How Artificial Intelligence is Changing Business Forever

January 27, 2021 by Rohit Leave a Comment

The world around us is changing very fast, industries are transforming, and small companies are slowly capturing the market with innovations. Robotics and artificial intelligence have faded the business’s word monopoly, and anyone with an innovative solution and right approach can establish their brand in the market.

Importance of AI

Artificial intelligence is becoming more diverse as it provides businesses the ability to analyze the data, fraud detection, improving customer satisfaction, and building relationships. Companies are getting an edge over others and serving their customers even better than ever before. AI is providing solutions to complex human problems with the help of algorithms in a computer-friendly way.

Advanced ML and AI are now actively implementing businesses and industries as robots, self-driven cars, consumer electronics, and an application to improve business processes, products, and services. In the upcoming years, most business processes will be automated, and human efforts will be put into creative aspects of the business, such as brainstorming, innovating, and researching. AI-based apps allow business leaders to focus on business growth & save time by automating common business processes.

However, experts have made many AI predictions and how it is going to shape the business forever. Here are some of the business areas where AI has proved its worth and changed the way businesses used to operate.

Market & Customer Insights

Artificial intelligence is helping businesses to analyze market trends and customer insights. Data collected from system to web matrix and social media can be used in the predictive analysis to enhance customer satisfaction and build a better product. AI provides opportunities for start-ups to adopt different thought processes and search for innovative solutions for business growth. Businesses are optimizing marketing strategies, and AI helps them opt for effective marketing tools to target potential customers and eliminate unlikely customers. Social media has emerged as one of the greatest mediums for getting customer insights, and most businesses are using these platforms to connect with customers. Artificial intelligence effectively understands social media trends, and data mining allows AI to analyze different types of social media traffic. This will enable businesses to adapt to the changing market scenario and continually improve business performance.

Virtual Assistance

Virtual assistants and AI chatbots are becoming important tools for businesses to connect with customers and provide 24/7 chat support and customer service. Many companies have already added these to their website, and others plan to use artificial intelligence for virtual assistance. Many businesses are still skeptical about the idea of the customer speaking with the machine, but still, there is a potential for machine-driven aid with human-driven customer service. E-commerce industries are using AI chatbots to answer simple questions, while human-driven customer support can solve complex service issues. Chatbots and virtual assistance provide 24/7 interaction with potential buyers that is not that easy & effective to achieve with human-driven customer support. There is no doubt that next decade virtual assistants and AI chatbots will become an integral part of customer service. More companies are going to focus on improving and enhancing customer service.

Efficient sales process

AI has changed the old sales technique and moved businesses from cold calling and long emails to customers. Social media platforms like Facebook, Instagram, print media, and TV commercials are becoming effective tools to connect with new and old customers. Artificial intelligence helps businesses adopt an innovative and effective sales approach to connect with the right customer on the right platform. AI helps sales teams know their customers better and offer tailored offers to convert a potential lead into sales. E-commerce platforms are using AI for conducting online surveys, asking questions to understand customer’s preferences. This enables these platforms to show products that are the best fit for a customer, increasing the chance of a conversion. AI has transformed and made the sales process efficient where customers are offered tailored solutions. Better conversion rates and getting customer insights are some of the major benefits of AI that help improve sales and serve them better.

Data Unlocking

Earlier businesses are generating relatively less data, which is easy to store databases in a structured way and also analyze it. Having fewer data to explore makes it easier for business leaders to give valuable insights from the collected data for business. But now, the entire business scenario has changed. With so much data from different resources, it isn’t easy to understand and categorize whole data in a structured way. Most of the business data from the digital platforms are unstructured that makes it hard to analyze. In the upcoming years, a business challenge is to effectively analyze this unstructured data and use it to take their business to the next level.

AI helps organizations in data unlocking and provides businesses with opportunities to offer well-structured data and analyze it efficiently. Businesses are improving their sales and customer satisfaction by identifying customer personalities with the help of AI.

