15 Key Functions of Any Digital Business

In this digital era, the number of worldwide digital population has been increasing continuously. To be viable in the current modern world, businesses are required to transform themselves digitally.

BUSINESS

Dezmon

11/27/20256 min read

In this digital era, the number of worldwide digital population has been increasing continuously. As of April 2022, there were 5 billion internet users compared to 4.6 billion internet accessors in 2020, according to Statista. The figures indicate that traditional business models are in need of a reconfiguration, or else they will soon fail to catch up with the market trend. To be viable in the modern world, businesses are required to transform themselves digitally.

There are many definitions for what a digital business is. Essentially, a digital business is the application of digital technologies on new or existing business models to improve a company’s products, services and customer experiences, thus creating new values achieved through convenience and efficiency.

Seven Stages of Sales Cycle

It can be said that closing sales is the ultimate goal for any company in any industry. With all the benefits the sales cycle provides, all modern entrepreneurs ought to know how it works. Sales in general, can be divided into 7 stages in the cycle.

Brand Development: A series of actions to create the brand for the company and distinguish it from other competitors. To that end, a digital business needs to plan out their brand image, identity and mission, while making sure that each element is clear and aligns well with each other, in order to effectively convey the brand message to its target audience.
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Digital Environment: A digital business, as the name implies, requires a matching environment. This involves all the components that a digital business will need to set up upon, such as website domains, content management system (CMS) and security system for the environment.
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Marketing website: With the structure of the digital environment in place, it is time to design the place where you present your product/service, together with other relevant details such as company profile, terms and contact information. With the environment operable, a digital business can easily attract interested or potential customers, thus begin its selling process.
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Sales Funnel: An incredibly important marketing concept that focuses on converting awareness into transactional actions. With this idea in mind, every digital asset should be designed in such a way that can turn interested prospects into real buyers. These assets will lead its visitor through a pathway that will essentially end at a purchase/checkout transaction. Examples of a funnel include pop-up offers, registration pages, sales pages, etc.

Form Design: Forms found throughout the internet may not be as simple as you may think. A good form requires a certain level of thoughts invested in it. The position of the form, the kind of data it gathers, its placeholder contents, all of this can create an impact on how you attract and filter your prospects in order to initiate the selling process.
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Payment Systems: A business cannot survive without revenue. The end goal of a digital business is also similar: to achieve purchase decisions from its customers and receive payments. To facilitate such activities, digital businesses need to implement payment systems on their digital assets so that transactions can be done digitally. This requires a strict amount of scrutiny and reliability as money-related issues are serious topics. You will also need to implement a payment gateway and a processor, both of which are often from a third-party software, for your payment system.
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Customer Relationship Management (CRM): In order to organize clients efficiently, a CRM system should be put into place. CRM is one of the key functions that facilitate customer’s information across all channels in one place. With this, a digital business can be able to streamline complex processes and consequently leverage relationships and interactions with current and potential customers. The use of CRM, for instance, is client and lead contact management, marketing process automation, etc.
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Appointment System: A system to initiate and manage meetings or conferences with your prospects should also be added to effectively manage your schedules. This allows your prospects to reach out to you more easily in a manageable manner. With its automated reminder function, you can be sure that no meeting or conference will be missed.
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Client Support: To handle their clients more efficiently, digital businesses will need customer-oriented softwares such as messaging and video conferencing software in order to follow up, communicate or handle their customer’s requirements.
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Social Jumpstart: Apart from the systems and softwares, a digital business won’t be able to make any sales if its presence remains unknown. All digital businesses should seriously take into account the promotion of their brand in order to increase their reach, raise awareness and consequently gain customers.
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Online Advertising: Another function that should be working hand-in-hand with the Social Jumpstart is online advertisement. While the former focuses on creating social media presence, the latter is more on the selling side. This includes advertising on Google Ads, Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn, etc.
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Real Use Case Examples

To give you a more elaborate view on digital businesses, here are some real life examples from some well-known digital companies:

Netflix’s adaptation of digitalization is a good example. Previously, Netflix utilized a warehouse management system (WMS) to rent out DVDs. Despite the efficient operation provided by WMS, Netflix was still similar to the video rental service. As the internet becomes more widely popular, the company offered an option for customers to watch/stream videos and on-demand via its online channel. That was how Netflix became one of the biggest video streaming services in the world.

Another example is the case of Uber. It builds its business model upon the gap between customers and taxi services by utilizing the universal use of smartphones and the internet. Specifically designed for booking taxis, the platform gets rid of time uncertainty and unavailability of public transportation for its users. With digital technology, Uber is able to become a taxi company without a single taxi in its parking space.

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Webinar: The combination of a website and a seminar. It is considered as a tool that can be used to create an interactive, participant-focused engagement. Its goal is to raise awareness for the brand, convey the brand message, eliminate doubts and answer questions that interested prospects may have, all in one place.

Blog: In addition to visual participation, textual communication through a blog post can be used as a tool to educate prospects and lead them to your product/service at the same time. It can also show the level of your expertise in the field in order to build reliability. Another advantage is that it can be, similar to a webinar, shared easily via social media or other online channels with ease.
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Analytics: One of the grand advantages of a digital business is its usability of data. It is something that a brick-and-mortar business cannot hope to compete with. This, of course, requires the use of data analytics tools that can help analyze the pattern, track performance and generate insights that are beneficial for a business strategy and policy decisions.
Agreements: The final, but not the least important function involves paperworks. Every business, whether traditional or digital, requires the presence of contracts, agreements, and terms as they are compulsory and required by the law. For digital businesses, having clear and defined terms can remove the legal risks that the firm may encounter, especially when it comes to the Terms of Services and Privacy Policy.

Conclusion

From the current trends, we can see that transforming into a digital business is inevitable in this technology-driven world. The more the people are digitally connected, the more the businesses should be digitally transformed. With this article’s guideline, we hope to help businesses become more well-equipped with the knowledge necessary for their digital transformation.