Tag: Digital Transformation

Integrating Customer Support Call Centers With Artificial Intelligence | Blog

Companies currently invest a lot of money in target markets to generate potential customers’ interest in products and services. But after they achieve a sale, they often frustrate customers by not providing effective customer service support. A poor customer experience can erode the company’s brand and reputation and destroy the company’s opportunities to increase revenue through new purchases by those existing customers. Obviously, these are significant problems, especially in today’s highly competitive environment with customers’ quick pace in buying decisions. Let us now explore the solution.

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How Changing Demographics and the Pandemic are Influencing Wealth Management | Blog

Millennials and Gen Xers currently account for a majority of the earning population worldwide. As a result, the largest demographic cohort looking to manage wealth or create retirement income is shifting from baby boomers to these population segments (see the exhibit below), which are generally more involved, aware, and digitally oriented than preceding generations. The new investor generations demand information at their fingertips, anytime, anywhere – something impossible to achieve with traditional wealth management methods.

Exhibit: estimated shift in wealth from baby boomers to Gen X and millennials from 2016 to 2046

estimated shift in wealth from baby boomers to Gen X and millennials from 2016 to 2046

The impact of COVID-19 on wealth management

The COVID-19 outbreak has brought some key challenges in wealth management to the forefront. First, it has highlighted gaps in traditional wealth management methods, accentuating the pressing need for digital transformation. COVID-19-induced restrictions have severely impacted agent availability and as well as customers’ ability to visit advisers. Firms that can leverage digital tools to balance business continuity challenges with customer expectations will be able to differentiate themselves from others in the current climate.

Second, revenue erosion resulting from the COVID-caused recession, combined with an increase in business costs, may drive consolidation in the industry, as smaller firms will find it difficult to stay afloat. We are already seeing a shift in asset classes’ preferences. High Net Worth Individuals (HNWIs) and Ultra HNWIs (UHNWIs) will be impacted, as the wealth managers’ diverse portfolios are impacted. More than half of respondents to a UBS Group AG survey of wealthy investors said they feared not having enough liquidity in the event of another pandemic, and a similar percentage expressed worry about leaving sufficient money to their heirs.

What wealth managers need to do

Wealth managers need to increase their focus on services such as workforce management, operations continuity, customer communications, digital, goal-based planning, and portfolio impact advisory to persist through the current challenging situation. At the same time, they shouldn’t lose sight of the perpetual risks to business, such as cyberattacks, money laundering, and other security threats. Wealth management firms will need to ensure – even in the absence of physical interaction and with limited agents – that leadership maintains the confidence of both customers and employees.

Digital will remain the overarching theme to address these challenges. In recent times, Business-Process-as-a-Service (BPaaS) for back-office operations and robo-advisory have gained traction, though the solutions’ scale and magnitude continue to remain low. While BPaaS helps firms bolster their critical operations,  technology leverage can be increased further via more digital products, automated cybersecurity systems, smart portfolio creation, trade analytics, and trade simulations for efficiency improvements, productivity gains, bandwidth creation, and customer satisfaction in the next normal.

As wealth management firms look to achieve these objectives, they will require support to quickly and efficiently adopt digital, set up the required infrastructure, move workforce interactions to virtual mediums, revamp operations and traditional workflows to minimize human intervention, and hedge location-based risks. They will have to carefully prioritize tasks and implement digital step-by-step, so as not to abruptly overhaul traditional methods and processes. For this, they could opt for off-the-shelf products or customized solutions, or choose an external provider to do it all.

To tide themselves over the crisis and prepare for what’s to come, we recommend that wealth management firms:

  • Instill confidence in their clients and employees and shield themselves against other risks to survive this unprecedented situation. It will also be vital to take additional precautionary measures to maintain investor confidence. Given investor loyalty to certain firms, it would be useful to focus on maintaining the customer base rather than acquiring new customers
  • Align themselves with and adopt emerging digital industry trends, including robo-advisory, automated workflows to close sales, remote due diligence, and subscription-based advice models
  • Ease the pressure on their bottom lines by focusing on reducing cost-to-serve; automating their middle and back offices could serve as a starting point
  • Continually assess their investment philosophies; while COVID-19 is a crisis like no other, firms must draw lessons from previous crises to diversify their assets and maximize their investments in passive funds that make reasonable margins

At present, digital transformation is no longer a strategy to cater to a specific customer segment but the very means to survive. It will help meet customer experience standards and preferences in relationship management, query resolution, and communication. For employees, digital tools will enable more robust decision-making and goal-based planning for portfolios, as well as help monitor them real-time to enable faster turnarounds and higher returns.

Data Management: An Unwitting Game of Russian Roulette | Blog

I noted in several recent blogs that the COVID-19 crisis increased the need for digital transformation because the crisis brings new value-creation opportunities to businesses, and I explained how to capture those business advantages even in a recession. It necessitates implementing the right infrastructure – not just cloud and automation, but also a robust data management capability. Unfortunately, many companies accelerate digital transformation without a robust data management structure. Warning: Lacking this ability for data mastery, they essentially play Russian roulette with their business going forward.