Process Automation

Businesses have realized the potential of automation and, in the last few decades, automate their processes. Automation tools are helping businesses to innovate and develop solutions to make the processes automated. Automation tools were introduced in the home appliances and later paved their way in the industry as industrial robots. Now, in industries, humans and robots are working alongside to deliver the best results. Most industrial leaders have predicted this rise of AI will create a new era of automation. Even small algorithms are playing a major role in industries like retail, hospitality, and e-commerce industries. Automating the processes allows industries to do a task efficiently and work 24 hours without a break.

Conclusion

Artificial intelligence in robotics has allowed big and small businesses to innovate and implement new methods to improve and meet their desired goals. Even new start-ups are actively using AI to get an edge over established businesses and setting them up as brands in the market. From self-driven cars to robots used in manufacturing processes to deliver better efficiencies compared to humans, there is no denying that AI has slowly become an essential part of our lives.

10 Ways Innovation can Help Grow Your Business

January 11, 2021 by Rohit 3 Comments

As customers become more demanding and tech-savvy, innovation has become a necessary tool for a business to stay competitive and be future-ready. Every business out there wants to get an edge and stand out among competitors. Innovation in business strategy helps businesses get that edge – boosting productivity, increasing profits, and growing brand popularity. Innovation is not always about the big world-changing breakthrough, but sometimes solving simple problems or issues, small improvements in business processes or workflow in any area of an organization. This blog will discuss some benefits of innovation & how it helps a business grow.

Better customer relationship & increased sales

Innovation can help in improving the business-customer relationship. Some small dedicated efforts like regularly surveying customers will help a business identify potential room for improvement in their products and services, identifying areas where innovation teams put efforts.

A business that fails to improve or update their product and services run into the risk of losing their business to its competitors. Thus, it becomes important for a business to invest time and money in innovation. Customers appreciate even small efforts put by the company that add extra value to what they are buying. This in turn means more sales opportunities for business.

Cost-effective and environment friendly

Organizations are using innovations to improve their operational efficiency by streamlining their processes, eliminating bottlenecks, reducing machinery and employee idle time. Innovations focused on long-term goals such as environment-friendly and cost-effective are getting more appreciation as businesses see them as an investment for a better future. An innovative solution that reduces product cost and environment-friendly is the need of the current market.

Boost brand’s popularity

The most significant advantage of innovation is that it allows businesses to anticipate market shifts and grab opportunities quickly. This gives a business an edge over its competitors and stays ready for the future. Businesses are actively using innovations to analyze market trends, improving customer, supplier, and advisor interactions, and examining competitors’ moves to look for new opportunities and grab on to them. With innovation, a business can find fresh ideas by examining what leading companies abroad in their industry are doing.

Enhance employee-employer relations

Improvement in an organization’s products and services develop a feeling of pride in their company. This results in boosting workplace productivity and efficiency as employees feel pride in what they are building. An employer should involve and take suggestions or feedback from them to get new innovative ideas to improve its internal processes. Make sure you listen to them as they are an essential source of ideas for an organization. Employees will appreciate this gesture as they feel more involved and can provide invaluable suggestions to innovate.

Pinpoint your Unique Value Proposition (UVP)

A product or service’s unique value proposition adds value to something and what differentiates it from its competitors. Creativity and innovation are perfect tools to stand apart from other products or services. Nowadays, it is often more about the uniqueness of the product or service for a customer than being valuable. A business needs to skip the better, faster, or stronger; but focus on being creative, on becoming the best, fastest or most vital to be competitive and future-ready. UVP helps a business create a unique brand story and build a quirky business image in the customers’ eyes. Once an image is created its time for a business to focus on its unique brand image and market it as such.

Getting ahead of competitors

A business that continually innovates its process and strategies will always have the edge over its competitors. Adding little creativity will help a business find better ways of connecting with customers, designing products, packaging, advertising, and market business. While creating something innovative, make sure you won’t end up copying competitors’ ideas and mess up your strategy. The best things are to go by the old rule of collecting important customer feedback, employee suggestions, competitor analysis, and other important data before making an innovative business strategy.

The unique solution to impossible problems

Innovations are done to solve existing problems or issues better or give unique solutions to an impossible situation. Organizations often ask their innovation team to focus efforts on issues that continually arise, which means the earlier solution was not that effective. The innovative team gathers all the information to find out a solution that is out of the box. This solution needs to be unique that helps the organization to improve its products or services, add value to a product, and increase customer satisfaction.

