Transformation

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Five Moves to Become a Convergent Enterprise

Make sure your business purpose is still relevant, and assess the change readiness of your organization.

Digital transformations that unlock uncommon growth are special. They require more than just adding on new digital capabilities or deploying new experiences, or even fielding new business models. Rather, organizations must work hard to converge these efforts around a singular purpose that is relevant to how customers live and work today – and find ways to satisfy their unmet needs.

1. Re-focus The Operating Model

Everything from talent, organization design, processes, interactions and tools should support the customer or employee experience that the company is trying to achieve. This means converging KPIs and measuring success in a way that ties the organization together in a shared commitment to customer outcomes.

2. Solve The Customer’s Actual Problem

Both internal and external-facing initiatives must embrace the evolved capabilities and new behaviors that customers and employees have today. The needs that your business was originally designed to address are likely being re-shaped by new capabilities that your customers are using. By pursuing new businesses at the intersection of what customers want and what they can already do with digital, firms will be able to address unmet needs in underexplored growth territories.

3. Reskill The Organization From the Top-Down

Investment in training for everyone from executive leadership to support staff will drive an enterprise-wide understanding of the software, tech and agile processes on which the business is built. Successful transformations are led by CEOs and executed teams who can connect strategy to implementation; orchestrate between new processes, new data and digital tools; and create impact.

4. Upgrade Your Go-to-Market Capabilities

Treat data as a renewable resource. Leverage marketing and sales functions to get closer to the customer and use always-on insights to enable a loyalty engine that not only drives preferences and new value props but also helps organizations anticipate shifts in demand.

5. Create Incentives for Innovation

Developing incentives for innovation throughout the company means rewarding test-and-learn, experimentation and calculated risk while tweaking funding models and time horizons to ensure that worthy investments are given a fair chance to succeed. No more short-termism or single-horizon thinking.

“Organizations must work hard to converge these efforts around a singular purpose that is relevant to how customers live and work today – and find ways to satisfy their needs.”

Getting Started:

Becoming a convergent enterprise is not quick or easy. We don’t expect every business will attempt it all at once. But, regardless of where you are in your transformation journey, we believe that every company has the ability to achieve convergence. The only requirement is a commitment to renewing purpose, shifting mindsets and aligning your priorities and pursuits. That starts with introspection.

Renewing your company’s purpose is not unique to digital transformation but because the digital environment has fundamentally transformed the way we live, it is a prerequisite for driving successful convergence.

Four Steps To Get Started

  1. Assess the relevance of the business purpose to today’s customers, employees and stakeholders. 
    Begin by asking how context, competition and new capabilities have impacted your purpose. Has any part of it become outdated?
  2. Map your existing digital transformation activities to convergent moves.
    Identify the gaps between the initiatives you’ve already invested in and those you should be investing in, to balance the portfolio of moves that are right for your organization.
  3. Measure the change readiness of your organization. 
    Understand how proposed shifts in priorities will impact decision-making and ways of working – establish a team to help lead the transition.
  4. Develop the convergence agenda to connect the convergent moves to an updated purpose.
    Use your renewed sense of purpose to prioritize the orchestration of effort.

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FINAL THOUGHTS

In the face of digital acceleration, customer and organizational needs keep changing. New technology regularly reconfigures both supply and demand – we know it as ‘disruption.’ Successful organizations, recognizing this need for constant reimagination and integration of new capabilities, engage in ongoing digital transformation. We call it convergence. And it’s the next phase of your transformation journey.

Prophet is a convergence accelerator and a purpose-led transformation consultancy that will help you reimagine your firm, integrate and scale digital investments, and drive real, defensible growth. We believe that to accelerate convergence we take your existing assets – such as data, brand, culture, business models – reimagine them for today’s customers and employees and look for new ways to integrate capabilities and talent with a reimagined sense of purpose. Then, we drive towards scale.

Get in touch today if you’d like to learn how to bring convergence moves to grow your organization.

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REPORT

The 2021 State of Digital Transformation

Companies with successful transformations prioritize data management, innovation and customer experience.

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In this year’s State of Digital Transformation report, our goal is to identify the key differences between the businesses who succeeded at digital transformation, and those who were still struggling. We surveyed 587 executives from the US, Europe and China, across a range of industries to highlight not only their current digital capabilities but the key investments and choices they made that got them to where they are. By separating the responses of high performers and average performers, we identified the key characteristics of companies that successfully met their transformation goals.

This report serves as a benchmark for what digital maturity looks like in 2021 and charts a path forward for businesses that are looking to thrive in the next wave of digital transformation initiatives.

Key findings include:

  • Growth and innovation were the top transformation goals for top performers, while average performers cited modernization and efficiency as their top goals.
  • The majority of companies used a holistic, or coordinated simultaneous transformation approach to transform the organization, rather than transforming departments in isolation, or sequentially.
  • COVID-19 reduced budgets and resources for transformation, but it did not slow transformation programs. In fact for high performers, it accelerated transformation efforts.
  • Companies with successful transformations were much more likely to prioritize data management, innovation, customer experience and employee experience initiatives, compared to average companies.
  • Transformations led by the CEO are more successful than those led by other positions
  • Digitally mature companies are looking to invest in leveraging data, optimizing customer and employee experiences, and building external partnerships and networks to prepare for the next phase of transformation.

Download the full report below to learn more.

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VIDEO

Fintech Frontier: Michael Dritsas on Meeting Customers Where They’re At

The CEO of Vlot, an insurtech company, talks about the need for seamless financial checkups.

15 min

Summary

Fintech Frontier: Prophet Talks Disruption is a series of interviews with leading fintech disruptors. In this episode, Prophet Partner Tosson El Noshokaty chats with Michael Dritsas, CEO of Vlot. Vlot is an insurtech company that partners with insurers, corporations and banks to deliver seamless financial checkups (white label risk analysis and coverage solutions) so customers and B2B organizations can become more financially responsible.

Michael discusses how Vlot is taking a fiercely customer-centric, bottom-up approach to insurance – providing data-rich insights to customers that fit into their lifestyles and goals. Watch the full interview to learn how Vlot is building enduring relationships with customers on their digital transformation journeys.

