The Strategy Wall || 27th Edition

THE STRATEGY AND CONSULTING CLUB OF IIM ROHTAK

“Strategy is the economy of forces."

Carl Philipp Gottfried

(A)I THINK

GREAT LAKES INSTITUTE OF MANAGEMENT, GURGAON

Everything, from marketing data collection and processing to HR onboarding, is changing thanks to artificial intelligence and automation technologies. While automation and AI are extremely useful for cutting costs and saving time internally, there is one area in which they may produce even better, more significant results i.e., customer experience.

In the twenty-first century, both our personal and professional lives are dominated by technology. Because it enables them to get what they want when they want, and from wherever they want it, the millennial generation is dependent on technology. Businesses have been compelled to revise their plans and embrace a new age of high-quality service.

AI in Marketing

The use of technology to improve the consumer experience is known as AI marketing. Additionally, it may be utilized to raise the ROI of marketing initiatives. Organizations employ machine learning, big data analytics, and other techniques to get insight into their target audience. With this information, they create customer touch points that are more productive. In contacts, whether for email marketing or customer support, AI eliminates the majority of the guessing.

Artificial intelligence is becoming more and more popular with corporate leaders and marketers, and it is now a necessary tool for every brand that wants to provide its customers with an incredible, hyper-personalized experience. Software for AI customer relationship management and customer data platforms have reduced the prohibitive costs of the technology such that organizations may now use it.

Advantages for Customers

Tailored Services

With hyper-personalization, content is sent that is specifically suited to a customer's demands by combining real-time data with AI. When compared to more conventional means of doing business, like waiting in line for a call or navigating through pages of content to get what you're looking for, it allows for customized experiences that are also far faster and more convenient. Along with offering a more individualized experience, AI is assisting in minimizing pain points in the journey.

Specific Deals

AI may successfully target customers and influence them to make purchases using the knowledge gleaned from these sources when big data and behavioral psychology are merged. The ability of artificial intelligence (AI) to forecast human behavior. Marketers may learn more about the underlying factors influencing people's decisions by using personality tests developed by behavioral psychologists. By fusing demographic data on prospective consumers with psychological profiles created via behavioral research, brands can deliver personalized communications that inspire and encourage individuals to take action. Customers benefit from being able to discover either the specific item they were seeking or the necessary item. It helps save time.

Enhanced Involvement

Once a brand gets a customer, it needs work tirelessly to keep them interested. You may boost customer engagement by organizing engaging social media contests, offering them compelling video material, or maintaining their attention throughout a customer experience. One international restaurant and bar company, TGI Fridays, has enhanced customer satisfaction by making significant investments in AI. The restaurant business has made an effort to leverage data from those who tweeted about TGI Fridays, made reservations online, changed those reservations, or paid with a credit card in order to enhance that person's experience. Utilizing NLP, this kind of interaction enables customer evaluations.

Ease of Access

Any customer would tell you that ease is the foundation of customer pleasure. A lot of companies are switching to AI technology because it can offer customers proactive service that saves them time and effort. For instance, Amazon makes use of interactive chatbots to provide real-time assistance.

The chatbot provides information such as the status of a customer's order(s), an expected delivery time, and even the ability to submit complaints via the application's portal using pre-set settings. Meanwhile, Michelin uses artificial intelligence to foretell when a customer's tyres need to be replaced. As a result, AI's capacity to effectively exploit data to offer proactive service is one of its main benefits.

Continuous Availability

We now expect everything to be 'instant' because of the Internet's rising speed and connection. Millennials lack patience. As a result, in order to give assistance, organizations must ensure high availability. AI-powered chatbots are quite handy. They conduct complex conversations around the clock, seven days a week. Customers may talk to chatbots at any moment and for as long as they like. There are no allowances for vacations, sickness, or irritation with Chatbots. A human agent may grow irritated or give up attempting to solve an issue, while technology does not. A corporation may use trained Chatbots to service customers at any time.

Conclusion

It's time to face reality when it comes to artificial intelligence and machine learning. There is no turning back the clock in terms of customer service. AI-enabled solutions that anticipate wants before they inquire are desired by businesses. AI will surely improve the game for those who employ it in customer service. It is no longer a choice for a customer-centric organization, but rather a need. AI-assisted customer service will increase efficiency, engagement, and reduce dependency, paving the way for new methods to beat the competition.

