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[x]cube LABS is a leading digital strategy and solution provider specializing in enterprise mobility space. Over the years, we have delivered numerous digital innovations and mobile solutions, creating over $ 2 billion for startups and enterprises. Broad spectrum of services ranging from mobile app development to enterprise digital strategy makes us the partner of choice for leading brands.
Blog, Covid-19, Digital Strategy, Healthcare, Hospitality

COVID-19: Additional Measures Your Enterprise Needs to Complement Work from Home

Table of contents

Our world has been shaken by a deadly virus that has forced us to change the routines of our lives. Businesses around the world have started working remotely to practice social distancing in a bid to keep the virus at bay as they can’t afford to put resources on hold.

So now the questions arise,

  1. What should we do to ensure the business is running as usual?
  2. If we work from home, would that will ensure the continuity and survival of business?

So is your business “work from home ready”?

It’s a question for all businesses out there, whether today or tomorrow, work from home ready is something which should be on the priority list for all decision-makers.

Organisations from various sectors are considering several tactical and strategic measures to protect their employees and to continue delivering value to the customers and clients. The measures that companies will be taking now, may change the perspective of workplace management in the long run. Remote work will become the new normal by leveraging digital infrastructure.

Here are 7 ways a company can quickly prepare a remote work environment:

  1. Digital connectivity: Robust connectivity to servers and applications is the first step. The organisation should ensure that good internet connectivity and desktops are accessible which enable employees to work efficiently from anywhere.
  2. Cloud Computing: It’s very important to invest in good cloud-based software to ensure safety and give your employees a seamless and secure virtual working experience from home. With the help of cloud computing, companies can continuously integrate thereby helping in smoothening the business process. Amazon web services, Microsoft Azure and Google cloud are some prominent leaders in cloud computing which enable the workforce.
  3. Communication tools: The organisation should encourage employees collaboration and ensure that to simplify employees access, they can integrate through interconnected communication channels or tools. This will enhance team engagement and significantly improve productivity. Tools like Google Suite, Slack Skype and other video conferencing tools allow all this to happen in real-time.
  4. IoT:  Internet of things or wi-fi connected technologies creates smart offices at home. Businesses can use IoT devices to allow interaction among employees or with clients as if they are in the same room. Remote devices also allow them to run a presentation while sitting at their home which is a pretty effective and efficient way to cut costs in terms of time and money.

  5. Project Management Tools: While working remotely, it is important to have correct corporate tools in place to ensure projects are executed correctly. Tools like Jira, Trello and Basecamp allow remote employees to collaborate, update files and assign tasks in the dashboard.

    Another notable tool along similar lines is Milanote which is finding increased adoption among creative professionals, project management teams and the development community. Providing a well-designed, intuitive interface, the tool makes organising tasks easy and collaboration a breeze.

  6. Security Protection: Security concerns add complexity to the technological side of remote working and can have serious consequences, employees can become prime targets for hackers. To ensure protection, best practices are to have up-to-date antivirus, device encryption, and firewalls. The IT department should either supply or advise your employees which equipment and software to use. This also includes a virtual private network (VPN).

It has become vital to digitally transform our workplaces to operate effectively. According to Forbes, 51% of senior executives believe it is critical to implement digital transformation in the next 12 months. Those companies who are leveraging technology and rethinking their business model will be able to adapt and stay ahead of the competition. Besides the ability to work from home, ensuring digital infrastructure in place will allow organisations to do business as usual.

Let us take you through how various industries can leverage digital infrastructure apart from working remotely..

Retail

  • Due to the coronavirus outbreak, customers are abandoning stores resulting in the absence of customer touchpoint. Consumers are now actively seeking technology-enabled companies to assist them in everyday tasks like shopping.
  • Companies have started leveraging digital technologies like augmented and virtual realities to meet consumer demands and to bring the in-store experience into their homes.
  • This has created a paradigm shift in strategies adopted by companies to protect them from any sort of crisis and ensure maintain business continuity.

Information Technology

  • The IT industry is one such industry, which has a little edge over other industries due to the normalcy of flexible hours and work from home practice. But this doesn’t ignore the fact that companies still have to bear the burden with varying degrees of impact.
  • When working from home, the employees are using teleconferencing tools to show clients the same static PowerPoint presentation or a product demonstration video to prospects which is less effective than conference room sales. pitch. Now think of sitting at home, wearing virtual reality gears and getting the feel of a conference room or watching a product demonstration is more interactive.
  • With the help of digital technologies, employees will be able to do work differently and engage clients in a better way.

Manufacturing

  • Manufacturing is one such sector, which is leading to a host of challenges to manufacturers as most of the jobs cannot be carried out remotely. Some major manufacturing industries are closing the facilities partially or fully depending on the nature of goods they are manufacturing.
  • Those facilities who are continuing the production must follow WHO guidelines to ensure workers safety and protection.
  • This is the demanding time to explore deployment of digital and automation technologies like robotics and industrial internet of things to ensure the production of goods.

Travel and Tourism

  • Amidst lockdown, tourism is one of the hardest-hit sectors. The tourism industry accounts for 10% of the world’s GDP. People working in the tourism sector will not survive if there are no tourists at all to visit.
  • But with the help of digital tools and technologies like virtual reality and IoT, tourism companies can leverage the immersive travel experience for different places while working remotely. This could be the next disruption in the tourism industry.

Education

  • As the coronavirus is spreading across the globe, schools and universities have decided to switch to virtual or online classrooms. This transition to digital education is disruptive and gives a boost to ed-tech companies. Students from all walks of life have now resorted to online learning.
  • Streaming classrooms are helping institutions smoothen their sudden transition to online teaching format. Google is giving free access to hangouts to meet video conferencing to all G suite education customers till July 1. Even online learning platforms like Coursera are giving free access to universities in times of crisis.
  • UNESCO offers a comprehensive list of technologies which are shaping the digital learning experience.

Hospitality

  • The pandemic in addition to the travel ban and lockdown, has forced the hospitality industry to shut down. Hospitality is among the hardest hit due to fears of community spread. The news has been highlighting the deferment and cancellation of events, conferences, and sports leagues.
  • Companies are resorting to virtual events using platforms like video conferencing and other virtual tools. There is a sudden push for innovation for event organizers and business owners to interact virtually.
  • Leveraging digital technologies will assist companies to enhance customer service thereby impacting customer expectations.

Conclusion

As this global health crisis continues to evolve work from home alone would not suffice. Digital transformation is a necessity to survive in the world of viruses and disasters. It’s the time for leveraging digital technologies and making the transition seamlessly to “all-digital world”.

Blog, Digital Strategy, Gamification

Leveraging Mobile Games for Brand Building and Sustenance

Table of contents

Mobile games: a snapshot of their growing popularity

In a world increasingly driven by mobility, it’s no surprise that the app stores keep welcoming new entrants by the hundreds every day. As of the first quarter of 2019, there were around 2.6 million Android and 2.2 million iOS apps. However, it’s the mobile games that generally see the most amount of traction and tops the download list by a huge margin. According to a report by Admob, around 62 percent of smartphone users install a game right after purchasing their device. The stats clearly highlight their  immense potential.

Covid-19: gaming sees an unprecedented upsurge

According to a research, the global games market was predicted to be worth $134.9 billion in 2018. The most booming sector of this was mobile gaming which was expected to be worth $63.2 billion, accounting for 47% of the global games market. However, given the current situation caused by COVID-19 that is restricting the movement of millions across the globe, the time spent on screen-based entertainment is increasing and consequently, the number of game downloads have also increased. As per the latest statistics, the mobile games category saw the largest increase in downloads between Q4 2019 and Q1 2020, up 30%, on Google Play and the iOS App Store- opening a floodgate of opportunities for mobile game developers.

What growth opportunities does it present for gaming companies?

Whether someone is under self-quarantine or just avoiding crowds during the COVID-19 outbreak, boredom sets in pretty quickly when they’re confined within the walls of their homes. Mobile games are providing an engaging and entertaining experience in such idle hours.

In February 2020, the average weekly game downloads in China went up by 80% compared to their average weekly download for the whole of 2019. South Korea, which was another country hit early by coronavirus, witnessed an increase in average weekly game downloads by 35% compared to their 2019 weekly average. This trend continued to catch up across the globe as countries implemented lock downs to reduce the spread of virus.

Recognizing the large potential of gaming in terms of retaining the attention and keeping people engaged, the World Health Organization is now encouraging people to stay at home and play video games. On March 29th, the WHO and 18 game companies collaborated for the #PlayApartTogether campaign. The campaign aims to promote the importance of social distancing and to give people a way to feel connected with each other remotely. All the game industry leaders participating in the initiative are encouraging their users to follow the WHO’s health guidelines to reduce the spread of COVID-19. 

“It’s never been more critical to ensure people stay safely connected to one another. Games are the perfect platform because they connect people through the lens of joy, purpose and meaning. We are proud to participate in such a worthwhile and necessary initiative,” 

Bobby Kotick, CEO,  Activision Blizzard
“There has perhaps never been a more pivotal time than present, for solidarity around a cause, such as the one facing us now with COVID-19. Together, with our global community of games publishers and the technical guidance of the World Health Organization, we hope to reach millions of players across our titles with the #PlayApartTogether campaign. Through games like Cooking Craze, Gummy Drop, Decurse and Fairway Solitaire, we can share WHO’s important message of safety while letting our community know that they are not alone. We are all in this together, even if we are apart.”

Jeff Karp, managing director and president of Big Fish Games

Here’s a list of companies participating in the campaign:

  • Activision Blizzard
  • Amazon Appstore
  • Big Fish Games
  • Dirtybit Games
  • Glu Mobile
  • Jam City
  • Kabam
  • Maysalward
  • Playtika
  • Pocket Gems
  • Riot Games
  • SciPlay
  • Snap Games
  • Twitch
  • Unity
  • Wooga
  • YouTube Gaming
  • Zynga

Given the large user base of some of these companies, they are the perfect platform for awareness campaigns of COVID-19. For instance, there are 3.3 million Unity game developers making games across platforms. Similarly, Twitch has 15 million daily active users. It is safe to say the current situation has opened the door for many opportunities for game development companies and mobile game developers to not just associate themselves with a cause, but also to engage people from all over the world and earn more revenue from their games.

Gamification as a marketing strategy for non-gaming companies

We can establish from various facts and figures that the average screen time of users has increased significantly ever since the pandemic forced them to stay inside their homes- leading to more people switching to games as a way to fight boredom. This has opened floodgates of opportunities for game developers and gaming companies but as a stakeholder of a non-gaming company, you might wonder if this situation can present you with equal opportunities. The answer is yes. 

As we witness a surge in mobile usage due to lock down and social distancing, the opportunity for your brand to engage with your customers and maintain relevance has in fact, become more promising. Also, if your business primarily operates offline, this is the best time for you to reach out to your customers digitally. You can leverage game development to:

Build brand awareness: Mobile games can help you raise brand awareness by allowing you to implement innovative ways to promote your products, engage with customers, and much more. Earlier, promoting products through games was considered a niche activity and brands often resorted to it as the last option but we have started to see a shift in trend as more customers are accessible only through mobile and over 50% of mobile users play games on a regular basis, with over 200 million people in the US alone.

Create customer engagement: Digital ads have hit peak now and consumers don’t engage with them anymore. In 2018, US companies spent $14.89 billion on Facebook ads despite the fact that 91% of total digital ad spend is viewed for less than one second. Social media marketing is now complemented by games which are proving to be an effective media which brands can leverage . With increasing difficulty in engaging with customers through digital ads and social media, you must implement a more innovative approach towards engagement and games are an effective way to do that.

New product launch: If you want to launch a new product or service, interactive games can be an excellent tool to create awareness around it. Grabbing attention through games and introducing your product to your audience helps to create more buzz. Audi is known to launch games for their various car models. Similarly, McDonalds created an interactive game before launching their new sandwich. In the current scenario where games are the most popular engagement platform for customers, they can be the perfect launchpad for your new product.

Advertising: To advertise your products or services, you need to reach where your target audience is. Mobile games can help you reach your desired consumer base, understand their needs and cater to them in quick time. Nearly 49% of US gamers have declared that in-game ads provide a better experience than social ads. Because rewarded ads offer a game token in exchange for viewing an ad, gamers prefer these advertisements more. Additionally, more adults are now playing mobile games which makes in-game advertisement an attractive platform for traditional brands.

Innovation stories: How leading brands used gamification to stand out

With a surge in the number of mobile game users, in-game advertising and gamification have become an important mode of digital advertising which is largely conversion oriented. Gamification ads are advertisements that people can interact in a manner similar to playing a game. Here are some  brands that have excelled in this area

  • OnePlus 8 and OnePlus 8 Pro

As the COVID-19 crisis caused lockdowns across the globe, OnePlus, being unable to do their usual pop-up events around the world for their latest OnePlus 8 series, decided to go innovative with gamification. They rolled out two AR filters on Instagram that lets users unbox the latest devices virtually. Users need to visit the Instagram profiles of OnePlus to access the new filters. Once they do, they need to find a flat surface to place the AR box, hit the record button to be able to see the contents of the box, and interact with the various elements that one gets with the phone.

  • Nestle

Nestle leveraged reward video which is one the leading ad formats on mobile games currently; instead of watching a forced ad, players can choose to watch a video in exchange for a game reward. For their campaign, Nestle partnered with King and ran reward ads across the publisher’s vast portfolio, spanning over 200 mobile game titles including popular hits like Candy Crush Saga. 

Outcome: By the end of the campaign, Nestle reported that 99.5% of the ads were viewed until the end and 3% of users who saw the ads clicked through.

  • Samsung

To promote their Galaxy S6 smartphone, Samsung partnered with InMobi to create interactive ads that gave the users experience of a personalized real-time battery identification mobile unit. They created an expandable interstitial ad to demonstrate their phone’s super fast charging capability by reaching out to their existing customers as well as potential customers.

Outcome: This campaign resulted in 1.1% of users clicking on the “Experience” button with an average of 20 seconds spent on the interstitial ad. 

  • Kellogg’s and Myntra

Gameloft created short, interactive ads for Kellogs to promote their cereal brand Froot Loops. The interactive media ads featured all loved and known Kelloggs’ characters. Gameloft also worked with Indian online retailer Myntra for a similar playable ad campaign.

Outcome: Myntra’s ad campaign received 82% completion rate and 2.1 million impressions in less than two months.

  • Pond’s

Ponds partnered with InMobi to create the world’s first face detection augmented reality mobile ad to give users a heightened brand experience and encourage them to try out the Ponds Acne 10-in-1 Solution. When users looked at their phones, the camera would scan their face and detect acne-prone areas on their face

Outcome: The campaign witnessed 39000 interactions with the ad with an average engagement time of 29 seconds.

  • Starbucks

During the peak of Pokemon Go’s popularity, Starbucks leveraged the game’s physical component to drive in-store traffic. They further encouraged traffic by creating a custom drink called Pokemon Go Frappuccino to connect further with the game fans who were always on a hunt for digital monsters.

Outcome: Starbucks successfully drove traffic to their stores and had over 7800 stores becoming Pokestops or Gyms.

  • Netflix

The world’s leading entertainment service provider, Netflix, captivated their viewers by creating a super realistic advertising experience where the mobile screen of the viewers resembled a broken piece of glass. In their campaign, Netflix tried to recreate the fear that people experienced after watching an episode of the popular techno-paranoia drama Black Mirror.

Outcome: The ad was an instant hit and Netflix won the Drum Mobile Award for the category “most innovative use of mobile.”

  • Pizza Hut

Pizza Hut turned their restaurants into gaming hubs by using a location-based targeting system that sent push notifications on player’s mobile to invite King of Glory players who were within five minutes distance of any Pizza Hut location to meet other players in-store and play.

Outcome: Within 20 day sof campaign, more than 100,000 King of Glory players had visited a Pizza Hut. The company sold over 150,000 special edition King of Glory meal sets and earned a 900% return on investment.

  • Snickers

Snickers partnered with Spotify to create an ad campaign “You’re Not You When You’re Hungry” that targeted users whenever they listened to songs out of their usual genre.

Using Spotify’s streaming data, Snickers identified users who were not listening to their normal genre of music and immediately delivered their audio ad. 

Outcome: The campaign generated 78,861 total clicks, 1,710,564 unique reach and 6,805,995 overall impressions.

  • GAP

GAP used Instagram stories to create an ad that showcased their new collection and enabled viewers to become a part of the logo remix launch. They also showcased a decode long archive of the world’s top logos to connect with the millennials.

Outcome: The 19-day ad campaign saw a 73% higher click-through rate than the past Instagram ads.

  • Headspace

Headspace, an English-American online healthcare company that specializes in meditation, targeted Instagram users who were likely to be suffering  from anxiety. The ad uses cartoon-style storytelling to encourage users to try their app and reduce their anxiety levels in 10 minutes.

Outcome: The instagram ad was viewed targeted at 2,971,000 followers and received  117,536 likes, 2,170 comments and an engagement rate of 2.01%

Conclusion

Statistics show that more than 50% of the global video game revenue is generated from mobile gaming and it is the fastest growing source of revenue in the gaming industry. This massive growth was driven by many factors such as increasing number of smartphones, 4G/5G internet connectivity, technological advancements and more. But the unexpected COVID-19 crisis further gave a tremendous push to mobile game adoption, accelerating its growth and paving the way for more opportunities. There is a surge in mobile gamers throughout the world which not only benefits stakeholders of game development companies but also the non-gaming businesses. Non-gaming companies can innovate their mobile ad strategy to take their business to the next level.

The impact of coronavirus is likely to last for quite a while.. Until then, as consumers stay home and self-isolate, we can expect a change in their preferences, leading to consumers getting used to engagement through mobile games. This means that businesses must start incorporating mobile gamification as an essential part of their digital strategy, and reap the maximum out of the benefits which games have to offer. 

Covid-19 pandemic
Blog, Coronavirus, Remotework

Covid-19 Crisis: 23 Remote Working Tools for Enterprizes to Stay Productive and Efficient

The Covid-19 pandemic is disrupting the way businesses normally work. Leaders around the world are faced with a number of tricky decisions which have to be made quickly to ensure the safety of their employees as well as continuity of business.

Among several such decisions, the one of transitioning entire workforces to work from home wherever possible has become a necessity. In an effort to encourage social distancing and to ensure that the virus doesn’t spread, companies which can function with a remote working model have implemented policies, helped employees make the transition seamlessly and are now coming to terms with the revised working model.

To make remote working productive and efficient, enterprises can leverage a number of useful tools to ensure smooth functioning across departments. Our comprehensive infographic below will be immensely helpful in identifying the right ones for your needs.

Check out the infographic here

Covid-19 pandemic
Banking, Blog, Coronavirus, Covid-19, Digital Transformation & Innovation, Healthcare, Manufacturing, Retail

Covid-19 Pandemic: Black Swan Event or A New Direction for Businesses?

Table of contents

  1. What is a black swan event and why shall we care?
  2. Impact on different industries
  3. Conclusion

“Not since the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, has a crisis enveloped so much of the economy so quickly”; quoted the New York Times in an article on the costs of Coronavirus to businesses and workers.

So will the Coronavirus be a black swan event, or is this a wake-up call for various industries and a reminder for everyone to be prepared for what may come in the future?

So what is a black swan event and why shall we care?

Basically, black swans like the September 11th attacks are rare events that no one could have predicted which dramatically alter the course of history, society, and economies.

Coronavirus is shaking up businesses and consumer behavior on a massive scale. While the public and private sectors are taking action to minimize the spread of the virus and the complete economic consequences are yet unclear, we know that the measures being taken to contain the virus have had a deep impact on certain industries and call for change.

Here are the ways we think the deadly Coronavirus is set to impact Healthcare, Retail, Manufacturing and Banking, and what opportunities they hold to tackle it.

1. Healthcare

One of the top pieces of advice to inhibit the spread of Coronavirus being passed along to the public by health organizations is to limit time spent in public settings.

This provides an opportunity for Telemedicine providers to step up. Virtual Consultations with doctors in lieu of non urgent situations can minimize the need to step out. Doctors not involved in Coronavirus treatment can consult their patients remotely from home or office.

With more people being steered toward virtual care, telemedicine providers are seeing substantial upticks in use.

PlushCare, a digital healthcare firm has witnessed a 40% bump in appointment volume since December—a month before the first case was reported in the US. For context, the company reports seeing a 10% increase in volume during flu season generally.

Now we can expect that a majority of users who hadn’t tried virtual healthcare earlier would rely on such means even after the Coronavirus outbreak is contained in the future.

On the other hand, AI-powered remote monitoring tools are granting clinicians the ability to keep track of patients’ health remotely in real time.

Social distancing has prompted the increase in need for Remote Patient Monitoring systems (RPM).

Similar to telemedicine, the necessity to start implementing these solutions now could pave the way for increased adoption among healthcare pros and their patients moving forward.

2. Retail

Brands like Nike, Lululemon, Apple, Lush, Urban Outfitters, Under Armour and Patagonia have recently announced the temporary closure of their stores across various geographical locations for a period of about 2 weeks to contain the spread of the virus and in light of employee safety. While food retail which remains a necessity is experiencing a boom in demand with consumers ‘panic buying’ under the state of quarantine or after being suggested by their governments to stay indoors.

The crisis has changed what an average grocery basket looks like. The supply chain is struggling to keep up. To restore the balance, we believe food retailers must simultaneously manage their commercial calendars and supply chains.

This is the right time for retailers to focus on transforming their business model and make it tech enabled and future proof.

4 key areas to focus on right now:-

  1. Smart Stores. Make your stores smarter to reduce congestion and enable contactless cash transactions. WHO has suggested consumers and retailers to opt for digital payments and make the process contactless. This can also reduce waiting times and enable faster checkout. This way customers won’t have to wait in lines and avoid staying in a congested area. Employ IoT to track inventory and on-shelf availability and automate replenishment so that customers won’t face a shortage of supply.Use of such smart technology can make your customers have faith in you to serve them at times like these.
  2. Supply chain. It is crucial to keep up with your supply chain at times like these. Employ technology like IoT to track inventory using smart tags and sensors which can automatically monitor changes in the inventory and enable efficient stocking. IoT allows you to track transport and delivery of products which in turn result in more accurate logistics.You can keep track of inventory levels in real time and make sure that the most popular products are always available in stock. Smart tags can also help employees track the exact location of items in a warehouse or store.Adopt Machine Learning to forecast demand and make sure you are prepared in the future, because the impact is going to last for a while.
  3. E-commerce. Customers are now looking to shop from online portals and avoid visiting stores. Leverage mobile applications and offer a seamless service to your consumers.Proactively shift spending to an online channel, in a model that serves your customers better in the long term. Actively engage your customers on this platform and suggest appropriate products based on data from their previous purchases to make it easier for them to shop.Set-up a smart delivery network that provides real time information to customers and ensures timely delivery.Enable secure and multiple modes of online payment to ease the experience.For instance when Panini, a celebrated name among enthusiasts of published collectibles, magazines, and books approached us to discuss digital strategy, we quickly recommended a transition from brick and mortar to digital stores. The change brought about a remarkable increase in the number of paid users and average revenue per paid user. Read all about it here.
  4. Head office. Transform your head office into a flexible, remote-working team supported by IoT and cloud based applications that let them function remotely without discrepancies.Also ensure proper security measures to tackle the cybersecurity issues that arise due to remote working.With large workforces suddenly finding themselves coordinating on work from home, business leaders must figure out the best practices to ensure employee morale and productivity stays high. So here’s a Comprehensive Guide to Remote Working During Covid-19 Pandemic to get you started and keep teams engaged, motivated and focused in these trying times.

3. Manufacturing

The manufacturing industry has taken a significant hit due to the coronavirus outbreak. Many large companies that are dependent on or have manufacturing units in China are the most vulnerable as their activity has fallen and will continue to remain so for the upcoming months.

Some manufacturers have already had to throttle back production in their plants outside of China, and the list gets longer by the day. For example, Fiat Chrysler Automobiles NV announced on February 14 that “it is temporarily halting production at a car factory in Serbia because it can’t get parts from China.” Similarly, Hyundai said that it “decided to suspend its production lines from operating at its plants in Korea … due to disruptions in the supply of parts resulting from the coronavirus outbreak in China.”

To counter such problems, it’s high time companies consider sourcing from multiple regions.

From a technological standpoint, companies should consider automation in the earlier stages of the supply chain and as well as at assembly stages which could reduce their dependence on intensive labor.

Companies should apply robust digital-twin and scenario-based modeling to assess changing operating conditions in real time and also proactively assess various disruption scenarios.

Inventory needs to be monitored through a detailed digital supply-chain mapping, including components and sources. Companies should differentiate how they hold inventory, using a multi-echelon optimization approach to prevent shortages.

4. Banking

Customers will now shift to online channels when it comes to banking as well.

Banks should encourage and support customers to use digital and other virtual channels, wherever possible. To encourage customers to use existing remote channels and digital products, institutions can launch positive and safety-oriented messaging aimed at reducing reliance on branches for services that are digitally available while also providing tutorials online and by phone and increasing remote support options.

Banks that have already established online platforms and enable the performing of various banking operations through apps/ websites or over call centers will greatly benefit in these times.

Beyond whether or not customers can carry out banking functions through alternative channels, greater usage will test how easy to use those channels are, especially for first-time users whose usage is a direct result of coronavirus concerns.

Banks can use this opportunity to effectively educate their customers on how to use these banking services online and continue this in the future.

Conclusion

Hopefully, the Coronavirus will remain less deadly than the common flu, but it should still serve as an eyeopener for changes we need to make now before we experience an even deadlier outbreak.

The effects from COVID-19 over the coming months are tremendously uncertain. The first priority must be to keep your people safe. Then, by understanding the scenarios and taking the appropriate actions, companies can build resiliency against the short-term shocks and lay the foundation for a strong recovery.

Taking lessons from this event, we believe that companies across the globe will have to come back stronger equipped with groundbreaking digital technologies that enable them to tackle such events in the future. What do you think?

Blog, Coronavirus, Covid-19, Healthcare

Working From Home During Covid-19 Pandemic-What Enterprises Need to Know

With the ongoing Covid-19 pandemic, enterprises worldwide are faced with a number of decisions that need to be taken quickly and carried out effectively to ensure the continuity of their businesses. An immediate step is the transition to remote working that is already being implemented by companies.

With large workforces suddenly finding themselves coordinating on work from home, business leaders must figure out the best practices to ensure employee morale and productivity stays high. Check out the infographic below for everything you need to know about the problems employees are likely to face and the steps you can take to keep teams engaged, motivated and focused in these trying times.

Check out the infographic here.

Blog, Digital Strategy, Enterprise Mobility, Mobility

Formulating an Enterprise Mobile Strategy Part 1: Key areas to focus on

Enterprise Mobile Strategy Key Areas to Focus on

Table of contents

Mobility- a top priority for CIOs and CTOs across all industries.