About Fintech Frontier: Prophet Talks Disruption

The Financial services industry is evolving rapidly with important shifts in market dynamics & customer expectations.  Prophet’s fintech interview series FinTech Frontier: Prophet Talks Disruption brings you one-on-one interviews with the thought leaders and innovators transforming financial services. Each episode showcases a FinTech leader story that is revolutionizing banking, payments, insurance, and all other areas disrupting our industry.

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Pinduoduo’s Purpose-Led Agri-Tech Innovation: A Conversation with Xin Yi Lim

This tech company focuses on farmer productivity while reducing the environmental footprint of farming.

E-commerce continues to surge globally, in part accelerated by the COVID-19 pandemic, and in many ways, China leads the charge. While some Chinese companies, such as Alibaba and Meituan, have focused on building ecosystems and “super apps,” Pinduoduo’s approach differs. With origins in agriculture and social commerce, Pinduoduo has risen to the top through an innovative business model that is set on creating value for both the merchant and the consumer. In 2020, Pinduoduo was ranked third by GMV of China’s e-commerce platforms, with a total GMV of $242 billion USD.

Prophet’s Tom Zhang, a senior engagement manager, had the chance to sit down with Xin Yi Lim, Pinduoduo’s executive director of sustainability and agricultural impact, to discuss Pinduoduo’s investment in agri-tech, its view on the consumer-to-manufacturer (C2M) model and the company’s ongoing purpose-led innovation initiatives.

Xin Yi Lim

Pinduoduo

Executive Director of Sustainability and Agricultural Impact

As Pinduoduo’s executive director of sustainability and agricultural impact, Xin Yi Lim is responsible for Pinduoduo’s international corporate strategy efforts and innovation in sustainability and agri-tech. Before joining Pinduoduo in late 2018, she worked for Singapore’s sovereign wealth fund, GIC, in both its Singapore and New York offices as a technology and media analyst in the Public Equities division. Xin Yi holds a bachelor’s degree from the University of Oxford and a master’s degree from Harvard University.

Can you tell us a bit more about your background? What brought you to Pinduoduo, and what is your current role there?

I’ve spent most of my working life in investment, covering technology, the internet and media. As a financial analyst and an outsider, I was familiar with Chinese e-commerce but very much interested in learning more.

I joined Pinduoduo in late 2018. I’m part of the broader strategy and investment team, but my title is quite unusual – executive director of sustainability and agricultural impact. It’s very hard to find anybody else who has those two things in one title, which speaks to how Pinduoduo sees agriculture. For us, it’s where we can have a huge impact in the social sphere, via poverty alleviation and job creation, and in the environmental sphere as well.

What is Pinduoduo’s ambition behind its continued focus on agriculture, even as the company has expanded into numerous other categories?

In the beginning, there was Pinduoduo and there was also Pinhaohuo (拼好货), which was focused solely on agricultural goods. We merged the two in 2016, and as a result, agriculture remained deeply rooted in our DNA. Even as we grew into selling other categories of goods, agriculture stayed at the forefront as a sector where we could have a large-scale impact and accelerate change.

As a technology company, we’re constantly thinking about how we can disseminate agricultural technologies to improve farmer productivity while reducing the environmental footprint of farming. By leveraging these technologies, customers can get the same product, or perhaps even one that is more nutritious, while reducing the environmental impact. Broadly, that’s how Pinduoduo thinks about agriculture, technology and sustainability.

As a platform, where can Pinduoduo have the biggest impact in the agricultural value chain?

The way agricultural products make their way to market – the distribution channel – has not yet been transformed as it has for other categories. We estimate only about 7% to 8% of the total dollar value of agricultural products transacted in a year is happening online.

That caught our attention because we know shifting online can unlock a lot of efficiencies in the supply chain. Through the Pinduoduo model, we are able to bring the produce directly from farmers to customers, cutting down on any unnecessary intermediaries in between. And by doing this, the farmer can earn more while the consumer can save more. It becomes a win-win for the producers and the consumers.

“As a technology company, we’re constantly thinking about how we can disseminate agricultural technologies to improve farmer productivity while reducing the environmental footprint of farming.”

The knock-on effect is also more prevalent now that the farmers are more plugged into the economy. This is because they have a direct sense of what their target consumers like. They can understand how consumers respond to certain pricing or packaging if there is stronger demand for large oranges versus small oranges or how demand changes throughout the year. We want to empower farmers so that they’re not just price-takers in the traditional distribution model, but instead, can be more actively involved in producing what consumers actually want. This is where we can add value and how we bring the C2M model to life.

Can you elaborate on how Pinduoduo incorporates the C2M model in its overall strategy?

In China, there is a very strong manufacturing base on the supply side. However, the Original Equipment Manufacturers (OEMs) often lack the expertise and insights to create distinctive brand identities and value propositions that connect with their consumers. Thus, we are coming up with new ways to enable domestic producers to leverage their own IP, understand consumer needs and create products and brands that resonate with the market.

Our New Brands Initiative, launched in late 2018, is one way we are bringing this to life. We have dedicated vertical specialists who work with manufacturers from each category, sharing emerging market and consumer trends with the goal of turning manufacturers from OEMs to Original Brand Manufacturers (OBMs). Based on these category trends as well as their own merchant data we provide via the platform, merchants are able to adjust their offerings accordingly and consider how to upgrade their marketing. That’s also where brand building begins. Brands can’t be everything to everyone, so by providing insights and narrowing the focus, C2M can help manufacturers develop their own value propositions and their own brands.

China has the benefit of having one of the highest levels of penetration of e-commerce. This speeds everything up, from product development to pricing to SKU assortment, by allowing manufacturers to get feedback in real-time.

Can you give a few examples of some of the initiatives Pinduoduo is undertaking in terms of innovation?

Pinduoduo is training a new generation of agri-entrepreneurs. In the past five years, we’ve trained one hundred thousand “new farmers,” a younger, more educated generation that is migrating back to their hometowns, and we’re committed to training one hundred thousand more. These are the ones who are managing the storefront, packaging, customer service and distribution and at the same time, they are also mobilizing the rest of their rural communities to join them in the digital economy. We bring business expertise via online and offline classes and then partner with institutions such as China Agricultural University to teach agricultural knowledge. Through these agri-entrepreneurs, we’re hoping to start improving the branding of agricultural goods in China, which is very undeveloped.

