The digitization of the world is revolutionizing traditional customer relationships. In the digital world that results from merging the natural and virtual worlds, the new battle for power between customers and companies is now taking place as a battle for data. Because whoever has the data also has the power.
Customer Experience Management
Companies lure with new customer experiences and want data as wages. Customers wish to get data on offers and prices to get the cheapest products and services. Here, analytics becomes essential because analytics turns data into the necessary knowledge that brings companies to glass customers and customers to the glass market.
Innovations in information technology are driving the digitization of the world. Cloud, Social, Mobile, Big Data, and the Internet of Things revolutionize our world, just as fundamentally as the steam engine at the time, which broke up and rearranged society, the economy, political systems, and even state systems at the center of these upheavals is – then as now – people whose living and working conditions are changing accordingly.
In this article, we want to highlight two aspects: the person who is a consumer in his life and the company through which the person is simultaneously involved in working life and is, therefore, part of a producer or service provider. In the digital world, he is such a digital customer and part of a digital company.
Digital Customers and Digital Companies
You can define a digital customer via his digital networking and communication. He lives in his world of experience and communicates at eye level through dialogue and interaction. He maintains his social relationships. He values authenticity, transparency, and loyalty. He develops momentum and prefers simple content production. He uses diverse digital platforms (not just Facebook) and leaves traces in the digital world: customer data as part of big data.
Therefore, finding, interpreting, and using these traces in big data is one of the main concerns of digital companies because this is the only way to manage the customer’s world of experience. What distinguishes a digital company from a traditional company? A digital company is created by digital transformation within the company. Specifically, this means that information technology no longer only serves as a support process but also serves to innovate the business model and business processes. New digital business models and processes mean new sources of revenue and disruptive competitive advantages. Digital products complement the product portfolio, and information is used as a strategic advantage. In other words, the company is reinventing itself.
According to Forrester, IT departments need consulting skills and comprehensive collaboration. This requires political sensitivity and methodological competence.
Big Data Becomes Smart Data
The second essential characteristic of a digital company is that it masters digital communication. New media and channels are continually integrated into corporate contact with all business partners and at all levels. This is the only way to follow digital customers and track down all traces in the digital world. This is how you can filter big Data: Smart Customer Data is the result.
The first consequence of digitization is that small, medium-sized, and large companies no longer show the known classic differences. In the digital world, everyone is equal because the cost of taking advantage of digitalization is small.
Thanks to the cloud, computing power is equally accessible to all companies. Now, the little ones can use the same methods as the big ones. Thanks to the cloud, you can find the complex infrastructure significant data analytics needs at user-related prices. This means that all significant data sources are accessible to everyone. Everyone can individually relate all Big Data sources to their customers and put them in context: Big Data becomes Smart Data.
Data is the New World Currency
In the old world, there were currencies in which customers paid country-specific for products and services. During digitization, there is a new currency: data! If you (the customer) give me your data, I will provide (Facebook, Google, and others) a “free” service. Digitalization makes the breakthrough. Data becomes the world currency by merging the virtual with the real world.
For example, data in the virtual world are enriched by corresponding sensor data using a spatial coordinate. The localization and navigation data of smartphones and other devices make localizing the customer and offering location-based services possible. As a result, the most significant data collectors, such as Apple, Facebook, and Google, are among the highest-rated companies in the world. This is no wonder because those who use data using analytics have the power to intervene in the customer’s world of experience. Smart data (customer-related and appropriately filtered data from big data) turns customers into long-awaited glass customers.
Conversely, the power of data is available to customers. Because in the digital world, prices, product features, and services are transparent. As a result, the digital market is evident and more transparent than the traditional market. Customers use this to hunt for the best offers. A flight from Berlin to Rome can be cheaper than a taxi from Spandau to Kreuzberg. Therefore, a power struggle will occur in 2015 and the following years. Customers want to pay increasingly for data, and companies are getting hungry for data to convince customers of better customer experiences to reveal increased data.
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