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SLAs Constrain Improving Productivity | Blog

Three years ago, I wrote some blogs stating that Service Level Agreements (SLAs) are dead. Unfortunately for businesses, SLAs are still around – they’re like zombies. Companies realized for many years that SLAs don’t work. They are not just ineffective; they constrain companies from getting to their goals for services. But, like zombies, they did not die. Why? Because there was nothing better to use in governing service agreements. Until now. In this blog, I will explain what works better than SLAs, and why.

In digital service models, companies need to move to a new set of metrics. Metrics that focus on productivity. Metrics that focus on velocity. Fluid metrics that allow companies to adjust the target to a changing reality. Metrics that accurately affect pricing. Metrics that do not lock companies into old contractual vehicles that no longer work.

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How To Structure A Company To Use A Gig Platform | Blog

In my previous blog, I talked about companies needing to structure their IT organizations so they are leaner, more agile and able to constantly use the world’s best coders with the rarest and newest skills that are dramatically scarce. To achieve these goals, I explained that they need to consider using a gig platform as an integral part of IT.

In the blog, I explained the benefits, especially accelerating the rebuilding of a business in the post-COVID-19 world. However, companies must understand the challenge in embracing a gig platform at scale: they must first restructure their organization. Here is a look at some important considerations and what is involved.

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Using A Gig Platform To Access Key Skills In The COVID-19 Crisis | Blog

The COVID-19 crisis has resulted in a devastated economy. Executives are looking at their businesses from a recession and retrench mindset, knowing they need to preserve cash. That involves eliminating inefficiencies, and enterprise IT organizations have significant inefficiencies and redundancies. So, companies have laid off many programmers and IT professionals. While these lay-offs created a surplus of IT talent, there is a talent shortage of necessary skills. Despite the lack of skills, companies recognize that coming out of the crisis will necessitate becoming more agile and innovating faster. In this blog, I discuss a potential answer to this problem.

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COVID-19 Crisis Pressures Service Providers To Cut Prices | Blog

As individuals or as businesses, any life-changing event results in rethinking our position. In the case of the COVID-19 crisis, it will change the way companies conduct business for a long time, as the crisis revealed weak spots in business practices and investments. Moreover, as companies begin to exit the crisis, they move forward with a recession mindset. However, the global crisis also reveals business opportunities going forward. Let’s look specifically at two factors: working from home and discounts from third-party service providers.

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Post-COVID-19 Recovery: A Technological Reform | Blog

COVID-19 has revealed some crippling inadequacies to enterprises across the globe. With employees locked down in their homes, manufacturing processes on hold, warehouse facilities inaccessible, and supply chains at a standstill, businesses are facing an undeniable economic crisis. This downtime has made them question their underlying business models, operating methodologies, and, most importantly, their tech investments. An overarching question that also looms large is: What will a post-pandemic business ecosystem look like, and how can enterprises and service partners be better prepared for it?

The 2008 financial crisis was a wake-up call for businesses around the world, and was accompanied by new financial governance structures, steps to ensure transparent and efficient decision-making, and large-scale legislative reforms. In contrast, COVID-19 is expected to usher in massive technological reforms. We already see early signs of enterprises preparing for the future by leveraging technologies not only to address current requirements but also to build a strong foundation for the post-pandemic ecosystem.

Let’s take a look at some areas where technology is being leveraged to respond in radically newer ways.

Next normal – virtual experiences

Imagine taking your kids to a safari, or attending a concert in London, or test driving a car, all of this while you are in self-quarantine at home. Virtual tours, virtual resource-sharing, and even virtual personalities and friends are likely to become routine, compelling enterprises to rethink their business models. Customer interactions and customers’ expectations from brands will also change dramatically, requiring enterprises to design innovative solutions and new experiences, and ensure their seamless delivery. Technologies such as Internet of Things (IoT), Augmented Reality (AR), and Mixed Reality (MR) offer enterprises exciting opportunities to address these needs. Service partners will play a critical role in helping enterprises understand customers’ evolved expectations, visualize future demand themes, re-design virtual customer journeys, and build the required technological assets.

Cross-industry collaborations

Amid the lockdown and uncertainty across the globe, technology platform-based businesses seem to fit like pieces in a puzzle. Think about food and grocery delivery businesses or content delivery platforms such as Amazon Prime and Netflix, or even social media platforms such as Facebook. As users get more comfortable with technology and use it increasingly to meet varying needs, the treasured data gathered across platforms will also pave the way for cross-industry collaborations. For instance, secured access to customers’ virtual profiles can enable insurance firms to design personalized products based on lifestyle and preferences. Similarly, travel and tourism businesses can identify target customers and offer them curated solutions based on their preferences identified by converging insights across these platforms. These changes will usher in a new wave of innovation, driving seamless interactions, deeper customer insights, personalized marketing, and new business opportunities. Service partners will be trusted with the critical role of catalyst, which can onboard various stakeholders, enable seamless integration of diverse systems, and facilitate value realization for all entities involved.

