The term digitalization was first introduced at the 2011 Hannover Fair in Germany. Digitalization includes several forms of change that have occurred, such as artificial intelligence, e-commerce, Big Data, financial technology, and the use of robots.
This process continues to progress. With this rapid progress, digitization has helped the community to provide convenience and create many changes. Because in this era we must be able to make various innovations based on technology that can be used for daily activities.
For those of you who are curious about the role of digitalization in business and society, make sure to read this article to the end.
Definition of Digitalization
The increase in the use of digital-based technology that is used in almost every aspect of life is one of the signs of the digitization process.
The definition of digitization is a term used to describe a media transition process that starts from the use of print, video, or audio technology to digital media with the aim of being able to store documents in digital form.
According to Brennan and Kries, digitalization is a digital communication and the impact of digital media on social life. Meanwhile, according to the Gartner.com dictionary be is the use of digital technology to change a business model and provide new revenue and generate opportunities, and this is a process of moving to a digital business. This process can occur with digitization.
So, What is digitization? Digitization is a conversion process from analog to digital.
The goal of digitization is to reduce costs by optimizing internal processes, such as work automation, minimizing paper use, and so on. Therefore digitization cannot occur without prior digitization because the use of digital technology must use digitized data, such as documents that were originally in the form of hard files to become electronic documents in pdf, doc, etc. formats.
Benefits of Digitalization
The purpose of digitization is to help people facilitate all their daily activities and work. This goal provides benefits that are quite effective in optimizing many things so that we don’t have to take a lot of time and effort to achieve the targets of our work.
For example, when we want to go to a place where we don’t know the route, we can easily reach that address because digital maps or online-based transportation services are now available.
Another example of the use of technology in buying and selling business activities through the current digitalization process is the ease of making transactions between sellers and buyers that can be done easily. This process is presented in various applications such as marketplaces, e-commerce, and online shops. That way people no longer need to spend a lot of time just to buy or sell something.
From this digitization, many things can be made to make the process easier, starting from the trade sector, the education sector, and also the health sector. What is the reason behind the many benefits arising from it?
Below we will discuss in depth the role of digitalization in business and society
1. Trade Sector
As explained in the previous paragraph, digitization makes it easier for business actors in the trade sector to provide various benefits. To find out in more detail about the benefits of the trade sector thanks to digitalization, are as follows:
- Minimizing operational costs
- Able to reach more consumers
- Facilitate the marketing process
2. Education Sector
If we look at the situation that occurred in the education sector in previous years, perhaps its role is still not clear. However, when the Covid-19 pandemic hit the whole world and human beings, in the case of the education sector, all face-to-face teaching and learning activities were completely stopped.
Then digitization was something that at that time became a savior. The benefits for the education sector from the digitalization process are:
- Facilitate teaching and learning activities remotely with e-learning
- Facilitate students in accessing information related to lessons
- Able to increase students’ creativity and technological innovation
3. Government Sector
- Increase cost efficiency
- Increase time efficiency
- Facilitate the public service system, such as paying taxes, levies, etc.
4. Health Sector
- Facilitate health workers in diagnosing disease
- Facilitate patients in making appointments
- Easy the consultation process
- Simplify the monitoring process
The Role of Digitalization in the Field of Industry and Business
In the previous discussion it was said that the presence of digitization helps many fields in reducing costs, facilitating many activity processes, etc. So this time, we will discuss in more detail the role of digitalization in industry and business.
1. Digitization of Production
Digitization transitions that occur in production systems such as the use of Quality Control (QC) automation that utilizes special programming algorithms based on Artificial Intelligence (AI) help us as business actors in producing quality products that can minimize supervision.
2. Digitalization of Finance
Financial activities in digitalized businesses and industries are a great move to implement. This is because digitalization of finance can make it easier for us as business actors to minimize data loss, find out the position of a business balance more easily and accurately, present digital money that is more practical to use, make it easier to record business financial conditions.
3. Digitization of Reports
The advantage of digitizing this report can help us to evaluate quickly by finding irregularities in the strategy.
4. Digitalization of Services
The presence of digitalization of services in the industrial and business world is useful for providing information about related products or services to customers or prospective customers by answering their questions automatically through chatbot technology and can also send broadcast messages or remind customers about existing promotions.
5. Digitalization of Marketing
One form of innovation that comes thanks to digitalization is digital marketing, which is a form of digital marketing. Digital marketing can be considered quite disruptive because it has succeeded in making market competition more perfect and not controlled by one or two brands. Another plus point is that businesses do not need to spend a lot of money to carry out promotions.
Closing
Those are some discussions about the role of digitalization in business and society, I hope the information above can help and provide many benefits for you.