How would you describe the Machine Learning (ML) landscape?

ĚýThe ML landscape growth will continue at an exponentially accelerated rate. Globally, companies are expected to invest over $265 billion in new intelligence technologies by 2023. Whether you’re ordering a book online, deciding what movie to watch or receiving a bank warning about suspected fraudulent activity on your credit card, ML is all around us. Machines now have the capability to not only execute set instructions based on algorithmic programming, but improve automatically and autonomously, through experience and the continuous injection of data. This has led to machines having the ability to make decisions without being specifically programmed to do so. This has huge implications for the world of business and society.

What are some of the standout developments in ML right now and how is this affecting business?

One of the biggest trends we’re seeing now is hyper-automation, where repetitive tasks are being performed by machines at a greater scale, timing, and accuracy than any human could ever hope to achieve. Consider the example of forecasting stock levels and ordering new stock in a warehouse or understanding documents using Optical Character Recognition (OCR). These capabilities are providing differentiated business value and competitive advantage for early adopters. ĚýAll businesses strive for improved efficiencies, greater levels of cost reduction, and greater profit margin, particularly in the wake of COVID-19 and the disruption it has wrought. Hyper-automation allows companies to focus on these strategic businesses while remaining adaptable and agile.

Is ML increasing efficiencies?

Absolutely, although there are teething problems; humans and machines are still learning how to work together. But already we are seeing ML driving efficiency in business in multiple ways.

As business processes become more digitised, companies have access to an ever-increasing stream of data which, with the help of ML, can be harnessed to automate different tasks. As this trend progresses, spending will decrease in the following areas: maintenance; payroll costs, which are now largely automated; raw material and quality control costs; equipment and machinery; and operating costs, which includes sales and marketing.

Although some have been resistant to embrace this new technology, slowly the light is dawning for SA businesses as to the extent of the savings they can achieve through AI and ML. Soon there will be an ecosystem of companies offering solutions that drive real business value and competitive advantage, based on these exponential technologies and giving support to those implementing them.

ĚýHow would you describe the evolving nature of man’s relationship with machine?

In the past, man was pitted against machine, but the new normal is not either/or, its AND. Gartner researchers posit that ML cannot match the human brain’s breadth of intelligence and dynamic ability to learn, yet. Instead, ML should be used to scope specific functions in business, particularly automating routine human activities. This is based on the current maturity of the technology and the ability of the technology to drive the best types of business value in todays complex multifaceted business environments.

The future will depend on a symbiotic relationship between man and machine, as Forrester analysts have picked up on. It won’t be a case of humans leading and machines doing the work. Instead, machines will match humans in terms of leadership, decision-making and even executive tasks.

The marketing intelligence firm IDC predicts that AI will be inescapable by 2025 and that about 90% of key enterprise applications will be driven by AI and ML. These applications will deliver incremental improvements to automate processes and replace rule-based techniques to enable applications to be operate more intelligently and dynamically.

How is ML developing based on real-time customer experience?

As far as customer experience (CX) is concerned, near real-time experiences are fast becoming the minimum requirement for most industries as companies are pressurised to build matching real-time customer experience signals. Forrester researchers predict that CX leaders will manage a portfolio of automation experiences, from the building and testing of data to the delivery and perceived value (or lack of value) of those experiences.

If a machine can memorise customers’ preferences and understand speech and text the more it’s used, we will be a step closer to achieving hyper-personalisation, streamlined processes and a memorable and ultra-convenient uniquely tailored customer experiences that truly differentiate brands.

What impact will ML have on employment? Will humans be replaced by machines?

This is a difficult topic to explore with any certainty. In a country like South Africa which is in desperate need of higher employment, anything that is seen to replace jobs is seen as a threat, which is understandable. But AI and ML won’t necessarily ONLY take people’s jobs away; they might just make them easier. If the boring part of your job could be done by a machine, it would free you up to concentrate on more important, higher-level work. Distinction must be drawn between tasks, jobs and work as a whole.

In a recent Gartner survey, 75% of respondents said they wanted AI and ML to help with tasks rather than completely take over tasks. That is probably because the same respondents said their top reasons for using AI and ML was automating repetitive or manual tasks, improving customer experience, and reducing costs.

As far as people are concerned, Forrester analysts have advised workers to learn core skills, adapt to new working models and understand what it means to be ready and fit for the future. This involves maximising your “Robotics Quotient”. In other words, it’s time to make friends with machines.

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Physical distancing has been mandated by governments across the globe, consumers are hunkering down in the safety of their homes, rarely venturing out and digital engagement, along with touchless technologies, have exponentially increased. However, it can be argued that in fact, quite the opposite is true; that the Experience Economy, now, is more important than ever before.

And here’s why. As companies try to connect with their consumers, employees and partners; as they try and meet the unmet and unarticulated needs of their stakeholders, the experiences they deliver, at this critical inflection point of our history, will be more important than ever to their long term success.

