Host: Good morning and welcome to our webinar “Winning at Digital, Turning Insights into Competitive Intelligence.” My name is Sarah Lynn Brunner and I will be your host today. Today’s presenter is Andrew Morgan. Andrew is a Director of Product Marketing at Apexon. He’s an experienced leader in strategic analysis, opportunity assessment and roadmap execution.
With his guidance and expertise, he has helped companies expand their digital initiatives to groundbreaking levels. Andrew has over 10 years of experience working with a wide range of companies including Global Automotive, pharmaceutical, and technology manufacturers. Additionally, he has directed the development of market firsts such as life science applications, customers engagement programs and predictive analytics platform. Let’s welcome Andrew.
Andrew Morgan: Thank you very much, Sarah-Lynn. I do pride myself on being able to strategically analyze and asses’ markets. I’m very appreciative of my opportunities and being able to use them to grow. Speaking of growing, that would be one of our underlying tones you’ll notice in this webinar. From 2017 to 2018, growing in agility and digital transformation achievement, can’t forget growing in opportunities.
We’ll look over some trends and missteps that we saw made by others within the market in 2017 and how we– That can really be used to understand, identify and prioritize your own opportunities. Then we’ll look at the 2018 roadmap to digital success. Why data driven insights are paramount to leveraging digital maturity and why you shouldn’t consider block chains and when you should in part of your equation.
Why Apexon? Our ability to foresee problems and provide practical solutions comes from a place beyond just expertise. At Apexon, we truly believe that we can provide not just one but many paradigms shift for many companies. While I’ve been here, we’ve already done so on multiple fronts, from the experience of testing over a quarter million applications to beginning to save 10 million lives in the next 10 years.
I know we’ll provide many more shifts because of our foundation. We are digital. It is how we were conceived over 11 years ago and is still a very prominent pillar in our DNA today. To know where you want to go and to transform digitally, you need to know where you’re coming from and what can be accomplished. Five years ago, give or take, software development cycle was in large organizations and enterprises was very typical.
Waterfall. Code would flow from development to testing to operation and customer feedback would go back to desk. Today the gap between dev and ops is coming closer together. With digital transformation being adopted at a rapid pace, you can see that dev and ops are already starting to work hand in hand. That doesn’t mean that testing is going away but it is becoming an inherent part of dev and ops.
What does this mean to you? Increased release frequency, adoption of automation and implementing the latest technologies, such as AI machine learning, will become a part of everyday thinking. Agile methodology has actually been around since 2001 but it has really only seen adoption in enterprises and organizations in the last three to five years. As you can see, 2017 truly was the year for Agile as it dominated how organizations decided to approach their own development.
Why are we seeing such a major shift in such a short amount of time? Easy. Technology and money. With the consumer truly being in control, we must adopt and adapt to their ever-changing needs. As you can see from our next chart how vital customer experience across various industries truly is. One point, just one point, of improvement in customer experience can result in increased revenue for– In the tens or hundreds of million dollars for most of these industries. For some, even into the billions.
What does this mean to you? Being able to implement the latest technologies and trends or gaining insight into customer actions is paramount into capturing these revenue opportunities. Not doing so will be giving away to your competitors. In addition to not incorporating customer experience, these are some additional missteps that we saw in 2017.
Limiting the IOT functionality, only prioritizing speeds and trying every fad.
IOT because customer needs and expectations are growing every day, so not incorporating all those latest and greatest technologies is only doing yourself a disservice. Additionally, the misstep of prioritizing speeds and fads because companies are not using that insight into what customers truly want and need from their services and products.
Now that we understand some of the missteps, let’s look at how we can leverage technology, ensure a roadmap to success. New technologies like quantum computing, machine learning and predictive analytics can help us analyze what we are really doing and why we are doing it and what that impact can be. In addition, robotic, IOT and digital gives us the ability to gain more from our market by quickly deploying technologies and experience that our customers value.
