The accelerator for Digital Transformation
Digital transformation is the key topic in boardrooms around the world, with CEOs demanding strategic clarity across the business on how mobile technology is being utilised in the customer lifecycle, the impact on internal processes, and how to increase agility to keep up with the relentless speed of new service delivery and innovation.
Matt Hooper
Digital transformation is the key topic in boardrooms around the world, with CEOs demanding strategic clarity across the business on how mobile technology is being utilised in the customer lifecycle, the impact on internal processes, and how to increase agility to keep up with the relentless speed of new service delivery and innovation. With digital and mobile technology applied to nearly all aspects of daily life, consumers now expect a personalised service experience from the organisations that serve them in both the private and public sector. The trend is irreversible, by 2017 there will be three times more devices than people in the world and failure to embrace digital transformation will create long-term problems for organisations that will negatively impact revenues, customer loyalty and market share.
We can see pressure across traditional industries such as banking and utilities to change how they serve and engage users across various customer journeys, because start-ups and tech-companies are already gaining customers through building a mobile centric service offering. A survey by Fujitsu questioned key European IT decision makers from multiple industries, finding that 4 in 5 wanted to move faster towards digital investment, but 83% admitted that they were gambling with their digitalisation investments. Only 1 in 4 was ‘extremely confident’ about if they were making the right choices about their digital projects, and almost three quarters claimed they were playing digital catch-up.
Where should you focus and where do you need to invest your money? Mobile should be high, if not top of your priority list. This is obvious given global mobile data traffic is expected to grow eightfold between now and 2020, with a CAGR of 53% and consumers already spending 3 hours every day looking at a mobile screen. Efforts to digitise will pay huge gains by focusing on the mobile device experience, a channel that is always on and always in the hands of your customers. In addition, as the smartphone centralises multiple capabilities and channels, it is the key platform for delivering the fabled ‘omni-channel’ experience.
At imimobile we have worked with a number of enterprises to enable them to effectively use mobile as the medium for accelerating digital transformation by digitising and orchestrating key customer journeys. We helped one particular financial services client by first identifying and prioritising which customer journeys could be digitised using automated mobile alerts, notifications and messages. For example, using our Webex Connect platform the client was able to prototype, test and deploy a new customer journey in just 2 days that would assist them in increasing the number of customers using online-only statements. At one point in the customer’s life-cycle, they would be asked via a text message whether they really needed paper statement, to which they could reply yes or no. This digitised customer journey led to messages achieving a 20% positive response rate, and ultimately helping the client to save 70p per statement not delivered via the post.
This may seem like a simple example, however, it is key for organisations to look at existing customer journeys and processes to determine where the quickest gains can be made. Where to inject, or blend mobile services such as messaging at the right point, how to make the experience personalised and relevant and how to ensure that an agile organisational capability is established for the creation, delivery and orchestration of digital services.
Digital transformation will be a key strategic driver for years to come, with 50% of IT budgets being tied to digital transformation initiatives by 2020. Ultimately, change will occur across multiple areas of the business from utilising the real-time elements of big data to personalise services to artificial intelligence augmenting the working environment. But right now, mobile represents the quickest win.