Our long-term goal is to bring in more upstream, purpose-led innovation. We’re in year two of hosting the Smart Agriculture Competition. We bring together global technology teams with backgrounds in AI, machine learning and plant science to compete against traditional, premium horticulture teams. We then put these teams in a smart greenhouse that they control remotely using IoT, monitoring the plants and making precise adjustments whenever needed. In last year’s competition, the AI teams produced three times as many strawberries and generated 76% higher ROI compared to the traditional teams. Not only was it very impressive to the farmers, but some of the technology experts also went on to work with the farmers after the competition. The Smart Agriculture Competition creates an opportunity to test the teams’ technologies on a bigger scale. At the same time, the farmers benefit from the efficiencies and see the real-world impact.

Pinduoduo has referred to itself as a “Costco+Disney” concept. Can you elaborate on what this means and how it guides Pinduoduo’s innovation and strategy?

The Costco+Disney concept ties in with Pinduoduo’s slogan: More Savings, More Fun (多实惠，多乐趣). The Costco part, “more savings,” comes from our early insight that we could get more value for money by aggregating demand. The Disney part, “more fun,” speaks to people’s desire for a social shopping experience.

We designed Pinduoduo to be very interactive. The app offers a social connection that helps users discover things more easily compared to the traditional e-commerce model, which is very individualistic. The “team purchase” model is a big part of the social element. Livestreaming serves as another interactive element, which helps build trust between consumers and merchants. It allows them to see how things are made, how it looks, which helps consumers feel closer to the producers, creating trust.

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FINAL THOUGHTS

We don’t want shopping to feel like a chore. We want it to be a fun part of your daily routine. Within the e-commerce industry, we’ve achieved one of the highest engagement rates in terms of monthly active users and daily active users. By emphasizing more savings and more fun, we’ve found a way for users to engage willingly and regularly.

Learn how your organization could drive innovation through a purpose-driven approach. Contact us today!

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The Four Digital and Innovation Trends Unlocking New Growth Opportunities in Southeast Asia

From digital healthcare to social commerce, new internet users are ready to embrace technology.

Over 40 million people in Southeast Asia (SEA) went online for the first time during the pandemic, bringing active Internet users in the region to 400 million [1], according to Google’s e-Conomy SEA 2020 report. This represents a 60% increase from 2015, and a 70% internet penetration rate of the region’s 580 million population, as well as a $100 billion worth of Internet economy.

In the past year, we have seen many new norms and many changed customer habits. To better understand the trends that have transformed the digital landscape in SEA and the implications for brands to maintain their relevance, we interviewed four key marketing and digital experts across the region.

Four Trends Shaping the Future of Digital and Innovation

1. Growth of Digital Healthcare

The pandemic exposed the fragile public healthcare system and scarcity of healthcare professionals for patients in underserved and rural areas. To fill this care gap, many are turning to telemedicine, increasing its demand. Two examples of the surge of telemedicine are Indonesian start-ups Alodokter and Halodoc, which link patients with physicians for online health consultations all from the comfort of their homes. These start-ups and many others have shown robust growth as citizens in remote, rural areas are becoming more aware of their need for quality healthcare and as governments begin to recognize telemedicine start-ups as an official care resource for citizens.

Looking more broadly, we expect the continued growth of digital healthcare solutions as health and wellness remains a top priority for customers, impacting their choices around self-care and their expectations towards their interactions with brands.

“The pandemic made us rethink the real part of our business – helping people get their health checked and making sure they were claiming right. And so, we realized that we need to enable all of our sellers to proactively reach out to people digitally.”  

– Ms. Jenn Villalobos

2. The Rise of Contactless and Digital Payments

Contactless became a new norm during the height of the pandemic. As a result, new, contactless services have seen substantial growth and adoption by major brands across SEA. For example, local food delivery companies such as GrabFood have evolved their services to better address customer needs, by giving customers the flexibility to schedule contactless delivery in advance.

Alongside contactless services, digital payments are expanding as customers increasingly forgo cash to avoid physical contact. This trend was accelerated when brands increased their implementation of cashless payments for their services. This led to non-cash transactions growing rapidly across the region. For example, GCash by Mynt and PayMaya by PLDT expanded to enable digital contactless payments in public taxis in the Philippines. In Vietnam, the number of mobile payment transactions grew by nearly 200% during their lock-down period. Additionally, e-wallets such as ZaloPay, Momo, and Grab-backed Moca also experienced high rates of adoption during this period.

“People were looking for an opportunity to do banking very easily but they wanted to avoid physical interaction as much as possible, so we launched a new digital, mobile banking offering with a much better user experience and faster transaction speed than before and compared to other banks.” 

– Mr. Pahala Mansury

3. Shift Towards Social Commerce

As COVID-19 disrupts most supply chains and traditional retail channels, many SEA customers have experienced or adopted new retail channels to a varying degree. An area that largely benefited from this opportunity is social commerce. Social media has become a one-stop platform where customers can be influenced by a variety of content and subsequently shop directly or through chat rooms on Facebook, WhatsApp or Line. In fact, social commerce accounted for about 44% of SEA’s $100 billion Internet economy in 2020[2].

To serve this growing demand and overcome challenges from the pandemic, we are not only seeing major brands but also micro-businesses adopt and integrate social commerce into their business models. One example is Singapore’s Infocomm Media Development Authority. They’re helping stalls in wet markets that are traditionally cash-only and have zero online presence online. This initiative has enabled customers to order their groceries from mom-and-pop shops remotely via Facebook and enjoy same-day delivery to their homes. We expect to see social commerce become an increasingly common practice among brands to grow their relevance and strengthen trust among customers.

“I would say social commerce is what makes a brand more relevant because it’s all about building community and trust. This is even more so in Southeast Asia.”

