Customer Experience: A Catalyst LEADERSHIP for Digital … · Sheryl Kingstone, Research Director, Business Applications ... SHERYL KINGSTONE RESEARCH DIRECTOR, BUSINESS ... businesses

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Customer Experience: A Catalyst for Digital Transformation

Sheryl Kingstone, Research Director, Business Applications

We are witnessing a dramatic shift in the balance of power between many organizations

and their customers across virtually all industries. Price and products are no longer

enough; customers value experiences. Organizations can digitally transform their

businesses to best attract, win, retain and support customers by leveraging the latest

applications, analytics and infrastructure to deliver a differentiated experience that

is not a luxury, but a necessity for survival.

OCT 2016

THOUGHT LEADERSHIP

A B O U T 4 5 1 R E S E A R C H451 Research is a preeminent information technology research and advisory company. With a core focus on technology innovation and market disruption, we provide essential insight for leaders of the digital economy. More than 100 analysts and consultants deliver that insight via syndicated research, advisory services and live events to more than 1,000 client organizations in North America, Europe and around the world. Founded in 2000 and headquartered in New York, 451 Research is a division of The 451 Group.

© 2016 451 Research, LLC and/or its Affiliates. All Rights Reserved. Reproduction and distribution of this publication, in whole or in part, in any form without prior written permission is forbidden. The terms of use regarding distribution, both internally and externally, shall be governed by the terms laid out in your Service Agreement with 451 Research and/or its Affiliates. The information contained herein has been obtained from sources believed to be reliable. 451 Research disclaims all warranties as to the accuracy, completeness or adequacy of such information. Although 451 Research may discuss legal issues related to the information technology business, 451 Research does not provide legal advice or services and their research should not be construed or used as such. 451 Research shall have no liability for errors, omissions or inadequacies in the information contained herein or for interpretations thereof. The reader assumes sole responsibility for the selection of these materials to achieve its intended results. The opinions expressed herein are subject to change without notice.

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S H E RY L K I N GSTO N ER E S E A R C H D I R EC TO R, B U S I N E S S A P P L I C AT I O N S

Research Director Sheryl Kingstone focuses on improving the customer experience across

all interaction channels for customer acquisition and loyalty. She helps operator and

enterprise clients make decisions regarding the use of technology, business processes

and data to boost revenue and optimize business performance. She also assists vendors

with custom research projects, messaging and positioning, as well as product road map

evaluations. Kingstone researches and writes on the top trends in mobile marketing and

commerce along with cross-channel customer experience technologies.

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II


Key Findings

III

The digital experience is the new heart of customer engagement as customers demand new forms of empowerment: 76% of our consumer survey respondents prefer digital channels to communicate with businesses, 40% prefer to chat with a business through a social media messenger, and 50% prefer mobile loyalty programs with personalized rewards (up 6% in just two years).

Businesses invest in new digital technologies and processes to more effectively engage customers, partners or employees. The essence of putting digital tools to work in a transformative way is to ensure that data and insight connect people with the right information and processes that ultimately lead to a better experience for customers.

The power of a digital transformation strategy lies in executive leadership driving its vision and objectives. Digital transformation may start around creating the ideal experience for customers, but it quickly expands throughout all departments. However, less than 25% of companies surveyed have a formal strategy for digitizing their businesses.

III


Executive Summary

T H R I V I N G I N T H E A G E O F D I G I TA L LY E M P OW E R E D C O N S U M E R S For almost two decades, 451 Research has defined the ideal customer experience (CX) as a commitment to customer interactions that are consistent, dynamic and transparent across four dimensions: brand, products and services, channel, and delivery and operations. The goal is to achieve competitive differentiation by viewing the world through the eyes of one’s customers and modifying interactions accordingly. While a strong CX produces significant results, many companies continue to struggle to create a broad, all-encompassing strategy across both offline and online experiences. As the lines blur between physical and digital channels, new CX strategies must be prioritized for businesses to thrive in the age of digitally empowered consumers.

We are witnessing a dramatic shift in the balance of power between many organizations and their customers across virtually all industries. Today’s empowered customers have access to more information, choices and opportunities, redefining the ‘ideal experience.’ Customers decide what they want, and also where and how they want it. The effect is that they can now dictate the terms of engagement with businesses.

Today’s customers value experiences – selfies, stories, chats and influence stats grab the attention of digitally empowered consumers, who in turn feel compelled to share their personal encounters. Experience, not price, will be the battleground of the future. Figure 1 shows that customers value the flexibility and convenience that digital channels provide, as 76% of respondents prefer digital interaction with businesses and 40% prefer to chat with a business through a social media messenger. Half prefer mobile loyalty programs with personalized rewards. This amount is up 6% in just two years.

Figure 1: Digital Customers Demand New Forms of EmpowermentSource: 451 Research, Commissioned by Microsoft, 2016

Customer

60%Value the ability to control and personalize their experience

Technological

40%Prefer to chat to a business through SMS, social media messenger

Communication Channels 76%Prefer digital channels to communicate with businesses (e.g., from other industries)

Experiences

50%Would strongly recommend acompany if it has mobile loyaltyprograms that offered rewards

IV

C U STO M E R E X P E R I E N C E : A C ATA LYST FO R D I G I TA L T R A N S FO R M AT I O N


V

Digital experiences (DX) represent a revolutionary shift in the brand-customer relationship. These driving factors have given a voice to customers, who now expect businesses to rise to the occasion. This report focuses on how organizations can digitally transform their businesses to best attract, win, retain and support customers by leveraging the latest applications, analytics and infrastructure to deliver a differentiated experience that is not a luxury, but a necessity for businesses’ survival.

M E T H O D O LO GYThis report explores how CX can be a catalyst to digital transformation as businesses adapt to the age of the empowered customer. CX and digital transformation are both umbrella terms that extend well beyond the confines of this report. This report focuses on digital technologies and the transformational impact they will have on IT and lines of business as they relate to CX improvements. For this report, DX is a sub-component of digital transformation and CX.

Digital engagement and customer engagement are considered business outcomes of a strong digital transformation strategy, which we discuss in this report based on a series of in-depth interviews with a variety of stakeholders in the vendor ecosystem, including enterprise end users across multiple sectors. This research was supplemented by additional primary research, including attendance at a number of trade shows and industry events. Reports such as this one represent a holistic perspective on key emerging markets in the enterprise business applications space. These markets evolve quickly, though, so 451 Research offers additional services that provide critical marketplace updates. These updated reports and perspectives are presented on a daily basis via the company’s core intelligence service, 451 Research Market Insight. Forward-looking M&A analysis and perspectives on strategic acquisitions and the liquidity environment for technology companies are also updated regularly via Market Insight, which is backed by the industry-leading 451 Research M&A KnowledgeBase.