Business continuity planning

Many technology firms are already supporting enterprises with solutions to ensure business continuity. For instance, Oracle, Salesforce, SAP, and ServiceNow are enabling collaboration, file sharing, and data sharing with flexible payment options to support their enterprise customers. And Cisco, Dell, Nutanix, and many others are offering free-to-use solutions or adopting creative financial models such as deferred payments and lower initial payments to facilitate business continuity for customers. This is, in turn, helps their clients build brand equity, which is likely to pay off in the long term. These firms are “doing good by doing well,” essentially responding with much-needed solutions. Increasingly, service partners will be expected to bring about changes in their engagement, delivery, and commercial models to address the challenges confronting their clients.

While businesses are still trying to fully grasp what it will take to survive and thrive post-pandemic, we can say one thing for sure: an astute understanding of customer needs, coupled with the right technological assets, proper governance, and a structured investment approach will help prepare enterprises for the world we encounter on the other side of the pandemic.

If you are looking to understand the evolving business ecosystem and a roadmap for how you can prepare your organization better for growth post-pandemic, please write to me at: [email protected].

COVID-19 Business Crisis Proves Automation Matters | Blog

Consider what’s now happening at companies that made investments in automation and moving work to the cloud. They’re doing better than others in the COVID-19 pandemic. They’re more flexible under trying conditions. They’re more resilient to challenges. They are a bright spot in this awful crisis. The pandemic showed what companies invested in as preparation for challenges. Unfortunately, it also exposed companies that were less prepared. As I mentioned in my prior blog, the pandemic was like what Warren Buffet described as the tide going out, exposing naked swimmers. One fact that the COVID-19 crisis exposed is that automation matters.

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The Need to Consolidate the Vendor Ecosystem to Deliver Great Customer Experience | Blog

Delivering new customer experiences has become the centerpiece of many enterprises’ strategies to achieve sustainable growth. In fact, our research indicates that 89% of enterprises are using digital technologies to redefine customer experience, allocating as much as 30-35% of their marketing budget to experience design. And this share is expected to increase to 50-55% by 2022.

Enterprise approach to experience design

Designing a successful customer experience is an intricate play of many enabling factors, including a well-planned strategic roadmap, a well-defined organizational structure, strong creative execution, the right mix of technology solutions, and use of the right channels, as illustrated in the exhibit below.

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Given this complex interplay of multiple factors, enterprises are actively engaging with service/technology providers, such as design agencies, consultancies, IT service providers, and technology providers, to deliver an enhanced customer experience. However, the number and range of providers involved in delivering the desired experience are creating an extremely fragmented vendor ecosystem; our research shows that an enterprise might work with as many as 100 design agencies across various customer experience initiatives globally. While the aim is to partner with players best suited to deliver on a particular aspect of an engagement, a fragmented ecosystem results in a siloed, disconnected approach to design and lack of success metrics ownership.

Let’s take a look at the area of website design, where one service provider could be responsible for User Interface (UI) design (including user research, defining user flows, creating wireframes, etc.), another for content creation (animations, text, videos),  and a third IT service provider for platform selection and development. A website’s key success metrics are as closely linked to UI as to the underlying technology and a persuasive content strategy. Thus, if the website does not bring these aspects together seamlessly and does meet user expectations (in terms of the bounce rate and time spent per page, among others), which service provider should be held accountable?

Thus, defining and owning the success metrics are the key to any experience engagement’s success.

How are service providers – and enterprises – responding?

Realizing that they can no longer cater to just one aspect of the value chain, both design agencies and IT service partners are bolstering their design and technology portfolios to deliver business value and act as strategic, one-stop partners to their customers. Thus, design agencies are ramping up their technology expertise to build data, analytics, and platform capabilities, while IT service partners are actively acquiring design agencies to build UI/UX, content, digital media design/execution, and design consulting capabilities. To take an example, over the last six years, Ireland-based digital agency Accenture Interactive has carried out 30+ acquisitions to boost its media, digital, and creative credentials across the globe. Another example is the London-based design agency WPP, which appointed its first-ever CTO in October 2018, committing itself to build a robust technology and data strategy.

However, even as service partners rush to build end-to-end capabilities, buyers remain largely unconvinced. They are continuing to partner with individual service partners for their experience engagements. Some doubt the ability of their IT service partners to deliver a strong creative impact, while others believe that design agencies cannot truly understand underlying platforms/technology solutions to deliver viable solutions.

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Is a solution in sight?

It is imperative for enterprises to understand that experience design is KPI-led design. Hence, they must push service providers to define and own KPIs that reflect the overall engagement’s success. Moreover, buyers should engage with service providers that possess robust end-to-end experience management capabilities. Service providers can acquire such capabilities by offering a broad solutions portfolio (either developed in-house or through a partnership network) across creative and technology execution. Doing this will pave the way to successful experience design, consolidation of the vendor portfolio, and higher service provider accountability.

What has your journey been? Share your thoughts on designing experiences for your customers with me at [email protected].

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