The enterprise mobility market has witnessed a year over year growth of 9% over the last three years and is expected to grow to $2.2 billion by 2022! As mobility continues to be an essential element of personal and corporate lives, enterprises worldwide are brainstorming to identify and implement strategies that enable them to mobilize their operations. Over the last decade, we observed an increase in demand from both customers and employees to modernize back-end operations so that they can access data and perform functions on their mobile devices and eliminate their dependency on desktops. As a result, companies are accepting mobility as an integral aspect of their enterprise infrastructure and implementing an enterprise mobility strategy has become a top priority for CIOs and CTOs across all industries.

What is an enterprise mobile strategy?

An enterprise mobile strategy is a framework that encompasses business, technology, projects, people and processes into one unified sphere. It integrates mobility as a technology with the rest of the ecosystem to allow organizations to define and practice their mobile engagement. A mobile strategy aligns mobility efforts with business goals, lays out a roadmap for its successful implementation, enables achieving near and long-term goals, provides policies and best practices for governance and helps in accurately measuring its success. Moreover, it also gives you the flexibility to tap future technological advancements and adjust your strategy in accordance with the shifts in the business environment.

Levels of enterprise mobile maturity

The evolution of enterprise mobility over time has been noteworthy. Initially, as smartphones became mainstream, enterprises started to upgrade their websites for optimal performance on mobile screens. With the launch of the app store, enterprises got an opportunity to further enhance their customer experience by building their own applications. These applications, however, were static in nature and just another replica of their website, with no added value. This led to the evolution of dynamic apps which enabled customers to exercise more control over what they could do and thereby simplified customer engagement. For instance, medical insurance companies allowed customers to file claims through apps, avoiding queues.

The next stage of evolution is powered by emerging technologies of artificial intelligence and the Internet of Things-giving rise to “intelligent apps” that are not only faster but more context-driven. Companies now see value in AI-driven apps and offer them to their employees and customers.

Why is it needed?

  • 67% of CIOs and IT professionals believe that enterprise mobility has a massive impact on their business.
  • 35% of business ROI is generated when companies invest in feature-rich enterprise mobile apps.
  • 82% of employees access their work emails even after working hours when they have enterprise mobile apps

Restricting employee functioning to a desktop unit limits their efficiency. Further, lack of a robust mobility strategy can lead to poor adoption rates, lower engagement, higher hidden costs and failure to achieve the desired ROI. Mobilizing the operations not only increases their productivity but also gives employees and customers faster and efficient access to backend systems. A study by VMWare reported that overall IT operational costs reduced by as much as 29 percent, and total management costs dropped by 20 percent after the implementation of a mobile strategy. Adopting an enterprise-wide mobile strategy enables you to achieve:

  • Smarter and faster decision making: Mobile adoption enables you to collect data at every touchpoint in your operations chain- internal as well as external. With an inflow of data stream, you can derive valuable insights that make informed decisions
  • Improved business value: With streamlined operations, you can save on operational costs and increase profit margins. Additionally, improved productivity means greater RoI, resulting in an overall improvement in business value.
  • New revenue streams: Unlock new revenue streams by leveraging innovation as a service and discover new ways to retain existing customers and acquire new ones through unique value propositions.
  • Improved customer experience: Enterprise mobility empowers you to respond to complaints and inquiries of customers at any point of time from anywhere, which ultimately increases customer loyalty
  • Brand awareness: Mobility tools can present your company to millions of potential customers, leading to improved brand awareness and conversions. Having a mobile responsive site, around-the-clock customer support, and optimized app, are all ways to further your brand reputation and get an edge over competitors.

Key areas to focus on

Despite its advantages, creating mobile systems that are deeply integrated into existing enterprise infrastructure can get challenging if you overlook some of the basics. Creating an effective mobile strategy involves a through coverage of certain critical aspects to ensure that post-implementation of your strategy, there is consistency throughout your enterprise, the integration is seamless and data sync happens in real-time.

We have listed seven such aspects and listed questions linked with them, each following the other, that will help you assess your current blueprint and give insights that will help you in formulating an effective enterprise mobility strategy.

  1. Changing consumer preferences

    Consumer preferences change with time and to stay abreast of the changing preferences, you need to have a mobile strategy that can evolve with it. Here are some questions you can ask:

    • Who are my consumers?
    • What are their pain points?
    • How have their preferences changed over time?
    • Which channel do they prefer for communication?

  2. Channels under threat

    Once you define your customer segment and their pain points, you need to decide on the right channel to reach out to them. With new tech innovations and alternatives available, your current channel can become obsolete, it is essential that you assess your current channels and keep yourself updated about the new ones.

    • Which are the channels that are under threat?
    • Which channels are fast catching up among my target audience?
    • Can I upgrade my channel to meet customer expectations?
    • Can I integrate my existing channel with the new ones?

  3. Current inefficiencies

    One of the primary reasons why enterprises adopt a mobile strategy is to streamline processes and eliminate inefficiencies. Identify which processes you want to mobilize, what are the possible challenges and pick the right tools to resolve them.

    • Are the inefficiencies people-oriented or process-oriented?
    • Which are the areas that have maximum blindspots?
    • Can I eliminate bottlenecks or middlemen?
    • Is the information accessibility difficult?
    • Is there consistency across the enterprise?
    • Does everyone have access to real-time information?

  4. Opportunity areas

    Having identified your audience and improvement areas, you can leverage mobile to convert challenges into opportunities.

    • What are the market segments I can effectively capture?
    • Where are my new customers coming from?
    • How can I innovate out of problems?
    • Which areas can provide maximum RoI?
    • How can I provide more value than my competitors?

  5. Security & Compliance

    Mobile security shouldn’t be limited to the app or device alone but rather, you should take a more holistic approach.

    • How will the backend integration be secured?
    • How will the transactions happening between client and back-end servers be monitored?
    • Does the development process follow any review standards?
    • Are you trading security for a better user experience?

  6. Identifying functional priorities

    While there’ll be plenty of functions across the organization that you can mobilize, it is important to prioritize just a few, considering the cost of development and ease of implementation.

    • Does it help the entire organization immediately?
    • Does it improve services only for a particular department?
    • What are the quick-wins?
    • Which initiatives can show signs of early success?

  7. Measurement

    Identify the right set of tools and metrics that will help you to evaluate or assess your deliverable.

    • How much cost savings were you able to achieve after your mobile initiative?
    • Which channels are adding to profits?
    • Did the customer satisfaction level improve?
    • How much man-efforts did your initiative save?

What are the business benefits?

Creating an enterprise mobile strategy can help you to solve complex challenges with scalable solutions and acquire new user base. It also streamlines business operations and empowers you to enhance user experience. With an effective mobile strategy, you can achieve:

  • More efficient and effective workforce
  • Better and faster customer service
  • Increased revenue and profitability
  • Improved communication across all stakeholders in the organization
  • Enhanced data security across all devices
  • Real-time analytics that allow data-driven decision making
  • Reduced operational costs with streamlined processes
  • A competitive edge within the industry

Conclusion

Mobile is no longer an option for your company; it has become a business imperative. It provides you with a long-term strategic vision and empowers you with flexibility to adapt to changes that come with shifts in the business environment. It’s not just about having an app but about driving value within your company. A robust enterprise mobile strategy can help you optimize results and maximize ROI by simply integrating processes, functions and people. Further, you can utilize data infrastructure to attract new customers and offer more value to existing ones. The gains of implementing a mobile enterprise strategy are enormous to stay afloat in a competitive environment you need to get started right now.

App Marketing, Blog, Mobility

10 Mobile application trends to watch out for in 2020

Mobile Application Trends

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The growth in app development trends: unprecedented and ongoing

According to Statista, the number of smartphone users worldwide today surpasses three billion and is forecasted to grow further by several hundred million in the next few years. China, India, and the United States are the countries with the highest number of smartphone users, with each country surpassing the 100 million user mark. With the increasing usage of smartphones, mobile app development trends are also growing and have made it essential for developers to stay updated and relevant.Businesses globally are keeping an eye on the latest trends to reap the maximum advantage and create a stronger, more engaged user-base. While we saw unprecedented growth in app development trends till 2019, this year is set to witness a similar trajectory of growth, with more promising trends. We have listed the top ten among them that businesses and developers must watch out for in 2020.

10 Mobile application trends to watch out for in 2020

  1. IoT

    2019 witnessed brands like Amazon and Google leveraging IoT and strengthening the competition by introducing the “Echo” range of devices and “Home voice controller” respectively. The investment of hardware companies like Cisco and Dell in IoT and Google’s move to acquire wearable company Fitbit and its collaboration with Nest, a home security camera manufacturer, further hints at the fast movement of these companies towards IoT technology.

    So far we have seen various use cases of IoT in real-life such as continuous supply chain management in retail, connected homes and savvy healthcare monitoring. We are yet to see more and with the increase in demand for IoT solutions, the demand for IoT-enabled apps will grow simultaneously. Forbes magazine predicts that the IoT market would double by 2021. App developers, therefore, will be looking to develop apps for connected products.

  2. Instant Apps

    Unlike native apps, you don’t need to download and install instant apps to run them, they can be accessed via a shared link. Instant apps give you access to limited features or a fundamental features-only version of the app. One of the prime reasons they are gaining traction is app demos. These apps provide a look into an app’s complete version and make it easier for you to decide if it’s useful for you before choosing to download. It has become a better way of reaching out to target audiences and convince them for installation. Another advantage of instant apps is that they are smaller in size when compared to regular apps which reduce the page loading time and bounce rate. Vimeo reported an increased session rate by 130% with instant apps.

    With users continuously demanding a better experience and shorter load times, instant apps are something to look forward to in 2020.

  3. AR/VR

    Many eCommerce stores, realtors and apparel brands have integrated AR/VR technologies in their applications- Sephora and IKEA, for instance. This not only enabled them to boost and enhance user experience but also increased conversion rates. New use cases are underway as technological giants like Apple and Google are investing heavily in innovation using AR. This year, Google plans to introduce a new AR feature for Google Maps, which would provide people with directions from their camera phones in real time.

    According to Statista, the augmented and virtual reality (AR/VR) market is forecasted to reach 18.8 billion U.S. dollars in 2020. Looking at the growth drivers and potential use cases, we can confirm that this year, AR integration will be one of the significant mobile app development trends that would shape the mobile industry.

  4. Chatbots

    Initially, only apps like Facebook, Skype, and Slack used chatbots at large but now we see most of the businesses leveraging chatbots for customer interactions. With nearly 50% of customers preferring self-service chatbots over human representatives, it has become imperative for every major product and service sector business to deploy a chatbot. Till date, there are approximately 2.5 million apps in the Google Play Store and nearly 1.8 million in the Apple App Store. However, there are very few apps that have deployed chatbots to enhance customer experience.

    As per Gartner, chatbot interaction is set to increase from just 20% in 2017 to 93% in 2022. With 80% of enterprises expected to use chatbots by 2020, the integration of chatbots to mobile apps will escalate quickly.

  5. BYOD

    Bring Your Own Device is a trend under which companies allow their employees to use their personal smartphones and tablet devices for work. This way, enterprises save the cost of device purchase. This comes with security challenges such as employee frauds and industrial spying but they can be averted by deploying a BYOD app. They can install the app on their personal devices which can have different features and rights.

    According to Insights, BYOD market will reach $367 billion by 2022. Many companies are expected to follow the trend set by large enterprises and build company app for their employees.

  6. Apps for foldable devices

    With Samsung coming up with its foldable phones, the operating systems are getting ready to make use of this technology to improve smartphone experiences. Google, in 2018, officially announced the foldable support on Android phones by using its ‘screen continuity’ API. According to Samsung, many android apps such as Amazon prime video, Twitter and Facebook have already been optimized for their Galaxy fold. Video streaming and gaming apps can also reap more benefits from foldable technology by simply increasing their screen size or using the extra space for additional information and controls.

    Since foldable phones are the next big thing of 2020, developers must plan their strategy in a way that their applications are poised to run seamlessly on foldable devices.

  7. Beacon technology

    A beacon technology-enabled app on your device shows you where you can have your preferred products, their costs, and other specifications. Beacons utilize BLE (Bluetooth Low Energy) signals. When your device enters a beacon’s zone, the particular app instantly gets this signal and offers appropriate notifications and instructions for the users. Industries like healthcare, museums, and hotels have already included beacons in their services. After Apple’s iBeacon and Google’s Eddystone, now beacon is a part of both iOS and Android app development.

    Beacon technology has been around for some time now, and 2020 will make its presence even stronger. Beacon-based notifications are increasingly helping many businesses and industries to connect with their customers in a highly contextual manner.

    According to GeoMarketing, by 2020, the number of beacon deployments is expected to reach 400 million globally, thereby generating $56,554M by 2026.

  8. 5G

    The introduction of 5G networks will not just strengthen network performance but create a data-intensive environment, facilitating new opportunities. By providing lower latency and speeding up data-sharing by upto 10x , you can automate more core processes and deliver improved applications for capturing and sharing data. 5G services offer an extensive range of opportunities, app developers should design the apps that can handle volumes of data being transmitted without compromising with performance.

    It is anticipated that the transition from 4G services to 5G wireless network will be completed by the end of 2020.

  9. Blockchain

    Blockchain technology, launched many years back, became a buzzword in 2018, and it was 2019 when we witnessed its many use cases across various industries. With data breaches and security becoming major challenges for business leaders worldwide, blockchain as a trend is growing fast. A large number of fintech companies have already reaped the benefits from blockchain app development.

    According to Transparency Market research, the blockchain market will reach $20 billion by 2024. This clearly indicates that app developers must get ready to capitalize on this technology.

  10. Low code/no-code development

    Businesses looking to have an in-house app development team sometimes lack the resources needed to effectively plan and develop a mobile product.  Low-code or no-code development is increasingly becoming popular among such businesses as it eliminates the need for in-house personnel to have a thorough knowledge of coding. In case of no-code development, they can develop the product with no coding knowledge at all.  These platforms are easy to use; where users can simply drag and drop visual components and compile an app.

    While low-code/no-code development platforms are not here to replace traditional coding, this trend will get a boost in 2020, especially among enterprises where budgets are a constraint.

Conclusion

As the trends change and new technologies evolve, it is important for business leaders to stay abreast of the latest trends and technologies and stand out in the highly competitive mobile app development space. The evolving app development trends would drive the need for enterprise mobile app development services. Make sure you keep up with the technologies and trends we mentioned here and try to implement them as much in your mobile app. You can also leverage the expertise of mobile app development companies such as [x]cube LABS to scale your businesses through mobile applications.

App Marketing, Blog, Digital Strategy

Cross Platform Applications: FAQs to help make the right choice

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While developing a mobile application, one of the first decisions you need to make is whether it will be a native, web, or hybrid app. With multiple pros and cons of each type, it becomes difficult to decide which one is right for you. Your decision should ideally depend on key factors such as budget, time to develop, user experience, ease of maintenance and developer skills. Since mobile development keeps evolving, cross-platform applications have become a popular choice, as they are easier to update over continuous iterations.

What are cross-platform applications?

Cross-platform are those that can run across multiple operating systems, such as iOS, Android, Universal Windows Platform and Web. With changing preferences and shifting loyalties, having the same footprint across major platforms is crucial for businesses to retain and engage customers. Cross-platform development has thus emerged as an indispensable strategy for enterprise leaders.

Why is it important?

Cross-platform development enables companies to create low-cost custom applications that are secure, stable, effortless to maintain and easy to iterate, thereby facilitating faster development cycles and quicker time to market compared to traditional app development undertakings.

With cross-platform applications, you can achieve:

  • Wider access to the target audience
  • Reduced development cost
  • Easier maintenance
  • Quicker development process
  • Reusable code
  • Faster time-to-market

Frequently asked questions

[x]cube LABS, with its decade-long history of helping enterprises multiply their businesses with the right app development strategy and execution, recently organised a strategic session where some of the top tech architects came together to discuss questions they face often. We present their thoughts below which would be beneficial for professionals to plan their mobile initiatives right.

  1. How cost-effective is it to choose a cross-platform application over native application?
    Other factors remaining same, in most of the cases you can build a cross-platform app for only 60% of the cost that it takes to build native building apps separately for multiple platforms.
  2. Are cross-platform apps recommended for gaming as well?
    Gaming works differently. For enhanced user experience, it is recommended to build them separately for each platform so that the native platform features can be utilized to their full potential, which might otherwise perform poorly on other platforms.
  3. What factors should I consider in deciding whether to build a cross-platform application or not?
    Primarily, you need to decide the purpose of your app. Then decide on how the UI is expected to perform. If your application requires gaming-level animations or is expected to deliver high performance overall, then native apps are the right choice to go with.
  4. What is the impact of content size on my cross-platform application?
    The app size of cross-platform applications is large as compared to native applications.
  5. Which category of applications is recommended for cross-platform development?
    Non-heavy B2C applications are the ideal choice for cross-platform development. For heavier applications, native apps are recommended.
  6. Which platform is more secure- native or cross-platform?
    There isn’t much difference on that end. Both offer a secure environment.
  7. How much is the deviation in native and cross-platform apps when it comes to time to market?
    Cross-platform apps can be delivered approximately 20% faster when it comes to time-to-market.

Conclusion

Cross-platform mobile apps are installed on your device, just like any other app. What differentiates them is the fact they retain elements from their native and web apps counterparts. Since technologies like Javascript, Dart and .Net are easier to maintain as compared to Android and iOS, cross-platform applications are often the first choice when developing applications that demand continuous iterations, easier maintenance, faster time to market and a lighter content and UI design.

Agriculture, Blog, Internet of Things

Top IoT Predictions for 2020 & Beyond

The Internet of Things (IoT, as we commonly know it), is a technology that conjures images of endless possibilities as well as inspires fantasy concepts of machines becoming more human-like, taking over the world and many such from the realms of sci-fi. However, as the new decade dawns, IoT is making its presence felt in more areas than ever. To an extent that’s eliciting quotes such as these from eminent personalities:

“And just like any company that blissfully ignored the Internet at the turn of the century, the ones that dismiss the Internet of Things risk getting left behind.” — Jared Newman

“If you invent a breakthrough in artificial intelligence, so machines can learn, that is worth 10 Microsofts.” — Bill Gates

So what exactly does the advancement of IoT have in store for us in 2020? Let’s take a look at the top trends and projections:

  • A World of Connected Devices: 42 Billion and Counting: Devices we use daily are getting smart capabilities and gearing up to do more and generate more data than ever. The International Data Corporation (IDC) estimates we will have upwards of 42 billion connected devices by 2025, generating 79.4 zettabytes of data. With that kind of information, imagine what businesses can do in terms of getting to know their customers better and improving their experience by leaps and bounds.
  • “Informed” Surroundings: Our cities and towns are poised to learn and take advantage of increasingly sophisticated sensors, data processing and AI to make certain decisions without human intervention. This development, leading them to become what we term “smart cities”, will be driven by IoT in a big way. Our traffic lights will be more aware in monitoring driving patterns, cameras will take autonomous action should emergencies present themselves and electricity, water and other resource meters will optimise their performance for a greener future.
  • Smarter Homes: All the gadgets and their extra capabilities are favorites of the millenials who love the various ways in which they make lives easier. Besides getting smarter, they are also getting more affordable. Thus, sales of various “things” constituting the “Internet of Things” are on the rise and it’s estimated that in the US alone, the number of “smart” homes will reach 28% of the total number of households by 2021. Such devices will bring about power savings, added security and the convenience of auto detecting problems and taking corrective actions.
  • Personalised Services, Courtesy Data: As mentioned in the first point, the amount of data generated by IoT will be humongous. With data analysis getting better and yielding more actionable insights, one can learn a whole lot about every step of their customer’s journey, usage patterns, device performance and more. With that knowledge, companies can increasingly provide more personalised services, take proactive action and streamline their customer experience to inspire greater loyalty and revenue
  • Edge Computing for Greater Efficiency: While processing huge volumes of data is important, it’s also imperative that it happens quickly for faster automation. As we see more traction on self-driving cars and other gadgets that are supposed to make quick decisions, instead of sending data to the cloud, they will be increasingly sent to local devices at the edge of the network so it can be analysed and acted upon faster. Currently, around 10% of data generated by the enterprise is processed through edge computing, but by 2025, this will increase to 75%.
  • From Agriculture to Agritech: One of the greatest advantages of IoT lies in its capability to help farmers increase their yield and make informed decisions about planting and rearing crops. Smart farming, as it is increasingly being called, is making a big difference in livestock monitoring, predicting climate conditions and best practices, crop monitoring and administering fertilizers and pesticides using drones, among others. The global shipment of IoT devices for agriculture is expected to reach $75 million by the end of 2020.

  • Build Secure: With IoT devices selling in millions and the data being generated by them, the question of security is paramount. The new decade, therefore, will see a lot of focus on IoT security and robust architectures to prevent data thefts will be implemented. Enterprises looking for an IoT solutions partner will be asking for increased security measures for smart devices and development with such protocols in mind will be extremely beneficial for service providers.
  • Getting Ahead of Schedule: As devices get smarter, they’ll be able to remind users about maintenance, predict malfunctions with greater accuracy and help avert disasters in time. Gas pipelines, water supply systems, electricity grids and more would be able to alert administrators about leakages and outages and also shut systems down immediately to aid repairs. A boost in predictive maintenance would also help companies extend better customer service by staying up to speed with the conditions of every product.
  • Advanced Healthcare: IoT in healthcare, or what’s being called the “internet of medical things”, is expected to grow at a compound annual growth rate of 26.2% to reach $72.07 billion by 2021 according to Frost and Sullivan. A lot of sophisticated technology and learning is going into smart implants, wearables, drones for medical support, virtual assistants to help patients with post-operative procedures at home, smart hospital rooms for better connectivity with staff and more, to ensure greater monitoring, accurate diagnosis and care.
  • Frameworks Align: One of the greatest challenges faced by IoT is one that’s right at the core of its very existence. The lack of a platform that all frameworks can share and communicate with, has been an issue and development is now being planned to address it. We are expecting companies to create unified frameworks which will aid integration and make adoption seamless. As more organisations undergo digital transformation and experience a fundamental shift in culture and digital thought, such strategies will be increasingly in vogue and propel IoT to greater success.

Conclusion:

The areas we touched upon in this article are some that have already seen traction and therefore, a general roadmap for where things could lead, is easier to draw up. However, there are other verticals that could benefit in many ways once suitable use cases of IoT are tried and tested, and we are eagerly waiting for such developments. IoT itself, is still in its formative years with more research, applications and newer devices to come. The future looks exciting, and as an organisation speaking the digital transformation language for well over a decade, we look forward to engaging conversations in our innovation labs, solving problems in new ways and building products to shape a better tomorrow.

Blockchain, Blog

Blockchain 2020: An Infographic

With global investments in blockchain slated to increase exponentially (reaching nearly $12 Billion by 2022) and Gartner reports placing Blockchain firmly among the top 10 technology trends for 2020, there’s no better time to look at how this emerging technology can help you multiply your enterprise’s business. Once you’ve identified suitable opportunities, the crucial task of building a team will be the next step.

So how exactly can you leverage blockchain for maximum impact? What skills should the team you hire have to be relevant for tomorrow’s requirements? As a digital enterprise who’ve helped organizations with a variety of solutions involving blockchain and one of the earliest adopters of the technology, we’ve put together a comprehensive infographic for you to understand key trends, projections, focus areas and essential blockchain skills the right team should possess.

Check out the infographic here.

Blog, Customer Experience, E-Commerce, Retail

10 eCommerce Trends to Watch out in 2020

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Transforming world of e-Commerce

In 1995, the first item ever was ordered online on Amazon – a book. 25 years later, the eCommerce industry achieved sales worth $3.53 trillion worldwide. When it began, eCommerce was limited in its capabilities, but not anymore. It has transformed retail over time, continuously evolving to meet the changing needs of people and to make the online shopping experience easier for today’s dynamic customer.

Whether it’s hyper-personalization, convenient return policies, or enhanced integration, all of these changes among a multitude of others have taken the eCommerce landscape by storm. But if you think that eCommerce has reached its pinnacle and there isn’t room for more, think again.

We believe that 2020 is here to further transform the world of eCommerce. We have listed the top 10 trends that bear testimony to the fact that eCommerce is still advancing at a rapid pace and there’s new frontiers to be conquered. You too can benefit from these advancements by ensuring that your business is in sync with the development tide.

1. Consumer awareness of the environmental and ethical footprint

Modern-day consumers have become more aware of the environmental and ethical footprint of their shopping preferences, including digital ones. They are concerned about the hidden impacts and cost of consumerism in general, which also impacts their decisions while using eCommerce. Merchants who resonate with the value system of the customers are likely to receive more advantages over the ones who don’t.

According to a survey, 48% of U.S. buyers would “probably” or “definitely” alter their buying habits in order to reduce environmental impact. Considering the fact that societal and environmental impact is exerting a strong influence on consumer choices, brands must leverage eCommerce to create the visibility and the transparency that customers seek.

2. Progressive web apps

The changing consumer needs require providing them content on-the-go without compromising with consumer experience. That’s why we are seeing many prominent brands focusing on enhancing user experiences with progressive web applications. Implementing PWA ensures the optimal usability of a website across all mobile devices, irrespective of the underlying platform. AliExpress, an Alibaba site, has pioneered the use of progressive web applications in commerce and claimed that building great mobile experiences through the PWA platform enabled them to grow three times faster than an eCommerce site.

As the focus of web delivery shifts to improving things like site speed, navigability, and functionality, PWAs in eCommerce will become an essential part of customer experience in 2020 and beyond.

3. Transactional social media

As of 2019, there were 3.2 billion social media users worldwide, and this number is growing. Undoubtedly, the step of integrating eCommerce with social media networks is a reasonable step. We saw more brands recognizing the potential of social media channels as powerful advertising platforms with a large pool of potential customers and made use of it last year.

Major social media players such as Instagram, Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest, and YouTube support product pages and eCommerce platforms integration solutions. We’ll see more companies creating accounts on popular social media channels in order to increase sales in 2020.

4. In-car e-commerce

Car commute is soon to emerge as another focus for brands. The increasing number of commuters using ride-sharing apps have a bandwidth to consume media and make purchases while travelling as they don’t have to focus on the road. Apps like Uber and Google maps have already started to place ads directly within their products. The fact that they can be geo-located, allowing for targeted advertising, makes them highly lucrative.

Podcasting apps and streaming music services also provide opportunities for interaction, personalized advertising, and dynamic call-to-action buttons. Automobile manufacturers like GM, via their Marketplace offering, are finding ways to partner with brands to offer commerce-enabled experiences within their vehicles. 2020 will see the commerce channels paired with effortless commuting, leading to a whole new path of growth for brands.

5. Efficient omni-channel approach

The right omni-channel strategy requires knowing a customer’s preferred channel to communicate, with the right message, at their convenience. Being judicious in sending appropriate messages via relevant channels is a must. For instance, if you wish to send out a long form or an information newsletter, then email is your channel, but if you wish to send out a short, quick-hitting information, then a push notification or SMS would be the way to go. 2020 will be all about achieving omnichannel effectiveness and crafting platform-specific messages for the right place at the right time.

