Accenture firm has released a new study on its technologies vision and their impact in 2013 on companies, with the central idea that any business becomes digital. This is not the first time I come back on this issue with some IBM studies, MIT, Sloan Management review, Mc Kinsey … the idea of digitizing the company is increasingly highlighted. But as nothing is worth pedagogy, and pedagogy is also repetition, here are the main points, which are related to the ideas presented in this blog, and not the entire study. I pass on all the tool side, data … (Even if it is interesting, but distant from the editorial line of this blog).

Interactions and datas, inside out the company

A customer relationship that evolves

Companies multiplied contact points and information concerning their customers, but do not still take advantage of these large-scale change. To do this, it also have to change the way it manages this relationship. We talk of managing interactions with customers one by one, but also those whom they have between them, which cannot be ignored. We no longer speak only about sale, rather individual relationship where everyone is able to express his choice, discontent, reviews … it goes beyond the transactional aspect and it is not yet integrated by companies.

To fully respond to these issues, this requires a questioning of internal silos, and more collaborative work especially between marketing and sales, between digital and the « real » to have a true integrated multichannel strategy.

 A closer customer relationship

It’s going to allow to better understand the customer, its needs, its expectations, its desires and thus to give it a better service at a lower cost,. It goes beyond the simple vision of the focus group, because we do not stop in words, we also see the actions in various contexts, what changes a lot. It is a kind of virtuous circle, the more you enrich the customer experience, the more you back information. While knowing that, the problem will be no more the lack of data, but the overload of data.

Review its organization and working processes

 Deploy tools to be more performant

Support the customer relationship, include a complete reorganization of work processes in a more collaborative way. The reason is simple, a better communication can improve the performance and the quality of work performed. But you should not confuse it with the implementation of a Facebook inside the company, indeed, culture and business objectives are not those of large public networks. They must be linked to the business processes of the company, then collaboration will become part of them. This will be even easier now that this type of behavior is still more present in the personal lives of employees and enterprise social networks offer the same type of practices.

Towards a collaborative culture

This means rethinking the role all along the value chain process, from the contributor to the top manager. But also the various collaborative uses that will bring value to the business process:

• conversation
• find an expert
• making recommendations
• find the right information contextualized

Unfortunately this part of the report is more about IT tools and real stakes are not there, as once more shown the recent Gartner’study. Thus the answer will not come from the IT department.

Nothing new under the sun I hear you say, indeed, but as explained in the introduction repetition does not hurt and if large firm such as Accenture began to look in that direction, we can assume that things will move. Even if apparently for them too, it remains to climb the social learning curve and master these stakes.