the 3 keys to achieving real-time visibility of your customer s experience

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1 the 3 keys to achieving real-time visibility of your customer s experience big data & business analytics AuthOr: john wills global director, center of excellence hcl business analytics services WHITEPAPER AUGUST 2014

2 HCL is one of the industry s fastest growing, top ranked system integrators. Our growth is a result of helping clients innovate by applying business analytics to create new solutions for old problems. An area, which is ripe for innovation is how organizations collect and analyze data to try to understand their customers. We offer 3 keys for achieving real-time visibility to your customer s experience based on our experience with leading consumer services companies. Leading consumer products and services companies are making a shift from a slow and imprecise process of collecting customer data to a real-time capability that can be leveraged by product management, brand management, and by marketing and sales. Experience has proven there are two basic prerequisites for success. First, the company must ensure a very open and collaborative relationship between their product development, brand management, and marketing organizations. There can be no siloes and everyone must be together when implementing an integrated go-to-market strategy. Second, they must create value add opportunities for customers to interact with the company on a regular basis not just when performing a transaction (purchase, exchange, return, credit, etc.). The goal is to use this interaction to create a deeper, longer lasting relationship and sense of community that translates into loyalty and high margins. Key #1 Focus on events not transactions For decades, the generally accepted approach for understanding customer behavior and interaction has focused on extracting transactions such as quotes, orders, payments, returns, warranty service, exchanges, etc., from operational systems and putting them in a data warehouse. Along with demographics, it represents the raw material used to understand customer behavior and indirectly understand what they think of the products/services. Over the past fifteen years, there have been wrinkles such as website usage analysis (clickstream analytics), enhanced demographics with social data and Omni-channel (multiple customer touch point) integration. These have added important context but they have not changed the fundamental approach of seeing a customer through the lens of interactions based on transactions. Leaders are moving beyond this coarse grain perspective to a fine-grained understanding of the customer. They know the customer is holding conversations about the products, purchase process, customer service, sponsored representatives/teams, distributor/ channels, etc. and they want to tap into these interactions. Better yet, they want to stimulate interaction and conversation around related topics and events to track sentiment, build brand image, customer loyalty, and insight social contagion. All of these consumer initiated or company stimulated conversations are communication events and they are happening constantly. The key is to recognize that these events (including transaction events) are what is important and aligning the organization to be able to capture, listen and react to them. 2014, HCL TECHNOLOGIES. REPRODUCTION PROHIBITED. THIS DOCUMENT IS PROTECTED UNDER COPYRIGHT BY THE AUTHOR, ALL RIGHTS RESERVED. 2

3 Key #2 Implement event collectors and complex event processing To collect and listen to events there must be a shift away from the batch processing approach of extracting information from source systems and moving it to data warehouses. Data warehouses still serve a purpose but the paradigm does not fit the requirement of capturing all-time series events and having a real-time view of what is happening. A better fit for this capability is a category known as Complex Event Processing (CEP). CEP acts as a data pipeline where events are streamed, queried and viewed as they happen and then stored for future analysis. In contrast, a data warehouse uses Extract, Transform, and Load (ETL) processing to first move the data, stores it and expects it to be queried later. A critical component of CEP is the method of collecting events from a number of different systems. This requires implementing a collector (sometimes called an adapter or listener) for each source. The collector should be designed to either push or pull data from the source and configurable for any source or event type. Key #3 Implement advanced data visualization not reports and dashboards Data visualization is like the speedometer in your car. It gives you direct feedback based on what is happening. Reports and dashboards are like looking at a printout of how fast you were going. They are designed to help you look back at what has already happened. The key characteristics of data visualization are the visual representation of large quantities of dynamically changing data and interactivity. Interactivity means the user should be able to drill into the details and move between views and representations. Product launches today, are usually timed to occur with a major holiday or a sporting event and use an integrated print, television, radio, internet advertising plus social media and celebrity endorsements. Data visualization shows exactly how customers are responding so that immediate adjustments can be made. This can include triggering supplier orders, shifting manufacturing priorities, spawning social media and media campaigns, fixing observed bottlenecks in the order process, etc. Watch closely the next time you see a product launch around events such as the Super Bowl. Advertisement banners, social chatter, celebrity comments, and regional promotions happening within 24 hours of the event are not a coincidence but a direct and dynamic response to customer reactions and experience. How HCL can help? HCL s Business Analytics Services provides a solution called Customer Analytics and Digital Experience. This real-time analytics monitoring system is designed to provide insight into consumer behaviors and reactions to new product launches including digital interaction patterns and social sentiment. 2014, HCL TECHNOLOGIES. REPRODUCTION PROHIBITED. THIS DOCUMENT IS PROTECTED UNDER COPYRIGHT BY THE AUTHOR, ALL RIGHTS RESERVED. 3