As a concept, the Experience Economy is not new. A 1998 article in Harvard Business Review titled ‘Welcome to the Experience Economy’ highlighted how leading companies understood that “the next competitive battleground lies in staging experiences.” Products and services were no longer seen as differentiators.

By 2017, McKinsey had declared ‘Experiences are king’ as their research confirmed how consumers had gradually shifted their expenditure from products to experiences. In their report, McKinsey found that personal consumption expenditure on experience-related services had grown 1.5 times faster than total personal consumption spending and nearly four times faster than expenditure on products.

Gartner even declared that 2019 would be the year that experience overtake product and price as the main competitive differentiators for brands and businesses. Positive, hyper-personalised experiences were now required to sweeten the deal for consumers.

Rise of Intelligent Experiences

In line with the rise of exponential technologies such as Artificial Intelligence, Big Data and the Internet of Thing, the concept of the Experience Economy has also evolved over the past few years. Today, successful businesses manage their experiences as a core strategic business capability. They have seen how customers are willing to pay more for experiences. They understand that the value needle has shifted.

This new approach is powered by Intelligence. Intelligent Experience Management leverages the power of exponential technologies – AI, IoT, advanced analytics – to drive a more optimal customer, employee, product and brand experiences. This relentless focus on value delivery through enhanced experiences, is what will allow enterprises to win in today’s market.

And these exponential technologies powering differentiated business capabilities, are vital to the long term success of enterprises, because of the volume and nature of data that informs modern Experience Economy strategies. Traditionally, organisations relied heavily on operational data – revenue, inventory, suppliers, workforce – to make decisions, but today they need insights from a different type of data to augment the value their provide to their customers; they need experience data.

Experience data provides insights into the sentiment and emotional aspects that influence a customer, employee, partner or supplier decisions towards a brand. In short, operational data reveals what is happening in an organisation, and experience data reveals why and how it is happening.

An Intelligent Experience Management strategy would measure and track operational data and experience data and use AI in combination with other exponential technologies to construct and augment individualised profiles of customers, employees, brands or products. Predicitve or Prescriptive actions can then be taken in order to optimally drive outcomes that matter.

Put another way, instead of reacting to problems when they occur, increasing the ‘experience gap’, companies can now get ahead of the curve and address challenges before they have a lasting negative impact on the organisation.

The impact and advantage of this type of capability will be indispensable to organisations as they adapt to changing customer behaviour in the wake of the pandemic. While adoption of digital services has exponentially increased across the globe, the events of 2020 and the resulting shift in consumer behaviour, will put additional pressure on organisations to transform how they engage with customer and employees.

And nowhere is this shift as apparent as in the financial services sector.

Experience Economy transforming banks, insurers

Banks’ relationships with their customers have largely been built on the basis of compliance: often a box-ticking exercise that ensures the bank’s conduct is in line with a robust set of rules and standards and that the consumer adheres to a strict set of principles.

This dynamic prevailed until the emergence of the internet and other digital technologies that created new channels for customer engagement. According to a recent Qualtrics study, of all the time customers spent interacting with their bank, 47% of that time was via online channels, and less than a third of that time in person. The same study found that ‘Poor Service’ was the second-most important factor in consumers considering leaving their bank for a competitor.

The banking industry is extremely competitive. Most banks generally offer the same types of products and services. The real differentiation lies in the experience that customers have when interacting with the bank. And the cost of a poor experience I this industry has become increasingly significant: a 2018 survey by Forrester Research found that, for every one-point decline in its customer experience score, a multi-channel bank loses $124-million in potential revenue.

Banks, competing with more agile fin-techs and a growing ecosystem of non-traditional financial services providers – including the powerful telco industry – have taken note of this and have been making significant investment into their Experience Economy strategies. By 2018, McKinsey found that three out of four of the world’s 50 largest banks were committed to some form of customer experience transformation.

Insurers are also taking note.

Insurance provider Allianz recently leveraged Qualtrics, the experience management platform, to collect experience data from customers in 22 countries. Using the platform to filter and priorities insights by location, and function, Allianz could empower their customer-facing teams with the certainty to know what action to take to deliver a seamless and positive experience at every step of each customers’ engagement with the company.

Allianz has also used the experience data to develop entirely new products to help protect businesses from emerging risks, improve its reputation for quality consultations and become integral business partners to its customers, building lasting loyalty.

Financial services companies that have not invested in transforming their customer and employee experiences will be left far behind their competitors in a post-2020 world. Leaving experience management to chance is a recipe for failure.

Instead, organisations should seek ways to improve their collection and processing of experience data and combine that with operational data to make informed decisions over the future of their companies.

The post Manage Experiences Intelligently in a Socially Distant World appeared first on 51ˇçÁ÷Africa News Center.

As a concept, the Experience Economy is not new. A 1998 article in Harvard Business Review titled ‘’ highlighted how leading companies understood that “the next competitive battleground lies in staging experiences.”ĚýProducts and services were no longer seen as differentiators.

By 2017, McKinsey had declared ‘’ as their research confirmed how consumers had gradually shifted their expenditure from products to experiences. In their report, McKinsey found that personal consumption expenditure on experience-related services had grown 1.5 times faster than total personal consumption spending and nearly four times faster than expenditure on products.

