Last week I was at a thought leadership event in London. The event brought together leaders from the media and telecom industry to discuss Digital; it’s impact on their businesses, the opportunities it presents and the threats it poses. Any forum that brings together such eminent leaders invariably sparks off interesting discussions and debates, as I listened to the many speakers and conversations, it occurred to me that each one of the delegates had their own unique view of digital, depending on the industry they came from and the function they represented.
While some spoke of digital’s ability to vastly improve customer experience, others discussed new opportunities including topics such as Software Defined Networks (SDN) and Security. Conversations and even the presentations seemed not to follow a linear path. As the marketing person who orchestrated this event, I was left a little worried that this lack of cohesiveness may have been my fault.
The 10-hour long flight from London/UK, one of the oldest parliamentary democracies to Bangalore/India the largest democracy in the world, gave me a few silent moments to reflect on the event. As I landed back in Bangalore my thoughts began to crystallise and I said to myself, ” Digital is a lot like Democracy”. Poll a few thousand people at random and you will invariably conclude that democracy is a good thing. But probe a little deeper by asking them to define it and you are likely to hear a cacophony of answers, ranging from individual to religious freedom. A few may even talk about the responsibilities that accompany the freedom we enjoy. Digital is similar, everyone would agree that it is a good thing, but each one has his/her own unique perspective on what it is and what it means to them.
In its most basic form, digital is an interconnection of people with other people; people with information. Now with the advent of Internet of Things (IoT), digital also includes the interconnection between machines, people and information.
As I tried to make sense of it all, I asked myself, “What are the top 3 things that any firm wants to achieve?” It was not difficult to come up with a common sense answer:
- Firms want to make more money (Top Line)
- Firms want to spend less ie, reduce expenses. (Bottom Line)
- Keep their customers close and happy. (Customer Engagement)
As MBAs and business leaders we can surely come up with many fancier objectives like boosting share holder value, launching innovations etc. However, I would argue that most of it boils down to the three basic goals; Top line, Bottom line and Customer Engagement.
Great! now that we have the top 3 goals that firms want to achieve, lets shift our focus to the means to accomplish these goals. In the last decade it would have meant better manufacturing plants, better processes and better supply chain agreements.
Today however, the tools available to firms are things like the Internet, Social Media, Big Data & Analytics, Cloud and Mobility. I find it easy to visualise Digital as the intersection of a Firms goals { Growth(TopLine, Cost), Efficiency(Bottom Line) & Customer Engagement } on the Y-Axis with the available means/tools (Mobile & Connectivity, Social, Analytics & Cloud) along the X-Axis. The points of intersection of these axes represents the possible range of Digital products and solutions.
Do I hear you say, “Oh big deal so what is new”? My answer to you is, “there is nothing new”. Apple’s iPhone is the analogy I like to use to elucidate my point. The iPhone is a spectacular product, many even call it the most innovative product in recent times. But, break it down to its constituent parts and it is anything, but spectacular. Mobile phones have existed for many years before the iPhone, Nokia had smart phones, touch screens, accelerometers, GPS have all existed long before the iPhone. But it is the happy blend of these technologies into a single product, that made all the difference.
Digital is similar, firms have always been driven by the triplet of goals and most of the technologies listed along the X Axis have been around for a while. But it is the ability to combine them in a particular way that gives Digital the power.
To further illustrate, allow me to pick 3 points of intersection on the ‘digital matrix’ , (A, B and C) and apply it to a telecom service provider.
- Intersection A: This is where social meets customer engagement. Gone are those days of toll free numbers and brick & mortar stores. As customers move to online channels it is important that firms follow them. A number of telecom service providers are now deploying social listening tools to track conversations and respond to customer queries. Building a social presence and community also has the additional advantage of customers helping each other with their usage and configuration problems. Gaming strategies can be used to promote customer advocates who amplify the brands message and also double up as customer service agents who help other users.
- Intersection B: Can telecom service providers leverage Analytics and Big Data for new revenue streams ? Telecom operators have access to a vast amount of customer information, right from their home addresses to usage patterns, places visited etc. Unfortunately many operators are yet to find a way to monetise that information, this is partly because unlike their internet peers, telecom operators are bound by more stringent privacy laws. A new breed of companies like FlyTxt ( http://www.flytxt.com ), are using Big Data Analytics to generate commercially sellable information without compromising the privacy of consumers.
- Intersection C: Using cloud technologies to optimise IT Capex & Opex is not new and this model works well for telecom service provider’s IT systems too. But cloud and virtualisation technologies can also be used in the core of the telecom network to optimise costs. Solutions such as Software Defined Networks (SDN), Network Function Virtualisation (NFV), Cloud RAN and Baseband pooling are offshoots of the cloud paradigm applied to core telecom networks, such technologies can help operator further reduce the cost of network deployments.
These are, but 3 of the many possible combinations from the ‘digital matrix’. It is not difficult to see why there were so many diverse conversations around the table. Software defined Networking (SDN) is as much digital as Social or Predictive analytics. Digital is not a bunch of things that fits nicely into a box, it best viewed as a Matrix with many possible permutations and combinations.
In retrospect, the event was far from perfect. Hosting an event is a complex activity with a million things to consider from particular dietary requirements to power point slides that work on Mac but not on Windows. Some things are bound to go wrong and in my case some did, but certainly, the theme was not one of them.
May be Digital is not only “Disruptive” but also “Disorienting”. The matrix framework for digital is one way to visualise it in a simple format.
