- December 25, 2017
- Blog
Will it be AI? Machine Learning? Customer Experiences? Chat-bots? Blockchain? What will drive growth of Large, Medium and Small firms? Not of Start-ups but of firms that are already in reasonable stages of commercialization.
And by ‘Growth’ I mean the growth of top-line or bottom-line. I dip into my professional network, recent literature and data (of course!) and turn in these:
- ‘Data will rule growth'. Small and medium enterprises will continue to invest in enterprise-wide data warehouse. They will create and leverage more reports, dashboards, alerts, and trackers. Insights, as opposed to gut-, based decision making will grow. Instead of siloed function-based decision making, firms will resort to holistic insights. For e.g., questions such as will marketing strategy adversely impact production strategy? Or will reducing TAT by a second increase revenue more than the cost of doing so?
- ‘Data protection’ laws will not be any more tougher in 2018 to dampen growth.
- ‘Engage customers’ to deepen usage or consumption. Several firms in this century made a mad rush to grow through acquisition of customers. But they have also been witnessing a leaky bucket. Year 2018 will be the defining year of finding engagement opportunities. Banks will need to find ways to make you park more funds in your account or use more credit card. Telecom cos will need to find ways to make you call more, use data more, etc. Firms will start really attempting to get industry benchmarks and nudge themselves towards those goals with astute marketing programs.
- ‘Enlarge the circle of influence' to ring-fence current and future customers. In a world of disloyalty and fickle brand recall, firms will do everything possible to keep you in their fold. For example, you will be able to book a movie through your banking app (Intelligent App, of course!) and pay it through the bank’s credit card. Or simply ask your telecom service provider for phone balance in its Facebook page. Not only will you get a response there, but also possibly a customized offer. Marketing will get more involved with Operations.
- ‘Fungible business boundaries’. The fight to engagement and increasing sphere of influence means, you can buy music from a telecom provider, pay with your wallet in your taxi-hailing app. Or, book a taxi from your bank-app that is also making an offer to insure yourself in that taxi ride!
- 'Capitalize customer life moments’ will be the marketing theme of 2018. Firms will no longer blindly cross-sell. For e.g., a bank emailing or calling a savings account customer touting all its other products such as insurance and credit card. Even in the year 2010, customers became tone-deaf to marketing messages – it took us nearly half a decade to realize it and set up systems to capture ‘customer life moments’. For example, a bank now knows that you have a bonus in your account and will cross sell an FD. Firms will invest a lot in detecting such moments and customize offerings.
- It’s no more ‘Customer Loyalty’. It’s now ‘Business Loyalty’ – of course, loyalty of the business to the customer – customer is the King, remember? Business making a mistake is at the peril of its head being chopped off. Firms will give like-never-before attention to customer service experience. Firms will analyze more moments of truth and build fortified fail-proof customer experience journeys.
- Large enterprises will leverage ‘Machine Learning’ to personalize products, communication and prices at scale nearing N=1. For e.g., based on a post or photo upload in Facebook about Kerala backwaters, you may get a Personal Loan email for INR 1L (instead of your full pre-approved limit of INR 3L, for that is what a holiday there may cost), for a 3D4N trip to Kerala’s backwaters. The content for the email may be generated on-the-fly using knowledge of the content you consume. Leveraging machine learning is not confined to just one technology, but is a function of several disconnected ones. For example, such technologies will range from statistical software, social media analytics, customer data unification services, and location based content services.
- ‘Narrow Artificial Intelligence’ (NAI) will deliver. NAI is a narrowly scoped AI project as opposed to sweeping ones. E.g. using AI to improve recruitment is a NAI. NAI applications will benefit healthcare providers in 2018. Applications that reduce pre-diagnosis time (e.g. heart attack?), improve accuracy of diagnosis (e.g. macular degeneration?) will lead to lift in hospital KPIs. NAI applications that help driver safety and driver use-optimization in logistics will increase; these may lead to lower transport times and lower fleet maintenance costs. Your bank will know if your ATM is working or not even before a you can find it out. Beyond that, rest of the Broad AI (BAI!) applications are in very very early stages of adoption and are assets of future – e.g. a swarm of cars talking to each other and helping avoid traffic and accidents.
- ‘Image processing’ may be useful to some extent. With the advent of products / technologies that allow price discovery basis images (just not brand names and model numbers) the game is set to change. One can draw an image from Instagram, upload it in an eCommerce site and search for a similar dress or furniture. Healthcare industry seems to be warming up for image-analytics led improvements. Media too uncover more of what users view and react to. Offline retail is experimenting with real time tracking a customer inside the store for better sales. Of course, matchmaking / dating industries should also see some benefits – for Indians have such preponderance for ‘skin-deep beauty’.
- ‘Voice analytics’ will not guide India’s growth in 2018. While several CEOs want (and still believe is important) to analyze call center voice data for growth, the challenges are many. Results from pilots are dis-satisfactory. The gains from an empowered call center agent is still higher than gains from real-time voice analytics support to an (dis-empowered) agent or “Ok Google, what’s my savings account balance?”. Neither is engagement up. Challenges such as use of mixed-languages, dialects and accents are rendering voice still an asset of the future. Diversity of business needs means such ‘voice’ products require on-site customization. Industries that are likely to see investments in leveraging voice data grow but with little returns in 2018: telecom, BFSI, internet, education, utilities, retail, media and logistics.
- ‘Shut the labs – and develop on the way’. Heightened competition means shorter development cycles, increased deployment frequency and dependable releases. Experimentation of new products and services will now increasingly move from labs or research teams to daily operations. Feature creep will be a common phenomenon – requirements stability index will hit all time lows.
- 'Digital Payments’ will be up significantly, especially with government poised to actually incentivize Unified Payments Interface (UPI) and Debit card based transaction. But, will this drive growth in 2018? Nope. Cash will still rule in the era of low security perceptions. And contactless Credit Cards, Debit Cards, Key Fobs, Smart Cards, etc. will still be used more in Blogs and Tech Talks than in the places you and I buy products and services.
- ‘IoT’? It is in its early phases and possibly too early to say that growth in 2018 will come from it – save except in the logistics industry and machines for manufacturing. Machines for manufacturing will become smarter, thereby helping in predictive maintenance. Will your wearables and smart yoga mats that track the legitimacy of your Suryanamaskar count for India’s growth story? Or will a swarm of cars talking to each other? Nope.
- India Inc., especially the Small enterprises, will see fastest move to cloud services in the year 2018. And this is not due to the natural pace of its adoption but due to the Big Three of Cloud wanting a firmer grip due to increased trend and success of multi-cloud. All the same, such adoption will reduce cost of technology and aid growth in a significant way.
- ‘Chatbots’ are witnessing impressive adoption rates and use cases in India. Read a post in Your Story here. However, I am unable to see significant contribution to top or bottom line in the year 2018. Costs of labor (even the smart call center agents) are still lower than total cost of chat bot implementations. Incremental gains, in revenue is unclear or meager. The brains of agents and customers in the case of self service, are significantly better than what Chatbots are today. These are unlikely to change in 2018.
- 'Blockchain’ is not going to close banks, stock exchanges, money transfer agents, courts, land registry and art sales fraud in the year 2018.
Happy New Year and happy growing (your organisation of course)!