Gartner even declared that 2019 would be the year that as the main competitive differentiators for brands and businesses. Positive, hyper-personalised experiences were now required to sweeten the deal for consumers.

Rise of Intelligent Experiences

In line with the rise of exponential technologies such as Artificial Intelligence, Big Data and the Internet of Thing, the concept of the Experience Economy has also evolved over the past few years. Today, successful businesses manage their experiences as a core strategic business capability. They have seen how customers are willing to pay more for experencies. They understand that the value needle has shifted.

This new approach is powered by Intelligence. Intelligent Experience Management leverages the power of exponential technologies – AI, IoT, advanced analytics – to drive a more optimal customer, employee, product and brand experiences. This relentless focus on value delivery through enhanced experiences, is what will allow enterprises to win in today’s market.

And these exponential technologies powering differentiated business capabilities, are vital to the long term success of enterprises, because of the volume and nature of data that informs modern Experience Economy strategies. Traditionally, organisations relied heavily on operational data – revenue, inventory, suppliers, workforce – to make decisions, but today they need insights from a different type of data to augment the value their provide to their customers; they need experience data.

Experience data provides insights into the sentiment and emotional aspects that influence a customer, employee, partner or supplier decisionsĚýtowards a brand. In short, operational data reveals what is happening in an organisation, and experience data reveals why and how it is happening.

An Intelligent Experience Management strategy would measure and track operational data and experience data and use AI in combination with other exponential technologies to construct and augment individualised profiles of customers, employees, brands or products. Predicitve or Prescriptive actions can then be taken in order to optimally drive outcomes that matter.

Put another way, instead of reacting to problems when they occur, increasing the ‘experience gap’, companies can now get ahead of the curve and address challenges before they have a lasting negative impact on the organisation.

The impact and advantage of this type of capability will be indispensable to organisations as they adapt to changing customer behaviour in the wake of the pandemic. While adoption of digital services has exponentially increased across the globe, the events of 2020 and the resulting shift in consumer behaviour, will put additional pressure on organisations to transform how they engage with customer and employees.

And nowhere is this shift as apparent as in the financial services sector.

ĚýExperience Economy transforming banks, insurers

Banks’ relationships with their customers have largely been built on the basis of compliance: often a box-ticking exercise that ensures the bank’s conduct is in line with a robust set of rules and standards and that the consumer adheres to a strict set of principles.

This dynamic prevailed until the emergence of the internet and other digital technologies that created new channels for customer engagement. According to a recent Qualtrics study, of all the time customers spent interacting with their bank, . The same study found that ‘Poor Service’ was the second-most important factor in consumers considering leaving their bank for a competitor.

The banking industry is extremely competitive. Most banks generally offer the same types of products and services. The real differentiation lies in the experience that customers have when interacting with the bank. And the cost of a poor experience I this industry has become increasingly significant: Ěýa 2018 survey by Forrester Research found that, for every one-point decline in its customer experience score,.

Banks, competing with more agile fin-techs and a growing ecosystem of non-traditional financial services providers – including the powerful telco industry – have taken note of this and have been making significant investment into their Experience Economy strategies. By 2018, McKinsey found that were committed to some form of customer experience transformation.

Insurers are also taking note.

Insurance provider Allianz recently leveraged Qualtrics, the experience management platform, to collect experience data from customers in 22 countries. Using the platform to filter and priorities insights by location, and function, Allianz could empower their customer-facing teams with the certainty to know what action to take to deliver a seamless and positive experience at every step of each customers’ engagement with the company.

Allianz has also used the experience data to develop entirely new products to help protect businesses from emerging risks, improve its reputation for quality consultations and become integral business partners to its customers, building lasting loyalty.

Financial services companies that have not invested in transforming their customer and employee experiences will be left far behind their competitors in a post-2020 world. Leaving experience management to chance is a recipe for failure.

Instead, organisations should seek ways to improve their collection and processing of experience data and combine that with operational data to make informed decisions over the future of their companies.

The post Experiences are Even More Important in a Socially Distant World. Manage them Intelligently appeared first on 51ˇçÁ÷Africa News Center.

One such truth is smbolised by the global #BlackLivesMatter movement, which has once againĚýhighlighted the embedded biases in our interconnected social fabric, forcing us all, to re-evaluate long standing notions of morality, fairness and ethics.

It is worth taking pause, to consider whether the exponential technological progress is not also amplifying some of the very same challenges we are trying to overcome, as a global society.

As we strive to meet the needs of customers, we continuously look towards technology. We see leading companies globally investing heavily in technologies such as cloud computing, internet of things, advanced analytics, edge computing, virtual and augmented reality, 3D printing and of course artificial intelligence. And it is AI, which many experts tout as one of the most transformational technologies of our time,in terms of sheer impact on humanity.

Global use of AI has , with estimated revenues of . AI powered technology solutions have become so pervasive, a recent Gallup poll found that .

