Digital Transformation – Everything’s Changing

Digital Transformation – Everything’s Changing

Digital Transformation

Digital Transformation – Everything’s Changing

Kevin’s face went white! He just realized he’d left his phone in the taxi. An older man at the bar was confused. ‘Is it insured?’ ‘Yes’ he replied. ‘Then why’s it a big deal?’

When people get more freaked out about being separated from their phone than their cash you know a paradigm shift has occurred.

Yellow Cabs in New York City
Look what happened to the taxi industry. In less than seven years, Lyft and Uber have turned the industry upside down. Yellow Cabs in San Francisco and Chicago both filed for bankruptcy recently. They were the big players in their cities. They had the infrastructure, the cars, the drivers, the connections. They should have beaten new start-ups easily. But they adapted too late.

Here’s the rub: like Yellow Cabs, your company may be late in embracing digital transformation – but your customer’s aren’t. They’ve already digital and they’re looking for businesses who understand how they operate and who talk their language.

Here’s another example: My business partner recently took his wife away for a long weekend. He went all out. Do you know where he stayed? In an AirBnB. He booked his beautiful, luxurious getaway through an app on his phone. The Marriott or Hilton didn’t get a look in.

Franschoek Villa
Don’t get confused. Digital transformation isn’t just connecting with customers over apps and cell phones. It’s about using digital technology to find better, easier ways of doing business. Many people confuse digital transformation, with having a digital strategy. But it goes far deeper than that.

Microsoft’s new CEO, Satya Nadella, who’s carried out his own digital transformation, says this:

“… [Digital Transformation] isn’t just about procuring a CRM, ERP, or office automation system. It requires building out… systems of intelligence — digital feedback loops that help you better engage with your customers, empower your employees, optimize your operations, and reinvent products and business models…. they will ultimately define your competitiveness and ability to change the landscape of the industries you participate in.”

Engaging your customers… empowering your employees… optimizing your operations… reinventing your business models – this is nothing new. Every great business leader in history has been on top of these. The difference nowadays is that the pace of technological advance is so great that if you don’t keep up you can quickly become a dinosaur – and you won’t even know it until it’s too late. Save & Exit

Aman Chowla, CEO of Prudential BSN Takaful Berhad puts it simply:

“Organizations must embrace a digital culture now or be embarrassed by it later.”

How is your industry doing in the realm of digital transformation? Could your industry be the next one to be disrupted by a tech-savvy start-up?

Last year, Accenture Interactive commissioned a Forrester survey of 396 organisations (minimum 1000 employees or more). They found:

  • Only 5% of organisations feel they have mastered digital to the point of differentiation from their competitors.
  • 58% now look to digital to help them sell profitability.
  • 63% of them plan to improve their online customer experience’ this year.
  • 88% of them use third-party providers for at least one component of their digital transformation.

Taken from ‘Digital Transformation in the Age of the Customer’

So. You’re aware of the threat/opportunity. What should you do?

The first thing you need to do is take Braden Kelly’s advice:

“You must look at your business and your industry in the same way that a digital native startup will if they seek to attack you and steal your market.”

Put yourself in the shoes of your customer. What aspect of their interaction with you feels old fashioned or clumsy? What are better ways of doing this? If you were a start-up and looking at things from a fresh perspective, what would you do to disrupt the industry?

For the Huffington Post, an online newspaper founded in 2005, that meant using the web, rather than print, to take on the big newspapers of the day. It sounds straight-forward, but HuffPost has also embraced marketing automation technology and has a highly-developed social media strategy.

But in doing so, it’s been successful. In 2011 it was acquired by AOL for $315m. In March 2016, the British national newspaper The Independent followed it’s lead and also became an online-only newspaper – halting its print run, that at its peak, had a daily production of 97,000 newspapers. The newspaper industry is in a fast-paced digital transformation.

A look at what’s possible

You might be saying ‘this is great, but I don’t actually know what is possible in my industry?’ This is understandable, but in the digital age, it’s become the job of every business leader to be familiar with the latest technology trends. It might give you just the advantage you need over your competitors.