6. Content repurposing

Content repurposing is fast catching up in a response to audience demand to receive information in a format of their choice. When customers receive information in a format that works best for them, they are more likely to engage with your posts.
Companies are using one piece of content as a framework to create another, but in a different format. For example, an influencer video that demonstrates the use of a product could be recreated in the form of a blogpost that lists step-by-step instructions for how to use the product or even fashion an infographic out of it.

We’ve started to see content repurposing on various websites such as Amazon, where instead of just displaying products with their specifications in the form of pictures and videos, they have also started to feature how-to guides for selecting the right product.

7. Drone delivery

The FAA predicts that there will be 7 million drones in the air by 2020 and that commercial drone sales will reach $2.7 million. We’ve already seen companies such as Amazon, UPS and Dominos experimenting with drone technology. As real-world use of drones for delivery purposes is in its infancy, we can anticipate seeing more and more companies adopt it for smaller and local deliveries.

Drone technology, that has been an underlying conversation for the past decade, is likely to finally become mainstream reality in 2020.

8. Headless eCommerce

Headless commerce is the future of eCommerce for all the obvious reasons. Using a headless platform allows organisations to seamlessly offer an omnichannel experience as it eliminates the front end dependency. Besides, the content can be repurposed with relative ease. Simply put, a headless commerce platform enables you to deploy rapid updates without impacting your back-end system. And you can easily make any changes to your front-end to coincide with the speed of consumer technology. Brands around the world have already started switching to headless ecommerce. Here are the 15 best examples from 2019.

Migrating to this platform is a promising way to future-proof your brand and get 2020 started on the right note.

9. Facial recognition linked with data

Data collection is no longer limited to online channels. Physical retailers are also catching up by collecting personal data via facial recognition, tracking beacons, point-of-sale data and other traditional digital measurement and analytics. WiFi, sensors, RFID beacons are gaining popularity at brick-and-mortar stores.

Offline data, thus collected, is helpful in identifying high-traffic areas in the store, overlooked products, dwell time and more. Amazon Go stores are using computer vision to recognize faces and products in order to provide a truly frictionless purchasing experience that doesn’t require check-out. 2020 will combine web, mobile and social data with in-person data collection and analytics, bringing retailers much closer to a truly 360-degree hyper-enhanced customer experience.

10. Interactive emails

We have seen email inboxes becoming dynamic and browsable, which is a significant shift from mere gifs and images. From choosing products, opening menus, leaving ratings and reviews, consumers and buyers have done everything without ever leaving their inbox, the email or mail app.

We will now see more brands and merchants making emails significantly more interactive and actionable, including integration with media-rich formats like video.
Additionally, interactive emails will make it possible to dynamically update emails, thereby removing outdated information contained within an old email.

Conclusion

Technology breakthroughs are often considered eureka moments. While that holds true to an extent, leveraging advanced technology to create new opportunities is more about programmatic and disciplined effort carried out over time rather than impulsive inspiration. One key takeaway from the above-mentioned trends for organizations, is to consider how they can establish processes that can identify the best fit technologies, evaluate them for effectiveness, and incubate them to transform their enterprises before they themselves are disrupted.

Blog

Becoming a Successful Digital Enterprise in 2020: The Approach You Need

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Introduction:

There’s few who would question that this new decade would belong to digital enterprises that seek to constantly evolve and better themselves. Organisations claiming to be living the digital life are plenty but ever so often, we keep hearing about failed transformation efforts or services falling short of new age requirements and the right thought that goes into formulating winning strategies. As digital becomes fundamental to the existence and multiplication of businesses, and more companies undergo the inevitable overhaul, we need to understand now, more than ever, the defining features of a successful digital enterprise in 2020.

Facts and Frictions:

Let’s look at why the need to transform the core working principles and culture of enterprises around digital is being felt so profoundly as we speak. One of the biggest changes brought about by the digital revolution has been the reduction of friction, which has propelled digital enterprises far ahead in terms of customer satisfaction and loyalty. The friction here alludes to the problems customers run into in the course of their journeys while using a product.

An improved CX drives engagement and engaged customers have been found to buy 90% more frequently, spend 60% more per purchase and provide 3X annual value, compared to run of the mill customers. Increased volumes of data derived from digital products is crucial to crafting great CX strategies and knowing your customers as detailed in this write-up.

Therefore, if you are aspiring to lead your digital enterprise to success in the new decade, you have to engage in a relentless pursuit of relevant data to minutely analyse customer behavior and keep reducing friction. For this to happen, your products must evolve to capture more data, you must acquire and develop tools to analyse raw data to derive actionable insights and regularly update your offerings. In case you are still on the fence about what improved customer journeys can accomplish, take a look.

To a New Level of Performance:

While worker productivity hasn’t increased materially from the days when computers were introduced, the evolution of technology and their impact on a variety of functional areas have ensured that we do more in less time. Technology such as Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning can significantly increase productivity and eradicate human error. It can also reduce information overload, relieve professionals of tedious, repetitive tasks and enable them to focus on innovation and thought leadership. All this will heighten job satisfaction considerably and inspire employees to perform better than before. By bringing out hitherto untapped intelligence from various systems in the workplace, AI will drive a culture of deeper understanding and smarter decision making.

Therefore, as an enterprise leader, the onus would be on you to recognise the value of such technologies in improving efficiency, reducing costs and managing high-performing, interconnected teams. While delivering solutions with such technologies, also look within and introspect how they can revolutionise your own workforce. Additionally, encourage a culture of constant learning, establish tie-ups with organisations dedicated to R&D and stay up to speed with the various aspects of emerging technology.

Comprehensive Approach to Solutions:

Plenty of organisations are vying for space in solving problems that have been already defined. They look at small chinks in the armor of overall development and pitch their services in solving them or helping companies accelerate their efforts towards tackling them. However, such organisations can only go so far. What a really successful digital enterprise should do is organise itself as an end-to end consultant, working to identify problems, researching and formulating a strategy that works, executing it and finally, working on taking the solution to the next level through meaningful updates. Such an approach would make your enterprise a valuable partner for organisations looking for talented teams who can innovate, execute and support.

For instance, several organisations whom we have partnered with, described the frustrating process of choosing the right digital transformation partner. Companies approached them claiming to be experts, while in reality, they were simply labelling their traditional IT services as digital transformation. They had little idea of how business value can be increased by analysing and making customer touchpoints better and lacked the capability to craft strategies that work. In an age where customer expectations are changing on a daily basis owing to newer disruptions, it’s imperative that companies improve upon their operational excellence constantly. For that, enterprises need partners who will help them introspect and evolve, to stay relevant.

Making Enterprises Future-proof:

Now this might sound contradictory. When technology is constantly evolving and disruption is pushing trends of today to obsolescence tomorrow, how can you possibly be future-proof today? Well, the key here is not to look for some elusive solution that helps you learn everything there’s to come but embracing an approach that’s flexible, yet cautious.

As we discussed before, keep a keen eye on new technology but don’t be too eager to jump on the bandwagon, as the cost of failure could be significant. Technologies will come, some will succeed and some won’t. Monitor progress carefully before you think of adapting them to evolve your systems.

Remember to follow the absolute best standards while developing your solutions. This will enable you to easily update and augment your work when required.

Diligently document everything you do in the course of development. This will be helpful in future while updating, modifying and generally extending viability.

As far as possible, develop open systems which can be configured with different components and plug-ins.

Conclusion:

At the juncture of looking back at the lessons learnt and planning for the future, analysing new trends and possibilities are all the rage. While approaches and preferences will be different from vertical to vertical, we can not deny that the desire to stay relevant and excel motivates us all. There will be new demands raised and new problems to tackle, but as long as rigidity is rejected and the need for change welcomed at every opportune moment, enterprises will endure and create lasting legacies.

Blog

9 Technology Trends That Will Shape 2020

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The Decade of Disruption

The past decade witnessed businesses heavily investing in digital transformation. What began as a source of competitive advantage became the new norm by the end of the decade. We saw a multitude of technologies being put to use and disrupting the traditional ways of doing things. The impact was such that the term “disrupt” became synonymous with innovation and success.

34% of companies have undergone a digital transformation (Smart Insights), email overtook voice as the most commonly used customer service channel in 2018 (Forrester), 31% of companies have invested in AI in an effort to get ahead of the competition (Accenture) and44% of companies have moved to a digital-first approach for customer experience (IDG). All these and a lot more happened over the last decade!

With the decade of 2010 coming to a close, enterprises must keep abreast of the latest disruptive technology to achieve timely transformation. Based on our extensive engagement with the industry and experience of deploying innovative solutions using a variety of technologies, we have listed the top 9 that we believe hold significant promise to drive real value for businesses and consumers over the next decade.

AI as a service

Most companies have been exploring how they can leverage AI to enhance customer experience and streamline their business operations. The trend will continue through 2020 and beyond, but deploying in-house AI-based systems will remain an expensive affair, leading to the rise of AI-as service platforms where businesses can pay for algorithms to providers and use their own data.

Currently, Amazon Web Services (AWS), Microsoft Azure, Google Cloud, IBM Cloud and the likes of them provide AI as a service. In future, we can anticipate wider adoption and a growing number of providers that are likely to offer tailored applications and services for specific tasks and at a lower cost, making it easier for companies to take advantage of the many benefits of AI.

5G data networks

With an expected speed of up to 2.5 GB/s and latency range between 1-4 milliseconds, 5G networks will cover 40% of the World by 2024, handling 25% of all mobile data traffic.
5G mobile data was made available for the first time in 2019, but it was expensive and limited to a few major cities and selected areas. 2020 will see 5G becoming more affordable with improved coverage, making it accessible to everyone.

The availability of super-fast and stable internet access anywhere hint at strong business implications for companies. The increased bandwidth will enable smart devices, robots, autonomous vehicles and other devices in the connected ecosystem to collect and transfer more data than ever and at a faster rate leading to further advances in Internet of Things (IoT).

Autonomous Driving

2020 marks the year over which the excitement and innovation in autonomous vehicles would build up. Elon Musk’s self-driving cars promise already made enthusiasts optimistic, especially after the successful testing of smart summon feature that allows Tesla cars to autonomously drive from a parking spot to the driver’s location (on private roads, such as a shopping mall lot).

Other leaders in the automobile industry are also investing heavily in R&D- Ford, GE and Honda, to name a few. Breakthroughs in this space won’t be limited to cars but extend to trucking and shipping as well. IHS Markit estimates that there will be 51,000 autonomous vehicles worldwide by 2021 and around 1 million by 2025.

Predictive medicine

The first decade of this century saw some of the key milestones including the digitization of health records, access to big data and storage in the cloud, advanced software and mobile applications. All of these milestones have collectively presented several advantages in the healthcare sector, such as workflow reduction, faster access to information, lower healthcare costs, improved public health, and more. The coming decade expects technology to continue to play a fundamental role in improving healthcare and reducing mortality rates among people. Predictive medicine will play a pivotal role in achieving this.

Throughout 2020 we will see that the data captured from wearable devices will be used to predict and treat health issues in people even before they arise. Doctors will be able to prescribe personalized medicines and apply treatments by following a data-driven approach to understand the efficiency of precision medicine.

Computer Vision

The next promising disruption is likely to come from what we call computer vision, meaning, computers with the ability to “see” and understand the content of digital images such as photographs and videos. If you don’t already know, it is the same technology that enables face recognition feature and powers google image search.

Computer vision will find more use cases in 2020- be it in the way autonomous cars see and navigate around danger, or identification of defects and failures in production lines. However, this technology comes with a potential debate around eroding privacy.

Extended Reality

Extended reality is an umbrella term given to all computer-generated environments. It primarily includes virtual reality (VR), augmented reality (AR) and mixed reality (MR) but can be extended to several new and emerging technologies being used to create more immersive digital experiences.

These technologies have been around for a while now but have been confined to the world of entertainment- video games, and smartphone features such as camera filters, for example. The last few years have seen businesses exploring its applications and trying to create new solutions such as training and simulation solutions and offering new ways to interact with customers. From 2020, we can expect AR and VR becoming more prevalent across various industries.

Blockchain Technology

Until last year, blockchain was able to find a number of potential use cases. You can read more about them in Blockchain Landscape Report 2019. However, it was still considered over-hyped and not very useful as a technology. The continued investments by FedEx, Walmart and their likes have generated a lot of curiosity among enthusiasts, and if it works out well, it could lead to quick adoption by small players as well.

If we evaluate the penetration of blockchain across various industries, the financial sector accounts for over 60 percent of the market value of blockchain worldwide. However, the technology has spread to nearly every industry from healthcare to agriculture. Forecasts suggest that spending on blockchain solutions will continue to grow in the coming years, reaching nearly 16 billion U.S. dollars annually by 2023.

Edge computing

Cloud computing phenomena grew exponentially over the last decade. However, as more and more businesses migrated to a cloud solution, they discovered its shortcomings. The current cloud computing architecture becomes less efficient as the quantity of data we’re dealing with continues to increase. This is where edge computing comes to the rescue and helps to solve some of those problems as a way to bypass the latency caused by cloud computing and getting data to a datacenter for processing. Forbes’ 12 business use cases for edge computing explain how edge computing has the potential to impact business processes on a fundamental level.

Businesses concerned about their growing network bandwidth requirements for video delivery, high-bandwidth cloud connectivity, and others must take to edge computing to stay on top of their competition.

Hyper automation

Hyper automation is the application of advanced technologies like artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning (ML) to automate processes in ways that are significantly more impactful than traditional automation capabilities. The idea of hyper automation is to involve multiple tools such as robotic process automation and intelligent business management software with the goal of eliminating human involvement to the extent possible.

This trend was kicked off with robotic process automation. However, RPA alone is not hyper automation. Hyper automation requires a combination of tools to help support replicate pieces of where humans are involved in a task.

Conclusion

With every passing year, the tech community engages in debates on what’s next, as the landscape is changing so fast and more and more verticals are being revolutionised by technology. Starting off to solve a singular problem, it’s fascinating to think how wide a net has been cast by some of them and the new possibilities they are presenting. While the trends above have been in vogue for a while, we have only seen what they can do at a basic level. 2020 and the coming years will provide a launchpad to move these trends from disruption to true transformation across industries enabling leaders and firms to better adapt and capitalize on opportunities. As digital transformation experts, we look forward to engaging with global leaders to deliver solutions which will define the new decade and open up newer avenues and trends to get excited about, year after year!

Blog, Digital Native Enterprise, Digital Strategy, Marketing

Top 5 tips to successfully scale up your digital product development

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Why is scaling a challenge for most products?

As enterprises leverage a host of digital technologies and strategies to drive innovation and growth, a critical aspect of Digital Product Development that many in our experience struggle with is making digital products that succeed at scale.

To be sure, not every digital initiative needs to scale to millions of users. An internal-focused digital solution built to make the sales force more efficient or to help recruitment teams collaborate better is unlikely to see millions of users. Many external-facing initiatives offer efficient digital interfaces to suppliers or distributors, for example, are similar.

And yet, we’ve found that even building these very focused, well-defined solutions often proves hard for large enterprises, and they struggle with execution and relevance. However, delivering digital initiatives that can scale successfully to a million or more users is even more challenging.

In the cloud and data centers age, most people understand ‘scale’ as a matter of server space, bandwidth, and uptime. Still, there is, in fact, a lot more to building digital products that scale to a million users, and scalability of the pipe, while critical, is only a part of it. Some key differences between small-scale digital products serve a niche or a small, limited user base and large-scale digital products that scale to millions of users. The differences come from how the digital product is conceived, what processes are during development, and more. Scaling up involves more than just expanding server capacity; it requires careful consideration of the entire digital product development proces, including architecture, design, testing, and deployment strategies.

Five tips for creating a product that scales to a million users

At [x]cube LABS, we have the experience of conceiving and executing multiple digital initiatives that scaled successfully to millions of users. We have delivered these successes for a wide variety of large enterprises globally. Our practiced approach to achieving product-market fit, as well as our DevOps-driven execution processes, have been instrumental in this success. In the write-up below, we leverage our experience to offer you quick guidelines on the four key areas you need to excel at to build a product in Digital Product Development that scales to a million or more users.

1. Relevance

Having a relevant solution that finds a precise product market fit is rarely the result of inspiration and invariably requires clear focus, rigorous discipline, and the use of methodologies and models that enable you to identify problems and target audiences clearly and envision relevant solutions. At a most basic level, your product must meet the following criteria in Digital Product Development:

  • Solve problems:  Your digital product or service must solve a specific, tangible problem in Digital Product Development. This is so obvious that mentioning it might seem almost frivolous, yet this fundamental point is more complex than most people think.The nature of problems that the product needs to solve, for example, changes based on the various segments within the target audience. Additionally, users evolve, and their needs and habits change. Can your product solve the same problem for a wide variety of people? Does it have the ability to adapt based on the user? Does it have the ability to evolve with the user and perhaps start solving additional problems for users over time?
  • Clear triggers for use: your digital product in the Digital Product Development process should be built with clear triggers. Hence, you are clear on the frequency of use and can design the overall experience accordingly.What makes the user come to this product? What triggers bring the user to this product? What will bring them back? How often will they come back, based on these triggers? How do you associate your product with a specific problem to ensure recall? Clear answers to these questions at the outset will ensure that your digital product has the right relevance.
  • Simple and easy to use: A successful app doesn’t require external help or guidance. The functionalities are simple and easy to use.
  • Update regularly: Frequently updating your app shows you care about community feedback and are constantly looking to provide a better experience to your users. All these factors drive customer engagement and loyalty. An app that’s not been updated for weeks or months will likely become obsolete.

The correct answers to these questions are commonly discovered iteratively as your perspective evolves in Digital Product Development. This iterative, rapidly growing method of functioning–where you test hypotheses quickly and move forward in quick sprints–will be central to your entire product development life cycle and is a precursor to the DevOps engineering methodologies you will need to implement to achieve scale on all fronts.

The DevOps engineering practice enables you to identify wrong paths quickly. Through continuous testing, you could revise your development every two days against spending over six months in code development and then testing, only to identify glitches after months of effort.

2. Design and Experience

Having established the relevance of your digital product in the Digital Product Development process, it’s time to move forward and plan its design and experience aspects. Avoid complexity in your UX/UI by having the following points in place.

  • Simplified sign-up process:  If your sign-up process is complex, you’ll lose users quickly–probably in under ten seconds! Simplify the process and make sure you are asking for a sign-up at the right juncture once the value proposition of your product or service has been conveyed clearly in Digital Product Development.
  • Login with existing platforms: Make the digital product development process easy by allowing you to log in from multiple platforms like Facebook, Google, or LinkedIn in Digital Product Development.
  • Launch screens: Replace the ‘loading screen’ with a well-branded image that says something about the app.
  • Essential things in order: The essential features that serve the most must be correct and easy to discover and use.
  • Navigation possibilities: Consider the extreme navigation possibilities as a user and consider all customer journey touchpoints while designing the wireframe. The above points are still basic hygiene. You may get the above specifics right and still mess up the overall experience. It’s essential that the design, besides being aesthetically pleasing, also focuses on serving specific user needs with minimum friction. You could follow the four steps below to use the ‘jobs to be done’ framework and stay on track.
  • The job-to-be-done framework: What job does the customer want done through your product or service in Digital Product Development? The concept of JTBD revolves around this central question. It helps the developer understand that customers don’t buy products and services; they hire solutions to complete various jobs. A JTBD is not a product, service, or specific solution; it’s the higher purpose for which customers buy products, services, and solutions. Consider this: For instance, if you want to be a disruptor in the education sector, you should focus on delivering the main job an aspirant wants: learning with a validated certification. An online course is a disruptor that serves the purpose here. You must find new ways to fulfill the jobs customers need to get done. The JTBD remains constant over time; your product and service offerings and value proposition should change at strategic intervals.
    1. Define the product to be developed:  Determine the goal of the product and plan the resources in Digital Product Development. Understand all the customers’ needs in the targeted market and conceptualize the products, sub-systems, and feature sets that will address the unmet needs of the targeted customers.
    2. Design the product to perform the core functional job:  Provide your engineers and architects with a job map and the precise metrics around each feature that forms part of the product in Digital Product Development. This will ensure the risk of implementing a solution that fails to deliver the desirable outcome.
    3. Enable effective interaction with the product:  Your UI designers must understand the metrics that measure success when a customer interacts with your product in Digital Product Development. They must determine the interface objects, the actions enabled by those objects, the link between objects, triggering actions, and the desired outcomes.
  • Managing Cognitive Load:  Any UX design has some cognitive load for the customer to explore the product in Digital Product Development. Considering the bounded capacity of the working memory, your UX designer should maintain the mental load of the product below the safe threshold. If you expose your customers to too much information in a chaotic way, they may miss out on the main features and quit using your product. Cognitive load may be attributed to any of the following:|
    1. Irrelevant actions: Every user is motivated to achieve their objective. Making them complete unnecessary steps and tasks is wasting their time.
    2. Too much content: Bombarding your users a lot of information at a time makes it difficult for them to comprehend and analyze, resulting in a loss of interest.
    3. Too many choices: Even though it sounds good to offer users various options, too many options can cause indecisiveness.
    4. Lack of clarity: The lack of a simple, concise, and straightforward interface adds to the complexity and wastes the customer’s time.
  • Context Awareness:  Context awareness can dramatically improve the user experience in Digital Product Development. It’s about figuring out what users need and designing the best interface. A context-aware product is a product that can learn what a user would need in a particular situation and provide it to them. For example, a person with an operative loan account would want quick access to his loan statement rather than having to scroll down and find it listed with options that he doesn’t use as frequently. Features such as being able to continue from where the user left last time and learning and adapting to a user’s habits and usage patterns over time should come without needing to be mentioned.

The quality of the product creation process also impacts the user’s overall experience in scaling digital product development. With a high level of complexity involved in your process, you are adopting some of the best practices, such as DevOps, which fosters a culture of collaboration to combine all the efforts into a seamless process and get your product off to a great start. Besides, it helps you evaluate design and experience promptly. Here’s how you can merge UX in the DevOps Lifecycle.

1. Understand your users. Formalize a process for creating a customer journey and identify different personas. Using these journey maps, you can create scripts for synthetic monitoring that simulate user behavior. If any issue is found, development teams can promptly resolve it before end users discover it.

2. Measure what matters—having understood your users well, and how they journey through your app, you’ll know strictly which metrics to measure are linked with UX.

3. Monitor the UX. Like any other DevOps practice, monitoring should be continuous and proactive and trigger alerts to the DevOps teams if problems occur.

4. Collect Data. The DevOps capability allows you to trace transactions end to end. This means your DevOps team can collect the data required to set benchmarks and recognize trends over time.

We’ll now talk about the software development life cycle and how to break it into three stages. Maintaining a quality SDLC would enable you to generate quality output.

    • Development: In Digital Product Development, lay out the product’s structure and consider its functionalities, utility, and reliability. From the CX perspective, produce a design that buyers would like. Also, focus on the accessibility and pleasure of using the product. Suppose you want to scale your product organically in Digital Product Development.

      In that case, your core functionalities should be flawless, and the UX/UI should be designed with the customer journey points in mind. You could adopt practices such as source code management, automated static code analysis, and implementation of CI in Digital Product Development. These will help you make your development process quick and effective in Digital Product Development.

  • Testing: In Digital Product Development, automation identifies and fixes bugs. Automated testing applies to developing segregated functionalities, POC, prototypes, and integrated products. Recommended testing areas and categories in Digital Product Development include unit, performance, web, and service testing.

    Adopting code coverage techniques further strengthens continuous testing in Digital Product Development. Vulnerability scans should be mandated while testing in Digital Product Development. Applying practices like Pen Testing on your application helps find security vulnerabilities that attackers could exploit. The primary goal of a pen test in Digital Product Development is to identify weak spots in your product and to measure its compliance with its security policy.

  • Release & Deployment: The development teams must automate the merging and testing of code. Artifacts produced from CI systems should be inputs for release processes to run frequent deployments. Automated release processes consume these artifacts to release new versions and fixes to existing systems. If you use GitLab, on committing a code, the file gets pushed into an internal repository. The backend could be packaged as a zip file or a docker file—the front moderates .apk for the front end, which could be downloaded from your internal app store. Deploy and test in multiple environments to ascertain the quality of your product.
  • Monitoring & Maintenance: In Digital Product Development, to ensure the optimum performance of your product, adopt a continuous improvement framework that performs metrics-based monitoring. This constant monitoring applies to deployment and post-deployment in Digital Product Development. For every service, aggregate logs in Digital Product Development. If anything goes wrong, you can check the dashboard for logs in Digital Product Development. You can also set alarms for specific cases that require attention due to a potential fault in Digital Product Development. Establish a centralized knowledge repository that keeps track of incidents for later referencing in Digital Product Development.

Tools used during SDLC

Tools commonly used over the software development life cycle.

Development Git, SVN, SonarQube, Jenkin, Cruise control, Puppet
Testing TestNG, JMeter, Selenium, Cucumber, Jacaco, Cobertura
Release ANT, Maven, Gradle
Deployment Custom deployment scripts, file copy scripts, and deployment plugins for Jenkins / CI tools
Monitoring & maintenance Web analytics scripts, Gomez, application health-check monitoring tools, server monitoring tools, real-time user monitoring tools

3. Distribution and Reach

You’ve now reached the moment you’ve been building up to. Your product is now ready to be unveiled. We suggest you have the following checklist in place to have a successful launch, for being a little cautious in the beginning can give your product the positive start it needs. As a leading digital product development company, we understand the significance of a well-executed launch strategy.

  • Launch an MVP and collect early feedback from a wide range of users
  • Make changes based on the feedback collected from the prelaunch to make your product better
  • Roll out the marketing and communications plan. You can’t scale to a million users without a promotional strategy.
  • Promote your product through influencer marketing, staggered rollout, and every possible way that builds constructive hype.
  • Use automated tools for information on important metrics that help assess the campaign.
  • Keep the engagement active through social media by changing your conversion goals or distributing creative assets.
  • Analyzing crucial key performance indicators related to your launch campaign to make your next product launch even more effective

What’s interesting to note here is that DevOps compliments your launch process by facilitating a seamless and reliable soft launch for every update.

4. Ability to Scale

To reach more and more users, you could continue marketing your product. But often, what’s not considered in this process is whether the infrastructure can support the increasing load. As your infrastructure crosses a specific load limit, the existing users experience poor performance, low response time, slower loading, and worst- app crashes. Ensuring that your digital product development company plans for scalability from the outset is crucial to avoid these issues and maintain a seamless user experience as your user base grows.

The pursuit of acquiring new users could cost you the loss of the existing ones if the infrastructure can’t scale up with your app. That’s only one type of scaling requirement. As you work around your product, you will come across various scaling needs and want to assess your ability to scale.

Scaling could refer to increasing or decreasing any parameter based on your needs. The most common needs that demand scaling include the following.

  • User acquisition: you want to acquire new users and increase your user base, but is your existing infrastructure poised to support the load?
  • New features: You launch with the most basic features but eventually add new features to retain users and compete in the market. How does it affect the functioning of other features and the overall performance?
  • Uptime: With more active users accessing your application, you would want to maintain a high uptime by cutting down on maintenance downtime or downtime due to unforeseen circumstances. How do you configure to maintain a high uptime?
  • Data analytics: With bulk data pouring in, which data do you need to store, what analytics tools are required, and how do you filter it out? The scaling up would require more storage, new technologies, and data mining.
  • Bandwidth: Depending on your peak load and low load times, you could use your bandwidth to save resources. How conveniently can you make that change?

