!
     
  2. Automated Compliance: The requirements involved in managing customer data can vary widely by industry. For example, those in the healthcare industry must contend with HIPAA, while financial sectors are more concerned over the Gramm–Leach–Bliley Act. Applying the right compliance standards to data, and automating the methods of enforcement, ensures companies meet legal responsibilities to customers.
     
  3. Cyber Threat Intelligence: Customer data will always be the target of bad actors, and they are forever changing their tactics. Open-source intelligence is incredibly valuable, as it allows companies to stay up to date on threats specific to their industry. With the right cyber threat intelligence, they can understand why specific data is at risk and assess attack sources.
     
  4. Data Tagging: One significant risk to data security is disorganization. A firm can’t protect what they don’t understand. Data tagging practices ensure companies can establish risk levels and provide the right standards of protection for confidential assets. Fortunately, the process of digitization provides the perfect opportunity to ensure that every piece of incoming information is appropriately tagged with the right classifications. Digitization is a one-time, often labor-intensive process, best to get maximum benefit for the effort!

It’s essential to be transparent about security measures in any digital transformation or digitization program. Customers must trust an organization to share their data. Having clearly established security protocols builds that confidence. Transparent security helps companies to take advantage of a customer-driven strategy while maintaining system integrity.

 

 

 

Book a demo

About The Author

#1 DevOps Platform for Salesforce

We Build Unstoppable Teams By Equipping DevOps Professionals With The Platform, Tools And Training They Need To Make Release Days Obsolete. Work Smarter, Not Longer.