Consumers that interact with AI more regularly have a more favorable opinion of it. Customers are more than three times as likely to believe that AI is enhancing their lives than it is making things worse. AI is positioned to revolutionize the customer experience because to technological improvements and younger consumers who are predicted to want more interaction with AI rather than less.

CONSULTING FIRMS ON NET ZERO MISSION

DAULAT RAM COLLEGE, DELHI UNIVERSITY

Net Zero is the balance between the greenhouse gases goes in the atmosphere and removal out of the atmosphere. It creates transition into clean energy and green technology that will result in reducing dependency on fossil fuels. Net Zero or balance is achieved when we remove carbon more than we added into the atmosphere. Corporations are setting targets to achieve Net Zero mission in order to control climate change. Basic and popular approach of moving towards mission are reflected in the picture.

Various Consulting firms are moving their operations in achieving Net Zero mission for creating sustainable environmental practices and adoption. One of them is BCG which has committed to remove more carbon to achieve mission by 2030. This begins from Net-Zero Consulting by helping clients when they adopt Net Zero transition and want to opt low carbon tools. Not only creating impact through clients but also making efforts on their operations and supply chain as well. Likewise Deloitte Consulting have been committed to achieve net zero mission by 2030 by setting carbon reduction targets and framing internal policies towards it. This include efforts on source 100 percent renewable electricity for their buildings and projects, reduce business travel emissions and many more. Recently the EY Consulting team launched EY Carbon hub- a transformation progress tracker to help businesses to plan and execute their transition to net zero.

Net Zero activity result of collective efforts of both private and public sectors by indulging their sustainable goals in businesses. Innovative thinking and ideas together with rapid action creates path for achieving Net Zero transmission. There are different set targets of time period of different consulting companies. The Bain & Company this year announced the leading step towards achieving net zero carbon targets by supporting nature based projects and projects that will remove carbon from the atmosphere such as reforestation and direct carbon capture instead of looking potential and future plans. Mckinsey & Company report evaluate various measure on achievement of Net Zero emissions. Under the analysis modifications in policies, technology, consumer and investor preferences would lead to major shifts in demand of various goods and services. Under achievement of Net Zero by 2050, oil and gas production would be 55percent and 70percent lower respectively than they are now. And coal production would be totally at the end by 2050. Power demand would be more than now along with massive growth in carbon capture and storage technologies. Many players in the consulting firms had opened the doors of sustainable ways of decarburization. A few months ago, KPMG also announced setting up Indian decarburization Hub. This hub will consolidate and makes collective path of knowledge, innovative solutions and capabilities for achieving net zero mission.

Along with major steps taken by various consulting companies, the demand of environmental consulting is growing at a fast pace to tackle the environmental problems and proposing best solutions for businesses. These consultancy firms helps businesses to inoculate best environmental practices in their operations by reducing carbon intensity and emission of greenhouse gas which results in serving sustainable products towards achieving net zero mission. With fast movement of net zero demand by clients and environment concerns, firms need to have people from various domains such as financial, risk, energy those can understand the changes in environment and their implications in the business. All businesses especially consulting firms need to adopt the sustainable processes along with goals of their clients and partners. Net Zero mission will make this world unite and sustainable.

MARKETING IN METAVERSE: A FORECAST

SRM UNIVERSITY, ANDHRA PRADESH

The “metaverse” is the next great revolution in computing. this concept of the long-term of the net promises to bring the physical world, together with new technologies, is only starting to rework the way people interact with one another, amuse themselves, last a spree and interact in other everyday activities.

The marketing trends were accelerated during the Covid pandemic, creating space for non-gaming brands to become a part of the Metaverse. Metaverse is unquestionably the subsequent marketing channel.

Meta (Facebook) isn`t the only real one; the concept of a metaverse continues to create big headlines. In April of 2021, Epic Games (that operates Fortnite) announced $1 billion in funding to develop a long-term metaverse vision.

“ART OF WAR” HEURISTICS

1. Parallel Marketing Gucci`s partnership with Roblox may well be an excellent example of how to parallel what your brand does in the world, making it simple and natural for this company to enter the metaverse. This allows Gucci to become an integral part of the Roblox supermarket by allowing users to enter their virtual lobby and view, try on and find Gucci

items digitally.

2. Virtual Showrooms

Next-tech AR goes one step further and uses AI to digitize 2D photos of consumers and turn them into 3D interactive spaces!