Improving Workplace Productivity

Innovation simplifies the work processes for your employees and streamlines the work to increase workplace productivity. Many businesses are getting benefits from innovation by adequately managing their employees’ workload, saving valuable time, increasing efficiency and productivity. Adding innovation to business processes will benefit the business if they are correctly implemented. This is one of the biggest reasons businesses are implementing innovation for streamlined processes, analyzing what’s working and whatnot, and planning to outsource processes to ease the workflow and increase productivity.

Organizations are tracking their work progress with homegrown project tracking systems. These tracking systems are used to assign tasks, monitor work progress, and prioritize the task given to employees. All these innovations help the organization track work and make sure employees meet the organization’s specific needs and update accordingly to remain productive. An organization should test these innovations and analyze what works best for them.

Reach your target audience and building word-of-mouth

Innovations are helping organizations to target their marketing efforts geographically, demographically, and precisely. Social media platforms are helping brands to reach their target audiences, interact precisely, and create brand awareness. This targeted marketing approach helps businesses to create word of mouth and spread awareness about their brand. Brands can add some incentives or promotional offers for their users, acting as brand ambassadors. Innovation helps brands be unique and improve their products and services, giving them an edge over competitors. This added value to their products or service cultivates the vibe that pushes people to promote and create word or mouth for the brand.

Final words

I hope this blog gave you some insight into how innovation can help your business grow. Since you have read so far just sharing an additional tip with you. An organization can also add innovation as a part of their hiring process. Asking new employees about their previous innovations – creative ideas they come up with in their last organization and how it helped their organization. Ask for their reviews on your products or services, and you don’t know this small effort from your side will help get a creative spark that can help improve the overall business as an organization doesn’t be scared of trying new things and learn from that experience.

Just a great quote I read today –

“There is no innovation & creativity without failure“

Top Data and Analytics Trends to Watch out for 2021

January 6, 2021 by Rohit 1 Comment

The year 2020 has been challenging for many companies, but one area that has seen consistent growth even in the uncertain market condition has been data analytics. Businesses now realized the importance of data and analytics; without the right data and proper analysis, it is difficult for a business to make the best decisions. The change in consumer behavior is one of the major factors pushing businesses worldwide to update their business strategies to stay relevant and future-ready consistently. Pandemic has given opportunities for businesses to change their business strategy and prepare them for unexpected market scenarios. This blog will discuss top data and analytics trends that flourish in 2021.

Artificial intelligence

Artificial intelligence is the science that aims to execute tasks performed by the human with the help of machines. With AI development, businesses have changed their way of analyzing data and analytics to make crucial decisions and strategic changes to stay relevant and competitive. It is predicted that businesses will shift from piloting to operationalizing AI by the end of 2024. In this post-covid market scenario, all the historical user and business data will no longer be valid due to changed market conditions. The AI-based algorithm will help businesses in 2021 detect anomalies by learning from historical data and will notify the users immediately in case of an unexpected event.

Cloud

Cloud will be the future of data storage, and the COVID-19 pandemic resulted in a faster shifting of the businesses towards the cloud. The businesses that failed to adapt to this sudden shift have paid a high cost in 2020. The adoption of hybrid and cloud systems has given the organization the power to involve everyone in their organization in decision-making processes rather than seniors taking all decisions. Cloud services are enabling organizations to work at a fast rate and doing quick and efficient work analysis.

These enhanced self-service analytics and data literacy applications will play a significant role in making it a reality. This means that the year 2021 will see a shift across the sectors to data freedom and organizational behaviors. There is no doubt that this is going to be future of the storage and will become a new stack

Real-time Data & Analytics

The post-pandemic market scenario resulted in a shift in consumer behavior, and all the older data became irrelevant for the organization. The need for real-time data and analysis became extremely important for an organization to adapt according to the current changing marketing and developing strategies for staying future-ready. In 2021, real-time data and analytics will become a new normal for businesses and everyday people. Accessing critical information quickly and adapting to new challenges that the next year will bring along with it will be the biggest challenge for businesses. There is no doubt that Business Analytics and Business Intelligence Solutions will be more in action in 2021, and real-time data analysis will be their main driver.

