Pioneering digital TRANSFORMATION for business success!
We are all aware that companies like Uber, Netflix, and AirBnB are disrupting traditional industries and introducing a new way of doing business and engaging with customers. Leading edge organizations are embracing it to their advantage while those who are slow to adopt are being left behind in business gains. Are you among those leading organizations or one who is baffled by this digital economy? When you think “Digital”, what comes to your mind? ? Is it something you can visualize? Do you think it means having a mobile app? Or is it a "big data” solution? Does it mean you have to adopt IoT or learn to use wearables for enterprises?
Today, I would like to demystify the word “digital” so that you can easily adopt it in your organization and obtain that competitive advantage.
A successful digital enterprise pivots on 3 critical areas:
1. Customer experience 2. Innovative products and 3. Data-driven decisions Customer Experience can mean a lot of things. Making your website user-friendly, engaging customers on social media and ensuring that information can be obtained by customers at their fingertips are some of the things encompassing it. To break it down into easy implementable steps, follow a phased approach: 1. Ensure that your website is user-friendly on PCs, Smartphones and Tablet devices. 2. Engage with customers 24/7 by having an amazing social media strategy and 3. Introduce a Mobile App for high-engagement value.
I am sure we all remember taking the #IceBucketChallenge to support ALS. What a worldwide phenomenon it had become! It was started by a single individual suffering from the disease and it gained so much momentum that the ALS Association had to make it official. The campaign raised around $115 million in donations and was shared by 1.2 million people on Facebook and 2.2 million on twitter. This is a perfect example of how a social media campaign can produce immense benefits. The goal of a good social media strategy is to clearly establish brand awareness, drive traffic which increases conversion rates leading to revenue increments. You should also excel at personalized messages instead of mass communications.
In the case of a Mobile app, no one has done it better than Walgreens. Walgreen introduced their mobile app for healthy choices initiative. Using the principle of habit forming to ensure that customers lead a healthy lifestyle as well as to use the product purchased. Alex Gourlay, EVP of Walgreens says "Walgreens now has 82 million active members in its Balance Rewards Program. What began as a typical retail consumer rewards program has grown into a BJ Fogg-inspired behavior change platform that promotes both healthy activity and tracking and recording health information.”
Another good example of Mobile App success is the Starbucks App. It became a blockbuster with more than 12 million downloads. https://www.youtube.com/watch?t=11&v=BlQDttTWM6o Super handy payment option is a key feature for the app: customers use their smartphones to pay for Starbucks orders about 7 million times per week — nearly 16% of total transactions. That’s how Starbucks app has become the customer’s perfect companion and makes buying drinks at Starbucks faster and easier. “I'm going to spend a ton of money making sure that everything we do is compelling on mobile devices. If we don't do that, I do think that we will fail. ”Ray Voelker, CIO at Progressive Insurance
Speaking of innovative products, who would think of John Deere as an epitome of innovation. But the company's new agricultural equipment is capable of planting the best seed in the best sub-inch of land available -- without a human operator -- is changing that perception. They are combining a big data solutions and are early adopters in precision agriculture and predictive analytics, and now, they also integrate with the Climate cloud. This ties back to the initiative of how big data is going to help feed nine billion people by 2050.Clearly an example of not only getting business gains using innovation but solving one of the world’s fundamental problems in obtaining food.
The third item on this list should be how to get to data-driven decision making?
At $18.7 billion biotechnology company Amgen, the digital enterprise simply means an organization that can reach its customers in digital ways. Amgen's customers are changing. Technologies like electronic health records, wearable health-monitoring devices and cloud computing are "creating an opportunity for a company like Amgen to participate directly in that patient/physician and payer space that didn't necessarily exist for us five years ago," says Diana McKenzie, CIO at Amgen. Amgen has vast clinical trial databases and thinks combining that data with real-world data from electronic health records, then applying mathematical models, may help caregivers predict how a patient will react to different treatments.
This is an excellent example of using data to change the lives of people and get ahead of your competition.
In conclusion, your digital strategy must include Customer experience with good social media strategy, adopting Mobile Applications for increasing revenue, innovative products to stay ahead of competition and finally utilizing data and analytics to deliver great results.