And yet, a dark side of AI is surfacing with alarming frequency as AI engrains itself in our daily lives.

Bias in the machine

There are ample examples of algorithms displaying forms of bias.

In 2018, of Gmail’s predictive text tool automatically assigning “investor” as “male”. When a research scientist typed “I am meeting an investor next week”, Gmail’s Smart Compose tool thought they would want to follow up with the question: “Do you want to meet him?”

That same year, Amazon had to decommission its AI-powered talent acquisition system . The software seemingly downgraded female candidates if their resumes included phrases with the word “women’s” in them, for example “women’s hockey club captain.”

Many of the large tech firms battle with diversity, with men much better represented than women in most major tech companies. Having gender bias embedded in algorithms designed to support the hiring process presents a significant risk to efforts at achieving greater diversity: Mercer’s Global Talent Trends report for 2019 highlights that 88% of companies globally already use AI powered solutions in some way for HR.

Persecuted by an algorithm

Errant algorithms can be responsible for greater harm than just a few missed employment opportunities.

In June 2020, the on an African American man wrongfully arrested for a crime he didn’t commit after a flawed match from a facial recognition algorithm.

found that facial recognition software, used by US police departments for decades, work relatively well on certain demographics, but is far less effective on other demographics, mainly due to a lack of diversity in the data that the developers used to train these algorithms.

Microsoft and Amazon have halted sales of their facial recognition software until there is a better understanding and mitigation of their impact, on especially vulnerable or minority communities. IBM has even gone as far to halt .

How bias enters our algorithms

McKinsey supports the view that it is actually the underlying data that is the culprit in perpetuating bias, more so than the actual algorithm itself. , the firm argued that algorithms trained on data containing human decisions have a natural tendency toward bias. For example, news articles could instil the common gender stereotypes we find in society simply due to the nature of the language used.

Many of the early algorithms were also trained using web data, which is often rife with our raw, unfiltered thoughts and prejudices. A person commenting anonymously on an online forum arguably has more freedom to display prejudices without much consequence. Any algorithm trained on this data is likely to assimilate the embedded biases.

As observes: “Debiasing humans is a lot harder than debiasing AI systems.”

One example of this is with its chatbot, Tay. Tay was plugged directly into Twitter, where users across the world could interact with it. Users of the popular social media platform promptly got to work teaching the bot racist, misogynistic phrases. Within one day, the bot started praising Hitler, forcing Microsoft researchers to pull the experiment.

The lesson: algorithms learn precisely what you teach them, consciously or unconsciously. And because algorithms learn from data, data matters.

Web data is also not fairly representative of society at large: issues with access to connectivity and the cost of smartphones and data could exclude many – especially minorities – from engaging with online content. This means that data collected from the web is naturally skewed to the demographics that make most use of websites and social media.

Combating bias in our AI solutions

One of the biggest challenges for the creators of AI algorithms trying to eliminate bias, besides merely identifying it, is knowing what should replace it. If fairness is the opposite of bias, how do you define fairness?

Princeton computer scientist Arvind Narayanan argues there are , the problem this creates is that one person’s fairness could be another’s discrimination.

There is arguably a need for greater diversity in the development rooms where AI algorithms are created. A cursory glance at the demographics of the big tech firms shows a disproportionate gender and demographic bias. More must be done to accelerate the synthesis of diverse and inclusive perspectives in the AI creation process, so that AI algorithms and the data they are trained on embody a broad range of perspectives, allowing them to drive more optimal outcomes for all those represented in society.

What can we do to mitigate bias in the AI solutions we increasingly use to make potentially life changing decisions, such as arresting someone or hiring someone? Greater awareness of bias can help developers see the context in which AI could amplify embedded bias and guide them to put corrective measures in place. Testing processes should also be developed with bias in mind: AI creators should deliberately create processes and practices that test for and correct bias. Design should always keep bias in mind.

Finally, AI firms need to make investments into bias research, partnering with other disciplines far beyond technology such as psychology or philosophy, and share the learnings broadly to ensure all the algorithms we use can operate alongside humans in a responsible and helpful manner.

Fixing bias is not something we can do overnight. It’s a process, just like solving discrimination in any other part of society. However, with greater awareness and a purposeful approach to combating bias, AI algorithm creators have a hugely influential role to play in helping establish a more fair and just society for everyone.

This could be one silver lining in the ominous cloud that is 2020.

The post Why Eliminating Bias in AI is Key to AI Success appeared first on 51ˇçÁ÷Africa News Center.

AI Expo Africa is the continent’s largest trade-focused artificial intelligence (AI), Robotic Process Automation (RPA), Data Science and Fourth Industrial Revolutions (4IR) business conference. Now in its third consecutive year, the 2020 edition will be held online on 3 and 4 September.

SAP’s end-to-end suite of business solutions and services enable its customers to transform their businesses so that they may serve their customers in unique and differentiated ways. The German company has more than 440 000 customers in more than 180 countries and over 200 million subscribers in its cloud user base. In addition, the firm also works with over 21 000 partner companies globally.