Your scaling-up needs could include many more parameters, such as sessions, engagement efforts, development roadmap, etc. Have a self-assessment ready to know the possible areas that may need attention should there be a requirement for scaling up or down.

5. Continuous Improvement: Implement a culture of continuous improvement throughout the digital product development lifecycle. Encourage teams within the digital product development company to regularly evaluate and optimize processes, technologies, and strategies to drive efficiency, innovation, and scalability. Embrace agile methodologies, DevOps practices, and automation tools to foster collaboration, accelerate time-to-market, and deliver customer value faster. Organizations can adapt to changing market dynamics by prioritizing continuous improvement, staying ahead of competitors, and effectively scaling their digital product development efforts.

Conclusion

Practicing DevOps in Digital Product Development Services has another advantage: it provides auto-scaling that allows your application always to have the compute capacity needed and eliminates the need to monitor server capacity manually in Digital Product Development. Auto-scaling could be done based on incoming requests, the number of jobs in the queue, and how long jobs have been in digital product development.

Creating a product in Digital Product Development Services that has the potential to scale to a million users could be enormous and complex, with challenges occurring at every stage of Digital Product Development. Partnering with a DevOps service provider is a great way to equip yourself to overcome those challenges in Digital Product Development. You’re already more than halfway to your aspiration by leveraging the abovementioned guidelines in Digital Product Development.

About [x]cube

[x]cube LABS, a division of PurpleTalk Inc., is a leader in digital innovation and strategy consulting. Established in 2008, we are born digital with deep expertise in all things digital – Social, Mobile, Analytics, Cloud, wearables & IoT. We have delivered over 700 solutions across industries with the DevOps philosophy, won 25+ International awards, worked with 500+ clients & created value of over $2.0 bn for our clients. Being one of the earliest adopters, we have developed expertise in implementing DevOps. [x]cube is also one of the first 12 agencies globally approved by Google as a Certified Developer Partner.

Blog, Digital Healthcare, Healthcare

2019 Digital Healthcare Flashback and What It Means for Future

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Overview 2019: What has been happening?

2019 continued to witness the growth in healthcare demand and expenditure which were fueled by factors such as growing aging population, increasing chronic diseases, rise of advanced digital technologies and other drivers. With the rising demand and challenges, different stakeholders have been struggling to achieve a sustainable healthcare ecosystem that leverages the latest digital technologies to create a business and care delivery model that is not only operationally and financially viable but also makes quality healthcare accessible and affordable.

Challenges faced

Reports suggest that key issues faced by global healthcare sector in 2019 included- need to create financial stability in an uncertain economy; adapting to changing consumer needs, demands, and expectations; using new care delivery models to improve access and affordability; maintaining regulatory compliance and cybersecurity; Investing in digital innovation and transformation; and recruiting, developing, and retaining top talent.

  • Achieving financial sustainabilityThe current financial performance of the healthcare ecosystem is witnessing challenges in the form of personalized medicine, new payment models, entry of non-traditional disruptors, rising technologies and much more. This has created an environment of instability where margins are shrinking and costs are rising.
  • Changing consumer preferencesHealthcare consumers’ demands are changing and they seek more convenience, affordability, transparency and quality. They show dissatisfaction with many aspects of traditional healthcare and are increasingly choosing non-traditional healthcare services that also offer digital capabilities.
  • Making healthcare accessible and affordable What follows from changing consumer preferences is the need for making healthcare accessible at the consumer’s convenience. The percentage of younger consumers with access to a primary care physician has been on a decline. They cite accessibility at convenience as a primary reason for this. Additionally, the rising costs of traditional healthcare create a need to eliminate unnecessary workflows and increase efficiency to reduce cost.
  • CybersecurityWith the increasing dependency on connected healthcare, data ranging from patient records and lab results to radiology equipment and hospital elevators is vulnerable to cyberattacks- The 2017 WannaCry attack, for instance, that hijacked thousands of hospital computers and diagnostic equipment, forcing doctors to ship lab results across hospitals by hand and cancel nearly 20,000 patient appointments.
  • Investing in Digital transformationThere is an exponential increase in the speed and scale with which digital healthcare innovations are emerging and influencing business operations. These rapid advances are further driving an increase in consumer expectations that has made “being digital” a necessity for all healthcare organizations.
  • Meeting the demand for skilled staffThe rising demand for healthcare services, an aging workforce, and reduction in physician working hours are driving shortages of skilled staff across the world.
    The World Health Organization predicts a shortfall of up to two million health professionals (15 % of the workforce) across the European Union by 2020.
    While part-time employees can cover most shortages, hiring them is typically expensive and may compromise the continuity of care.

Handling challenges the 2019 way: How healthcare converted them into opportunities

2019 witnessed some innovative solutions in the form of healthcare technologies that showcased how companies could rise above challenges and use them to their advantage.

  • Cutting costs and optimizing profits through increased efficiencyBy automating routine tasks, reducing workflows, providing virtual healthcare support, the companies are bringing down healthcare costs. One of our clients, Vios Medical, reduced operational costs by remotely monitoring services, applying big data approach to profitably manage the oversight of patients across the entire continuum of care, and automating common patient clinical workflows. Similarly, healthcare companies across the world are finding innovative ways to use technology to their advantage. An example of increasing efficiency through innovation is Pulsara, a solution that enhances treatment time outcome by improving communication and care coordination through the entire healthcare system.
  • Improving accessibility and affordabilityRemote doctor visits, AI doctors, remote monitoring, personal health apps are making healthcare accessible and affordable. About 10% of doctors in the US practice in rural areas with more than 19% of the American population living in rural locations. This creates a major problem. Telemedicine solves this issue by offering remote medical consultations which allows patients to connect with a doctor through phone or video. Telehealth technology is empowering patients in even the most remote locations to access quality healthcare and receive life-saving diagnoses.
  • Meeting customer expectationsTalking about improving customer experience, it has been found that with AI and deep learning, body scans have been shown to analyze CT scans up to 150 times faster than human radiologists, detecting acute neurological events in just 1.2 seconds- which means no more waiting upto weeks for results. Healthcare companies are driving innovations wherever required. One of our clients, Dr Lal PathLabs, uses a solution that closely monitors and derives the time of report delivery so that patients don’t have to wait for reports or can easily track the estimated time for delivery.
  • Creating disruption through digital transformationBlockchain, RPA, cloud, artificial intelligence, and robotics virtual reality are some of the ways technology is disrupting health care. These technologies are helping with diagnosis and treatment, helping with speed, quality and accuracy, and improving the patient experience. Consider VR, for instance. Its use has helped in reducing anxiety in cancer patients undergoing chemotherapy and made injections and other painful procedures less distressing to children. Going a step ahead in disrupting the normal way of treatment, AR and VR are now being used to help Alzheimer’s and dementia patients retrieve memories and feel a sense of joy by immersing them in an environment that recreates a time, experience, or sound that was important to them in the past. Talk about creating disruption in healthcare through digital transformation!
  • Blockchain for cybersecurity in healthcareData breach is a growing concern with increasing amount of digital transactions and the increasing data from various connected medical devices. The solution to this concern lies in blockchain. Since blockchain is Immutable and traceable, patients can send records to anyone without worrying about data corruption or tampering. Similarly, a medical record that has been generated and added to the blockchain will be completely secure. The patient can also exercise control over how their medical data gets used and shared by the various members involved in the chain. Anyone who wants to get medical data about a patient would need to get the necessary permission. According to a recent report, blockchain in healthcare market is expected to reach $890.5 million by 2023.
  • Balancing demand-supply of health professionals through automation Statistics revealed that doctors spend one-third of their time, their remaining time goes in handling records and other routine tasks. This is a significant loss of productivity and is a critical issue, considering the current shortage of skilled professionals. The problem is being solved effectively by automating tasks and switching to technologies that could reduce workflow and eliminate bottlenecks that would otherwise consume a lot of time. Additionally, telemedicine, virtual monitoring, and personal health apps also aid in balancing the demand-supply of medical professionals. Healthcare industry is also making a shift from sick-care to preventive care measures, thereby reducing the number of patients.

Opportunities 2020: What digital healthcare stakeholders should know

Stakeholders of digital healthcare have a lot to look forward to in the near future. While we witnessed some significant breakthroughs in 2019, the next year seems promising as well. For every challenge, the scope for innovative solutions is vast. The idea is to sustainably and profitably meet the challenges in the most optimal manner. Having said that, here are some takeaways from this year that we think form the foundation for what to expect next year.

  • Hospitals are shifting certain services to alternative points of care, including virtual environments, to benefit from a cost and accessibility perspective.
  • Investments in telehealth and virtual care is likely to expand through horizontal service offerings to help hospitals cut down costs.
  • With manpower shortage, healthcare providers would seek more opportunities for automation in clinical workflows. AI-powered robots and virtual assistants will provide personalized health care guidance.
  • With growing health consciousness of today’s consumers, there will be ample opportunities to establish more direct and personal relationships with the consumer and drive patient engagement strategies.
  • The demand for highly skilled resources, augmented by digital innovation capabilities will increase and the focus will shift to value-based and patient-centric activities.
  • Cybersecurity has become a priority for healthcare organizations but the steps to protect themselves from data breaches have been insignificant, this means organizations will start looking for robust solutions that can secure them against cyberattacks.

Conclusion

Despite various challenges to the current healthcare environment, digital healthcare companies have leveraged a mix of technologies to drive innovation and convert challenges into opportunities. Investments in digital technologies are rising- 77% of healthcare executives reported that their organizations are increasing investments in big data analytics; the global healthcare market spend on blockchain is expected to hit $5.61 billion by 2025; virtual reality in the healthcare market is growing fast and is expected to reach USD 6.91 Billion By 2026; AI in the healthcare market will cross $1.7 billion by 2019; this and much more.

The end goal, however, is to achieve both operational and financial viability, while maintaining the sustainability of healthcare ecosystem; digital technologies are only means to it. Organizations have a long way to go before achieving sustainability because just like every challenge gives rise to opportunity, every innovation brings more issues to address- the security vulnerabilities that came along with interconnected systems, for instance.

Artificial Intelligence, Automation, Blog, Digital Strategy, Manufacturing, Robotics, Technology

Robots at the Helm: The Present and Future of Manufacturing Automation

Table of Contents

  1. Introduction
  2. Onwards and Upwards
  3. Technologies
  4. Industry 4.0 & Beyond
  5. Moves that Matter
  6. Conclusion

In the middle of 1913 when a new, shiny, Ford Model T emerged, completed off an assembly line, a new chapter in the history of manufacturing dawned. Prior to that, cars were manufactured by a laborious, time consuming process with workers putting together nearly a hundred different components one by one. The introduction of the mobile assembly line with parts being fit by machines as the structure rolled along, reduced the construction time of each car from more than 12 hours to merely around 2.5

Thus, a new era began and industries would never look back after that. With time, automation simplified and streamlined complex tasks around the world, with Japan, several European nations and others leading the way from the mid 20th century. With devastating wars reducing entire cities to rubble, it was automation which helped many a nation get back on their feet quickly and achieve rapid industrialisation. As the 21st century arrived, it brought a range of new technological advancements that enabled automation to conquer new frontiers of efficiency.

Onwards and Upwards

Indeed, manufacturing automation can be studied as a great example of hardware and software operating in sync to change the world for the better. Across manufacturing companies worldwide, research is always in motion to determine how the hardware could be made better as well as smarter so they can take on more varied tasks. After all, Graetz and Michaels established in 2015, based on their study of the impact of automation across 14 industries in more than 17 countries for over a decade, that the average GDP growth rates of such nations increased by 0.37 percentage points and productivity growth rates by 0.36 percentage points respectively. These numbers translate to a 12% total GDP growth and 18% labour productivity growth for the countries researched over said decade.

Mckinsey’s research adds more weight to ongoing research with their projection of 0.8 to 1.4 percent productivity growth annually across industries, globally. Therefore, it’s vital that enterprises in the manufacturing sector get up to speed with automation tools and tech to stay relevant in the decade to come.

The Tech

So which technologies are extending the capabilities of automation the most? Let’s take a look:

  • Artificial Intelligence: AI has, over the years, played an increasingly vital role in automation and led us to such advancements as self-driving cars and automatic checkouts at stores. True to its name, it serves as the brain of the hardware components, continuously learning, evolving and directing their journey into newer avenues. Notable names such as Harley Davidson has successfully used AI and Robotics to increase sales leads by a whopping 2,930%. Among other things, AI powered robots are increasingly being used as head hunters for recruitment in fraud prevention.
  • Internet of Things (IoT): Manufacturing is all about intelligent machines making more intelligent machines, and a big part of that intelligence is driven by the IoT which empowers appliances, gadgets, vehicles and more to diagnose themselves, generate reports, study user behavior and adapt themselves to provide better experiences. At [x]cube LABS, we have helped organisations augment their products with smart capabilities which have then provided organisations with valuable data at every stage of the automation process, helping them improve processes, build better and reduce operational expenses.
  • Cloud: Robotics have benefitted immensely from cloud computing and other services which have increased coordination and efficiency by a huge margin. Cloud robotics, as the branch is known, is flourishing, and its many aspects such as environment navigation, computer vision and fleet management, has made owning, coding and managing robots extremely efficient. Such services, which make robot development lifecycle simpler, are crucial for the success of small and mid-size businesses.
  • Mobility: As robots increase in number and boost manufacturing speed, their ease of use gets increasingly better with mobile applications. With apps equipped to monitor, control and customise their every move, robots can be remotely managed and assigned tasks. Additionally, the data they generate can be accessed, filtered and analysed. The connected mobile apps also take care of basic troubleshooting and repair requests.

Industry 4.0 and Beyond:

So what can we expect going forward? How will the manufacturing industry look like a few years down the line and what should you be doing to stay relevant?

Automation for More Complex Tasks: Goes without saying that as the technology keeps getting better, automatons would be able to take up a wider range of tasks and make a bigger impact on the economy. If you are already using automated manufacturing tools, invest in augmenting them with technology and preparing them for more than what they can do today. For just as Ford’s assembly line in 1913 left their competitors behind, better machines are going to leave those not upgraded behind in due time. Here’s a quick look at how automation ranks among tech to reckon with:

Changing Job Landscape: It is estimated that with increasing automation the work scenario will be majorly disrupted. However, as many activities within work will be taken over by automation, they will not completely replace entire jobs. As stated by Mckinsey, about 30% of activities in 60% of all occupations would be automated. Thus, the future manufacturing scenario is one where humans will be working alongside capable machines and sharing tasks with them.

Moves That Matter:

What it means for organisations is they need to be prepared for a major transformation. At every level, they will need to create awareness for the new approach to come and ensure proper training is given to the workforce so they can accept, adapt and evolve. Contrary to a major fear of job loss, advancement of automation and robotics will also create new jobs for the industry. As nations grow economically, there will be more jobs and as the technologies powering automation grow and evolve, they will need more professionals working on them to make them better.

Again, this implies that as a business leader, you have to cultivate and stay up to speed with every technology and hardware advancements on the horizon. This knowledge will help you understand what kind of a future workforce (man and machine) should you be creating for your organisation to keep breaking new ground. This might sound ponderous, but you won’t have to do everything alone. We often sit down with decision makers within the manufacturing industry and work together to craft these visions. Before you actually start planning for products of tomorrow, it’s imperative to know what will and will not be good market fits in the days to come. Through a number of workshops, surveys, curriculum development exercises and preparation of in-depth reports of how a manufacturing company can undergo successful digital transformation, we have forged some great partnerships to drive productivity and revenue across major functional areas.

Conclusion

As machines take productivity ahead, business leaders must stay further ahead to steer them to their true potential. Industry 4.0, like other revolutions before it, demanded greater efficiency and with problems such as labor shortage, high staff turnover and population aging, it’s technology which had to come to the rescue. However, revolutions will keep coming and leaders need to be ready to leverage all that’s essential to keep building great products. Plan your moves in advance, build teams of tomorrow, find the right partners and you’ll be ready for every transition to come.

Blog, Digital Strategy, Digital Transformation & Innovation

Current State of Digital Transformation in Manufacturing: Driving Factors, Opportunities and Learnings

Table of Contents

  1. Industry 1.0 to Industry 4.0
  2. Manufacturing through uncertainty: Growth drivers
    1. Geopolitics
    2. Consumer Preferences
    3. Improving profitability through cost-saving
    4. Servitization of manufacturing
  3. Riding the tide of Opportunities: How manufacturing companies are using Industry 4.0 technologies
  4. Takeaways: What we can learn from the current state of digital manufacturing
  5. Conclusion

Industry 1.0 to Industry 4.0

We’re in the middle of the fourth industrial revolution where labours on factory shop floors have been replaced with smart manufacturing facilities, where tech-savvy workers leverage sophisticated technologies to create the products of the future. Unlike the previous industrial revolutions, each being a breakthrough in their time, of course, this one goes far beyond manufacturing- it marks a shift from physical to software, from processes and functions to data. It embeds smart and connected technologies to your legacy production units in order to create a manufacturing ecosystem that is interconnected, able to communicate, and can analyze real-time data to drive intelligence back into the system. It is predicted that by 2020, 60% of the top manufacturers will rely on industry 4.0 technologies that will support as much as 30% of their overall revenue.

Manufacturing through uncertainty: Growth drivers

We live in a VUCA world that presents many challenges to the manufacturing industry and other industries as well. To counter these forces of volatility, uncertainty, complexity and ambiguity, innovators have sought solutions by adopting the latest technologies, thereby converting much of the challenges into opportunities. While several driving forces of digital transformation in the manufacturing industry are relatively similar to those in other industries, we’ll discuss the ones more specific to the manufacturing industry.

-Geopolitics:

Manufacturing industry is facing the heat from the growing uncertainty and unpredictability in global politics and macroeconomics. The protectionist environment in the US with special focus on manufacturing industry, for instance. In other regions similar protectionist risks are present. A Forbes report mentions how the growing divide due to geopolitics is forcing companies to consider other sources and manufacturing options. Similarly, the uncertainties caused by Brexit have created a push for driving Industry 4.0 forward. With Brexit, trading with the EU will be disrupted and become more costly as employing EU nationals would become challenging with the curtail on the free movement of labor. With the drop in the value of currency, exports are likely to get competitive while the cost of importing inputs might rise, thereby impacting the output price. In such a scenario, the need to push to automate processes, save costs and increasing efficiencies becomes higher.

-Consumer preferences:

Consumers don’t see manufacturers, brands, products, and resellers differently. For them, both product and brand experience are the same. They wouldn’t care if their product failed because of a broken part that was manufactured by an outsourced manufacturer. As a result, the rapidly evolving consumer expectations such as quick delivery, affordable, high quality and customized products are directly impacting the entire manufacturing supply chain. Even manufacturers share interdependency, therefore, even if some manufacturers don’t produce consumer goods, they too, are impacted by changing consumer preferences. This leads us to the need for evolution in logistics that can accommodate the dynamic requirements in manufacturing better.

-Improving profitability through cost-saving:

With demand for consumer as well as industrial products being uncertain, the profitability of the manufacturing industry is constantly in a state of flux. To maintain their profitability, manufacturers need to stop relying on revenue from selling products alone and focus on bringing down the costs. The production costs can be brought down by leveraging latest technologies to increase operational efficiencies, reduce operating costs and improve quality control, while also reducing regulatory compliance costs.

The amount of expected cost reduction in the automotive sector between 2016 and 2020 due to industry 4.0 is $28 billion. This number represents a 3.9% production in costs per annum across the auto industry; The average expected reduction across all industries is 3.6%.

-Servitization of manufacturing:
Manufacturers are under pressure to cut costs and are being pushed to deliver products faster, for a lesser price. Not only do they need to leverage technology to enhance operational efficiencies and support lean production initiatives, but they also need to shift to a more customer-centric approach and explore new service-based business models to build value and generate new revenue streams. Microsoft’s 2019 Manufacturing Trends Report mentions that until now, contract manufacturing has always been a service, but digitization has changed the way products are designed and the way manufacturers produce those products. These changes have led to the development of Manufacturing as a Service, where businesses can use a shared network of manufacturing infrastructure- from machines and maintenance to software and networking.

Riding the tide of Opportunities: How manufacturing companies are using Industry 4.0 technologies

In this era of Industry 4.0, machinery is equipped with intelligent sensors to collect extensive, real-time data; artificial intelligence allows superhuman efficiency and quality assurance; blockchain transactions create trust with transparency and security; and edge computing guarantees uninterrupted connectivity. Manufacturers are leveraging these technologies and creating a tide of opportunities. It’s safe to say that if adopted correctly, the technologies prevalent in the current industrial revolution guarantee:

  • Economic gains, such as increased revenues and lower operating costs
  • Consistent productivity and output; more reliable and better quality products
  • Sustainable and Energy-efficient production environment
  • Optimal use of human and material resources
  • More open innovation systems
  • Changes in the organization culture, with remote, flexible and on-demand work becoming a standard and much more!

Let’s have a look at how manufacturers worldwide have used these technologies to their advantage and become trendsetters in Industry 4.0.

    • IoT for inventory and supply chain managementBJC HealthCare, a healthcare service provider that operates 15 hospitals in Missouri and Illinois, deployed RFID technology to track and manage thousands of medical supplies. Previously, the process of tracking inventory involved a lot of manual labor. In some cases, products’ expiration dates needed to be closely monitored and the loss of stock lead to a lot of time spent on conducting inventory checks. After implementing RFID, BJC has been able to reduce the stock kept onsite at each facility by 23%. The company predicts that it will achieve savings of almost $5 million annually, once RFID tagging is fully implemented.
    • Big Data analytics for optimizing production processesBosch Automotive Diesel System factory in China embedded sensors into the factory’s machines to collect data about the machines’ performance. Once the data is collected, data analytics tools process the data in real-time and alert workers if there are any bottlenecks in the production. This approach has helped Bosch to predict equipment failures, enabled the factory to schedule maintenance operations before any failures occur, and has contributed to more than 10% output increase in certain areas while improving delivery and customer satisfaction.
    • Enabling connected cars through CloudVolkswagen, in collaboration with Microsoft, is set to develop a cloud network called “Volkswagen Automotive Cloud”. The technology, scheduled for 2020, will offer a range of features such as a digital assistant, predictive maintenance service, media streaming and updates. As the automotive industry is moving towards developing advanced autonomous and vehicles, makers need an effective way to manage and transmit large amounts of data to their vehicles. Cloud-based storage and communication platform serves as the most effective way to meet this requirement of automakers.
    • Augmented reality for increased efficiencyGeneral Electric Aviation used AR glasses to help engineers manufacture jet engines. By using AR technology, workers received instant feedback on whether they were accurately tightening and sealing nuts in the engine. This resulted in significant time savings, with increased efficiencies of up to 11%. It was also effective in enhancing quality control and safety standards. AR headsets were also used to give factory workers access to additional visualized information, such as machinery performance statistics, product assembly supervision and parts of potential malfunction.

Takeaways: What we can learn from the current state of digital manufacturing

If we are to mention a key takeaway from the current state of digital transformation in manufacturing, it would be that manufacturers should focus on solutions, not technologies. It is essential to note that new technologies do not guarantee solving a problem and they aren’t helpful unless they create some value. Simply put, if you plan to make the maximum out of digital manufacturing technologies, you must:

      • Identify the problem that you intend to solve. Do you want to reduce wastage or improve accuracy? Do you want to save time by automating routine activities or is your focus on reducing maintenance downtime?
      • Decide upon the area where you want to solve problems and set key parameters to measure performance before and after implementation of relevant technology.
      • Based on information gathered from the above two points, decide on which digital technology has the capability to solve your problem optimally.
      • Test on a single production asset and scale up gradually, start collecting and analyzing data and use the insights derived into decision-making process.
      • Integrate it in your ecosystem, move applications and data to the cloud, utilize data, share knowledge with stakeholders, and explore potential avenues to further the quality and scope of your products and services.
      • Partner with experts in digital technology and services such as [x]cube LABS and leverage their expertise to be aware of the latest solutions and how to implement them.

Conclusion

It’s clear that despite the rising challenges in manufacturing industries, manufacturers are using technologies such as advanced analytics, automation, AR and more in the mix, to convert them into opportunities. The overall aim of manufacturing in current scenario is to increase productivity, lower costs and reduce errors, and digital manufacturing is making it possible. Although the manufacturing industry has been slow off the mark with digital disruption, examples of innovative companies mentioned in this article show that change can be managed effectively and used to gain business advantage.

The digital manufacturing market is expected to reach USD 299.19 billion by 2023, at a CAGR of 11.9% from 2018 to 2023. The growth statistics shows that the tides are in favor of digitizing manufacturing industry, it is up to manufacturers to make it possible to use the driving factors to their advantage and get the maximum out of it.

Blog, Customer Behavior, Customer Experience, Digital Strategy

Do You Truly Know Your Customer? Leveraging Data to Drive CX Transformation

Most enterprises, we’ve observed, find launching digital initiatives and undertaking digital transformation in general to be a relatively easy and low-risk undertaking, at least from a cost perspective. Where enterprises typically spend in 7 digits for legacy technology initiatives, digital initiatives typically only require a 6 digit spend. At least from a budgeting and expenses perspective enterprises rarely hit a major roadblock when it comes to digital transformation.

If it’s not spend that holds enterprises back in delivering successful digital initiatives, then what other factors are at play? After all, time is running out! As detailed and analysed in this Forbes article, the majority of enterprises admit they have only a couple of years to transform or risk falling behind.

There are many reasons, of course, including experience and skills of the teams undertaking these initiatives, the organizational culture and the pace of adaptation to digital, and more. Another critical factor, and the one that’s the focus of this writeup, is: data. Where digital transformation initiatives falter, typically, pertains to the specifics: what precise initiative is planned, how the details are worked out, how the idea is validated, and more. Just as importantly, innovation efforts rarely see success immediately on launch, and need a patient and iterative approach before clear success can be seen.

Here’s Where Data Comes into Play

Enterprises need to leverage data carefully at the planning stage as well as at the execution and support stage. At the planning level, stage, data needs to guide what assumptions are made, what level of customer understanding drives the initiatives, and so on. And once the initiatives make contact with the real world, and are in the hands of real customers, enterprises need to take a patient, iterative approach that carefully leverages data to ensure that they see success over time.

While leveraging data effectively sounds simple enough in theory, it is actually far harder to manage in practice.

Case in Point

A prominent brick-and-mortar services organization that we worked with, was eager to undertake digital transformation, but they seemed to approach it as a checklist of initiatives, rather than as a business transformation effort where each technology initiative is tied into clear business metrics and CX transformation goals. When we recommended a comprehensive mobile strategy for them, their response was that they already had a mobile app. When we chose to dig deep into the mobile app however, we quickly discovered problems. The app lacked a certain amount of empathy, and failed to prioritise the way customers would want to use the app and the workflow they would prefer, and seemed to have too many friction points that customers found frustrating.

