The Growing Amity Between Tech & Biz
Probing whether technology is the sine qua non of businesses today is a daft thought. Its strength has been well established and is certainly inseparable from most part of our work. However, it is particularly interesting to witness the way it has advanced through the various stages and opened newer avenues for everyone around, primarily from a business perspective. It has redefined processes, functions, deliveries and growth at a massive level by changing the traditional ways of how businesses operate. The adoption of cutting-edge technologies such as CRM, Martech, AI-powered solutions, Machine Learning, Cloud Computing, Conversational Technologies and collaboration tools have begotten a paradigm shift that none would have imagined a few years ago.
This AI-enabled Martech has now become a reality for many brands to improve personalisation and automation with the right content in the right channel. Marketers now have many data touchpoints to understand their customers better. As a result of acquisitions, consolidations or new startups, the number of martech companies has grown from 150 in 2011 to over 8,000 in 2020, offering a diverse range of solutions.
It is oberseved that technology's role is more deeply appreciated post the crisis year, having enabled businesses to survive the storm. It has made us believe that technology today is fundamental, perhaps sometimes without a clear explanation. Almost that the inertia of the market takes us there, without having time to ask ourselves why I am using what they call technology.
Hareesh Tibrewala, Joint CEO, Mirum India agrees that while technology began as a productivity enhancer, it has become ‘the way to conduct business in the current times. “No business, big or small or B2B or B2C can survive anymore if you are not able to use technology to establish a relationship with your customer and be able to deliver products and services to the customer online,” he says.
Evidently, technology in current times is opening up tremendous opportunities for business. Sooraj Balakrishnan, Head-Marketing, Acer India seesit helping businesses streamline operations, predict future opportunities, optimise their products/services and serve customers better. “With the crisis, it has shown businesses that the only way to minimise disruptions and maintain business continuity is by making technology at the centrepiece of their business. Automation and AI can help companies introduce three key traits - agility, flexibility, and responsiveness - enabling companies to better adapt to fast-changing situations,” he says.
Even for Sahil Shah, Chief Business Officer, WATConsult, technology is not changing business but also disrupting the way businesses used to operate, “Ten years ago, who would have thought that we will have an app-based startup becoming an exchange-listed behemoth and that’s happened by one big driving force- technology. And it is everywhere. Right from the backend jobs to the customer-facing interfaces, technology has enabled more efficient ways for businesses and customers alike."
A Necessity-Driven Overnight Digital Revolution?
At a macro-economic level, the impact of technology till a few years back was globalisation (ability to build and manage very large global corporations) and digitisation (everything being converted into bits and bytes). Now the crisis has added one more dimension to it- dispersion. As technology has brought businesses to the customer's doorstep and it has only expanded during the past two years, Sunil Mirani, CEO, and Co-founder, Ugam finds this relationship more cohesive, agile, and quick today. It is also increasingly centred on the customer experience, he emphasises.
As indicated by the CCI (Consumer Confidence Index), the mood of consumers is not high today and the tendency is to optimise spending and buy only on necessity. Now, more than ever, there seems a need for marketers to have an acute understanding of their consumers and the market they are targeting to devise the most successful and appropriate marketing strategies. A digital platform that provides marketers with real-time insights into their consumers and gives them the necessary intelligence to shape their strategy for success will come in play.
Tabrez Alam, Chief Data & Strategy Officer, Bobble AI quips that digital adoption has taken a quantum leap at both the organisational and industry levels, while consumers moved dramatically toward online channels, and companies and industries responded in turn.“Every activity and function that could move online did, fueling a mass digital migration. Businesses also turned to digital tools in new ways. Collaboration and learning have seen a change by use of technology that helps to coordinate teams and train them to increase their productivity with the teleconferencing tools, webinars, file sharing via clouds, IM etc,” he asserts.
A recent McKinsey study also stamps that the average share of customer interactions that are digital has accelerated by three years globally, where APAC's adoption has accelerated by four years alone.
Chandralika Hazarika, MD & Co-Founder, Bigthinx further points that businesses have adapted to a much greater reliance and dependence on technology, where the ones that were always human-centric have learned to adopt technology as a means to help them operate better. “Today, many businesses have used technology to reduce their dependence on human labour while reaping the benefits that reliable technology brings to the table. This has also required new means of educating the workforce to be open and welcoming to the use of technology: something that was never a priority pre-pandemic,” she adds.
Similar to different industries and businesses at large, the marketing function, per say, has also undergone major disruptions. The key factors driving this change are the evolved customer expectations and the exponential rise of digital consumption. In the pre-pandemic era, hyper-personalisation was a buzzword to a great extent. However, in the post-crisis era, digital technology adoption is an absolute necessity to deliver a personalised, seamless omnichannel experience. To win in a market where experience is the new battleground, brands need to create new value across every interaction throughout the customer journey.
There is an increasing realisation across the C-suite that innovative marketing technology can help brands bridge the gap with the consumer; shape distinct consumer experiences and in turn, create tangible business value. In fact, Martech is enabling the CMO agenda to shift from the business of communication to intelligence-led experiences.
While the crisis has accelerated a digital-led demand boom in pockets, it has also exposed challenges in Martech adoption for several companies, such as the need to derive actionable insights from disparate data sets, put in the right governance and an integrated omnichannel approach. Going forward, leveraging data-driven insights to build a single view of the customer should be a top priority for marketers, along with innovative use of contextual and content-led marketing and in-app programmatic advertising, tell experts.
“As the pandemic unfolds, businesses that keep their strategies agile will come out winners as they swiftly navigate the challenging times. The hook that connects consumers with marketers in this changing world is technology, especially through AI & hyper-personalisation,” comments Dimpy Yadav, General Manager, Xaxis India on a new era in the digital media advertising world where these advanced technologies are promising the evolution of media effectiveness by addressing cross-device targeting, audience reach unification, hyper-personalisation and 360-degree measurement.
Experts maintain that without technology and connectivity, it would have been a scary proposition in situations like the last year. It is this technology that has somewhere weathered these small and large businesses from the storm and helped them sail with reduced jolts. This crisis time has forever changed the experience of being a customer, an employee, a citizen and a human. In such a context, the continued and effective use of technology, with an empathetic problem-solving approach, will guide the future course of action for businesses. Also, as technology increasingly automates both marketing operations and intelligence, creativity will be a key differentiator in the coming times.