Rudeon Snell, Global Senior Director – Industries & Customer Advisory, 51ˇçÁ÷is set to deliver a talk at AI Expo Africa 2020 titled, “Tackling bias in AI – The key to unlocking trillion dollars of value” inĚýwhich he will discuss why bias in AI is one of the most critical topics of our time and why it is imperative that bias in AI be addressed as a priority initiative.

Snell stated, “Trust is still the ultimate human currency and no technology solution can ever hope to achieve adoption at scale in society, if its users do not trust the outcomes provided by that solution. This is why solving bias in AI is fundamental to progressing into an AI first world”.

Nick Bradshaw, co-founder of AI Media Group stated, “We are very grateful for the support from 51ˇçÁ÷at this years’ show – they have been a long term supporter of our event and community.ĚýĚýMany of the large vendors like 51ˇçÁ÷are showcasing many new AI and RPA related features on their platforms at the show.ĚýĚýWe are able to curate both local, regional and international interest in these new products and services and large companies like 51ˇçÁ÷as well as the smallest, newest start-ups, gain significant exposure via our community, event, Synapse magazine and U Tube channel AITV.”.

Roy Bannister, co-founder of AI Media Group and show production director at AI Expo Africa stated, “Its great to be welcoming back Rudeon and the 51ˇçÁ÷team – they really value our platform and community and that’s what makes being part of the AI Expo Africa family such a great experience.ĚýĚýThis year our main two day live event is archived and then lives on for 30 more days as a learning platform for the whole of Africa where we will be inviting some 5,000 – 15,000 more delegates to join for FREE as part of our wider vision to inspire young people about the 4IR in Africa. We believe this is a first for Africa and with 40 hours of talks, 82 exhibitors and a poster zone, youth zone and 3 trade pavilions, the young minds of tomorrow will experience first hand what is happening in industry and also secure intern / work placements via the vendors at the show”.

About AI Expo Africa 2020
Produced by the AI Media Group and with 3000+ community members, AI Expo Africa is now entering its third successful year and is the largest B2B trade focused Artificial Intelligence, RPA & Data Science business conference in Africa. The 2020 edition of AI Expo Africa will run online on 3-4 September 2020 and builds upon the phenomenal success of the 2018 and 2019 events that cemented it as the largest gathering of its kind, with over 1000 registered delegates, decision makers, investors, buyers, suppliers, innovators, SMBs and global brands in the region.

TicketsĚý

Contact:Ěýenquiries@aiexpoafrica.com
Web:Ěý

The post 51ˇçÁ÷to Showcase Intelligent Enterprise Solutions at AI Expo Africa 2020 Online appeared first on 51ˇçÁ÷Africa News Center.

The COVID-19 pandemic has fundamentally changed how we view customer experience, teaching lessons that businesses can take into the post-lockdown world.

Each time we as consumers interact with a brand, it leaves an impression. The sum of all these impressions is what we today call customer experience or CX. The rise of technology has led to aĚýnew-age consumer – one who is informed, picky and imbued with the power of social media at their fingertips. As a result of this pandemic, there has been an explosion in the number of consumers that are interacting with businesses online and many businesses are having to think really hard about how they now shape these consumers’ CX, considering the harsh reality of the present day.

“One of the biggest CX challenges posed by the lockdowns across the globe, is how brands now need to reinvent their customer engagement models, in the age of Covid-19,” explains Rudeon Snell, the Senior Director of Customer Advisory and Industries for SAP. “A key aspect of this ‘redefinition’ is the rapid acceleration towards digital experiences. Essentially, businesses are having to reimagine CX, to serve customers while they shelter.”

Snell has real insight on the importance of CX in a post-COVID world. His company, SAP, is known as a global leader in enterprise software, as well as a market leader in digital technologies. As the world’s largest enterprise cloud company, 51ˇçÁ÷has over 200 million cloud users, with over 437,000 customers in more than 180 countries ranging from small companies to global organizations. 78% of the world’s food and 82% of the world’s medical devices are distributed through 51ˇçÁ÷customers, while over 78% of all business transactions around the globe come into contact with 51ˇçÁ÷software. It’s impossible to manage that level of transactional volume, without a real appreciation for the importance of the customer experience, as a strategic enabler to business success.

Customer service has always been a vital cog in the Experience Management wheel. Now more than ever, the importance of customer service has been highlighted. As Snell points out, theĚýCOVID-19 pandemic has thrust customer service directly into the spotlight. The lockdown has created a situation where the most important business stakeholders are human beings, who are now craving comfort, security and a sense of connection, on top of suddenly needing an entirely new customer experience. Industries such as airlines, hospitality, sports, entertainment and events are dealing with waves of cancellations, refunds and credit requests, in addition to a lack of physical customer presence. At the same time, delivery services are dealing with a surge in demand, as people adapt to a new normal. Call centres around the world are flooded with an overflow of customer service requests. Agents are working overtime, often in new remote environments, leading to immense challenges for customer service teams, arguably, at a time when it has never mattered more.

