Revenue, Profitability, Cost-Reduction: Goals of Digital Journeys

You can watch the video of this presentation here.

The digital journey should target three key aspects in every company: growing revenue, increasing profitability and reducing costs. Otherwise, digitalization might just be a costly solution that does not solve any problems, said Luis Martin Del Campo, Strategist and Senior Director at Genesys, during Mexico Business Forum 2021.

During the presentation, the leader of Genesys pointed out that an effective business strategy should follow "a clear path that impacts these three basic business metrics.” Otherwise, the digital journey “will quickly become a solution in search of a problem and eventually fail." Addressing these three key variables can take many shapes. For instance, revenue growth could mean more customers or more sales. Increased profitability could be mean innovation or specialization, while efficiency will ultimately drive cost reduction.

Companies may be following misleading incentives in their digital journey, said Del Campo. Often, business leaders decide to increase digitalization because they assume it is what customers need or because their competitors are doing it. After the pandemic, digitalization might have been perceived as a matter of survival. "These ideas may be leading us to jump on a trend rather than designing an effective business strategy," says Del Campo.

The first step for a successful digital journey is to be customer-focused. "To elaborate a successful digital journey, we should depart from placing the customer at the center of the strategy."

Not one single channel alone is effective; to build an effective customer experience, an omnichannel strategy is essential. "To offer the customer all possible channels is the way to go. Depending on his or her situation customers may select one channel over another at a specific moment. Rather than prioritizing one, we can use all so the customer decides which is the experience they want to enjoy," he mentioned.

Elements and tools that helped companies remain close to their customers in its digital journey include chatbots that provide an immediate and enjoyable experience to customers and predictive models, which can also become important differentiators from competitors.