Why Cloud? It’s all about the experience economy!

The question I have found myself trying to answer more than any other over the past few years (apart from my daughter asking when the COVID-19 pandemic will finally end) has been “Why move to the cloud? Is it really the IT nirvana people say it is?”

Like many of my colleagues working in technology, I have traditionally responded in rapid fire format with what I always assumed to be the strongest arguments, which typically include — 1) the ability to scale 2) easier to maintain security standards 3) cost savings 4) reduced infrastructure complexity and 4) better IT resource optimization.

These arguments are all valid and fully support a move to the cloud, but they focus primarily on the internal benefits to an organization. A while back, I realized (during a sort of “Grinch Stole Christmas” epiphany) that the greatest benefits of moving to the cloud are not so much the internal IT efficiencies but rather the exceptional value it brings to employees and customers. In my view, this is the most compelling reason why companies should be moving to the cloud – because it’s the cloud which enables you to create truly exceptional and valuable experiences for both employees and customers, which when combined we call the experience economy. The nirvana of experiences!

For me, there are three main reasons why moving to cloud is important for creating this nirvana experience:

Companies today must accept and embrace the fact that their customers are always on and always connected – whether they are B2B, B2C, or C2C. We can debate all we want about people spending too much time on their phones and in front of laptops, but the reality is they are connected non-stop, and this will never change. Like the invention of the wheel, once people experienced how it changed their lives, they were never again without it. Such is our destiny with technology, whether we like it or not.

And no industry is immune to this new reality. The local bank branch may close at 5pm but their customers are still banking online at midnight. The shoe factory may close for the weekend, but its customers are still buying shoes online on Sunday. And the local department of motor vehicles may not be open from 12-1pm, but the citizen still wants to complete an online license renewal during a lunch break.

And the pandemic has only made this argument even more compelling. “Analog” customers who were reluctant to embrace online services such as video conferencing and e-commerce were forced into a new world overnight and “analog” businesses who were never planning a move to the digital space were right behind them – willing or unwilling.

This evolution is important. If your customers are always connected and your company is not, they’ll take their business to the company who is available because they are providing the better customer experience. With the technology today, it’s just that easy. In the end, it’s the customer who decides which experience is better, not the company.

This is why cloud is so important. With the hyper-connected customers out there today across multiple channels and countless connected devices, it becomes more compelling than ever that companies leverage the power of the cloud to maintain the high levels of interaction, real-time data collection and interpretation necessary for a unified customer experience.