Customer World

Recently, I had a chat with Kate Visconti, Managing Director of  Acumen Solutions, USA who takes care of the Sales Acceleration and Change Management Practice. She is also an Adjunct Professor with Santa Clara University, USA. It was an interesting & engaging conversation and here are the highlights of the discussion.

What was interesting to me was the points she made for successful adoption of technology in an enterprise - the importance of business process re-engineeering, change management as much the software or technology selection & upgrade itself and looking at the implementation itself thro' a customer lens.

I have believed for many years that these were the most critical aspects when it comes successful technology adoption & usage and often enough importance & attention is not paid within the organization and the stake holders to this area. Kate brought this out beautifully and reinforced this very well during our conversation.

Here is the summary of our chat:

Swami: How do you approach a technology implementation and what do you believe are key differences that you or your organization focuses on?

Kate: We always start any technology implementation with a first principle approach - how is the enterprise and their stakeholders currently thinking, feeling and doing with their workflow right now. We strongly focus on process innovation and not a run-of-the-mill implementation like other system integrators. We conduct multi-day workshops, build customer personas, enable collaborative  conversations across cross-functional groups to understand current issues and identify opportunities for optimization and automation. For us change management is as much important as the technology implementation itself. That's a key difference we believe we bring to the table & where I have seen successful technology transformation happen. 

Swami: When it comes to selecting or shortlisting technology platforms or software etc. and adopting technology across the organization, which are areas that are normally missed by them in your experience?

Kate: Most of them don't have an 'outside-in' approach and we bring that to play when we work with organizations. When a tech platform or software is selected, there is a lot of discussion on features, benefits etc. but very often during implementation, they don't see the technology from a customer's lens. We do a lot of shadowing to know how the current processes work, do customer research, customer experience benchmarking and often these are areas that are not often not given enough attention or missed most often.

Swami: Enterprises spend millions of dollars on acquiring licenses for tech & software and you have seen many successful technology implementations, adoption and transformation across enterprises, what do you believe is the secret sauce for their success?

Kate: What I have seen in enterprises where there have been successful technology transformation or adoption is that if there is an Engaged Executive Sponsor, the chances of success improve by at least 2 times! An engaged leadership committee which defines the vision & organizational priorities makes the next difference in the success as the technology road map, business outcomes and priorities get defined well. Engaged Stakeholders make the next difference - end-users, managers, executives, customers as they influence adoption and validate user experience across the enterprise. These I believe are the secret sauce to success and where I have seen this happen in organizations, things have been successful most of the time.

Swami: You also emphasize a lot on hand-holding the enterprises which your organization does after you implement the technology or software. That's a very interesting point that you make and in fact what kind of metrices do you track and for how long do you suggest one must do this?

Kate: I normally suggest we do this for 60-90 days ramp cycle depending on the scale and complexity of the project and implementation. We track a lot of metrices post implementation like:

1. Project Success - Both by way of budget and time
2. Adoption -  Quality of inputs that go into using the software or technology within the enterprise after roll-out - Timeliness, Completeness of the information, Not just no. of log-ins but demonstration of new user benefits and referrals etc.
3. Business before vs Business After - Benchmarking and looking at % increase in agreed business metrics, % decrease in, say, sales cycle or service cycle reduction etc.

These are some of the sample key metrices one should look at.

Swami: There is often an underestimation of the services costs which enterprises need to spend to make the technology transformation successful. There is a lot of focus on licenses fees, infra needed, maintenance & renewal fees etc. but much less attention is paid to services & costs associated with it. Right?

Kate: I totally agree with you, Swami. In my estimate, these may vary by project scope, complexity and these are directional just to give you a perspective that enterprises need to factor these services cost for a successful technology transformation - up to 30-40% factor for change management, engaged leadership, customer research, building alignment workshops, post implementation program adoption costs etc. These are over and above license fees and customization costs they would incur during the course of a 3-4 year project or program.

Swami: I saw that right at the start of our chat, you mentioned don't treat it like an IT project. What did you mean by that? 

Kate: I often quote from the point made by Forrester Research Chairman and Chief Executive Officer George Colony made on technology projects, that in this age it is transforming from IT projects to Business Technology projects thinking. This is a key difference to successful technology selection, implementation, adoption and usage. I also say - Don't treat it like an IT project but treat it like a customer project!