– Ms. Pinky Yee

4. Emergence of the New Experiential Customer

The pandemic has led to stay-at-home restrictions that forced customers to live their lives, including working, shopping, exercising and entertaining, all from home. Personalized digital experiences that seamlessly fit into the customer’s individual home routines have become increasingly important as they have fewer opportunities to interact with products and services physically. Even as stores re-open, we are seeing brands adjusting to the new normal at home by complementing their services.

For example, Indonesian ride-hailing brand GoJek accelerated the launch of GoPlay, a streaming entertainment service that offers locally personalized content such as Gossip Girl Indonesia. The growing pool of customers demanding personalized experiences at home has pushed brands to reinvent their offerings. Luxury, healthcare, food and beverage and educational experiences, for instance, are increasingly integrated into the stay-at-home lifestyle.

“As the outdoors are declining in terms of relevance, brands need to continuously think about how they can generate content that is relevant and entertaining to that family, to that side of the home lifestyle as they spend more hours at home.”

– Mr. Pahala Mansury

How to Unlock New Value to Win in SEA

The above trends create a wealth of opportunities for brands to innovate and unlock value. During times of disruption, brands need to adopt a digital transformation and innovation agenda that is both human-centric and digitally powered to align employees, customers and communities around a shared purpose and vision. While most companies turn to technology-driven optimization, technology alone does not drive the wheel of transformation, but rather, we must use technology to enable changes across all areas of the business from customer experience to marketing and sales to organizational culture in order to unlock uncommon growth.

“Instilling innovation from inside out allows companies to adapt quickly to evolving customer needs and get ahead of other competitors.”

– Mr. Alvin Neo

  • Customer experience transformation must begin from a human perspective, focusing not just on users but also business operators responsible for maintaining and improving the experience. Singapore Airlines leveraged artificial intelligence (AI), customer data and blockchain technology to deliver more personalized end-to-end experiences across its channels. As a result, Singapore Airlines was able to consistently outperform key competitor, Emirates, with the highest customer satisfaction (87%) [3]
  • Businesses need to reinvent marketing and sales by embracing customer-data strategies and omnichannel approaches to grow market share and increase loyalty and customer value. In Thailand, the iconic tricycle-riding ice cream vendor, Wall’s Man, was elevated into a new-world phenomenon by creating a new, mobile-activated service and interactive messaging with GPS tracking. Customers order ice cream by simply sending a sticker to Wall’s Man’s chatbot online. The customer data collected through its services allows Wall’s Man to manage his inventory better while providing insights through customer profiling. Despite the economic turmoil and entrance of new players, sales increased by 4% within the first two months of activation. Currently, one of three Thai Line users has joined Wall’s Man Line account, allowing a whole new generation to experience the joy of delivered ice cream [4].
  • It is also crucial for companies to approach the transformational agenda from the inside out by advancing cultures that excite top talent and continuously fuel innovation. The culture of innovation is instilled within Tokopedia, an Indonesian technology company specializing in e-commerce. Tokopedia has built a winning learning and development (L&D) ecosystem that is digital, accessible and gamified. Tokopedia’s effort in L&D was recognized by winning the “Best Companies to Work for in Asia” Award in 2020 [5]. Success in L&D has also been translated into business, with Tokopedia sustaining its position as a trailblazer in Indonesia and its CEO, William Tanuwijaya, won the Innovation Leadership Achievement Award in Indonesia from The Asian Banker in 2021.

References:

[1] According to the e-Conomy SEA 2020 research done by Google Inc., Temasek Holdings Pre. and Bain & Co., 2020 https://storage.googleapis.com/gweb-economy-sea.appspot.com/assets/pdf/e-Conomy_SEA_2020_Report.pdf

[2] The e-Conomy SEA 2020, https://storage.googleapis.com/gweb-economy-sea.appspot.com/assets/pdf/e-Conomy_SEA_2020_Report.pdf

[3] According to Roy Morgan, Jan 2020, https://www.roymorgan.com/findings/8253-csa-results-november-2019-international-airline-satisfaction-202001192349

[4] According to The State of Digital Transformation in SEA

[5] According to Nanang Chalid Blog Post, Dec 2020, https://www.nanangchalid.com/post/start-with-why-a-winning-l-d-story

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FINAL THOUGHTS

The COVID-19 pandemic has accelerated and transformed the digital landscape in SEA, presenting opportunities for uncommon growth in this diverse, fast-growing and digitally developed region. The key to unlocking more value is approaching innovation not just by applying new digital technologies, but more importantly, innovating from the inside out across all dimensions of the organization.

To learn more about how to unlock uncommon growth in your organization, contact us today.

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The Transformation of Southeast Asia: Innovation Wins over Digital-First Customers

Leaders from Thailand, Philippines, Indonesia and Singapore weigh in on the region’s unique digital readiness.

With brick-and-mortar businesses halted, supply chains crashed down and trust towards existing brands and practices shaken, opportunities for digital businesses have emerged out of the pandemic. In Southeast Asia (SEA) particularly, we have seen tremendous growth of the digital economy as customers across the region rapidly shifted to online last year.

To better understand the trends that have transformed the digital landscape in SEA and the implications for brands to maintain their relevance, we interviewed four key marketing and digital experts across the region.

The Unique Digital Culture in SEA

SEA is a huge digital market with an Internet economy projected to reach $200 billion within the next four years [1]. While the region’s excitement for digital discovery and friendly start-up climate offers many of the unique regional strengths for businesses, leaders and marketing specialists need to consider local, cultural nuances and avoid taking a monolithic approach to best capture opportunities in the region.

Here are three important cultural traits and market trends for businesses to consider:

 1. A Digital-Ready Culture

SEA is one of the world’s fastest adopters of digital transformation. This is driven by a rising power of consumption, a strong start-up climate, cheap and accessible devices and a youthful, tech-loving population that has embraced e-commerce and social media. Currently, the region has incubated over seven thousand start-ups and 12 unicorns.

Marketing towards digital and non-digital customers alike will be a more fast-moving process than it is in more developed regions, as the local consumers do not need to get rid of old practices to embrace the new. This would also be a challenge for brand specialists as customers of the region will respond quicker, requiring swifter actions towards changes.

“We are observing a youthful segment in Thailand that is extremely open to digital tools and solutions like Fintech and digital banking that other people may have concerns about.”