Let’s look at our next poll about some of the issues you are facing in your roadmap. Why are some of these latest technologies so beneficial? You can see from this chart on data driven insight– Is that really just giving them a shot and seeing what they can potentially do has been beneficial for a lot of these enterprises and organizations. Just trying these digital activities has given a minimum of 40% growth in any of these areas, from opportunities, efficiency, sales and customer satisfaction.
Another technology or initiative that’s gained a lot of traction is Blockchain. Blockchain is a global network of computers that jointly manages the database of records or transactions. The best use for this is anything with a life series or history of event, like banking or supply chain, one of the reasons you have seen so much news about cryptocurrencies. This network is also one without a central authority, making it decentralized. That means the network operates on a user to user or peer to peer basis.
Additionally, Blockchain has built on the latest technology, so it integrates extremely well in– With mobile access and verification procedures. The decentralization makes it ideal for security, transparency and visibility. We have actually begun implementing a few Blockchain concepts and practices throughout some of our customers and we’d be happy to share what it can really do with you at a future date.
Host: At this time, we would really like to get your questions answered. As a reminder, you can at any time just feel free to ask a question in the QA window at the top- center of your screen. Please, we welcome all of your questions. Looks like we have one right here. Andrew, first question. “You identified some missteps but do you consider the first step– Excuse me, what do you consider the first step in successful digital transformation?”
Andrew Morgan: Great question, Sarah-Lynn. I’ve seen a lot of companies approach it in a different manner, deciding on what the initiatives should be, what projects need priority. It’s really about mindset. Having the mindset that digital transformation isn’t necessarily a one-off operation or project. It’s an evolving process that needs commitment and adjustment and acknowledgement that there’s still a learning curve and it takes a lot to get there. Definitely having the mindset. The great thing about Apexon is we’ve done this with a lot of companies and so we’re able to provide some of these jumpstarts and best practices to get you started on your digital transformation journey in an effective and efficient manner.
Host: Perfect, thanks Andrew. Another question for you. “Which industries do you think will benefit most from applying Agile DevOp methodology to more areas of their company?”
Andrew Morgan: That’s a tough one. As we saw from the chart, all of these industries are really benefiting across a large degree of areas, especially in terms of customer experience. That’s why they’ve gone into this Agile and DevOp. Really, what I would consider Fintech or banking and financial services as well as healthcare is true opportunities for different reasons. The customer service and demands of banking are always changing and evolving.
Their ability to adapt to that technology, everything from Apple’s new customer service beta that they just released in iOS 11.3– Then, additionally, to being able to secure your own transaction with all types of frauds that are happening. Additionally, healthcare is constantly changing– Constantly needing to evolve to adapt to how they service their customers as we see viruses and flu epidemics, like we’ve had the last couple weeks, really impacting how people can live their lives. Healthcare needs to be able to evolve and provide solutions at just a rapid rate with the latest and greatest technologies.
Sarah Lynn: Great, thanks for sharing your insights on that. Okay. For question three, let’s see here. Okay. “What technology trends do you see having the biggest impact on allowing companies to achieve their digital initiative?
Andrew: That’s an even harder question. It’s getting harder and harder. Thanks, Sarah Lynn. As we saw from the roadmap to success, there’s lots of technologies there today. Actually, one of them that we didn’t quite allude to that is impacting customer experiences, is really voice-in communication. Incorporating voice, voice activity as well as communications like that messenger bot, or being able to have the ability to communicate with customers in an Agile fashion– They’re able to get that feedback directly into how you develop and provide your own services– Is instrumental to making sure that you’re able to achieve your own digital initiatives successfully.
Then, also, you have to be able to make sure you’re testing and analyzing the output of those actions and what those customers are saying. Having the correct predictive analytics and testing infrastructures set up is, again, just as critical to make sure that you’re able to leverage the benefits that we’ve seen from the voice-in communication initiatives.
Host: Great. Thank you, Andrew. I believe that’s all the questions we are able to answer at this time. Thank you very much. I just want to say thanks to everyone for joining us today. You’ll receive an e-mail in the next 24 hours with the slide presentation and link to the webcast replay. If you have any questions at all please contact us at info@apexon.com or call 1-408-727-1100 to speak with a representative. Again, thank you all.
