How Product Digitization Adds Value to the Businesses

Highlights:

• At the core of product digitization lies the essential concept of digital twins, which assists brands with diverse business needs.
• It seamlessly integrates digital capabilities into physical products, bestowing businesses with a wide array of strategic advantages.

“At least 40% of all businesses will die in the next ten years… if they don’t figure out how to change their entire company to accommodate new technologies.” — John Chambers, Cisco.

Nowadays, customers are expressing a growing interest in aspects such as sustainability, product safety, authenticity verification, and visibility into the origins of their goods.

In a landscape where brands have digitized nearly every process and data byte, most products lack a digital footprint or substantial information once they leave the loading dock. This gap is where product digitization comes at the forefront.

What Does Product Digitization Behold?

It involves projecting physical products and their packaging (such as baby lotion or oil) on digital platforms. This enables the product to be showcased digitally, connect with the seekers, and impart crucial insights into the brand it is made under.

Thriving in the contemporary digital era, users are acquainted with real-time updates about various life aspects, ranging from product delivery tracking to its anticipated arrival moment. Still, most products we add to usage are yet to make it to the digital ecosystem realm.

To exemplify, consider fresh herbal products that have not yet been presented digitally anywhere, cannot mention specifications, or are refrained from communicating with sorting devices at recycling facilities. Digitized products, on the contrary, are capable of being featured broadly by the audience.

If fresh herbal products are to be digitized, brands can track:

• Location and time of the content retrieval.
• Ingredient safety records.
• Specific edibles in and out with a suitable plastic grade for wrapping that can be sustainably recycled later.

This information gives a complete view of the supply chain, from when you have the product to when it’s recycled. In simpler terms, having this data offers many ways to strengthen your company’s supply chain by:

• Enhancing operational efficiency
• Improving customer satisfaction and loyalty
• Facilitating data-driven decision-making

The above product digitization example acts as a fundamental guide. For a more nuanced understanding, we’ll immerse ourselves in a case study to extract practical insights.

Case Study: How Did Product Digitization United Coca-Cola with Consumers?

Approximately close to two billion servings of Coca-Cola beverages are consumed worldwide. The beverage industry giant adopted a solution to streamline direct connections with consumers and deliver customized remote experiences.

What did Coca-Cola do?

The company joined forces with Digimarc for a campaign appealing to consumers to connect digitally with 18 exclusive Coke Zero cans across Germany. The motive behind the campaign enabled customers to get in contact digitally by scanning these special cans. Not only did the scanning land them in a soccer jersey giveaway draw, but it also triggered a customized, context-oriented experience associated with time, date, product SKU, and geolocation.

What were the results?

• The campaign exceeded predictions tied to engagement frequencies and conversion rates.
• Coca-Cola’s website witnessed a stellar 10% traffic spur fetched from the consumers scanning the products.

Following the campaign’s success, Coca-Cola started exploring prospects beyond the leaps and bounds of Germany. It established direct digital contacts with consumers across 28 markets in Europe and North America, setting a major benchmark for the company’s global footprint.

Coca-Cola’s success in meeting engagement goals highlights the significance of product digitization. This valuable tool, driven by digital twins technology, goes beyond by fostering knowledge creation and automating business processes.

How Can Product Digitization Provide Value?

Digital twins are a fundamental aspect of product digitization, offering brands support for various business requirements. The knowledge creation and automation capabilities of digital twins are virtually limitless.

Digital twins, armed with accurate packaging component information, can automate material identification, leading to more precise and efficient sortation.

It also excels in automating customer engagement. When consumers scan the QR code on the product, they can activate rule-based events such as initiating a drip email campaign. Incorporating geolocation logic enhances this feature, offering contextually relevant information in-store or at home, like product specs, promotions, or usage instructions.

Therefore, digital twins help track your products in the following ways:

• Product authenticity verification
• first-party insights provision
• Packaging visibility assurance
• Data aggregation in a centralized place
• Recycling support

Going ahead, the infusion of digital technologies into traditional products extends beyond simple modernization, paving the way for heightened efficiency, innovation, and connectivity.

Explore the array of benefits businesses enjoy through product digitization:

• Companies can expect better tracking of individual items with unique digital identities, ensuring errorless monitoring for organizations.
• Companies can get access to centralized product intelligence irrespective of the time and location, furnishing valuable insights into the digital conversations of their digitized products.
• Companies can uncover a common ecosystem of interoperable applications that facilitate them with unique capabilities and encourage collective efforts with partners.
• Companies can benefit from the process and workflow automation channelized by real-time product data, stimulating intelligent interactions in a digital world.
• Companies can get a direct, brand-owned communications channel that tackles consumer demands for digital experiences, giving them the means to deliver desired information effectively.

To sum up, the profound benefits of product digitization in business are apparent. Let’s clarify the distinctions by examining “what is digitalization,” as the proximity of digitization and digitalization may lead to confusion.

Digital Duel: Product Digitization Vs. Product Digitalization

“Product digitization” and “product digitalization” play pivotal roles in guiding businesses through the intricacies of the digital landscape, fundamentally influencing how products are conceptualized, crafted, and encountered in our increasingly interconnected world.

Let’s distinguish between them:

 In summary, product digitization involves representing physical products digitally, while product digitalization encompasses a comprehensive transformation, leveraging digital technologies throughout the entire product lifecycle for holistic improvements.

Product Digitization Heralds the Future

Global product digitization is using digital technologies to create a globally improved product, promoting connectivity, efficiency, and innovation. Products gain the ability to transcend geographical constraints, fostering seamless communication and collaboration when we add digital technology to it.

This interdependent ecosystem gives space for efficiency, promotes real-time data exchange, and sparks newer solutions. It also positions global product digitization at the front line of advanced business practices.

Finally, the future of product digitization conceives an uninterrupted integration of advanced technologies, modernizing product intelligence and connectivity. As AI and IoT grow, products will become more advanced, more trustworthy, and capable of delivering tailored experiences.

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