Data security

Data security is one of the most discussed topics that remained on everyone’s lips in 2020 and will continue even in 2021. The implementation of privacy regulations in the USA, EU, and other countries have heated the discussions of protection of users’ personal information and data security. In the year 2021, most businesses will shift their focus to data security. Businesses that have set these three things – privacy, safety, and security as their primary goal will have the edge over the competitor in the upcoming year. In the pre and post-pandemic, the incidents of data breaches have increased all over the world. It is understandable why users are concerned and why businesses are investing in security products and services.

Mobile Business Intelligence

The next trend that will continue in 2021, mobile business intelligence, has a lot to offer, but the devices’ impracticality has held them back. One of these devices’ significant drawbacks is that the data is large, and mobile screens are smaller than a computer. It makes it difficult for a user to analyze the information thoroughly. In 2021, professionals plan to recreate the analytical capabilities for mobiles or tablets to enhance the user experience. The market is still growing slowly, but more vendors and BI solutions with the option within their software like mobile dashboard will see a boom looking at the current market conditions.

Companies will soon be switching towards these ultimate solutions looking at the benefits of accessing information, more straightforward data representation, etc., from anywhere and anytime. With mobile BI, organizations can access data in real-time, which means faster response to any business occurrences and more freedom to access the information for anyone who isn’t in the office but need to access it.

Software as a service BI

One of the best business intelligence solutions that have progressed in the last year and will continue to prosper even in 2021 is SaaS. COVID-19 pandemic has introduced a new norm of working remotely for companies, even for those who rely on humans to perform daily tasks. Following the current market trend, the businesses that have opted for SaaS BI gained more flexibility and easy access to the data on the cloud from anywhere with any device. These technologies enable an organization data movement, and easy access from anywhere will become one of the most critical trends in 2021. SaaS BI is the future of business analytics and provides the possibility to perform its analysis for a business. This analysis is available to anyone from any location and can adapt according to the current and future market conditions.

Conclusion

These are the top data and analytics trends that have already dominated the year 2020 and will continue to do so even in 2021. Adapting to these new future trends and planning accordingly will undoubtedly give a business edge over its competitors in the upcoming year. Following a data-driven approach has become a necessity for the business, and all these trends will guide and help businesses to stay relevant and future-ready in 2021.

Best B2B Marketing Strategies Essential for Business in 2021

January 5, 2021 by Rohit 2 Comments

B2B marketing has changed in the past 5-10 years. Marketers are switching their focus from sales and cold calling to digital marketing and SEO to engage new clients and build brand presence. Digital is the new driving force that will dominate the business marketing strategy in 2021 as well. Creating a buyer persona and then targeting audiences with a well-analyzed marketing strategy will do wonders for any business. This blog will address some of the best B2B marketing strategies to help a business be competitive and move ahead of its competitors in the next year.

A well researched niche-driven strategy

Creating the best B2B marketing strategy is all about doing thorough research for making well-informed decisions. Research from marketplace to brand, detailed scientific studies about the business will help set up marketing objectives and provide a baseline for measuring a marketing strategy’s success. While creating a marketing strategy in 2021, a business should opt for a niche B2B marketing strategy as the marketing strategy base. A well thought and specifically targeted marketing strategy will give fast results and help a business move ahead in 2021.

Feedback will help you know your client better and build a marketing strategy to help a business serve them even better. Surveys and market research will help get insights about processes, business performance, and finding areas worth putting efforts into.

Website – Digital identity

In 2021, a business demands a website where they can share their story, connect directly with people, and make the best first impression. A website has become an important digital asset for building an online presence. Most clients search online, and a website allows a business to win their business. This digital identity enables a business to exhibit its expertise and become well-known throughout the marketplace, just like a billboard or brochure.

A website that is easy to navigate and offers a better user experience can engage more audience and numerous business opportunities. A well-designed website helps influence the audience’s perception, swiftly and intuitively differentiating and creating a digital identity for a business in the client’s mind.

AI Chat Bots

After creating a digital identity over the internet, chatbots are becoming an essential part of a website, and the same trend will continue in 2021 as well. Most clients use AI chat support system to give their feedback and fix issues as they offer quick replies to queries and 24*7 service support. All these become a difficult task to manage without the help of these AI chatbots that are programmed to perform tasks to match human behavior and offer the same support.

