The word digital is appropriately synonymous with our lives. In business, digital transformation is the new mantra that all enterprises big and small alike have on their minds and budgets intending to serve and stay relevant with the emerging needs of the market and their customers. But what is digitalization in business? Simply put, digitalization or digital transformation is when a company uses or starts to use digital technologies as a business model in their daily operations thereby providing and creating high value, efficient, and new revenue-generating opportunities.
An essential on the road to success
When it comes to business, the bigger enterprises have been armed with a digital approach for quite some time now. It is used as an add-on to the customer service to make purchases, exchanges or simply to browse products and offers. Right from digital payments to automatic scheduling of appointments, businesses rely on digital solutions to best serve their customers' needs around the clock. For the small and medium enterprise owner, however, the use of a dedicated business management platform to manage their business was never considered as much of an option, until now, where it has become a prerequisite to running a productive and successful business. They have previously refrained from using technologies or used them to a minimum because of a lack of trust or knowledge in it. Many have steered clear from tech-based AI due to a certain cost involved in setting it up as well.
Helping these small and medium enterprises adapt and achieve growth through digital transformation is Seattle-based, vcita which was established in 2010 and has employees working remotely throughout the world and a second office in Tel Aviv, Israel. vcita was originally designed as an online scheduling platform which over time has evolved to become the all-in-one business management and client engagement app. It has been instrumental in empowering the digitalization of small and medium enterprises, enabling them to focus on what matters most: building businesses and communities that they are proud of.
vcita delivers an innovative digital solution uniquely designed to serve the needs of service providers. It accelerates SME digital transformation by motivating greater opportunities from all over the internet, whether it is through social media, emails, or SMS, equipping users to self-serve and build a long-lasting resilience. It provides SME clients with the tools they need to shift into hybrid mode, allowing them to remain competitive in an ever-changing digital-first economy.
“Our mission is to support small business owners across the globe in digitalising their day to day tasks, managing their money, time, and clients.”
In the year 2020 Adi Engel, Chief Marketing Officer joined vcita. She is responsible for leading vcita’s strategic thinking and global marketing objectives in supporting micro and small businesses on their journey to success and digital transformation. Adi has a host of experience and customer-centric product knowledge, which she constantly brings into new, innovative, company-wide, initiatives that are guided by her passion for enabling the inclusion of the underserved. She explains that digital transformation is not just important for an enterprise but the entire ecosystem around it. It not only achieves operational excellence for an organization but also ensures optimum customer service. After all, as Michael LeBoeuf, author of ‘The Perfect Business’ quoted, a satisfied customer is the best business strategy of all.
The small or medium-size business comprises 90% of the market employing 60% of the total population in almost all economies. At vcita, Adi and her team of specialists undertook that challenge of meeting these small business owners where they are at scale, by engaging with the greater ecosystem that is serving them and building partnerships to support SMEs digitalisation journey. She had a clear vision of what the output and solution should be and how to best implement it. With a sense of pride of confidence in the product offering by the company, the team initiated development.
Starting out in Tel-Aviv, vcita quickly opened an office in Seattle. Over the years the team worked tirelessly to develop a strong and robust code and API platform to empower their SME partners which they then translated into other languages to give an advantage to the non-English speakers. It was followed by the launch of the vcita app while simultaneously updating their product offerings and features.
“Driving a growth culture and mentality, we are building a team that we are proud of; to support SMEs in building businesses that they are proud of.”
Breaking barriers and pushing through
As CMO, Adi works with vcita’s customer base throughout the world. She has extensive experience in understanding and identifying her clients’ pain points in running a small enterprise, and a keen passion for technology. She is constantly thinking of new ways to educate the small business owners about the power of digitalization and the advantages it has.
Besides being a true strategist and visionary, Adi strongly believes that any action taken by a leader has a direct impact on their employees worldwide. To her, it also means being a person that can understand the perspectives of different people. She possesses the ability to adjust to her audience and thus can serve them better.
Adi works to empower both partners and their SME clients alike, helping them evolve, to build their own business resilience. She is working at assembling an all-around team of vcita professionals well equipped and knowledgeable in all areas. She encourages personal authenticity and demonstrates vulnerability without the connotations of weakness.
“I would like to think it is not unique to female leaders, but only in recent years I felt truly comfortable in showing my colleagues I am tired, or hungry, or angry.”
An outdoors person, traveller, runner, and avid reader, Adi looks forward to being able to travel soon as possible because that is when she feels most productive and can feel the ideas flowing through her head. As a woman business leader, she believes that leadership in any form, whether male or female is a privilege and a duty. She hopes that her nieces and nephews and her employees’ kids don’t see a woman leader as some one-of-a-kind unique phenomenon and rather just see leadership as a calling and an act of service no matter who the person is by gender or identity.
The freeway ahead
vcita offers a range of software services like online schedulers for sorting and receiving bookings, digital payment portals for safe and secure payments, customer relationship management tools to keep all contacts organized and collated, and more. Thanks to these solutions over 1.4M service-based businesses use vcita’s offerings to manage and grow their client base and business.
Whether it is email marketing, SMS marketing, or any kind of cross-channel marketing, vcita enables customers to create their own unique online identities supported by personalised marketing campaigns. With functions like automatically adjusting your availability to your client's time zone, saving clients’ payment details for future transactions and refunds, or even generating digital invoices, vcita is a business owner’s 24-hour digital business partner.
Recent studies have shown that small businesses that have adopted digitalization see revenue growth of 26%. The data produced by digitalization not only improves workflow management and productivity but also allows businesses to connect with customers in a more engaging way while simultaneously boosting products and services ensuring higher customer satisfaction.
Adi is passionate about enabling the inclusion of the underserved and champions digital and financial inclusion for SMEs. She is an expert and thought leader, respected and revered by other leaders, industry professionals and SMEs across the globe. Together her team and vcita are helping to positively impact hundreds of thousands of small businesses around the world to build businesses they are proud of.