Interpersonal Solutions for a Digital Age

This isn’t a problem that can be solved, by just introducing a swishy new website design or new call centre scripts. If there’s one thing the lockdown has taught us, it’s that CX, like so much else, is ultimately about human connections, even in the digital world.

“When we take a step back, we have to first acknowledge that all relationships have an emotional component to them — that holds true for the relationship between people and brands,” Snell says. “A brand’s relationship with its customers is built over time, nourished by experiences along many touchpoints, both digital and physical. AsĚýSAP, the burning questions we are asking during this time are not grounded in ‘How can we expand market share?’ or even, ‘How do we boost top-line revenue to counteract the economic devastation?’ We are laser-focused on answering the most pressing question, which is ‘How do we support our customers right now in a meaningful, empathetic, human-centric and relevant manner?’”

It is not only customers that require support from businesses, but also their employees. Theodore Roosevelt once remarked thatĚý“Nobody cares how much you know until they know how much you care.”ĚýBy the same token, Snell argues that it’s only after you’ve shown your employees how much you care that you earn the right to ask them what they need in order to be as productive as possible.

“Consistently checking on the well-being of your employees during this time, is simply the right thing to do. With Qualtrics’s Remote Pulse, any business is able to keep daily tabs on how their employees are doing. And during these unprecedented times, we have made it free to use for a period of time, so that all organizations can leverage this benefit,” Snell says. “In addition to this, supply chains across the globe are being disrupted at scale. As SAP, we have also taken the decision to open access to Ariba Discovery for a certain time. By connecting buyers and suppliers amidst global supply chain disruption, any buyer will be able to post immediate sourcing needs and any of the four million suppliers on Ariba Network will be able to respond.”

A Roadmap to CX

In times as uncertain as the ones we are currently living through, what customers crave more than anything else is clarity, authenticity and informed advice. 51ˇçÁ÷Customer Experience offers a comprehensive selection of solutions, that can provide customers with just that.

This includes a suite of industry-leading cloud solutions under the 51ˇçÁ÷Intelligent Enterprise umbrella to help businesses innovate, integrate silos and attain the agility they need to respond to rapidly changing times. As Snell points out, the global economy is becoming much more of an “Experience Economy” and as a result of this shift, it is more important now than ever, that customers receive the experience they expect.

“Experience gaps”Ěýoccur when a brand fails to meet customer expectations at any point along the customer journey. It’s where relationships between a provider and a customer so frequently break down. Companies believe they are delivering what is promised, but if you ask the customer, they will tell a different story altogether. Failure to close experience gaps have a direct effect on a company’s stock performance, with market leaders nearly tripling the market performance of those who fall behind in this arena.

Of course, one essential differentiator in the Experience Economy is time to market. Personalised experiences need to be delivered consistently, yet innovatively, to ever tighter deadlines. Enter 51ˇçÁ÷Customer Experience solutions. Their CX solution portfolio allows users to implement solutions quickly and conveniently, bringing together customer data, experiential data and operational data. This data convolution is then augmented by the power of intelligent technologies such as artificial intelligence, advanced analytics and machine learning, all with the express purpose of delivering engaging and trusted experiences in, the moments that matter most to customers.

Today, customer expectations are higher than ever and even during the global lockdowns, businesses that can offer continuous, real-time, engagement across multiple digital channels, are the ones able to best weather the storm. The scale and magnitude of the challenge are enormous, but with the capabilities offered by 51ˇçÁ÷Customer Experience solutions, businesses are well-positioned to overcome the challenges posed. As Snell points out, “It’s not just about selling a single product or service, it’s about instigating the rapid pace of innovation needed to differentiate your brand and drive value in the Experience Economy, in a holistic manner.”

That’s the ambition behind SAP’s Customer Experience solution portfolio. It blends market-leading, cloud-native solutions for sentiment, sales, service, marketing, e-commerce, and customer data management to empower businesses to take their customers on unique, personalised journeys that build trust and brand loyalty long term. It amounts to a more loyal and engaged customer base enjoying increased efficiencies, lower costs and less risk.

Empathy, Built-in

By analysing the behaviour of customers and their transactions 51ˇçÁ÷can draw insight about what, where, or when a customer does or is likely to do something, but 51ˇçÁ÷readily acknowledges this is not the whole picture. Data alone cannot answer the ‘Why?’ questions.

Understanding the Experience Economy is something that can feel counter-intuitive to a lot of businesses. If you run a business, you are likely the sort of person who naturally thinks in terms of the economic value of a product, the quality of the product, what distinguishes your product from its competitors.

But the conversation about the Experience Economy was naturally tailored to meet the demand of the digitally native millennial generation, who have become the largest purchasing group. A far smaller proportion of this generation own homes than previous generations, and while older generations might have poured their disposable income into building up a large record collection, millennials are more likely to simply subscribe to an on-demand service like Spotify. They are more likely to interact with, and express themselves, online, and have birthed phenomena like “FOMO” (fear of missing out) as the status symbol becomes not what you have, but what you’ve been up to. In short, what they value and pay for most, is experiences.