Have a look at what is trending currently:

  • Machine Learning – Get supercomputers to work for you. Imagine taking the data you’re collecting, analysing it and automatically adjusting your business processes in response to the results. The more data the system is fed, the better its predictions become. For example, in the insurance industry machine learning is helping companies better predict which offers certain customers will respond to. As the customer data is fed into the call centre program the salesperson will be prompted with certain deals. If the deal is taken, the system learns that deal is a good fit for that customer. If not, it adjusts it algorithm and tries a different deal next time, evolving with every iteration.
  • The Internet of Things (IoT) – Imagine the benefit you’d obtain by connecting the assets you own to the cloud. Each vehicle or piece of machinery you own can have its own IP address. You can monitor and make interventions in real time, from anywhere in the world. For example, machines can generate their own service tickets so that repairs happens before things go wrong. Weather data can be combined with automated irrigation machinery so that only the crops that need watering actually receive it. The options are endless.
  • Bots – You may already have interacted with these without realizing it. These are pieces of software designed to run automated tasks (scripts) for you over the internet. Typically, they are designed to be as conversational as possible. For instance, there is a medical bot that you can type in your symptoms and it will suggest relevant medical websites to go to. Facebook already has 11,000 bots ready to launch with its Messenger service. Siri, Cortana and Google Now are very advanced bots hosted on your cell phone, tablet or computer. The popular company communication app, Slack, has been using bots for a while. And Microsoft is preparing to launch bots in conjunction with Skype, and Office 365
  • Integrated Business Applications – Most companies already use Microsoft Office 365 to optimize employee productivity, but Microsoft’s announcement of Dynamics 365, means that businesses will be able to give their employees continual access to the software they need, wherever they are, from any device. Cloud applications have done away with the need to dial into company servers, and with Dynamics 365 built on the same data model as Office 365, multiple sets of customer data will be a thing of the past.

Beginning the Digital Transformation Journey

Of course, you don’t even need to use these technologies for your company to begin the journey of digital transformation. You need to see a new way of operating and adopt the technology that helps you do that. Technology is simply the tool that you use.

Let’s talk

Whatever your industry, here at The CRM Team we are helping many companies take their first step (or next step) along the digital transformation journey. Whether it’s as simple taking your sales team off Excel, or more complex projects, such bringing consistency with the way you engage with your customer over the four customer touch points, we can help. And of course, we’re also geared up to help you use some of the trending tech such as IoT, Machine Learning, Integrated business apps, bots etc.

What opportunity will digital transformation create for your business?

What risks does it pose?

We’d love to assist you to take your next step. And in a digital world, it doesn’t matter where you are based. Why not arrange a conversation about it today?

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Microsoft | LinkedIn: Why competitors are *still* having sleepless nights.

Microsoft | LinkedIn: Why competitors are *still* having sleepless nights.

Digital Transformation

Microsoft | LinkedIn – Why competitors are *still* having sleepless nights.

It’s been three short months. Satya Nadella, Jeff Weiner and Reid Hoffman stood outside the LinkedIn Headquarters in Mountain View, California and announced the third biggest tech acquisition of all time.

Since then we’ve learnt 3 fascinating facts about the deal:

  1. LinkedIn went with Microsoft over Facebook, Google and Salesforce.com (Say what!?)
  2. LinkedIn went with Microsoft even though Microsoft wasn’t the highest bid. (Say what!?!?)
  3. The battle was fierce and went down to the wire. (Understandable)

And the deal is still making waves!

Last week Salesforce.com’s stock crashed on less-than-expected projected earnings for the third quarter (one wonders why!) Meanwhile, Microsoft quietly overtook them as the world’s biggest enterprise SaaS provider. And that’s without counting LinkedIn’s contribution!

