As businesses continue to digitize, business models continue to change. Using the UAE as an example, Mark Ackerman, Area VP, Middle East and Africa, ServiceNow, tells us how businesses adapt and use digital operating models to drive growth.
As countries in the Arab Gulf, such as the UAE, look forward to their 5G future, they are preparing to write a new chapter of the fourth Industrial Revolution. Real-time insights from data lakes will soon become standard, as companies remove old information in siloes and homogenize the enterprise view for all decision makers.
Across the region, the pandemic has forced digital experiments and feasibility studies to quickly march into live service. Beyond the remote-work tools and other collaboration platforms used for Business Continuity, businesses have made lemonade from the lemons of COVID-19, addressing the need for cloud migration and making it a series of positives. They streamlined operations, re-invented business models and they created a rich new digital experience for customers and employees.
As the pandemic lasted, examples of hard-hit industries re-inventing themselves penetrated the region. Emirates Flight Catering, faced with an idle workforce and possible layoffs, has created an online ecommerce portal to deliver its food to the doorsteps of land -based consumers. The new brand, called FoodCraft, keeps employees employed and allowed Emirates Flight Catering to weather the economic storm.
The importance of agility
Meanwhile, GCC governments have used their digitized services to create a series of effective workflows. The UAE government, for example, maintains an eager public awareness, manages locks and runs one of the most successful vaccination programs in the world. Most of this – like many of the other stories of change caused by the region’s pandemic – is achieved through automated workflows, with due attention being paid to customer and employee experiences.
Success, in the next stage of the digital journey, will require more business agility. Our new digital operating models require new metrics that capture events such as renewals, customer interaction results and adoption. Our ability to succeed depends on three factors: understanding the customer, making life comfortable for them and letting them know that we understand them as an individual.
For example, in the BFSI sector, institutions possess vast stores of historical, personal, and transactional information that they can use to understand behavior and predict the volume and outcome of future transactions. They have the scale to build service models that automate the mundane and empower employees to handle more complex customer queries. And they have a way to deliver these services through multiple channels – social, voice, app and more. This means more convenience for customers. The information will also be used to personalize experiences, allowing tellers and investment advisors to suggest other products that are relevant and useful. This greatly enhances the experience for the customer and builds brand loyalty.
Measure everything
All industries can see change in common metrics. Now, information about new customers, their interactions and their transactions must be unified into touchpoints and channels-instore, app, social and more. Sales are revenue, wherever it occurs or how. And in order to individualize the customer experience and keep it consistent, all non-selling interactions need to be captured, even (and perhaps especially) if they don’t lead to a purchase. Monthly active users on apps, engagement scores from surveys, renewal rates, adoption rates and gross and net retention rates-these are the lines on today’s scorecards.
As the region continues its return to economic stability, employee experience will play a larger part in the company’s strategy. Talent shortages can hinder recovery as can a lack of customers. Well -trained, adequate equipment will keep consumers coming back for more. They will be driven away by uninformed and uninformed employees. Mobile, virtual agents, live chat and social media platforms all need to be used to ensure that employees can connect with customers however and whenever customers want to connect. Chatbots will play a very important role in maintaining human intelligence for issues that require it, and thus enhance customer and employee experiences.
When workflows are digitized to this extent, it becomes easier to track every element of the experience. What do customers do before a sale? What did they do then? How often do they use the product or service? Obtaining this information could allow digital businesses to gain other metrics, such as the likelihood of subscription renewals.
Rise from the ashes
A digital economy has emerged to complement our digital lifestyles. Information, products and services are no longer confined to tight geographical radii. And this is true for industries beyond retail and media. Banks can advise customers around the world at any time, day or night. Telecom providers, as always, form the backbone of our global communications, but even they can vary to provide a range of services for other dominant businesses.
Modern business challenges require modern metrics. With the right information in their hands, regional innovators can rise from the ash pandemic stronger than ever. Not only will they be more stable when the next crisis comes, but they will thrive in the meantime through digital operating models that connect people, data and processes together in an experiential ecosystem powered by real-time solutions. insight.
Economic experience is not created by invention. It emerged in response to events. A more demanding consumer base of digital natives; a workforce made up of both consumers, who rely on flexibility and empowerment; and a pandemic that dialed these factors up to unprecedented intensity. But make no mistake, regional businesses can meet these challenges by becoming more digital and allowing data to guide them to better experiences and more rewarding results.
Click below to share this article