Many industries use chatbots to answer clients’ queries and guide them in the best way possible. These chatbots offer a better online experience and provide better results due to which most businesses prefer to have them on their website. An increase in overall client satisfaction, engagement, business connections, and better customer service are some of the benefits that make these AI chatbots an important part of business-to-business marketing strategy even in 2021.

Voice search

If you thought that voice search was just a trend and planning to add this to your marketing strategy but later in the future. Think again! The number of voice searches is expected to reach close to 5 billion in the year 2021 and boom in the next year. It’s high time that businesses adapt fast to these changes and plan their marketing strategies accordingly to stay competitive. In earlier stages, voice devices were used for taking important notes and making grocery store lists. Nowadays, things have changed, and people are using voice searches for playing songs, getting directions, searching over the internet, and getting directions.

Speech recognition gadgets like Alexa and Google Home have resulted in a huge increase in voice searches over the internet. Marketers see the huge potential that this futuristic technology offers and are creating content specifically for these gadgets. In 2021, a business needs to add this in their marketing strategy to stay future-ready and stay ahead with other businesses.

Search Engine Optimization & Search Engine Marketing

With the growing importance of a business website, marketing professionals are investing heavily in SEO and SEM. Organic and paid search is not a new B2B marketing strategy but definitely a well-proven and effective marketing strategy worth putting effort and money into 2021. SEO experts are working on both on-page and off-page optimization techniques to improve the website’s ranking in SERP.

Best B2B Marketing Strategies Essential for Business in 2021 4

On-site SEO involves optimization of website pages to rank higher in SERP and get more organic traffic. All optimization activities are performed on the website, thus On-site SEO.

Off-site SEO involves optimization techniques that are carried outside your website to improve websites ranking higher on SERP.

Similar to SEO for getting organic traffic, SEM helps in getting paid traffic to the website.

Pay-per-click (PPC) is an internet marketing tool that helps businesses to show their products, content, and brand to their targeted audiences via search engines like Bing and Google.
Email marketing is a tried and tested B2B marketing method for reaching customers and business clients relevant in 2021. This marketing strategy gained popularity in the early 2010s and still provides better ROI, thus making it a must-have marketing strategy in the next year.
Remarketing is also known as retargeting, is a marketing method that helps businesses keep track and approach the bounced traffic on their website. It provides a great opportunity for businesses to bring back abandoned visitors and drive repeat purchases.

Social Media

Last but not least is Social media, the modern B2B marketing technique that can help a business to grow exponentially. Making a profile on social media is not going to be sufficient in 2021. A brand or business is expected to be present on all major social media platforms and actively promote connections with potential customers. The referrals culture on social media has changed the social media, and many businesses are actively using this marketing strategy to get more business. Social media is a great medium for a business to build reputation, expertise, and make valuable contacts and connect with influencers to market your brand.

Final words

A business needs to approach the upcoming year with a competitive and flexible marketing strategy keeping in mind the post-pandemic effect. For a business to have the edge over its competitor, it is important to constantly assess its B2B marketing strategies. The marketing world is evolving – the firms that are analyzing their marketing methods and making changes based on the performance of the strategies will be on the winning side by the end of the year 2021.

The Tale Of Vintage Watch Gift And Leadership Principles

August 29, 2020 by Rohit Leave a Comment

There are moments in our lives that define or redefine our leadership principles and our lives. One such incident just happened and brought me back to my core values. One of my previous direct reports came to meet me and gifted something very special. He appreciated me for my leadership style of transparency, empathy, trust and getting the best out of people. It was a humbling and life redefining moment for me! As it was was a redefining moment hence thought of sharing here.

TISSOT NAVIGATOR SEASTAR T12, AUTOMATIC 24H — Vintage watch gifted by my team member

The Gift

This is a priceless gift for me as he invested thoughts, money and then loads of time. This is a 1970 vintage watch that he bought online for approx. $500-$1000. He spent lot of time cleaning the inside mechanism, restoring the outside/bezel and installing a brand new leather band. He loves to restore vintage watches and this one was very special for him. As per him he went through all this labor because he appreciates my friendship, leadership and the value I have added. I may never be able to repay him for this gift and I doubt if I ever added that much value into his life.

