The
challenge. A survey
says that small and mid-sized businesses using a sales management solution see
a boost revenue by about 86%.
Nearly 80%
of sales people report that implementation of a CRM solution increases in
customer satisfaction levels and one every two enterprises see significant
improvement in customer retention and satisfaction.
The
reality. Acquiring
new customers has always been a big challenge for enterprises. Marketing teams
that are launching out to new markets and customer segments need to gel well
with their sales teams to come up with successful campaigns to successfully
penetrate an already saturated and competitive ecosystem. A scalable and
dynamic collaboration model that can collect inputs form the field needs to be
in place to make such strategic moves.
Businesses
have realized that it is much costlier - nearly 7 times - to acquire a new customer
than to retain one. Some also dole out additional discounts and design
personalized offers to an individual or a group of individuals who satisfy some
simple criteria to create stickiness and increase brand loyalty. This again
requires enough data containing the purchase history and preferences of the
customers. A seamless customer bond needs to be built with them if we are
looking at a long-term relationship. Profitability of a business in directly
related to the success with which a business can retain its customers.
Modern
enterprises need to create more touch points and improve interaction with
customers in order to analyze their sentiments towards their products. What
they feel about the usability, price and quality is to be collected as feedback
so that the product or service that the customer consumes undergoes the
required correction. This feedback mechanism closes the loop in the interaction
between the enterprise and the customer.
Designing
sales campaigns and personalized products would require data about the
customers. This can be achieved internally by implementing a sturdy Customer
Relationship Management solution that can gather and maintain not only basic
data but also updated information about the customer.
Automation
of the sales processes and streamlining of customer data to effective channels
for dynamic consumption would be essential. Teams that interact with customers
either from remote locations or face to face require this information so that
the discussion can be healthy and product pitch perfect. When there is an
effective collaboration atmosphere for the marketing and sales teams,
productivity is bound to increase, and sales outcomes would turn out to be
positive and predictable.
Another
important aspect of building confidence in customers is to ensure that the data
acquired and stored about customers is kept private and safe. None would want
their personal data to be misused for purposes other than what it is intended
for. Nor would anyone want their data to be retained in systems that are open
to vulnerabilities. Securing apps, data and networks within which they are
shared is the responsibility of the enterprise to ensure privacy and safety of
this data.
The
challenge. The sole
driving force of enterprises to transform digitally is to put the customer at
the heart of every activity in the business.
Customers
determine the success and leadership of an enterprise. And customers are now
becoming tech savvy rapidly with the availability of cheaper devices packed
with digital power. What was a distant mirage for the common man has landed in
his hands with little effort from his side. Apps that span from e-commerce to
health monitoring to entertainment apart from official collaboration are
available for free or at an affordable rate. Most of these apps are provided by
sellers to increase touch points for gathering data and feedback from their
customers. Valuable inputs from customers can help enterprises design a very
personalized experience for customers. Targeted marketing campaigns can be
created for very special category of customers to promote stickiness and to
improve brand loyalty.
The
reality. With the
increase in complexity in organizations due to rapid growth in staff and
exponential growth in information, there is a need to create a conducive
atmosphere for seamless communication and collaboration. Today’s business
scenario requires enterprises to remain agile to changes mandated by customer
behavior. And customer behavior is unpredictable and highly volatile.
Empowering employees with the right kind of platform and tools to collaborate
and connect better is essential to address this challenge. Establishing more
channels to bring people and information closer in an enterprise will pave way
for better decision making and customer retention. Anywhere anytime access to
the enterprise resources through any device will improve mobility.
Democratization of information with actionable insights will place seamless
power in the hands of the relevant people to cater to the need of the customer
dynamically.
Enterprises
have organically grown internally but not all functions and departments are
well knit together as a fabric to function in unison. Ad hoc projects and
committees that mushroom time and again result in horizontal expansion that
operate in silos creating real challenge for effective governance and control.
Enterprises might lose focus on customers and their needs when firefighting
happens internally to contain the challenges in running the organization. Teams
that function in geographically separated locations are prone to remain
isolated from the overall functioning of things in the enterprise unless there
is an efficient collaboration mechanism. Optimizing these operations would result
in functional and operational teams working together to pay increased attention
to the customers’ needs.
Trends are
changing today with consumerism calling the shots in enterprises. Established
businesses are finding it difficult to keep up with the changing behavior of
customers. They are just one mouse-click away from losing a customer forever.
Flagship products are losing their relevance in this changing world of varied
customer preferences. Startups are ruling the day with their innovative
products and enterprises are forced to package their products as services to
remain competent and retain customers. Airplane engines are replaced by air
times. Capital goods are offered as subscription services. Real estates are let
for rent rather than being sold. Taxis are hired instead of cars being bought.