– Ms. Jenn Villalobos

2. Street-Based Digital Economy

Throughout SEA, micro-businesses permeate every aspect of consumers’ lives as people rely on smaller mom-and-pop shops to purchase groceries, pay bills, make transfers and more. For instance, in Thailand, small convenience stores are the starting point of the country’s digital economy. TrueMoney, one of Thailand’s biggest payment providers, partnered with convenience stores allowing users to directly top up their TrueMoney wallets by purchasing recharge cards at the stores. The TrueMoney wallet can then be used to transfer money, shop online and buy goods from the convenience store via digital payments [2]. This example, alongside many others, shows that digital innovation should complement and fit into customers’ existing consumption habits as part of the unique local culture.

3. Burgeoning MSMEs That Require E-Business Support

The rapid growth of the SEA economy is led by the burgeoning MSMEs (Micro, Small, Medium Enterprises), which employ over 80% of the workforce. However, the intrinsic characteristics of MSMEs make it difficult for these companies to benefit fully from the e-commerce ecosystem. less than 20% of such enterprises were able to benefit from the trend [3], according to International Think Tank Chairman Professor Syed Munir Khasru. Greater training and support on infrastructure, equipment and technology proficiency is required for the MSMEs to participate in the digital boom.

“Leaders and marketing specialists need to consider local, cultural nuances and avoid taking a monolithic approach to best capture opportunities in the region.”

How Global Businesses Can Innovate to Win Better in SEA

At Prophet, we believe the most relevant brands always win when people can integrate them into their everyday lives. We believe there are four major pillars in the modern approach of creating and maintaining relevance. These pillars guide brands to stay relevant and constantly on the cutting edge.

Additionally, brands must also take a localized approach to digital innovation by having a deep understanding of consumer behaviors in each of the SEA markets. By becoming customer-obsessed, pervasively innovative, ruthlessly pragmatic, distinctively inspired and locally relevant,  brands are equipped to delight customers and continue to lead their categories.

Customer Obsessed: To deliver personalization successfully requires leveraging customer data and creating a value exchange where customers provide brands access to their data in return for additional value in their product, service or experience. This results in customers receiving experiences that are individually tailored to their specific needs at a specific moment in time, which allows brands to strengthen their relevance with their target audiences.

“We are stepping into a new era of personalization known as self-customization, where customers can choose what they want for themselves and to do this we need to create a meaningful data exchange with our customers – if we are able to achieve that then we will have achieved customer obsession.”

– Mr. Alvin Neo

How to Innovate: Refresh your existing segmentation by taking an insights-focused approach. This will help your business identify opportunities for new customer engagements and data exchange to create personalized offers that deliver greater value.

Pervasively Innovative: Brands that maintain leadership does not rest on their laurels. Even as industry leaders, they push the status quo, engage with customers in new and creative ways and find new solutions to address unmet needs. This also ties in with being customer-obsessed. Brands can use their innovation to cater to their customers’ needs.

“We are viewing innovation through the eyes of the customer rather than from the company’s standpoint. It’s a completely different perspective because we aim to truly realize our customer’s needs.”

– Ms. Pinky Yee

How to Innovate: Review enterprise-wide value chains to identify a new business model and revenue opportunities that are centered on digital-first offers.

Ruthlessly Pragmatic: As COVID-19 has shaken brand loyalty for many customers, brands need to make sure their products are available where and when customers need them, deliver consistent experiences and simply make life easier for their customers. At the same time, brands need to ensure their offerings address customers’ changing priorities given the challenges posed by the pandemic, such as creating contactless, digital experiences that meet customers’ heightened awareness of their own personal health and safety.

How to Innovate: Build new online presence and direct-to-customer, O2O models that are not only frictionless but also contactless to guarantee safer, healthier interactions with customers.

Distinctively Inspired: It is important in such trying times to let customers know powerful brands and companies are giving back to the community. To stay relevant, these brands make emotional connections, earn trust and often exist to fulfill a larger purpose.

During our interview with Pinky Yee, the former CMO at Domino’s Pizza, Pinky shared the interesting case of San Miguel, who turned its gin line into hand sanitizer and donated it to local hospitals in the Philippines. This campaign has received a lot of local traction as it showed its social commitment during a time when it was needed most.

How to Innovate: Deploy resources and assets towards use cases that align your brand purpose with opportunities to give back and to deepen existing relationships with your target audiences.

Locally Relevant: With more customers trying new brands and products, we are expecting many smaller brands to benefit from such loyalty shifts. A critical factor we find in how customers make their decisions when choosing a new brand is how locally relevant a brand is.

Speaking to our experts has helped us understand that amongst big foreign multinational corporations, localization is limited or still feels disconnected from local customers. This is a key understanding to succeeding in SEA where there are a lot of different countries and each with its own cultural nuances. Marketing with the right strategic channels in every geography is also important.

How to Innovate: Develop country-specific go-to-market plans and leverage local partnerships to create localized product and experience offers that strengthen credibility and relevance with customers

—

References:

[1] The e-Conomy SEA 2020, https://storage.googleapis.com/gweb-economy-sea.appspot.com/assets/pdf/e-Conomy_SEA_2020_Report.pdf

[2] Deloitte “The Next Wave” Emerging digital life in South and SEA, https://www2.deloitte.com/content/dam/Deloitte/cn/Documents/technology-media-telecommunications/deloitte-cn-tmt-inclusion-en-200924.pdf

[3] According to Professor Syed Munir Khasru in an opinion written for South China Morning Post, Jun 2021, https://www.scmp.com/comment/opinion/article/3135868/key-aseans-post-pandemic-recovery-digital-transformation

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FINAL THOUGHTS

To win in SEA, brands can pull different levers to deliver on brand relevance. At the same time, brands must also take a localized approach to digital and innovation by having a deep understanding of consumers’ digital behaviors in each unique SEA market.

To learn more about how to build brand relevance in Southeast Asia, contact us today!

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Webinar Replay: Innovation as a Future Growth Driver for Singapore

The pandemic is changing the role of innovation. SGInnovate’s CEO explains how that plays out in Singapore.

