The Importance Of Centralization in Digital Transformation

This article, by Andrea Müller Beilschmidt, Director of Field Marketing at censhare, an IOI technology partner, originally appeared on the censhare Blog and we think our readers will find it interesting.

For many consumers, the customer experience is now just as important to them as the product itself. *  The customer experience then, can be key to a brand’s success. It can be the decider, making the difference between whether a brand is remembered or forgotten, seen as a one-time provider or as a brand to return to again and again, informing the customer's lifestyle, supporting their community, or furthering their values.

Different Channel – Same Content
So, it’s time to put the focus on reaching customers through the channel of their choice and at a time most relevant to them. While many companies manage to speak to their customers across a range of channels, relatively few actually succeed in delivering a joined up, omni-channel experience to their customers.

Unfortunately, it is still rare that companies are able to consistently meet their customers’ expectations once they begin to move from channel to channel. For example, a customer can interact with a brand via a mobile app whilst on the go, but once he/she gets home and opens their laptop, they want a continuation, not an iteration, of the previous interaction with the brand. They expect to see the same product description, images, and information as they did before, regardless of the platform they have now chosen to move to. It is only when companies can deliver this kind of smooth, uninterrupted and tailored experience to their customers - as they move from app to website, from website to physical store, from physical store to third party app - that an organization can truly deliver the ultimate comfort which the customer appreciates.

In addition to this, the customer experience must be personalized and timely, ensuring that the right communication is received at the right time. For example, coupons sent via mobile push notifications are no use to a customer if they receive them after leaving the supermarket, based on the selection of items which they have just purchased.

The Role of Centralization
The digital transformation is key to opening the way for the provision of such a customer experience. During this transformation, emphasis should be placed on the centralization of information in order to make all data, assets, and content available in one place to all relevant users.

This puts organizations in a pretty good place to succeed in their customer experience. Those who decide to prioritize such a centralization of assets in their digital transformation, or indeed decide that the digital transformation is necessary in order to facilitate the centralization of their assets allow new ways of working become possible, such as transparency, automation, and collaboration. This in turn facilitates a higher quality of content creation, management and delivery. It also provides the context needed for each asset in order to enhance its worth to the end customer, allowing it to be delivered in the right format, at the right time. 

Thanks to these new ways of working, internally, teams might find themselves with less admin work to do and with more time on their hands, time that they can use to optimize their content, data and assets, to better their quality, and ultimately, relevance to the end recipient.

Bringing Quality CX to the Customer
With this in mind, the centralization of data, assets, and content is another way of becoming customer centric. Through this central approach, it is possible to better the customer's experience, from end to end, to keep track of their current position in iterative customer journey, to target them at the most beneficial moment to them, and to move them through to the next stage, or level in their journey with you. 

The ultimate customer experience cannot be put into an exact formula which can be consistently replicated across similar industries, companies, or even products, but one thing is for certain. Those organizations who are able to transform in order to favor the centralization of their assets will soon find themselves sitting at the front of the race towards the perfect customer experience...and their customers will recognize it.

*Source: Experience is Everywhere, PwC, 2018