Banks operate with literally no physical presence; room-stays and holiday
packages are available with no property owned; content is proliferating while
nothing is originally created; Food lands on the table from virtual kitchens.
Customers want all of these in the comfort of their homes and work-spots and in
their familiar devices that they carry day in and day out.
The
challenge. The economic
environment is undergoing the 4th industrial revolution with the
advent of new technologies brought about by the nexus of forces – Social media,
mobility, Information pattern and the Cloud-
as Gartner puts it.
What
started as an internal networking tool for students at Harvard 13 years ago has
grown into a $525 B enterprise called Facebook. It has more than two billion
(two hundred crore) monthly active users as of June 2017 – nearly one third of
the world population. Twitter has nearly 280 million users and it is only
growing by the minute. Instagram has 150 million users sharing their updates
and photos every day. Social media is here to stay and becoming more powerful
by the second.
More and
more hours are spent online by people as there is proliferation of devices,
availability of internet connectivity and usage of apps for everything – from
official work to personal use, social networking and entertainment.
Availability
of data connectivity almost everywhere has resulted in people accessing the
internet from anywhere anytime through any device. Mobility of employees has
increased manifold as people have started using multiple devices in contrast to
a desktop being shared by more than one person some years ago.
The arrival
of the public cloud for enterprise consumption has turned the game against
investing for technology in millions upfront. And the huge resources that the
cloud can now bring to the enterprises has resulted in increased use of digital
technology for business purposes like never before.
The
availability of huge resources on the cloud has also favored the exponential
growth of data – not just in the form of files, mails and structured data but
also in the form of continuous inflow of digital data from various embedded
devices called the Internet of Things – the emergence of web 3.0 that now
captures data from every user and device connected to the world-wide web.
The
reality. The coming
together of these forces has ultimately brought in a disruption to our normal
way of working in the enterprise. All efforts to keep employees from the social
networking sites have failed, enterprises that fail to provide mobility to the
staff have started lagging behind, maintaining an on-premises infrastructure
has become a huge challenge
and providing infrastructure to capture, store, manage and safeguard huge data
inflow has become costly.
Enterprises
are now forced to look at these challenges in a different angle – putting these
forces to work for the growth of the enterprises rather than to shy away from
them. As a survey predicts, 25% of the world economy will be digital by 2020.
So, a significant number of enterprises have already launched out to capitalize
on the opportunities they see in this disruptive environment. Non-starters and
late comers face the risk of being left behind and getting lost in these times
of change.
The
challenge. The
third industrial revolution flooded in the digital technology and pervaded
every desk with a desktop or a laptop. However, this took nearly a quarter of a
century to make a man’s dream come true. But here is the deluge – the fourth
industrial revolution that tries to bring digital in every realm that man has
set his foot on. The volume and pace with which this has invaded this planet is
unprecedented.
While
technology promised a lot triggering huge investment by enterprises over long
periods, the results had always remained a mirage for decision makers. A major
reason for this might have been because of a lack of a unifying vision across
technology deployments. Another reason might have been the lack of seamless
information flow for businesses to make intelligent decisions. Data kept
flowing in in bits and pieces, from various silo systems and in disparate forms
that contributed little to the enterprises for sustenance and growth. Various
functions in the enterprise could not harvest actionable insights from business
data that had been accumulating over the years. The data just remained dead in
systems for enough time that it had only increased the cost of safekeeping day
by day.
IT and digital had remained a supportive
function with limited business role for quite long but has now quickly moved to
a state where it is currently playing a transformational role spreading an all
pervasive intelligent mesh touching and transforming all aspects of business.
The
reality. Now, there
is a realization that technology infrastructure should talk to each other and
work in unison to produce value for the enterprise. Data that has been lying
fallow for years should be harnessed to show reality and predict the future for
the enterprise to device its course of action. There is valuable IT infra in
the enterprise datacenters and a rich collection of data that contain a wealth
of information for executives to strategize their approach for expanding their
business, reaching potential markets and increasing their revenue and profits.
All
industries have started investing heavily in digital transformation as they
realize that digital business is intelligent business in the current state of
IT affairs. The top ten highest spending industries are expected to spend $151
billion (approximate Rs.10 lakh crores) in the next two years capitalizing on this
unprecedented opportunity. Financial services lead the pack with the highest
intended spending during this transformation journey. Manufacturing and Retail
business have also jumped into the bandwagon so that they don’t want to be left
behind by the startups and digital leaders that rely heavily on digital for
their success and leadership.