Salesforce’s CEO, Marc Benioff, is obviously rattled. After a period of collaboration and partnership, he has now declared the rivalry with Microsoft is back on. His words are defiant, but it doesn’t look great for the CRM-focused company. Microsoft’s new combined cloud CRM/ERP offering, Dynamics 365, with LinkedIn’s mighty Sales Navigator is going to be a potent combination and a big worry for them. This was a big win for Microsoft and LinkedIn. Salesforce.com lost out – big time.

Much more than CRM

But it would be unfair to make this a deal about Dynamics CRM vs Salesforce.com. It was much bigger than that. And both Microsoft and LinkedIn know this. You can’t box the 10,000 strong, 433 million member, professional network megalith as a simple CRM add-on. Jeff Weiner, who remains as LinkedIn CEO, said that Microsoft gives LinkedIn “advantages most companies can only dream of leveraging”. That’s got to hurt, Marc.

Microsoft CEO, Satya Nadella, was also very excited about the deal:

‘[it] brings together the world’s leading professional cloud with the world’s leading professional network’

We agree. With a combined reach of 1.5 billion+ people (Microsoft’s customer base and LinkedIn’s membership), the possibilities are staggering.

Nadella told his 114,000 employees:

“Think about it: How people find jobs, build skills, sell, market and get work done and ultimately find success requires a connected professional world.”

Microsoft already helps over 1.2 billion people become more productive through the Microsoft Office suite. Imagine integrating LinkedIn with this. LinkedIn’s reach increases dramatically, and Office’s usefulness gets better and better. Nadella has stated that Microsoft wants to integrate the LinkedIn data with their artificial intelligent assistant Cortana. As Nadella said, “Imagine walking into a meeting and Cortana tells you about people you are meeting and what you need to know about them”.

But it won’t just be Microsoft Office that benefits from LinkedIn. Microsoft wants to integrate their powerful machine learning capabilities with the professional network. And being part of the world’s biggest software company will have also have its benefits. Not only can LinkedIn now get input from the best engineers from Microsoft’s 114,000-strong workforce, but partnering with Microsoft also brings a healthy financial stability. Jeff Weiner said we are now,

‘not pressured to compromise on long-term investment… or hamstrung in the way we can reward and acquire new talent due to stock price concerns’.

Weiner predicts that through combining with Microsoft they’ll now be able to innovate and disrupt in some of the following areas:

“the corporate directory, company news dissemination, collaboration, productivity tools, distribution of business intelligence and employee voice…”

Prepare for more creativity and innovation from LinkedIn.

And the timing is great.

Digital Transformation is going to be a huge thing for companies in 2017 and much of this will result in big growth for cloud computing (read: Saas, PaaS and Iaas).

The SaaS (Software as a Service) market is growing rapidly (33% growth last quarter) and there is plenty of scope for Microsoft | LinkedIn to dominate here.

  • LinkedIn: Unlike Facebook, LinkedIn has been extremely successful at SaaS. On its own, it’s been in the top SaaS providers in the world for years. Last year it’s recruitment suite, Talent Solutions, brought in $2 billion (!) in revenue alone. Combined with its sales tool, Sales Navigator, it already has a healthy subscriber base of 2 million people. This will grow rapidly through the access to Microsoft’s 1 billion plus customer base.
  • Microsoft: Microsoft has already had a successful transition over to SaaS. Its launch of Office 365 five years ago saw it move its famous desktop brand into the cloud. (Recently, even Facebook announced its adoption of Office 365). It also offers SharePoint Online and now, this Fall, their ERP/CRM clouds solutions will be relaunched as Dynamics 365. We at The CRM Team, have already stated our belief about how seismic a shift this will be. Integrate this with LinkedIn and it becomes even more powerful.

When it comes to IaaS and PaaS (Infrastructure/Platform as a service), Microsoft are already positioned well here, second behind Amazon, but ahead of Google and IBM. If, as predicted, LinkedIn moves its hosting to Microsoft’s Cloud (Azure) then that will bolster Azure even further.