Virtual events: Next-tech AR can facilitate your craft of a virtual event as engaging as fun. The possibility of being experimental and innovative in crafting new, immersive experiences for our consumers is too good to pass up.

For example, Coach recently installed four pop-up shops to showcase the new Disney and Keith Haring collection. However, their unique virtual gallery promises an identical amount of interaction and immersive quality from a distance.

3. Offer Unique Collectables

Brand integration isn't only encouraging ticket sales. Still, it makes for a different quiet ticket purchasing experience with the added “Gamification” of shoppers potentially progressing to own a rare Marvel digitized item. 3D and Augmented Reality (AR) models: this could be one all told, the only way to start and add immersive elements needed for metaverse experiences.

What does the Metaverse mean for your business?

In addition to the mobile-first nature of AR, it also provides virtual immersive and computational interactions without isolation from games (VR), keeping users in one place and enabling interaction. interact primarily through avatars rather than actual people and places.

Power of the Metaverse

Brands like Warner Bros., Hyundai and Gucci have built their virtual worlds; Coca-Cola is tipping its toes into the space by selling non-fungible NFT tokens that are bought and sold on blockchain technology, allowing anyone to own digital items like images or videos - and Sephora, Nike and HBO are looking at AR and VR experiences. NFTs are an entry area for several brands to experiment with metaverse properties.

Another issue is Determining Return-On-Investment

As we wind down the previous year of meta mania, it`d be prudent to possess a minimum in some sense of the ways as this is often new means of working, so playing and investing might affect your budget and time. It might seem silly now, but how you look online could start to matter much more if much of your work and play happens there. Of course, NFT art has become one of the buzziest digital assets over the past few years. It might seem silly now, but how you look online could start to matter much more if much of your work and play happens there.

Metaverse Scams, Criticism and Conclusion

It is essential to check and check again once you would like to invest during a project. Unfortunately, there are plenty of scammers out there who use a variety of methods to coerce money from people. The metaverse could be a relative niche that must work out to avoid and keep one's eyes off scamming.

Otherwise, it'd be a significant privacy breach, investment, and marketing crisis. Finally, It remains an ambiguous prophecy, and to be frank, one must have a contingency plan, too, especially for Gen Z and Millennials.

MANAGING INFLATION

INDIAN INSTITUTE OF MANAGEMENT JAMMU

Strategies for Industries facing Headwinds

With the pandemic declining in the second half of 2021, economies worldwide started to recover. However, with the onset of the recovery, the companies had to brace for a high level of input cost, labour shortage, supply-side constraints etc. The geopolitical crisis (Russia-Ukraine war) eventually worsened the situation in 2022.

Hence, this high inflationary trend will likely last for months, if not years. So how should a company respond in such a situation?

The traditional response would be to go ahead with the following three options.

Raising the price level

·Cutting investor's margin

·Reducing the product quality in order to reduce cost

If the customers of the company's product are pricesensitive, then they are less likely to notice a lower quality or quantity of products offered at the same price level. Therefore, the company can reduce the quantity and quality of products to save on production expenses. However, if the company is targeting a niche segment not affected by a price rise, then adopting this strategy of saving on production costs is flawed and would not work for the company's best interest. Hence the company must know their potential customers and formulate policies according to them.

Identifying the core competency and cleaning up their product portfolio

Companies can implement this strategy by banking on the product in which they command a significant market share. The company must know which of their products are not doing well so that its resources are not spent on such products.

With the help of the BCG matrix, the management could identify their product offerings and go ahead with products that provide them with constant revenue inflow. It would be an ideal strategy for the company to focus on the products which come in the "cash cow" and "star" categories as it will help the company reduce its input cost and help them conserve its resources without any impact on its earnings.

Repositioning their brand

A company at any particular time have their product offerings that may be overpriced or underpriced. The current inflationary trend offers the company's management an opportunity to rectify this anomaly in the positioning of their product offerings.

For example- let's begin with an overpriced product. When a company spends a vast sum of money on marketing so as to maintain or bolster the value proposition that is becoming increasingly unsustainable, then in such case reducing the price level makes more sense as the company's product offering is losing its competitive edge. Also, inflation makes it difficult for the company to maintain such price levels. The optimal strategy for the company would be to reduce its marketing expenditure and simultaneously reduce its price level to support a more realistic position. This move could also result in higher profits for the company.

On the other hand, if the product offered is underpriced compared to the value that customers derive from products. In such case, variability of inflation, combined with the customer's expectation that they have to pay more for the products, provides an ideal opportunity for the company to reposition its price level on the higher side.