At this time you must be thinking, how is this vintage watch related to my leadership principles? Please trsut me and stay with me for another minute.

Leadership Principles

Since early childhood, I have lead teams at school, college, community and now in the professional world. All these years I have built my list of leadership principles that I lead with on a daily basis. These are leadership principles that I either discovered (not invented) in the process or learned from other leaders by following or reading books on leadership. Here are my top 10 leadership principles:

Be the example of the culture you want to build in your team and remembered for
Respect your team members in every situation
Lead with empathy and transparency as it builds TRUST in short and long term
Operate with accountability
Enable performance by promoting the culture of short term wins and celebrating them as a team
Focus on the strengths of your team members. Only coach them in areas of weakness if it is hurting or will hurt them
Feedback is a gift. Be vulnerable as a leader and allow your team members their feedback on you
Follow the principles of situational leadership
Be humble, invest in continuous learning
Have fun with your team. Culture is not built while you are working on the projects but when you are not. Find opportunities to have fun time, learn about them, their families, journeys, aspirations etc.

The connection

So here comes the link between the two that I promised you earlier......

We all live in real-world where we often swim with sharks. I have been going through some rough patches in my life and questioning my leadership principles. I have been questioning their validity in the corporate world where there is a cut-throat competition. What matters in those environments is goals/numbers in each quarter, your perception among your seniors and peers and much more. Questions that have been bothering me for months are: Do I need to change to survive and be successful in the corporate world? Do I need to change my leadership principles and be one of the “sharks”? Do I need to stop being that “Nice Guy”, “servant leader”, “Strength finder”?

...Here is the connection back to the wonderful gift. I am glad you waited and continued the journey to see how this all connects...

This thoughtful gift and the humbling incident brought me back on-track. It answered my questions that I must continue to be who I am. I am defined by the principles, beliefs and values that I have lived with. Yes, I evolve those to become better as per the North Star of my life but I cannot change them completely or in the opposite direction. These are the leadership principles that align with my True North.

This team member appreciated me and gave me such a thoughtful gift because he likes to be led with these leadership principles. These leadership principles have enabled him during those years when was part of my team and believed in him, trusted him and enabled him. We have always been a family that works hard, extra hard in times of need, backs-up each other, and then have fun together.

When I retire from my professional career, I will like to be remembered for the value I created in the life of my fellow co-workers and the organizations. I will like to be known for the value I gave back to the community that I helped me become better every day. I will like to be known for the smiles I brought, careers I enabled and dreams I helped to come to life for my family, friends and colleagues.

Closing thoughts

Only existing or new leadership principles can help me reach my True North and not some shallow principles that may help me be temporarily successful. This gift empowered me to continue believing in my leadership principles. It forced me to think again about my end game and not just this small destination which is part of my long journey. Once-again I believe in the power of my decades-old leadership principles!

I hope my story inspires you to question yourself and identify your leadership principles. What will you like to be remembered for? What are the memories you want to retire with? How many lives do you want to touch & add value? I hope you will share your story one day and inspire me!

MarTech Adoption – How to increase Marketing ROI

July 22, 2020 by Rohit 1 Comment

Beside your MarTech stack, MarTech adoption is a critical factor in driving success and high return on investment (ROI). Hence enabling MarTech skills and regular use of those skills is a critical first step. Skills come primarily from training and that needs resources especially investment of money.

After spending a lot of $$ on procuring MarTech, resources for training become a luxury that we cannot afford. Failure to train marketing teams on MarTech skills will create a huge barrier to MarTech adoption. If you are not planning to invest in MarTech training you are starting with a poor ROI from the beginning. I caution you against that and I hope you have both training and onboarding as part of MarTech strategy and investment plan.

“Organizations that invest in acquiring and maintaining MarTech skills are eight times more likely to also experience good or very good ROI.”
– A study I read few years ago.