But the Microsoft | LinkedIn deal is not just a strategic move to stop Amazon getting LinkedIn’s business. What Microsoft and LinkedIn realise is that currently their offerings and customer base are quite different. Place them all on one platform and the combined graph is eye-watering for developers:

Who can compete with that?

This deal is a great move for both Microsoft and LinkedIn and it’s going to shake up many industries. There should be lots of companies having sleepless nights – for a good while to come.

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Microsoft | LinkedIn: Sleepless nights have arrived for Microsoft’s competitors!

Microsoft | LinkedIn: Sleepless nights have arrived for Microsoft’s competitors!

Digital Transformation

Microsoft | LinkedIn – Sleepless nights have arrived for Microsoft’s competitors!

Last year we wrote about Microsoft’s acquisition of LinkedIn and why competitors will be having sleepless nights.

Now those sleepless nights have arrived!

On Monday, Microsoft and LinkedIn threw out their first challenge to Salesforce.com. In an article released by Reuters, Microsoft CEO, Satya Nadella shared the companies plan to integrate LinkedIn data with their Dynamics 365 offering.

According to Microsoft, the upgrade will help salespeople become more efficient. With new insights from LinkedIn’s 500 million professionals, this solution will help salespeople improve their pipeline by,

  • Recommending ways to save an at-risk deal.
  • Displaying LinkedIn personal and company information on every lead, contact, account, and opportunity page in Dynamics 365.
  • Daily updates between systems, which automatically save accounts and contacts in Dynamics 365 to Sales Navigator.

 

The new solution will comb through a salesperson’s emails, CRM, and LinkedIn to gain insight into their relationship with a potential customer. And ultimately give recommendations on the next best action to take.

 

“We’re introducing a single offer that brings together LinkedIn Sales Navigator and Dynamics 365 for Sales… at about half the cost of competitive solutions.” Said Microsoft on Monday.

Nadella also said that artificial intelligence (A.I.) will be central to this software.

 

“I want to be able to democratise A.I. so that any customer using these products is able to take their own data and load it into A.I.”

As the first major product initiative built off the Microsoft, LinkedIn deal, this will be a turning point for Microsoft. In an interview last year, Business Insider asked Nadella why they bought LinkedIn. His response was simple.

 

“This is really all about expanding the opportunity we have, going beyond productivity and collaboration tools, to having a professional network.”

We all know LinkedIn is the business social hub and is a fantastic source of data for salespeople. So, we’re excited to see the first updates to Dynamics 365 that will include LinkedIn.

Read the full article here: Microsoft’s Nadella banks on LinkedIn data to challenge Salesforce

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Microsoft Overtakes Salesforce.com – Forrester

Microsoft Overtakes Salesforce.com – Forrester

Digital Transformation

Microsoft Overtakes Salesforce.com

They’ve led for decades. But things are now fading for Salesforce.com. In the recent Forrester Wave report Microsoft is ahead in Salesforce.com’s traditional stronghold: sales software[1]. This is a big coup for Microsoft who have been making gains in this area for a long time.

“Microsoft delivers on intelligent seller productivity.” – Forrester 2017 Q2 report

What should worry all Microsoft’s competitors: this latest Forrester Wave is based on Microsoft’s 2016 release. Wait until Forrester assesses Microsoft’s deep integration with LinkedIn – predicted to be a game-changer by many. The seamless flow between Outlook, Dynamics 365 and Sales Navigator (LinkedIn) is going to make it harder for Sales Directors to justify the higher expense of Oracle, SAP or Saleforce.com

The Satya Nadella Treatment

You might ask yourself what has given Microsoft the edge? While they have invested heavily in machine learning/artificial intelligence, and the now famous acquisition of LinkedIn, Forrester put it down to a “heightened focus on seller productivity”.

Sales software has traditionally focused on reporting and analytics. But with deep integration into Outlook, Microsoft has made it possible for sales reps to more productive on the go. Simple things such as not switching between apps has recently been shown to have a massive impact on revenue.