How could this have been avoided? The key of course, is to achieve a shift in perspective: enterprises need to switch from prioritising their own problems and seeking their own benefits, to prioritizing customer needs and customer perspective. This is of course very hard to do, which is why leveraging available data to deliver critical insights that help you plan your overall digital strategy as well as execute specific digital initiatives is critical.

That’s just what we did with this organization, and tossed in key terms like ‘Customer Experience’ and ‘Customer Centricity’ for good measure. Eventually, with the data we gathered from actual customers who provided extensive feedback, along with the insights we gleaned from the usage of their currently faltering mobile channel, the organisation came around and we worked with them to create a solution that has helped them achieve immense customer satisfaction and loyalty.

The Perils of Presumption:

You could be spending endless hours testing your product, passing it around the organisation and beginning to think you have the hang of it, but reality could present itself as something else entirely. Out there in the world, it will be used by people from a wide range of geographical locations, cultures, professions and experiences with digital products. That kind of variety simply cannot be matched by the small sample within which you’d be testing before release. According to recent research by eTouchPoint, while 80% of companies believe they are providing great CX, only 8% of their customers agree.

And why should you be listening to your customers? Well:

  • CX is projected to become the top brand differentiator by 2020, surpassing price and product
  • Back in 2016, only 36% of the enterprises were competing on CX, the percentage today is 89 and the competition is primarily based on CX
  • When it comes to choosing a brand, 88% of customers prefer one with a great customer service track record than one which flaunts innovative products
  • 86% of US adults surveyed expressed their willingness to pay more for better customer experience

Therefore, what’s crucial is to figure out for whom the solution is. Is it for you? A specific target audience? Your distributors? Anyone and everyone? Once you’ve got that figured, how do you go about it? Simply put, the answer is build, learn and iterate till you perfect it. The learning being key as it helps you recognise pain points, eliminate them, release and learn more. The more data you collect and analyse, the more you know what is to be done to craft something your audience will really love. Also, the inferences will go a long way in helping you design the product to minimise bottlenecks and smoothen the customer journey.

We’ve been helping organisations multiply their businesses and elevate customer experience for a long time and have solved problems around meeting customer expectations and anticipating their needs in the feature planning stage. The key to all of this is effective collection and analysis of data. So what is data to be exact?

It is the comprehensive corpus of information on what your customers are doing at every stage of their journey through your solution. How are they interacting with it, at what times, at which points are they confused and dropping off, how many are actively using it on a daily basis, churn rates, how are they interacting with notifications, what’s the interaction like on offers and special sale events and much more. Once you augment your solution to send you information on each of them, you can draw up a strategy to fix the problems, push out rapid updates and improve your chances of success manifold.

A Transformation Story

We enabled Mann+Hummel to improve their filtering solutions with smart capabilities which gathered information on customer experience and based on that, added features which removed a bunch of manual tasks the customer had to perform. This delivered significant additional value to their customers, which naturally reflected in their revenues and reach. Their sales increased significantly and operational costs went down by a big margin. It all came back to using data to eliminate customer pain points as far as possible. Read all about it here.

Six Crucial Ways in which Data Benefits your Organisation:

  • Provides Insights on Preferences: Data helps you understand usage patterns and customer preferences for you to deliver helpful tips and recommendations. Most customers prefer a digital solution that understands their needs and adapts itself to the various ways they use it. If you are in retail or running an online content platform, data enables you to recommend the right products, shows, books and so on. You could also leverage data to find out at what times the customers are active and run additional offers and promotions. Amid growing concerns over privacy, the only way to get customers to share data is to provide an experience which they enjoy as well as benefit from.
  • Helps You Realise The Effectiveness of Your Solution: Speaking of digital properties, out of millions of apps in the market, less than 1% of them account for over 70% of use. Data shows you everything you are doing wrong as you analyse NPS (Net Promoter Scores), CES (Customer Effort Scores), CSAT (Customer Satisfaction Scores) and others. Look at the specific journey points where you are losing customers and deep dive into what’s damaging their experience at these points. Get a fixed version out as soon as you can and you never know, that could make all the difference.
  • Enables you to Interact Better: Customers appreciate an organisation that engages them in dialogue, listens and acts on their feedback and consults them for new features and products. For one of our digital solutions, we identified a large group of users who were the most active in our social media platforms and created an advisory group with them. It resulted in a lot of positivity as they felt special and rewarded. A bunch of useful ideas were discussed and implemented, plus our viral marketing efforts received a boost as this group of highly engaged users did a lot to spread the word, resulting in the product’s continued success.
  • Empowers You to Create an Informed Pipeline: When you know your customers and understand their expectations, you can get a lot of clarity on what your product pipeline should be for your target audience, how they should be designed for the best experience and what problems should you be solving on priority.
  • Greater Customisation: It enables you to understand what type of products each customer is interested in so you can recommend more of such when customers open and explore your digital channel. Not having to search for specifics lends added seamlessness to the journey and customers enjoy faster, simplified checkouts
  • Improved Personalisation: Knowing customer preferences, usage habits and purchase times can help you personalise the solution for each customer. Showing them special offers at times they use the digital channels the most, festival content they might be interested in, a customised landing page where they can see their potential favorites at a glance, personal offers on their special days and much more. This conveys to customers the fact that each of them are special and the company truly cares about providing them the best possible experience.

Conclusion

As product heads or transformation leaders, you might be owning the solutions and often believe you know best, but you are building them for an audience and looking for wide acceptance and recognition. You will not achieve that unless your users get an absolutely stellar experience, for which the offering must be intuitive, personal and secure. The key to getting it right is knowing all you can about your customers, and data is crucial in that regard. Embrace data, follow where it leads and your customers will be right beside you on the journey.

Agriculture to Agritech
Agriculture, Artificial Intelligence, Blog, Customer Experience, Digital Transformation & Innovation

Agriculture to Agritech: Trends, Challenges, and the Path Forward with Digital Technology and Software Solutions

Taking the Field:

Connected devices providing informed choices, artificial intelligence deep diving into farming data and providing guidance and corrective measures, simulated environments to better prepare farmers for incidents they might encounter in real life-none of these are fancy conjectures but elements of a revolution brought about by technology. This is the first of a series of articles where we cover the basics, look at projections and the overall state of disruption. Subsequent articles will cover specific technologies and the many ways in which they benefit agriculture.

Digital Transformation in Agriculture:

Before 2013 agri innovation tended to focus on biotech sector and plant genetics. It was in late 2013 that Agritech growth witnessed a shift in momentum. Investments in Agritech grew 75 percent to reach $860 million in 2013 and subsequently increased 170 percent in 2014. This strong growth in investment continued in 2015 and beyond. This momentum shift is attributed to a confluence of four underlying driving forces that are prevailing today:

Macroeconomic trends
Changing consumer preferences
Emerging technologies
Transforming value chains

1. Macroeconomics

A multitude of global megatrends such as urbanization, demographic changes, climate change, globalized trade, have collectively tipped the demand-supply balance in agriculture. It is estimated that agriculture industry would feed an estimated global population of 9.7 billion by 2050. In 2020 alone, a 60% increase is required to feed the population. Globally, the arable land per capita is nearing capacity which suggests that the paradigm of agricultural farming will have to shift. The increasing scarcity of water as a resource poses another threat. Water shortages have become a significant concern around the globe and, as per climate change projections, will only worsen over time. It has, therefore, become imperative that we find innovative methods to increase productivity, while also enhancing the efficiency of supply chains.

2. Changing consumer preferences

Changing consumer preferences have accelerated the need for new and innovative ways to meet agricultural demands. Consumers demand personalized products and solutions. They have become more health-conscious in food consumption and want their food to be traceable to validate and authenticate food origin and ensure that it has been grown right. Some consumers even demand sustainability and consume only organically grown food to reduce ecological footprint from their end. Further, the expectation to use services and products on demand has highlighted the need for an efficient supply chain that can cater to these demands while keeping the costs low.

3. Emerging technologies

The technological advancements in agriculture were earlier limited to applications of biological technologies, tissues, and organisms. With the advent of new technologies, we had access to manufacturing innovations for 3D printing and robotic work, autonomous vehicles that can perform tasks like fumigating plants, and devices and sensors that communicate with each other. But a lot more is needed to meet the rising demand for a paradigm shift in agriculture. Worldwide, the variety of advanced technologies such as IoT, machine learning, drones, blockchain and more are being leveraged to achieve maximum productivity and output with minimum input.

4. Transforming value chains

To reduce costs along the value chain, the agriculture industry is witnessing horizontal integration of related offerings into the agricultural ecosystem and vertical integration of input suppliers in an attempt to optimize cost, and increase efficiency.

Source: Agro Value Chain

Converting Challenges into Opportunities:

Due to these drivers of disruption, the agricultural ecosystem faces new challenges, from which three significant growth opportunities for existing and prospective innovators and players can be derived:

1. Improving yield efficiency

The world population is rapidly growing, thereby creating severe urgency to increase yields.
Reports suggest that yield improvement still has a potential of 30%. Investors can capitalize on this opportunity to feed the growing population.

2. Increasing supply chain efficiency

Value chain losses account for up to 33% losses in yield. To compensate for this, reducing the average value chain loss is a considerably more powerful way of increasing effective output than upfront yield improvement. As per statistics, to compensate 33% of value chain losses, a yield increase of 50% would be necessary whereas increasing supply chain efficiency by only 5% has the same effect on the output as a 10% yield improvement.

3. Decreasing complexity along farmers’ value chain

Tomorrow’s farmers need to deal with higher complexity and a rapidly growing amount of product and service offerings from different input providers along their value chain, it is inevitable that they will strive for simple, ease-to-use, complexity-reducing products, offered as integrated end-to-end solutions. This opens up another dimension of opportunities for innovators that intend to leverage the growing agritech sector.

Conclusion

In today’s challenging agriculture ecosystem, it is a given that leveraging digital solutions is the key. Digital technologies have made it possible to collect and utilize huge amounts of data efficiently, thus making a farm’s operations more insight-driven, and subsequently more productive and efficient. They not only have the potential to improve a farm’s business performance but can also meet the food demands of the growing population. The elimination of intermediaries from the supply chain and direct-to-consumer approach has disrupted traditional business models and also reduced yield loss. The digital disruption has created strong value zones into which new and existing agricultural players can tap with smart solutions to capture value and growth potential, considering the fact that digital agriculture still has considerable untapped potential.

Innovators can already be seen offering specialized services, often fully integrated solutions, ranging from direct delivery services through satellite imagery to automated farm management. In this environment, startups, agricultural players and cross-industry innovators can capitalize on the opportunities that come with the shift from agriculture to agritech.

Over the next few posts in this series, we will be going in-depth into specific technologies and their role in transforming agriculture. Stay tuned!

Transforming CX
Blog, Customer Behavior, Customer Experience, Digital Strategy

Transforming Customer Experience Using Digital Channels: Top Tips

A radical, far-reaching and customer-driven transformation in customer experience is taking place. The way customers shop and share their experiences is no longer the same. Customers are driving the buying process through various channels and by the time they become visible in the sales funnel, they are clear on what they want to buy and how much they want to pay. Once the sale is closed, customers use the same channels to appreciate or criticize your services.

The bright side of these changes is that new channels have opened up fresh opportunities that can make your company outshine the competitors. Opportunities that enable you to build an ongoing dialogue with customers, learn from them, and increase the relevance of your offerings.
The negative side of these changes is that in the pursuit to leverage digital channels for enhancing customer experience, you can go astray and make a lot of mistakes. 50% of customers have left a brand for a competitor who was able to stay more relevant and better satisfy their needs. That’s why it becomes essential to give attention to details when leveraging digital channels to enhance customer experience.

With our proven expertise in delivering solutions that keep CX at their core, we understand that an effective CX strategy ensures that all types of customers benefit from the existing mix of solutions and channels. We believe that a couple of things if taken care of, could help you remain on the right track and allow you to leverage digital channels to their full potential. Here are a few tips:

1. Have a consistent CX strategy: Have consistency across all channels and ensure that all customers benefit. Identify gaps, if any, and ensure that clear guidelines are in place for all the channels, it keeps them in sync and offers a consistent experience.

2. Follow a unique approach for each channel: Each channel that you leverage to connect with your customers has its own capabilities, best practices, and limitations. Clarity on what you expect your customers to achieve from a particular channel and the specific problem you are solving enables you to formulate the right strategy and solution for each channel.

3. Integrate seamlessly across all channels: Each solution needs to be done right, with every little detail working perfectly. The correct level of intuitive customization with transition points well designed-between and within channels, is imperative. Additionally, the social media or platform transitioning from phone to laptop or to a chatbot must be seamless.

4. Map customer journey: Map out your customer journey across web, phone, email, and social channels to gain insights into their experience with your brand so far. It will help you identify their needs and problems, allowing you to serve them better as you can align each channel with contextual outcomes.

5. Make decisions through data-driven AI: With AI and data, you can now transition from addressing customer needs and complaints effectively to anticipating and preventing them. The tremendous volumes of data available can be fed into a machine-learning system that can learn how to reproduce the algorithm. The algorithm once formed, can be used to analyze fresh data and predict future patterns.

6. Unify communication channels across various touchpoints
To support customer needs across different communication channels, you have to offer multiple communication touchpoints to them. This may require support agents to switch between different channels for addressing customers at their individual touch-points and in the process, they might lose the context of the conversation. You must unify conversations in a single communication platform where the entire conversations can be viewed by the entire support vertical, enabling you to offer a contextual and consistent experience to customers.

7. Set performance standards
Set service level benchmarks so that you and your customers can rate and measure the performance of your customer experience. For instance, set standard response time benchmark for live chat as 48 seconds while that of an email as 1 hour. Similarly, set standards for solution delivery as well, so everything can be measured and monitored.

8. Simplify interface
Make sure that reaching out to you is a convenient process that involves minimum clicks with an intuitive and clean design. The user interfaces must be easy to navigate, critical information should not be obscured in pages and the user must be offered a wide variety of services and choice of support channel.

9. Provide real-time interaction
Provide your customers with an interactive environment where they can connect to you in real-time. If a customer has already spoken to an agent once, route the call back to the same agent. This ensures that there is no repeat information flow and saves time. The also reduces efforts from customer’s end.

10. Improvise existing processes using data insights
Conduct surveys and gather feedback to understand why customers connect with you, how you can help them better and find ways to make their experience richer. Analyze the data collected to fix the existing problems. Don’t develop digital channels independently of your existing human-support channels otherwise you might fail to tap into the contact center’s value in providing multichannel customer support and customer insight.

Silver lining in digital disruption- Myriad of opportunities

The wave of digital disruption has left many organizations struggling but at the same time,
revealed a plethora of opportunities for higher-level customer engagement. The customer engagement teams can take advantage of this to level up and watch their customers come back time and again. This could be achieved only if done right with careful deliberation involving a thorough understanding of customer behavior and using the best mix of channels to reach out to them.

Blog, Customer Behavior, Customer Experience, Digital Strategy

Customer journey mapping: Frequently asked questions to help you stay on track

Ordinarily, a customer journey can be summed up as the seller offering a product and the buyer buying it. But as you get into details, you find customer journeys to be quite complex. For instance, your customers can find you through innumerable channels and from different starting points, such as referrals, organic searches, social media advertisements, and offline campaigns. To make sure that you give your customers a superior experience, you need to map out every possible touchpoint or experience along the customer journey.

What is it?

A customer journey represents every experience your customers have with you. It is a story about understanding your users, how they behave while they visit your website or application, and what could be done to improve their interaction in order to retain them. Customer journey mapping helps you step into your customer’s shoes and see your offering from their perspective.

Why is it important?

Using journey mapping, you can gain insights into common customer pain points, how you can improve their experience, and define what they need to complete a purchase without the necessity to repeatedly state their needs. The customer journey mapping helps you to:

  • Identify touch points where customers interact with your business
  • Address different needs at different stages in the buying funnel
  • Take a logical approach to customer journey design
  • Identify gaps between the desired customer experience and the actual one
  • Set development priorities
Measured benefits

  • 54% greater return on marketing investment
  • Over 10 times improvement in the cost of customer service
  • 3.5 times greater revenue from customer referrals
  • 18 times faster average sales cycle
  • 56% more cross- and up-sell revenue

At [x]cube, we understand that offering the right kind of customer experience is critical for organizations. With a proven track record of customer-centric approach towards developing solutions, our experts have answered some frequently asked questions that have enabled them to stay on track while planning numerous successful customer journey flows.

1. How do I define my customer journey as a process flow?

This is the first misconception. You may believe that customer journey is a set of well-defined processes but it is, in fact, not a process flow. Customer journey varies for different customers and trying to translate the experience of all customers as one would defeat the purpose of having a customer journey map.

2. How should I design effective tutorials?

While preparing tutorials, we assume that a customer would follow the same path that we think he would and hence we make them do what we want. A thought here is- are we allowed to dictate one thing for everybody? This necessitates understanding different personas and predicting their unique journeys.

3. Could there be any divergence from the planned customer journey?

There could be a divergence from the path but most of the cases are straightforward with a definite purpose. Most solutions do not have the scope of uncertainty.

4. What should I focus on to keep my solution relevant?

Relevance in journey mapping isn’t about different paths but a single, seamless journey. The focus should be to keep everything hassle-free and simple. To ensure that and to keep the cognitive load to a minimum, ask yourself- what problem do you want to solve? Are you making a compelling enough argument/case? Is there room for including customer journey? How do you ensure that you are doing it well?

5. What are the elements of a good customer journey mapping?

Your journey mapping could have two elements:
Elements to help customer
Elements to make you look good
Assessing the elements and categorizing them into either of the above would help you eliminate the unnecessary ones and keep the context relevant.

6. What are the trade-offs that could help me plan journey mapping better?

Having the right trade-offs ensures a simple, fast, and seamless journey for your customers. Ask yourself the following questions while planning a journey map:
What is the focus on- doing something in a better way or creating a new solution?
What causes a customer to go on a journey? Is it more rewarding for them to figure a way or follow what someone is mandating for them?
Are you focused on pushing digital or tangibly cutting efforts?
Is it an obligatory journey or an optional journey for a customer?

7. How do I determine the effectiveness of my customer journey map?

The only way is to collect data points along the journey and measure. Set an acceptable limit for customer effort score- a parameter that evaluates how easy or difficult it is for someone to follow a step. The idea of measurements and identification of bottlenecks represent maturity in thinking.

8. How do I identify points of friction?

Coming to a pause, mandatory decision making, too many choices, complicated onboarding, blind spots, thinking-feeling-doing, are some common friction points.
A leading retail outlet couldn’t locate their stores using bill numbers. If an incident was raised with their customer care, they couldn’t provide the expected resolution without struggling. Such experiences contribute to friction points.

Conclusion

While designing customer journeys, we as organizations tend to make it more about ourselves and less about customers. We often feel in control of what and how a customer would do on his journey and mandate a lot of obligations for them. But in reality, customer journeys are authored by them, not us. Therefore, the design should strive to make us a part of that journey.

AR/VR can Help Boost Customer Engagement
Augmented Reality, Blog, Customer Experience, Digital Transformation & Innovation, Virtual Reality

3 Practical Ways AR/VR can Help Boost Customer Engagement

AR/VR can Help Boost Customer Engagement-

The adoption of AR and VR technologies allows companies to explore new and creative ways to step up the customer engagement game. AR garners considerable attention, especially from a customer-facing perspective, but retailers should not discount the effectiveness of VR, the more immersive of the two. Let’s explore how these immersive technologies are enabling new ways for organizations to drive innovation in customer experience and engagement.

Augmented Reality
AR provides users with a composite image which consists of a view of the real world around them overlaid with a digital information layer designed to enhance the user’s experience.

Virtual Reality
VR, on the other hand, creates a totally immersive experience which transports the user from the real world to a simulated one.

Statista’s recent survey estimates that by 2021, the combined market size of the AR/VR is expected to reach nearly $215 Billion Share on X

1. Customer Experience & Interactive Marketing

AR/VR provides a host of benefits for marketers to create differentiated value as they promote experience over products and services. By stimulating brand awareness, and communicating the values, they help the customer relate to the identifiable stories. AR/VR can be an effective tool to personalize the offerings. For instance, De Beers started a “My Forevermark Fitting” campaign. This campaign uses a 3-D virtual try-on for ForeverMark diamonds. Women customer can visualize themselves wearing the ForeverMark diamond with the help of a webcam and decide to purchase, without actually trying them on physically in the store. This paves the way to create an everlasting meaningful experience–personalized, interactive, and memorable.

80% of U.S. consumers would pay more for a product or service to ensure a superior customer experience Share on X

2. In-Store Shopping

AR/VR can be strategically integrated into the overall in-store journey to offer fulfilling, helpful, and efficient experience for customers. For example, indoor navigation can be aided with the help of AR for customers to find their way through the aisle to the shelf. IBM has developed an AR app which provides instant information on products which are on display. A cosmetic brand like Charlotte Tilbury put the magic of AR onto the wall mirror and have entered the arena of AR powered cosmetic experience. Using AR-enabled mirrors customer would sit in front of the mirror to scan the image of their face and under a minute they would see their face with a couple of the brand’s iconic looks — without physically wearing any makeup. Timberland and Topshop have also come up with AR mirrors to let customers try out their new products. The list is ever growing, as more and more companies start to use AR/VR technologies in their line of business to completely reimagine the face of shopping, AR/VR is definitely the next biggest differentiator to boost engagement.

86 % of consumers see reviews when making purchase decisions & 56 % of shoppers specifically check websites with reviews Share on X

3.Enhance Online Shopping Offerings

Companies need to offer solutions that mimic in-store experience and take advantage of rising online sales, especially those assisted by knowledgeable store associates, by gathering the knowledge possessed by an associate and using these technologies to reproduce an effective virtual product demonstration. Formex Watches recently moved their business from a brick and mortar operation to a completely online business model. Willing to enhance the online buying experience for their customers, Formex developed an app that projects a realistic image of their watches onto the user’s wrist. This gives a real-life “feel” and look that the customer is wearing one of their timepieces and allows them to interact with the product. AR/VR has the potential to act as a bridge between the consumers’ conflict of the desire for personal service and unwillingness to visit a store by enabling experiences and create a more engaging encounter with the brand, which boosts conversions and revenue to make shopping fun again.

Both augmented reality and virtual reality offer immense potential to transform retail by offering new and innovative ways of interacting with customers, boost customer engagement, generate value, and drive growth. By leveraging these new technologies, retail companies will be able to achieve effective customer engagement. [x]cube LABS with its core focus on strategy, creativity and technology help organizations with innovative customer engagement strategy to transform business operations by bringing digital to the core. Connect with us to know more.

Blog, Digital Strategy, Digital Transformation & Innovation

Common Problems Faced by Startups as They Strive to Carve a Niche for Themselves

Entrepreneurs today face various hurdles in this ultra-competitive business world, fortunately, present times have also blessed them with more resources for tackling those problems than ever before. Let’s look at a few of the problem areas and try to understand the challenges faced by entrepreneurs today. Define why each difficulty exists, and offer solutions so that you can run an efficient and successful business.

Difficulty in Arriving at the Exact Product to Be Built

Many of the applications we get are imitations of some existing ones. That’s definitely one source of ideas, but may not be the best and is subject to interpretation. If you look at the genesis of successful startups, few were started in imitation of some other startup. Where did they get their ideas? Usually, from some specific, unsolved problem the founders identified.

It seems like the best problems to solve are ones that affect you personally. Apple happened because Steve Wozniak wanted a compact, more efficient computer, Google because Larry and Sergey couldn’t find stuff online, Hotmail because Sabeer Bhatia and Jack Smith couldn’t exchange email at work. The list could continue, however, the point is to critically appreciate and balance them to understand the bigger picture.   

Issues with Testing Resulting in Delays

Despite the huge investment in testing, recent data from Capers Jones shows that the different types of testing are relatively ineffective. In particular, testing typically only identifies from one-fourth to one-half of defects, while other verification methods, such as inspections, are typically more effective. Inadequate testing is one of the main reasons why software is typically delivered with approximately 2 to 7 defects per thousand lines of code (KLOC). While this may seem like a negligible amount, the result is that major software-reliant systems are being delivered and placed into operation with hundreds or even thousands of residual defects. If software vulnerabilities (such as the CWE/SAN Top 25 Most Dangerous Software Errors) are counted as security defects, the rates are even more troubling.  Let’s consider the following ones below which continue to plague us, but are avoidable:

  • Test planning and scheduling problems often occur when there is no separate test plan, but a highly incomplete and superficial summaries in other planning documents. Test plans are often ignored once they are written, and test case descriptions are often mistaken for overall test plans. The schedule of testing is often inadequate for the amount of testing that should be performed, especially when testing is primarily manual. Significant testing is often postponed until too late in the development process, especially on projects using traditional sequential development cycles.
  • Stakeholder involvement includes having the wrong testing mindset; that the purpose of testing is to show that the software works instead of finding defects. Having unrealistic testing expectations; that testing will find all of the significant defects. And lastly, stakeholders who are inadequately committed to and supportive of the testing effort.
  • Test tools and environment problems include an over-reliance on manual testing or testing tools. Often, there are an insufficient number of test environments some the test environments may also have poor quality (excessive defects) or insufficient fidelity to the actual system being tested. Moreover, the system and software under test may behave differently during testing than during operation. Other common problems are that tests were not delivered or the test software, test data, and test environments were not under sufficient configuration control.
  • Test communication and requirement related testing problems primarily involve inadequate test documentation, a lack of independence, unclear testing responsibilities, and inadequate testing expertise. These types of problems often occur when test documents are not maintained or inadequate communication concerning testing is taking place.

Funds Are Tight so Deadlines Must Be Met

Cash flow is critical to any business survival, yet many struggle to pay the bills (let alone themselves) while they’re waiting for checks to arrive. Part of the problem stems from delayed invoicing, which is common in the entrepreneurial world. You perform a job, send an invoice, then get paid (hopefully) 30 days later. In the meantime, you have to pay for everything from employees or contractors to your mortgage, to your grocery bill. Waiting to get paid can make it difficult to get by — and when a customer doesn’t pay, you may be risking everything.

Like money, time doesn’t grow on trees, so you have to be smart about how you’re spending it. Here’s how:

  • Create goal lists: You should have a list of goals, broken down into smaller goals, and reach a granular level to define specific tasks by the day. In this manner, what is on your task list in any given day is all you need to do to stay on track with your lifetime goals
  • If any tasks do not mesh with your goals, eliminate them
  • If any tasks do not absolutely have to be completed by you, delegate them
  • Constantly ask yourself: “Is what I’m doing right now the absolute best use of my time?”