Emerging technologies and markets are covered in 451 Research channels including Business Applications; Cloud Transformation; Data Platforms and Analytics; Datacenter Technologies; Development, DevOps and IT Ops; Enterprise Mobility; European Services; Information Security; Internet of Things; Mobile Telecom; Multi-Tenant Datacenters; Networking; Service Providers; Storage; and Systems and Software Infrastructure.

Beyond that, 451 Research has a robust set of quantitative insights covered in products such as Voice of the Enterprise, Voice of the Connected User Landscape, Cloud Price Index, Market Monitor, the M&A KnowledgeBase and the Datacenter KnowledgeBase.

All of these 451 Research services, which are accessible via the web, provide critical and timely analysis specifically focused on the business of enterprise IT innovation. For more information about 451 Research, please go to: www.451research.com.

http://www.451research.com


©COPYRIGHT 2016 451 RESEARCH. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.©COPYRIGHT 2016 451 RESEARCH. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.

Table of Contents

VIVI

Figure 1: Digital Customers Demand New Forms of Empowerment . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . IV

1. DIGITAL TRANSFORMATION: A FOUR-PRONGED STRATEGY 1

Figure 2: Digital Transformation Takes a Four-Pronged Approach . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1

DIGITAL EXPERIENCE . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2

Figure 3: Five-Year Shift in Channel Preferences 2010-2015 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2

DIGITAL ORGANIZATION . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4

Figure 4: Less Than 25% of Businesses Have a Formal Digital Transformation Strategy . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4

DIGITAL PLATFORM . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5

DIGITAL OPERATIONS . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6

2. TOP DIGITAL TRANSFORMATION PRIORITIES IMPROVING CX 7

Figure 5: Combining a System of Record and a System of Engagement Creates the Ideal Experience . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7

Figure 6: Digital Transformation Initiatives Require Significant Levels of Investment . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 8

DIGITIZING THE CUSTOMER JOURNEY ACROSS PHYSICAL AND DIGITAL WORLDS . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 8

Figure 7: Consumers Force Digital and Physical Convergence . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 9

DATA-DRIVEN EXPERIENCES AT THE INDIVIDUAL LEVEL DEMAND INFORMATION, IDENTITY AND INSIGHT 10

Figure 8: Information, Identity and Insight Feed Data-Driven Experiences . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 11

Figure 9: Data-Driven Experiences Must Take a Hybrid Approach . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 12

B2B DIGITAL CUSTOMER ENGAGEMENT FOR SALES AND MARKETING . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 12

3. A COMPLICATED VENDOR ECOSYSTEM 14

Figure 10: Process Efficiency + Dynamic Experience + Actionable Insight = Digital Engagement. . . . . . . . . . . 14

TRANSACTIONAL BUSINESS APPLICATIONS . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 15

ENGAGEMENT-DRIVEN APPLICATIONS . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 16

DATA AND ANALYTICS . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 17



VII

5. CONCLUSIONS AND RECOMMENDATIONS 19

6. FURTHER READING 20

7. INDEX OF COMPANIES 21


1. Digital Transformation: A Four-Pronged Strategy

CX is a catalyst in many digital transformation projects. It is why many businesses invest in new digital technologies and processes to more effectively engage customers, partners or employees. The goal of putting digital tools to work in a transformative way is to ensure that data and insights connect people with information and processes that ultimately lead to a better experience for customers.

As businesses adjust to the age of empowered customers and their changing expectations, it is important to realize that digital transformation is more than just an IT strategy. As a result, businesses must take a four-pronged approach to digital transformation, as seen in Figure 2. While DX garners a lot of attention, it will not be successful without full consideration of an organization’s strategy, platform and operations.

Figure 2: Digital Transformation Takes a Four-Pronged ApproachSource: 451 Research, 2016

• Digital strategy• Executive

leadership• Disruptive attitude

• Cloud infrastructure

• Embedded machine learning

• Open APIs

• Mobile-first• Omni-channel

engagement• Cloud applications

• Paperless• Real-time• Prescriptive

DIGITALOPERATIONS

DIGITAL EXPERIENCE

DIGITAL ORGANIZATION

DIGITALPLATFORM

1



2

DIGITAL EXPERIENCE

DX is the new heart of customer engagement. It has evolved to incorporate multiple, rapidly increasing digital channels and touchpoints. DX today is increasingly mobile-first, omnichannel engagement – seamless, connected experiences across all channels of consumer interaction, from retail store, social, email and voice to SMS, web and the latest mobile applications, and back-end processes such as pricing and inventory. This approach is critical for delivering a new generation of customer engagement that goes beyond ‘traditional’ CRM to deliver a truly effective CX: a connected, contextual experience on any channel across the entire buying experience.

451 Research customer survey data shows that mobile options have increased in popularity across the entire customer journey – consumers increasingly want to interact via SMS, mobile phone self-service, in-app two-way messaging, mobile browsing, social media or using a mobile phone to talk to a company representative. At the same time, traditional interaction methods have steadily declined, with a 38% drop in home telephone interaction and a 27% decline in email use (see Figure 3).

Figure 3: Five-Year Shift in Channel Preferences 2010-2015Source: 451 Research’s US Consumer Survey, 2010-2015

12%

12%

12%

6%

6%

-6%

-27%

-38%

Mobile phone - SMS/text to a company representative

Mobile phone - self-service

Browse website on the mobile phone

Social media

Mobile phone - to speak with a customer service representative

Company website

Online/web chat

Email

Home telephone

-3%



3

With 64% of surveyed consumers wanting to be connected all the time, mobile is moving beyond traditional marketing use cases and into core business functions and processes throughout the customer lifecycle. Even older, more traditional businesses have embraced DX. For example, Sheet Music Direct combined an iPad app with play-along content notation and audio from publishers Hal Leonard and the Music Sales Group to create a new type of digital sheet music experience. Yankee Candle launched Scent Systems, which uses Internet of Things (IoT) and cloud services to deliver ambient scent to retail, hospitality and other service companies. Though connected devices have been around for decades, the shift to subscription services offered by Yankee Candle is a great example of a traditional company using advancements in mobile and IoT to remotely control and gather data and thus move from a non-digital business toward a digitally transformed product offering.

Despite these examples, most companies provide inconsistent, disconnected experiences, leading to a disjointed and negative brand impression that creates friction and, over time, erodes loyalty. Companies still treat each interaction or touchpoint as a separate silo, and businesses can have more than 30 application sources scattered across customer, employee and product data, such as e-commerce, marketing automation, content management, point of sale, clienteling, customer service and order management. When we add to that all the new channels of interactions, including mobile, social and chat, the result is an IT nightmare across systems, applications and data repositories. Digital transformation initiatives are key to enabling businesses to stop asking customers to adapt to company processes or technology constraints.