Forrester concludes:

“Microsoft is a best fit for companies looking to capitalize on the productivity gains of their other Microsoft cloud investments” – which is fairly obvious. But interestingly, they go on to say:

“..and those companies that are …looking to disrupt their peers with AI and machine learning”

Sales teams across the globe are already disrupting their competitors with Microsoft’s new Dynamics 365 platform, but ironically, this disruptive ability is already being felt by Microsoft’s own competitors.

If you want to find out more, why not check out: Office 365 & Dynamics 365

[1] John Bruno, The Forrester Wave: Sales Force Automation Solutions, Q2 2017 (Forrester)

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Run a field service business? Here’s why efficiency is everything

Run a field service business? Here’s why efficiency is everything

Digital Transformation

Run a field service business? Here’s why efficiency is everything

Read the statistics – they paint an interesting picture. Consider this:

  • 91% of customers stay loyal to brands that offer low-effort interactions
  • Only 4% of service organisations can solve an inquiry using a single application
  • 77% of consumers globally have a more favourable view of brands that offer proactive service notifications.

Conclusion: customers love efficiency. They stay loyal to companies able to offer it. However, very few businesses are able to offer the kind of service that keeps customers coming back. If you’re one of the few that can, you’ve got a powerful market differentiator – one that can allow you to carve out a niche in the market.

Here are 4 ways the right toolset can drive efficiency for that market-leading edge.

1. Intelligent Scheduling.

A great top-down view is key to optimising service delivery. If dispatchers can access real-time information on where technicians are, accurate, efficient scheduling becomes possible. Workloads and resources can be better balanced too, and more appointments scheduled per day. The result: productivity gets a massive boost.

2. Remote Monitoring

On-site assistance should be carried out only when necessary. The right technology can help you detect, troubleshoot and resolve issues remotely when possible. Remote monitoring and predictive maintenance also become possible when you have the right tools. Moreover, systems can be designed to ask customers the right questions upfront. Do this and you can ensure you dispatch technician only when necessary – and that when you do, you always send the right person for the job.

3. Streamlined Administration.

Admin is the enemy. It eats into energy and resources. By streamlining the back office, your time is far better spent. The right technology means that client emails, phone calls and appointments can be monitored at the click of a button, and stored in one place, against their client record. Clients can also be kept informed at any stage of the engagement, with updates being sent by staff from any device. Further, when you have the ability to generate reports instantly, you can prioritise the most important clients and ensure you always provide great experiences to your customers.

4. Efficient Contract and SLA management.

Field service organisations have tons of info to keep track of. And while background information is key, it can quickly become a burden. Technology can provide key alerts and prompts, making insights actionable. For example, when service contracts, warranties and installed products are kept up to date, business flows far more smoothly. Driving additional revenue becomes possible too. Accurate contract information can ensure you are offering renewals at the right time, and not letting any contracts expire.

Conclusion: customers care about service. Organisations able to keep interactions low-effort build customer loyalty. The right toolsets such as Microsoft Dynamics for Field Service can connect and empower service technicians, facilitate optimal scheduling and enable optimised contract management. From customers’ perspectives, the result is smooth, seamless service delivery – the kind of interactions that keep them coming back.
Want to explore how we could help you transform your field service?

Get in touch.

Let's Chat

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Privacy and Protection: GDPR – what you need to know

Privacy and Protection: GDPR – what you need to know

Digital Transformation

Privacy and Protection – What you need to know about the GDPR

Does your company deal with data from individuals or companies in the European Union (EU)? If so, read on.

Data is everywhere – and at the heart of almost every business. Yet recent data breaches have meant heightened security concerns.

Here in South Africa we are familiar with the impending PoPI Act. But if you have clients that are European Citizens, or based in the EU you’ll also have to navigate a new piece of legislation: GDPR (the General Data Protection Regulation).

The GDPR: a 5-second overview

At core, The General Data Protection Regulation (or GDPR) is about safeguarding the privacy of individuals and companies in the EU, and reflects the implementation of the Digital Single Market Strategy.

What will the GDPR do?

