15 minute read
Adapting Technology to meet the need
by CIOONE
Saymaad Mansoor, the Head of IT at Speed House Group elaborates on the business and digital transformation journey of Speed House Group — By Arya Devi
Explain your role as Head of IT in Speed House Group?
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My role at Speed House Group is multi-dimensional, and my responsibilities include ensuring IT process implementation to improve the work proficiency, creating a strategy and overlooking performance management to move towards achieving our business goal. I am also responsible for implementing IT infrastructure to support international business expansion and work towards ensuring Speed House Group being ISO 27001 certified by the end of 2020
What are the most recent technology implementations done in Speed House?
In terms of IT or IT enabled implementation, we have scripted a remarkable success story by going paperless. Today, we have come very close to match up to our international partners with several noteworthy digital features. We are migrating to a Scalable Cloud Enabled ERP in order to support planned expansion, increase transparency and tractability. We are providing live video stream of production lines to our customers, enabling them to monitor the production and execution processes of their projects, resulting in higher customer satisfaction and a more Transparent relationship. We have a platform to download all marketing materials from the website and avoid paper consumption. There is a webbased enquiry portal to monitor enquiries and help maintain contact with the clients. We have been strengthening our online presence with Google Organic listing that help customers to reach to Speed House without following traditional method of marketing or distributing printed material
Saymaad Mansoor IT Head, Speed House Group
How technically ready is Speed House?
We have put our best foot forward to unshackle Speed House Group from the outdated stereotypes which construction or manufacturing sectors are associated with. In the GCC region, we are one of the few Modular Construction companies which realized the importance of 3D Printing very early. With the passage of time, 3D printing has become a name of the game in Prefabrication and Modular Construction Industry. It has enabled us to deliver convincing business reports and presentations to the main contractors, consultants, architects and other stake holders.
At Speed House we believe that the tide once again is shifting, hence we have already introduced the strategies to implement robotics and IoT, and different AI features to provide our clients with a quicker turn around period for their Enquiries, as well as monitoring our upcoming projects while ensuring that Health & Safety issues of our on-site deployed manpower can be addressed in a far better way.
Although we have seen so many ups and downs, the digital transformation journey of Speed House Group has been very interesting. Until recently, we remained one of the most traditional companies in the UAE and operated without a functioning website. Later on, we shook this idea and started to grow our presence be it offline or online. For that to happen, we focused on hiring qualified and skilled people who need negligible or minimal supervision in the areas assigned. Today we are close to being 100% paperless with our Cloud Enablement Initiative. We conduct internal meetings using video conferencing, all business processes are being transformed defying geographical barriers and promoting deskless workforce. At the time when there is so much hue and cry about Coronavirus, these ideas should be embraced by every industry, irrespective of the products or services they are in.
Which IT implementation do you say has revolutionized the organization? Explain
just to name a few where digital transformation has been playing a significant role.
Furthermore in marketing, the role of digital interference is undeniable as we spend more and more time on mobiles, tablets and laptops. When it comes to the magnitude of services Speed House provide, the idea to create campaigns and connect with the customers available on various social media platforms has lead the path for the brand to establish itself as a front-runner. Moreover our ERP implementation combined with the Customer Controlled Monitoring System is definitely an exemplary model on how modern businesses should operate. Engineering wise the recent implementation of BIM Software in our engineering department has definitely been a game changer for the whole engineering, manufacturing and installation process related to our works.
Which technology accord
ing to you is the most over hyped in the UAE market? And which is the one that you wish the market recognized more? Elaborate.
Blockchain is the talk of the town in the local market now a days. The mains cases why it is overhyped in the UAE market is – hassle-free customer verifications, accumulation of financial data, smooth flow of supply chain and asset digitization. Despite all that, I strongly believe AI based cyber security is more important with the ever increasing number of cyber-attacks including ransomware and data theft cases. IT security deserves more attention and recognition due to growing reliance on WiFi, Bluetooth and Smart Devices.
As a diversified business, what challenges do you plan to overcome in future with the help of IT?
We anticipate a consolidation of our Group’s industries that require real-time process control, asset integrity management, traceability and agility. Every technology we implement is aimed at attaining an integrated framework catering the needs of each industry to bring about a comprehensive and agile solution with the accurate functionality for our specific requirements. Moreover, to assimilate processes our engineers require divergent manufacturing and monitoring capabilities in this framework, with quality management and traceability inbuilt right from the raw material supply chain through to the finished product shipped to an individual customer, in the most economical method.
As the Head of IT, what is your mission for 2020?
Speed House is committed to adapting Technology to meet the latest engineering and construction requirements, it is highly unlikely for the Digital Transformation of the organization to end anytime soon.
We thrive to compete with the developed markets and are in the process of exploring Cloud Based AI Solutions from leading technology providers along with IoT to continue providing exemplary levels of service that our customers come to expect from us. Mission 2020 for IT at Speed House is a complete overhaul of the organization’s business processes and obtaining the ISO 27001 certification.
