Startups Need To Cater To The Demands of New ‘Information Generation Consumer': Report

Waves of startups have completely changed the way people consume and do things but what makes an idea stick and cater to unseen needs still largely remains a mystery. A new report reveals that their success is dependent on catering to the multifaceted demands of the ‘Information Generation’, a new breed of connected consumers who are shaped by easy availability of information and technology and are placing new demands on how businesses operate.

The survey which was commissioned by EMC India and conducted by Greyhound Research found that hat business agility is the key business attribute that is allowing startups to disrupt traditional industries. Out of the 100 B2C and B2B startups, aged 0 to 5, surveyed, 88 per cent of respondents reported to have the ability to be to deliver unique and personalised experiences, with 42 per cent of startups already doing this organisation-wide compared with 33 per cent of mid-large enterprises. 82 per cent reported that they believed that digital technologies impact the way they do businesses.

One of the things that the survey discovered was while most startups admitted that mobiles accounted for the maximum customer outreach and experience, 79 per cent claimed that the endpoint was going beyond mobile, implying that transitioning beyond the mobile was important to a startups success.

“There are three outcomes from the survey—the need for experience continuum is high, while mobile continues to be the most important endpoint that is being served at, the definition of the endpoint will quickly go beyond the mobile, moving to smartwatches, IOT devices, BYOX, etc. It's all about the understanding of the business context and which kind of people to hire,” said Sanchit Vir Gogia, Chief Analyst and CEO of Greyhound Research.

The survey further ound that access on multiple platforms across web and mobile (82 per cent), 24x7 support and connectivity (65 per cent) and personalised experiences (62 per cent) are the top customer demands that startups are facing.

Around half of the B2B startups reportedly felt that their customers would expect proactive rather than reactive service delivery within the next two years with over 85 per cent citing that mobile devices have changed the way they do business. The majority of respondents (59 per cent) said adaptability was the core of their technology strategy, while 55 per cent were focused on connectivity.

However, the proliferation of connected devices and people is also resulting in an information overload. While startups understand the value of information in creating and delivering unique customer experiences, few are able to utilize it effectively. Nearly 60 per cent said they are not able to turn the learnings into sizeable, actionable results, and 10 per cent stated that information overload was making it even harder to make decisions.

A focus on data analytics for rethinking and fine-tuning business strategies was another revelation. 60 per cent of B2B startups indicated that real-time analytics has transformed their market outreach. About 9 in 10 startups said that customers are driving the need for data and insights, resulting in the sales and marketing teams being the highest consumers of information and analytics organisation-wide.

However, despite an understanding for the need to deploy data related outcomes and tools, the ground reality is a lot more different. “When we speak about real-time analytics, there is a dichotomy. While 85 per cent of them (the startups) want analytics, only a few understand it—how to consume it. 47 per cent have no data scientists. So they might have the stack but they do not actually know how to use it and marry it with their business context. The problem is one of understanding, people and business contexuality,” Gogia said.

When considering technology investment strategies, only 12 per cent of B2B startups are currently using Data Lakes to capture unstructured data, and none of the B2C startups surveyed are currently doing so.