It’s not just customers’ DX that is inconsistent, but also employees’. Sales associates, marketing professionals and customer service representatives are forced to use systems cobbled together from one or more task-specific business applications that usually provide inconsistent data, processes and user experiences. Consequently, it’s important to invest in new applications that can use processes and data more effectively, so that businesses can make critical adjustments to their CX to align with the digital shift and remain relevant in the eyes of customers, partners and employees. This can take the form of new apps for sales, service and marketing. For example, clienteling is a sales strategy for increasing the purchase volume or frequency potential of the in-store shopping experience by delivering 360-degree customer views and sales tools to sales associates. Consumers often have more information at their fingertips than sales associates, but clienteling tools give front-line associates the right information at the right time. Location technologies have also increased the value here by enabling door triggers to indicate when VIP customers enter a store. A sales associate’s tablet can be the window to everything from past purchases to detailed product information, along with guidance for selling.

Customer service agents’ experiences are also being transformed with new agent desktops that automate processes and provide an intuitive agent UI that guides conversation with the next best action. The new agent desktop provides not just the contextual information needed to solve a customer’s concern or purchase products, but also the ability to auto-log essential notes and orders quickly and efficiently through integration across all appropriate systems of record.



4

DIGITAL ORGANIZATION

The power of a digital transformation strategy lies in executive leadership driving its vision and objectives. Digital transfor-mation may start around creating the ideal experience for customers, but it quickly expands throughout all departments. 451 Research defines digital transformation as the result of IT innovation that is aligned with, and driven by, a well-planned business strategy with the goal of transforming how organizations: • Serve customers, employees and partners

• Support continuous improvement in business operations

• Disrupt existing businesses and markets

• Invent new businesses and business models

However, Figure 4 shows that less than 25% of companies have a formal strategy for digitizing their businesses. Roughly half do not have a strategy at all. Less digitally mature organizations tend to focus on individual technologies and have strategies that are tactical and operational in focus, as compared to more forward-thinking companies that embrace digital with an eye toward transforming their businesses.

Figure 4: Less Than 25% of Businesses Have a Formal Digital Transformation StrategySource: 451 Research’s VoCUL: Corporate Software Purchasing Trends (Leading Indicator), April 2016Q: Which of the following best describes your company’s status with regards to a digital transformation effort?

We are considering it, but have no formal plans

No answer

Don't know

We have a formalstrategy and are actively

digitizing our businessprocesses and technologies

We are in the planningstages, researching

to form our digitaltransformation strategy

18%

29% We currently do not have a digital transformation strategy

18%

22%

9%

3%



5

Strong leadership with a disruptive attitude is necessary to guide an organization through rapid changes in technology, customer behaviors and business models. It is a journey that forces a company to move beyond business as usual to embrace organizational change, agile business processes and systems to support transformation.

DIGITAL PLATFORM

Defining a digital platform is complicated. It is fundamentally a collection of tightly integrated technologies that organizations use to run their operations and support their external business models. Companies that have successfully organized their businesses around being digital platforms include giants such as Twitter, Facebook and Amazon. In each case, these companies have synthesized data sources, processes and operations into a coherent IT landscape, which helps create a consistent experience for insiders and outsiders.

The digital platform, then, helps businesses redesign their IT strategies to be more responsive to the needs of their users. Fundamental building blocks for a digital transformation platform include a cloud-services foundation, an API and microservices strategy for the digital glue, and cognitive systems that use natural language processing and machine learning.

Cognitive and self-learning systems and the data that drives them play an increasing role in the evolution of customer-facing business applications, whether they focus on sales, service or marketing. Intelligent business applications are really the only way to understand, contextualize and embed data intelligently into business processes. Embedded machine learning and artificial intelligence (AI) provide the self-learning attributes to eliminate human intervention through smart automation. Smart bots and robotic process automation (RPA) are also critical elements of the digital platform. Because the new model for interaction is conversation, smart bots can be embedded from open protocols like SMS or email for better customer engagement processes. (Not all bots have AI, which is a critical element for improving the accuracy of the conversation.) Smart bots will also further enhance the capabilities in all digital transformation initiatives, but today they are most popular in customer engagement use cases that enable personalized, structured responses and automating services and business workflows.

Efforts are underway to accelerate agile development practices that speed deployments of better experiences for employees, customers and partners. Microservice is a method of developing software applications as a set of lightweight, modular services that communicate to achieve a business goal. A spin-off of services-oriented architecture (SOA), which began in the early 2000s, microservice architecture bears a number of similarities to its parent, but the real difference has to do with the support of more agile development practices. Since everything changes in the digital world, agile techniques are a better approach to serve customers and employees who expect dynamic yet consistent experiences across a wide range of devices. As a result, a requirement for the digital platform is to enable scalable, adaptable, cloud-based process-level workflow applications that provide a foundation to meet the needs of digital transformation initiatives.



6

CX demands an approach that takes into account all tools, processes and data across the customer journey. The complex process usually involves dynamically maintaining a single source of truth about each customer to drive a personalized experience based on individual preferences and behaviors. However, businesses today have primarily invested in systems of record such as legacy CRM and ERP. While these systems are critical for managing internal operational processes, they are typically monolithic, expensive and time-consuming to modify, making them unsuitable for today’s pace of business change. With the age of the customer upon us, companies must complement systems of record with systems of engagement that are more agile and intelligent to provide a frictionless customer experience. Systems of engagement (tools and applications specifically designed for automating customer-facing processes) can be tied to the old systems of record so that existing intelligence isn’t lost, but can also be leveraged in ways that enable, rather than inhibit, good customer experience. These systems of engagement need to be able to take advantage of all this additional customer interaction and the data that is generated from it and keep pace with the smartphone-toting, social-media-posting empowered customer.

DIGITAL OPERATIONS

Building upon the digital platform, strategy and experience, businesses must also evaluate their processes with efficient digital operations. Digital operations must include paperless, real-time processes. Most businesses have only partially automated processes: Every day, customers still fill out forms manually, restate the obvious on a call or embark on redundant data entry. It is possible to automate the majority of business processes through a combination of data, content and intelligent processes, but it can only happen if IT embraces business applications that are more agile and operate in real time. Focusing on digitizing operations can transform how work is conducted and change the nature of that work in a way that heavily influences customer and employee engagement and retention. Businesses must operationalize workflows, automate process steps and digitize content and data, incorporating analytics to ensure efficient operations. Customers and employees must have access to collaboration tools and social media channels as and when needed, enabling the workforce to become connected knowledge workers who can make higher-level contributions.