With behavioral science and AI being implemented to ease the journey of customers into brand journey, Customer Experience (CX) market is seeing new technologies and new trends.
— By Arya Devi
One of the key objectives of digital transformation rollouts is enhancing the customer experience. Integral to that objective is having a customer experience (CX) software platform in place, which will help manage and enhance customer experience. It does this by extracting information about individual customer interactions with the company at various transactional touchpoints It helps to analyze and interpret outcomes and responses.
CX is a term that encompasses a diverse array of software tools from different vendors and therefore any technological development designed and implemented specifically for the ease of customers can be termed as a customer experience (CX) software. Some CX software are also implemented to ease the workloads and pressure on the employees.
“Used loosely, customer experience is a broad term. Any interaction with a brand could be considered a customer experience,” says Subhi Farah, Co-founder and CEO of Kanari, one of the leading CX insights and analytics platforms based in UAE.
Used widely in retail, CX deployments with AI, help cater to customer profiles and expectations more precisely, helping save the customer precious time and therein delivering better customer satisfaction. With customer overview available from a single window, retailers can take more informed decisions regarding the customer journey. In shopping for instance, new technologies let shoppers be aware of the total amount to be paid for the items in the shopping cart even while physically shopping with a cart. Amazon has unveiled technologies that let shoppers grab without having to scan and pay; which in short eliminates even the idea of checkout line.
Enhanced outcomes
Year on year, new data comes out that indicates customer service and the customer experience (CX) are more important than ever. A Forrester study shows that 72% of businesses say that improving the customer experience is their top priority. Studies also show that companies lose more than $62 billion due to poor customer service.
According to the new Mulesoft 2020 Connectivity Benchmark Report, 92% of organizations are undertaking digital transformation initiatives or planning to in 2020 worldwide. However, 85% of organizations face integration challenges – stalling digital transformation and negatively impacting revenue, speed to market, and customer experiences. Companies are realizing the need to be ahead in the customer experience game, understanding quite well that
Thierry Nicault Regional VP, EBU, MEA & Central Europe, Salesforce
they cannot afford to be a laggard in customer service unless they are willing to lose some customers along the way. In countries like the UAE which has a very competitive retail segment, the importance of having a dynamic CX strategy in place cannot be ignored.
“Customer experience is important in the UAE, where 88% of shoppers buy from retailers, brands, and online marketplaces, according to our 2019 Connected Shoppers Report. Integrated CX is vital where customer touchpoints are increasingly fragmented. 51% of shoppers use mobile wallet, 48% use social media, and 28% use messaging apps,” said Thierry Nicault, Regional Vice-President for Enterprise Business Unit (EBU) - Middle East, Africa, and Central Europe, Salesforce. GCC business priority in 2020. “As the UAE embraces the Experience Economy, organizations can no longer deliver only products and solutions – they need to deliver enhanced experiences. By combining the customer “x-data” with operational “o-data,” organizations can better listen, understand, and act on customer beliefs, emotions, and intentions. As a result, organizations can become Intelligent Enterprises with greater business visibility, focus, and agility – and focus on transforming citizen, customer, and employee experiences,” says Abdallah Saqqa, Head of Customer Experience, SAP Middle East North.
AI and ML: or better or for worse
in terms of the enhancements in customer engagements and ensuring their transactions or even enquiries are an effortless digital experience and seamlessly integrated with the physical over the counter/POS experience as well. Unless a company wants to be recognized or differentiated only as a low-cost provider, the value proposition of good customer service can make prices less relevant. That’s how smaller independent retailers compete against big box stores.
CX brings to the fore an integration of several new powerful technologies. Technology is being used to track customer preferences and history. Big data gives us trends and insights with uncanny accuracy. Customer experience market is seeing all the major technologies being implemented in them including Big Data Management, IoT, AI etc. Artificial Intelligence is coming to the forefront of how a company creates a better CX. ML and AI is put to its optimum use in CX software development. AI and Intelligent Assistant (IA) is expected to positively impact the customers.
“AI is key for Middle East organizations to offer real-time customer insights, especially in shopping. AI-powered search and product recommendations drove the 2019 winter holiday season. Our 2019 Holiday Shopping Report shows 10 %of digital orders and 5% of digital revenue came from AI-powered recommendations,” adds Nicault.
To add to this point, Saqqa said that conversational AI and the use of text and voice-based messaging apps automate communications between businesses and their customers. As consumers continue to make greater use of these channels, GCC organizations can seize the opportunity to integrate conversational AI technologies. He further said, “Powered by AI, smart chatbots are designed to automatically mimic a human response. These chatbots can message back and forth with customers throughout their commerce journey while also gathering data and generating a more personalized experience.”
