BYOD – Freedom and Responsibility

Mobility is a multi-faceted asset, but some of the value it adds may actually be a cause for concern, especially in terms of the fine balance between rights and freedom.

This would hold especially true when it is about mobility at the workplace. So one of the biggest challenges technology teams in any enterprise face, is how far to go and where to draw the line.

To ensure a good work-life balance, enterprises today are definitely allowing personal spaces to encroach onto the office time, and in many cases that is unavoidable- just as office work almost always takes up personal space as well. The flexibility to carry personal mobile devices at work will to some extent send out a message that the organisation does appreciate the concept of work-life balance. But while we do believe in allowing mobile devices at work, there are a number of issues that need to be resolved at the end of the day. Common knowledge is that security is a big issue with the Bring Your Own Devices (BYOD) policy. But we believe the solution is not getting rid of it altogether, but actually setting processes and policies in place that will control the usage and definitely the malpractices or security risks.

The big concern that global companies face is that employees are averse that their personal devices are being monitored and controlled.

While security policies may be effective enough for the present, the proliferation of mobile applications in every sphere of activity leaves constantly evolving gaps in security. What then is our solution? Obviously, as a team that supports the IT and IT security policies of the organisation, we need to ensure complete awareness of the risks involved, and the procedures that will keep enterprise data safe, even in personal devices. They may go beyond the mobile phone or the laptop. The issue of all around holistic security is always a challenge. Enterprise control on corporate data residing in the mobile device will always be the requirement with a BYOD policy in place. But while enterprises have the potential to access personal data; they may not enforce scrutiny,  as a mark of trust.  It is time that employees also have a deeper insight about the balance of BYOD with their corporate responsibility, and a commitment to keeping enterprise data uncompromised. Every employee also needs to feel responsible for the security of corporate assets and information. We bank on this sensitivity, but keep policies in place.

That is the only way to truly have equilibrium between work-life balance, and the responsibility of enterprise security.

Ultimately, the balance has to be about responsible ownership, both by enterprises as well as employees. And in this, enterprises may be more inclined to have some clear policies in place…and also not be shy of enforcing them.

Evolving the model of next generation customer engagement

Who is the Boss? Customer is the Boss.

We hear this all the time. There is a lot of research on the topic of customer engagement but little has been done to adapt to the new ways of engagement using newer technology channels instead of the traditional old ways. This mindset will require a paradigm shift from the marketing, sales and support functions in any organization, to realign their actions and engagements around Engagement, Experience and Value.

Engagements must move from content-aware to context-aware models; services mindset will need to move from quantitative to qualitative experiences. All of this will result in moving to Volumetric to Value-metric customer engagement.

With this basic dynamics in place, we can clearly define three elements that identify differentiated delivery in the current dynamic and often volatile business environment.

A.  Customer engagement re-defined: The transition of communication means that the right type to touch connectivity and hereafter even virtual presence, has forced businesses to relook at how it interacts for every purpose. Simple communication is almost deceased, and when it does take place, it is in a whole environment of interactivity. There is a cluster of co-current communication taking place in the various means available at any given point in time between teams, between clients, and even between support and client organizations. The means of communication has changed irreversibly and unrecognizably, presumably for the better. The outcome of the whole new environment is that this universal interaction paradigm has created the need for context-aware engagement. Social media plays a very significant role in this brave new world of multi-tiered communication and interaction. The environment is almost defined by the various social media applications and thus sets the parameters for customer engagement as well. We need to be mindful of this.

B. Support purpose re-stated: The second element of significance is that a support center is not assessed in terms of numbers, issues resolved ,or services extended in tickets. Today, it is extremely important that the scope of the servicestransforms from being a quantitative cost center to a competitive and qualitative experience function. This move from quantity to quality is what will define the business metrics of efficiency going forward.

C. Volume vs. Value: Client organizations are today looking for better support for the same dollar. In a nutshell, organizations need to push the service process growth from being volumetric to value- metric. This transformation will also offer a tremendous window of opportunity that will present the support side of the client organizations, an opportunity to engage with the end consumer. Awareness of that end of the support will be a source of extremely valuable insights. Riding on this, the industry needs to introspect the current engagement models, redefine customer support and thus create the superlative experience for them.

The added advantage of this kind of mutually beneficial engagement is that it will help a new  operational  paradigm to emerge –  a support model  that adds value as it matures, and that should be the measure of a ‘superlative ’experience.

Analytics led Customer Insights in a Connected World – your path to Big Profits from Big Data

 

We live in the era of Big Data and connectivity. In our ever more connected homes, humans are being taken out of the equation in a trend called home automation. Smart meters in homes can send data to utilities in order to dynamically regulate peak consumption periods, and thermostats like the Google owned(GOOGLE) Nest can ‘learn’ and adjust energy usage based on patterns. Systems, devices and physical objects are talking to one another too, adding on to the data exhaust.

For this very reason, leaders everywhere are wondering how to harness the power of all this information to improve the effectiveness and efficiency of their enterprises and institutions. All of these leaders want to know how the world’s best forward thinkers are using this Big Data to understand their environment, anticipate what it means and drive action. Analytics led Customer Insights on Big data is one area that leading Consumer and Enterprise technology products/services organization are actively getting involved with, to actually anticipate outcomes that can provide significant improvement on economic benefits.

A connected customer world offers challenges to understand customer behaviour and at the same time provide opportunities to build upon the necessary customer intelligence in a time bound adaptive manner around the following dimensions:

• Customer Identity
• Customer Intent
• Customer Intelligence

Big Data in this context is the Voice of your Customer, and with SMART Analytics provides enterprises with the ability to capture, interpret and act in real time based on signals from the market in the context of your operational data, which then provides such enterprises with the necessary Customer Insights that help them make decisions. This in turn, provides such enterprises with the competitive advantage to be a differentiator in the market.