I was reading an interesting update on Forrester Marketing 2016, where companies & marketers were asked to take cognizance of micromoments. I don't disagree fundamentally with this theory but I was thinking how do marketers prepare & adapt to this new paradigm.

One of the top questions that came to my head was - How do marketers really identify these micromoments? In an increasingly walled garden world of Facebook, Google, Twitter, Amazon- many customers' micromoments are happening, as I write this, in different digital platforms independently. Not only that, there are ever so many billion micromoments that happen offline in a customers' life and how do marketers make sense of it?

My premise is that it is now increasingly becoming  O2O(Offline-to-Online & Vice-versa) world, marketers need to look at this very differently. Here's my view of how this should be looked at:

Intent-driven micromoments - Some digital platforms naturally fit into intent-driven micromoments. For example, Google is a great example of a digital platform where "billions of intents" are searched by customers. People don't search for a product, they search for a need.They can be searching for a home, for a restaurant, for a car, for a college education, for naming a baby to be born, comparing a product to be bought, for a holiday etc. etc. In a customer's buying cycle - the trigger, consider & search- happens here. Marketers need to find a way of dominating "intent-share" at these micromoments.

Sharing-driven micromoments - Google, as a platform, does not naturally fit into this micromoment as customers don't share their moments there. A digital platform like Facebook fits here far more beautifully & perfectly. It is not difficult to see people sharing their convocation photos during the current season, their holiday, their child's birthday, their family get-together etc. etc. Sharing-driven moments provide opportunities for marketers to blend brands with their customer's life needs and see how they can be a part of these different micromoments. Marketers need to find ways of dominating "sharing-driven moments" & align it with their brand's storytelling.

Experience-driven micromoments - Some digital platforms like Twitter, Facebook, blogs fall here as customers share their experience - good and bad - here. For example, tweeting about poor govt. services is becoming a norm and governments globally are encouraging this. The same is with product performance, customer service, product support etc. where again experiences are largely drive this micromoment and is shared with world outside.  This micromoment can be a new business opportunity for a competing brand and retention opportunity for the incumbent brand. Again, marketers need to find ways of dominating "experience-share" micromoments.

The above are largely only online micromoments but as a marketer, one needs to find offline micromoments, which they can own,  that are contextual in the households they have been bought again & again. Be it thro' embedded IoT & other "service-led" mindset transformation platforms, marketers need to find new solutions here. 

Finally, in this battle for the customer & the micromoment, the other question to be asked is, who owns the data of the micromoment & privacy related issues need to be addressed very carefully by marketers. Doc Searls, in his book talks of intent casting,  where customers play a role in sharing their intent and brands then need to play a reverse role of fulfilling the micromoment.

Managing the customer micromoment is far more complex & deep than one can think of. And marketers need to rapidly innovate to gain share of this micromoment in their customer's life thro' relevant platforms and contextual marketing.

In the recent past, i had written saying that we will move in the near future from "search" engines to "do" engines. Looks like Eric Schimdt recently has been talking about serendipity engines as the future. 

Forrester writes about this.

As you look into the future, the distinction between “search” and “discovery” gets muddy.  While it sounds like science fiction to suggest that technology can help search for things you don’t even yet know you want, the opportunities to improve human discovery are very real.  Combining a person’s context—where they are, who they’re with—with their past opinions and actions and the opinions and actions of others can create tremendous value and relevance.

Imagine you’re someone who has positively rated Mexican restaurants in the past.  As you drive through town around lunchtime, your device alerts you to a well-rated Mexican restaurant that is nearby and likely to suit your tastes.  This information may not be welcome at 8 a.m. or 2 p.m., nor would it be welcome to someone who hasn’t expressed an affinity for Mexican food.  It is the combination of social media, individual preferences and context that creates the opportunity for proactive discovery rather than reactive search.

This isn’t about opening your Yelp application on your smartphone and seeing the same search results as everyone else; it’s about having hardware and software that intuits and presents the things you really care about.  There are already examples of simple "Serendipity Engines" available, such as Netflix's rating system—the more movies you rate, the better the recommendations you'll receive.

What is exciting about this future is the continued progress toward empowering consumers. 

How will this evolve over the next few years will be interesting to track. Service & solution providers will need to build and integrate their development around these trends.