For organizations to embrace digital operations, they must make applications more prescriptive to capitalize on the data and the desired business outcomes. The data layer is critical for overall process improvements that provide prescriptive action. It will help operations by providing the right insight at the right time during the right process.

Beyond customer-facing operations, companies must also transform the back-end foundation that handles core processes such as order management, inventory and pricing as part of digital operation strategies. These back-end systems contain necessary data that is needed during customer-facing processes – for example, to enable customer demand for ‘click and collect,’ one-hour delivery and cross-selling. Without the back-end systems of record, it would be impossible to meet customer expectations. Retail, travel and transportation, and hospitality are also all looking to capitalize on location-based services to integrate with back-end infrastructure to improve customer engagement.


2. Top Digital Transformation Priorities Improving CX

7

As shown in Figure 5, systems of record must be complemented by systems of engagement to provide an interactive, personalized experience. Enterprises must streamline the process for customers, partners and employees to ensure the systems used for customer engagement enhance the process and provide accurate and reliable information for various back-end systems of record. It’s about leveraging a digitally transformed platform to reduce customer and employee friction points.

Figure 5: Combining a System of Record and a System of Engagement Creates the Ideal ExperienceSource: 451 Research, 2016

SYSTEM OF RECORD SYSTEM OF ENGAGEMENT IDEAL EXPERIENCE

CRMERP

Channels ProcessesDigitally

TransformedPlatform

ECM

The good news is the digital revolution is under way, with businesses making significant investments in digital transformation initiatives to increase revenue, reduce costs and transform CX. Figure 6 illustrates data from a joint Microsoft and 451 Research study that identified business initiatives that are being transformed digitally. It also ascertained the anticipated level of investment needed to deliver on digital strategies over the next two years for increasing revenue, improving speed to market or decreasing costs. While the necessary strategy is different at each organization, depending on a variety of factors, the data clearly illustrates that organizations expect to make a significant level of investment to deliver digital transformation strategies across customer engagement, digital and physical convergence and data-driven initiatives.



8

Figure 6: Digital Transformation Initiatives Require Significant Levels of Investment Source: 451 Research, Commissioned by Microsoft, 2016

43% to create and/or

streamline more efficient

business processes

58% to focus on customer convenience 51% to

personalize the customer

experience

Customer EngagementDigital and Physical

Convergence

47% to create a single customer

experience across digital and

physical services

Data-Driven Experiences

46% to track digital identities

of customers

41% to improve

marketing and promotion of products and

services

The expected significant investment does align with key digital transformation projects currently underway in most organizations.

DIGITIZING THE CUSTOMER JOURNEY ACROSS PHYSICAL AND DIGITAL WORLDSThe digital and physical worlds are colliding in more than just the retail vertical – it’s happening across multiple industries and brands. It’s virtually impossible to plan for all potential customer journeys, because each is essentially a non-linear, self-directed interaction, or ‘micro-moment,’ across a customer’s channel of choice. It’s also not just digital interactions that need to be mapped, but physical interactions such as phone calls or face-to-face contact. There are facets of the physical journey that, when tracked, can be used as influencing factors in digital interaction. For example, the retail industry must rethink customer experience and leverage new, innovative technologies to address the ‘digital divide’ between digital and physical experiences before, during and after a purchase. There’s an opportunity to add more value to the customer journey, be it through personalized information, location-based services or empowering front-line associates (see Figure 7).



9

Figure 7: Consumers Force Digital and Physical ConvergenceSource: 451 Research’s VoCUL: Q1 2016 Mobile Payment Trends (Representative), May 2016

46% would share personal information with a retailer or brand for better rewards

51% want to order ahead, pick up and pay using a mobile app to avoid waiting in line

49% would like to reveive personalized information based on immediate location

46%

51%

49%

Beacons and Wi-Fi geofences digitize the journey to allow easy discovery of relevant information such as local content and services. Add intelligence to the mix, and the future is about aggregated learning regarding behaviors and preferences that can help ensure relevant customer interactions. The entire outdoor or indoor experience can become a learning opportunity to display personalized location information, product information, pop-up coupons, video demonstrations and more. Consumers can request help based on location, such as a dressing room or clothing rack. The dressing room itself is being digitized to provide inventory availability and recommend other products based on items already in the room through a digital display.

It’s critically important for companies to not only know their customers, but also be able to orchestrate their experience across the customer journey. Key areas that can help include tools to optimize the lifecycle and promote engagement across the digital and physical worlds. It’s not only about knowing when to interact, but also which method a particular consumer prefers, such as web, self-service, mobile chat/text, Facebook Messenger, Twitter, etc. Conversational commerce is a relatively new DX that nurtures relationships across the customer journey, typically using machine learning to trigger contextual responses to a mobile phone throughout the customer lifecycle. Businesses can leverage chat bots to provide automated, personalized selling or VIP support experiences on-demand via messaging apps such as Facebook Messenger, Twitter DM and WhatsApp. Issues can also be seamlessly escalated to a live agent when a self-service environment is not effective. By unlocking information that is generated across multiple customer interactions and across several channels and sources, brands can exceed customer expectations. Yesterday’s world was about one-way customer interactions; today’s is about self-directed, on-demand, two-way engagement anywhere, on any device. Customers want to communicate on their terms in their preferred channels. Depending on the urgency, nature and overall context of the customer’s situation, self-service is one of the most important engagement channels, with many interactions beginning on mobile devices.



10

Customer onboarding is another transformation initiative primarily focused around improving customer convenience. Financial services organizations are under pressure to meet customer demands for insurance quotes and claims processing, mortgage processing and loan origination; healthcare companies are working on new patient onboarding, clinical documentation and medical claims submission. Governments are creating mobile applications for handling citizen benefit enrollments, claim submissions, licenses, permits and renewals. The goal is to be more responsive to customers by reducing the friction of the customer acquisition process – for example, from the point at which the customer begins researching providers to the time when they submit underwriting documents for approval of a loan. The result is streamlined upfront customer identity verification and onboarding capabilities. Digital platforms can turn a potentially complicated manual, paper-based process into an experience that leverages a customer’s mobile phone to capture and intelligently extract relevant data, then integrate with a wide variety of back-end services such as Lexis Nexis, the IRS, credit-checking, etc., to enrich that information, eventually creating consolidated reports for the customer to verify – all without killing a tree or picking up a pen.

