Technology Trends

• • Relationships at Scale: Moving beyond transactions to digital relationships.

         It’s time for businesses to turn their attention back to their relationships with consumers. Specifically, they need to rethink their digital strategies to move  beyond e-commerce and marketing— and strive for the kinds of personal relationships that were typical years ago, between shoppers and the corner store.

  The key factor is that technology is finally at a point where buyers can be treated like individuals again. Consumers are more than faceless digital       transactions, more than a cookie file or a transaction history or a   demographic profile; they’re real people with real differences. Yet the             tendency of many companies has been to use mobile technology, social     networks, and context-based services largely to create yet more detailed   views of consumers, consumer attributes, and transactions rather than using   the new digital connections to improve the ways in which they interact with  those consumers as individuals.

  Taken in aggregate, digital represents a key new approach to consumer       engagement and loyalty: it gives businesses rich channels through which to   communicate with consumers in much more personal ways, enabling them to manage relationships with consumers at scale. Digital brings the intimacy of the corner store relationship to all your consumers, and then gives them more—more convenient access, more effective communication, more  tailored services that matter.

  Farsighted organizations see this as a huge opportunity to drive revenue   growth. Specifically, they are customizing the experience for every interaction they have with consumers regardless of channel. This mass personalization  includes not only the interactions between company and consumer but the  interactions that consumers have with one another. The potential payoff is  two-pronged: customer relationships that your competitors don’t have and a strongly differentiated brand.

  Related articles

  • The Future of Marketing Relies on Technology (business2community.com)
  • How can companies better tailor their mobile banking options? | CreditRepair.com (creditrepair.com)
  • Demographics are dead: the new, technical face of marketing – O … (radar.oreilly.com)

Every Business Is a Digital Business

Technology is now intertwined with nearly every aspect of business. Information technology is not only pervasive; it is fast becoming a primary driver of market differentiation, business growth, and profitability. Software is absolutely integral to how we currently run our businesses as well as how we re-imagine our businesses as the world continues to change—how we redesign and produce things, how we create and manage new commercial transactions, how we begin to collaborate at unprecedented levels internally and with customers and suppliers. In the new world, our digital efforts will be key to how we innovate and expand our business.