AI is increasingly a part of every new technology and every business and has had its significant impact on CX platforms as well. “AI is going to revolutionize everything, simplify processes and make them smoother and more seamless. AI has become a fact of life,” adds Farah.
AI has done wonders in transforming traditional chatbots, making them a lot smarter. With Machine Learning and AI, Smartbots have replaced the role of human in the first entry enquiry stage. The best chatbots are able to not only respond to requests and questions, but also recognize when the cus-
Subhi Farah Co-Founder & CEO, Kanari
tomer is confused and seamlessly hand off the conversation to a live customer support representative.
This then extends the journey beyond customer experience towards “customer success”, making customers use your product to solve their problem for themselves or their business and making sure that customers are satisfied every time they interact with your company, at all touchmpoints.
Enabling “Customer Success”
Since all products are not the same, there are certain that would need higher level of customer support or in turn gets frustration. For example, the idea of self assembling of a furniture from IKEA. The goal of a customer success program is to ensure that the customer has success with the company’s products. Companies provide with online tutorials or coaching classes for these kinds of special attention required products. This eliminates the frustration which might be faced by the customers while getting acquainted with the products. Such proactive customer success programs eliminates a good majority of the need for customer support calls and enquiry. There are various challenges though in CX software deployment. The major challenges faced by organizations in their CX deployments would be in having successful ways of collecting customer feedback across touchpoints, and then leveraging that customer experience feedback to optimize experiences.
Saqqa says “In the YouGov survey, barely half (52 percent) of GCC organizations successfully collect customer feedback, though two-thirds (66 percent) of organizations say that they are effectively leveraging customer feedback. One way that GCC organizations can solve this customer experience gap is by working with specialized and authorized channel partners to identify the business cases and the CX solutions. Organizations also need to train staff in digital skills. Not everyone needs to be a data scientist, but employees do need data science skills.”
Working in real time is another major challenge faced with the CX deployment. Worldwide, 69% of customers expect connected experiences that raise the bar for
engagement, and 71% of customers expect companies to interact in real time.
Nicault says, “Middle East organizations need to prioritize constant innovation, with 75% of customers worldwide expecting companies to use new technologies to create better experiences. Worldwide, 76% of customers are using connected devices, and 62% are open to using artificial intelligence to improve their experiences.”
Experience and Management
Tracking, mapping, understanding, predicting and managing customer experience are various steps in the overall strategy of Customer experience management (CEM). CEM, is in other words, the practice of designing and reacting to customer interactions to meet or exceed their expectations, leading to greater customer satisfaction, loyalty and advocacy. There’s tangible business value in managing the customer experience effectively. Good customer experience management can strengthen brand preference through differentiated experiences. It can further boost revenue with incremental sales from existing customers and new sales from word of mouth. With CEM, there would be an improved customer loyalty (and create advocates) through valued and memorable customer interactions.
Pointing out the importance of CEM, Farah says “We look at customer experience from a holistic perspective; at how we can collect any type of data and feedback from customers and turn it into actionable insights and improvements for a business.” He further added, “We mostly focus on helping companies measure the customer experience and as a result identify dissatisfied customers and their specific areas of dissatisfaction within the business."
More companies are going in for a transformation in its CX strategy, especially as online commerce picks up. The ROI on an enterprise-wide CX transformation scenario are quite significant but the best approach would be to start with smaller projects and then and use the resulting ROI model to fuel a winning business case for wider scale CX transformation. It is said that “Customer service represents the heart of a brand in the hearts of its customers.” Businesses are striving to brand their products into the hearts of the customers nevertheless.
CUSTOMER EXPERIENCE LEADERS EXPECT BUDGETS TO RISE IN 2020
Customer experience (CX) efforts remain inconsistent in many organizations, but there are signs of greater commitment and execution for 2020, according to according to Gartner’s 2019 Customer Experience Management Survey revealed earlier this year. More than two-thirds of CX leaders expect budget increases in 2020 . This is a considerable change compared with the 2017 survey where only 47% of CX leaders expected budgets to increase.
The survey revealed that CX leaders who know how customer satisfaction drives business results get a larger budget. Those respondents whose firms have established a positive relationship between improving customer satisfaction and business impact are more likely to expect significant budget increases.
To positively demonstrate success and prove the value of CX to business results, Gartner recommends CX leaders take the following actions:
Use customer data to demonstrate CX’s business impact: One of the keys to sustain attention from leaders and collaboration from peers is to make CX matter in terms of the results that are important to them. Prove how satisfied customers drive up revenue, lower churn, reduce costs and grow the business by combining customer satisfaction data with transaction and operational data.
Budget for effective CX execution in the future: Developing a CX budget isn’t just a once-a-year process. Always monitor budget and performance and consistently promote the organization’s CX successes and impact. Plan ahead for the annual budgeting process by collaborating with key stakeholders, gathering data and drafting a persuasive budget to accomplish the organization’s CX goals.
