The growing adoption of Internet of Things (IoT) consumer electronics — such as smart thermostats and digital assistants — has paved the way for brands to use connected devices in their physical spaces too. The same sophisticated technology that powers “smart home” devices is slowly finding its way into stores, hospitals, and other public spaces, creating “smart places.”
For this report, we outline how location-based brands can take the battle offline by investing in technology-rich locations that raise the bar for Customer Experience (CX).
We also examine the barriers brands will face, balancing the value of enhanced consumer insights, customer experience, and operational efficiencies against heightened risks around consumer privacy.
Key Findings:
Detailed use cases distilled from research into hundreds of different ‘smart place’ devices
Interviews with early adopters, device makers, industry groups, and vendors who focus on CX management in physical locations
Recommendations for incorporating these technologies into your business strategy, and the challenges therein
In the new report, “The 2017 State of Digital Transformation,” we surveyed more than 500 executives and digital strategists to understand the current challenges and opportunities they are facing as they undergo a digital transformation.
This is the third annual report on the topic from Altimeter principal analyst Brian Solis. This year builds on his 2016 research and reveals how, why, and to what extent businesses are investing in digital strategies, initiatives and operational models. The good news is a growing number of businesses are investing in innovation strategies to uncover new growth opportunities. The bad news is most companies surveyed are ignoring the pervasive changes happening to connected consumers’ buying behaviors.
Key Findings
While businesses cite “evolving customer behaviors and preferences” as the top driver of digital transformation, fewer than half invest in understanding digital customers.
Some executives are beginning to own digital transformation efforts, and the Chief Information Officer (CIO) is most often at the helm (28%). As all companies increasingly become “technology companies,” the roles of the CIO and IT department are more important than ever — but true success in digital transformation is an enterprise-wide, cross-functional endeavor.
Companies and their change agents still face big challenges in the pursuit of digital transformation, including a lack of digital talent and expertise (31.4%), the perception that digital transformation is a cost center and not an investment (31%), and general culture issues (31%).
While companies are making attempts to modernize employees’ skillsets for a digital economy with new training programs (62%), only about half are investing in new digital talent. The employee experience is a crucial, yet often overlooked element of a successful digital transformation.
Undergoing a Digital Transformation? Get a Digital Maturity Assessment
To help companies navigate the digital transformation journey, Altimeter and Prophet have developed a diagnostic that assesses a company’s digital maturity. The tool provides an objective look at the current digital state vs. ideal future state while identifying major perceived gaps and opportunities that can be pursued as part of the digital transformation journey. Contact us today to learn more.
What’s Driving Digital Transformation Across Organizations?
Building on his 2014 research of digital transformation, principal analyst Brian Solis studied how companies are changing, and the challenges and opportunities they face while undergoing a digital transformation. Based on insights and data from more than 500 digital strategists and executives, the report found that companies are still facing significant challenges to operating in a digital economy.
The report, “The 2016 State of Digital Transformation,” shares the latest facts and figures on the top drivers, challenges and best practices of companies that are undergoing a digital transformation.
Key Findings
In our research, we identified key insights and trends impacting companies going through a digital transformation.
Customer Experience (CX) remains the top driver of digital transformation but IT and marketing still influence technology investments
55% of those responsible for digital transformation cite “evolving customer behaviors and preferences” as the primary catalyst for change. Yet, the number one challenge facing executives (71%) is understanding behavior or impact of the new customer
Only half (54%) of survey respondents have completely mapped out the customer journey. This means that many companies are changing without true customer-centricity 41% of leaders surveyed said they’ve witnessed an increase in market share due to digital transformation efforts, and 37% cite a positive impact on employee morale
The CMO vs. CIO: Digital transformation is largely led by the CMO (34%) not the CIO/CTO (19%)
Innovation tops digital transformation initiatives at companies today. 81% said it was at the top of their agenda, 46% stated their company has launched a formal “innovation center.” Right behind innovation was modernizing IT infrastructure (80%) and improving operational agility (79%)
Undergoing a digital transformation? Contact us for a digital maturity assessment.
To help companies navigate the digital transformation journey, Altimeter and Prophet have developed a diagnostic that assesses a company’s digital maturity. The tool provides an objective look at the current digital state vs. ideal future state while identifying major perceived gaps and opportunities that can be pursued as part of the digital transformation journey. Contact us today to learn more.
How Companies Are Investing in the Digital Customer Experience
Digital transformation isn’t a trend owned by a particular role, nor a discipline that belongs to one department alone. It is, however, a significant movement where daring business leaders venture into tomorrow’s markets, today.
In 2013, Altimeter researched how businesses explore digital transformation. One finding revealed that while the word “digital” is part of “digital transformation,” the essence of digital transformation comes down to people and how their digital behaviors differ from that of the traditional customers before them. It’s also more than that.
In our initial report on the topic, Digital Transformation: Why and How Companies Are Investing in New Business Models to Lead Digital Customer Experiences, we set out to determine how digital transformation unified disparate digital efforts under a common vision. In the process, we uncovered a more human story. We followed up our initial research with a 2014 survey, aimed at digital strategists, to further understand the state of digital transformation.
This report shares its results and is designed to complement Altimeter’s annual State of Social Business report. Combined, this research helps strategists drive social business evolution and digital transformation based on insight from peers and market leaders.
Tapping into the power of an engaged social workforce
The use of employees to advocate on behalf of their brand is nothing new, but a combination of market forces and growing comfort with social business has created a tipping point for the growth of formalized Employee Advocacy programs. In Ed Terpening’s latest report, he surveyed brand leaders, employees and consumers to understand employee advocacy. His research uncovered motivations for companies investing in employee advocacy programs; what motivates employees to share information about their workplace; and what employee-driven content resonates most with customers.
Key Findings
90% of brands surveyed are already pursuing or have plans to pursue some form of employee advocacy
Consumer response to employee posts often outperform traditional digital advertising results
21% of consumers report “liking” employee posts – a far higher engagement rate than the average social ad
Employee advocacy drives employee engagement. When employees are asked how they felt after sharing work-related content, the leading response was “I feel more connected and enthusiastic about the company I work for”
Employee advocacy supports employment branding. When asked which employee-shared content consumers found most relevant, recruiting rose to the top
Interestingly, European consumers are less likely to be interested in a connection’s posts about work and European employees are less likely to share work-related content.
Europeans have a stronger preference for keeping work and home life separate: 44% of Europeans cited this as a reason for not sharing work-related content, compared to only 23% of North American
By focusing more on the executional arms of content development and content marketing instead of a holistic content strategy, organizations can end up producing large volumes of content without a clear purpose or sense of direction. In addition, the different departments that deploy content can end up producing material with differing (and often competing) objectives. With limited resources and digital real estate for engaging customers, it’s crucial that the entire organization work off a single, coherent content strategy that explicitly states who the brand’s customer is, what is the major need or problem they have, and how the brand will fulfill that need using content.
Through our research, we found that companies with successful content strategies had clarity around what they wanted the content to do for their customers and strong criteria for what they would and wouldn’t publish. Our methodology for narrowing this focus for companies to choose one of five major content strategy archetypes:
Content as Presence
Content as a Window
Content as Currency
Content as Community
Content as Support
Key Findings
This report helps companies decide which archetype is best suited to help them deliver on a customer’s need while also meeting a business goal. It then walks through the sequence of steps that build upon this archetype to create a formalized strategy that minimizes content waste, aligns multiple teams around a common vision and helps them deliver on a unified customer experience.
In our research, we learned that digital transformation is a movement progressing without a universal map to guide businesses through proven and productive passages. This leaves organizations pursuing change from a known, safe approach that correlates with “business as usual” practices. Operating within the confines of traditional paradigms without purpose or vision eventually challenges the direction, capacity, and agility for thriving in a digital economy.
After several years of interviewing those helping to drive digital transformation, we have identified a series of patterns, components and processes that form a strong foundation for change. We have organized these elements into six distinct stages:
Business as Usual
Present and Active
Formalized
Strategic
Converged
Innovative and Adaptive
Collectively, these phases serve as a digital maturity blueprint to guide purposeful and advantageous digital transformation. Our research of digital transformation is centered on the digital customer experience (DCX) and thus reflects one of many paths toward change. We found that DCX was an important catalyst in driving the evolution of business, in addition to technology and other market factors.
Why be one of many in a crowded category, when you can create one you can have all to yourself?
2 min
Summary
David Aaker says that brands today should actively search for ways to define new subcategories with unique attributes that cannot be duplicated by competitors.
6 Actions to Build an Insurance Service Strategy that Drives Growth
Our research finds that consumers expect more, and want products combined with services.
Over the past several years insurance companies have faced increased product commoditization due to ubiquitous online presence, more sophisticated aggregators and the increased availability of insurance products. They are faced with the challenge of driving growth while managing their risk profiles to be less capital-intensive. In a market with heightened expectations for digital experiences – which the COVID-19 pandemic raised even more – the likes of Oscar, Lemonade and other new DTC market entrants are raising consumer expectations, spurring companies to develop more experience-led strategies to drive engagement and value. Then there’s other players like American Express and Chase making their play.
Where should insurers look to drive growth?
Against this backdrop, Life, Health and P&C insurers are turning to new services to drive growth and engagement. Services create more compelling and differentiated solutions that focus on customer needs, going above and beyond basic insurance coverages. This enables insurers to identify new streams of less capital-intensive revenue and increase demand for existing products – especially in a category that has historically struggled to drive engagement at moments outside of the core product moments (e.g., purchase, premium payment and claim).
Based on our extensive experience and research within the industry, integrating a services strategy also translates into impactful business outcomes for insurers globally – from initial purchase intent to long-term customer retention. The results speak for themselves:
Customers were twice as interested in an insurance product when sold with relevant services (Source: Prophet Insurer Research)
The presence of services impacts broker interest with three-quarters of brokers stating that services are critical to their choice of provider when recommending to clients (Source: Prophet Insurer Research)
Insurers who offer three or more services on top of the core product see NPS increases between 20-40 points.
When it comes to services, who is doing it well?
Insurers are already recognizing the value services can bring both to their customers and their business. However, as many insurers do not have exclusive relationships with services providers, avoiding services replication across the industry is key. Insurers are therefore partnering and acquiring across the services ecosystem to uniquely deliver new customer value.
P&C providers are already seeing strong integration of services into their offers given their ability to utilize customer tracking and connected devices, not only providing product discounts but also additional services on-top. For example, Progressive Insurance has partnered with TrueMotion to launch Snapshot, a service that monitors and measures driver data through either their smartphones or a plug-in device. This enables customers to understand their driving habits and generate personal discounts. Progressive is continuing to explore expansions to the program and invest in partnerships to combat distracted driving.
“Integrating a services strategy also translates into impactful business outcomes for insurers globally – from initial purchase intent to long-term customer retention.”
Health and Life are also now capitalizing upon the opportunity to integrate services into their portfolios by exploring the way they can utilize health tracking to adjust premiums through improved health. From a global standpoint, Vitality is one example of a brand that has developed a personalized customer health and wellness tracking and support platform. In the U.S. specifically, John Hancock has partnered with Vitality to provide discounts and tailored recommendations to their customers based on their health tracking. While in Asia, AIA has made a focused push to expand the solutions they offer to customer across the region.
Health insurers also are exploring the role of partnerships with preventative health start-ups to help customers manage chronic illnesses. For example, Cigna has partnered with Omada Health to offer customers a personalized preventative health solution to mitigate risk against diabetes, heart disease and stroke.
Six actions for insurers to create impact and drive growth through services
We believe there are six actions insurers take to develop a winning services strategy:
Understand what customers want. What is the foundational understanding of customer wants and needs to guide services development?
Identify the business opportunity. What role could and should services play for your business and what business objectives should your services strategy inform (i.e., acquisition, incremental revenue, retention, efficiency)?
Prioritize unique and relevant services. What are the set of unique services most relevant to your customer base that you will prioritize developing?
Drive engagement. Where and when within the journey do customers become aware of services and how do we improve interest for them?
Improve the experience of access and use. What is the right experience behind driving easier services access and use to deliver greater customer value?
Identify the right internal owners. Who within the organization is responsible for funding, building and managing our services strategy?
Insurers are falling short on delivering value to customers. A well-defined services strategy can nurture customer relationships and earn loyalty to fuel growth.
If you’d like to learn more about the role of services and how we have helped leading insurance companies execute experience-led strategies that drive impact and engagement, get in touch.
The best stories grab attention and don’t let go, with interesting characters and intriguing details
2 min
Summary
David Aaker says that brand marketers shouldn’t communicate important messages using facts, they should use signature stories. The narrative is more likely to capture the consumer’s attention, peak their interest and be remembered.
Using Anniversaries to Reinforce Your Brand Purpose
Annual events can strengthen and reinforce important values, helping to tell different stories.
It is more important than ever for companies to have a brand purpose. To remain relevant to their customers, companies need to find opportunities to share that purpose with the world and in turn, also become inspiring places to work for their employees.
A powerful way to reinforce a brand’s value to both internal and external audiences is through brand anniversaries.
They are also an opportunity to celebrate the past while setting up a vision for the future.
In the past few years, many iconic brands have used key anniversary milestones to strengthen ties with their stakeholders and build brand perceptions around a strong purpose. But anniversary celebrations can be used in different strategic ways as well. We’ve identified 3 ways brands can make the most of their anniversary through a focused strategy.
3 Ways Brands Can Use Anniversaries to Reinforce Their Brand’s Purpose
Reinforce the Core
For example, Marvel Studios used its 10-year anniversary to engage core fans and drive loyalty through its “More Than a Hero” campaign. The branding campaign kicked off with a week-long event showcasing 20 Marvel movies in IMAX theaters. Marvel also released behind-the-scenes, never-before-seen footage and launched a sweepstake for fans to share their favorite Marvel memory on social media.
Through these activities and content, they successfully engaged tens of thousands of fans in live events and via anniversary videos on YouTube (which received over two million views), helping to cement loyalty for the franchise.
Strengthen Your Image
Swiss Re celebrated its 150th anniversary by engaging stakeholders worldwide to participate in collaborative dialogues on important topics of our time, such as advancing sustainable energy solutions, funding longer lives and partnering for food security. To achieve its goals, Swiss Re launched The Open Minds Forum around the world, discussing ground-breaking ideas and exploring fresh perspectives on the risks facing generations to come. Employees were also encouraged to write articles and share their perspectives.
The anniversary celebration helped Swiss Re initiate conversations around business and societal risks with its customers and reinforced the brand image of being ‘smarter together,’ by creating a dialogue with people around the world.
Shift the Narrative
For its centennial anniversary, BMW launched “The Next 100 Years”, a year-long integrated campaign to strengthen its brand worldwide. As part of the campaign, the company revealed four concept cars and released “The Next 100” publication to invite industry experts & pioneer thinkers to envision the future of BMW. They interacted with consumers digitally through curated content on a dedicated centennial website, live discussions on social media platforms, and AR/VR interaction through the ‘BMW VISIONS’ mobile app.
These anniversary celebrations bolstered BMW’s status as a future shaper by gathering hundreds of thousands of guests and consumers to join celebration events in person or online.
How Do Anniversary Celebrations Help to Amplify Brand Purpose?
While each of these celebrations took on different forms and focused on different objectives, there were four guiding principles they each followed which made them successful:
Be authentic: For any anniversary celebration, you need to stay true to your brand DNA in everything you do and say
Be clear: You need to have clear objectives and create a single, overarching theme to align all activities and leave stakeholders with a clear understanding of what your brand stands for
Be targeted: You must consider what you represent to different stakeholders and design specific ways to engage each of them appropriately
Be bold and brilliant: To deliver impact, you must activate at sufficient scale and frequency to get noticed and to show the company in a new light
Anniversaries are a great time for celebration and a great opportunity to reinforce your brand purpose. To get the most out of the milestone, they require a deliberate approach. As you plan your next brand anniversary make sure you do four key things:
Align on the vision, with clear objectives and a creative theme that will serve as the guiding foundation to engage all stakeholders
Plan the experiences throughout the campaign and define the desired interaction and requirements
Design and develop unique content to bring the experience to life at each touchpoint – spanning digital & physical and internal & external
Prepare for activation with an integrated roadmap that pulls together all activities into a coherent campaign
Visions are compelling and unifying. Just make sure you can really bring it to life.
1 min
Summary
What do you want your brand to stand for? The answer to this question usually leads to 2-3 attributes that differentiate your brand, resonate with your target audience and drive your brand-building programs.
