Customer centric business models

Digital transformation is not about digitalising the existing business.

Companies that are doing this are not making the most of the digital revolution and won’t stay competitive in the long run.

The end goal should not be to digitise a company but to reinvent the business and deliver better products, services and cost efficiencies.

This will rely in large part on providing quality customer experience (CX) and matching the increasing demand for one consistent cross-channel experience.

Another point to note is that if end-users don’t respond positively then don’t continue on the wrong path. Most organisations don’t have the discipline to kill projects even when they should.

Successful organisations are likely to embed the mobile customer experience throughout every part of the organisation. They will reimagine products, services and processes in a mobile world, using lean UX to be faster and more agile.

This multi-channel challenge will be managed from products to services, and successful enterprises will conceive their IoT as customer centric.

The (new) year of data

There are so many inefficiencies in preparing, sharing and moving datasets multiple times to different data scientists/analysts across the business functions.

Big and small data insights will become increasingly important as companies search for a competitive advantage.

As a matter of fact, the majority of organisations we meet have invested in multiple tools but few actually use them for anything productive other than creating beautiful graphs and reports.

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Instead they should have started with the business problems they want to solve.

Successful data driven organisations use data to come up with new products and services, optimise the business and improve the customer experience.

In 2017 the focus will be on solving problems with data, while ensuring businesses have access to powerful analysis tools and can keep moving data to the cloud for easy access.

Creating relationships with data experts will expand industry knowledge on data governance and allow companies to operationalise their dark data that is currently ignored.

Wearables

DMI International will be the first to admit that for a long time it has questioned the mass market demand for wearables, at least until they solve real problems beyond tracking our fitness activities and showing time.

But the trend towards cheaper and smaller connected devices continues, opening up for more use cases as wearable tech become less obstructive and more discreet, not to mention more powerful.

As the computing power of these devices increases over 2017, niche items such as VR headsets, Snapchat spectacles and smart watches will see a rise in demand, and enterprises will need to consider these devices as points of contact with customers in their integrated communications strategies for 2017.

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That being said, the overall bottom line impact of wearables will still be relatively limited for most organisations, but there will continue to be a lot of media engagement and some great PR opportunities.

Cloud and data talent specialisation

In 2017, the fast development of new platform as a service cloud platforms and tools will facilitate many of today’s complex analysis challenges out of the box.

At the same time the speed makes it challenging for companies and generalist IT staff to keep up. Companies will have to look at their core business objectives and skills to make a judgment on their focus, relegating other activities to out-of-house specialists.

This trend is already visible in relation to cloud mobile app development, where companies that do not specialise are struggling to find the right combination between speed and future proof solutions.

The emergence of hybrid platforms that combine the best of native apps and web also lead to new complexities in skills. With the right approach cloud and hybrid apps can facilitate and expedite faster release schedules (as a part of DevOps programs) and transition away from legacy systems.

Innovation

Finally, 2017 is set to be a big year for innovation and there are a few areas of technology that you should keep an eye out for: AI assistants and Chatbots are set to become more useful; voice recognition will become commonplace; and novel monetary technologies such as blockchain, will grow ever more popular to manage digital IP, transactions of physical goods, security and privacy.

Transport technology is also likely to evolve following Tesla’s highly publicised smart-car releases.

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Already, some Tesla cars receive a monthly update to their operating systems and the next step in this evolution would be to allow third party developers to provide modular updates and improvements.

Understanding the best way to follow these trends will allow companies to reap the benefits of digital transformation without suffering through the adaptation period that is an area for concern for many executives.

While many of the points detailed above are not ‘new’ technologies in the strictest sense of the word, they are reaching a critical velocity in their development and can contribute to the success of organisations in 2017.

Sourced by Magnus Jern, president DMI International