How Data is Transforming Society & Companies Make Data and Analytics Your Tool for Better Customer Interactions and Business Transformation
By Manish Chowdhary •
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Digital transformation is reinventing how businesses operate their processes. There is a wholesale reimaging of business strategies because in the digital transformation space data has taken over. Today's business environment is hyper-competitive, and businesses have to constantly reinvent themselves. The pace of transformation has picked up impacting businesses and society as a whole.
Data is at the core of digital transformation today. It is what allows a business to meet a customer's expectations and improve the customer experience of using products and services.
Data is the Driving Force Behind Business Growth
Data makes a business more relevant. Data provides insights which improve business intelligence for companies. In fact, data is the tool for entrepreneurs and start-ups to drive their business, stay competitive and cutting edge against the more established companies.
We are able to understand and serve our customers better. In fact, insights gathered from AI-driven data help us offer our customers solutions to their present problems. Unlike in the earlier years, businesses no longer push a product or a service down a customer's throat. The new age sales and marketing approach is to offer products and services that solve their most current pressing problem.
This is possible when an organisation makes data and analytics part of their business process. According to Gartner study data and analytics has to become the centrepiece of an organisation's strategy, focus and investment. It is the tool to understand customer behaviour.
With the insight you gather today from data analysis, you can offer your audience exactly what they are looking for. In our experience, we have found that we are able to listen to their demands and fulfil it in a more meaningful when we use the data from customer interactions at every touchpoint.
In the current scenario where artificial intelligence and machine learning are touching every aspect, it is helping data become more meaningful as well. AI-driven insights from enterprise data are changing the way we do business, plan a campaign and target our audience and customers.
Managing Data for Business Agility
For a start-up or a small business maintaining competitive edge means developing a certain level of business agility. This can be done by maintaining the quality of data and ensuring data hygiene. Only then will you get clear insights from which to further develop business strategies. Ensure that you have data management practices where the data collected from various channels are cleansed, reviewed and analysed on a regular basis. You have to have the information management and data governance initiative in place.
Data and Insights for Improving Customer Experience
Why are we talking about data governance? To ensure that data and analytics become the tools for innovation within the business. It will help the business have a competitive edge by offering critical insights needed for developing the engaging customer experience.
Why does this matter? In the digital era, customers have become more demanding than ever. We find that more and more customers leave a brand or stop engaging because of bad user experience.
It is not just enough to know customer behaviour pattern. You have to be smart and use data to understand the whole customer journey. For a B2C company, it is important to get insights from data gathered from each of its digital presence whether in the company website, online stores, call centres, mobile app and social media. Overlay all the insights on your basic customer buying behaviours and you have a more comprehensive customer experience strategy and a better rate of customer satisfaction, which is always good for business.
This is important because customers today want a personalised experience with a brand. They feel closer and engage better with that company which gives the sense of knowing them. They prefer websites or apps which are highly personalised – offering suggestions and options based on their earlier buying behaviour.
All this would not be possible without data and analytics.
Data Helps Business Move Ahead Faster
Today customers have a stronger voice than ever. With the popularity of social media, the rate at which feedback about a company, product or service gets shared is mind-boggling. It can make or break a company. When you have the right insights from your data, you can respond to feedback faster, reach out to your customers faster and take care of their needs based on their feedback.
Data actually help us with providing a lot of knowledge about the business, product and customer behaviour. So, as a new business if you are able to leverage that information and work upon the insights to create your marketing strategy and then use the power of the internet to reach out to the right set of customers, then you will truly be a digitally transformed organisation.
