Organisations need to go from 'customer-centric' to 'customer-obsessed': Forrester

Businesses all over the world, since time immemorial have followed the cardinal rule of ‘customer is king’. And as businesses race to go digital, they follow the rule with renewed zest, putting customers at the heart of their digital transformation strategies. Tech2 spoke to Ashutosh Sharma, VP and research director at technology and market research company Forrester about how organisations are going through a culture shift when it comes to digital transformation. Defining the concept of it, Sharma says that there have been many waves of digital transformation in the past. So what’s different about this one? “The one that organisations are facing right now is about the customer,” says Sharma. “With that in mind, digital transformation is the process that businesses need to go through, at the end of which they are able to exploit digital technologies to create new sources of value for customers, as well as increase operational agility in service of customers,” explains Sharma. He adds that to be able to win in the age of the customer, companies need to undergo this process of digital transformation. “They need to go beyond customer-centric to become customer-obsessed.” says Sharma. Setting off on this journey to digital nirvana is easier said than done. One of the biggest challenge for companies is that it requires a significant overhaul of their culture. “To date, companies were able to get away with displaying limited customer empathy and customer centricity at touch points that were most visible to the customer. It was only skin-deep. A successful digital transformation requires that all the functions within the company, even behind the line of visibility, are as customer-obsessed as the rest of the organisation,” reveals Sharma. What this means is that companies have to let go of years of entrenched behaviour and start behaving very differently. Sharma believes this can only happen when the commitment is from the very top. In addition to culture, companies also struggle with problems such as a lack of the right processes, technology, talent but these are relatively easier to solve. While all these are significant challenges for companies, there arise new ones everyday in form of emerging technology trends that test them to the limits. We ask Sharma what the impact of factors like mobile, Big Data or IoT is on digital transformation. “Technologies such as mobile, big data, analytics, IoT, cloud are simply the tool-sets available to companies, which need to be exploited to build solutions that create value for the customers,” says Sharma. “The availability of these technologies and similar things such as the smartphone platforms, their app stores and ubiquitous social networks have reduced the time it takes to move an idea to reality,” adds Sharma hinting at how companies can turn those into lucrative opportunities to know their customers better. Sharing some best practices Sharma says the single biggest one is to have the transformation exercises led from the office of the CEO. “Unlike previous transformations, this time it is not about improving the efficiencies or reducing the costs which can be effectively led by functional heads. Being a customer-obsessed enterprise takes the whole village. The CEO needs to lead from the front and formulate the vision and the strategy for the entire organisation, he explains. Sharma adds that the CMO and CIO also play significant roles in the process. “The CMO is the de-facto champion of the customers for a long time and CIOs can elevate themselves to introduce the digital technology. They need to collaborate as one. One successful practice followed by some companies is to form a cross-functional digital acceleration team. This team has the mandate to propagate digital thinking within the organisation,” he says. Advising companies on key principles underlying digital transformation strategies, Sharma says, “Forrester recommends following a customer-obsessed operating model for digital transformation. It has four key operating principles. The first is moving from being customer-aware to being customer-led. The second is to move from perfect to fast. The third is moving from data-rich to insights-driven and the last one is moving from siloed to connected.”