Key Metrics to track MarTech Adoption

Some of the key metrics that come to my mind to measure MarTech adoption and ROI are:

Volume metrics: Measure things like impression, leads, form fills, product views etc.
Financial metrics: Measure things like opportunities created, revenue generated, revenue influenced or ROI. You need a stack that has data well connected for your insights team to calculate these.
NPS of Customer Zero: This is an ongoing tracking of satisfaction across your internal users. I have found this to be an important metric for MarTech adoption.

Customer Zero NPS is very helpful metric for tracking MarTech adoption — Customer Zero NPS – Leading indicator of MarTech Adoption in 2016 for MarTech

Productivity metrics: Measure things like time saved or requests handled, adherence to SLAs, time saved, the velocity of deals, speed to lead etc.
Stack Complexity/Retire Legacy assets: How many technologies that can be consolidated as we move from a disconnected MarTech stack with redundant technologies to a MarTech stack that is connected like a platform.

You may argue that first two are marketing metrics. MarTech teams should co-own these metrics as this ensures investments in solutions that enable business outcomes. This will also motivate your MarTech teams to integrate across technologies. Integration and Data are two key aspects in the evolution of MarTech maturity. I will be sharing industries’ first MarTech Maturity Model built with over 30 years of collective MarTech experience in the next few weeks. You will be able to use it as a framework to evolve your MarTech program.

Ideas to enable MarTech adoption

Here are some of the ideas that I have used or plan to use in the future to enable MarTech adoption and Marketing enablement:

As part of MarTech governance ensure your marketing stakeholder(s) are part of prioritization. They should also share responsibility for enabling ROI. Do this before you decide to invest in that MarTech solution.
Involve key marketing stakeholders in vendor selection, implementation and onboarding as a responsible party.
As soon as the marketing team onboards on MarTech solution, start creating monthly reports that use 2 or more metrics mentioned above to track MarTech adoption.
Roll out onboarding sessions followed by on-going training.
Track MarTech adoption with the help of the vendor and report out on a quarterly basis. Have a north star for adoption and request the vendor to come with recommendations to achieve it.
Roll-out a full-service digital marketing academy that works round the clock to enable. I will attribute the success of our MarTech program at McKesson to the Digital Marketing Academy. Here are some of the focus areas I recommend for a MarTech or Digital Marketing Academy:
- On-going training on essential and emerging technologies
- Certifications
- Sharing of Best practices (internal and external)
- Awards for best work in various categories
- Opportunities to network across division if you are in a large enterprise
- Have fun included in your program, so that various teams can bond across team silos

Marketing teams like to connect with each other — From Survey after 2016 Digital Marketing Academy at McKesson

I hope this helps and I will love to be part of your MarTech adoption and Marketing transformation journey. Feel free to share your experience on the topic of MarTech adoption and Marketing Enablement.

Feel free to reach out if you need guidance on putting together MarTech adoption strategy or establishing a Digital Marketing Academy.

What is Digital

May 24, 2020 by Rohit Leave a Comment

You must have heard people claiming that the world is going digital. Well, have you ever wondered what is digital? Every single aspect of our lives is slowly evolving and stepping into the modern era of the digital revolution. The world is gradually becoming paperless, and every single activity is now carried out via technology, smartphones, and the internet. From necessary communication to overseas conference calls, websites, apps, television, etc. the world is run on digital advancements.

Today, we will discuss what is Digital, how it is changing our world. Once you thoroughly understand what is digital, you will understand how to use it to your advantage, and how is digital changing the businesses around the globe.

Role of digital in our life — (Source: https://www.pexels.com/photo/woman-holding-laptop-beside-glass-wall-1181316/)

Textbook Definition

Basically, a digital system can only differentiate between two values or two states: off and on. These are represented with the help of 0 and 1, respectively. Nowadays, every piece of machinery and equipment is digital in nature and uses 0’s and 1’s to store, manipulate, and retrieve information. You can read more about the history of digital here. We can spend a lot more time discussing what is digital but let’s try to understand it using real-life applications.

What Is Digital Evolution’s impact on Business World?

For some business and technology leaders, it’s more about the technological infrastructure, while for others, digital is a new form of customer engagement especially if they are in digital or marketing. Some business owners perceive digital as a whole different way to do business. None of those concepts are incorrect.

