The Era of Digital

In today’s world, everything needs to be “digital”. Organizations across industries are fighting the marketing space to prove that they are more “digital” than their competitor. However, the definition of “digital” is still unclear for most leaders.

If one looks at the history of this digital revolution, it started in 1947 with the creation of the transistor. Digital Revolution, therefore, began its journey with the transformation of mechanical technology to electronics.

Since then, over the next seven decades, we have seen the revolution intensifying. The launch of the computer, internet, saw the world becoming smaller and getting more connected.

Today, technology is advancing at a raging pace, enabling innovations and disruptions in all industries. I know a lot of people will relate to the music playing cassette and the Sony Walkman. In the age and era when we were moving into teens, the ability to reproduce content and play it was introduced. It still required a lot of manual effort to store and copy. Over time, we saw i-pods and mp3 players reducing music to mere files that can be played everywhere.

Telegrams introduced a fast method of communication. One could send a birthday greeting to a friend or a relative ensuring it will reach them on time through this mode. It was automated to an extent that you only needed to feed in the code for such greetings.

Then came the telephone. The black dialing instrument that allowed you to connect to anyone in the same city using 3 digits. Today’s generation does not understand the phone without it being “smart”

Several such examples exist of how technology has moved us closer to each other. From anywhere printing, to switching on lights from a phone, we are very comfortable in this connected ecosystem.

Yet, leaders, struggle to define their “digital” strategy. For a long time, being digital, meant having other accessibility channels for the customer. Retail outlets opened launched their web-stores, banks launched anytime banking through the internet. Progression on these came with the apps on the mobile technologies. Business around the globe are still adopting these “digital” methodologies.

Yet, is this enough and is more needed. Very simply put Digital is about two aspects:

a.      Improving the speed of operations. Businesses need to automate everything that is “mechanical”. Which means that if the same job is being done more than once in a specified period of time, it needs to be executed through the use of technology. Businesses have outages and need to make their web-stores inaccessible to their customers. Loyalty is fading from the customer value system. Speed of response, immediate availability and accessibility and key to retain customers.

b.     Improving customer experience. This aspect is about the value-add that you bring to your customer. Is the experience you offer simple, easy, complete and “intuitive”

Today, facilitating Digital outcomes, is supported by in-numerous technologies. One can automate using various technologies available, develop and deploy BOTs that can, not just automate, but intelligently process data. Availability of data is high and drawing insights from that to significantly increase customer experience and pleasure. Several BI techniques exits that allow organizations to do simple drilling into data to very complex insights that could be needed. I read this in another article and thought it was very relevant to digital - Identifying where the bottlenecks lie, how each party is motivated to respond, and seeking to shape both incentives and the value loop itself puts companies more in control of their destinies.

So what are the reasons for customer experience not improving on a periodic basis. To my mind, the workforce of today is stuck in the era of yesterday. When my generation joined the business domains, concentration was on hard-work, on getting things done and creating value. There was a huge emphasis companies put at that time, to simply create business outcomes. Business grew at exponential pace at that time. Once the growth rates stabilized, focus moved to margins and then it was all about cost optimization. Reducing cost of labor meant creation of the services business.

Today, the consumers demand creativity. Take any industry or business, the consumers always want to see what’s the difference, the company’s product or business is brings to their lives. No industry is now spared to this brutal reality. You name the industry and we have enough examples available. Telecom, Banking, Healthcare, Retail, etc. are all subjected to this. Even the HR groups of organizations today need to ensure they are relevant for the millennia by providing them the digital experience that keeps employees hooked to them. This is the bottleneck. We need to groom ourselves and our work force to remain relevant for the changing times. BOTs will eventually replace low cost jobs, Automation and Digitization will have an impact on jobs that could earlier be done by putting “bodies” for execution. Switching to minds is necessary – are we ready……