I woke up in the morning with no milk, butter and bread at home. While living during a lock down and forgetting to order the basics for the next day has become a norm for many of us.
The fresh morning, however started by realizing that no one will be delivering groceries before 8:00 AM and it is only 6:00 in the morning. Passing time with some usual exercises could be a breakthrough for the week. This seems like a good start, but only the thought of food not being delivered in the next 1.5 hours makes a person feeling more hungry, or maybe it was only me...
Anyhow, I managed to spend an hour on rejecting tens of nearby options for breakfast delivery and then finally my app popped up with a notification of 'brewed coffee with freshly baked croissants' offer. Ahh! "Well, wow, this is exactly I needed in life at this hour", I said to myself.
Later, during the day, while working and thinking about my work, consumers and businesses, I realized how everything is changing and shaping with different norms of life. How many cafes just doesn't exist and can't offer any services because they don't have access to my Siri, Alexa or other Apps. How many promotions can't make a noise into my ears and how many times I can't smell the aromas because since now I am no where near their shops.
During these troubling times, people have drastically changed their services and the ways of selling their products. Yes, we all know it's digital. But is it personal as well?
Unfortunately the shops, businesses, brands who survived merely and not thrived are the ones who didn't innovate their business processes for quite some time. Or never thought of joining established market places for their reach. For many big brands it was fine to provide a store experience rather than to get personal through Alexa and mobile apps.
“Loyal customers, they don’t just come back, they don’t simply recommend you, they insist that their friends do business with you.” – Chip Bell
Since I am working very closely with people in retail and banking, I somehow understand their business challenges competing in the current times.
If you are a unicorn or an enterprise and struggling to add new services and offers to consumer channels where they need it the most; you will need to think in terms of short term and long term innovation goals.
There are profound differences in just being present on digital space and "be" on your customer's mind when 'she smells coffee without even seeing it'.. You got the point!..
Also, as a starting point, here are some prominent questions you would like to ask before starting new projects or innovating them for the future.
1. What are my organization's innovation goals?
2. How the collaboration exists among departments and teams?
3. Does it require sharing data within an organization through internal & external sources?
4. Does it require working on multiple applications at the same time?
5. Do we need to manage teams with different roles and security parameters?
6. Do we need to adopt new technology or services?
7. Does my services or products improve with innovating processes?
8. What technology shall we use for short term projects, Would my technology and tools scale for tomorrow?
9. What is the time to market for products or services?
10. Could technology management would be a hindrance to productivity, scaling & profitability?
11. How the company's brand improves with personalization and innovation goals?
12. What will be the ROI projections during uncertain times?
Once you start asking such questions, then try to answer if Alexa can bake the croissant at 8:00 in the morning when the customer needs it the most!
Also learn about the latest technology and platforms that I am currently working, at this link below:
https://www.ibm.com/ae-en/products/cloud-pak-for-data
#Modernization #Innovation #Applications #CloudPakforData #Alexa #Siri #AI #Analytics
I am Technology Advisor for Data & AI. Feel free to reach out for further consultation on your innovative ideas, projects and goals.
https://www.linkedin.com/in/sanain/
#GlobalAIandDataScience#GlobalDataScience