58 min

Innovation is the cornerstone of business growth today. Figuring out the right formula results in big ideas and opens the door to new business opportunities. In this webinar, our expert speakers, Jacqueline Alexis Thng, Partner of Prophet, and Dr. Lim Jui, CEO of SGInnovate, discuss how innovation is driving future growth in Singapore.

Watch to learn:

  • How SGInnovate is driving innovation and investing in Deep Tech (newly researched, frontier technologies) in Singapore
  • The essentials of open innovation, including its benefits and best practices
  • The impact of coronavirus and the future of innovation

To learn more about how to create winning innovations that grab customers’ attention at once, download our latest whitepaper High-Concept Thinking: 6 Ways To Create Striking Innovations.

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Digital Transformation in Healthcare: Senior Leaders on Opportunities and Challenges

Our seven-expert panel says that while there’s no single strategy, transformation must always deliver value.

The tech is ready, but people and talent are just as important. Digital is no longer the domain of just one team. User experiences must be personalized and offer clear benefits.

Those are among the major takeaways from Prophet’s most recent healthcare roundtable on digital transformation. We gather for these discussions several times a year so leaders from different subsectors and functions can compare notes and share insights. A big thank you to our participants:

We covered a lot in a little time, but here are the big takeaways – many of which align with the insights found in Prophet Healthcare’s research report.

Five Things to Keep in Mind as Your Healthcare Organization Digitally Transforms

1) There’s No One Right Transformation Strategy

Transformation approaches are as varied as the healthcare organizations trying to transform. If the question is whether to build, buy or borrow, the answer in healthcare is often all of the above.

Healthcare leaders called out that startup acquisitions can be attractive when they provide access to new thinking, talent and ways of working. But the acquiring company must take the right integration approach if it is to overcome cultural barriers and fully realize the value of its investment. One global healthcare leader carefully evaluates talent as part of its acquisition strategy and said that putting “acqui-hires” high-profile leadership positions can signal the organization’s commitment to its digital transformation. Such bold moves are a good way to move the needle on “digital thinking” at the largest organizations.

2) Flexible Solutions and Hybrid Models Suit Varying Needs

Tactical flexibility is necessary to navigate inevitable resistance points. For example, the overnight shift to remote working showed just how quickly organizations could “get digital.” Now it’s a matter of optimizing what works and scaling it. For example, mental health is a natural fit for virtual care, but not for all patients (e.g., those with roommates). Such realities necessitate business models that are both traditional and virtual, rather than either-or.

One healthcare sales leader confirmed that field representatives want to get back out on the road, but also recognized how digital made their lives easier and helped enhance personal relationships. What “location, location, location” was once to retail, “hybrid, hybrid, hybrid” will be to all parts of healthcare.

3) Digital Must Deliver Value

Participants pointed out common links among effective transformation strategies – how they deliver real value to users and solve real-world problems. One leader mentioned digital interactions that provide “a little something extra,” such as access to a community or tools to address common issues (e.g., guides to talking to an employer about a disease).

“Such realities necessitate business models that are both traditional and virtual, rather than either-or.”

Another stated that too much digital content is still brochureware when it should be engaging users with questions about specific needs. While digital transformation is strategically critical, success can – and should – be measured tactically and practically.  It’s not about taking non-digital things and making them digital.  It’s about making things better through the use of digital.

4) Transformation Takes More Than Tech

Healthcare organizations adopted technology at an unprecedented pace in 2020, generally a good thing for a historically slow-moving industry. There’s a risk, however, that some companies may under-invest in other vital people-related capabilities (e.g., user experience design, Agile methodologies, innovation approaches). In some cases, it may be necessary to dust off that tired ­– but still true – warning: “tech is not a silver bullet.”

Leaders want to avoid simply adding more devices. They are looking for tech that simplifies and streamlines. For instance, smart beds that automatically take patients’ vital signs could free nurses to focus on more meaningful tasks. In order to change a behavior, there has to be a clear benefit.

Indeed, behavioral change may be the biggest barrier to achieving scale, according to our group. Consider how it took a global pandemic to overcome caregiver resistance to virtual visits. The technology has been ready for years and patients wanted virtual care, but the power of habit – doing things the way they’d always been done – was too strong. Some leaders are wary that we’ll lapse back into these old patterns post-pandemic, though others are optimistic that medical schools now offer virtual care training for the next generation of physicians.

5) Optimizing The Value of Digital Means Thinking Digital

To build on the momentum of the last year, leaders are looking to optimize what works. For example, enhancing online sessions for new pharma research or treatment options and mandating that some appointments be virtual (e.g., check-ins for prescription renewal or with chronic disease patients). They also called out the necessity of balancing digital marketing and sales efforts with traditional tactics.

Leaders in our roundtable also spoke to the need for specific digital talent (e.g., individuals who can translate business needs into technology requirements). Everyone claims to be agile, but too many projects run into “sprint-stop, sprint-stop” patterns because one leader or stakeholder isn’t on board. Our roundtable participants showed empathy – as well as a few eye rolls and chuckles – about this common experience. Still, everyone agrees the journey to agile must continue and a ‘digital mindset’ from leaders is necessary to accelerate it.

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FINAL THOUGHTS

In terms of digital transformation, healthcare adapted quickly to the COVID-19 crisis. Leaders are pushing forward, despite significant barriers, fine-tuning and scaling their successful initiatives and exploring new capabilities. The next year may not bring as much change as the last year, but it will be critical to sustaining the positive change that’s occurred.

For more, download our Transforming Healthcare: The State of Digital Marketing and Selling in Life Sciences report.

If you’re interested in participating in future healthcare roundtables, reach out to Paul.

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WEBCAST

Webinar Replay: The Insurance Customer of the Future

We take an in-depth look at sweeping demographic and psychographic changes shaping the insurance landscape.

59 min

Prophet’s financial services team leaders moderate a discussion with executives from MetLife, Thrivent and Shift Technology on the way customer behaviors are shifting and these shifts are impacting their transformation priorities.

