Three Ways Digital Transformation Is Changing How We Do Business

In an effort to grow and lead better in the market, many businesses are turning to a customer-first model. And while customer-centricity is not a new concept, in recent times, customer experience has become a battleground where businesses can differentiate themselves and stay ahead of the competition. Businesses need to evolve their models using technology and data to meet the needs of tomorrow’s customers.

However, it seems that traditional businesses have not been able to keep pace. In fact, according to research from Forrester Consulting and my company, 81% of executives feel traditional business models will disappear in the next five years due to digital transformation. Similarly, recent IDC research reveals that 85% of enterprise decision-makers say they have a time frame of two years to make significant inroads into digital transformation or they will fall behind their competitors and suffer financially.

But where can these decision-makers start?

1. Businesses Need To Adapt To The Simplicity Of New Models

One might wonder why these businesses struggle to catch up with evolving ecosystems — especially when they have huge amounts of resources compared to nimble startups. Some might argue those struggles are a response to the complexity of traditional businesses, especially when compared to the pragmatic simplicity of new models leveraging technology with a strong focus on customer experience.

In many cases, it is because the very systems that the companies put in originally to automate and improve their processes have become a barrier. Too often, these businesses focus on making the company efficient and saving money for an individual process, leaving customers with a literal jigsaw of ways to get things done. However, changing these systems to create a seamless and simple experience is often surprisingly hard. Enterprises should get some inspiration from startups in terms of streamlining their experiences. Often, leveraging cloud and “as a service” options with more “vanilla” tools can help them resolve these challenges.

2. Understanding A Customer’s Context Is The Key To Relevant Experiences

To deliver a seamless and relevant experience, companies need to know the context of the customer, which starts with the business understanding the context of its relationship with a given customer at that point in time.

As consumers, I suspect most of us have, at some point in our lives, had a frustrating experience with a corporation, where one part of the company didn’t know what the other was doing and the process of explaining and navigating the company was fully left to the consumer, often to be repeated with increasing frustration.

Data analytics tools can help identify customer moods and dispositions, as well as assess and build on knowledge about past interactions between that customer and your organization. By gathering information on your customers’ actions and past experiences, you can glean important details that will help you better serve them. Using customer data meaningfully helps you direct consumers to the right places, guiding them to the products they are looking for and making suggestions that could be genuinely helpful to those customers, therefore avoiding frustration and wasting time on the ones that they are not even interested in.

It is through creating this context that data and analytics really makes a difference. For example, fed with the right context, virtual assistants can leverage natural language processing (NPL) and perform to the standards that consumers expect.

3. Automating Meaningful Decisions At Scale: The New Normal

As digital becomes the new normal, more and more companies will feel the pressure to automate decisions. In a digital world, decisions and applications happen instantly, and if the real-time imperative is not met, consumers drop off processes in large proportions.