ChannelVision Magazine

EMERGENT with in order to improve customer service and remove friction. Mailchimp and HubSpot give small businesses an inexpensive market - ing automation system. This is just one form of data collection. There are ways to collect data on website visi - tors and to use remarketing to follow them around the web. For bigger businesses with CRM, billing systems, ERP and other da - tabases, these are opportunities to mine data. From some of that data a profile can emerge of the best cus - tomer – and the worst. Since hiring is expensive, a sketch of what a bet - ter employee would look like can be drawn from some data. Software today delivered by SaaS levels the playing field. Years ago, a small business could not afford an IVR or contact center software. Today, a small business can buy a cloud IVR from Twilio and a handful of seats of contact center for a single department. This might be why line of business managers are the new buy - ers; they weren’t able to afford these types of tools before. Now they are easy to procure. The ability to procure this technol - ogy and these tools has brought us to this time when everyone talks about digital transformation, because it is possible. The technology is available, and the computing power is cheap. New tools are created each day. It doesn’t have to happen all at once. It can be introduced a department at a time. A company or manager would have to mandate it to happen, however, since the power and benefit of cloud is that it increases efficiency and produc - tivity, but it changes how business is done. Business process improvement is an old consulting term, but it is a goal of many progressive senior ex - ecutives. Get more productivity out of the same employees – or even better out of less of them. The flip side to this is that AI and machine learning are advantageous for repetitive tasks. This way the em - ployee is freed from the tasks and can do other, perhaps creative, work. An example of a transformative service is desktop as a service (DaaS). While DaaS has some practical control benefits for the business, for the user, it is different. It takes some getting used to. In an era of cloud computing, mobility and disposable devices, DaaS is a reasonable compromise. Big data was a term for a while. Now, what it has come to mean is that businesses have data in a number of silos that they are not doing anything with. Migrating those databases to the cloud allows the business to access the data and leverage it unlike before when it was sitting in a silo. Businesses are looking for efficien - cies, productivity and savings. They also want more revenue and less churn. Customer experience is the beacon of reducing churn and increas - ing revenue. Digital transformation contains an outcome of improved CX. When partners are out there sell- ing, the thing to keep in mind is that in many small ways your customer’s business can be improved with cloud – and you are doing both of you a dis - service by not assisting the business in transforming digitally. o Peter Radizeski is president of RAD-INFO INC., a telecom strategy and marketing consulting agency. He is also the author of five books and is available to speak at your events on channel, marketing, strategy or sales. His next book on channel will be out soon. Top Ov Current Approach to DT, Midmarket Source: BDO midmarket survey Source: Bla Intentional Steps Toward a Clearly Defi ed Strategy Experimental, Testing and Learning Senior Managment (e.g., CEO, CMO, COO) CIO/IT Leadership Steering Committee Board of Directors Business Unit Heads Placing Smart Bets and Focusing on Low-Hanging Fruit Intrinsic, Part of Company Data No Digital Transformation Initiatives 51% 22% 18% 7% 2% Digital Transformation Transcends IT Source: BDO midmarket survey 3% 5% 15% 31% 46% Ret Tec Busin Finance – Ba Government Te Primary Leader of Digital Transformation Strategy Current Approach to DT, Midmarket Separation in the Czech Republic created tremendous value for sh Source: BDO midmarket survey Intentional Steps Toward a Clearly Defined Strategy Experimental, Testing and Learning Senior Managment (e.g., CEO, CMO, COO) CIO/IT Leadership Steering Committee Board of Directors Business Unit Heads Placing Smart Bets and Focusing on Low-Hanging Fruit Intrinsic, Part of Company Data No Digital Transformation Initiatives 51% 22% 18% 7% 2% Digital Transformation Transcends IT Source: BDO midmarket survey 3% 5% 15% 31% 46% O2 market capitalization 99.1 72.3 30.2 68.9 68.9 68.9 68.9 68.9 67.3 82.8 77.0 66.8 136.2 151.7 145.9 135.7 10.1 16.9 36.9 +97% CZK billion Before separation After separation NetCo* S rvCo Before separation After separa O2 return on invested ca % (including goodwill and Primary Leader of Digital Transf rmation Strat gy 14 CHANNEL VISION | March - April, 2020