Watch to learn:

  • The key findings about insurance customer behavior shifts – and predictions for their shift over the next decade
  • The ways financial services organizations – from a global insurance provider to an AI-native InsureTech company – are helping build better experiences for their customers
  • The top priorities of senior leaders advancing transformation agendas of their own

Panelists:

  • Michelle Froah, SVP Global Marketing Strategy & Sciences, MetLife
  • Rohit Mull, Chief Marketing Officer, Thrivent
  • Benjamin Braunschvig, Global Head of Partnerships, Shift Technology

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Will Your Organization Be Left Behind as Consumer Healthcare Transforms?

Offer more value, and be willing to meet your customers in the messy middle.

It’s no surprise that the pandemic has changed the way consumers interact with healthcare. We see it in the proliferation of virtual care across the care continuum, from acute to chronic, episodic and now primary and preventive care. We see it in the embrace of new digital devices and programs designed to monitor chronic conditions at home. And we see it in the uptake of digital pharmacy services that promise ever-faster delivery times and simple, easier, prescription transfers. These shifting consumer need states are forcing companies to action.

Those that will win with consumers in the post-pandemic age are the ones that will accelerate innovation as they reimagine their business models – integrating and re-configuring assets around emergent consumer use cases.

Here are three healthcare business design imperatives for making markets and capturing post-pandemic value through big, bold and transformative moves:

1) Trade the value chain for value exchange

The old news? Payers, providers, pharmaceuticals and MedTech companies once controlled discrete pieces of the value chain. Today, they are operating as collaborators and competitors alongside one another – with non-healthcare entrants (financial services and technology companies) also looking for a piece of the pie.

The new news? “Who does what” doesn’t matter to consumers, instead they value the promise of an integrated approach to health. Whether you build, buy or partner, leaning into the discomfort of superseding the value chain can lead to transformative, new offers. Teladoc Health is a great example of a company that bet big on the idea that virtual primary care is here to stay. It built the Primary360 platform as an entryway to take advantage of its unique portfolio of assets from acute and episodic care (Teladoc Health) to chronic care (Livongo), behavioral health (BetterHelp), and more.

Alternatively, a company that took the partnership route is Cigna. They joined forces with Oscar Health to create an integrated, easily navigable approach to health plans for small businesses. By bringing together Cigna’s provider network and Oscar’s technology platform, they’ve created a relevant solution for the small business population that meets their needs.

2) Meet consumers in the messy middle

If transcending historical value chains is one way to play, another is to exploit the current outages in the value chain and become the middleware that bridges a care gap. Emerging care gaps could include areas like post-acute care, kidney care, pre-and post-Cancer treatment, and health conditions at the intersection of health and wellness (e.g. sleep, behavioral health).

Take recently acquired startup PatientPing, which focuses on the post-acute care space. Through its technology platform, the company can coordinate care by “pinging” healthcare providers when their patients are treated at other facilities. For instance, a provider could be notified in real-time when a patient is transferred from a nursing home to another outpatient setting. Now, with its acquisition by Appriss Health, close to 1 million healthcare professionals across all 50 states can be connected across care settings.

“Those that will win with consumers in the post-pandemic age are the ones that will accelerate innovation as they reimagine their business models.”

In another direction, Alula Health is a startup tackling the “messy middle” of the physical, emotional and financial changes involved with a cancer diagnosis and treatment process. Alula’s platform focuses on patients and their caregivers. They provide organizational tools such as spreadsheets and calendars to ease treatment coordination and a curated list of cancer-specific shopping items (e.g. post-surgery bras and robes with extra room for prostheses or drain management, “Travel to Treatment” bundles with pill organizers, sickness bags, sanitizing wipes, and face masks).

A final example is Talkspace, a platform aimed to make behavioral therapy more accessible. In a world where the dominant method of therapy was administered through expensive 1:1 sessions, Talkspace broke the prevailing mode of thinking and dispensed therapy through bite-sized, text-based interactions – a new modality for meeting the needs of those struggling with mental health challenges discreetly and without confining therapy to a set date/time. In doing so, they normalized therapy for a whole new, addressable market and have since expanded to partner with employers to offer its service as part of workplace benefits.

3) If it doesn’t have their name written on it, it’s not for them

The third hack for making markets through transformation is to address the unmet needs of unique consumer populations. Traditional provider-driven healthcare focuses on triage to identify a treatment path for every patient. But flipping this approach on its head allows for a deeper level of focus, prioritizing time, resources and expenses to solve the needs of one population group more effectively than a general solution.

Segment-specific opportunities are everywhere and can include:

  1. Those with a stigmatized condition
  2. An underserved population with unique needs
  3. An overly generalized population.

A good example of the first opportunity is Ro, self-styled as “the patient company”. Ro started by providing telemedicine and prescriptions for erectile dysfunction via its Roman brand, but gradually expanded to include other medical challenges like smoking cessation (via zero) and weight management (via Plenity). With the technology infrastructure, brand architecture and consumer base established, the company can pursue additional disease states with room for growth.

An example of the second segment-specific opportunity is Included Health, newly acquired by telemedicine provider Grand Rounds / Doctor on Demand. Included Health focuses on the needs of the LGBTQ+ community, who have all too often faced challenges finding culturally competent and affirming providers. The company works with employers to provide benefits to individuals that help them connect to physical care providers, mental care providers, community support and gender-affirming care.

The third-dimension type of play is to identify an overly generalized population – and the field of women’s health is a great example. While some companies have developed “female” healthcare brands, women have different needs by life stage. The spectrum of startups in today’s women’s health space demonstrates different focus areas such as reproductive/sexual health, pregnancy and postpartum, as well as menopause. Within each focus area, individual companies target specific challenges. For example within the category of reproductive/ sexual health, some companies focus on areas such as fertility (Modern Fertility, recently acquired by Ro), cycle tracking (Glow), birth control (Nurx) and more.

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FINAL THOUGHTS

The pandemic has created new and exciting consumer use cases. Uncommon growth will only be captured through transformative moves that reconfigure assets and ecosystems. To capture this growth, companies can deploy one or more of the three design imperatives.  Incrementalism is a direct path to low growth and missed opportunities,  and capturing uncommon growth will require high-conviction leaders, cultural resilience and organizational agility. To help companies forge a path to uncommon growth, Prophet approaches each organization as though it were an individual – with a unique DNA, Body, Mind, and Soul.