Transitioning traditional loyalty programs to truly leverage a digital experience provides another opportunity to blend digital and physical interactions. Mobile loyalty programs not only ease enrollment and redemption, but also gather the data necessary for targeting high-value customers. Programs are beneficial for both the customer and the business because they tie customer profiles to actual transaction data. Customers can get the personalized offers that they prefer when rewards are based on real-world transactions.

DATA-DRIVEN EXPERIENCES AT THE INDIVIDUAL LEVEL DEMAND INFORMATION, IDENTITY AND INSIGHT Turning data into meaningful intelligence is crucial. Data-driven individual experiences require information that is updated constantly (e.g., transactions, events, contexts, interactions and behaviors) and tied to a unique identity for each customer in order to build a complete customer profile. Then that information and identity must be turned into prescriptive insight using machine-learning-based algorithms to identify customer opportunities and determine how to best engage with customers across multiple channels and devices (see Figure 8).



11

Figure 8: Information, Identity and Insight Feed Data-Driven ExperiencesSource: 451 Research, 2016

Loyalty Programs

USE CASES USE CASES

Self-Service

Assisted Service

Mobile Advertising

Location-BasedMobile Marketing

Customer JourneyOptimization

Retail Engagement Digital Commerce

CUSTOMER IDENTITY GRAPH

Sentiment AffinityValue

Churn/Risk Intent

Natural language processing and machine-learning algorithms to continuouslysynthesize, learn, adapt, improve and automate in real time

STRUCTURED DATA

UNSTRUCTUREDDATA

OMNI-CHANNELINTERACTIONS

RAW SOCIALMEDIA DATA BEHAVIORAL LOCATION THIRD-PARTY

DATA

Blanketing customers with tweets, MMS, SMS and in-app messages is not a meaningful experience strategy; it alienates customers and causes them to opt out of future marketing communications. Personalized, context-relevant offers are more effective – especially ones based on prior transactions to ensure that initiatives are calibrated appropriately and promote stronger engagement at the right time.

Whether at the individual or the segment level, businesses need to understand who the most profitable customers are. Do they look like the company’s best customers or visitors? What is the customer buying and what do they care about? The complex buying journey presents significant challenges in terms of identifying and personalizing CX at different stages of the process. This problem is exacerbated by the proliferation of consumer channels – mobile, social, TV, etc. – making it difficult for marketers to ‘connect the dots’ and fully understand the customer identity as they cross various online and offline channels. But while many businesses feel they are producing targeted marketing campaigns, most don’t use accurate customer insight to form precise, effective promotions. Just because a business is showing five different digital experiences to five different customer segments doesn’t mean it has directed the right offer at the right crowds or individuals. If it hasn’t, its digital spending is no more effective than if it had targeted all five groups with the same mass advertising. This effectively wastes the marketing budget in terms of measurable results. Financial services, retail and telcos have an abundance of customer data, but insight-driven experiences are difficult without a clear understanding of the target customer. The problem is not a lack of data; it’s making sense of this data and being able to act on it.

Personalizing CX is not a new concept. One-to-one marketing began about 15 years ago as a CRM strategy that emphasized highly personalized interaction. There were two barriers to success. First, marketers had to rely on IT, creating long development cycles. Second, the accuracy of the strategy lacked a layer of real-time intelligence, relying heavily on a rules-based approach. More recently, newer technology and social media platforms added digital dimensions to 1:1 marketing, improving the tracking of customer behavior and engagement with customers and prospects online in an increasingly personalized way.



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Figure 9: Data-Driven Experiences Must Take a Hybrid ApproachSouce: 451 Research, 2016

Pre-determined

Rules-Based

Segment

Limited HumanIntervention

Algorithmic

1:1

Capture real-time content and data, then dynamically interact with relevent content based on explicit signals such as search and imlicit signals such as first party customer data

DETERMINISTIC COGNITIVEHYBRID

Figure 9 illustrates how deterministic, rules-based approaches still add value in personalizing CX through segments such as high-value customers, anonymous visitors, etc. However, they don’t provide 1:1 algorithm-driven recommendations, which require a more cognitive approach. Determinism works well when tracking and using data such as clicks, time spent, mouse movement, hovers, scroll and inactivity. It can incorporate each visitor’s referring site, geolocation, industry and online ad or email campaign source. However, the cognitive approach applies algorithmic, predictive machine learning for an even stronger engagement strategy. The deeper data and improved algorithms provide the ability to factor in individual affinity, segment and survey-response data along with overall intent, resulting in greater relevancy and effectiveness.

Delivering insight-driven experiences requires a customer data platform that combines both first- and third-party data and adds a layer of predictive machine learning intelligence to achieve real-time 1:1 capability in less than 20 milliseconds. The deeper data and improved algorithms now enable the ability to factor in individual affinity, segment and survey-response data along with overall intent, resulting in greater relevancy and effectiveness.

Machine-learning algorithms can self-learn to adjust or adapt based on any factor or combination of factors in each individual visitor’s personal interests/preferences. While an algorithm can be based on a visitor’s behavior or geolocation, it can also be based on key company variables such as inventory levels and manufacturer incentives.

B2B DIGITAL CUSTOMER ENGAGEMENT FOR SALES AND MARKETING The B2B buyers’ journeys can be complex, demanding personalization strategies similar to those of their B2C counterparts to help the sales engagement process. Buyers conduct their research across a multitude of touchpoints before making decisions. B2B sellers need to create a more interactive and personalized experience, leveraging data and dynamic content to adapt to the context or different stages of the buying cycle. The future of B2B sales is now transformed through DX – by interacting digitally, businesses now have the ability to provide 1:1 automated communication, dynamic content personalization or content performance tracking to make intelligent recommendations about which content to use during a particular opportunity.

Gone are the days of marketing creating static, one-size-fits-all brochures, presentations, content, proposals or quotes. Every buying experience and influencer is different. While marketing has been responsible for conducting email marketing campaigns, generating content and producing qualified leads through digital marketing for years, sales reps need their own email outreach capabilities that are differentiated from traditional office productivity email and marketing automation platforms, focusing on sales engagement using recommended templates with granular controls on content, expiration dates and alerts. The digital content needs to be dynamic and react to various data points within a specific opportunity to ensure the supporting materials are relevant to the current situation. The goal is to provide very specific content recommendations based on sales stage, product, process, persona, etc.



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Sales engagement today is also more digital, with outreach capabilities to help with interactions and prescriptive guidance. Digital content is shared through personalized portals, which are especially important as digital content shifts toward rich media that is more interactive for prospects. Sales reps can now track engagement analytics such as the opening of emails and other campaign materials to close the loop and provide feedback on pitches by viewer and by content. Businesses are also shifting traditional face-to-face calls to web-based meetings to enable the ability to screen-share for demos, providing better collaboration with attendees.


