Digital skills are the knowledge and practice needed to use digital tools for better results. They are a hard skill set on top of reading, writing and arithmetic. This post gives examples at three levels and shows how to choose the skills your team trains first.
Learn these skills in the course Digital Marketing (MC-DM).
What Are Digital Skills?
Using a calculator is a skill. Using Excel to add up rows of numbers automatically is a digital skill. Basic Microsoft Excel training is still in demand, because many graduates do not use functions such as SUM.
Basic Digital Skills
- Digital notes in Evernote or Microsoft OneNote: meeting points with photos, voice recordings and written notes on one page.
- A smartphone as a productivity tool, for example to turn business cards into contacts.
- An online QR code generator to add a one-touch action to print and digital media.
Intermediate Digital Skills
Writing a document in a word processor is a basic skill. Making brochures, proposals, quotations and PDF documents in publishing software is an intermediate skill.
- A WordPress website to test a business or product idea as a minimum viable product (MVP).
- Images and videos optimised for speed and file size online.
- Search engine marketing to reach active buyers.
- Excel functions to sort and analyse data.
Advanced Digital Skills
Making slides in PowerPoint is a basic skill. Using PowerPoint or cloud automation tools to make slide shows and videos is an advanced skill.
- Adobe Creative Suite to create digital content.
- Google Analytics to find business and growth opportunities.
- UiPath or Zapier to automate workflows for productivity and a shorter turnaround time (TAT).
Why a Business Needs Digital Skills
Managers and staff with digital skills deliver results with less time and money. Digital tools make tasks faster and more accurate, because the logic of the tool controls errors. This helps managers to scope, plan, do, monitor and control work for each target.
Which Digital Skills to Train
Choose the skills by task:
- Marketing tasks need digital marketing skills.
- Project management tasks need digital project management skills.
- Process automation tasks need automation skills, for example UiPath, Zapier or Blue Prism.
Digitalisation and Process Automation
To digitalise a team or a department, map the process flow to the result first. An Ishikawa diagram with design thinking helps you choose the right tools and resources with a clear payback period and return on investment.
Automation makes a closed process from input to result. A CRM system is a good example: each new enquiry becomes a contact, goes to a sales or service agent, and the history of the enquiry is logged for follow-up.
Start With a Training Needs Analysis
A training needs analysis (TNA) shows which skills each role needs and where the gaps are. Use it before you choose courses.
Common Mistakes to Avoid
- Training tools before mapping the process. The tool then automates a bad process.
- One course for every role. Choose the skills by task.
Try It This Week
Pick one task your team does by hand each week. Write the steps. Mark the step a digital tool can do faster.
Frequently Asked Questions
What is the difference between basic and advanced digital skills?
Basic skills use a tool for a task; advanced skills automate or scale the task, for example with analytics or workflow automation.
Where should a business start?
With a training needs analysis by role, then the skills that the most frequent tasks need.
Next Step
Read the full outline of Digital Marketing (MC-DM). Public classes: 25 and 26 January 2027; 31 March and 1 April 2027. All dates are on the Training Calendar. For a group from your company, get a quote for in-house training. More Work Tips are in the skill area Communication. Read also:
