Discover how GenAI is reshaping digital transformation by putting consumers at the center. Our report reveals surprising insights into how consumers are adopting GenAI faster than expected and leveraging it to improve their lives. Learn how businesses can apply GenAI not just for optimization or efficiency, but to unlock consumer-centric growth and stay ahead of the curve.
For business leaders formulating GenAI strategies and identifying priority use cases, the time is now to raise and consider these questions:
How do we unleash growth with this new technology?
What can we do now to attract, engage and serve customers?
Will we be in the same business tomorrow as we’re in today?
The TL;DR on Our Findings
We surveyed more than 2,400 consumers across the globe to understand how they perceive and use GenAI, here’s what we found:
With an average adoption rate of 45%, consumers are taking up GenAI faster and at a greater scale than previous breakthrough technologies.
Typically, younger consumers show the greatest interest in new tech. But in the case of GenAI, there is strong adoption by all generations. Millennials have the highest adoption rates (53%).
“Entertainment” is the top consumer use case today. Of GenAI users, 77% believe GenAI provides inspiration and helps them discover new things.
Consumers want GenAI to give them coaching and – in some cases – make decisions autonomously. They look for support in meaningful parts of their lives.
Consumers are more optimistic than concerned: 76% of survey respondents are excited about the possibilities it creates.
Download the report to discover how consumers are leveraging GenAI today and how your business can harness these insights to create transformative growth opportunities.
“It is the tech of the future; powered by automation and the power of us.”
MALE, MILLENNIAL, U.S.
“AI’s future technological developments can help humans create a better life.”
MALE, GEN X, CHINA
Winning with GenAI Requires a Consumer-Centric Approach
To unlock uncommon growth, brands must embrace GenAI with bold strategies and customer-centric thinking. Focus on creating value through inspiring experiences, reimagined consumer journeys, and innovative business models.
Balance near-term AI deployment with long-term transformative opportunities and prioritize building organizational infrastructure to scale effectively. By putting consumers at the heart of GenAI strategies, brands can transcend technological hype, delivering impactful, human-centered outcomes that foster trust and drive sustainable growth.
Three Brand Building Imperatives in Leading Successful M&A Deals
Learn the importance of a well-defined brand strategy with three M&A examples.
Many businesses in Asia have achieved exponential growth through mergers and acquisitions (M&A) in recent years. However, success hinges not just on immediate financial gains, but also on how the new organization (“NewCo”) integrates both operational and brand equities.
A well-defined and executed brand strategy can significantly impact the overall business success during and post M&A by fostering cohesion, clarity and confidence among all stakeholders. This is especially true for B2B companies, where M&A deals often involve the evolution of not only organizational structures, but also offerings, processes, people and cultures.
At Prophet, we have partnered with a diverse array of businesses across Asia and around the world to safeguard complex M&A deals, from which we’ve identified several common success factors. In this article, we share our perspectives with three distinctive case studies.
Seatrium: Creating an “Atrium of People of the Sea”
Keppel O&M and Sembcorp Marine, two leading global marine companies merged in 2023. As the industry strives towards cleaner and renewable energy, the two organizations came together to forge a new path forward. We identified an opportunity for the NewCo to differentiate with a stronger brand purpose – “We exist to ensure customers can thrive today while creating a greener and brighter tomorrow.” The new visual identity was carefully crafted to highlight new waves of innovation in the marine environment. The name “Seatrium” created by the client also centered around this purpose.
Vistra: Building a “Category of One” From the Inside out
EQT Private Capital Asia (formerly BPEA EQT) made significant investments to merge Vistra and Tricor, forming a powerhouse brand in the corporate and fund solutions industry. With its diversified business portfolio, Vistra embarked on a bold transformation journey, reimagining itself as a purpose-led brand. From beginning to end, Prophet worked closely with employees and stakeholders in the extensive brand, visual and culture development process to make sure that it resonates with those who embody the brand and culture.
G7 Connect: Connecting all with a Human-Centric Brand Story
Another powerful example is G7 Connect, born from a merger of two leading IoT SaaS companies in China’s road freight sector, G7 and E6 Technology. After a successful merger, G7 Connect had two key challenges – to clearly define its renewed vision and engage all stakeholders, while streamlining the currently complex portfolios inherited from two industry giants. Prophet partnered with the NewCo to create an impactful and human-centric brand tagline, “Beautiful change happens now” to encapsulate G7 Connect’s commitment to continuously creating positive changes for all industry participants through digital technology.
Three Brand Building Imperatives
Through these examples, we can clearly see the common threads that empowered their successful transformations – a steadfast and consistent purpose and the unification of diverse stakeholders. The role of a compelling brand strategy cannot be understated, which unveils three imperatives:
1. Adopt a Brand-Led Mindset in the Early Stages of M&A Deals
Transformation across the culture and organization, business model and objectives are an integral component of any merger and acquisition. This must be led by a strong brand purpose anchored in business objectives as a guiding star for the organization throughout the M&A process.
As the strategic foundation translating business objectives into resonating go-to-market solutions, this brand-led vision must be a CEO agenda adopted from the early set of M&A deals to instil energy and confidence throughout the organizations. Lack of a brand-led vision may lead to risk of misalignment across functions and hindered collaboration, ultimately causing suboptimal and inconsistent executions.
In the case of G7 Connect, the leadership team had carefully considered brand implications at every step of the M&A journey, so that cross-functional leads were united under a common goal. Strategic priorities were thus clearly defined when it comes to creating a new brand for the NewCo. At launch, various business units from operational to talent teams had already reached clear alignment with the marketing and strategy teams, gaining a thorough understanding of the new brand and its purpose, thus empowered to plan and execute innovative marketing activations in an effective way.
2. Unite Diverse Audience Groups with a Human-Centered Brand Story
M&A deals often bring together multifaceted stakeholder groups with diverse priorities, values, and interests, spanning from investors, employees, partners, to customers, government entities and the public. With a clarified purpose, the NewCo must articulate their objectives and vision through a compelling brand story to unite all stakeholders behind a common goal. Human-centered storytelling is instrumental in resonating with different audiences within the stakeholder ecosystem who have distinctive perspectives and expectations.
For example, while Seatrium’s vision was to forge a new way forward for the O&M and energy industry, it also aimed to create meaningful impact for employees, Singapore, and shareholders. By immersing ourselves in the cultures and perspectives of different stakeholders, we combined the strengths from both organizations to retain their unique DNA. At the core, Seatrium’s new brand purpose is centered around people, customers and its culture, while striving for engineering and execution excellence. This human-centered approach is the key enabler for the organization’s success after the M&A.
Beyond establishing a strong brand identity externally, an impactful brand story also helps to harmonize organizational structures and foster a unified organizational culture. As organizational changes bring about uncertainties, incorporating the brand story to develop a comprehensive EVP (Employee Value Proposition) and employee engagement strategy is critical.
3. Optimize Brand Architecture to Demonstrate Amplified Value
The brand portfolios of the individual entities must not exist in isolation post M&A, as this could lead to confusion of the customers and the dilution of each brand’s equity. Guided by its new brand purpose and positioning, NewCo must clarify its brand portfolio and architecture strategy in order to identify new or redefined offers.
Additionally, this will demonstrate the change and evolution in the business model and ambition, as well as the amplified value delivered to various stakeholders.
With Vistra’s expansion through M&A, it was crucial to harmonize the sub-brands within the portfolio. Through competitor and industry analysis, we adopted a strategic, data-driven approach, creating a decision tree that gives management flexibility to organize all sub-brands effectively. This will help build a relevant, credible and differentiated brand portfolio.
Embracing a brand-led mindset, uniting diverse audience groups with a human-centered brand story and optimizing brand architecture are indispensable imperatives for steering successful M&A deals. By creating a powerful and resonant brand for NewCo, organizations can achieve sustainable growth beyond short-term financial and operational returns.
Transforming Healthcare: Advocate Health’s Shift to Platforms
In Conversation: Exploring the Journey of Building Momentum and Implementing a Platform in a Health System
Jeff Gourdji, Senior Partner at Prophet, spoke with a number of healthcare leaders to learn more about the challenges and opportunities for platform thinking in healthcare. Here, he speaks with Jamey Shiels, SVP Consumer & Digital Experience at Advocate Health, on the process of driving momentum for and implementing a platform in a health system.
Deploying a platform approach will be crucial for businesses to thrive going forward. As our colleagues Ted Moser, Charlotte Bloom, and Omar Akhtar observe in their book, “Winning Through Platforms: How to Succeed When Every Competitor Has One” platforms illuminate parts of the customer journey that have historically been dark by enabling companies to have a better, holistic understanding of how customers engage with the organization. In the last decade or so, health systems have begun to observe customers during the “choose” part of the journey, but platforms could enable health systems to understand the “use” part of the journey and how to personalize it to consumers.
In this illuminating interview with Jamey Shiels of Advocate Health, he shares how he overcame the barriers to building a platform – from driving organizational buy-in to clearly defining a set of metrics to measure key experiences. He highlights how a clear connection between patient needs and business requirements was key to demonstrating potential impact and showcasing the value for a health system in adapting a platform approach.
What enabled you to align the leadership that platforms were the right move for the business?
First, our Chief Marketing Officer at the time, Kelly Jo Golson, made [the LiveWell platform] a priority for our brand marketing and experience teams. She determined we were going to be a consumer first organization and platforms were the way to get there. She was able to onboard senior leadership to that vision and align support across the enterprise.
Second, we built a consumer-first executive committee that allowed us to bring [together] all the key stakeholders that knew we were going to need — Operations, Medical Group, Finance, HR were all in the room with us as we presented the strategy, got buy in and support, and achieved goal alignment.
Third,we developed a set of metrics called ‘ease of use’ metrics that measure different encounters patients have on the platform and allow consumers to give feedback. We created a closed feedback loop [that allows us to] make improvements that both benefit the consumer as well as the operational people on the other side. We also built those metrics into our incentive plan, so anybody in the organization who was incentive eligible was very interested in embedding the platform into their day-to-day work.
How did the business determine implementing a platform strategy was beneficial for the reputation of Advocate Health and its success?
Our challenge was– especially in healthcare – ‘consume’ means ‘use’ and doesn’t mean ‘choose.’ The idea of a patient as a consumer was difficult for some to understand, so we had to go upstream and find a way to understand consumer choice.
We first aligned consumer insights to our core business metrics of awareness and acquisition. We wanted to go into market with a brand and an experience that would encourage consumers to choose us before [they] use us.
The second step was in the form of acquisition. Consumers are looking for their wants and needs [to be met when] finding a physician. Therefore, we looked into some of the metrics that the operations team was using in the onboarding experience and connected those to the clinical experience to demonstrate if we lift consumer metrics, we can lift business metrics. That connection between what matters most to consumers with what matters to the businesses was key.
“I think that’s where platforms can really play a role, by making those connections and making them much easier than they historically have been.”
Was there a specific leader whose support was crucial in getting marketing, compliance, and clinical leaders on board with this initiative?
The key leader was our Chief Operating Officer, who had accountability for the medical group, operations, and P&L for the organization and knew the different parts of the business that we needed to align with.
A big piece [of getting alignment] was saying: ‘We want to co-create this with your team.’ We emphasized how we’re solving consumer needs as well as the business problems.
Can you talk about the capabilities you built in the platform as you started to build momentum?
The core functionality that needs to be in a platform is your EHR and transactional HR data. We wrapped that EHR data with a fledgling platform. That gave us the infrastructure to start to add features that improved the patient and clinical experience – and extended into health and wellness.
We’re also working on integrating third party products into the platform for care-at-home and digital therapeutics. We want to create a true multi-sided marketplace for healthcare that connects health and wellness creators to consumers.
What was the role of the clinicians in all this? What role are they now playing in advocating for the platform?
Whether it was governance or co-creation, [clinicians] needed to have a voice in the room. We designed a partnership with a clinical leadership team [to drive] co-creation across the board. We asked: ‘How does this improve your work and fit into your day?’ The benefit is that now, when you go into one of our physicians’ offices, you’ll hear them talk about LiveWell.
“We’ve seen continued uptake with LiveWell; it is now fully embedded in the operations of our organization.”
What operational challenges were you solving for with platforms?
There are three problem areas that we’ve looked at over the last few years:
Online scheduling takes call volume out. When you can message your provider in a secure platform it reduces call volume at the front desk, but you have to ensure you can manage and service the messages on behalf of physicians.
We have a mail order pharmacy that in our Midwest region generates 7 million calls a year related to prescription refill. We think we can take half of that out through new systems automation feature functionality in the platform.
E-Check-In, self service capabilities built in the platform make the consumer’s life easier and helps the frontline staff.
Where is the platform going in the future?
“We think the idea of platforms as a business model [in healthcare] for the benefit of consumers and the business is where the future is.”
The challenge we’re facing from a healthcare perspective is the battle for the soul of the platform. Is that going to be the EHR? Vendors? EPIC primarily? Or third parties? Or are the health systems going to try to step up? Do you want to differentiate within your market, and do you want to deliver an exceptional consumer experience?
“We’re going to go big into the platform space because we think it is the right decision for our business, and the future of business.”
About Jamey: As Senior Vice President, Consumer and Digital Experience at Advocate Health, Jamey Shiels leads enterprise activities focused on creating a personalized and seamless consumer experience that improves engagement and health outcomes as well as business value through growth and cost-savings.
About Jeff: Jeff Gourdji is a Senior Partner at Prophet and is responsible for leading client engagements across the firm’s range of solutions. As a leader of Prophet’s healthcare industry practice, Jeff works with clients across the healthcare ecosystem, including provider systems, payers, healthcare technology and life sciences companies.
Transformation in healthcare is not a new topic but rethinking how a health system organizes itself to better observe, engage with, and deliver value to consumers is. Health systems that are infusing platform thinking into their organizations are starting to see the immediate return on those efforts – as well as the path ahead to greater impact across the communities they serve. Now is the time to activate and advance platforms in health systems, reimagine how an organization is set up to deliver a full continuum of engagement, differentiate against competitors and elevate the value delivered to consumers
Transforming Healthcare: The Power of Platform Thinking
Platform thinking is the path to consumer-centricity in healthcare – and the key to its transformation.
Platforms are the key to illuminating the consumer journey. They allow companies to light the “dark” side of a consumer’s journey, the post-purchase “use” side, when previously, only the “choose” side was visible. As our colleagues Ted Moser, Charlotte Bloom and Omar Akhtar observe in their book, “Winning Through Platforms: How to Succeed When Every Competitor Has One,” platforms are the way to enable companies to observe, interact with and provide value to consumers as they engage with the organization. Many industries are already immersed in the platform race – from Amazon Prime’s offering (i.e., ecommerce, Whole Foods, streaming content) to Uber and Uber One (linking rides and eats). Even financial services companies are in the game with strategies from Chase, Bank of America, and more. So, how will healthcare players engage in this new value exchange?
The beauty of healthcare is we know more about our customers than pretty much any other industry. It’s about how we use that knowledge to personalize, drive conversion, and close gaps in care.
Jeremy Rogers, Executive Director, Digital Marketing & Experience, Indiana University Health
Broadcast connection reflects the one-way communication that marked most of the 20th century. With the launch of the internet, websites and digital analytics, businesses were able to shine a light on the “choose” side of consumers’ engagement. While it’s often the darker side of the consumer journey, the “use” side that reflects the greatest value – both for business and for consumers.
(Lighting the choose and use journeys graphic Int. 1.2)
In the era of platform connection, health systems have an opportunity to capture and deliver greater value to their consumers. And the stakes couldn’t be higher. In healthcare, the data and knowledge gained by this level of consumer engagement could have profound effects not only on that patient and their care delivery, but a systemic impact on how to manage disease states, reduction of challenging SDOHs and improved health equity. Currently most health systems are focused on patient portals and transactional engagement, making this transformation feel daunting, elusive, or even operationally impossible.
Healthcare is behind, and we all acknowledge this. Think about the hospitality industry and how their rewards programs generate loyalty and word of mouth – the best experience you have anywhere is the experience you want everywhere – and that includes in healthcare.
Ken Chaplin, Chief Marketing Officer, City of Hope
There’s no doubt this is hard work. There are several reasons why healthcare leaders say it’s been an uphill battle – from a lack of integrated technology systems to concerns around patient data privacy – these are valid reasons to be concerned. However, other highly regulated industries have shown how to connect and protect consumers data. We spoke with several leading healthcare innovators to understand why this work is daunting and what they are doing to overcome the challenges:
1. Non-Proprietary Platforms Are Not Designed for Optimal User Experience
Health systems often started with their EMR as the main platform, and what was the EMR developed to do? Billing, coding or quality documentation. They certainly weren’t designed for the user experience of a clinical physician or clinical nurse user – let alone a patient.
Jodi Rosen, Vice President Innovation & Digital Strategy, City of Hope
2. Barriers to Risk-Taking
We can have zero failure when lives are at stake, zero failure. That doesn’t apply to the business-oriented things we can do. We need to ask to experiment and fail and then fail forward, to learn and get better. But it’s just culturally very tough for people nowadays.
Jeremy Rogers, Executive Director, Digital Marketing & Experience, Indiana University Health
3. Internal Resistance to Change
How do you have large scale change when you are changing the way people work? Number one, we cannot innovate and bring customer centricity to life without the operators – we can’t move forward until everyone comes to the table.
Sara Saldoff, Head of Product Management & User Experience, OhioHealth
4. Overcoming Data Concerns With the Right Data Value-Exchange
I don’t think it’s truly a challenge to get consumers to believe their data is safe. I think it’s about translating, what’s the benefit to them? We must help patients and health consumers understand the value of sharing their data. How do we tell the story in the right way to facilitate their willingness to share private health information or behaviors?
Jodi Rosen, Vice President Innovation & Digital Strategy, City of Hope
5. Competing Priorities, Competing Investments, and Tremendous Pressure
You have to invest in building an appropriate infrastructure. You need talent that doesn’t necessarily exist in the system already. You’ve got to build a lot of capabilities. But these strategies, in the long term, will alleviate some of the pressures we’re all facing.
Nick Stefanizzi, Chief Executive Officer, Northwell Direct
Challenges aside, shifting to a platform-based model is the solution to achieving the transformation C-suite executives have been collectively working towards to achieve better business and health outcomes for patients.
There’s a massive amount of data that health systems today have access to. If we can get this right and gain more consumer trust, we can harness that data in a way that can help with precision medicine, drug discovery, disease prevention – it’s so incredibly powerful.
Jodi Rosen, Vice President Innovation & Digital Strategy, City of Hope
Inherent in this shift to platform thinking is a value proposition for consumers: I share information about myself so that a company can provide me with more value via content, loyalty programs and tools. Equally as important is the value generated for the organization. Today, many consumer engagements with health systems are transactional, leading to drop off, and overall brand neutrality. This is exacerbated by behaviors of younger generations (Gen Z and Millennials) who often don’t have a PCP. For health systems, the opportunity to develop meaningful relationships with consumers, whether they need care today or in the future, is essential for driving loyalty and patient volume in any market.
Beyond the acquisition and retention of patients, there is a halo of benefits for building strong consumer relationships including increased adherence, proactive preventative care, lower costs for the system (both administrative, e.g., faster bill pay, and clinical, e.g., getting preventative screening) and better negotiating power with payers. Properly collected, synthesized and actionable data could ultimately shape future innovations in disease prevention or treatments. Platforms help C-suite leaders optimize and personalize the patient experience with critical knowledge and data-driven insights.
Platforms are the way to:
1. Make Holistic Care Real
This has been an ongoing topic in healthcare. Health systems struggle to deliver holistic care, particularly for marginalized groups. Collecting data and applying insights to deliver better care, based on what patients really need, would drastically upend engagement and loyalty in healthcare. Consider how Amazon uses its data – from grocery shopping to prescription drugs to baby care essentials, to deliver better experiences.
Patients are doing all these things in the wellness space that are tangentially attached to their health, but that health systems don’t know about. We don’t know where it’s happening, and we don’t necessarily provide all the tangential services that customers want or need. The question is how much of that experience can we stitch together in partnership with the customer so we can treat the whole person?
Sara Saldoff, Head of Product Management & User Experience, OhioHealth
We’re creating communities that connect cancer fighters with prospective patients – it’s incredibly powerful and allows us to drive deeper, meaningful relationships with patients.
Ken Chaplin, Chief Marketing Officer, City of Hope
2. Empower Ongoing Engagement With Health
It’s no surprise that consumers are willing to pay to engage with their health (i.e., Fitbit; Apple Watch; fitness, sleep, wellness tracking apps, etc.) Connecting the healthcare experience to meet consumer needs and their desire to be “always on” has the power to turn engagements from transitional to longitudinal. Facebook enjoys regular engagement from users drawn in by sharing features, community connections, and a focus on life’s moments (“on this day,” birthdays, etc.).
So much of the journey happens outside of the clinical experience. What are we doing to engage patients in between those appointments, those procedures? Modern consumers demand autonomy- agency in their healthcare journey. If we can give them agency, they’ll take advantage of it.
Jeremy Rogers, Executive Director, Digital Marketing & Experience, Indiana University Health
We envision a world where care support is everywhere – a doctor prescribes a curriculum where the patient can access tools and educational content about their prescription regimen, diet, broader wellness – and not have to go digging and find it on their own.
Ken Chaplin, Chief Marketing Officer, City of Hope
3. Create and Drive New Revenue Streams
Platforms have the power to optimize white space opportunities to create new revenue streams. They also have the potential to shift health systems’ focus from “sick care” to “well care”. Northwell Direct saw an opportunity to disrupt the traditional payer model and better serve employers by strengthening the connection between health coverage and care. They implemented a plan to reduce the hurdles for providers and patients, to drive to more comprehensive wellness for the employees they serve.
We have an opportunity to serve our communities through a different pathway. We took this idea and said, how do we create a business around this? Yes, to meet employer needs through services…but also to disrupt the payer space because it’s our belief that a more direct relationship between those who provide the care and those who pay for the care is beneficial to delivering higher quality care and to better managing and improving outcomes.
Nick Stefanizzi, Chief Executive Officer, Northwell Direct
4. Make Personalized Care Scalable
The balance between the hyper personal and the need to scale across a health system is daunting. There are myriad nuances that impact or shift an individual’s health journey. Value-generating data collection through platforms can help to bridge this gap. Consider Nike’s app family – from workout classes and SNKRS drops to monitoring runs and alerts when footwear needs replacing based on the integrated mileage tracking, they can serve consumers what they need before they know they need it.
The dream of our Smart Rooms is to give us real time feedback so we can solve problems with a patient in moment – but down the road, we could use the increased data use and AI to help us anticipate when something could go wrong and recommend solutions so we can get ahead of an individual’s care needs.
Sara Saldoff, Head of Product Management & User Experience, OhioHealth
If we can hyper personalize, for example, for a person whose family was touched by asthma or coronary heart disease or cancer or diabetes, and determine how to engage that individual over a lifetime with preventative behaviors and interactions, it can cut across things like health, education, literacy, economic status and be inclusive of race, religion, gender, etc. It’s going to be hard – but it’s also going to be a big game changer.
Jodi Rosen, Vice President Innovation & Digital Strategy, City of Hope
We see exciting signs of progress. It is still early days for health systems, though clear signs of progress are emerging. From OhioHealth’s “smart rooms” to City of Hope’s connected patient communities, there are signs on where health systems are heading. Others, like Advocate Health, are already leading with their LiveWell Platform, which helps consumers manage both their health and their wellness. Jamey Shiels, SVP Consumer & Digital Experience at Advocate Health emphasized that driving organizational alignment required connecting the vision with pre-determined patient needs with business requirements. For example, easier check-in process means less stress on front-line staff, on-line scheduling means reduced volume in the call centers and more
We are constantly improving LiveWell, listening to what our consumers are telling us about the experience to create a feedback loop we can engineer back into the experience. We mapped the consumer needs to the business metrics and showed how lifting those needs could improve the business metrics; connecting what matters most to the consumer to what matters most to the business is our biggest challenge but where I think platforms play a large role. We believe platforms are the business model of the future. Healthcare is behind, but we want to get into the game and lead the way.
Jamey Shiels, Senior Vice President Consumer & Digital Experience, Advocate Health
If platforms are the answer, how do we get started? To begin building a Platform Connection, start by thinking about how to align your platform’s needs with your organizational ambition. Winning Through Platforms lays out a path to success, and it starts with cultural shifts to gain three key advantages: Strategic, In-Market, and Alignment.
Strategic Advantage: Bring Something Structural to the Market That the Competition Doesn’t Have
How might the organization’s portfolio of solutions (i.e. care, coverage, ancillary services) better connect to demonstrate the value of the care network it offers?
How can teams better share assets to reduce efforts and increase flexibility?
How can the organization align on the customer personas (patients? payers? referring physicians?) and journeys to align strategic intention?
In-Market Advantage: Grow at Higher-Than-Market Rates Through Better-Than-Competitor Practices, Spanning Go-to-Market and Innovation
What technology is required to capture patient information and organize it for action that results in customer and system benefit?
How can content across the journey be personalized by life stage, condition type, and relevant social determinants?
What role might community and patient-generated content play in enriching the overall engagement experience – and keeping patients engaged beyond the transactional?
Alignment Advantage: Translate Better Internal Alignment and Teaming Into Stronger Customer Engagement and Superior Organizational Performance
How might the traditional functional silos be restructured into a full journey, collaborative, go-to-market model?
How will internal teams align on and ensure a consistent set of customer interaction standards?
What will define best practices when it comes to an elevated patient experience?
There’s too much at stake to not figure out the right way to partner for better outcomes for patients.
Jodi Rosen, Vice President Innovation & Digital Strategy, City of Hope
Transformation in healthcare is not a new topic but rethinking how a health system organizes itself to better observe, engage with and deliver value to consumers is. Health systems that are infusing platform thinking into their organizations are starting to see the immediate return on those efforts – as well as the path ahead to greater impact across the communities they serve. Now is the time to activate and advance platforms in health systems, reimagine how an organization is set up to deliver a full continuum of engagement, differentiate against competitors and elevate the value delivered to consumers.
Prophet research reveals surprising perceptions and adoption patterns of AI with consumers.
Since the seemingly overnight emergence of ChatGPT, businesses everywhere have been buzzing about generative AI’s impact, particularly on process efficiency and workforce productivity. While the benefits in those areas are indeed transformational, we’ve been struck by how consumers and their perceptions and experience of AI have been largely sidelined in the conversation. Similarly, we see immense opportunities for GenAI to unlock growth, a frontier of AI transformation many businesses haven’t yet reached.
That’s why we’re launching a study to explore:
What are consumers doing with GenAI today, and why?
How will GenAI affect them?
What are their plans for the future?
The “tl;dr” on Our Initial Findings
While the quantitative research is still underway, we wanted to share initial findings from our qualitative sessions because we think the implications are potentially profound. Specifically, we see clear evidence of the rise of AI-powered consumers who are moving faster, doing more and expecting more in terms of fast, frictionless and individualized offerings. They seem increasingly ready to turn over more of their lives to AI, are watching brands’ commitments to ethical AI, and are deeply invested in finding even more ways to benefit from it.
Thus, firms looking to spark sustainable and transformative growth with GenAI will likely need to accelerate their plans to get ahead of – or even keep up with – the most creative-minded early adopters and power-users. That’s especially true for firms in retail, CPG, hospitality, financial services and healthcare, which are in the vanguard of GenAI adoption. We hope the insights in this article help you connect the dots between your AI strategies and the emergence of the AI-powered consumer.
What Consumers Are Telling Us
As is always the case with new technology, consumers have diverse views about GenAI. There are power users actively adopting GenAI across many facets of their personal and professional lives and more passive and cautious adopters. Tinkering is the norm for many in the middle. Each of these groups exhibits different uptake and usage patterns. There is also considerable nuance in their attitudes toward AI ethics and responsible adoption by businesses.
Despite these distinctions, the initial phases of our research yielded evidence of five meaningful patterns in consumer adoption of AI.
1. All Types of Consumers Are Moving Surprisingly Fast
Conventional wisdom says that businesses are leading the way on AI, but our research shows that consumers are moving faster than many companies realize. When talking to us about AI, consumers used their own terms and definitions. They clearly see the value of the apps and tools they use and do not feel overwhelmed by AI’s complexity. That’s true of even the slower and more cautious adopters. Natural language processing – and voice integration – are of great interest to all types of users, because they make GenAI tools feel more accessible than the digital tools and platforms of the past.
What consumers say: “With AI, I don’t have to go down the rabbit hole of Googling my ailments but can have a conversation. It says, ‘it could be this’ and I say, ‘no, it’s not that.’ That’s better than having to read and read. AI scans for me and has a conversation,” said a somewhat frequent 60-year-old user.
So what: Because consumers are moving fast, there is urgency to identify new ways to engage with AI-enabled experiences that map to consumer needs and preferences.
Who’s doing it right: Colgate-Palmolive is leveraging AI to improve consumer experiences across the journey – from enhancing search with AI, to personalizing creative, to rapidly prototyping and testing product innovations.
Consumers are using generative AI tools before, during and after purchases.
2. Beyond Personal Productivity, Consumers Prioritize Creativity, Fun and Inspiration
Productivity is a big part of AI’s attraction. But our research shows that inspiration, shopping and fun are other major motivations to use GenAI. One consumer told us about how he enjoys creating AI images on his phone and sharing them with friends.
What consumers say: “When I’m on the bus, I will click over to [an AI image generator] and put in some words and just play around for 15-30 minutes,” said an occasional 30-year-old user.
So what: For businesses, creative AI-driven marketing activations and experiences can boost engagement by creating joy and delight.
Who’s doing it right: Warner Bros.’ Barbie AI Selfie Generator allowed users to design their own unique Barbie. Reaching 13 million users in just a few months, the generator was a hallmark of Barbie’s world-class marketing campaign.
3. Consumers Have Strikingly Specific AI Aspirations
That old paradigm “if I had asked my customers what they wanted, they would have said a faster horse” may be less applicable as modern consumers become more tech savvy and have easy access to powerful tools.Consumers don’t necessarily grasp the technical fine points or legal guardrails about AI; but they are pretty clear about the experience they want.
What consumers say: “If I could enter what I want to eat and if my fridge could use AI to analyze the ingredients I have, what I need from the shop, and then build a shopping cart I can review and order, that would be great,” said a somewhat frequent 65-year-old user.
So what: Because consumers are imagining new ways to use AI, they can help imagine and co-create breakthrough applications as part of clearly defined innovation processes.
Who’s doing it well: Coca-Cola’s Creations platform provides a space to engage consumers and capture their input for new product innovations. The Y3000 Flavor of the Future was created by leveraging consumer insight and the power of AI to drive engagement with Gen Z, the brand’s growth target.
4. In the Eyes of Consumers, ChatGPT is Only the Beginning
The first killer app of the GenAI age, ChatGPT is incredibly powerful for consumers and among the most popular and frequently used apps. But consumers hope to use many other applications in the future, largely because they see the limits of ChatGPT; as one consumer told us, “It only takes me so far.” In fact, they are looking for more nuanced, bespoke answers to the questions they need.
What consumers say: “I’ve tried things like ChatGPT for trip itinerary planning. It’s helpful but doesn’t get that detailed. If I want to know details like the safest place to walk around as a woman, it can’t give me that yet,” said a high-frequency, 23-year-old user.
So what: Consumers want more precision, meaning businesses can develop bespoke solutions based on proprietary data and look to deliver on unique brand promises. Build, buy and partner – depending on the use case, each of those approaches can be viable.
Who’s doing it well: Via a partnership with OpenAI, KAYAK used its historical travel database to train GPT-4, the large language model. The goal is to help users find travel experiences meeting their precise needs.
5. Consumers Are Paying Attention to How Businesses Talk About AI
Consumers told us they want to hear about AI, but within preferred contexts and applications. If an experience is piloting or experimenting with AI, consumers appreciate a call out that it’s AI, and that it’s “still learning.”
Some consumers are annoyed by “overly promotional” language about AI; they are looking for authenticity and transparency instead. We also heard about the importance of brands communicating their commitments to use AI in ways that align to the organizational purpose and values – clear evidence of consumer interest in AI ethics.
What consumers say: “I’m thinking about what brand do I want to support with AI? Who is investing and being thoughtful in terms of protection and checks? And which firms are brazenly advancing and not so worried about protection?” said a high-frequency 23-year-old user.
So what: Because consumers are paying attention, brands should be deliberate in crafting intentional, authentic messaging around AI, presenting it in the moments that matter.The focus should be on explaining brand intentions and providing helpful and transparent guidance. For more ways Marketers can use AI, see our Four Ways to Maximize Value
Who’s doing it well: S&P Global is taking a holistic approach in positioning its brand for the age of AI. It’s developing an AI brand narrative linked to its company purpose, designed to resonate across its wide array of audiences. From there, it’s integrating clear, consistent messaging across all of its brand communications and experiences that stem from that positioning.
Ethics Matter on the Road Ahead
Discussions of AI are incomplete without mentioning ethics. And, according to our research, all types of users – from cautious adopters to more pragmatic users – have AI ethics on their mind. The common theme is that ethics and brand intentions matter, though they will influence decisions differently in different contexts and for different users. Consumers aren’t just blindly adopting every GenAI app; rather, they are thoughtfully considering and – in the case of power users – calculating where they want to spend their time and engagement.
Imagine a world where multiple AIs work in the background to find bargains, negotiate better prices for consumers, and make smart purchase decisions. Or where personal assistants connect accounts and act on consumers’ behalf across financial services, healthcare and other sectors, particularly with those companies that have cultivated trust with their AI deployments.
Based on our research, we believe that futuristic vision may become reality much sooner than many brands expect. Consumers may not know precisely what’s coming next, but they seem well on their way to proactively figuring out how to embed AI more deeply in their lives.
There’s more to come as we complete and expand our research globally. Subscribe today for access to our newsletter to be among the first to receive insights and ideas for how to better know and serve the AI Powered Consumer.
A Formula for Kickstarting Behavioral Change and Creating Lasting Organizational Habits
Unlock the secrets to organizational change with Behavior Kickstarters. Learn how rapid experiments can catalyze cultural shifts and drive impactful transformation.
We’ve all been there. We start the year with the best of intentions, convinced that this time will be different. However, as life’s demands and our ingrained habits exert their influence, our resolve weakens. Despite multiple attempts to restart, within a few months, we find ourselves reverting to familiar patterns.
And it’s no different in the workplace – in fact it’s much harder. Beyond the demands of their job, employees must also fight against the pull of the organizational system. A pull that is so strong that eventually most change efforts are pulled back to ‘the way things are done around here’ and ultimately fail. An IMD global study of 500 executives found that only 50% of attempts to change employee behavior are successful. So, in short, change in a busy, complex organization is hard.
So how do you overcome these powerful forces to successfully change behavior and build new habits?
We believe that change happens through doing, not talking. Moving from words to action. You can’t just click your fingers and suddenly become more innovative, creative and collaborative. Humans don’t work like that. You must poke a stick into the organizational system and be intentional about creating change.
The first step in this magical process is to start really, really small.
Behavior Kickstarters Formula
Behavior Kickstarters are rapid experiments designed to activate new behaviors and catalyze cultural shifts. Using a mix of behavioral science and experimentation techniques, our Behavior Kickstarters create a safe space for people to experiment with, and ultimately adopt new behaviors and build new habits. They establish the right conditions for people to try, fail, learn and grow.
While people are wonderfully different and unique, human behavior has followed consistent patterns since the dawn of time. Not only are we programmed to follow the path of least resistance, but our endorphins also encourage us to seek out the things that are satisfying. And we’re social beings, where the pull of the crowd can have a significant impact on our behavior and decisions. In other words, we only change our behavior when it is easy, feels good or when people we admire are doing it.
Our Behavior Kickstarter formula ensures the right ingredients are present for driving behavior change.
Trigger – Make it obvious – Something that signals the need to start, gets your attention and shows the need to take action.
Motivation – Make it attractive –Create an image in the mind of the user that makes them want to change.
Ability – Make it easy – The easier a behavior is to do, the more likely it is to be done.
Reward – Make it satisfying – If it feels good and has a satisfying ending, we’re more likely to repeat it in the future and form a habit.
While this formula helps us change in the immediate term, we also need to consider how we form new habits to embed the change. This is where experimentation comes in.
Unlocking Organizational Change Through Experimentation
Experimentation isn’t reserved for labs or innovation teams – it can be a powerful mechanism to drive sustained organizational change. Teams can use it to become more adaptive and to create a safe environment that allows people to try new behaviors and fail, and to apply learnings from their failures to change their approach and try again. Supporting this idea, our Catalysts research, How to Build an Adaptable Organization that Thrives During Uncertainty, identified ‘lowering the cost of experimentation’ as one of the five ways to build an adaptive organization.
The concept of experimentation is deeply ingrained in all of us. We just don’t apply it in an organizational context. Dave Snowden, founder and chief scientific officer of Cognitive Edge, sums it up beautifully, “The engine of all life on this planet has always changed in the same way. We try things, notice positive and negative patterns, amplify what’s working, minimize what isn’t.” Yet, despite being ingrained in us, the number of people who use experimentation is comparatively small. People seem to struggle to apply it to their day-to-day lives, meaning its potential is often left untapped. Michael Schrage, author of The Innovators Dilemma, uses a wonderful model for driving its adoption whilst solving real business challenges. Teams of five, each generate and test a solution to solve one of five challenges, over five weeks. The winning idea receives financial backing to be taken forward. Along with generating great ideas to solve real problems, this approach creates a fun, engaging way to understand the power of experimentation.
Like Schrage’s method, putting experimentation into practice with our Behavior Kickstarters is simple. We recommend a timeframe (~2-4 weeks) and at the end of that period, we reflect on how it went, what went well and whether we achieved the desired outcomes – using this data to define what could we do differently next time. Then, if needed, we make changes to the Kickstarter and go again!
A Kickstarter can take many forms. Ideally, it will be designed so it fits seamlessly into the employee’s day-to-day world – as part of existing meetings or a regular routine, like a morning cup of coffee, for example.
Trying to make your teams feel recognized? Thank You Thursday: Every Thursday, send a short thank you note, acknowledging the efforts of an individual or team for that week (for something big or small).
Trying to increase psychological safety? Poke Holes in This: Before sharing an idea, ask the team ‘Please poke holes in this’, opening yourself up to helpful feedback and encouraging vulnerability.
Trying to increase collaboration? Don’t Rush Into it: At the start of your weekly meeting, spend five minutes with everyone sharing what they did over the weekend, building relationships outside of just work commitments.
Prophet’s research tells us that, by targeting the “Soul” of the organization, we can activate and accelerate key transformation levers, such as ‘Developing meaningful mechanisms to enable employees to adapt.’ We mentioned earlier that beating the organizational system is difficult and most organizations don’t have these change mechanisms in place. Behavior Kickstarters do exactly that, equipping employees with a powerful method to grow, adapt and thrive in the ever-changing world we now find ourselves in.
The crucial part of this comes not in running the Kickstarter, but in equipping your teams with the permission and ability to constantly repeat it over time to embed the new behavior until it becomes a habit. Wendy Wood, author of Good Habits, Bad Habits estimates that we spend 50% of our time unconsciously repeating actions we’ve already taken. By intentionally repeating the Kickstarter, you train your brain by practicing new behaviors and building the pathways needed to create daily habits. For this instance, fake it until you make it – or in behavioral terms, fake it until you become it.
The idea of ‘fake it until you become it’ is not new, in fact, it is over 2,000 years old. Aristotle believed that people could not simply know, or study, how to be virtuous. To be virtuous, they must practice virtuous actions: first by imitating others who demonstrate virtuous actions and then turning those imitated behaviors into habits by performing them every day. You practice the behavior you want and then one day you turn around and discover you’re not performing the behavior, you’re living it.
The beauty of this transformational process is its ripple effect, fostering further change not only with individuals but also throughout the broader organization. On an individual level, the success of initiating the first Behavior Kickstarter inspires you to do it again (following our Behavior Kickstarter formula: we only change when it feels good). If you’re trying to get fit, and you feel good after your first 5km run, you might try 7km, or 10km and then maybe eventually a half marathon. At an organizational level, it can quickly become contagious. The stories of others successfully changing their behavior become the currency of change, creating a sense of envy that motivates others to do the same. Just like when we witness a good deed, like someone helping an elderly person with their shopping, we’re far more likely to carry out a good deed ourselves later that day.
“All big things come from small beginnings. The seed of every habit is a single, tiny decision”
James Clear, Author of Atomic Habits
To fuel a change movement across the organization, it’s helpful to share stories of how others are running their Behavior Kickstarters to reinforce these successes with recognition and celebration. This inspires others to initiate their own Kickstarter, setting off a chain reaction that swiftly builds into a potent force for change.
Change shouldn’t be isolated to those with ‘people’ or ‘culture’ in their title, or limited to company offsites and launches for new corporate values. The beauty of Behavior Kickstarters is that they’re accessible to everyone. Facilitating the adoption of new behaviors is a sure-fire way to accelerate change across your organization.
Some questions for you to reflect on: How is your organization living your values? How are you living them? Are there new behaviors or ways of working that are not currently being lived?
If you’re interested in finding ways to create a safe space, enhance collaboration, or ignite innovation and creativity, our experts are ready to help.
A Guide to Kickstarting AI Integration in Your Product Organization
Discover the transformative power of Generative Artificial Intelligence (Gen AI) in reshaping product development and customer experiences.
In the past year, Generative Artificial Intelligence (Gen AI), spearheaded by advanced models like ChatGPT and its counterparts, has revolutionized the customer experience landscape, democratizing intelligent technology as both an interface and an enabler. The rapid proliferation of Gen AI tools underscores a clear imperative: speed is of the essence when it comes to embracing Gen AI.
Against this backdrop, the significance of AI in product development cannot be overstated. Organizations that leverage Gen AI as a strategic capability in delivering new products have the additional benefit of unlocking new pathways for AI transformation, growth and change. However, amidst the plethora of Gen AI applications and tools (alongside mounting stakeholder requests for AI integration), navigating this new terrain can seem daunting. Yet, the cost of delaying action outweighs the challenges of embracing AI. Its integration requires a paradigm shift, but here are a few actionable kick-starters to usher in opportunities to boost efficiency, effectiveness and innovation, while also addressing the hurdles typically encountered so that product leaders can embark on their AI journey with confidence, clarity and a purposeful approach.
1. Efficiency: Service Operations and Workflow Evaluation
Efficiency is paramount in today’s fast-paced business landscape and presents an invaluable opportunity to streamline operations. For instance, how can we let Gen AI act as our assistant, adeptly handling cumbersome or repetitive tasks, both at the individual and organizational levels? Imagine not having to write a single product description: with Gen AI at the helm, targeting and performance see significant improvements. Take inspiration from Amazon’s product management team, who seamlessly integrated Gen AI into customer support, effectively managing first/second-level queries, reducing workloads and response times.
To harness these efficiencies, start by evaluating service operations and workflows, followed by an AI Feasibility Assessment. Prioritize tasks based on their repetitiveness, data availability, scalability and complexity. When prioritizing tasks, consider giving more relevance to those that improve customer time to value. Select one or two pilot cases where appropriate off-the-shelf Gen AI solutions are already available and conduct pilots to assess impact and feasibility. This strategic approach not only optimizes efficiency but also paves the way for transformative change in organizational workflows.
2. Enhancing Effectiveness: Value Exchange Analysis
How might the computing power of Gen AI revolutionize approaches to identifying new insights, elevating our creative thinking and strategic decision-making? What if you could leverage Gen AI to analyze user engagement data, uncovering valuable insights into feature improvements and prioritizing them for implementation? Take Citymapper, for instance. This international city travel planning app is used by millions of commuters daily to navigate cities with real-time information. Leveraging data science, the company identified a critical time and route in London underserved by existing transportation options. In response, they established a dedicated private bus route on weekday afternoons to address this gap. By utilizing data collected from their mobile application, they translated insights into a tangible service, enhancing customer experience.
To drive effectiveness in your organization, you should consider embarking on a Value Exchange Analysis exercise to define the value exchanged through your product offering, systems, processes, service partners and customers. Consider what each stakeholder or partner in your ecosystem gives and receives. Visualize these exchanges and explore how Gen AI can maximize value by enhancing efficiencies, reducing errors and proactively recommending new insights, or creating entirely new value propositions. Again, run an AI Feasibility Assessment but instead of focusing on “repetitiveness” focus on “value maximization” potential. Utilize concierge tests to determine the minimum service level for each feature or offering to deliver tangible value. This not only amplifies effectiveness but also fosters a culture of innovation and value creation within the organization.
3. Driving Innovation: Future-Back Growth
How can Gen AI drive business model innovation by reconfiguring current assets and capabilities to create entirely new value propositions? With its aptitude for lateral and creative thinking, Gen AI is poised to maximize personalization, attracting previously untapped customer segments. Consider the case of a coffee roasting company that used Gen AI to analyze its customer data alongside market trends to suggest innovative coffee blends, which resulted in boosted sales and customer loyalty.
To enhance innovation, adopt a future-back growth approach that anticipates and responds to evolving customer expectations. Run a comprehensive trend analysis to identify emerging behaviors and signals of change, laying the groundwork for scenario planning to explore new opportunity areas. Embrace Gen AI tools at every stage, from trend research to product development, to capitalize on its predictive capabilities and ensure alignment with future market demands. By embracing Gen AI-driven innovation, organizations can position themselves as pioneers in shaping the future landscape of their industries.
We help our clients leverage Gen AI to discover innovative ways to develop digital and connected products that create customer and business value. This not only fuels growth but equips your people with the necessary skills to design superior experiences and products. It’s essential to recognize that leveraging AI isn’t just about data and technology. Our approach to AI is at the intersection of where data and technology meet human intuition and experience. Our aim is to simplify the complexity and pave the way for a promising future. Your Gen AI adventure awaits.
Four Imperatives for APAC Companies to Drive Human-Centric Transformations
Our global study showed organizations in APAC often prioritize technological and revenue-driven initiatives. Here we explore how human centricity leads to successful transformations.
Our latest commissioned global research study conducted by Forrester Consulting on behalf of Prophet explored how “human-centric” organizations use human-aligned change management principles to design transformation initiatives and align their business strategy around the human. We have found that human-centric companies are more likely to see results from their business transformation efforts. In fact, human-centric organizations are 10 times more likely to achieve revenue growth rates of 20% or more. Moreover, these organizations experience a remarkable 25% boost in employee collaboration, a significant 23% increase in shareholder value, an impressive 48% improvement in time to market, and a substantial 28% higher likelihood of pioneering groundbreaking innovations, among other remarkable statistics.
We believe these findings underscore the profound impact of human centricity, which involves prioritizing people, culture, and empathy within the context of organizational transformation. By doing so, organizations can harness the benefits of enhanced collaboration, increased shareholder value, and sustainable change, ultimately positioning themselves for growth and resilience in today’s fiercely competitive business landscape.
Embracing Human-Centric Transformation: The 4 Pillars of Success
In the dynamic business landscape of the APAC region, achieving substantial growth requires consistent strategic recalibration. Our research showed that driving long-term transformational growth requires a shift in focus from operations- and revenue-driven objectives to ones that prioritize the needs and experiences of their customers and employees.
In this article, we identified four key areas of how companies can embrace human-centric transformation through a multifaceted approach.
1. Enhance Customer Experience (CX) by Better Capturing and Predicting Customer Needs
Our research underscores a strong focus on high maturity and human-centric companies on understanding consumers through data and analytics and improving customer experience (CX). These transformation value drivers are among the top three priorities for close to half (44%) of the high-maturity respondents.
However, it is a very different scenario for APAC companies – there is a predominant focus on products and services (54%) rather than a broader consideration of CX (30%).
Hence a key opportunity for Asian businesses is to pivot their transformation drivers towards enhancing CX by harnessing the power of data analytics.
Nevertheless, there are pioneers in China who already embed human centricity in their core business strategy. NIO, a prominent player in the electric car industry, stands out as a prime example of a holistic and human-centric approach to its business. The company takes pride in its user-first operation model, placing an unwavering focus on creating long-lasting touchpoints and pleasant experiences across the customer life cycle. One of NIO’s leading innovations is its Power Swap Station which provides users with battery swapping as an alternative to conventional charging. NIO decided to invest in establishing and operating the service on its own, instead of using a third-party provider, in order to maintain the highest customer satisfaction. “User service may show a loss in financial statements, but it can also be interpreted as an investment in customer satisfaction, which I think is the more appropriate perspective,” said Lihong Qin, President of NIO.
2. Embracing Purposefulness as a Cornerstone of Brand and Culture for Employee and Customer Engagement
Purpose is more than a buzzword; it is a strategic imperative. Those who embrace this approach are well-positioned for success in the human-centric era. Companies around the world are increasingly recognizing the importance of anchoring their brand identity and organizational culture around a clear purpose to engage both employees and customers effectively.
According to our research, 56% of human-centric firms globally firmly believe that their culture enables purposefulness in everything they do (compared to 44% in APAC), which shows that those who operate with a clear purpose tend to excel in their transformation endeavors. However, many APAC companies making strides in commercial performance and technological innovation often deprioritize fostering purposefulness with a human-centric lens. Moreover, compared to global counterparts, only 50% of APAC companies strongly consider “society”, “customers” and “communities” as very important transformation initiatives, while only 37% prioritized “employees”.
Companies in the APAC region have a significant opportunity to strengthen their approach to transformation by defining a clear purpose and applying it to everything that they do. This involves shifting the focus to not only placing a greater emphasis on consumer experience but also broadening the lens to fostering a human-centric culture both internally and externally. It is crucial to align employees with the company’s purpose by developing a clear Employee Value Proposition (EVP) and effective employee engagement programs. Additionally, companies must consider the societal implications of business actions and Environmental, Social, and Governance (ESG) principles to create a more profound and sustainable impact.
Sea, a Singapore-based tech company and holding company of Shopee serves as a compelling example of how purpose can be seamlessly integrated into an organization’s human-centric culture. Sea’s overarching mission is to enhance lives and build more connected communities through technology. As it grows, Sea remains committed to nurturing the growth of the broader digital ecosystem and helping achieve digital inclusion for various local stakeholders who are underserved. For example, Shopee, one of the largest global e-commerce platforms, drives e-commerce access to local communities across hard-to-serve regions while also enabling local SME entrepreneurs to succeed. From launching a variety of training programs and platforms like Shopee University and Shopee Seller Center to working with local governments to establish local e-commerce hubs, the firm actively supports local communities to accelerate their digitization journey and grow their businesses. By embracing purposefulness through business initiatives, Sea’s mission transcends boundaries, benefitting all its stakeholders which include consumers, small businesses, local communities and employees.
3. Empowering C-Level Transformation Leadership
Another key finding from our research resonates clearly – human-centric transformations are most likely to thrive and yield tangible results when guided by C-level management who leads through their own actions. 79% of human-centric organizations have C-level leaders who lead their company’s transformation agenda, while only 70% of the APAC companies reported the same.
Human-centricity goes beyond just lines of mission statement, it should be translated into tangible actions within the organization. Hence there is a need for a more direct and hands-on stewardship from C-level executives in APAC to drive crucial transformation initiatives forward.
A striking illustration can be found in Ping An, a leading financial services company in Asia, which experienced a threefold increase in digital users over the past five years and doubled its retail customer base. Ping An made the strategic appointment of Jessica Tan as CIO in 2013, who was later promoted to co-CEO in 2018, to play a pivotal role in architecting Ping An’s business transformation into an innovation-driven business. Tan’s leadership brought importance to innovation and a forward-thinking approach, launching various industry-leading initiatives across fintech, healthtech and AI-based offerings. Ping An has invested RMB100 billion over the past decade and committed to investing twice that over the next five years. It now ranks 7th in the Forbes Global 2000 and is the largest insurance company in Asia today.
The Ping An example serves as a testament to the transformative potential of C-level leaders who actively lead by example, underscoring the importance of leadership in driving human-centric transformation and fostering a culture where technology and innovation thrive through collaboration across teams.
4. Building Internal and External Trust in the Brand
Driving near-term revenue growth by enhancing brand recognition and consumer insights is indeed important for an organization to survive in this unpredictable economy. However, the key to achieving sustainable growth is through transformation that is truly human-centric, which requires making focused and consistent investments in building both internal and external brand trust.
Our research indicates that amid the fervor for technological progress, investments in human capital development and brand trust often find themselves on the back burner among APAC companies. In fact, 98% of human-centric companies globally are investing to maintain trust in their brand while only 85% of APAC companies are doing so. APAC companies are also investing less in their employees as compared to human-centric companies (81% vs 98%).
Gojek is a powerful example of the paramount importance of maintaining a steadfast commitment to social impact and brand trust, even when confronted with the challenge of plummeting share prices. Gojek’s continuous investments in initiatives designed to support financially vulnerable riders and drivers, and its commitment to sustainability goals exemplify a forward-thinking approach. For example, recognizing that many drivers prefer greater flexibility and freedom, Gojek continues to update its daily incentives scheme like its Monthly Loyalty Rewards program which allows drivers to have more stable and sustainable earnings. By showcasing such a strong commitment to the community, this approach can significantly elevate internal brand loyalty, build external trust and maintain unwavering resilience, even amidst the most turbulent economic storms.
As the region continues to evolve, those that lead with purpose and resilience will thrive and make a lasting impact on the world of business. Shifting focus from operations- and revenue-driven objectives to ones that truly prioritize the needs and experiences of customers and employees will give organizations a higher ground. Through the above four pillars, there are opportunities to be more human-centric and achieve successful business transformation.
Senior leaders must embrace these five strategies to unlock growth in a shifting business landscape.
The good news is that 2023, a very challenging year for businesses, is far in the rearview mirror. The bad news is that rest of 2024 into 2025 may have many of the same barriers to growth. That means senior leaders should think bigger (about go-to-market innovation and future-back strategies), bolder (about brand-led transformation and new business models) and more creatively (about driving organizational capacity for change).
As we return to a period of potential growth, C-suites are being pressured by investors and capital markets to find new sources of revenue and new ways to increase customer loyalty. Every part of the business is charged with identifying new pathways to growth. At the same time, every dollar invested is being closely scrutinized for its impact on overall performance.
For all the market uncertainty and competitive intensity, it’s worth remembering that disruption is born out of turbulent times. In that spirit, we offer five key ideas for unlocking growth in 2024 and beyond.
Theme 1: Driving Value Through Go-to-Market Platforms
Given customer expectations today, it’s no longer enough to have a great product or service. You must engage customers and demonstrate your relevance to their lives outside of simple, one-off transactions. Platforms have become critical because “Use journeys” have become more important than “Choose journeys,” as my colleague Ted Moser writes in his new book, Winning Through Platforms:
“In the Choose journey, customers explore their needs and options, assess their final choices, and transact. In the Use journey, customers use the products and services they have accessed, then eventually decide whether to access them again – and if so, from whom.”
Platforms are for the Use journey in the 2020s what websites were to the Choose journey in the early 2000s – the primary way companies engage with customers to deliver satisfying experiences and execute their growth strategies. They are powerful because they enable companies to carefully observe how customers use their products and explore other areas of interest. That creates momentum on the Use journey and provides data the company can use to add features, shape offers, and drive uptake.
Platforms are known by many names – apps, super apps, hubs, portals, clouds, suites, exchanges. Whatever they’re called, the platforms convert functionality into valued customer experiences, which lead to renewed brand relevance and, ultimately, market leadership. They also signal advantage to investors and prepare a company for convergent competition.
Platforms are no longer purely for tech giants or ambitious, well-funded start-ups. Consider how pharmaceutical companies are creating hubs and communities for specific types of patients, with content and connections to help them manage their conditions and lead healthier lives
Companies can no more “pass” on deploying platforms than they could “pass” on having a good website. And if they choose only one, it should be a platform.
Theme 2: Utilizing a Future-Back Approach to Rethink Growth Strategy
Today’s markets are too volatile to leave growth to traditional cycles, which are not nearly as consistent as they used to be. In fact, growth can accelerate and amplify at any turn. That’s good news because many companies that experienced declines in the last year can’t wait for the next naturally occurring growth cycle to occur organically. Firms that aren’t prepared for the next growth cycle, or are over-reliant on advice about the past, may miss their chance to accelerate growth.
A future-back approach has helped many firms envision new growth trajectories. A leader in manufacturing recognized a pivotal shift: consumers were quickly adopting connected home technology. Given their product’s universal presence in homes, they identified a unique opportunity to become a cornerstone of the connected home ecosystem. By adopting a future-back approach, we helped them envision a future where their products not only fulfilled their primary function but also integrated seamlessly into the broader connected home environment. This strategic perspective allowed them to see beyond current market limitations and focus on long-term value creation.
Firms that struggle to unlock growth or get leapfrogged by disruptive competitors often make the mistake of expecting patterns of past market behavior to repeat in the future. Obviously, senior leaders know markets keep moving, driven by shifting customer behaviors and evolving societal trends. That’s why companies must invest time and resources in figuring out what’s over the horizon.
While it’s impossible to predict the future, firms can leverage deep customer insights and formalized approaches to exploration to identify probable developments and preferred outcomes. Our recent research found that a leading barrier to increasing innovation is the lack of a long-term planning process. Asking tough questions – Why hasn’t this innovation been tried before? Are we best positioned to deliver a new type of offering? What advantages and disadvantages do we have in the market? – is as important as generating new ideas. The answers to these questions will help define the key capabilities and innovative offers necessary to lead the next growth cycle.
Theme 3: Accelerating Business Transformation Through Powerful Branding
Unlocking breakthrough value often requires transformation in the form of rationalizing the portfolio, realigning the organization, or digitizing operations. The struggles to realize full value on transformation investments are well documented. Less appreciated is the unique power of brands to increase the odds of transformation success.
As portfolios of products and services are redesigned and new experiences created, thoughtful branding can drive adoption and engagement, among both customers and employees. Used properly, brands can establish a new frame of reference and highlight a clear and compelling purpose. Internally, branding can inspire change by giving employees the motivation to contribute to important transformation initiatives.
In accelerating growth through business transformation, senior leaders must ask what role their brand can – and should – play. Understanding how brands and a company’s purpose are perceived in the market is a vital first step. In some cases, brands may need a refresh to match updated offerings. In other situations, brand equities can extend effectively into new categories. In either case, careful planning and market insights can help senior leaders find the right way to put the brand to work.
The regional casino operator formerly known as Penn National Gaming aimed to disrupt a sector undergoing great change. Facing an inflection point in its business – thanks to technology advancements, expansion of online gaming and rapid growth via acquisitions – the company set out a bold transformation agenda to lead the gaming and entertainment industry into a new era.
Senior leadership decided it was time to redefine the corporate identity to reflect its growth beyond casinos into omnichannel entertainment. The rebrand created stronger connections with consumers, employees, investors and partners, which led to more support for the broader transformation effort.
Theme 4: Rethinking Business Models to Find New Ways to Make Money
In seeking new pathways for growth, many companies default to product and service extensions rather than exploring entirely new ways to generate revenue and engage customers. We think the latter approach – the development of new business models – is the better option in 2024. Why? Because that’s where the uncommon results come from.
Identifying new business models requires a deep understanding of the value chain – where and how money is being made today, where the biggest pain and friction points exist for customers and which assets can deliver more value. These insights point the way to value-added services that will resonate with customers, versus mere product wraparounds.
A major US consumer products retailer not only remained relevant but delivered strong growth by expanding from basic tech support capabilities into a subscription-based total tech support for home entertainment and productivity, building on the strength of its expert service capability Customers love getting direction on the best system for their needs and investors love the margins of the higher-end services.
Another example – acquisitions: The build, buy or partner question certainly applies to new business model development. Every firm should consider a wide range of options.
Theme 5: Building a Business Reinvention Capability to Always Be One Step Ahead
Whatever lingering goodwill brands created during COVID is long gone. The loyalty bump from that era has been lost to rising prices, increasing competition and changing behaviors. Current market realities have placed a premium on the ability of companies to drive change effectively, repeatedly and in line with big-picture business objectives like growth.
Because they know change and disruption are inevitable, companies must learn to disrupt themselves – building new offerings and experiences in line with changing customer needs, tearing down to refocus and then reinventing again.
The legendary toymaker LEGO underwent a stunning transformation in the early 2000s to become the “Apple of Toys.” Facing bankruptcy, new leadership formalized its approach to innovation while remaining focused on its core product – the humble brick. The company encouraged customers (both kids and adults) to share feedback and ideas for innovation. Its adoption of “full-spectrum innovation” transcended individual product lines and revealed potential new markets. Even in the age of immersive video games and pet robots, LEGO has delivered impressive results, in terms of both bottom-line metrics and customer engagement, even passion.
In a turbulent, hyper-competitive environment, this capacity for reinvention needs to become a core competency and cultural attribute. Establishing a separate business reinvention capability will help cultivate a disruptive mindset and the necessary processes and skills, such as portfolio review, market analysis, and innovation labs. Self-disruption is never easy but it’s necessary for market leadership. To get ahead, most businesses need to step up their game in terms of reinvention.
Disruption remains the only constant for senior business leaders, the one factor they can rely on year over year. And 2024 into 2025 will offer plenty of it. Organizations that view market threats and disruption as an invitation to reinvent themselves will have a distinct advantage in establishing the mindset and capabilities they need to win. The journey starts with rethinking what’s possible, refining strategies and establishing platforms as a foundation for long-term growth. Organizations can advance by reinforcing their brands and retooling key operations, at which point the process of reinvention naturally begins again. We’ve helped several companies unlock growth strategies and move them into market fast. We can help you.
Unlocking Digital Transformation Success in the Middle East: A Human-Centric Approach
Human-centered transformations are crucial globally, but in the Middle East they take on a distinctly different imperative, shifting from technology to empowering people.
Digital transformation has come a long way from being a buzzword to becoming a fundamental for business success. But, digital transformation goes beyond technology; it’s an ongoing process where human issues and change management are just as central to a successful transformation process as the tech. And today, organizations are starting to understand that change comes from using technology to achieve human goals. They recognize that such change helps them to be more targeted in servicing customers, creating experiences and becoming more efficient, profitable and sustainable.
While human-centered transformations are essential all over the world, they take on a distinctly different imperative in the Middle East. The relationship-based culture requires a very human approach – business here is all about the way people connect.
The region has one of the world’s youngest populations, with about 60% under 25, which means most employees are digital natives. They run their lives using mobile technology and expect the companies they work for to do the same. They are more at ease with artificial intelligence and want all the entities in their lives, from government and employers to shopping and entertainment, to be convenient, automated and personalized.
There’s no ignoring the need to be digital. It is simply expected in every aspect of life. Yet technology is only one part of the solution. It frees up and increases the demand for organizations to provide a human experience. This is becoming more important every day: Yes, there are plenty of tasks tech can do better than people, from booking airline tickets to delivering groceries. But when it’s time for people to interact with each other, whether with colleagues or customers, those interactions take on outsized importance.
In the Middle East, this transition to a more human-centered business should foster the growth of the region’s relationship-driven culture by directing employees’ attention more toward the human elements of business. Organizations should allow their employees to use technology to help their customers and stakeholders achieve their goals.
And this is the crucial distinction: recognizing that humans drive the change in business – not technology.
Starting a Human-Centered Transformation
For the last five years, Prophet’s global research has explored how companies can leap from outdated ideas of digital transformation to human-centered change. We’ve found that sustainable change, the kind that leads to uncommon growth, works best by comparing every organization to the makeup of a human being. Every enterprise has DNA, a mind, body and soul. We call it the Human Centered Transformation Model.
These transformation efforts are powered by purpose, values, brand and strategy, which we consider an organization’s ‘DNA’. All enterprises need a clear and compelling ‘why’. That ‘why’ is the North Star, illuminating every effort, so every part of the organization pulls in the same direction. This purpose must be meaningful, a shared ambition that can unite and inspire people to embrace change for a better future.
Each organization also has a ‘mind’, including the talent, skills and capabilities to take it forward. The ‘body’ includes the organization’s shape, such as governance, processes and systems. And finally, each enterprise has a ‘soul’, the behaviors, beliefs and stories that motivate its people. These soul-based elements are especially important in the Middle East. They include symbols, rituals and a mindset that help ignite change and are deeply meaningful to younger workers.
Leveraging the Middle East’s Unique Advantages and Addressing its Challenges
Our research has identified the critical levers – fundamentals and accelerators – that can drive change. These are global findings. Yet there are some specific conditions in the Middle East that support rapid digital transformation and help bring people on the journey of change.
First, there is speed, urgency and ambition. The race to achieve the national 2030 vision, even as it expands toward 2040, is an amazing driver for change. People who run enterprises feel this vital purpose and are eager to achieve it. Employees are even more impatient.
Next, there’s a regional thirst for excellence, prestige and creativity, inspired by ambitious projects, whether it’s Dubai’s “20-minute city” goals, Saudi Arabia’s $500 billion bet on NEOM, or Egypt’s audacious plans for a new capital. These ambitious endeavors are not only shaping the future but also instilling a sense of collective national pride, fuelling the appetite for achievement and making people eager to join the journey towards a digital future.
The region also faces barriers. Similar to companies globally, some entities react reflexively in ways that are inconsistent or misaligned with their declared strategy, making it more challenging to coordinate and drive change.
Organizations are maturing and evolving all the time. Yet, even in flux, it’s essential to connect the dots strategically. Every change should arise from the enterprise’s DNA, relating continuous improvement to a broader agenda. This clear purpose is the North Star, helping companies see how that purpose translates into every employee and customer experience.
The region also faces workforce challenges due to the transient nature of talent, where professionals frequently change roles and locations. This dynamic environment contributes to fluctuations in productivity, as teams experience continuous turnover, impacting stability. This is why strategies that focus on talent retention, skill development and creating a workplace culture that aligns with the diverse expectations of the workforce are imperative.
These unique advantages and challenges make taking a human-centered approach even more important, ensuring it is tailored to your organization’s characteristics and strengths.
Beyond Cookie-Cutter Approaches: Honor Regional and Organizational Uniqueness
Studying transformation success stories and digital leaders in the West can be tempting. But that’s a mistake. Only Google can be Google. While it’s fine to be inspired by what others have done, organizations in the Middle East (and everywhere else) must remain authentic to their core identity. They should be driven by and centered around the unique group of individuals within their organization and guided by the strategic purpose they aim to achieve.
Cookie-cutter methods won’t create the far-reaching, long-lasting transformation required in modern marketplaces. But there are specific steps companies can take to begin this human-centered change in ways that build on what they do best, helping them create more robust, more agile organizations that better serve all stakeholders.
The Power of Leadership Excellence
Start by defining what good leadership looks like. Leadership values need to stem from the organization’s unique DNA. And while an enlightened CEO is required to initiate the transformation journey, the passion for the mission needs to be nurtured in leaders at all levels. Organizations in the Middle East need leaders who can work with many cultures and nationalities. They require the ability to co-create a dialogue about what the enterprise wants to achieve with this transformation, deciding how best to prepare employees for the changes ahead.
Again, there are inherent regional advantages. Organizations can create close-knit, enterprise-focused leadership teams using the power of the relationship-based culture. We see this inherently in start-ups, steering away from traditional hierarchies and driven by innovation, the emphasis is on collaborative cultures that nurture a sense of belonging and shared purpose among team members. Similarly, government entities in the region have increasingly recognized the value of cultivating strong leadership teams to enhance organizational effectiveness and establish relationship-based cultures that resonate with the diverse populations they serve.
While transformation efforts are still in the planning stage, leaders should remind themselves how much power they have over the outcome of any transformation effort. If leadership isn’t seen as fully on board with changes, efforts will never gain traction. Companies can increase the chance of transformational success by:
Framing the transformation as a positive, modern journey. Make it clear that it helps build pride and furthers national goals, using context that is meaningful and relevant to all employees.
Encouraging creative thinking. As Artificial Intelligence (AI) takes over more operational and administrative tasks, organizations should emphasize the human effort shaping these technological changes. AI can only predict. It can’t think or invent. Constantly seek out new ways to encourage human insight and innovation.
Embracing diversity. Effective transformation in the Middle East requires working with locals, whose motivation and sense of purpose are linked to faith and cultural heritage. But it also requires international workers and customers. Organizations need to serve many segments, tailoring and personalizing every experience.
Build the Right Employee Value Proposition
As leadership teams coalesce around this pivotal transformation initiative, it’s crucial to sharpen every element of talent acquisition. That starts with updating the Employee Value Proposition (EVP) – the deal you offer those who join your organization. While encompassing salary and benefits, an EVP transcends these essentials, delving into the fundamental reasons why people come to work each day. A robust EVP that vividly articulates the organization’s purpose unveils the unique, compelling and meaningful aspects of the employee experience. Beyond merely enhancing talent acquisition, this refined EVP serves as a linchpin for retention. Engaged employees, drawn to a purposeful workplace, contribute to the transformational journey, propelling the organization toward unparalleled growth.
Given macroeconomic challenges, it’s a critical time for regional organizations to make sure these EVPs play across borders, attracting international talent. This can be time-consuming for companies not well-known in other parts of the world. And it often calls for new ways of thinking. For example, flexible schedules and work-life balance are now an expectation of many people in the West and must be addressed in recruiting efforts.
You can’t skimp on developing an EVP. Successful transformation relies on building new capabilities. And while some of those needs will be addressed by upskilling current employees, attracting talent with new skills and background is essential. The rapid expansion of AI tools has dramatically accelerated the demand for new skills.
Companies can’t afford to overlook local talent, either. The competition is intensifying as the Middle East region prospers and grows, especially relative to Western economies.
To meet the needs of the Middle East today and tomorrow, organizations can no longer rely on outdated ideas of digital transformation. Instead, they need to find new and better ways to use human-centered transformation, putting the right technology into the hands of the many people they serve. When enterprises put people before technology, all stakeholders benefit – employees, customers, community members and investors.
If you’d like to discuss your digital transformation effort, our expert team can help you in placing a human-centered focus at the heart of your approach.
Unleashing the Power of Digital Transformation in Manufacturing and Distribution
60% YOY growth in e-commerce sales. $1 billion in new revenue. 8x productivity gains.
These are the types of results that B2B manufacturing and distribution businesses can realize if the right digital strategies are developed, and when leaders take on the necessary transformation work to bring these strategies to life. Unfortunately, many companies in the manufacturing sector are still trying to get by with outdated systems and patchwork solutions – leading to operational inefficiencies and limiting their strategic options for growth. There is hope: Those who embrace digital transformation can create new possibilities.
In our work with a range of B2B manufacturing and distribution leaders, we’ve seen successful digital transformation enable companies to expand into new markets, unlock new avenues for growth, engage new customers and gain a tangible competitive advantage. In this article, we explore why digital growth strategies matter and how to develop the right e-commerce approach for your business.
“We believe our industry will begin seeing more disruption from large online players and big digital marketplace players, and want to support our customers from seeing attrition as a result. We saw it as absolutely critical to digitally transform to meet rising consumer expectations and to ultimately help our customers grow their businesses.”
Rob Saper, General Manager, Dexter Distribution Group
The Significance of a Digital Growth Strategy
Digital growth strategies can support a range of business objectives, from increased sales and stronger customer loyalty to higher efficiency and lower costs. But the simplest reason that B2B companies need digital and e-commerce strategies is that customers expect them to have one. All customers are looking for convenience, flexibility and personalized experiences. Every company must have a digital platform that supports effortless ordering, rapid delivery and responsive service.
When Dawn Food Products Inc. made it easier for customers to discover new products on its online self-service platform, the company saw a surge in online orders for products that customers had not previously purchased offline. The well-designed digital solution prompted customers to buy more and expand their relationships with Dawn.
Digital platforms add value beyond purchasing by providing an outlet for content and services that cater to diverse customer needs associated with the core product set. Anheuser-Busch InBev’s BEES B2B sales platform, for example, empowers retailers and partners with customer insights, personalized product recommendations and sales trends. AB InBev now generates 63% of its revenue through B2B digital platforms, with BEES experiencing a remarkable 60% growth from 2021 to 2022.
Digital strategies also empower companies to scale efficiently, accommodating a growing customer base without the limitations of traditional brick-and-mortar operations. Casey’s Distributing achieved an eightfold increase in productivity by transitioning from manual order processes to a SaaS-based e-commerce platform integrated with inventory management software.
Platforms that automate manual processes and connect diverse systems reduce both error rates and costs. They make it possible to harness the power of data and analytics to generate invaluable insights that can be used to optimize pricing, marketing programs, inventory, and supply management. These platforms help companies understand where they should invest in growth and how to scale the business.
E-commerce strategies are critical for B2B companies to extend into new market segments and compete with established players, new market entrants and potential disrupters. To engage smaller businesses with simpler needs than its larger customers, Grainger operates Zoro.com alongside its flagship website. The expanded product assortment has been a hit, generating $1 billion in annual revenue.
Over time, as digital strategies evolve and capabilities mature, companies may consider refining their business models or launching entirely new value streams. The right platform allows companies to test and learn about new products and services. For instance, Schneider Electric’s Exchange created a new marketplace of data services that foster collaboration and networking within the energy sector.
A common theme for successful e-commerce strategies is data monetization. Marketplace and platform models featuring different vendors offering their products produce data and insights that customers value. They also create a market for selling advertising space. B2B businesses, especially distribution companies and others that serve as middlemen, can follow the lead of Walmart, Target, Kroger and others that have built large businesses by selling ads and customer data directly to advertisers.
Asking the Right Questions
The journey to breakthrough results starts with asking the right questions to inform digital and e-commerce strategies:
What information or tools would enrich and accelerate the customer journey?
Which interactions and touchpoints can we personalize to encourage upselling?
What data would be valuable for customers? What’s the best way to make it accessible and actionable?
Which existing processes would benefit from automation and integration?
How can e-commerce enable us to fully capture and leverage customer data?
How can we expand the value exchange with the customer base? What’s the best place to start?
Where can we find new revenue streams in a revamped digital ecosystem?
Seven Steps for Developing a Successful Digital Growth Strategy
To build successful e-commerce and digital strategies, companies should consider the following key steps:
1. Define the Vision and Goals
Envision your business aspirations and how they relate to what customers want. Determine where your e-commerce and digital strategy can deliver maximum value in meeting customer needs. Clearly identify, document and gain organizational consensus on the top areas of opportunity across the customer journey.
2. Assess Customer Readiness for Change
Proactively engage customers to determine their preferences for digital engagement versus traditional business approaches. Communicate clearly what’s changing and how they will benefit from a more digital experience. Take advantage of the inherent stickiness of manufacturing and distribution to gradually evolve customer mindsets toward digital ecosystems and, ultimately, strengthen existing relationships.
3. Prepare the Organization
Assess organizational structures, processes and resources to determine whether they need to be enhanced or adjusted to execute against the new digital ambitions. Engage business units and organizational capabilities that will be affected by the new strategy to ensure they understand the goals and their role in it.
4. Prioritize Change Management Needs
Craft a change management approach that addresses fears of job security and change fatigue, especially among essential customer-facing staff. Consider refining incentives and shifting cultural attitudes to foster innovative thinking and behaviors. Invest in training and upskilling and equip the workforce with the right tools so they can thrive as their everyday work and your business operations get more digital.
5. Create a Roadmap and Business Case
Develop a detailed plan outlining how your digital strategy will unlock value over time, with key milestones and quantifiable targets. Engage stakeholders to gain buy-in based on formal business cases and roadmaps, which is especially important for low-margin businesses unaccustomed to transformational change.
6. Choose the Right Platforms and Technologies
Evaluate and select e-commerce and digital platforms that best align with your business objectives. Integrate the back-office systems and data repositories necessary to build the foundation for high-impact customer-facing solutions.
7. Continuously Monitor and Adjust
With the roadmap and business case as the baseline, devise and track meaningful customer, financial and operational metrics to monitor the success of your digital strategy. Adapt your strategy accordingly while keeping the long-term vision in mind. Plan to iterate continuously as digital transformation is more an ongoing journey than a single destination.
The prospect of digital transformation can seem daunting, to even the most forward-looking leaders. But robust e-commerce and digital strategies have become essential in B2B manufacturing and distribution businesses. And the lessons learned from those firms that have successfully transformed confirm the compelling returns – in the form of broader reach, increased efficiency, high-value customer insights, stronger relationships, and stronger competitive capabilities.
Prophet has been recognized by Forrester as a notable Digital Transformation in The Digital Transformation Services Landscape, Q3 2023. Check out the report here and learn how Prophet can help drive performance gains through effective digital strategies.
Our new global research commissioned from Forrester Consulting has found that human-centric companies are more likely to see results from their business transformation efforts. In fact, human-centric organizations are 10 times more likely to achieve revenue growth rates of 20% or more.
Forrester surveyed over 300 organizational growth and transformation decision-makers across geographies and industries to uncover how firms are using human-centricity to design and assess the effectiveness of their transformation initiatives. Our maturity model provides a comparative analysis that illustrates how human-centric firms are outperforming their peers when it comes to delivering transformative growth.
In comparison to less human-centric organizations, respondents from human-centric organizations are more likely to achieve or expect these benefits:
Barriers to meeting transformation goals for initiatives that are less human-centric:
This study offers resources for decision-makers looking to transform their organizations to be more resilient, improve their culture and satisfy all stakeholders while setting themselves up for future business success.
Source: A commissioned study conducted by Forrester Consulting on behalf of Prophet, July 2023.
Our report reveals that successful transformations often require partnerships to help drive organizational change. As leaders navigate the complex landscape of business transformation, relying on the expertise of external partners becomes a vital catalyst for achieving success.