Altering their pricing model

Over the years, companies ranging from software to education to the automobile sector have demonstrated that changing the way you charge your customers can be advantageous. Nevertheless, the company should be able to attract customers and, at the same time, be able to satisfy all its investors by changing its pricing model.

• Attract the customer to a lower price point- For example, pricing the products as per the unit consumption model is much more transparent and lower than quoting the outright purchasing price. Hence it is more manageable for the customers as they have to pay for what they consume.

• Satisfying your investors- The primary concern that the investor has with the alteration of the company's pricing model is the impact on revenue. However, the recurring cost over the customer's lifetime makes up for any loss in revenue. Also, investors find this pricing model particularly attractive because it diversifies their risk over the broader customer basis.

Conclusion

The abovementioned options are some of the strategic options available to the companies to manage inflationary headwinds. Along with those, some other steps which the company can take are

·Use of automation in the production of goods and services

·Demarcation of strategic and non-strategic spending ·Reduction of revenue expenses without compromising on the long-term goal of the company.

BOSTON CONSULTING GROUP TO ACQUIRE QUANTIS

KIET GROUP OF INSTITUTIONS, GHAZIABAD

The acquisition of Quantis, a sustainability consultant, has been announced by Boston Consulting Group (BCG), the world's top consulting business. On September 15th, the announcement was made without providing any financial information. According to press reports, BCG and Quantis intend to lead the world's transition to a new planetary economy.

The acquisition of Quantis comes after, BCG was declared the exclusive consulting partner for COP27 to help organizations accelerate their climate and sustainability journey. Also, after turning a deaf ear for their major operating years, the environmental issues and their repercussions have taken up a rise among companies, both small and big players, in the last decade. “Bringing together Quantis and BCG is an exciting step in strengthening our ability to help clients protect our planet and transform sustainably,” said Christoph Schweizer, BCG CEO in the press release. “Many of the CEOs I speak to want to take action but are looking for the kind of deep expertise our Quantis team offers to solve their complex problems.

Quantis a topliner in North America and Europe, has more than 250 sustainability and environment-focused consultants, providing scientific and economical solutions to global companies regarding the reduction of carbon footprints, tackling climate change, deforestation, and many others, along with strategies to function within planetary boundaries, developed by the Stockholm Resilience Centre. BCG stated that the firm has a proven history and is evergrowing since its foundation in 2006. Apple, PepsiCo, Intel, and Nestle are one of the big clients of the firm.

I am proud to welcome this accomplished and passionate team to BCG.” BCG’s plans of expanding its grip on the sustainability market and getting maximum clients are highlighted by its recent activities. In June, BCG partnered with the Emirates Nature-WWF program to protect the environment in UAE by laying a new foundation for climatic action.

The desperate need not only, to find solutions but to find the finest ones that last longer and are within limits of the company’s budget has led to the growth of sustainability consultancies above the clouds. As stated in the survey conducted by Verdantix, 57% of firms expected sustainability initiative spending in 2022 to exhibit double-digit growth compared with 2021, with 28% anticipating an increase greater than 25%. Furthermore, ESG and sustainability consulting is one of consulting’s fastest growing segments and is expected to hit $16 billion worldwide by 2027, on the back of a compounded average growth rate of 21% in the coming five years.

The sustainability consulting industry is cutthroat and will become even more so in the years to come. Global governments and environmentalists are concerned about the future of the earth, which opens business prospects for both large and small companies. This has motivated the large consultancies to buy smaller and newer sustainability firms to strengthen their expertise, additionally eliminating the competition. Of course, generating handsome money is always the end goal. For instance, in April itself Accenture acquired two Europebased sustainability-focused firms, Avieco and Greenfish. ERM bought Sustainalize – a Dutch sustainability consulting firm with offices in the Netherlands, Belgium, and Germany. McKinsey & Co. has acquired three sustainability consultancies: Vivid Economics, Planetrics, and Material Economics to provide better insights for companies in the green transition. SLR, EY Canada, Deloitte, and BearingPoint are some of the firms that are also actively acquiring said consultancy.

It will be interesting to see how BCG's move affects both the company and its rivals. It will not come as a surprise if BCG keeps hiring people and firms with an environmental focus. The future of consulting businesses in the field of sustainability and climate change appears bright and appears to be creating engaging competition among top firms.