Copado Launches Copado Explorer to Simplify and Streamline Testing on Salesforce
Exploring Top Cloud Automation Testing Tools
Master Salesforce DevOps with Copado Robotic Testing
Exploratory Testing vs. Automated Testing: Finding the Right Balance
A Guide to Salesforce Source Control
A Guide to DevOps Branching Strategies
Family Time vs. Mobile App Release Days: Can Test Automation Help Us Have Both?
How to Resolve Salesforce Merge Conflicts: A Guide
Copado Expands Beta Access to CopadoGPT for All Customers, Revolutionizing SaaS DevOps with AI
Is Mobile Test Automation Unnecessarily Hard? A Guide to Simplify Mobile Test Automation
From Silos to Streamlined Development: Tarun’s Tale of DevOps Success
Simplified Scaling: 10 Ways to Grow Your Salesforce Development Practice
What is Salesforce Incident Management?
What Is Automated Salesforce Testing? Choosing the Right Automation Tool for Salesforce
Copado Appoints Seasoned Sales Executive Bob Grewal to Chief Revenue Officer
Business Benefits of DevOps: A Guide
Copado Brings Generative AI to Its DevOps Platform to Improve Software Development for Enterprise SaaS
Celebrating 10 Years of Copado: A Decade of DevOps Evolution and Growth
Copado Celebrates 10 Years of DevOps for Enterprise SaaS Solutions
5 Reasons Why Copado = Less Divorces for Developers
What is DevOps? Build a Successful DevOps Ecosystem with Copado’s Best Practices
Scaling App Development While Meeting Security Standards
5 Data Deploy Features You Don’t Want to Miss
Top 5 Reasons I Choose Copado for Salesforce Development
How to Elevate Customer Experiences with Automated Testing
Getting Started With Value Stream Maps
Copado and nCino Partner to Provide Proven DevOps Tools for Financial Institutions
Unlocking Success with Copado: Mission-Critical Tools for Developers
How Automated Testing Enables DevOps Efficiency
How to Keep Salesforce Sandboxes in Sync
How to Switch from Manual to Automated Testing with Robotic Testing
Best Practices to Prevent Merge Conflicts with Copado 1 Platform
Software Bugs: The Three Causes of Programming Errors
How Does Copado Solve Release Readiness Roadblocks?
Why I Choose Copado Robotic Testing for my Test Automation
How to schedule a Function and Job Template in DevOps: A Step-by-Step Guide
Delivering Quality nCino Experiences with Automated Deployments and Testing
Best Practices Matter for Accelerated Salesforce Release Management
Maximize Your Code Quality, Security and performance with Copado Salesforce Code Analyzer
Upgrade Your Test Automation Game: The Benefits of Switching from Selenium to a More Advanced Platform
Three Takeaways From Copa Community Day
Cloud Native Applications: 5 Characteristics to Look for in the Right Tools
Using Salesforce nCino Architecture for Best Testing Results
How To Develop A Salesforce Testing Strategy For Your Enterprise
What Is Multi Cloud: Key Use Cases and Benefits for Enterprise Settings
5 Steps to Building a Salesforce Center of Excellence for Government Agencies
Salesforce UI testing: Benefits to Staying on Top of Updates
Benefits of UI Test Automation and Why You Should Care
Types of Salesforce Testing and When To Use Them
Copado + DataColada: Enabling CI/CD for Developers Across APAC
What is Salesforce API Testing and It Why Should Be Automated
Machine Learning Models: Adapting Data Patterns With Copado For AI Test Automation
Automated Testing Benefits: The Case For As Little Manual Testing As Possible
Beyond Selenium: Low Code Testing To Maximize Speed and Quality
UI Testing Best Practices: From Implementation to Automation
How Agile Test Automation Helps You Develop Better and Faster
Salesforce Test Cases: Knowing When to Test
DevOps Quality Assurance: Major Pitfalls and Challenges
11 Characteristics of Advanced Persistent Threats (APTs) That Set Them Apart
7 Key Compliance Regulations Relating to Data Storage
7 Ways Digital Transformation Consulting Revolutionizes Your Business
6 Top Cloud Security Trends
API Management Best Practices
Applying a Zero Trust Infrastructure in Kubernetes
Building a Data Pipeline Architecture Based on Best Practices Brings the Biggest Rewards
CI/CD Methodology vs. CI/CD Mentality: How to Meet Your Workflow Goals
DevOps to DevSecOps: How to Build Security into the Development Lifecycle
DevSecOps vs Agile: It’s Not Either/Or
How to Create a Digital Transformation Roadmap to Success
Infrastructure As Code: Overcome the Barriers to Effective Network Automation
Leveraging Compliance Automation Tools to Mitigate Risk
Moving Forward with These CI/CD Best Practices
Top 3 Data Compliance Challenges of Tomorrow and the Solutions You Need Today
Top 6 Cloud Security Management Policies and Procedures to Protect Your Business
What are the Benefits of Principle of Least Privilege (POLP) for My Organization?
You Can’t Measure What You Can’t See: Getting to know the 4 Metrics of Software Delivery Performance
How the Public Sector Can Continue to Accelerate Modernization
Building an Automated Test Framework to Streamline Deployments
How To Implement a Compliance Testing Methodology To Exceed Your Objectives
Cloud Security: Advantages and Disadvantages to Accessibility
Copado Collaborates with IBM to Accelerate Digital Transformation Projects on the Salesforce Platform
Continuous Quality: The missing link to DevOps maturity
Why Empowering Your Salesforce CoE is Essential for Maximizing ROI
Value Stream Management: The Future of DevOps at Scale is Here
Is Salesforce Development ‘One Size Fits All?’
The 3 Pillars of DevOps Value Stream Management
Gartner Recommends Companies Adopt Value Stream Delivery Platforms To Scale DevOps
The Admin's Quick Glossary for Understanding Salesforce DevOps
Top 10 Copado Features for #AwesomeAdmins
10 Secrets Management Tools to Facilitate Stronger Security Practices
5 Cloud Security Compliance Basics to Prevent Data Breaches
5 Data Security Management Fundamentals
Cloud Agnostic vs Cloud Native: Developing a Hybrid Approach
Making DIE Model Security vs. the CIA Security Triad Complementary, Not Competitive
The CI/CD Pipeline: Why Testing Is Required at Every Stage
DevSecOps Roadmap: From Architecture to Automation
Pets vs. Cattle: More Than an Analogy for Modern Infrastructures
Data Compliance Solutions Provide Greater Control Over Enterprise Data
Copado Cares: Free Training, Collaboration and Product Access for Global Response to COVID-19
12 Types of Social Engineering Attacks to Look Out For
Go back to resources
There is no previous posts
Go back to resources
There is no next posts
Ready to Transform Your Software Delivery Process?

Explore more about

Security & Governance
Simplified Scaling: 10 Ways to Grow Your Salesforce Development Practice
Articles
10/5/2023
Simplified Scaling: 10 Ways to Grow Your Salesforce Development Practice
Why Empowering Your Salesforce CoE is Essential for Maximizing ROI
Articles
9/15/2023
Why Empowering Your Salesforce CoE is Essential for Maximizing ROI
Continuous Quality: The missing link to DevOps maturity
Articles
10/5/2023
Continuous Quality: The missing link to DevOps maturity
Data Security for Banks: Standards for Success
Articles
10/5/2023
Data Security for Banks: Standards for Success