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Top Considerations When Selecting a Digital Transformation Partner
Digital transformation is essential for CX success
Digital transformation is the starting point for a wide range of IT and business process modernization efforts. Its importance in achieving superior CX results is no exception. To meet the ever-increasing expectations of today’s digitally connected consumers, all your customer-facing technologies and business processes must be integrated, aligned, and streamlined to deliver a consistent and positive brand experience.
When an organization is empowered with the right mix of integrated technologies for supporting seamless communication across the full spectrum of channels, the benefits are enormous. Advanced and innovative communication tools improve and expand customer interactions with the business, providing a wealth of new data-driven insights which, in turn, enable CX leaders to discover new opportunities to improve their customers’ experience, and to keep advancing the conversation and enhancing business revenues.
Achieving Digital Transformation
Achieving digital transformation is never easy, or quick. That’s because it inevitably involves major changes, including re-thinking, re-aligning, and unifying all those separate, independently managed streams of customer contact that currently rely on a complicated collection of legacy apps and data systems. Most organizations simply don’t have the available resources, in terms of IT and staff, with the required expertise across all the new and rapidly advancing technologies to achieve digital transformation on their own.
In fact, according to research conducted by McKinsey, organizations that undertake such large-scale transformation projects fully in-house fail to achieve their stated goals about 70 percent of the time. In contrast, the most successful digital transformations result when companies engage Customer Experience Management (CXM) experts to help them define, plan, and execute their digital transformation projects.
Top Considerations When Selecting a Digital Transformation Partner
The end goal of your digital transformation is to improve business results through more open and complete collaboration with your customers. The same should be true when considering who to rely upon to achieve your goals. You certainly want to partner with experts who have the most comprehensive knowledge of current CXM technologies. But product knowledge is only part of the formula for success. The right partner will provide so much more.
1. Deep technical understanding of all your current technologies and applications
Digital transformation requires carefully sequenced, coordinated, and above all, non-disruptive bridging from the systems you have in place today to the new technologies you are adopting. This requires that your partner has broad expertise that encompasses all the customer-facing systems across your organization, not just your CRM-specific technologies, including:
- Legacy data storage and document archives
- Core business systems, including mainframe, open system and cloud platforms
- In-house and third-party print and distribution systems
- Call-center integrated network and telecom systems
- And much more
2. Top-notch change management skills for developing effective transformation strategies
Successfully implementing new technologies and workflows always requires full support from everyone involved. Your chosen digital transformation partner must have proven change management skills and experience in working collaboratively with you, your leadership, and your teams to develop and guide inclusive and collaborative project plans.
3. Decades of experience and a long track record of CXM leadership
Truly embracing digital transformation also means making a commitment to continuous change. One of the key advantages of today’s CXPs is the ability to apply advanced analytics to fully unified CX data across all channels. Continuously evaluating your CX results in near-real time provides the insight you need to respond with more rapid and targeted improvements, including the adoption of new technologies and channels.
So, it is important that your digital transformation partner not only has solid CXM knowledge and experience, but also a proven track record of leadership across the years in understanding and delivering all the latest technologies and best practices, including:
- Converging traditional and digital document composition and production, using advanced CX data analytics and no-code, business user-managed content design and development
- Integrating existing data stores and systems with advanced CXM technologies including location intelligence; data quality and enrichment systems; and artificial intelligence, to deliver personalized video; interactive forms; chatbots and intelligent voice assistants; self-service account and payment portals; and more.
The business case for digital transformation of CXM
The explosion of customer interaction points—across new channels, devices, applications, and more—brings with it both challenges and opportunities. Achieving your organization’s CXM objectives requires managing not just individual touchpoints, but the full omni-channel customer experience. In the end, digital transformation drives business transformation.
Digital Adoption drives improved customer experiences and greater efficiencies for businesses
Today’s customers want to engage with you across digital channels, for convenience, for speed, and an increased feeling of control over the conversation. For example, transitioning as much push messaging to digital delivery is a win-win, with customers receiving your messages via their preferred, most convenient channel while your business reduces both production expenses and time-to-delivery. Digital invoicing and self-service payment systems likewise benefit both you and your customers.
For a wide range of service-centered businesses, including banking, credit card, insurance, real estate, and many others, winning and keeping the customer requires making and keeping contractual promises over long periods of time. And that requires many detailed and often regulated conversations.
No matter the touchpoint, whether creating and delivering insurance policies, providing onboarding education and support, or processing claims, customers feel more empowered and secure when the conversation is safe, private, convenient, uncomplicated, and fully customized – all characteristics of properly designed and delivered digital interactions.
The business value of partnering for digital transformation
In the broader perspective, the commitment to digitally transforming CXM in your organization impacts far more than specific technology and business process decisions. Because so many top-level business goals and results depend upon getting it right, you need to have a digital transformation partner at your side who understands not only the CXM technologies and processes but also their ultimate impacts on your organization’s success.
Benefit from Precisely expertise
Our experts work with you through every phase of your digital transformation from scoping and assessment workshops to implementation, experience design, content management, and planning for your ongoing digital CXM transformation.
We recommend industry best practices geared toward helping you save time and money while improving engagement. Our consulting workshops and other services leverage our decades of experiences improving how businesses connect to their customers.
Learn how Precisely can help you successfully execute and accelerate your digital transformation.
