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  If not at any other time in history, the lockdown realities which set in during the Covid-19 pandemic world has necessitated that a lot of businesses move from physical stores to online stores.
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Online stores became the go-to place for many people who had things to buy or sell after many of the brick and mortar stores were locked up in Nigeria. This was the same reason the stock price of online merchants such as Amazon Inc, Target and Walmart in the USA has shot up in the past year. One of the largest textile stores in the U.K. Primark, had a sharp decline in their revenue as their stores remained closed during the lockdown while they had not yet prepared their stores for online vending. Business digitalization not only opens up a marketplace to a new set of online customers but also prepares a business for the realities of a sudden lockdown. Business digitalizing as a global phenomenon also provokes fundamental changes in how companies operate and how they deliver value to their customers. Meanwhile, business automation will lead to a more efficient business turnover and increased operational stability.
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To benefit from some of the few ways through which business digitization/automation gives entrepreneurial structure to any business, a few ways by which your business can be digitised are highlighted below;

  1. Set Proper Digital Protocols

A lot of planning has to go into how digitization will impact your business. This is to prevent your business from deploying a series of ineffective programs and protocols that lead to a negative response from customers and target audiences. Once the current standing of your business has been analysed and determined, you may then focus on how the diverse branches such as procurement, storage, inventory, marketing, and so on; all interlink and interact with one another. How will you create, store, edit, transfer and despatch whatever merchandise your business is engaged in? Remember that properly channelling these processes is a huge part of the digitisation and automation that your business needs to move to the online space.

  1. Build your Infrastructure on Cloud-Based services

For businesses that are very small, creating a presence by opening a branded account on social media platforms should suffice. Usually, it is through these platforms that orders for the product/service of your business will be taken. If you own or manage a large enterprise that you would like to take online, deploying a few cloud-based technologies, such as a Customer Relationship Management (CRM) program and Knowledge Management System (KMS) is the ideal route to digitization and automation. The usefulness of these two tools is to provide a centralized location for the expedited management of select information. However, if you are worried about the technical complexity of working with cloud computing, you should employ the service of an IT expert to walk you through setting up services such as Amazon Web Services, Microsoft Azure and Google Cloud. Featured Image Source: Carrot Suite
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This article was first published on 20th March 2021

adedoyin

Macaddy is mostly a farmer in the day who also dabbles into technology at night, in search of other cutting edge intersections. He's on Twitter @i_fix_you

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