Industries are being shaped by the dramatic shift in customer expectations. Companies such as Uber, Square and Amazon have created and disrupted markets by understanding the power of simple, personalised, quick transactions done anytime anywhere.
Even fast-food companies such as McDonald’s and Taco Bell are reinventing “fast” by investing significantly in mobile order-ahead and delivery services.
Ultimately, these consumer expectations and the power of quick, personalised, contextual transactions will also shape how businesses run. If it takes a minute to get a cab, book a room or make a purchase, it should be just as quick for employees to complete an essential task at work.
Companies that can harness the power of the new consumer experience for business tasks will realise huge workforce productivity gains, accelerate processes, and ultimately deliver superior goods and services to their customers
It’s critical to understand that what powers customer experience is the speed and effectiveness your employees can deliver it. Companies that can harness the power of the new consumer experience for business tasks will realise huge workforce productivity gains, accelerate processes, and ultimately deliver superior goods and services to their customers – and compete in the market.
Delivering a consumer-like experience for the workforce, however, is far easier for new companies than for large, established enterprises. While enterprises have market traction and an established customer base, the average enterprise has more than 700 business applications, making it very challenging to deliver a productive, personalised way to work for each employee.
The very systems, processes and workforce that give these companies might and scale make it difficult for them to be nimble and adapt to change. In contrast, newer companies, unburdened by existing processes, legacy systems and a large workforce, can deliver employee-centric solutions quickly and keep pace with consumers’ changing needs.
This isn’t stopping some market leaders from transforming how they deliver products and services to their customers. Disney, the “mother of experience”, is betting $1 billion on mobile and wearable technology that will enable park employees, restaurant hosts, greeters and kitchen staff to power a high-touch personalised experience, and make it easy to buy throughout the Magic Kingdom. Among other things, restaurant visitors will be able to be greeted by name, order food at their seats and have the food magically arrive at their table.
Facing competition from the likes of Amazon and Google Express, Home Depot plans on spending at least $300 million on supply chain, technology and online improvements, including building new fulfilment centres and overhauling its warehouse technology systems to enable its employees to operate at the speed of mobile. The initiative is aimed at boosting online and mobile revenues by offering same-day delivery for customers and contractors, who might be in the midst of a home improvement project and need dry-wall, tiles or nails in a matter of hours.
When DirecTV needed to enhance first-time customer experience, they focused on minimising the time their 7,000 field technicians spend in customers’ homes during activations. Rather than have technicians dial into a call centre to activate the set-top box, DirecTV enabled the technician to manage the entire activation process on their mobile device using an app by Capriza. This not only eliminated 20 minutes from the activation experience, but also dramatically lowered their call centre costs.
Networking hardware manufacturer Brocade faced a different supply chain challenge: the company’s $500-million annual procurement budget was negatively impacted by lengthy purchase approval cycles. Equipping managers with a Capriza app that enabled them to approve purchase requests from Oracle EBS immediately from their smartphones, Brocade saw a 90 per cent improvement to cycle times.
The challenge facing companies such as DirectTV and Brocade is their large workforce relies on existing processes that leverage legacy systems, making it difficult to deliver on the new expectations of the modern customer. Because these business applications are complex, customised and interconnected, they are almost impossible to personalise and simplify, let alone mobilise, without a considerable amount of retooling.
At Capriza we have helped numerous companies modernise by simplifying and mobilising their business applications (SAP, Oracle, PeopleSoft, Salesforce, custom-built and so on) without any business disruption. All this involves no upgrades, no hiring, no changes to existing infrastructure or security. The Capriza solution helps deliver these easily, in just days and without the usual cost and complexity we have come to expect. The result is intuitive, contextual experiences that deliver a productive, personalised way to work for each employee. If you can deliver on that simple contextual experience for your employees, they will be able to deliver on that experience for your customers.
