Prioritizing Tech Investment to Fuel Customer and Employee Engagement

Artificial Intelligence, Machine Learning, Blockchain, and IoT have been buzzwords in the technology space for quite some time. These technologies are setting the trend and defining business priorities for far enriching Consumer Digital Experience (CDX). Right-fit Technology adoption and associative partnership are critical for setting-up current and future business upliftment. Understanding customer businesses end-to-end, exploration & research, selection, implementation, and upgradation of the right set of technologies to improve customer pain-points are all areas where IT plays a critical role.

Prioritizing technologies and projects is critical to a company’s success. Technology, in particular, that has the potential to have a huge impact on making the proper decision, becomes even more crucial.

And on top of that, the IT service industry is also experiencing massive disruption, not only on the demand and supply front but also on the technical skill gap front. Technology leaders in IT organizations shall garnish existing and upcoming talent pools and show them the right direction, so that customer and employee engagement turn into an ultimate business success.

The above-cited context makes overall tech prioritization even more important than any time in the past.

Invest in employee upskilling to bear technological fruits through organization technology group

Factors and actors are a prime consideration for High Tech investment, and prioritization of these is crucial. One of the beginning factors for investment in technology by the organization is a customer need, and the factors driving those needs will be the employees. Organizations need not solely prioritize employee upskilling to be on the right side of the technology periphery and customer need,they must also ensure that employees are part of the organization’s core technological group, fostering their learning, providing technical mentorship, sharpening their thinking direction, bringing adequate exposure, and ultimately driving a cultural shift in the technological paradigm in line with organizational vision.

The organizational core technology group or sub-group is at the forefront of technological adventurism and keenly observes customer business progression. With an eye on future technology needs of customers, prospects, and industry trend reports, the organization’s core technology group can create a technological roadmap or blueprint and divide it into quarterly technological charters to bring visibility and prioritization in high tech investment. AI is a powerful tool; its proper implementation for the right problem can make or break the impact. As an example, most of us have interacted with a BOT. Unless the company deploying the BOT figured out who among the customers like it and those who don’t, the BOT will not help,except for the strategy itself is to keep customers who like BOTs. That’s a perfect example of putting technology in place with the customer’s experience in mind.

Devise technological offerings from your current customer experiences

Customers or potential customers in the B2B industry want to learn more about your product or service offering and how it fits into their journey need/transition success and results in positive outcome on spending vs. value. Understanding and learning from customer experience have always been critical in the B2C world. It’s crucial to identify and provide the correct tool/touchpoint in the proper context to have the best possible client experience.

Plain vanilla IT offerings could assist an IT services company in onboarding a customer. However, that customer may later encounter specialized high-tech needs to boost their business, digital brand value positioning, and possible positive effects. These pointers lead to devise technological offerings, which is now the core of IT services.

There is always a thin line for a product company between offering a high-end IOT enabled but the complex device and a high-end but simple device for IoT-enabled products. A simple Wi-Fi-enabled electrical switch, for example. We realize that the switch must be secure, but the trick is deciding between how secure and sophisticated the switch should be and how simple and secure it should be. These decisions are crucial to a product’s success; thus, learning from consumer experiences is essential.

Customers use cases are driving force

Employee upskilling, core technology group, and product/service offerings require heavy investment, and prioritizing such investment are critical in the long run.With the proliferation of technologies, there is always the possibility that you may be caught off guard, and it will take much too long to recognize this, and scope of rectification becomes out of scope.

The core technology group can drive technology initiatives in line with customer use cases to minimize this impact and be on the right side of the selection. It helps build a mapped skill set. Organizations can leverage and propagate technology initiatives across a similar customer segment and get a chance to recalibrate or blossom with their current investment.

Situation Adoption is crucial

Regardless of one’s preparation, investment, strategy, or planning, there will always be natural uncontrollable factors that must coexist. Customers and employees in such situations must immediately re-prioritize technological implementation and adopt complementary or opposing technologies to get close to the desired outcome.

Because clients are embracing new technologies at rapid pace, one of the essential employee skills to evolve is adoption. It would be impossible to exercise and map high-tech employee abilities against customer needs. Many times, customer requirements flounder, or when their partners dig details, some distant picture emerges.

Remember how tech is evolving; even the public at large is also evolving. Whatever our business, we need to keep a tab on the situation – customer demographic, political changes, nature changes, anything that changes your offering context of applicability.

Revisit Tech investment on periodic basis

To obtain high-tech consumer engagement, company advancement, the outlook of industry trends, deviation measurement, and Risk-Reward calibration, an organization needs to have a certain kind of framework or business intelligence tool. It’s critical to revisit specific tech investments with the assistance of new technologies and keep an eye on which tech segment is riding the wave and solving client pain points more efficiently.

The revisit plan also allows for the reintroduction of dying breeds that have been re-invented and re-gained traction, as well as the introduction of cutting-edge technologies that might be the fulcrum for the next several years.

Reach-out to your employees and customers

Effective collaboration, whether with customers, employees, or both, is critical to the success of any engagement. When High Tech Arena has a lot to offer, we need to see what fits for which customer use case and how is this fitment with the employee to a certain extent so that adoption is also feasible. The organization needs to collect customer and employee feedback to come across technology rationalization.

Prioritizing technological investment is dependent on an organization’s maturity, desire to excel, and where it stands in terms of foreseeing business futures. These are possible by harvesting technological culture in their employees and actively realizing it with their customers, employees, and a smile on the end user’s face, all of which ultimately sway them towards a specific product. These are initial considerations to fuel customer and employee engagement by prioritizing tech investments and setting up the necessary foundation.

(The author Jagat Pal Singh is COO, Cybage and the views expressed in this article are his own)