Development Takes Precedence over Design, Resulting in Bad CX

A lot of organizations make the mistake of incorporating design too late in the product development process, and yet ask the question does it matter? It absolutely does! An excess of features, baited rebates, and a paucity of the personal touch are all evidence of indifference( read as development) to what should be a company’s first concern: the quality of customers’ experiences. By fusing design from the beginning, it allows all elements of a product to work together seamlessly, providing a superior user experience. However, a lot of organizations relegate it to being a mere synonym for aesthetics. The truth is,  it’s more than that – design takes into consideration other elements such as manufacturing, logistical concerns, and business applications. Actually, it is design, that largely defines how the product works, its discovery of personas and figuring out which feature lists to include. Following it up by building prototypes to get user inputs and fine-tune the design, learning, and ability to cater to various user segments. Therefore design and development, yes you read it right and not development and design are not mutually exclusive, but rather a collaboration of different elements that gives shape to the product for the users to experience.  

Make a Successful Startup by Choice and Not Just Want

The right way for a startup to begin is by forging a relationship with an established organization that suits them the best. With due diligence and proper design, they can exceed expectations and energize organizations. Therefore the common denominator to success isn’t just careful planning and comprehensive analysis, but also taking fast, simple and competitive steps seriously: 

An Organization with Proven Expertise Can Help You  

Create awareness through workshops, iterations and quick scans

Build clarity with an iterative process and reduce delays due to experimentation

Spruce up your business process design, track it for optimized delivery 

Define improvement programs and offer vision, 

Execute data intelligence, upgrades, and maintenance with sophisticated analytics and user engagement platform 

Why [x]cube

We offer a structured approach, aiding widespread adoption

We drive synergy to your business’ unique technology needs

We collaborate closely with your team and elevate your product to the highest level

We have 10+ years of experience in business transformation in numerous industry verticals with proven expertise in marketing and unmatched technical capability

Conclusion

Entrepreneurship is growing, and for a good reason. With more funding available, coupled with know-how and content on how to start your own business being easily accessible, and innovation hubs popping up all over the country. It’s an excellent time to be involved in the startup scene — an industry that’s not going anywhere or slowing down anytime soon. Despite the rising popularity, startup culture brings its own novel set of challenges and issues that the leaders must commit to addressing. By working together to overcome these obstacles, they collectively foster a startup culture that’s inclusive, efficient, and valuable for everyone.

Blog, Digital Strategy, Digital Transformation & Innovation

Where Are Organisations Going Wrong with Digital Transformation? Why Do so Many Initiatives Fail?

Digital transformation is still here, and many organizations are rushing to change to profit from the benefits. Digital transformation ensures more earnings, a significant improvement in client experience, and a notable new level of productivity you haven’t witnessed before. Except by choosing to follow the shift in a hurry, these organizations are jumbling up digital transformation.

Only because organizations can digitize does not mean they are ready. Even with the resources, they aren’t able to generate any actual value from great information, machine learning, and other emerging technologies like AI, blockchain, AR/VR, humanoids, bots, RPA’s, etc. Thus, where are organizations going wrong? They have just lost attention and focus. Let’s have a look at how firms are confused about industry 4.0, the consequences, and the way to fix it.

The Results

Before getting started, it’s essential to understand the consequences that come out of a failed digital transformation, and organizations would have endured in more ways than one.

  • Loss of income and profit. As per a study by MuleSoft, four out of five organizations are expected to get a negative impression on earnings in the subsequent 12 months if they are not able to complete digital conversion initiatives. This may result in a completely ruined transformation or none in any respect.
  • Waste of time. Conversion takes a lot of effort and time of the entire organization. This is a time which you cannot reclaim and could possibly end up being wasted when your transformation objective fails.
  • Reduction of productivity. Consider you have your advertising team working on mounds of information to create random marketing collateral. You have your sales staff as well as sorting through the very same data for insights; about how best to sell. The matter here? There’s a significant reduction in productivity without a clear plan. No strategy? No transformation.

One of the critical parts of the digital transformation is to fail fast but failing as a complete such as this can hurt a lot more and cause damage than do any good. Therefore, it is necessary to invest time, produce a clear and sound strategy, and you’ll stop messing up electronic transformation in your organization.

92% of business say that intelligent automation will be integrated during the next 12 months Share on X

What Are Organizations Doing Wrong?

Most organizations and vendors are approaching the digital transformation with similar mindsets. Let’s try to understand what they are indulging in, which somewhat looks like this:

  • Digitalizing everything: So everything. For example, in manufacturing, this might look like installing and allotting detectors on whatever possible. Instead of drawing a strategy, digitization begins full force, carrying everything that comes in its path. Just because it can be digitized, does not indicate it should be. Consider what in your workflow could be simplified and improved upon by digitization and start there.
  • Collecting Redundant Data and analyzing it: This has been said earlier and is an absolute no brainer, to collect data, which is of no help and doesn’t mean that you have to. We see enormous amounts of data that are collected, without any real direction. This induces an assortment of useful data and a whole lot of sound to sift through. Sifting takes time and effort that you cannot afford through the conversion. Much of the information sourced may end being misused as a result of the overwhelming quantity of it.
  • Haphazardly trying to make things happen with the information to increase ROI and drive value:  With the incredible amount of information that is gathered coupled with the insights, organizations attempt to try and make something happen with this. Haphazardly choosing what type of makes no sense again, there’s absolutely no plan, only some information to support the hypothesis of a hundred procedures.

The New Digital Transformation Procedure

What exactly then does a true digital transformation approach comprise or look like? It mostly appears like a premeditated plan that can take your intended areas in your enterprise, mix it with the right pieces of information solutions, and helps to make a huge impact on your ROI. Here are some steps:

 First things first: Define the process you want to mend. You have to specify what business process that you need to repair upfront. You need to focus on one particular problem area rather than everything all at once. Digitize in which you want it most, rather than running a giant science experiment, trusting you can discover an issue and solution on the way.

Collect data: By focusing, you could eliminate the rest of the noise from your inputs you get. Assessing allows you to get your analytics projects up and running much faster since you’re digitizing a single procedure, rather than the entire business. Once Data starts coming, the advice you collect can be linked to an area, enabling you to have a fantastic snapshot of your improvement.

 Increase ROI and drive value with direct insights: The Data you collect can now be used to induce focused insights into the problem space to reach your preferred ROI and to drive value for the consumers. You may not have an overwhelming number of insights to attempt to direct towards a hundred jobs. Instead, you run with a focused campaign.

You can easily avoid messing up with electronic transformation in your business. Define the process that you need to fix first, collect data from that procedure alone, and utilize this information to make insights that are guided. With these three steps, your organization can improve its ROI and push much-needed price. Flip the pyramid and take steps to boost conversion into your organization. It could surely make the required difference.

How Organizations can do right with Digital Transformation and make it count

Digital transformation, digitization, or digital maturity? No matter what terminology is used, it is revolutionizing the way businesses operate and succeed. A third of key decision makers state that culture is the most significant barrier to digital effectiveness followed by a lack of understanding of digital trends (25%) Mckinsey.

In such a competing market, the need to create and cultivate a digital culture is an integral part of the transformation process. This change necessitates a work environment that not only has digital from the top-down but also makes it a priority to ensure that employees are informed, engaged and most importantly enabled to help cultivate a digital mindset in-house. We look at a couple of ways that could help organizations achieve this

Embrace Transparency

Embedding a digital culture means that everyone in the company – regardless of their role – is aware of the impact digital can have on revenue, sales and productivity. Technology is no longer limited to professionals – we are personally embedded in the digital world. While most businesses are already digitalized to an extent. The key with it is to fine-tune that digitalization.

An open and honest ethos with a clear line of communication will not only help to empower employees but filter down to customer and clients helping to communicate authenticity and build rapport. 

Encourage Collaboration

It’s no longer possible for teams to work in silos. Sharing learnings and insights between departments are paramount to a productive and effective digital culture. Leaders need to encourage collaboration by engaging teams in activities outside the workplace and outside team building. This way of working will help encourage collaboration and introduce be more likely to empathize with one another, which adds to the group’s cohesion.

Train Digitally (all levels)

Programs that are flexible can be very valuable to a busy workforce. Programs that are available online through a Learning portal would enable the employee to gain knowledge as and when they have time and the need to upskill.

Build a Risk Appetite

Don’t be averse to taking the risk, it isn’t a scary concept as thought to be. Rather the beauty of Digital transformation is that it allows itself to experimentation and the success of it brings great rewards to business. Agility is key in a workforce and risk feed on that as leaders should cultivate the culture of trying new things. However, this approach only works when they have skills and mindset to take on the data and insights on offer to enhance their knowledge and optimize tasks effectively.

Aspire to Inspire Digitally 

87% of global organizations feel that digital transformation is a future-proof opportunity Share on X

Digital offers an infinite number of opportunities, but not many are capitalizing on them. Innovation in a digital world calls for big thinking, aspirational even. The fact is that digital disruption is not going anywhere but is here to stay. There will continue to be new entries onto the market that will challenge how things are currently done. By setting a mission with big ideas and digital at the heart, an organization can encourage its workforce and inspire them to not only take calculated risks but also see things in new ways to get inspired. 

Conclusion:

As digital disruption gains momentum, there is a sense of urgency among executives that permeates all throughout—but it rarely reaches the level of particularity needed to address the disconnects described above. Leaders intensely focus and are likely to describe the drive —“taking our business to the cloud” or “leveraging the Internet of Things”—then facing the new realities of digital competition head-on.

Blog, Digital Strategy, Digital Transformation & Innovation

How Setting a Continuous Cycle of Innovation in Motion is Crucial for Your Business

What is Innovation as a service? Why should you continue to innovate? Is it an approach or a solution. More often than not, the response would be: that it’s a mix of both. While the former helps you to look at things differently, the latter builds upon the approach incrementally, to implement the solution that you as a company look forward to. For innovation is a real differentiator, human service agencies have worked hard to prove the point and be innovative every day, create new ideas, methods, and products. They try to look at problems differently and come up with solutions which others cannot, and add continuous value for their companies. Innovation is poised to be the most critical component of a successful enterprise.

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Let’s take a quick look to understand what it is all about and know the process, visualize the concept along with the best practices on why innovation is so essential for an organization.

What is Innovation and what it is not

Innovation is an output. It’s when something new is implemented that adds value to the organization.  It comes in all sorts of shape and size, but the best form of innovation is one that adds substantially and sustainably to the top and bottom lines of the P&L. A great idea is a solid foundation for innovation, by itself, but it isn’t worth any unless something is done with it. So is with Invention and investment, while the former has a tradeable value, the latter is only an input.

Therefore, to sustain in this new landscape—between new rivals, demographic shifts, and technological developments—enterprises of various shapes and sizes need to be front-footed and differentiated from competitors. This can’t be any truer than this; we have to move faster, think bigger, and act differently.

Make It Count: Accelerate Growth with Value and Not Just Tech Innovation

84% of customers say it is somewhat very important that the company they buy from is innovative. Share on X

From ideation to reality, many digital innovation initiatives either fail to complete or deliver no measurable value out of investments. Therefore prior to investing in any innovation initiatives, there should be quantifiable insights to rationalize the ideas. Many enterprises fail to achieve value out of technology transformation like the Internet of Things, Big Data, Artificial Intelligence, Machine Learning, and Cloud computing since they are adopted as individual projects rather than comprehensive platform solution.  Therefore, it is necessary to ensure that the idea generation is insight driven and validated for a successful  digital innovation solution by a structured approach such as:

Discover:

  • Initial Idea. An idea is submitted.
  • Research & Validation– The innovation team analyzes the concept to understand the type of insight needed and does sufficient research, including focus groups, audits, and end-user studies or interviews, to determine the intent, ability, and determination necessary for this idea.
  • Prioritization & Allocation– Provided the idea has merit, meets end-user needs, aligns with the business strategy, and likely to deliver product business value, it moves to the next step.
  • Spark Session– The Spark session brings together the entire team: all disciplines, business units, and responsibilities to choose the ideas to develop into full-fledged concepts. The team creates a plan for how each selected idea will be brought to life.

Ideate and Prototype

  • Design– We build an initial view of the concept, using human-centered design, leveraging anthropological research insights, and lived knowledge. Sufficient detail is given to put the concept in front of end users, right at the beginning of the process. The current customer journey is reimagined to realize the vision, and key scenarios for the new experience are defined.
  • Test and Validate–  Based on lessons learned, we apply new angles to maturing the concept through prototype refinement and iteration. We test each iteration of the concept with users to identify what’s working, and what isn’t. We can then modify the design before deploying the prototype, including adding layers of detail or functionality. This activity repeats until the concept becomes a Minimum Viable Product (MVP).
  • MVP– Once the concept has become an MVP, we create the tools necessary to begin the final development process, including a product specific governance model, a detailed business case and process, a pilot implementation plan and a product roadmap.

Pilot and Scale

  • Launch- Based on the MVP, a pilot is launched to a carefully selected and controlled group of users. This allows for additional real-world testing without the risk of a global launch.
  • Operate & Measure –  We measure and track all failures, successes, interactions, transactions, and all other relevant elements of the product pilot. This identifies the aspects of the product with a higher probability of downstream success. It also identifies any issues to address in the next iteration of the product.
  • Learn & Respond – Once the current iteration of the product reaches the usage threshold defined in the product roadmap, the iteration is then complete. If the product has met all the goals and requires no further adaptation, it is released. If any further adaptation is needed, we start an additional iteration.  
  • Release- The product is released and branches out for larger operating environments, based on the readiness of the most recent iteration. The scale cycles focus on both vertical and horizontal scaling, growing the reach of the product to the entire audience. We use analytics and feedback from the implementation to support future innovation cycles.

Best Practices for Running the Innovation as a Service Value Chain

The lessons learned have been invaluable, and the experience helps to zero in on at least a few best practices for running a successful Innovation Program. For Example:

Use an “Agile Development” Mindset

Agile development orbits around a “build, measure and learn” feedback loop, allowing enterprises to deliver products to users, test results, and iterate again. It also encourages a fast and flexible response to change and emphasizes the continuous testing and iterating of products in the market. Enterprises need to develop innovative programs that adopt these essential principles.

Nurture Outside of the Core Business

Innovation proves to be successful when concepts and solutions are nurtured outside of the core business.

By setting up a development center that operates with no boundaries, innovators gain the freedom to fail. Though the innovation program should leverage inputs from the core business (for example, large data sets), it will accelerate faster with program leads possessing different and established capabilities elsewhere.

Prioritize Diversity

For any innovation program to be successful, it requires a mix of technical, business, and industry skills.

Select individuals to create a talent pool comprised of a diverse set of skills, experience, and expertise. Typically, when we seek candidates for the pool, we seek subject matter experts from a specific industry.

Today’s economy features a convergence of industries, so clients are eager to learn from leaders in other fields. Therefore it is necessary to have diverse personnel selection approach to run the innovation program.

Activate a Two-Pronged Approach

  • When approaching new ideas and solutions, it is of utmost importance to  take a two-pronged approach:
  • Foundational/Reactive – Focused on revamping or redefining your existing business model and embracing newer/better solutions
  • Disruptive/Proactive – Redrawing/blurring industry boundaries to focus on future customer engagements and experience.

Enable Agility with Technology

Developing scalable ideas and concepts requires you to equip your team with the right tools and technologies. Our experience with AWS  technology stack illustrates how business can benefit: through lower costs, higher efficiency, new capabilities, and more.

$15 mn is the average cost of launching a new product in the market which carries an 85% likely chance to fail at launch. Share on X

Meet Customer Needs: why this is a priority?

Customer needs are always changing. On a given day, your customers might exactly need what you have to offer, and the next day, they might seek something else. Innovators can predict changes in the market and provide solutions before people even realize they need them. You cannot meet your customers’ needs on a long-term basis unless you are willing to innovate. If you remain stagnant, your business will eventually flounder. You have to come up with new ideas that excite your customers and meet their needs if you want to have staying power.

Attract the Right Talent to sustain

Talented, innovative people crave to work for innovative companies. You won’t be able to attract someone who could potentially go on to create the next big thing unless your company has a history of creating one. Innovative minds like to be challenged and encouraged to develop regularly. Therefore you need a culture of innovation to recruit the right talent. Innovators from all over will want to work with your brand. You will experience more growth, stand out from the competition, and meet your customers’ needs in ways you never imagined. It’s normal to want to maintain the status quo. Since you assume that it’s worked for you in the past, it will work for you in the future. In reality, the status quo only works for so long, and if you’re going to keep your doors open, you have to innovate. It would help if you took the risks that come with innovation so you can enjoy all of the rewards.

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Conclusion

Being innovative should always be a part of your approach. With creative thinking, problems can be solved differently and strategically. The right innovative techniques can help you save precious time and money, and give you a competitive lead in expanding your business. Significant efficiencies are experienced because of the development and use of new strategies. One way to experience this is when distinctly different ideas come from different minds. Don’t be afraid to surround yourself with people who have ideas that differ from yours. You’ll come up with different concepts and designs that you can pool to achieve a different approach from what has always been done – and that is what you call motivation. Now go get innovative!

Blog, Customer Behavior, Customer Experience, Digital Strategy, Digital Transformation & Innovation

Comprehensive CX Hygiene – a Checklist

 

When you engage in a digital transformation strategy, one of the first and foremost important steps in the process is to design a compelling customer experience (CX).

Think about some of the leaders in the CX space: Amazon, JetBlue, Southwest Airlines,  and Zappos. We all know that they have a strong CX the moment we see it. While good CX is easy to recognize, it can be equally difficult to deliver. Why? because, It’s the sum of all customer interactions and, behind the scenes, the people, systems, technology, and guidelines that enable and power those experiences.

Since CX sits at the intersection of your product, brand, customer engagement, transactions, and customer care, designing (or redesigning, which is more often the case) your business around your customer requires remarkable collaboration and effort. CX is a hidden thread that ties all interplays into a cohesive whole, with the desired end result being a happy customer who won’t hesitate to continue to do business with you.

While CX is on its way to mature and fully evolve, let’s consider some of the best practices and guidelines that are in focus.

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A Customer-First approach

Across the board, anyone you speak with will echo the “start with the customer” mantra and lend support for an “outside-in” approach, where putting yourself and your team in the shoes of the customer is “Job# One” when it comes to creating a useful and differentiating customer experience.

“Start with the customer” sounds commonplace, but companies often address CX and digital transformation from an inward-facing, cost-cutting or productivity point of view, which rarely results in the preferred experience for the customer.

For Scot Gillespie, CTO at the Washington Post — who heads the team responsible for a suite of 26 products under the Arc Publishing umbrella that provides support and facilitates newsroom operations, along with the creation, distribution, marketing, measurement and optimization of WaPo content — the “customers” he designs for, are not the only subscribers to Washington Post but also the internal newsroom operations and his own engineering and development team. Handling all these groups as “customers” has encouraged Gillespie and his team delivers experiences that are easy, useful and enjoyable based on the needs of specific personas.

Empathy (For the Customer)

Choosing an “outside-in” approach that represents empathy for customer is a key pillar in user experience design, while it also pertains to customer experience efforts.

Carlos Manalo, co-founder of design firm “Office of Experience”, shared his thoughts about empathy. Manalo said his firm “helps companies think about the customer journey through a ‘user-centered’ design approach.”

“A big part of this process is fostering empathy for the customer, and it can be difficult to gain that perspective,” he added. “But, in crafting a useful and appealing customer experience, it’s imperative to get out of your company (or brand) headspace and really look at things through the lens of the customer.”

With multiple options available to undertake this type of work, qualitative and quantitative research, stakeholder interviews, observation, ethnographies, focus groups, and co-creation approaches are all useful. Also, social insights can help provide appropriate learning and feedback into a persona and user-story development.

A Holistic Approach

Effective customer experience is one built with the intention that takes into account all of the various touchpoints and tasks that a customer engages in. Great CX is “intentional, purposeful and consistent,” said Diane Magers, CEO, and chairman of the board of the Customer Experience Professionals Association. CX is “not just about the transaction,” she added. It also “optimizes every touchpoint and takes into account all customer interactions, both online and offline.”

Want of leadership can derail the customer experience, and while it is important to gain approval, it doesn’t naturally end there. Expertise and input from all units and functions should be incorporated into customer experience planning efforts.

According to Jeannie Walters, founder of 360Connext, a customer-experience strategy firm, CX design is a challenge because “it doesn’t fall into one department or function — even with a chief customer officer in place, the purview isn’t always big enough because they’re not involved in designing the experience. They get bits and pieces, but not the whole thing. It’s a difficult role to define right now, and [the shift] is similar to what marketing went through two decades ago.”

Ideally, a strong customer experience builds on your brand equity. According to Manalo, “brands that can take advantage of [customer experience] will continue to build equity; [CX] deepens engagement and is the new road to ‘stickiness’ and getting advocates and influencers.”

Being Agile

Given the varied nature of customer experience, constant iteration and experimentation have become a requirement to get the desired results. Agile development, when applied to product development, marketing or customer experience planning, means “a constant tuning, and concentrates on speed and performance, measurement, and trust in front-line employees,” said Gillespie. “Because,” he added, “if you want to get closer to your customers, you have to trust that the people closest to them working on the front lines, will do the right thing.”

Another way to think of this is to envision the customer experience as an “ever-present continuum” and recognize that “the goal is to be planful and purposeful for as far down the pike as you can see” according to Manalo.

How The Washington Post Tackles CX

The way the Washington Post has approached CX is fascinating. A case study of digital transformation on a grand scale. According to Gillespie, many of the products were “born out of necessity” at a time when the journalism industry was struggling to stay afloat amidst dual threats of declining interest in print media and the advent of digital content.

Fast-forward several years with an intense digital transformation focus, and now the Washington Post’s publishing products are so successful that the company has monetized the product suite and is offering the products and services to other companies, brands and digital publishers under the “Arc Publishing” umbrella.

How did Gillespie and his team do it? By designing not just for the millions of WaPo readers and subscribers who are the end users, but by also taking into consideration the hundreds of internal individuals and teams at the company whose job is to produce and deliver news and content — correctly, consistently and at lightning speed.

The end goal at the Washington Post and its Arc Publishing arm, according to Gillespie, is to focus internally on “speed and performance” in the products they develop to deliver “something that is quick, seamless and enjoyable” or, essentially, a “frictionless experience.”

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Tip for a Prudent Journey Ahead

These best practices are also indicative of a design-thinking approach. Here are a few other things to keep in mind when embarking on your customer experience-planning journey.

For enterprises new to this space, CX “has been a catalyst for organizational change, and it needs to sit in a place that encompasses all facets of the organization,” according to Magers. “A governing body like a council can be helpful in defining the strategy and  empowered to execute on it.”

For companies that are well into their digital transformation journey and have well-defined customer experience in place, the simple piece of advice: Do not get contented. Enterprises do have a tendency to slow down or stop innovating. The Washington Post has been successful because they continually pushed the needle and have transformed themselves from a publisher to a software company and now a media company.

Conclusion

As digital-first disruptors mold the business landscape, customer needs for more digital services and operational expertise are posing a significant hurdle to the incumbent players across all sectors. The rejoinder calls for a new working model that puts the customer’s needs and wants at the center of a digital transformation strategy, enabled by redesigned customer journeys and agile delivery of insights and services.

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Blog, Digital Transformation & Innovation, Internet of Things

Key Tips for Powering Your Connected Products with the Cloud

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As the Internet of Things (IoT) continues to evolve, it can transform the business scene as well as our lives. Cloud computing is the backbone of this transformation. Rapid cloud adoption has served as a springboard for many IoT applications and business models, enabling the enterprise to reduce time-to-market and cost of ownership.

With cloud computing, enterprises do not have to use great hardware or configure/manage networks and infrastructure. Cloud computing enables enterprises to scale up the foundation, as per their needs. This not only aids to speed up the development process but reduce development costs considerably. Close to half of all CIOs and IT leaders who were surveyed by the cloud-security company Bitglass reported about cost savings using cloud-based applications.

Worldwide spending on the Internet of Things (IoT) is forecast to reach $745 billion in 2019, an increase of 15.4% over the $646 billion spent in 2018 Share on X

Technical Hurdles and How Cloud Comes to the Rescue

Firstly, it’s not easy to launch an IoT solution. You have to worry about how your hardware or machinery can function. This involves working with sensors, connecting the device to the internet, potentially dealing with battery life, and more. Then you have to develop the software to facilitate all of the communication and data collection. Finally, you have to deploy all of the back-end infrastructures to bring every moving part of your IoT solution together. Cloud computing helps you tackle these technical issues.

When you’re in the process of setting up your IoT hardware and software, you don’t want to have to worry about configuring networks, setting up servers, deploying databases, or performing any other infrastructure tasks. Cloud computing service providers have all of this ready in no time. You can quickly spin up virtual servers, launch a database instance, and create data pipelines to help run your IoT solution.

What’s more, there are now services dedicated explicitly to launching and managing IoT offerings. For instance, AWS’s IoT platform allows you to instantly and securely connect as well as manage these device connections, and capture and feed the collected data into other AWS technologies like S3 and Redshift for processing and analysis. Not only does this help to expedite your development process, but also reduce the development costs. Therefore, you won’t have to spend money upfront to buy and provision servers and other infrastructure. As a subscriber, you only pay for the resources that you utilize. Cloud computing providers have all of the foundations that you need, ready at their disposal and can help speed up your development process. This enables you to get to market faster allows you to concentrate on developing the best product possible.

Build Scalable & Flexible Data Infrastructure for IoT Deployment Through Cloud

With improved connectivity and greater data penetration, IoT traffic and the number of devices are set to explode in the next few years, pointing to increased communication between devices and vast volumes of data generated. In order to manage all this, business needs a cost-efficient way to store, process, and access data from your IoT solutions and scale resources to handle peak demand when required.

With cloud computing, you are all set for your infrastructure capacity to scale up on demand when usage increases and drop down when demand is lower. On the contrary, if you use traditional servers, you would have to buy with enough capacity up front to account for peak times, which would continue to sit idle at times of low use and thereby subtract from your bottom line.

However, with the cloud by your side, as you add more features into your IoT solution, you can quickly scale the infrastructure to handle all of this functionality.

Take John Deere, for example, it is paving the way for farmers to leverage IoT to understand their farms better and be smarter about their output. They’ve built smart farm solutions that aid real-time monitoring, administration, and review exercises of land preparation, seeding, fertilizing, and harvesting. This is achieved by using SeedStar Mobile application, which presents real-time, row-by-row planting performance data.

JDLink is an example of a mobile application, supporting farmers and their machinery dealers to gather fleet location, utilization, fuel efficiency, and diagnostic data for each machine remotely, in real-time.

Needless to say, all of these applications are powered by cloud computing, which can manage the fluctuating demands of farmers accessing and monitoring various amounts of data, at any given time, from any device and location. Moreover, as John Deere continues to build out its portfolio of IoT solutions, they can quickly scale their infrastructure resources to accommodate new apps and the customers that use them.

IoT software spending will total $154 billion in 2019 and will see the fastest growth over the five-year forecast period with a CAGR of 16.6%. Share on X

Improve Your Data Security with Cloud

With the growth of the IoT industry comes loads of security challenges. While it’s already an uphill task to secure your employees’ mobile phones, computers, and other devices. Imagine the level of difficulty it poses to secure thousands of different tools that are in the hands of unsuspecting users?

