Forrester’s Stephen Power spoke about transforming digital strategy. Stephen is Vice President at Forrester and covers the Digital Experience market. He started by talking about the age of the customer and how we got to this point (customer centricity per Gary Dolsen). Preceding the age of the customer was Age of Manufacturing, Age of Distribution and the Age of iInformation. Starting in 2010, he suggests that the Age of Customer started.
Complexity is increasing in the Age of the Customer because of the multi-channel requirements increasing and shifting rapidly.
Business Technology is the term he uses instead of Information Technology because the focus is on business results rather than just information. He predicts that budgets for business technology will surpass information technology in 2016.
With this shift to BT, digital experiences must adapt. Here are three points he talked about with regards to digital experience transformation:
- Focus on the customer lifecycle, not just customer acquisition. Switching costs for customers are lower in the digital world so they are more willing to move if they are not taken care of during their lifecycle with you. Ree
- Reexamine the technologies and investments for the new digital experiences. You may end up with overlapping technologies and have to rationalize which ones to keep and which to retire.
- Don’t just manage your data – leverage it. Use demographics, historical and situational data to contextualize your experience. Predictive analytics is a key future capability.
Transforming your digital strategy is not about perfection, its about progression. As you build out new strategies, keep in mind the need to be flexible because the Age of Customer is just beginning. There will be a lot of changes as the market responds, adapts and changes to customers.