The GDPR will place new rules on companies that deal with EU residents. It will also apply to companies that collect or analyse data tied to EU residents, no matter where they are located.

To do this, the GDPR establishes global requirements governing how companies manage and protect personal data – and respect individual choice. Importantly, it is a law that will apply no matter where the relevant data is sent, processed, or stored.

When is it due to take effect?

The GDPR comes into effect on 25 May 2018.

What will the impacts be?

Depending on what data a company holds, the GDPR may mean a number of changes. These may include updates to personal privacy policies or strengthening how data is protected.

What are some of the key elements of the GDPR?

  • Enhanced personal privacy rights. Part of the law looks to improve data protection. It will do this by giving EU residents the right to: access their data, correct inaccuracies, erase or move their data, or object to processing of their information.
  • Increased data protection duties. The accountability of companies that process personal data will be reinforced and their responsibility for ensuring compliance increased.
  • Mandatory data breach reporting. In the event of a breach, companies will be required to report the situation quickly, generally no later than 72 hours after the fact.
  • Penalties for non-compliance. The GDPR will mean sanctions and fines can be imposed on organisations that have failed to comply.

Does the GDPR apply to my business?

The GDPR applies to companies (operators or controllers) in the EU.

It also applies to those outside the EU who offer goods and services to, or collect personal data from, EU residents.

What kind of data does the GDPR consider ‘personal data’?

The GDPR considers personal data to be any information related to an identified – or identifiable –natural person. This relates to direct identification data (such as a legal name). However, it also covers indirect identification data (data that makes it clear who is being referenced).

Personal data also includes online identifiers (such as IP addresses and mobile device IDs) and location data.

I use Dynamics 365. What types of data might be affected?

  • Customer data. This spans all text, sound, video or image files and software.
  • Administrator data. This is information about administrators supplied during signup, purchase, or administration of Microsoft services. It includes names, phone numbers, email addresses and aggregated usage information.
  • Payment data. This is the information companies provide when making online purchases with Microsoft, including credit card numbers, security codes, names and billing addresses and other financial data.
  • Support data. This information is supplied in a support request or results from running an automated troubleshooter.
  • A special note on children’s data: Children (defined as a natural person under the age of 16 or as specified by Member State law) need specific data protection. Data controllers will need to get the consent of a parent/guardian for using the child’s personal data.

Where do I begin? Dynamics 365 users have four stages to follow in the journey toward GDPR compliance: discover, manage, protect and report.

Step 1 – Discover: Companies need to identify what personal data they hold have and where that data rests. This means both searching for and identifying the relevant personal information and then classifying it.

Step 2 – Manage: This relates to governing how personal data is used and accessed. This means, among other things, putting in place a governance system that can: notify subjects about how their personal data will be processed, get consent from data subjects around the processing of their personal data, provide a way for subjects to ask that processing of their data be stopped, correct inaccurate or incomplete data, transfer and save data. The system should also make it clear how data requests are processed and resolved.

Step 3 – Protect: Companies need to establish security controls to prevent, detect, and respond to data vulnerabilities and data breaches. Companies must put in place data privacy and security controls that ensure the confidentiality, integrity and availability of personal data. Encryption is one tool that satisfies the GDPR requirements.

Step 4 – Report: To show GDPR compliance through reporting, companies need to maintain an audit trail of all processing activities, requests and their resolution. Companies will also need to track and record flows of personal data into and out of the EU and third-party service providers. Moving toward GDPR compliance needn’t be an involved or difficult process, but companies should start thinking today about the steps they may need to take. At The CRM Team, we’re helping our customers keep in step with this legislation. There are many ways this can be done, but our preferred platform is Microsoft Dynamics 365 – a suite of intelligent business applications that brings all your customer information together in one place.

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Drive Change And Adoption Of Your Technology Investments

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Drive Change And Adoption Of Your Technology InvestmentsThe CRM Team will be hosting a free webinar titled Adapting To Change: User Adoption & Technology, helping business leaders optimise their software investment through effective change management. This topical...

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