Digital Disruption from EX²

In today's economy, retailers are being forced to trim margins to battle a marketplace of global competition, slow growth, increasingly demanding customers and rising costs. Many retailers have reduced their margins to a single-digit percentage, and most are struggling to find ways to reduce costs and operate more efficiently.

Why Engage a Technology Partner

A true technology partner provides many benefits that a technology vendor cannot provide. A vendor might sell you a piece of hardware or software, but a technology partner will make sure that it is the best solution for your specific situation. A vendor can sell you an off-the-shelf solution, but a technology partner can offer a customized solution. A vendor can offer you what is currently available, but a technology partner stays current on new products and new methodologies that could potentially affect your long-term satisfaction with your decision.

To some, the relationship between technology and humans is a bit like the "chicken or the egg" question. There are those who feel that technology is in the driver's seat, and when an innovative technology appears, clever marketers make people believe that they must have it. As a marketing professional, however, you know that it is virtually impossible to sell a product that has no appeal. Even seemingly useless "gadgets" (think singing fish, electronic pets or the iPod toilet dock) have always had some appeal to certain people. 

Other products, such as the emailer telephone, digital audio tapes and laserdiscs, faded into obscurity quickly. It was not that these items were useless or unappealing. It was more that superior technology arrived that offered more to the customer. The people chose to embrace the new technology — not because marketers manipulated them, but because the new technology gave the customers more of what they wanted.

Giving the customers what they want, when they want it and how they want it is what successful businesses do. Today, customers want to interact with your company across a variety of channels, most of which are digital. They want to use their favorite mobile devices to access your site, find you on Facebook and manage their accounts online. 

Consumer attitudes have changed since the early days of the web. When the Internet was in its infancy, baby boomers accounted for a significant portion of sales across all industries, however, they were not comfortable with the new technology. They were hesitant to place online orders, slow to master effective use of search engines and loathed to spend more time conducting a transaction online that took more time than a traditional interaction.

That was then. Today, you are marketing to a generation that has grown up with technology. Generation Y, also called millennials, have been surrounded by cell phones, home computers and high-speed Internet providers for all or most of their lives. You are also marketing to their parents, who came of age during the transition to the digital age and embraced innovative technology. As for the baby boomers, they too have grown more comfortable with technology. They have become accustomed to paying their bills online, using their smartphones to do more than make phone calls and relying on the Internet to locate the products they want.

What all this means is that you need to embrace innovative technologies if you want to reach your customers. You have probably already realized the importance of mobile technology for your marketing efforts. (After all, the smartphone was one of the most disruptive technologies of the 21st century.) However, you cannot afford to ignore other innovations that are quickly gaining popularity among consumers as well as with your competition.

In the modern world, technology is never stagnant. Each new innovation opens the possibilities for additional innovations. In IT, more powerful hardware allows for more powerful software. Smaller components allow the development of new products. New devices require applications developed specifically for them. During the past few years, the IT/tech world has changed substantially. Although predicting what the future holds is always a risky proposition, as 2014 draws to a close, it is only natural to try to predict what 2015 holds in store.

Experience optimization is not just a marketing project or an IT project, and approaching it as such isvirtually a guarantee that efforts will be in vain. Optimization must be approached as a business-wide effort. Because all companies have goals, structures, philosophies, purposes and environments that are combined into a unique picture, no single optimization plan will work for all enterprises. However, regardless of where a company is in terms of volume, experience or size, there are seven things that effective experience optimization teams commonly do to ensure success.

Marketing professionals know all too well that competition has become increasingly stiff over the past decade or two. This is especially true online -- the Internet has served to help "level the playing field," and even small enterprises can use technology to empower their marketing. In an attempt to not be left behind, companies feel pressured to make sure that their marketing efforts immediately include every new technology that appears. Although this is typically the wisest strategy, sometimes technology outpaces purpose.

Whether your company is deploying a new mainframe system, enterprise content management system or mobile app, problems can arise. It is common to encounter employees who resist the change, either out of fear that they will be unable to master the new technology or because they fail to see how they can benefit from the change. However, a lack of prior planning is responsible for many deployments that experience delays or fail completely. Here are five steps you can take to ensure a smooth deployment and encourage company-wide adoption.

As most retailers will freely admit, one of the more difficult aspects of pleasing customers is keeping up with their constantly changing desires. Consumers can be fickle; a brand or product that sold faster than retailers could stock their shelves last week may gather dust this week. Customers who were once reluctant to make purchases online have become increasingly more comfortable with the process. Shoppers who could not imagine using a mobile phone to place an order a decade ago are now conducting research, comparing pricing and purchasing items with their mobile devices.