Customers key to digital transformation
dubai — The road towards digital transformation begins with, and revolves around the customer, experts said on the second day of the Digitrans 2018-The Digital Transformation Forum.
Speaking in a keynote session about improving efficiency and business agility, Safdar Zaman, head of IT Strategy & Governance at Nakheel, said that customer journeys and a unified experience are the key to digital transformation.
“The customer should be at the center of any digital transformation project,” he said at the two-day forum, which was jointly organised by and MITSloan.
“Look and map out the present customer journey and then see which points can be improved through automation. Look at improving the convenience that you are offering. If there are papers that can be sent by e-mail, then there is no need to ask your customers to come to the office. Create a whole digital ecosystem that revolves around the needs of your customers. Look at their behaviours, their preferences, and their purchasing history and then create preemptive systems that automatically reach out to them with what they like or might be interested in.”
Zaman also noted that an increasingly competitive market means that companies have to be increasingly agile in everything that they are doing.
“Use cloud systems to enhance your business agility. Today, you don’t have the luxury of waiting to launch products. If you are one of those companies that says that you will do a lot of studies about what customers think about a project and the company before you decide to plan a new project, then you have already lost. You can’t afford to wait and need to do this immediately.”
Speaking about the importance of data, Anshul Srivastav, chief information officer of Information Technology at Union Insurance Company, noted that companies are increasingly leveraging the power of data to make our lives easier.
“A few years back, nobody was looking at the dimensions of data. Today, you have a number of companies that rely on nothing but data. Organisations have to allow data to give you a 360 degree view. Allow data to build intelligence and offer value to you. Even the smallest bit of data has an immense amount of power. However, one thing that you have to be careful about when capturing data is that it should not go stale.”
Ankit Satsangi, CISO and head of Cyber Security and Monitoring at Azizi Developments, noted that while the Internet of Things (IoT) is the next big jump that everyone is excited about, and which would become a key feature of smart cities, organisations need to do more to protect data.
“Security is a big issue, especially since many users are freely sharing data without thinking about what could happen,” he said. “Also, you can’t protect what you can’t see, and many users don’t have the in-depth knowledge about the technology that is needed to protect themselves. Hackers today have many ways to gain access to information. They can gain access through a back door to your camera, as well as your photos, your contacts, and your e-mails.”