Rapid advancements in technology and digital transformation have revolutionised customer behaviour and company operations. To keep pace with customer demands, expectations and needs enterprises are now rushing to leverage cloud, analytics, machine learning, artificial intelligence and blockchain solutions, creating a complex digital ecosystem that becomes increasingly difficult to manage and develop.
Yet, despite the state of the art technology they’re using, many companies are still facing numerous issues and challenges in delivering a flawless, seamless user experience that increases customer satisfaction and drives employee productivity and efficiency.
Why is it so difficult for companies to leverage the full potential of their digital ecosystem?
In a world where companies have lost count of the digital tools, solutions and platforms they have integrated in order to increase efficiency and deliver a high quality customer experience, finding the one cog in this complex ecosystem that doesn’t work properly but is affecting the entire network, is a massive challenge most companies don’t know how to tackle.
The answer lies with human experience analytics
The main problem stems from the fact that businesses have rushed to acquire and deploy the latest technology but no one looked deeper to see how all these new technologies fit into the wider puzzle of organisational performance and productivity.
Related: Accelerating digital transformation with effective data infrastructure – A clear digital transformation strategy supported by a robust data infrastructure consisting of the right technology is necessary to allow collaboration and smooth workflows
So what do you do when your digital infrastructure is failing but you can’t figure out where the problem lies?
The answer lies with human experience analytics
Nowadays companies leverage the power of analytics for almost every aspect of the business – for risk management, to assess new business opportunities, for marketing insights to boost customer acquisition and retention and to drive company culture and employee engagement.
Most companies with extensive digital services that involve complicated networks, data centres, applications and solutions use analytics to monitor their digital ecosystem and ensure it functions within the desired parameters. However, these analytics tools only look at engineering performance.
No one really looks deeper to see how all these new technologies fit into the wider puzzle of organisational performance, employee productivity and human experience.
See also: Gartner – top 10 data and analytics technology trends for 2019 – Augmented analytics, continuous intelligence and explainable artificial intelligence (AI) are among the top trends in data and analytics technology, according to Gartner
No one truly understands how humans, employees and customers alike are really interacting with this complex ecosystem that grows by the day.
‘What are the technological roadblocks that hamper efficiency, high performance and seamless customer experience?’ is a question most IT specialists can’t provide a clear answer for.
Otherwise it’s just guesswork and looking for a needle in a haystack.
To provide an answer to this question is difficult because on the one hand a lot of the integrated systems, tools and networks are outsourced to third party providers and therefore are outside of the CIO’s direct control. On the other hand, most IT professionals focus on the technical performance of systems and not on the end user’s experience with the final product or service.
Senior IT professionals have to focus on the human experience to fully understand the intricacies of a sophisticated digital ecosystem and how it affects user experience both inside and outside the enterprise.
Otherwise it’s just guesswork and looking for a needle in a haystack.
But guesswork is time consuming and resource intensive and can significantly jeopardise business success or even a company’s survival. As a result IT departments are under huge pressure to understand, find and solve the issues in the shortest time possible.
To do this IT professionals need to take a different approach and use an analytics solution that doesn’t focus on engineering parameters but on how real users interact with the digital services.
CIOs can now use smart analytics tools that cut through the complexity of the digital ecosystem and are able to analyse the system through the human experience lens. Only in this way can they uncover why the company’s digital infrastructure is underperforming and correlate it with the effect on user experience.
Thankfully today’s analytics tools can perform millions of calculations per minute and uncover the cause of any technical bad behaviour in a very short amount of time.
As a result IT departments can quickly address any issues and ensure the company is providing a high quality user experience both internally and externally, boosting productivity, improving brand reputation and ultimately increasing business profitability.
In today’s business environment a high quality digital experience is essential to revenue growth and market relevance. To deliver on customers’ and employees’ needs and expectations companies need an underlying digital ecosystem that is as efficient as possible and runs at its full potential.
Even if companies have invested huge budgets in creating high performance digital infrastructures, if they can’t understand how it affects human experience and interaction with their digital services it will never deliver the expected business outcomes.
Technology has become a critical element to any business development plan, and senior IT leaders need to understand that it is constantly evolving and shifting. As a result, if they want to deliver flawless services they need to constantly assess the digital ecosystem under their care, monitor it and configure it to ensure they’re serving internal and external customers in the best possible way.
Written by Dave Page, co-founder and CEO of Actual Experience