4 It uniquely combines embedded product signaling, big data, analytics and advanced visualization and is used by marketing, product development, procurement (supply chain), support and brand management to: y Respond to competitive pressure by decreasing the time from product concept to launch y Gather insight required to make immediate product marketing and social influencing investment decisions y Understand product usage patterns to adopt product features that increase customer conversion and retention rates For more information, please contact HCL at ets.bis@hcl.com. HCL EXECUTIVE BIOGRAPHY HCL JOHN WILLS Global Director, Center of Excellence HCL Business Analytics Services John Wills leads HCL s global Center of Excellence Business Analytic Services with responsibilities for solution development, labs, intellectual property and knowledge management. Wills has 24 years of business intelligence experience in a number of diverse leadership roles including responsibility for consulting, sales, marketing and product development. 2014, HCL TECHNOLOGIES. REPRODUCTION PROHIBITED. THIS DOCUMENT IS PROTECTED UNDER COPYRIGHT BY THE AUTHOR, ALL RIGHTS RESERVED. 4

5 ABOUT HCL About HCL Technologies HCL Technologies is a leading global IT services company working with clients in the areas that impact and redefine the core of their businesses. Since its emergence on the global landscape, and after its IPO in 1999, HCL has focused on transformational outsourcing, underlined by innovation and value creation, offering an integrated portfolio of services including software-led IT solutions, remote infrastructure management, engineering and R&D services and business services. HCL leverages its extensive global offshore infrastructure and network of offices in 31 countries to provide holistic, multi-service delivery in key industry verticals including Financial Services, Manufacturing, Consumer Services, Public Services and Healthcare & Life Sciences. HCL takes pride in its philosophy of Employees First, Customers Second which empowers its 91,691 transformers to create real value for customers. HCL Technologies, along with its subsidiaries, had consolidated revenues of US$ 5.4 billion, for the Financial Year ended as on 30 th June For more information, please visit About HCL Enterprise HCL is a $6.5 billion leading global technology and IT enterprise comprising two companies listed in India HCL Technologies and HCL Infosystems. Founded in 1976, HCL is one of India s original IT garage start-ups. A pioneer of modern computing, HCL is a global transformational enterprise today. Its range of offerings includes product engineering, custom & package applications, BPO, IT infrastructure services, IT hardware, systems integration, and distribution of information and communications technology (ICT) products across a wide range of focused industry verticals. The HCL team consists of over 95,000 professionals of diverse nationalities, who operate from 31 countries including over 505 points of presence in India. HCL has partnerships with several leading global 1000 firms, including leading IT and technology firms. For more information, please visit Hello there! I am an Ideapreneur. I believe that sustainable business outcomes are driven by relationships nurtured through values like trust, transparency and flexibility. I respect the contract, but believe in going beyond through collaboration, applied innovation and new generation partnership models that put your interest above everything else. Right now 95,000 Ideapreneurs are in a Relationship Beyond the Contract with 500 customers in 31 countries. How can I help you?