Have you checked your investment account balance today? Do you know how many steps you’ve taken so far? How about that grocery delivery order? Chances are none of these tasks required a phone call or trip anywhere beyond your couch.

Businesses are recognizing that nearly every task in our to-do list has a digital solution—albeit, at different degrees and speeds—and polls found that more than 70% of US based companies plan to introduce a new digital technology platform, digitize existing products, or digitize their innovation processes. More broadly, a recent report projected that the global digital transformation market will grow at a Compound Annual Growth Rate of 16.5% by 2025.

Digital transformation was already well underway before 2020, and to state the obvious, COVID has only accelerated the inevitable. As more businesses begin to build, update, or reimagine internal and external software offerings in order to succeed in this new era, the people responsible for these efforts play a critical role in the digital transformation that’s taking place.

Whether you possess a product title yourself or work at a large enterprise that builds internal or external digital products, this guide aims to illuminate the connection between product professionals and digital transformation. We interviewed experts from a variety of industries in order to offer both helpful context and tactical advice for leveraging digital products to drive business outcomes like customer retention, growth, innovation, and beyond.

To begin, let’s turn to one of the most important questions: Why is this so important now?