3. A Complicated Vendor Ecosystem

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The market is fragmented, with more than 1,000 vendors addressing some form of digital transformation for CX. Businesses need a platform that can leverage existing investments in transactional systems while providing additional capabilities for engagement and insight. Figure 10 illustrates how complicated it is for businesses today to create a digital engagement platform. No single vendor corners the market and provides the complete software stack for digital transformation. Transactional business applications coupled with data and analytics can provide actionable insight; combined with engagement-driven applications, they can improve process efficiency. Engagement-driven applications paired with data will provide a more dynamic experience. However, leveraging the power of all three creates a better platform for digital engagement.

Figure 10: Process Efficiency + Dynamic Experience + Actionable Insight = Digital EngagementSource: 451 Research, 2016

Data and Analytics

Engagement-Driven Applications

Transactional Business Applications

DIGITALENGAGEMENT

Actionable Insight

ProcessEfficiency

DynamicExperience

CRM

SFA

Marketing

Automation

ERP

Commerce

CSS

ECM

BPM

Robotic Process (RPA)

Social Sentiment

Customer Data Platforms

Personalization

Search

Cross-ChannelAttribution Customer

Experience measurement

Customer Journey Mapping

Mobile Analytics

Web Experience Mgt

Sales Enablement

Sales and Marketing Content

Mobile Marketing

Social

Conversational Commerce/BOT

Voice of the Customer

Customer Self-Service

CPQ

Sales Engagement

Customer Communications

Management



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TRANSACTIONAL BUSINESS APPLICATIONSMany businesses have already made investments in transactional businesses applications (ERP, CRM, commerce, etc.), but many investments in legacy applications that create monolithic architectures can actually be detrimental to digital transformation goals. Yet these transactional systems can be extended or augmented with more modern cloud-based business applications that provide a more agile platform. For example, investments in Siebel can be extended as businesses look to transition to a more modern environment. Oracle offers transitional paths from Siebel to Oracle Cloud applications for sales, service and marketing. SAP is transitioning Hybris with cloud-based microservices that are lightweight and loosely coupled. These microservice packages are grouped into different categories such as commerce, loyalty and the customer-engagement center. Other approaches involve shifting completely to new cloud business applications such as Salesforce, SugarCRM or bpm’online, which provide more flexible architecture and agile development environments to take advantage of newer innovative technologies as they evolve.

SaaS products are kept fresh with frequent high-quality releases, which are forcing organizations to move from waterfall-type development methodologies to more agile approaches. The typical release cycle for SaaS is a couple of months (many times just a matter of weeks) vs. the one to three years that used to be the case for a major release of on-premises software. Continuous integration, simplicity in design and working in a lightweight manner are some of the guiding principles of the agile approach.

One of the reasons why SaaS applications became popular was ease of use over existing on-premises applications due to their consumer-like user interface. However, early entrants to the SaaS market quickly found that the existing UI became outdated as new entrants leapfrogged with better layout options, improved visual design and adoption of responsive design for cross-device usage.

Standards today include:

• Left-hand side navigation vs. tabbed navigation at the top, which provides better usability and reduces the number of clicks

• Responsive design that can adapt from small screen to wide screen by capitalizing on task-based UIs for mobile, while also leveraging newer white space provided by 16:9 screens

• Three-column layout with context-driven guidance and navigation such as hovers

It is also recommended that the right-hand sidebar provide context-driven information based on the current task or situation to further reduce the number of clicks. Additionally, open architectures that can naturally extend to existing business workflow and processes with minimal customization are preferred. Netflix is an example of a company that does a great job of blending form and function: The user interface provides pictures of movie and television titles, and users looking for more detail can hover over the previews to reveal information about main actors, plot summaries and reviews from other users.

There are also vendors such as Lexmark International, WorkFusion, K2, Nintex, eXalt Communications, Pegasystems and Appian that provide business process applications for smart process automation, and also potentially RPA, enterprise content and document management, search, omnichannel extraction and verification capabilities. Access to information must be more responsive and immediate in the age of the customer. The end goal is for businesses to phase out analog and paper-based processes, which are error-prone and require manual effort.

Lastly, digital commerce has become a major part of CX. While it is part of transactional applications today, it aligns very closely to engagement-driven initiatives. Commerce vendors such as IBM WebSphere, Oracle, SAP Hybris, Salesforce Demandware, Digital River, NetSuite, Shopify, Magento, Elastic Path, Episerver and others all offer transactional commerce capabilities that focus on the B2C market. These vendors also enable mobile commerce, which is a growing part of the overall commerce experience, with social networks incorporating buy buttons into digital commerce sales. While only about 25% of average users have actually shopped via their mobile devices, we find that almost half of advanced users, who are also considered early adopters, have embraced mobile commerce. The trend for early adopters has remained steady for the past two years, but as more consumers turn to their mobile devices for search, coupons and shopping apps, mainstream users will likely adopt the behavior.



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It becomes even more complicated for B2B digital commerce sites that must also incorporate configure, price and quote (CPQ) tools to dynamically calculate and configure products and pricing. Companies such as CloudCraze Software and Apttus offer differentiated B2B commerce capabilities. Since most commerce is also about creating a 1:1 personalized experience, the role of digital commerce is now moving away from a pure transactional engine toward engagement as it incorporates more web experience management and personalization technologies to drive engagement interaction capabilities. Smart personalization engines, however, are also very much aligned with data and analytics since the technology uses data, identity, search and content tools to understand customer intent.

ENGAGEMENT-DRIVEN APPLICATIONSEngagement-driven applications, whether employee-facing or customer-facing, provide complementary uses to transactional systems. These applications usually own the direct experience for the interaction with the customer. Some of the more mature applications are optimized less around the transaction and more around the actual content to be delivered. Web experience management, content management, and sales and marketing content tools help deliver more personalized, individualized experiences to customers or prospects. For example, leading players such as Acquia, Adobe, Drupal, Episerver, SiteCore, IBM, OpenText, Oracle, Progress Software and WordPress enable businesses to digitally engage with customers using commerce transactions, content and data across multiple channels such as mobile, social and Web with the aim of personalization and monitoring of web and mobile interactions.

There are also customer communication management (CCM) tools that support the creation and delivery of outbound and interactive customer communication. These products create individualized customer messages, marketing collateral, new product introductions and transactional documents. While historically used to drive print communications, CCM software has evolved to support a variety of digital communications including mobile, email, SMS, web pages and social media sites. Leading vendors that provide CCM software include OpenText, Intralinks, Pitney Bowes, Lexmark International and GMC Software.