Contact us to learn more about our proprietary Human-Centered Transformation Model and how we can deliver uncommon growth for your business.

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REPORT

Transforming Healthcare: The State of Digital Marketing and Selling in Life Sciences

Leaders in healthcare need to embrace a marketing and sales strategy that is digital and collaborative.

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The pandemic accelerated the integration between marketing and sales – and it’s never going back to the way it was. Leaders in healthcare and life sciences will need to embrace a marketing and sales strategy that is both digital and collaborative to reach business goals. The reality is that if organizations fail to transform their go-to-market approach they will be at risk of losing customers.

Transforming Healthcare: The State of Digital Marketing & Selling in Life Sciences identifies and quantifies the salient trends and key practices used by top companies today. Based on data from Altimeter’s research for The 2020 State of Digital Marketing and The 2020 State of Digital Selling, this industry-specific report provides insights for healthcare and life sciences leaders looking to strengthen their marketing and sales functions and jumpstart a new era of uncommon growth.

Read this report to gain deeper insights on:

  • The top priorities of marketing and sales teams in healthcare and life sciences today
  • The biggest obstacles organizations are facing in terms of digital collaboration and performance
  • Marketing and sales leaders’ candid observations of what their teams are doing well – and how they need to do better
  • Four key recommendations for marketing and sales teams seeking significant performance gains

Download the full report below.

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Three Signs You Need a Customer-Centric Transformation

These common blindspots get in the way of breakthrough insights.

The CEO of a large financial-services organization recognized that their customers were defecting to fintech disruptors, ranging from SoFi to Acorns to Robinhood. The customer base was shrinking and revenue growth was stagnant. But while everyone constantly talked about customer-centricity, the executive team didn’t realize how unfocused they had become. This became clear when they couldn’t explain why some customers were leaving and which customers should be their future source of growth.

“How can we find our way back to growth when we don’t even know who our customer is,” the CEO asked.

The company realized it needed to undergo a transformation.

Most Companies Aren’t as Consumer-Centric as They Think

The pressure for reinvention feels more urgent than ever as organizations look to find their way past the turbulence of the pandemic. Customer behavior has shifted radically and with it, so have customer expectations. Markets are resizing. Supply chains are disrupted. Digital commerce is growing rapidly. Customer experiences are the new product.

Despite these changes, companies, theoretically, are 100% committed to customer-centricity. Unfortunately, all that noise has caused many to relax their true commitment to customers — even if they can’t quite see it. (Of course, some have never been customer-centric, despite years of lip service.)

In our transformation work, we’ve come to understand the root of this lack of focus. Companies missing customer-centricity often struggle with at least some of these internal barriers:

Failing To Connect the Dots

Customer-centricity requires a deep and connected view of the customer, supporting real-time, integrated customer insights. This constantly refreshed stream of data is a tool that all functions should use, and should be buttressed by meaningful, qualitative research including deep listening and active interrogation. The data helps spot the critical shifts in customer behaviors. Tools like ethnography are critical to getting at the why behind the trends in the data. Both ingredients are critical to customer-centric growth.

“Customer-centricity requires a deep and connected view of the customer, supporting real-time, integrated customer insights.”

Too often, companies invest in one-off research studies without thinking through how the insights can be operationalized, distributed, and refreshed over time. Or, they over-rely on data collection as the sole source of customer truth without delving into the why behind the behaviors they are seeing. Without the combination of data and insights, companies can easily lose their way.

Finally, different business units typically “own” these insights, which means they aren’t shared or connected across the organization. The result is that sales, marketing, product and service teams each see a different side of the customer, and no one is connecting the dots or able to see the bigger picture.

True customer-centricity flows from an ongoing and distributed source of new insights — this includes a combination of survey and perceptual data along with database and behavioral insights. Staying on top of what consumers want today and in the future will be crucial to identify the right products, services and experiences that lend themselves towards new opportunities for growth.

Unwillingness To Put Yourself Out of Business

Companies that pay lip service to customer-centricity build products and experiences to fit existing capabilities or business models and then optimize margins based on testing. They think about what they want and what’s good for their margins. They look at existing resources and say, “What can we build with what we have?”

Customer-centric organizations approach innovation and experience design differently. They are unencumbered by how things are done now. Instead, think about how to best meet customer needs today and in the future.

This is inherently risky. Nike’s 2017 decision to sell directly with consumers meant ditching large wholesale customers. To some, that seemed reckless.  Within a year of adopting a direct-to-consumer model, their revenue grew by nearly 6%, and Nike continues to be one of the world’s most fast-moving, beloved brands.

Fear of Going All-in

Companies that aren’t all-in on customer-centricity might think that engagement is a metric only the marketing team needs to focus on, or that managing Net Promoter Scores is a role for the servicing department. They may be willing to overhaul some areas or happy to tweak the existing business model. But complete reinvention? That’s often off the table.

However, there is no such thing as a partial transformation. Genuinely customer-centric organizations know that to accelerate growth, it takes alignment through the entire company. Whether in sales or HR, supply chain or R&D, these organizations set shared transformation goals around the relationships they seek to create with their customers, and they hold everyone to account. Hiring, compensation and operating models are linked to these customer relationship goals in ways that reinforce the right behaviors and business decisions.

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FINAL THOUGHTS

Customer-centric transformation strategies are powerful for companies to gain relevance and win a place in people’s hearts. When organizations put this objective arbiter – the customer – at the center of all decisions, it provides the clarity needed to unlock growth. Of course, these transformation agendas take digital and enterprise objectives into account. But by committing to a customer-centric path–and the promise to follow those customers anywhere, companies become increasingly more relevant. They become indispensable to the lives of their customers and they find uncommon growth.

That’s what we’ve achieved for our financial services client: A complete customer-centric transformation – a coordinated multi-year effort to impact every aspect of the business. Working with the CEO, chief growth officer and leadership team, Prophet helped design and operationalize this transformation agenda, prioritizing key markets and target customers, and reimagining products, services, and experiences to make customers’ lives easier. Within a year, new business revenue rose 8%, and new leads increased 20 times over.

Contact us to learn more about customer-centric transformation and what steps your organization needs to take to achieve uncommon growth.

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