In short, contact centers cannot provide superior customer experiences unless/until the silos are broken down. There needs to be a way for all of the interactions, on all corporate data bases can be (to use another popular jargon term) “federated.” In fact, going back to the first two audiences of customer experience, it means that the structured and un-structured data from various parts of an enterprise —from ERP systems, inventory and delivery databases, sales and marketing, etc. — need to be inter-meshed, and capable of providing useable information on-demand and in real time.
Enter Big Data
The SAP introduction of SAP BusinessObjects Predictive Analysis Software that is powered by the SAP HANA Platform is a critical part of the move toward federation that can enable enterprises to deliver to everyone who needs it, but particularly those who touch customers directly and often, the information and insights they need to up their game in engaging customers. It is the HANA Platform that provides the capabilities to crunch the big numbers and enable the ability to visualize data. Predictive modeling is only one piece of the puzzle. As if not more important is the ability for customer-facing employees to be able to provide inquiring minds answers to their questions at a level of detail previously unattainable in real or near real time.
None of this is going to be easy. I liked the way Marc Alvarez, Senior Director for Reference Data Infrastructure at Interactive Data recently blogged in discussing big data in the context of financial institutions:
“When looked at as a whole, this positions big data at a very interesting intersection between data content, technology, and analytical capability. It involves the pre-processing of data before a firm makes strategic decisions based on it. The pressure to keep pace and thrive in this environment is going to place a premium on having the right software and other infrastructure in place. For data suppliers this means being able to offer a far wider (as well as deeper) universe of content on demand and in a form that is easily consumed. The historical partnership between supply and application of data is going to become even more important and sophisticated as a result.”
SAP, coming from its historical core competencies of enterprise resource planning (ERP), business process automation (BPA) and customer relationship management (CRM), believes that it has a meaningful leg up in the market. It’s growing leveraging of the HANA in-memory distributed data platform is destined to make it a key player in the evolving big data space.
What was most interesting about the session with SAP and its reference accounts was what the two customers had to say. EMIYoshi’s Zafir stated, “We evaluated a number of vendors and found SAP met our needs based not only on functionality, but also on price its support from the company and its community.” Woodward noted that, “We are taking a gradual approach but are extremely pleased with the flexibility SAP has given us not just with our customers but with our internal stakeholders as well.”
One factoid that emerged in the discussion really was a grabber. Iyer noted that there are now 8,000 executives around the world with “customer experience,” in their titles. He said that these were executives empowered to look at how improving the experiences of the internal enterprise users to meet their needs and the needs of their ecosystem partners were having a real impact on improving the way end users experience a company’s people, products and services, and business processes.
I asked Iyer how much had changed since work started on the book almost two years ago. He responded, “It is hard to keep up with the pace of technology change, but the fundamentals of what will be required to provide improved customer experiences remain the same. It is not just in having the right tools. It is in knowing what you have, what it tells you and then knowing what to do with and about it. That is how you go beyond traditional customer service and get to providing 360° customer experiences.”
Not a bad place to end. For that matter it happens to be a good place to start as well.
Edited by Jennifer Russell
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