Conversational commerce, customer feedback, self-service and social engagement applications provide direct interactions with customers to create a personal dialogue across the buying journey to answer questions, gauge satisfaction or provide interactive communications. Feedback tools capture the voice of the customer across multiple channels, at every touchpoint of the customer journey. They are essential components of a digital strategy to measure and improve customer loyalty, reduce churn by identifing unhappy customers and get valuable insight to feed back into metric-based programs such as customer effort score, net promoter score and customer satisfaction). Traditional vendors from the contact center ecosystem include Genesys, NICE and Verint Systems; SaaS-based providers include Medallia, MaritzCX Research, Confirmit, SATMetrix Systems, Vision Critical and Qualtrics. These vendors primarily offer survey-based interaction options, data visualization, A/B testing and digital engagement tools for promotions, ads or other relevant content to targeted individuals, based on website behavior and customer profiles.

There are also mobile-centric applications for conversational commerce, customer engagement and marketing. With the exponential mobile-device adoption rates, delivering an optimized mobile CX will be the ultimate game-changer. Apps on mobile devices are winning the hearts of mobile consumers: 451 Research data shows that an average of 60% of consumers’ time on a mobile phone is spent interacting with applications, and even when consumers aren’t in mobile apps, they spend much of their time browsing the web on their devices. Mobile-centric vendors such as Appboy, Swrve, Kahuna, Localytics, Vibes, Urban Airship, Waterfall International and FollowAnalytics provide data-driven approaches that help marketers with segmentation, multi-channel messaging and mobile marketing automation based on mobile user behavior. Many companies are moving to a mobile-first marketing strategy, which demands a rich range of variables to create marketing campaigns that ensure active engagement. These companies provide advanced tools for mobile campaign management, including proactive communication strategies such as push notifications for enterprises to create automated marketing and use A/B testing to optimize their campaigns. Vendors such as Salesforce (ExactTarget), Oracle (Responsys/Eloqua/Push.io), Adobe (Neolane) and IBM (Unica/Xtify/Silverpop) have aggressively entered the mobile space through traditional email marketing, as have agency/CRM players, including Acxiom, Experian and Merkle Group.



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Conversational commerce and service put mobile conversations between brands and their customers at the heart of the digital customer journey. They include all conversations related to consumer engagement and purchase conversions through new channels of engagement such as SMS, chat on a website or on mobile (WhatsApp, Line, WeChat, Snapchat), or a social interaction such as Twitter, Facebook or Instagram using a link or buy button. These conversational tools such as Helpshift, Twillio, Nexmo and Salesforce LiveMessage go beyond the transaction by embedding AI into the process to create a personal concierge in a self-service or even assisted-service engagement. For example, users can text or chat restaurant reservation requests, get product information based on contextually relevant data or place an order without adding to a shopping cart. These engagement tools work most effectively when integrated into a transactional e-commerce system such as Shopify, Magento, Salesforce Demandware, Episerver, IBM, SAP and Oracle. For example, a customer could type or speak “Find me red platform shoes for under $150.” The customer would then get a personalized product recommendation along with express shipping selected and color and size already accounted for; they can then pay and track shipping status all within the confines of a digital mobile conversation. These new channels embedded into the commerce experience across the buying journey enable a more seamless CX from facilitating product discovery and order to processing mobile payments, tracking order status and providing customer service. However, a critical part of this reality is the need to embed a layer of intelligence into processes to connect divisions, back office and front office to meet customer expectations.

Lastly, sales engagement, sales and marketing content, CPQ and sales enablement enable a sales rep to engage customers in a more interactive and personalized fashion. These technologies either focus on the delivery of dynamic content at the right time to the right audience or communication tools such as landing pages, email and video communications. Additionally, these vendors will focus on multi-model rich media communications such as interactive storytelling and video conversations to improve engagement. The goal is to present context-driven content, pricing or even products that are relevant to prospects during the buying cycle. Vendor examples include SAVO Sales Enablement Software, Seismic, Showpad, Docurated, ClearSlide, Apptus, CallidusCloud and FPX.

DATA AND ANALYTICSAnother critical area affecting CX is the role of data, analytics and newer customer data platforms to provide data-driven experiences at the individual and the segment level. Historically, CRM systems were used as the single source of truth, but over time, they became just another silo of information. There are specialized systems for real-time decision-making, such as Pegasystems Next Best Action, Oracle Real-Time Decisions and Infor Epiphany Interaction Advisor, and predictive customer analytic vendors such as Adobe, AgilOne, Alteryx, IBM, SAP, SAS, Oracle and Teradata. However, there are also new customer data platform entrants such as Lytics, Umbel, InfoTrellis and NGDATA, along with identity orchestration options such as SAP Hybris Profile, Gigya, UnboundID, Janrain and Adobe, that gather customer data from multiple sources, combine information related to the same individuals, perform analytics and use the results to guide marketing and CX treatments across multiple channels. There are are also marketing-focused data management platforms that provide the ability to ingest first- and third-party data to use within the marketing journey, such as Adobe, Neustar, Oracle, CXense, Salesforce (Krux), IgnitionOne and Lotame.

Personalization, targeting and search tools are also critical elements of providing data-driven experiences. Adobe, Evergage, Reflektion, Optimizely, Certona and RichRelevance work with enterprise content management to deliver targeted content in real time by leveraging data and intelligence to identify interesting behaviors based on browsing, demographic information, contextual clues, and first- and third-party data to power personalized experiences.

Search tools such as Coveo and Solr provide customers, employees and partners with unified search across all information throughout the enterprise, as well as automated content recommendations based on each user’s context. Coveo specifically provides a cloud-based, self-learning site-search app that automatically learns from visitor behavior, tunes relevance and recommends content. It works with web content tools such as Sitecore to understand what content visitors want and optimize the search experience.



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Cross-channel attribution, another growing area, assigns a weighting to each marketing touchpoint across digital and physical channels to avoid last-click or final purchase attribution. It’s also essential to identity interactions across multiple devices, channels and types of media to understand what is driving overall conversion. Vendors in this space such as Visual IQ, MarketShare or Google Adometry are able to track the dynamic purchase path of the customer journey, allowing marketers to allocate marketing spending effectively. Whether the model is rules-based or algorithmic (probabilistic or deterministic), cross-channel attribution must look at all the different touchpoints that led to a conversion. Companies such as PlaceIQ, Factual, Placecast, 4INFO and NinthDecimal focus on making location data relevant for marketing and advertisers to bridge physical and and digital channels.