Each of these devices is the gateway to sensitive information of your customers, employees, and lines of business, and access to this data can lead to stolen identities, loss of money, and even bodily harm. Since many smart devices are interconnected, it requires a breach at a single point to gain access to an entire IoT ecosystem. Scary.

A few high-profile IoT security violations have already happened-

Chrysler had to recall 1.4 million Jeeps due to a security flaw. The Tesla Model S entertainment system security was broken, and up to 2.2 million BMW-built vehicles were vulnerable to a breach that could let hackers unlock the car doors.

A hack of VTech’s Learning Lodge app store databases disclosed the data of 6.4 million children. Also, a breach of digital video recorders and internet-connected cameras led to massive internet outages.

All of these security breaches prompted the Cloud Security Alliance to create guidelines that identify the key actions that should be taken to ensure the security of an IoT offering. IoT security starts with educating the end user of the associated risks and how they can protect themselves. After that, the cloud can help secure the smart device itself and the backend that powers all of these devices.

Listed below are some of the recommended guidelines, that can help secure your IoT offering and how the cloud helps to expedite them.

Authentication

It all starts with precise authentication of users at the device level. Every cloud services provider has an identity management solution that allows integration into your IoT solution so that users can log into their devices safely and securely. For instance, AWS has Identity and Access Management (IAM) and Cognito modules to help facilitate secure login and access. Additionally, security certificates should be issued to each device so information about potential security breaches, when it occurred, the device location, and more, can be captured and analyzed. Also, these certificates can be revoked, so the device is no longer connected to the IoT ecosystem once it has been stolen or compromised, further ensuring the security of your environment.

Firmware and Software Update Procedures

Devices with legacy firmware and software are prime targets for hackers, who know that the tools and ecosystems, without the latest security patches, are the most vulnerable. A standard process towards securing your IoT devices is to have the most recent firmware and software from day one. Cloud providers have tools and processes that allow for easy setup of software and Firmware-Over-The-Air (FOTA) updates. Also, these updates have digital certificates that inform the users about their security and authenticity.

Encryption

With the amount of data that are created by smart devices, it may be challenging to identify signals of suspicious activity and separate them from all of the noise. Hackers know this, and it’s a significant reason why they target IoT environments. Thus, it’s imperative to encrypt as much data as possible that flows throughout your IoT ecosystem and is stored in your databases.

Cloud platforms can help you manage and automate the encryption process for both client and server-side. Further, it allows you to create customized encryption packages that fit your company’s security policies. Moreover, cloud security experts always stay on top of the latest threats and trends, so you don’t get hassled.

Harness the True Potential of IoT- Integration, and Interoperability

To get the best value out of your IoT solution, it’s best to seamlessly integrate the data you’re collecting from these devices with the information you have in current business applications.

For instance, if you manage a manufacturing company and are collecting uptime data from sensors on your machine, you can consolidate this information with your shipping logs to identify the impact of machine downtime on delivery times.

Often these data sets are siloed on separate servers and inaccessible to be analyzed simultaneously. The cloud comes to the rescue and can help link applications and processes, and house all of these data so they can be seamlessly integrated and analyzed, regardless of the source. Also, the cloud can support your IoT solution better integrate with the smart products built by other companies, which ultimately provides more value to your users. With the IoT industry still in its infancy, many companies are trying to build their own platform to become the market leader. This has evidently led to a lack of standards where devices from multiple manufacturers can’t communicate, or those that run on different operating systems can’t be integrated, and therefore data can’t be shared across platforms.

Fragmentation is a big problem that’s holding back the true potential of IoT, but a few companies are working on cloud solutions that alleviate issues with interoperability. For example

Intel released an IoT platform reference architecture alongside hardware and software products which aims to standardize the complex and fragmented IoT industry.

Similarly, IBM has also attempted to regulate and solve the lack of interoperability by collaborating with global alliances and working groups such as the Cloud Standards Customer Council and the Distributed Management Task Force to create standards and build a cloud environment that interoperates seamlessly with the bulk of applications, appliances, and platforms.

For IoT to reach its full potential, connectivity and communication between things, people, and processes is needed, no matter who makes the devices. Cloud computing will play a critical role in bringing it all together.

Conclusion:

If you’re an individual or a small business seeking a stake in the IoT revolution, you can take advantage of the same cloud applications that major enterprises are using to power digital transformation. The major cloud service providers all offer similar services on a pay-per-use basis, with facilities to help prove your concept at low or zero cost and to scale your vision economically as demand grows.

There is no reason why you shouldn’t try any or all of these offerings simultaneously, to discover which one has the most suitable application, or is the easiest to use, or offers you the best opportunities to sell your skills in the marketplace. Connecting one or a small number of devices is so easy that you could move from one platform to another with little inconvenience. On the other hand, transferring a traditional service containing a large number of connected devices could be more labor intensive.

Blog, Digital Strategy, Digital Transformation & Innovation

Win the Game of Digital Transformation with a Comprehensive Strategy

When we talk about digital transformation, the quote from Richard Rohr sums it up completely. “The business world is changing so quickly that it can be hard to keep up” – but the businesses who accept the culture of change and transformation are well on their way to solidifying their prospects. So far there has been much talk on this aspect, and many attempts made to define it by discussing the current state of adoption of digital technologies. However, now, we should take a look at the different stages an organization goes through to achieve digital transformation and what plans and thoughts are involved in this journey to realize real change.

While the addition of new software applications provides a competitive advantage within the marketplace and stands out as the cornerstone of digital transformation. Therefore, to facilitate these game-changing innovations and digital transformations, enterprises need to rethink how they consume infrastructure by taking advantage of the resources that drive change.

By 2020, at least 55% of organizations will be digitally determined, transforming markets and re-imagining the future through new business models and digitally enabled products and services. Share on X

Design Thinking: The Essential Ingredient for Digital Success

This innovation philosophy (read as Design Thinking) is rapidly gaining sway with ever-increasing C-suite executives leveraging it as a critical part in developing their IT and product development strategies. But what exactly is design thinking and how are the leading CIOs/ CTOs harnessing its power to leverage and build enhanced business value?

According to Gartner, design thinking practitioners observe and analyze user behavior to gain insights into their needs and wants. Thereby, they create digital products to acquire and retain customers based on the information they have. This sounds fairly simple. However, there is another dimension to this. Let us try to understand and appreciate the same. Design thinking is closely related to human-centered design — so much so that the terms are often used synonymously. Experts tend to differ both on the degree of difference between the philosophies, as well as whether there does exist a difference in practice.

Experts, such as Gartner analyst Marcus Blosch, say human-centered design is an umbrella term under which design thinking sits. If a human-centered design is a philosophy that puts people at the center of digital solutions and services that are being designed, design thinking includes the best practices used to build those solutions. “It’s about finding out people’s behavior, motivations, and needs and coming up with solutions and services to match,” according to Blosch. The human-centered design includes practices such as social network analysis or historical analysis. “The toolbox is wide and varied,” Blosch says.

On that score, Shelley Evenson, managing director of Accenture’s Fjord design consultancy, agrees. Evenson says that human-centered design falls under design thinking. “But they are really the same thing,” she says. Both leverage aspects of anthropology, sociology, and psychology to meet consumer desires.

Therefore the expression “starting with the customer and working backward” is the ethos from which design thinking springs. While it may look like common sense, enterprises have long taken the build-it-and-they-will-come tack.

For design thinking to succeed, it does require a culture change, and for that to happen, we also need to incorporate the best practices which help foster innovation as companies seek to renew themselves frequently to keep up with the pace of change and avoid the pitfalls which keep projects from succeeding. Those include:

Problem Framing: Earnest teams are often in a hurry to fix a problem without fixing its root cause. They don’t understand the scope of the issue plaguing their organization. Chris Pacione, CEO, LUMA Institute recommends firms “question the question” by exploring new ways of framing the problem accurately and ensuring teams are on the same page. “Teams that understand the real opportunity in the first place have a chance of success,” he says.

Empathy: One of the primary reasons why projects fail is the lack of understanding and compassion for stakeholders the initiatives intend to serve. Capturing insight isn’t easy, as end users don’t share a collective intelligence. Enterprises must design solutions keeping in mind those who install, repair or maintain them. This is where contextual inquiry and participatory design techniques come in handy.

Iteration: Corporate governance, which is linear-minded, tends to stifle innovation, which requires iterative approaches. Enterprises must allow for multiple failures associated with large or novel ideas. The faster time to market as a rule is unimportant in this day and age. Enterprises that iterate the quickest and do it well will win.

Project Failure Points: It is critical to identify areas that aren’t working and fix them. That’s one of the advantages of iteration; designers and engineers can fix bugs and ux design quirks on a rolling basis, from the inception of minimally viable products to fully-baked commercial solutions.

Collaboration: Enterprises today are living under the constant threat of disruption. They have to come up with excellent ideas and need to collaborate with other departments, plus their clients, to get them implemented. Moreover, share the best practices of working that are more visually imaginative and creative.

IDC forecasts global spending on the technology and services that enable digital transformation will reach $1.18 trillion in 2019, an increase of 17.9% over 2018. Share on X

Exploring Digital Myths

Digital transformation possesses the capacity to be transformative; when done right, a digital transformation can enable your business to earn significant, and well-documented, benefits. However, with many things IT, there comes a tendency to get caught up in the hype and not being able to see and think through the hard truths of execution until the promise doesn’t live up to the expectation.

The fundamental concepts and strategies of digital transformation are not new and have been tried and tested for some time now. “The idea of rethinking how an enterprise uses technology in pursuing new revenue streams or business models has been central to business, and it continues to build and accelerate in the transformative age of digital today,’’ notes Michael Kanazawa, at Ernst & Young. For those who have been continuously innovating and leveraging new technologies, there is no hype, he adds. “There is a constant push to innovate business as fast as new technologies enable breakthroughs in value and business performance, and that’s a journey,” he says, “not a moment in time to be hyped.”

Here are the seven myths about digital transformation by industry, business, and IT experts to reflect upon :

Myth No. 1: Digital Transformation Is an IT Function

New and emerging digital capabilities are affecting all areas of an organization. It’s important to remember that the change is just as much about leadership as the technology, says Janice Miller, director of leadership programs and product management at Harvard Business Publishing Corporate Learning, a leadership development firm. Also, digital technology needs an entirely new mindset that needs to be borne by each member at an enterprise level. Most of the times this change is narrowed down as mere software implementations which fail to realize the potential that was envisioned. Therefore, it’s not only about the right team, but a  pan-organization culture that is willing to accept meaningful change.

Myth No. 2: Real Transformation Is a Blue Chip’s Journey

The truth is that real transformation comes from disruptors who do not possess or have a large market share. Large corporations think that they can dominate their industries, the reason being they have been successful in the past. However, even established companies like Starbucks are trying to stay competitive by continually looking at their processes and making changes, experimenting with their stores.

Most companies do not look at or create process maps; only when they start losing market share that they try out new things to remain competitive. Therefore, digital transformation ignites and works best when the conditions are tough.

Myth No. 3: Digital Transformation Is About Reducing the Workforce

As digital transformations often make use of emerging AI and machine learning capabilities, many believe that the end game of digital transformation is fewer roles for humans. “However as good as AI and machine learning might become in the near future, you still need human beings,” says Andy Bennett, senior vice president of IoT EcoStruxure at Schneider Electric, a Paris-based corporation that focuses on energy management and automation in buildings and other structures.

The truth is that with more automation and analytics put in place, there will be a need for more human beings to drive the algorithms. While there is an inherent belief associated with data analytics and AI that it will result in equipment not breaking or not requiring any service, factually this is not the case. We could pre-empt and get to things just in time to fix it which would then definitely require a capable workforce ready to deliver.

Myth No. 4. Digital Transformation Is All About Technology

There is a widespread perception that businesses need to bring in new tools, models, and skills to compete on a new playing field, says Seth Robinson, senior director of technology analysis at CompTIA, a nonprofit trade association for the technology industry.

CompTIA research shows that while businesses have an appreciation for strategic IT, they are not necessarily prepared to execute on that vision, he says. 78% of the firms surveyed say they are using technology to drive business outcomes, but only 28 % are extremely confident in their ability to apply technology to business goals, says Robinson.

Myth No. 5: Executive Buy-in Is a Must Thing

For any project to be successful, you need buy-in and continuous support from upper management; digital transformations are no different. Senior executives are mostly reluctant to give the go-ahead to these projects because they are often complex and daunting, says Andriole, who is also a business consultant.

“It’s more about lip service than it is about reality.” And often, they have the “if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it syndrome.”  In those instances, Andriole suggests looking inward. He poses the question; What do you really see?” If there is no real reason to deploy a digital initiative or commitment on the part of management, he says, don’t do it.

Myth No. 6: Digital transformation brings IT-business harmony

“Successful digital transformations require collaboration between IT and the business, but if you think IT-business harmony is the guaranteed outcome of a digital transformation, you may want to think again,” says Schneider Electric’s Bennett, “I think it’s a fallacy. They don’t get along very well. They come from very different starting points. People really forget there’s a fundamental human road bump that’s in the mix that will take years and years and years to work through. It’s a big change management issue to work through.”

Myth No. 7. the Digital Journey Ends at the Implementation

Dan Doggendorf has learned from experience that digital transformation is not always the silver bullet for solving a business problem. Doggendorf, vice president of business operations and CIO for the Dallas Stars NHL hockey team, says his eyes were opened after the deployment of a new phone system with reporting capabilities to track sales data. As they began looking at systems, he says “requirements started getting bigger and bigger, and when [sales executives would] see a demo, they wanted more.”

IT bought a system with a lot of functionality, “and quite honestly, the only thing they use is the dashboard,” he notes. There are very few organizations who do a post-evaluation on technology deployment to glean what it has done for them and what the ROI is, Doggendorf observes.

Understanding Digital Transformation Drivers

Enterprises often embark on digital transformations to counter the potential for disruption from incumbents and startups. Consider Amazon.com’s steady march across nearly every retail vertical. This has added to the consumer expectations for not only how quickly they receive goods, but the consistent availability of products, says Tyagarajan.

Taking a cue from Amazon.com’s playbook, retailers like Target and Walmart are using algorithms to complement logistics and ensure that anything from food items to beauty aids quickly makes their way from local warehouses — to replenish their stores before they run out of stock. “Retail and consumer goods need to reinvent themselves to meet ever-changing customer needs continually,” Says Genpact CEO, Tiger Tyagarajan.

Staying ahead of the competition with new technology offerings is another digital transformation driver. For example, restaurant chains such as TGI Fridays and IHOP, fearful of being rendered irrelevant by hipper, more tech-savvy boutique brands, are experimenting with virtual helper applications such as Google Assistant and Amazon Alexa to facilitate mobile ordering, in hopes that millennial customers will cling on to their brands.

Transforming products into services is another critical motivation. Digital twins, for example, are a new reality in the manufacturing sector. Organizations from General Electric to Boeing and McDermott International are creating software versions of their physical assets, ideally to generate application revenue.

Think about the disruption Uber has brought into the transportation sector, literally forcing everyone from taxi companies to car rental service providers to automakers to incorporate similar ride-sharing or other on-demand services, including bikes and scooters, into their business models.

How to Optimize and Put Costs Under Control

CIOs must reconcile legacy investments for which business value has not been adequately tracked. Driving digital change is hard when you don’t have your financial house in order; it is imperative to do so before tackling or initiating any innovation in support of a digital transformation.

“CIOs are under a lot of pressure right now; there is a ton of expectations around digital transformation and CIOs are figuring out how to move money left to right in a way that is responsible,” says Trevor Schulze, former CIO of chipmaker Micron.

The trick, Schulze says, is figuring out how to shift money tied up in legacy investments to innovation. “We had to control costs but at the same time, invest and be strategic,” Schulze says. “But we didn’t have enough insight into where the money was being spent.”

IDC predicts DX-related software spending will total $253 billion in 2019. With IaaS at 35.9%, application development & deployment software at 26.7%, and business services 26.5% CAGR respectively. Share on X

By implementing a technology business management (TBM) taxonomy and accounting software from Apptio, Schulze was able to identify contracts to phase out in favor of cloud services and innovation investments. Increasingly, RPA, ML, and AI are being brought to bear on such challenges, as underscored by Genpact’s partnership with Walmart.

Conclusion

Change is difficult for any organization. Once it is underway, the going can be sluggish and slow. However, in an era of Digital Darwinism where businesses must “adapt or die,” ignoring change is not an option. With a lot of work to be done, it starts by making the case, ringing the alarm bells, and creating a sense of urgency that puts threats and opportunities front and center. The pace of technology isn’t slowing. In fact, it’s only accelerating, and its impact on customer and employee behavior (and expectations) is happening faster than most enterprises can comprehend or react.

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Blog, Digital Strategy, Enterprise Mobility, Mobility

How Mobility Solutions Are Transforming the Manufacturing Industry

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Industry 4.0 is currently generating tremendous noise and drift for data exchange and automation in manufacturing technologies together with IoT, cloud computing, cognitive computing, and cyber-physical systems. Mobile technology is one of the fundamental driving forces behind Industry 4.0, creating “smart factories” and streamlining manufacturing operations with mobility. While most of them have been slow to adopt the benefits of technology, manufacturers aren’t unaware of the substantial tangible improvements other industries are undergoing with the implementation of mobile technology and organizations are noticing improvements in their divisions. Mobility in manufacturing is bringing intensification across all divisions, optimizing from the shop floor to the warehouse to management. Even IT leaders cannot overlook the hazard of production downtime and competitive benefits of improving productivity using mobile devices and solutions.

The Need for Mobility Solutions in Manufacturing Companies

While global expansion strategy forms the core of the emerging need for mobility solutions in most of the manufacturing companies, it is equally important to meet the ever-growing expectations of consumers and stakeholders in the ecosystem. For example, an automobile manufacturer sold auto spare parts to its partners. As the demand for spare parts increased, they felt the need and launched a mobile app to manage the demand-supply gap. Now consumers can place an order for more spare parts online. This helps them reduce cost and improve productivity in the long way. Therefore, to remain competitive, manufacturers must look out for efficiencies in production and the capacity to deliver a broader mix of customized products. This demands operational processes and production lines to be integrated and flexible to allow fast configuration changes and reduced load times, without compromising on quality or safety.

Adoption of mobility solutions by manufacturing enterprises helps to improve their capacities which manifest in the form of improvement in enterprise processes.

Credit: Ericsson Mobility Report June 2018

81% of Industrial Manufacturing CEOs said that they plan to rely on operational efficiencies to bolster growth via enhanced competitiveness. Share on X

Key Advantages of Mobility Solutions

Data and information play a crucial role in implementing business processes right from marketing to manufacturing. Mobility holds the key to the prospect of managing your business from anywhere at any time. Moreover, it shares real-time updates for decision makers. Mobility also provides information during an emergency and therefore manages the uncertain situations well

Portability – Mobile apps are designed for on the go, anytime usage. The right mobile solution can reduce the need to return to a fixed-point to review checklists, receive information or fulfill orders. For example, tablets allow workers to conduct quality checks, send out alerts for any problems and instantly update job status on an order or machines.

Real-Time Problems / Real-Time Solutions – Instead of anticipating problems and outcomes based on earlier performance and trends, it is critical for organizations to have the ability to figure out an issue while there is time to correct it. Learning about errors, malfunctions or other problems after the fact, could delay progress, whereas the management team and staff can be alerted instantly of issues in real-time. Therefore situational awareness can extend the reaction time and lead to positive outcomes and better customer relationships as well.

Accessibility Increases Worker Productivity – Choosing mobile tablets can lead to better productivity of warehouse workers as people respond well to current technology which is easy to understand. Rather than having to visit the fixed workstation repeatedly, workers can perform tasks on the go. Employees are already embracing mobility in their personal life, therefore the traditional learning curve when introducing innovative technology, systems or processes are reduced to a great extent and will arguably, disappear in a few years’ time.

Precision Monitoring –  With GPS locations in vogue, it allows manufacturing organizations to analyze their logistics and figure out where they are being inefficient or losing time in their freight management duties. Instant updates allow team leaders to check the status of any order at any time, or to find raw materials and goods arriving instantly. For businesses with active on field sales staff(s), the ability to both check inventory and input sales on the go increases efficiency tremendously and can boost customer relationships in the process.

Mobility in the manufacturing industry is trending like other industries and is the reason many companies give mobile devices to their staff and discourage BYOD to avoid risk. However, for the company-owned devices as well, organizations should be extra vigilant for the security of the devices as well as business data. Organizations need to address security concerns and place adequate security measures for mobile device management to prevent data theft and misuse of the devices for personal entertainment which eventually leads to wastage of time and productivity decline.

86% of CEO's say a clear vision of how Digital technologies including Mobile can create competitive advantage is key to the success of their investments. Share on X

Some Operational Benefits of Mobility

  • Increases overall productivity
  • Ensures cost reduction with increased efficiency
  • Real-time monitoring and faster access to critical information
  • Facilitates collaboration between people at all levels
  • Rapid product development
  • Improve RoI
  • Increase in sales
  • Enhance customer satisfaction
  • Manage regulatory compliance

Reduce Time to Market and Achieve Optimal Efficiency

In this increasingly connected world, manufacturing intelligence is the new normal. The choice of connectivity determines the planning, materials, build quality and flexibility of a manufacturer’s digital foundation. This adds to the possibilities and ultimately increases the value it brings to their operations, enabling smarter resource management. It affects which equipment and operations can be connected, how many assets and processes can run simultaneously, and how well it scales beyond one geographical site to achieve optimal efficiency. Mobility is helping with data collection, and manufacturers are applying advanced pattern detection and predictive analytics to simplify steps and eliminate delays by pulling the right levers to get ahead of production cost trends and generate good market speed.

Bottom Line

Mobility is making manufacturers compete in their prospects and customers timeframes while delivering higher value in less time than before. Therefore manufacturers and their suppliers must generate and share vast amounts of digital data about the design, dimensions, quality, and location of components. Additionally, tracking their journey through the factory and beyond is imperative. They must manage complex flows of physical materials and become data managers. Yes, we anticipate a growth in the number of data engineers in the flexible plant to almost double between now and 2030.

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Digital Strategy, Digital Transformation & Innovation, Internet of Things

5 Ways to Make a Successful Connected Product Launch

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For new players entering the IoT space, the stakes are rather high. For one, the time required to develop is longer for hardware than for software, which makes it difficult to pivot if the product-market fit is not achieved initially. Moreover, the success rate in the consumer IoT space, in particular, is meager—even the intrepid hardware investors who work with an IoT original device manufacturer have plenty of apprehensions about the consumer side.

In a rush to get on the Internet of Things (IoT) bandwagon, enterprises are trying to make their products smarter by combining connectivity and intelligence. Under ideal circumstances, these products are reckoned to make customers’ lives simpler. However, in reality, or practice, how do “smart” products function?

Making Your IOT Project a Success

Whether it’s a pilot or a mini IoT project added to a more massive non-IoT project, make it relevant by addressing a real need. This assures support and visibility from the business, whether it’s as simple as time to answer your queries, involvement from management or contribution of resources. Equally significant, it gives you a foundation from which to build follow-up projects. The proliferation of many smart products that people don’t need helps to explain why fearless predictions for the growth of IoT are being readjusted. For instance, Ericsson has shaved 20 billion off of its 2010 forecast that there would be 50 billion Internet-connected devices by 2020. Gartner says the IoT market is experiencing “inflated expectations,” with many companies struggling to find use cases for their ideas.

Worldwide spending on the Internet of Things (IoT) is forecast to reach $745 billion in 2019, an increase of 15.4% over the $646 billion spent in 2018 Share on X

5 Questions to Ask About Your Smart Product

The reality is that, while IoT is new and exciting, succeeding in this market requires a few basic rules of product innovation.

In a recent Harvard Business Review article, Carey Smith, founder of fan and light manufacturer Big Ass Solutions, shares some of those basic rules. His advice is based on his experience of building smart fans that didn’t exactly become a massive hit in the market. He recommends asking five questions before launching an intelligent product or feature:

1. Does it answer a real customer need? Enterprises need to understand their customers deeply, to deliver genuinely innovative products. “The traditional business model is based on identifying a need and meeting it, or defining a problem and solving it,” Smith writes. “So far, most connected products have been solutions in search of problems to solve.”

2. How big is the market for this product? “Just like a carpenter must measure twice before cutting, manufacturers should poll their customers at least twice before committing to the new technology,” writes Smith. Don’t believe in your own hype—talk to consumers to validate that you have a market.

3. What are the economics? Your forecast should cover both revenue and costs.

4. Should we outsource manufacturing? While doing it in-house is a huge commitment, outsourcing brings unexpected expenses, according to Smith.

5. What’s the impact on customer experience? As you enter the IoT market, you’ll need to have staff who are equipped to engage with technologically advanced users.

IoT software spending will total $154 billion in 2019 and will see the fastest growth over the five-year forecast period with a CAGR of 16.6%. Share on X

Don’t Commit Smart Mistakes

Ultimately, winning in the IoT landscape isn’t only about possessing the right technology. Brands who fancy a first-mover advantage in making connected products smarter, need to add value to their customers’ lives—and to do so, they need insight on real customer pain points. In the long term, companies also need to keep up with evolving customer attitudes and preferences and continue to consider unmet needs.

Let’s consider the case of Salesforce who raced to announce its AI product Einstein ahead of competitor Oracle, whom they suspected might announce a similar product at the Dreamforce conference.

Salesforce earned a lot of media coverage, but then the same media went on to observe their every move and misstep, including the fact that Salesforce had to partner with IBM Watson to build the product they announced in September of 2016.  While Salesforce had hardly locked down the market by being the first enterprise solution provider to announce its AI: Other competitors in the fray went on to capitalize the media interest with technology what only Salesforce had promised.

Being first-to-market without the actual product ready to back it up is little more than flagging the way for the competition. Those very reporters who wanted to believe in a groundbreaking solution now looked out for alternative solutions that could deliver.

That’s not to say that people will ever need smart coffee-maker that can talk. Rather, willing to bet they won’t.

Focus on a Niche Sector to Stay Relevant in the Game or Be Annihilated

By concentrating on ways to secure a corner of the IoT industry, smaller manufacturers can not only ensure that they stay out of the radar of major companies but build devices with longevity. Working up in the IoT devices space is quickly noticed by the ecosystem leaders. Higher-ups at large-scale enterprises have access to data at their fingertips about which devices are selling well, generating traffic, garnering positive reviews, and so on. Therefore, one of the apparent safe spaces for IoT based projects are those that develop B2B applications. It’s less likely that a prominent ecosystem player is going to get into the B2B space. IoT enterprises have more flexibility, for example in automating fertilizer distribution on a farm or controlling a power plant. Building off existing devices and connecting them to create even greater ease of use is also a kind of success.

An example of this is the Amazon Echo and Google Home. As both of them currently enjoy high acceptance in people’s homes. Also, they connect to the existing ecosystem and with each other, which makes things even easier for the user. You can set music to play on your Google Home. You could connect multiple Google Home Minis throughout the house in different rooms.