The reality is that over the last three months, this description has grown to include customers even outside the millennial demographic. Under lockdown conditions, most people are interacting with brands digitally. No matter how much you own, the things you are probably missing the most are experiences, sitting in a restaurant, ordering a drink at a bar, seeing a film in the cinema, taking a flight or a cruise overseas.

And embedded in all of those experiences, is the feeling of wanting to be around people who can share in those experiences with you or sharing those experiences with your family and friends in a digital world. This means businesses that can recognise and interact with customers on a personal experiential level, have a much stronger value proposition, than those who do not.

SAP’s recent acquisition of Qualtrics, which we have written about before, now allows for businesses to embed the opinion and voice of the customer throughout their business processes, infusing the customer’s journey with empathy and engaging with them on a much deeper level. With Qualtrics, businesses are able to tap into the experience ocean of their consumers and shape individually crafted, sentiment infused journeys, for those consumers.

ĚýLearning the Lessons of Lockdown

The lockdown will not last forever, but Snell emphasises that the lessons businesses have learned from the lockdown must be taken to heart, long after this pandemic has ended.

“The criticality of Experience Management (EX) cannot be emphasised more. Experience Management is the only sustainable competitive advantage,” he insists.Ěý“If you look at the experience portion of the Consumer Price Index (CPI) over the long term, you can see how experience offerings break away from the pack, with consumers paying more for experiences and experience spending making up a bigger portion of spending, now than before. It is clear that if you aren’t competing on experience, you are missing boat!”

Snell highlights a recent study by Bain that showed how most companies are disconnected from the experiences they provide, with 80% of CEOs believing they are providing a great customer experience, but only 8% of their customers agreeing with that assessment. Snell believes the Covid-19 pandemic has only amplified this experience gap exponentially.

“AsĚýSAP, one of our core beliefs is that we owe it to our customers to help them serve their customers in unique and differentiated ways. Ensuring that we empower our customers to cohesively optimize theirĚýcustomer, employee, product and brand experiences, helps them drive sustainable competitive advantage,” he tells us. “That’s howĚýSAPĚýhelps its customers compete and win in the Experience Economy!”

When businesses finally start to rebuild once the pandemic is over, CX will still be an essential competitive capability. Companies will need to relearn the shifting needs of their customers as they emerge from their shelters and tentatively engage in the economy.

“The COVID-19 pandemic has caused virtually everyone to reconsider their needs and wants, in addition to how they interact with brands. Companies will need to respond by focusing on listening to their consumers from a place of empathy and with a bias toward how they can be most helpful to their customers during this time,” Snell says. “Listening and building with empathy, will let organizations provide products, services and most importantly, experiences, that genuinely serve customers’ needs and generate goodwill, without coming across as tone-deaf or uncaring. Tying their efforts to relevance is also a crucial element when wanting to drive successful CX programs.”

In a crisis like this, companies are faced with shifting priorities and evolving needs, both from customers and employees. Timing is a crucial element to success under these circumstances. Digitally savvy consumers will not take kindly to outdated, tone-deaf and irrelevant CX efforts and employees who feel their employers don’t care about their well-being, will simply not be as productive as they can be.

“A focus on getting your timing right in landing your experience management programs shows customers you respect their reality, which is more relevant than ever during this emotionally charged time,” Snell points out. “Companies can’t begin to build CX programs, without understanding that their consumers are all riding out the same storm in different boats. That shows a level of empathy that consumers gravitate towards. Finding ways to cope during this crisis is a task that looks different for everyone, so connecting on a hyper-personal level is more important than ever.”

The COVID-19 pandemic has shattered many of the long-held assumptions about what customers need and how they need it, but Snell reminds us that this is a time when CX can thrive because, at the core, it’s about connecting with individuals.

The post How CX Can Help You Win in a Post-COVID-19 World appeared first on 51ˇçÁ÷Africa News Center.

Travel and hospitality industries find themselves in the same adapt-or-die situation. For now, some hotels are responding by providing rooms for healthcare professionals and first responders who have either gone to work in another city or have decided the risk of carrying infection back to their loved ones is too great. Some airlines have pivoted from carrying passengers to moving cargo and donating masks and airline meals to first responders and those in need.

The first step for any business entering the era of COVID-19 has been simply to respond as appropriately as possible. This usually amounts to warp speed for most organizations. The metaphor of building the plane while flying it has suddenly changed direction to building an off-road vehicle out of plane parts while flying what had been a plane. There’s nothing simple about it.

But success in business requires being highly adaptable. We’ve been building toward swift adaptability through digital transformation, using greater levels ofĚýĚýto get closer to real-time visibility and responsiveness to quickly changing conditions. High-speed creative responses, innovation and adaptation are going to remain essential ingredients for building organizational resilience moving forward.

Take Aaron Hornlimann’s quick pivot of his company, Elenium Automation, which “provides check-in and bag drop systems used at 13 airports.” Hornlimann had firsthand accounts about how SARS impacted air travel in Hong Kong and shifted his operations to develop and apply for “patents on a contactless machine that measures vital signs to determine if a would-be traveler is showing symptoms of COVID-19.” As Hornlimann says, “We’re hoping that automated health screening will encourage people to return to travel sooner” and “inspire greater confidence.”

