Analytics as the bedrock of transformative customer experiences

Instrumental to enacting positive change and empowering efficiency, data is the biggest value driver for businesses. Today, the key to gaining insights from massive new datasets - born from linking assets and processes across the entire value chain - lies with an enterprise-wide culture supported by powerful data analytics tools. The expansion of data-driven and intelligent tools, such as AI systems, also underscores the fact that the full potential of these new technologies cannot be reaped without an effective culture around data within the business.

While the data at the fingertips of organisations has become significantly more voluminous in recent years, business leaders across India are striving to make the most of this and give impetus to transformative customer experiences. In fact, the National Association of Software and Services Companies (NASSCOM) estimates that big data analytics will grow USD2 billion in the next two years, jumping to USD16 billion by mid-decade. While this will undoubtedly drive demand for highly skilled data professionals, businesses must also consider how advanced analytics-based process-optimisation models can support domain experts to make sense of all that data.

Leveraging transformation opportunities

Anticipating what the future holds is critical for businesses, and without data leadership this is virtually impossible. Simply put, as organisations grapple with data challenges, empowering data experts with advanced analytics is crucial for meaningful, actionable insights. In some ways, the current economic headwinds are a prime opportunity for data professionals to demonstrate business value, as the higher stakes can underscore the importance of putting data to use.

For the majority of businesses, the first step in the journey of leveraging data's value is by identifying the three key touchpoints in the typical customer journey: sales, support and success. These components are foundational to unifying customer data for analytics that allows the business to keep customers happy, upsell product features and reduce the risk of churn.

Being agile makes offerings irresistible

Since time immemorial, businesses have focused their attention on winning new customers and retaining existing ones. At the heart of it, success in these two key focus areas hinges on clearly conveying the value of products or services to target audiences. Naturally, differentiation and anticipating customer needs are top of mind.

When it comes to delivering impactful customer experiences, businesses need the agility to be able to engage customers and deter pain points before they escalate. Here is where arming the organisation's data teams with the tools to guide customers to more valuable experiences is critical. For example, insightful analytics can be harnessed for more than just addressing gaps in the market to bring in new customers, it can also be leveraged to direct existing ones to offerings that meet their specific needs while helping them reduce costs. 

At the end of the day, this will build trust and leave customers wanting more, driving them to adopt new product features, repurchase at contract renewal, and recommend the product or service to other professionals.

Enhancing decision-making via automation

It is no exaggeration to say that customer success is impossible if businesses are hampered by inaccurate, messy and low-quality data. On the flip side, overcoming this empowers innovation, and business leaders can accelerate transformation by turning to automated data management that creates a clean and steady data flow.

The benefits run the gamut of enterprise objectives – from helping with future projections to delivering on C-suite ambitions. Automation eliminates silos that slow down go-to-market strategies, ensuring that good-quality and real-time data flows through the organisation, creating a solid foundation for decision-making. Establishing this single source of truth facilitates turning raw data into usable insights. Furthermore, leveraging automation in data  processes also frees up data professionals to reach their full potential, which allows the business to gain more from assets and resources, for less.

Where does this leave legacy infrastructure

The focus on digital transformation in recent years has put a spotlight on the necessity of legacy systems. At the heart of these conversations are also considerations around sunk costs vis-a-vis tech investments. More often than not, organisations need not discard legacy technology completely. Provided data is secured and not hampered by friction, the benefits of the cloud and so on can be actualised with hybrid environments tailored to the enterprise’s core needs and objectives. 

While complex, these new efficiencies can be realised with data movement platforms that offer self-hosted, fully managed deployment options that empower automation and data integration. Leaving a strong impression on customers hinges on efficiency and the agility to anticipate disruption, and the onus is on businesses to review data processes. This is instrumental to ensuring effective use of data to inform the development of products and services that boost customer relationships instead of impair them.

The article has been written by Viswanath C, Sr. Director of Engineering, Fivetran India