Let’s take a look at how the digital advancements are impacting the customer relationships, engagements, and user experience or in other words how is digital is changing our world

Reinventing Business Frontiers #Disruption

Some business owners employ modern digital practices to investigate new demographics and engage with them. Reinventing the business frontiers have become more accessible, quicker, and more accurate with the help of digital devices.

Digital systems offer the power of evaluating new investment sectors and communities and also highlights the possible opportunities, threats, and competitors in the field. Moreover, some businesses are employing data science practices to understand the precedents and the past of the sector to come up with profitable strategies for the future.

The exploration of business frontiers has also allowed businesses to offer a better user experience. For instance, in the automotive industry, companies are now using digital devices to provide in-car entertainment, automated navigation systems, and even automated driving systems. The reinvention of the business frontiers allows businesses to point out the flaws in the existing business models, restructure them, and offer a better user experience for maximum customer engagement.

Big data, analysis, and data science algorithms allow businesses to reevaluate their current impact on the audiences, restructure the business strategies, and enhance user journeys.

Restructuring Value of Core Business #BusinessTransformation

The next aspect of digital technology is to reconsider how modern technologies will be utilized to change the way consumers are engaged, served, and benefited.

This is embedded in a fascination with knowing every phase of the buying process of a customer, regardless of the medium, and talking about how digital technologies will develop and offer the best product experience in all areas of the market. The digital era offers new ways to serve customers and enhance their overall interaction with the business.

For instance, the supply chain is essential to the advancement of consistency, quality, and speed to produce the best commodity effectively in a manner that the consumer needs. At the same time, data and analytics should rely on delivering information regarding consumers that, in effect, control and drive decisions regarding promotions and revenue.

The digital revolution is all about introducing a cyclical environment where systems and technologies are continually changing depending on consumer feedback, promoting sustained product or loyalty. Everything comes together to enhance user interaction with the company and also boosts the company’s revenue by increasing customer loyalty and identifying more opportunities to serve them better.

Offering Fast Work Process #Agility

Digital technologies allow companies to become faster, quicker, and more agile in terms of serving customers and identifying market needs. Being modern is about leveraging data to make smarter and easier choices, delegating decision-making to smaller teams, and finding even more iterative and simpler methods to do stuff. This way of thought will not be limited to only a couple of roles. It will provide a wide variety of how companies work, including innovative collaborations with external firms to broaden the requisite capability.

Look at how computing, computing, infrastructure, technology development, installation, continuous integration, and everything else has changed due to cloud services from Amazon, Google, Microsoft, Netapps, and many more. How building websites has changed by companies like Wix, e-commerce by Shopify are some of the everyday examples I come across. What used to take years two decades ago, months in the last decade; can now be done in days.

Another way of looking at it is from the viewpoint of modern devices and networks that allow the users to interact with the companies quickly. Back in the day, everything took weeks, and it took weeks for companies to reach out to their customers. However, with modern digital platforms and devices, the companies can freely and openly interact with their audiences in a matter of seconds.

Redefining Customer experience #CX

The old and traditional methods of engaging customers are changed and have been tailored to offer an enhanced customer experience. A prime example of this experience is available at Amazon, Uber, Zappos, Delta, and many more.

With the help of modern digital technologies, companies can now understand what the users want and offer it to them individually. This means that if one group of users want to see sci-fi movies, while others want to see history movies, digital technologies can understand this, and offer a personalized and tailored GUI for these groups. Prime daily life example is Netflix, Hulu and many others.

Moreover, you can use technology to enhance the overall level of customer satisfaction by allowing them to interact with your social media platforms, customer service platforms, and finding new mediums of contacting you.

New Customer Experience — (Source: https://www.pexels.com/photo/woman-holding-tablet-computer-3082341/)

Closing Thoughts on what is Digital

Digital continues to change how customers behave and businesses work. It all began with ones and zeroes in 1703, but it has come a long way!

Today, modern digital technologies allow companies to understand better new sectors, existing demographics, customer journeys; to offer a new level of customer experience, interaction, satisfaction, and explore new business models and markets.

I hope this offers a quick view of what is Digital and how is digital changing our world. Will love to hear your thoughts on how digital is changing the world and especially the one that you live in?