This is the kind of innovation we’re likely to see applied to industries such as air travel, cruise lines, sports, and other events whose offerings are experiences requiring physical presence.

By continuing to develop theĚýĚýinto our built environments we will see how the potential of digital transformation becomes truly essential to building a resilient organization. Business and everyday life will enter a new era and the Fourth Industrial Revolution will be more fully realized, accelerating the delivery of value experiences in a safe way.

Smart environments can assure safety and build trust: If you build it, they will come (back)

A lot has changed and will continue to change in how businesses interact with employees as well as customers. And a lot of what changes won’t be going back to the way things were before.

What will stay the same? The essentials will remain essential, even if they look a bit different. Human relationships built on trust, transparency and empathy are among the most essential for maintaining society and business.

Without question, we will have to change traditional business models to adapt to a post-COVID-19 world. Businesses and industries who expect to survive and have any hope of remaining competitive will likely have to embrace the journey to becoming anĚý. Many at the forefront have been on this journey for a long time, and many have been working hard to implement their digital transformation if they’re not already digital native.

What’s next: Smart environments will be a necessity going forward

The ways in which businesses interact with customers and employees will necessarily change. Not only by embracing virtual environments, but also our relationships with our built environments will change.

As the economy gets moving again, we’re likely to see big changes to how we experience and interact with our built environments. Stadiums, offices, distribution centers, convention centers and factories as well as cruise ships, airplanes, and hotels have perhaps some of the biggest challenges.

Assuming restrictions on large gatherings and crowds of people are lifted without qualification at some point, customers are not going to feel safe and comfortable for a longer time than these businesses can wait. What can be done when the virus can linger in the air and on surfaces? How do they earn customer’s trust again?

Take Amazon, for example, whose share price hasn’t been impacted, although they are seeing more cases of workers in the warehouses and distribution centers testing positive for COVID-19. In fact, their workers have startedĚýĚýabout the lack of provision for social distancing. So, if they expect to continue with as little interruption as possible, they will have to find a way toĚý.

But the travel and hospitality industries face incredible challenges to innovate and adapt to creating a different type of experience if social distancing continues in one form or another. The most practical and effective solution may be if we have an amount of rapid detection built into the environment itself. In a world where if we have mini outbreaks, we will need to certify people as healthy, safe, or well, to get onto a cruise ship. Businesses may have to create environments with some level of health monitoring built in. To maintain that safety and allow work and play to resume in anything resembling what we knew as normal will require the ability to ensure the health of each person moving within that environment.

As seen above, the technologies to check temperatures can detect those who are symptomatic, but as we’ve learned, many asymptomatic have transmitted the coronavirus unknowingly, so contact-tracing of individuals becomes a potential solution, and the technology is here and now, as we’ve seen with the partnership between,Ěý

Companies will need to gather more telemetry about the movement of people within its environments and develop plans for how handle an outbreak in such environments. UV-C lights can kill the virus but are unsafe for anyone in close proximity to the rays.ĚýĚýhas solved this challenge by linking the lights to sensors which detect movement, which are in use in many spaces anyway. Such lighting solutions can be used overnight in offices, convention centres or in closed areas such as restaurants on cruise ships to eliminate traces of the virus, safely.

Privacy will be a huge concern, of course. On one hand it seems like an authoritarian dystopia. Compound that with the last five years of data breaches and data privacy abuses by the tech giants and the hesitation and knee-jerk distrust doesn’t seem so unreasonable.

Before now such measures would have been out of the question. To allow employers and businesses access to an employee’s or customer’s health data would be unacceptable. Except we’ve been agreeing to similar trade-offs for decades. Many jobs have required drug tests and other regular testing, so we’ve been moving in this direction for some time. Now the technology is there to make it widely applicable with some amount of accuracy. This could be a new “fit-for-work” requirement.

Short of a vaccine that works or treatment to reduce mortality rate, large congregations of people will not happen without the participants consenting to share greater amounts of information about themselves.

What will we take with us?

In this moment, we have a rare opportunity to reevaluate what is necessary. And we have the tools to take action and to design the way forward, helping to keep people safe, whilst maximizing the opportunity to get life back to some sort of normal. What is necessary to retain from life before COVID-19? From economic activity to standardized testing to performances and entertainment, what can we leave in the past and what is worth carrying with us into the future?

The path forward involves a lot of questions, and the core of any successful solution is making sure we ask the right ones. 51ˇçÁ÷can help companies steer their way through the challenges ahead and help them on their journey to become anĚý.

Join 51ˇçÁ÷CEO Christian Klein, members of the Executive Board of 51ˇçÁ÷and special guests on June 15th to learn how to lead your organization in a period of crisis and economic recovery. Learn moreĚý.

The post Want A Resilient Organization? Digital Transformation Is Essential appeared first on 51ˇçÁ÷Africa News Center.