Conclusion

In this supersaturated tech landscape filled with enterprises and products that will fail, there’s little or no room for error. Project teams should be nimble and agile to react to the unplanned. Project plans should allow for larger exigencies by keeping sponsors and owners in the loop, who are not averse to change. It is critical to building a project team with members who are selected based on their ability to quickly adapt and learn, as well as for their knowledge and execution skills. Finally, a well-timed launch of a fully-realized product helps an enterprise catch and ride the media wave of awareness and relevance.

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Digital Strategy, Digital Transformation & Innovation

Leveraging Data and Insights to Drive Innovation

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The last few decades have seen a wave of technological revolution that has to a large extent changed the way we live and work. Many of the familiar devices and services delivered have become digital — from Internet-based banking, music, films, and shopping. In addition, social media sites empower us to interact with friends, family, and businesses in new ways. All of which leaves a data trail which is visible to companies that provide these services to leverage upon.

Enterprises need to ask the question: “ Is our business strategy still relevant in a digital world?” With the mass adoption of digital products and services,  consumers are generating huge volumes of personal data across all aspects of their lives, which is captured by organizations through digital channels or devices.

While data about a person’s friendship networks, hobbies and interests are captured on social media,  details of their shopping patterns are captured by online retailers. In addition to these established data sources, technological developments contribute to new sources of consumer data that provides unique insights into consumer behavior. We look into how businesses can harness and filter the insights from this information through social media analytics and digital analytics to drive innovation and improve customer experience.

Socialize Data and Share the Vision:

In most enterprises, the journey toward becoming more data-driven or data-informed is uneven. Enterprises need to move away from isolated data platforms, meant to support a business unit or role, to centralized platforms with multi-team access. This technology shift will create the required synergy with today’s cross-departmental, design-thinking collaboration strategies. Instead of teams maintaining their own work styles and dedicated discrete projects, enterprises need to form diverse teams from different groups and environments that share expertise and knowledge.

This type of culture aims to make the knowledge held by data and people hyper-collaborative and accessible across the company. Customer purchase histories, addresses, and persona, for example, aren’t available only for sales and marketing. Other business interest groups and project teams should access this valuable CRM data for their goals to leverage business and operations insights.

Data-Driven Cultures Work Together to Empower Teams

With data being available to all and free from silos, employees working in marketing, supply chain, finance, and other groups could have first-hand knowledge of the business processes of all the groups concerned. Their in-the-trenches expertise makes them the best source for engaging with the data and pushing it toward creating better business outcomes. Teams, working under a comprehensive data framework plan, need centralized analytics tools that let them interact with the data. A platform that enables assigned levels of access and role-based security keeps data-driven cultures within the defined framework outlined by the IT departments. Most importantly, this modern-day approach is faster than earlier models, for example in the past, a data query was sent to IT and a report would get generated weeks later. In the current scenario with data-driven culture, and constantly evolving technology lets a functional-expert query and wields the data to visualize the results immediately.

69% of outperforming organizations combine technology with business to innovate Share on X

Executive Support Separates Data-Driven Cultures from Traditional Businesses

In a data-driven culture, leaders encourage employees to understand and interact with data for necessary action. Teams have the freedom to act upon, review, and respond to the results.  It’s plausible that not all results will be positive, and learning would come from both good and bad outcomes. What is critical, is feeding data into models and promoting an iterative process so that business decisions based on the outcomes are mature and precise over time.

In tandem with this support, data-driven leaders rely on dashboards in their day-to-day activities and they give credit to the data which is at the core of the business decisions and results achieved. This creates transparency with regards to change and shifts in the business. Since the irrefutable data serves as the role model, everyone in the organization get on board and begin to practice data to work, innovate and gain insight.

Realizing an Adaptive Enterprise

With changes underway, the possibilities are endless. Enterprises can enter into new markets, proceed with the desired demographic, or create business models around untapped assets. Data will reveal itself in unexpected ways, as businesses become more empathetic and aware of their customers’ needs. Under Armour, for example, created apps tied to Fitbit for its customers committed to exercise. Once an enterprise puts itself in its customers’ shoes, it can build service models and products that cut costs, create efficiencies, and improve customer engagement.

57% of outperforming organizations are good at translating insight into action Share on X

This insight to empathy is only possible in an adaptive enterprise, which is derived from a data-driven culture. They respond to customers, partners, and market changes in real time based on insights from data. To stay ahead, they constantly ask:  Where are we now? What did we do today? Where are we headed?

Adaptive enterprises respond to those queries through a mixture of reports, that is more experimental and agile. They look at marketplace activities, including tests, trials, and theories that are revolutionizing the industry and causing disruptions. Adaptive enterprises assimilate these two modes to present a common view across the business. From this central platform, teams throughout the company can test and hypothesize, productize, and operationalize by manipulating the data. They run multiple tests and iterations, to pour the learnings back into the business.

Conclusion

Data is as vital as oil for the digital economy and is at the center of dictating insight-driven business transactions – from decision-making to cross-departmental collaboration. Businesses deal with plenty of data across the width and breadth, creating an opportunity to deliver insights and drive material outcomes to gain a competitive advantage. Reaching this inflection point starts with enterprises committing to redefining their businesses and creating data-driven cultures. This culture can spread when businesses establish three goals: break down data silos, engage teams through leadership and empower teams to explore data to drive better outcomes and insights that can be used to make a company’s offerings more relevant to its customers

Key things about your digital strategy your employees must know
Blog, Digital Strategy, Digital Transformation & Innovation

Key Things About Digital Strategy Your Employees Must Know

Key things about your digital strategy your employees must know

“There’s never been a worse time to be a worker with only ‘ordinary’ skills and abilities to offer, because computers, robots, and other digital technologies are acquiring these skills and abilities at an extraordinary rate.” Erik Brynjolfsson and Andrew McAfee, The Second Machine Age1

In the new digital world, the interpretation of success is no longer linked primarily to efficiency, but to business agility. Enterprises need to seize the available digital opportunities in a rapidly changing business environment while acknowledging the needs of your technology-powered customers and acting quickly to successfully implement the digital strategy. At present, very few organizations are still operating through the hierarchical models, in which decisions are taken in a traditional top-down manner. Instead, organizations operating in the digital business orb have chosen loose hierarchies in which responsibility sits closer to the point of impact where each decision is felt. Also, enterprises are shifting the focus toward outcomes and away from the processes performed to achieve those outcomes.

Industry Trends

In order to succeed in this world of digital transformation, it is imperative that organizations must design a digitally connected and collaborative work atmosphere – or endure the risk of being left behind. Therefore, for the new digital workplace to thrive, it needs the employees to be equally aware. Employees have to start thinking on a new level in the non-physical world and see the enterprise as it should and could be, not only what it is currently. They should be cognizant of what has worked and has not worked in the digital world. Digital leaders also play a critical role in this as they need to be able to bestow confidence, build an environment of inclusiveness so that enterprises don’t fear to embark on new projects.

Since 2010, 13 million new jobs have been created, 30% of which requires high-level digital skills, which are filled with ease by millennials. Share on X

Accountability Is Key

While you are on your marks and ready to create your strategy, it is necessary that you clearly define the roles of everyone who are set to be a part of the project. Leadership and management roles are particularly significant to discuss. In order to be successful, the aim is to keep every employee on the same page when it comes to strategic decision making. This will help to check the project from stalling in case of organizational or leadership changes. By precisely defining roles and responsibilities, a detailed digital strategy will reduce the impact of these changes in the days to come. By making sure that everyone is on the same page and placing strong support for the cause, this can prove to be priceless and ensures that an approved strategy moves forward without any further delay.

Set Appropriate Calls to Action & Measure Your KPI’s

As always, original content plays a big role in any well-thought-out digital strategy. But great content will never be enough on its own. It is important that you always remember the actual reason for building your site – and it isn’t to just fill it with a copy. You must decide what the purpose of your site is and what the content you’re creating is meant to do. Where are you trying to drive your visitors? What do you want them to do? You should be able to answer these questions and then create effective calls-to-action (CTAs) to drive them home. You need to put them in a position where they can easily make a purchase, register or call once they visit your website.

Along with generating powerful CTAs, it is critical that you are prepared to consider which key performance indicators (KPIs) you wish to measure moving forward. Choosing these carefully will allow you to effectively demonstrate the value that your digital strategy is providing to your organization. Both time and energy should be committed to this step. Failure to do so will make attributing successes of future projects much harder than they need to be. The strategy developed, will need to be tailored to the goals of your business and these components should be considered while planning. By including them into your game plan, your digital strategy will be up and running in no time.

New Organization Goals in the Context of Digital / Long Term Vision

New organizational/enterprise models also need a new attitude toward leadership. Leaders of connected teams in agile organizations require skills such as negotiation, resilience, and systems thinking. At times, the most seasoned leaders and business unit heads may not be the best fits to take charge of digital, agile, connected teams. Effective leaders in a connected environment must have a high degree of network intelligence to catch the drift of their enterprise, the industry and throughout the customer marketplace.

As connected enterprises continue to emerge, new tools are starting to make collaboration simpler.  Google Team Drives, Atlassian Confluence, Facebook’s Workplace, Slack, Microsoft Skype, and hundreds of others are helping to expedite the transition to networks of teams. Nearly 75% of enterprises are now experimenting with these tools—and benefiting in novel ways. For example, the Museum of Applied Arts and Sciences (MAAS) in Sydney runs three venues: Sydney Observatory, the Powerhouse Museum, and the Museum’s Discovery Centre in Castle Hill. Jira, an agile management tool,  is used for all aspects of the project (MAAS) — facilities, staffing, security, PR, and marketing, as well as digital education. By using HipChat, an auto distributor in Maine monitors tire pressures and repair items in its warehouses.

With digital being ubiquitous 55% of employees felt they could be more informed and engaged if they could communicate using a mobile app Share on X

Short Term or Immediate Execution Plan

Take a moment to consider your target market. Odds are you are trying to reach a variety of consumers with diverse backgrounds, traits, and habits. Because of this, a one-size-fits-all strategic approach will do little to address the motivations driving each unique personality type.

Creating individual personas that describe your audience can help you make important decisions while building your strategy. Personas are an excellent way to identify the key target audiences you wish to attract while revealing specific goals for each one. The more research and effort you invest in defining your audiences, the more refined and effective your strategy will end up being. You should also consider performing a SWOT (strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, threats) analysis during this step.

How Digital Strategy Changes Internal Processes, Goals, and Priorities

To build the enterprise of the future, digital employees need “the capacity to find and delegate information to the right people without risking security. Unassuming communication with intelligent tools to support work processes will help to form teams quickly and work with networks outside their enterprise. A comprehensive, personalized and context-sensitive learning environment will build a fully functioning digital workplace and encourage employee engagement.  This is especially true if workers can access the digital workplace from different devices, which helps people work more efficiently on their own time. While the dimensions of space, capability, and intelligence are immersive and pervasive, this dimension helps to realize that the digital enterprise will embody more and more of what we need to do each day.

What Employees Can Do in Their Individual Capacity to Help in This Journey

The proliferation of information technology is revolutionizing the ways in which employees connect, communicate and collaborate.

This change accelerated over the last couple of years due to the development of three major trends:

  • Evolving workforce: With the baby boomers about to retire, experience is leaving the company, reinforcing the need to capture it. On the other hand, the new generation of workers are very IT savvy and expect to have pliant, easy to use tools just as they have in their individual lives
  • Data overload: while data is available and ever- growing at exponential rates, still  employees can’t find what they need, even with technological advancement
  • Need for speed: With the lively pace of today’s work environment, employees need to work faster and collaborate more productively to get their jobs done

Due to rapid workplace demographic changes, employers strive to meet the changing needs of a multi-generational workforce.  As the availability and use of the Internet and mobile devices grows, the pace of change continues to accelerate. These changes are further intensified by open-ended demands to increase productivity and cut costs, making it tougher for employees to meet market expectations. Together, these bearings are reshaping the work environment.

The goal of digital strategy is to create relevant foundations for digital business. This means creating an enterprise that can pursue to reinvent itself as necessary to keep up with changes in technology and customer expectations. Digital strategy should be visionary enough to carry enterprises through shifts in the digital economy, in a way that continues to bring a digital edge to the business.

Blog, Digital Transformation & Innovation

Why Speed Is Critical in Innovation

We talk about innovation at scale, but innovation at speed is just as important. Being able to innovate fast and cheap, test digital products and services in the market, perfect them, and deliver them on a regular basis, is, not surprisingly, a significant competitive advantage. And yet, there are far too many articles written, with regular frequency, that lament how enterprises move slowly, and fail to innovate at the right pace. Therefore, we figured a quick reminder of why speed is a critical aspect of innovation and will serve as an effective reminder that innovation is not just about new things, or about doing them in new ways, but also about doing them fast.

So why does speed matter at all, when it comes to innovation? Most of the answers below are common sense, but there might still be a surprise for you.

Benefits of Speed:

Improving speed to market leads to diverse financial and nonfinancial gains. Greater agility has the potential to boost gross sales and shareholder value. The financial gains are often directly measurable and hugely exceed the upfront costs of introducing speed-to-market strategies to the organization. Some examples of the benefits of speed are:

Faster Innovation:

If an enterprise innovates quickly, it naturally gains the first-mover advantage. The first-mover advantage typically results in gaining quick market share, a headstart on iterative improvement, and a significant window for building a moat around the business powered by the new innovation.

As enterprises learn to move fast, they often go into a virtuous cycle and see their growth accelerate further. This is essentially the culture of speed. As, innovation and efficiency increase, the competitive advantage for the fast enterprise becomes significant. No enterprise in any industry can expect to move forward with a slow culture; by purpose, entrepreneurship is all about moving forward and promoting innovation forward.

Source BCG Global Innovation Survey

Lower Research and Development Cost

Limited and focused iterations, streamlined processes, and decreased slack release financial and operating resources for other value-adding activities are the need of the hour. Enterprises need to diligently balance plans for more effective and better results. And the basic logic is simple: when you develop and launch an innovative product or service quickly, you also invariably reduce your pre-launch investment in it. Post-launch, if you have the right product-market fit, you can always invest more and refine your innovation further. But initially, keeping the cost low (by launching quickly) is a significant advantage, as it frees up your organizational resources to focus on other innovations, as well as on improving the just-launched innovation on the basis of real-world feedback.

Larger Market Share

A swift introduction also gives a product more time to increase its market share before it fades into being a commodity. A product that goes to market quickly is unlikely to face early competition. Brand leadership and loyalty are usually awarded to first-movers, but one must continue to evolve to avoid being overtaken by competitors.

While first-movers have the privilege of capturing undivided consumer mindshare, attention, and brand loyalty before competitors emerge on the scene. Let’s consider some real-life examples of the first-mover advantage. Here are a few of my favorites.

Through 2021, IDC predicts that Innovation Accelerator markets to grow by more than 18% Share on X

Kelloggs: James Caleb Jackson in 1863 is credited to have created the first Graham flour based cereal called Granula but it didn’t attract as much. It was shortly after, when surgeon John Harvey Kellogg made a similar kind of cereal, and named it granola, and debuted with his younger brother, that Corn Flakes with added sugar came into being. Thereafter they started mass-marketing their brand, which then really started to take off and they seized the first-mover advantage.

Let’s go down the memory lane – remember when Amazon sold only books? They were the first major online bookseller and a force in the reckoning, who rocked the longtime brick-and-mortar stalwarts like Barnes & Noble and Borders as they didn’t stand a chance. Borders group shuttered in 2011 and Barnes & Noble — Where Amazon’s Jeff Bezos used to have company meetings — has steadily seen share prices falling, revenue, layoffs, and store closures.

Ironically, Amazon has even overstepped on Barnes & Noble’s physical store center over the past few years. With fast shipping, an increasing number of Prime members, and incredibly low prices have placed Amazon to seemingly unbeatable market share and space.

With Kindle, Amazon knocked off Barnes & Noble by the punch again with their 2007 e-reader. Barnes & Noble answered them back with the Nook in 2007, but it was too late. While Nook initially peaked as a $933 million per year business, but, in 2016, they announced meagre earnings of just $146 million.

Two years of Kindle brand loyalty was able to overcome an initial market share grip by Barnes & Noble, which had lost $1.3 billion on Nook in the last six years.

Greater Forecasting accuracy

One of the biggest challenges that enterprises face is forecasting demand for new products over time. Exceed it, and risk warehouses full of excess inventory. Underestimate it, and your customers could leave empty-handed or you might be left with a huge bill for expedited delivery. Therefore with a shorter time frame between product design and product release, enterprises would be interested to take it to market.

Per IDC, market size of worldwide cloud system & services is $5.6 billion and is poised to grow at a CAGR of 24% for the period 2018–2023 Share on X

A case in point worthy of a mention: In a new study conducted by Van Mieghem and Doug Thomas of Penn State University, researchers partnered with Dell to analyze sales data from over a hundred of the company’s products. While companies count significantly on managers’ experience and market research, researchers observed that companies like Dell could use past data from previous products to better forecast accuracy on new products by as much as 9%. This essentially means millions of dollars of worth savings.

Design the system for Speed

From an innovation attitude, we can count on two aspects to speed: firstly the rate at which enterprises develop new products and services, and secondly the pace at which they deliver those products and services to market. Enterprises insist on one or the other; for example, innovation leaders emphasize development and fast followers concentrate on delivery. Therefore, enterprises who have designed their systems, structures, processes, and cultures for speed in either context tend to keep four things in common:  application of lean processes, prototyping, and iterations, with committed innovation staff, and follow the right metrics.

Conclusion:

Fast innovators have long manifested that by shortening the innovation and product development cycles and tapering the time to market can be a potent source of competitive advantage. However, with the increasing importance on speed, even enterprises that already operate on lean processes and are fast, infer that a new awareness is dawning: the need for speed is itself rising.

Blog, Digital Strategy, Technology, Weekly Insights

Top 15 Must Read Books On Digital Strategy

Must Reads Books On Digital Strategy

In an era of digital transformation where there’s information aplenty but lack of clarity on how to get started, a comprehensive description of changes it entails and technologies to get accustomed with, a list of tried and tested titles on the topic could be handy. Here’s a curated list targeted at such a segment

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#1 The Digital Transformation Playbook- Rethink Your Business for the Digital Age

David Rogers in this book has succinctly explained the effects of digital change on legacy business and innovators. He uses case histories and frameworks to explain the rationale that prompts us to adapt to the changing times, as it is the most important thing to do right now. This is a must-read for every executive out there.

#2 Driving Digital Strategy: A Guide to Reimagining Your Business 

Replete with rich, illuminating, compelling case studies and examples, Sunil Gupta presents a comprehensive guide to digital transformation. This is an excellent book for all executives who wish to generate a digital tailwind and stay relevant in the next decade with synthesized findings.  

#3 Digital Strategy: A Guide to Digital Business Transformation

Illustrated with stories of technology from the past, the current situation and what could it possibly be in the future, Alexander Rauser emphasizes digital transformation which is an ongoing process. He has addressed the problem head-on by placing a practical framework for a digital strategist and business to follow.

#4 Digital to the Core: Remastering Leadership for Your Industry, Your Enterprise, and Yourself

Every business model is getting upended due to technology. The rise in customer expectation is unparalleled and digital revolution has swept us off our feet. The authors make it a point to help us understand that never before have we grappled with such a number of significant changes at one time. This book provides excellent thought and frameworks to embark on this journey towards a sustainable digital business.  

#5 Digital or Death: Digital Transformation: The Only Choice for Business to Survive Smash and Conquer

A highly informative book on the world of digital strategy, with enough information to keep you motivated and inspired. Daniel Mazzone has the uncanny ability to make you think in ways that you have never done before. This is the go-to book for anyone who wishes to understand digital transformation and embed it in their enterprise.

#6 Strategy Beyond the Hockey Stick: People, Probabilities, and Big Moves to Beat the Odds

Inspiring insights and a genuinely fresh approach, this book surely tells you what it takes to beat the odds in the business. The collective trio present practical advice on the hard and soft side- a rare combo of data, social dynamics and human leadership for the organizations to attain the next level of performance.

#7 Goliath′s Revenge: How Established Companies Turn the Tables on Digital Disruptors

Digital disruption is the new normal and Goliath’s Revenge details how established enterprises and professionals with distinguished careers can start to recognize the unique advantages of their position. It guides you with practical steps on how you need to transform your company and adopt a new growth model. Definitely worth a read!

#8 Brave New Work: Are You Ready to Reinvent Your Organization?

By discerning the patterns of complex situations of a dysfunctional group or enterprise, Aaron Dignan asks us to live in the present and not look reflectively backward for answers. He offers an ennobling vision for the world of work. By embracing the human complexity in our enterprises, he shows us a new way of working with many styles and perspectives.

#9 Leading Digital: Turning Technology into Business Transformation

A book for all enterprises who want to master and increase revenue through digital-driven methodologies. It’s replete with real-life and tested frameworks ready to adapt. The authors believe that 94% of the business economy is still untapped and needs to become digital – and they show how to do it by featuring several traditional companies across industries that are successfully leading the digital transformation. This is a must-read for all digital readers who wish to transform their business.  

#10 The Innovator’s Dilemma: When New Technologies Cause Great Firms to Fail (Management of Innovation and Change) 

One of the best selling classics on innovation. Sharp, cogent and provocative, this book has been cited by the worlds best-known thought leaders. Showcasing both success and failures of leading enterprises, Christensen explains why most of them miss out in spite of doing everything right. The Innovator’s Dilemma is a read which no manager or leader could afford to miss.

#11 Innovator’s Solution: Creating and Sustaining Successful Growth

This is a seminal piece of work by bestselling author Clayton M Christensen & Michael Raynor. In the Innovator’s Solution, both the authors explain the idea of disruption in its new avatar. They emphasize how companies can and should become disruptors themselves. This book is an essential addition to any innovation library and an imperative read for entrepreneurs and business builders.

#12 Platform Revolution – How Networked Markets are Transforming the Economy and How to Make Them Work for You 

A thorough, provocative, and authoritative guide on the role of online platforms. Providing the first comprehensive framework for platform strategy foretelling probable winners and losers of future disruptions.

#13 Human + Machine: Reimagining Work in the Age of AI

This book gives an exceptional level of credibility and insight. A must-read for business managers who possess a reasonable level of know-how on AI but find the topic intimidating and confusing.

#14 The Fourth Industrial Revolution

In his book The Fourth Industrial Revolution, Prof. Schwab describes the key technologies driving this revolution, he considers the major impacts on governments, businesses, civil society, and individuals and offers critical ideas on what can be done to shape a better future for all.

#15 Optimizing digital strategy: How to Make Informed, Tactical Decisions that Deliver Growth

Christopher Bones’ Optimizing Digital Strategy explores the choices facing organizations in the rapidly changing world of technology-enabled business. From performance marketing through to personalization, on-demand retailing and AI, this book maps out commercial and customer-focused challenges and explains how leaders can get the most out of their digital strategies

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Blog, Digital Transformation & Innovation, Technology, Weekly Insights

Top 15 Tech News Websites That You Need to Follow in 2019

Tech news Website

In this age of modern technology, where gadgets and digital apps get created by the day, change is the only constant. In order to keep up with the latest, you need to always scan for new information, and soak up the latest news and insights. However, your time for all this is limited, and no one can possibly know or keep track of everything. Fortunately, there are a number of high-quality resources out there that give you all this information in a concise manner and are authoritative and reliable. Here, for example, is a great list of the best tech-related websites that you should absolutely bookmark right now.

#1 Mashable:

Mashable associates itself with not just tech but everything that is related to technology news: gadgets, science, culture, entertainment, business, and more. With plenty of rolling-in content, you would always be in the know of things when it comes to the latest tech news.

#2 The Verge:

The Verge does not limit itself to tech and is deeply diverse. Splitting their topics into various categories, it is the technology section where you would probably do most of your reading. With clearly segmented units, it’s an absolutely easy task to find the relevant content that you are interested to read be it anything from cars to techno-culture.

#3 TechCrunch:

Considered amongst the most popular and well-known sites for their high-quality information. Tech Crunch provides news for the latest gadgets to the most happening technology. Their specialty? Provide news on startups and related event launches, often exclusively. TechCrunch also is the leader when it comes to the online tech blog and media content.  

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    #4 Digital Trends:

    This is one of the largest repositories of technology, computer gaming devices, and lifestyle guides, packed with all sorts of information. Digital Trends cover tech news in a wide array of product categories. And, their standout section is the product reviews one, where they cover everything from earphones to camera etc.

    #5 Term Sheet:

    If you are interested in the finance side of tech, then this is surely the site to visit. Managed by Fortune, Term Sheet presents a daily dose of fundraising, venture capital deals, IPO’s and related industry information.

    #6 The Information:

    When you want The Information and want it deep, look no further, as this is the place to be. With their long-form content and thorough analysis, you are bound to get yourself immersed with a variety of information in the tech industry and be absolutely better informed than the rest.

    #7 The Next Web: 

    While this was actually launched to promote their own event that they were hosting, The Next Web soon became a hub for all sorts of technology news, events, conferences, deals, and even a market intelligence platform. Highly recommended as a must visit website for next-gen gadgets and other tech-related reading.

    #8 VentureBeat:

    Obsessed with covering amazing technology, VentureBeat has all the information that tech enthusiasts, entrepreneurs, and executives need. They are a bunch of devoted folks who provide exhaustive coverage when it comes to technology.

    #9 Wired:

    Almost a household name of sorts when it comes to technology news, Wired is the 3rd most popular media in the technology circles. It publishes helpful guides related to emerging technologies and how it impacts our lives. This is overall a very a well-organized site which delivers a lot of high-quality content for each section.

    #10 Gizmodo:

    With Gizmodo, there’s no shortage of tech- content. It is one of the best online portals for gadget freaks. Focusing mainly on news related to gadgets, guides, and tutorials, you are sure to find an honest opinion on whether a specific device is meriting enough or just hype.

    #11 MakeUseOf:

    Overwhelmed? Don’t be, anymore! MakeUseOf comes to your rescue by simplifying the otherwise confusing tech world. They describe themselves as the guide to modern tech, and they’re right: you can learn a lot by picking up a free ebook to choosing the best router or even how to use Snapchat effectively from their well laid out sections.

    #12 TechRadar:

    Want to know more about “How To” learn awesome tips and tricks to get more out of your tech gadgets. TechRadar is the site to watch out for. Touted as one of the best sources for tech buying advice, there is always plenty of news and reviews on TechRadar.

    #13 Business Insider: 

    A fast-growing deep business site with an emphasis on financial, media, tech and other industry verticals. Business Insider is a site that is followed by many entrepreneurs who are happy to share their knowledge of valuable lessons learned on various social channels.

    #14 Recode:

    Recode enjoys the lion’s share of well-informed and revered journalists in the technology and media space. It is one of the best sources for unbiased tech reviews and analysis. And when you want to read nothing but the best this is surely one of the top sites to visit.

    #15 Futurism: 

    If you enjoy reading about science and technology, then Futurism is the one for you. They have a range of topics starting with the future of humanity, to AI, virtual reality, and renewable energy. If you are a visual learner then Futurism infographics are the best to understand a complex technology which is presented in a lucid manner

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