Mobile analytics vendors such as Amplitude, Adobe, Google, Mixpanel, Localytics, Flurry and Kissmetrics are necessary due to the explosion of information brought on by newer mobile channels. Coaxing relevant insights from the mountain of data paves the way for intelligent communications and better mobile engagement. It’s important to understand the differences between these vendors and the multiple levels of analytics each offers to ensure the most relevant insights are leveraged to close the loop, improve measurement of customer-engagement strategies, and ensure that future initiatives are relevant and personalized. These products must be able to identify patterns in individual behaviors and preferences in real time, without the need for coding and IT.

There are two types of vendors that help businesses map the customer journey: SaaS-based visualization and measurement providers such as SuiteCX, ExperienceFellow GmbH (Smaply) and Touchpoint Dashboard and contact center vendors such as Verint Systems, ClickFox, NICE and eGain. These vendors visualize the complex journey that may start on the web, continue over email or online chat and end up with one or more calls to the contact center. These tools must also include customer interaction events such as billing statements and transactions, payments or account changes. Building on cross-channel analytics, it is important to gather information hidden in customer interactions and improve the overall CX by dynamically mapping the customer journey to understand how customers interact, identify bottlenecks and pitfalls, and reduce customer effort. Usually building upon an identity graph, these vendors provide the capability to link data from many different customer data sources to assemble a complete record of every interaction an individual or group has had with a company. The identity graph assembles these customer journeys around individual customers, households or organizations.

Whether vendors provide transactional business applications, engagement-driven applications or data-driven platforms, all are embracing aspects of machine learning and AI technologies. Business applications are becoming more intelligent to take advantage of the abundance of data growth within organizations or third-party services. Context-aware, process-driven applications are the future. There are many vendors leading the charge – Salesforce with Einstein, Oracle with Oracle Adaptive Intelligent, IBM with Watson, Microsoft with Cortana, SugarCRM with Candace and OpenText with Magellan, just to name a few.

Enabling technologies such as AI (which is powered by machine learning algorithms, natural language processing and speech technologies) can help automate redundant tasks or assist employees by helping them plan meetings or respond to late-breaking developments. Embedded in customer-facing processes, enabling technologies can build deeper connections, recommend next best actions and createc a more contextually driven interaction.


5. Conclusions and Recommendations

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Digital transformation is more than just an IT agenda. A powerful digital transformation plan must take into account the organization’s digital strategy, customer experience, IT platform and operational execution. Since CX is a main catalyst in many digital transformation projects, businesses must invest in new technologies and processes to more effectively engage customers, partners and employees. Ultimately, the essence of putting digital tools to work in a transformative way is ensuring that data and insight connect people with the right information and processes that ultimately lead to a better experience for customers. Organizations can digitally transform their businesses to best attract, win, retain and support customers, employees and partners by leveraging the latest applications, analytics and infrastructure to deliver a differentiated experience that is not a luxury, but a necessity for these businesses to survive.


6. Further Reading

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VoCUL: Q1 2016 Mobile Payment Trends (Representative), May 2016

SugarCRM differentiates with its data enrichment, machine learning and intelligent agent, July 2016

B2B sales engagement tech: analytics, intelligent automation and sales enablement, July 2016

Marriage of Microsoft & LinkedIn: fusion of data, intelligent automation and applications, June 2016

mParticle aims to become the critical data layer for the mobile app ecosystem, May 2016

Lexmark Enterprise Software goes beyond ‘first mile’ vision toward digital transformation, April 2016

Why customer experience is at the heart of digital transformation, April 2016

Evergage touts intelligent personalization platform to enable dynamic customer experiences, April 2016

SAP Hybris deepens its omni-channel commerce with stronger customer engagement tools, March 2016

Zoho, the quiet but profitable SaaS company, March 2016

Salesforce promotes digital transformation vision for ‘the age of the customer,’ February 2016

Retail disrupted: navigating the digital transformation, January 2016

FollowAnalytics provides mobile-first approach with integrations to existing CRM, January 2016

Amplitude differentiates with three levels of mobile analytics, December 2015

Appboy offers intelligent communications for the mobile economy, November 2015

Kahuna’s mobile marketing powered by machine learning for personalized communications, November 2015

Genesys launches AppFoundry, deepens omni-channel strategy, November 2015

Consumers embrace mobile commerce: strong adoption from 2014-2015, October 2015

https://451research.com/report-long?icid=3817

https://451research.com/report-short?entityId=89690


















7. Index of Companies

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4INFO 18

Acquia 16

Acxiom 16

AgilOne 17

Alteryx 17

Amazon 5

Amplitude 18, 20

Appboy 16, 20

Appian 15

Apptus 17

Apttus 16

CallidusCloud 17

Certona 17

ClearSlide 17

ClickFox 18

CloudCraze Software 16

Confirmit 16

Coveo 17

CXense 17

Digital River 15

Docurated 17

eGain 18

Elastic Path 15

Episerver 15, 16, 17

Evergage 17, 20

eXalt Communications 15

Experian 16

ExperienceFellow GmbH 18

Facebook 5, 9, 17

Factual 18

Flurry 18

FollowAnalytics 16, 20

FPX 17

Genesys 16, 20

Gigya 17

GMC Software 16

Hal Leonard 3

Helpshift 17

IBM 15, 16, 17, 18

IgnitionOne 17

Infor 17

InfoTrellis 17

Instagram 17

Intralinks 16

Janrain 17

K2 15

Kahuna 16, 20

Kissmetrics 18

Lexmark International 15, 16

Line 17

Localytics 16, 18

Lotame 17

Lytics 17

Magento 15, 17



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MaritzCX Research 16

Medallia 16

Merkle Group 16

Mixpanel 18

NetSuite 15

Neustar 17

Nexmo 17

NGDATA 17

NICE 16, 18

Nintex 15

NinthDecimal 18

OpenText 16, 18

Optimizely 17

Oracle 15, 16, 17, 18

Pegasystems 15, 17

Pitney Bowes 16

Placecast 18

PlaceIQ 18

Progress Software 16

Qualtrics 16

Reflektion 17

RichRelevance 17

Salesforce 15, 16, 17, 18, 20, 22

SAP 15, 17, 20

SAS 17

SATMetrix Systems 16

SAVO Sales Enablement Soft-ware 17

Seismic 17

Sheet Music Direct 3

Shopify 15, 17

Showpad 17

SiteCore 16

Swrve 16

Teradata 17

Twillio 17

Twitter 5, 9, 17

Umbel 17

UnboundID 17

Urban Airship 16

Verint Systems 16, 18

Vibes 16

Vision Critical 16

Visual IQ 18

Waterfall International 16

WorkFusion 15

Customer Experience: A Catalyst LEADERSHIP for Digital … · Sheryl Kingstone, Research Director, Business Applications ... SHERYL KINGSTONE RESEARCH DIRECTOR, BUSINESS ... businesses

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