Accelerating Digital Transformation to Drive Uncommon Growth

With the backdrop of the COVID-19 crisis, there is more pressure for digital transformation to perform than ever. Altimeter, a Prophet company surveyed more than 600 key executives about how they are pursuing digital transformation and the impact of the pandemic (see our global report “The 2020 State of Digital Transformation”), including 100 in Southeast Asia (SEA) across Singapore, Indonesia and Vietnam. The study reveals interesting differences between digital transformation effort and sentiment in SEA and the rest of the world.

While the rest of the world is becoming more risk-averse, SEA expresses optimism about the future outlook – in fact, a significantly higher number of companies have accelerated their digital transformation initiatives and are focused on growth.

There are five key takeaways regarding digital transformation in Southeast Asia:

• Top drivers of digital transformation in SEA is more growth-oriented, focusing on improving efficiency to go after new markets and customers while adopting more agile and flexible operation.
• SEA experiences less financial impact due to COVID-19 than the rest of the world, and they have accelerated investments in digital transformation, especially in marketing operations.
• Budget cuts are less of a digital transformation challenge to SEA than rigid infrastructure, data quality, ROI articulation as well as digital literacy and expertise within the organization.
• The focus of digital transformation investments in SEA leans towards connectivity, social and consumer platforms followed by AI & Analytics.
• There is stronger leadership, culture and optimism of digital transformation in SEA thanks to the consistent and visible efforts driven by top executive in C-Suites, especially CEO & Board of Directors, and CDO

What are the opportunities and challenges for companies to accelerate digital transformation in Southeast Asia? Download the full report to learn more.

Connect with us to learn how Prophet can help you drive uncommon growth in Southeast Asia.

Benchmarking Digital Maturity in the COVID-19 Era

The COVID-19 crisis caused a major upheaval in the first half of 2020. Within weeks, organizations made drastic changes that were expected to take years, like shifting employees to remote work and digitizing customer offerings. The digitization of organizations that was previously anticipated to take years happened in a matter of days.

There is now more pressure than ever for digital to perform in ways that can power meaningful business transformations.

This year’s annual State of Digital Transformation report:

• Examines how organizations pursue digital transformation, analyzing differences based on digital maturity stage, industry, geography, and organization size.
• Examines the impact of COVID-19 on digital transformation efforts.
• Offers a comprehensive benchmark of digital maturity across five areas that define customer-focused digital transformation: Leadership and culture, customer experience, marketing and sales, technology and innovation, and data and artificial intelligence.

The report has four major takeaways:

• Operations support, agility, and revenue are top priorities given COVID-19. The lead use cases are working from home (82%); digital marketing (78% investing to improve); digital selling (76% trying to close compatability gaps); virtual product/ service delivery (52%); and growth initiatives (37%).
• The more digitally mature the company, the more they are focused on responding to and taking advantage of the COVID-19 crisis. The less digitally mature the company, the more they are working on implementing digital basics.
• Digitally mature companies are maintaining their strategic focus despite the pandemic; they focus on digitally-driven innovation, incorporating a new wave of technologies with an intensity that is outpacing the market.
• Leadership from CEOs and CIO/CTOs — supplemented by CDOs, Innovation Officers, and Boards — helps ensure firms chart and follow their digital transformation ambitions.

Download the full report below to learn more.

The COVID-19 pandemic will have a long-lasting impact on businesses and their customers. Some industries have been disrupted, while others thrive despite the crisis. Leading through disruptive times requires businesses to consider new consumer perspectives, rethink their value propositions and further accelerate their digital transformations.

At Prophet, we have identified two imperatives that will help businesses achieve uncommon growth in the post-COVID-19 world: adapting to the new normal consumers and accelerating digital transformation. In this report, we delve into the underlying consumer trends, social and technological enablers, as well as emerging patterns of digital transformation that all work to point out new opportunities.

In this report, you will learn:

• Key consumer trends that will impact future business growth in the new normal
• Major enablers that will accelerate digital transformation post COVID-19
• Emerging patterns across industries that reveal the state of digital transformation in Asia
• What business leaders can do next to seize the transformation opportunity

Download the full report below.

Foreword

The evolving COVID-19 pandemic has thrust us all into a new, urgent reality, one that—perhaps permanently—is challenging assumptions about how we live and work. From a business perspective, the pandemic is rapidly exposing the vulnerabilities in our strategies, systems and processes, and accelerating our reliance on digital systems that scale and connect where people cannot.

In this context, digital assistants such as chatbots and voice agents have a valuable role to play. They can support business resilience and reduced operational expenses, freeing up service and support representatives to focus on higher urgency, more sophisticated customer interactions; deliver needed information and services; become a source of “voice-of-the-customer” insight; or provide a moment of humanity and helpfulness when customers need it most.

The report that follows lays out strategic and brand guidelines for designing and activating digital assistants. We hope you find it valuable as you navigate this challenging time.

Susan Etlinger & Darcy Muñoz
April 8, 2020

Executive Summary

Digital assistants — whether embodied in a voice agent, a chatbot, or a combination — change the way we think about brand, from a generally static and visual experience to one that is dynamic and conversational. They unlock new strategic possibilities for customer and ecosystem engagement, and, as a result, raise questions about how brands should sound and behave in dynamic, often unpredictable situations. Finally, they compel us to address questions of brand architecture, identity, behaviors, language choices, movement, and tone in an unprecedented way.

This report, based both on independent research and direct consulting experience with global brands, addresses the opportunities of digital assistants and the conversational technologies that make them possible. We focus on conversational brand strategy, the key elements of persona development, and how to build engaging and trustworthy conversational experiences. Finally, we include a checklist to help business leaders plan for the risks and opportunities of incorporating conversational technologies into a well-considered brand strategy.

This report includes the following:

• How to build a conversational brand that supports business strategy
• Key elements of a conversational brand identity
• Fundamentals of a trustworthy conversational experience
• A checklist & assessment to guide planning efforts and gauge progress

Is your organization well-positioned to deliver strategic, on-brand and trustworthy customer experiences using digital assistants?

Take our assessment to find out.

Download the full report below.