There’s no doubt that the digital economy has become an essential element of the American economy in a relatively short time. The most recent statistics by the United States Bureau of Economic Analysis (BEA), developed in 2019, are startling:
- It’s the fourth-largest sector of the economy, behind only real estate, government, and manufacturing.
- It accounts for $2.1 trillion, or 9.6 percent of the nation’s gross domestic product (GDP).
- It grew 6.5% annually from 2005 to 2019, well above the 1.8% rate of growth of the rest of the economy.
Of course, COVID-19 has only accelerated the emergence and growth of the digital economy. According to the World Economic Forum, “Industry structures and business models are being disrupted – and the digitalization of the economy is being rapidly accelerated. An estimated 70% of new value created in the economy over the next decade will be based on digitally enabled platform business models.”
Clearly, a new era of the digital economy has arrived and encompasses multiple disciplines, experiences, and sectors. Consumers value personalization and speed; employees demand efficient processes, technologies, and applications that work seamlessly together from anywhere; and companies want to differentiate themselves in a crowded marketplace.
We define ‘digital economy’ today as the business and personal transactions and interactions conducted using digital technologies. It’s not just a hot trend anymore – it’s an economic and societal force, and it will be one of the most influential drivers of the world economy in the years ahead.
What Customers Want in the Digital Economy
The digital economy has grown to what it is today because it has increasingly delivered what customers want – and, in many cases, what they’ve needed since the start of the COVID-19 pandemic. Enterprise customers, retail customers, and employees expect value, personalization, accessibility, of information, and adaptability of service in the digital economy. Deloitte echoes this demand, stating, “In the digital economy, all customers – business-to-business as well as business-to-consumer alike – want to interact with businesses when and where they want and in a fashion that is most convenient for them. It has become crucial to give all customers a personalized and unique journey right from the minute they land on a business’s website, all the way to making a purchase in your store and beyond.”
Three attributes are essential to this kind of customer journey:
- An End-to-End Process. Customers are not satisfied anymore with a few periodic emails. They want to be taken on a buying excursion tailored specifically to their unique needs and pain points. They don’t just want to see a product or service in action – they want to jump in, try/test it and see first-hand how it will bring value. The more senses that can be stimulated in the process, the better. To do this, enterprises need applications and software systems that create and manage these comprehensive experiences.
- Versatility. Customers want to go on their buying journey using their preferred methods at their preferred times. Some prefer social media, others virtual reality, traditional email, or other channels. In a perfect world, these also feature that the right applications and systems will bring to the table; the more all of this can be automated and responsive to consumer data and feedback, the more enterprise staffers can focus on creating desirable consumer content.
- Partnership. Customers do not just want products and services anymore. They want counsel and advice on how to maximize their return on investment. To make this happen, ideally, smarter data intelligence around customers’ needs can be achieved through automation and AI, and in turn employees, time and skills can be reinvested into value-added personal touches.
In short, enterprises need powerful digital tools to help them adapt to the evolving digital economy and deliver the kind of engagement customers are looking for. They should explore, procure and integrate the right applications and systems soon before their competition passes them by.
How Composable Applications Deliver On What Customers Want
In the traditional sense of the digital economy, e-commerce websites, online business-to-business platforms, and online software tools were the start of this journey, With the maturity of the digital economy and the growing demand for faster, better online connections amongst people, businesses, devices, data, and processes, there is a need to be able to invest in software infrastructure that can be enhanced over time without impacting other applications.
In our previous blog, we touch on “4 trends that will reshape your organization Product & Service experience in 2022”, with that being Composable Applications, AI Decision Intelligence, Total Experience, and Block Chain technology. For this discussion, we focus our lens on Composable Applications, as these are the tools perhaps best suited to help organizations deliver the attributes that customers want in a Digital Economy. These applications contain functional blocks that can be separated from the rest of the application, and then integrated with other applications or their parts to create new applications with the exact functionality and purpose their organizations need. With all of this, organizations can map and execute cohesive, personalized, end-to-end customer experiences with various aspects of an organization and its product suite.
As an example CoTé evolved from traditional Customer Communication Management platform learnings to build a powerful customer experience management (CXM) platform that manages composable applications to help organizations gain operational momentum for the next generation of products and services in the market. . Our composable CXM platform integrates into other technology platforms seamlessly, and layer on other appropriate technologies to help businesses supplement their core functionality and make their platforms more powerful. This has really helped us accelerate client projects in an unprecedented time for a faster release to market.
There are several key-value attributes that these applications bring to businesses, including:
- Loyalty. By delivering what customers want how they want, customers will have positive experiences that cause them to come back again and again. They also will spread the word about their experience and encourage others to buy in. Employees also benefit from retention and can focus on nourishing those customer relationships instead of securing new leads and managing cumbersome technologies on the back end.
- Agility and Adaptability. By integrating with all channels and devices, composable applications offer customers all options for how to communicate and experience organizations and brands. As a result, employees can devise tailored strategies and processes, and adjust them however and whenever they need.
- Personalization. Specific messages, content pieces, and experiences can also be tailored to consumers at specific stages of their journey. The more organizations match their products and services to consumers’ wants and needs when they have them, the more likely they will be to engage and buy-in.
As the digital economy becomes even more of an integral part of our society, it’s increasingly important for organizations to ensure they’re integrating new technologies and providing the experiences their customers want from them. Sooner than later, this will become one of the key determinants in which organizations succeed and lead industries in the decades to come – and which ones lag behind.
All CoTé applications are built on our proprietary virsaic™ platform, which removes roadblocks in the way of customer engagement. It’s the only all-in-one CXM platform, and it offers complete control and management of all inbound and outbound customer interactions across all channels and devices. The platform automates manual tasks and processes, improving efficiency and minimizing effort. It eliminates manual processes, removing the risk of errors and delays and ensuring quality control at all levels. It’s also built in the cloud and hosted on Microsoft Azure, which ensures complete back-end security, scalability, and reliability.
If you are seeking advise on how to stay ahead of the digital economy talk to CoTé today !