Insights | Sutherland Blogs & Infographicshttps://www.sutherlandglobal.com/insightsWe creatively discover, humanistically design, analytically develop, and seamlessly deploy intelligent experiences.en{DFF14AA1-463E-423B-B8A1-3E15CE0E6BD3}https://www.sutherlandglobal.com/Insights/Communications-Media-and-Entertainment/ai-is-transforming-network-operationsAI Is Transforming Network Operations: Here’s How You Can Get Ahead of the Curve<p>As the digital landscape continues to evolve at an unprecedented pace, network operators face mounting challenges. The increasing complexity of telco networks has left them overloaded, overwhelmed, and unable to continually enhance end-user’s experience to elevate business outcomes. Engineering and support teams must spend too much time on manual, day-to-day tasks, which creates inefficiencies that affect the bottom line.</p> <p>Thankfully, there’s an AI-shaped solution on the horizon. AI-driven predictive analytics and machine learning will change network operations forever, overcoming the challenges operators currently face.</p> <p>AI and ML are the technological keys that will turn today’s business challenges into opportunities for substantial, sustainable growth. According to <a rel="noopener noreferrer" href="https://www.arubanetworks.com/analyst-reports/ai-networking-innovation-insight/" title="https://www.arubanetworks.com/analyst-reports/ai-networking-innovation-insight/" target="_blank">Gartner</a>, 90% of telcos will leverage AI functions to automate Day 2 network operations by 2027. This marks a great increase from the 10% adoption rate observed in 2023 and underscores the urgency of embracing AI technology.</p> <p> But how will AI-driven predictive analytics change network operations? And what benefits will it bring? There are four main areas to consider.</p> <h2>The Benefits of AI for Network Operators</h2> <p><strong>Improved Network Service</strong><br /> By leveraging AI-powered systems to identify patterns and anomalies, operators can proactively optimize network performance, ensure seamless connectivity, and minimize downtime.</p> <p>Predictive analytics also play a crucial role in capacity planning, enabling telcos to scale networks efficiently in response to evolving demands.</p> <p><strong>Optimized Resource Allocation and Cost Savings</strong><br /> By automating routine tasks such as configuration management, troubleshooting, and network optimization, machine learning technologies remove the need for manual intervention. This enhances operational efficiency, reduces human errors, and ultimately leads to significant cost savings.</p> <p>Freeing up network administrators’ time, machine learning enables them to focus on strategic initiatives that bring better customer outcomes and drive business growth.</p> <p><strong>Enhanced Network Security</strong><br /> AI-powered systems can detect and mitigate cybersecurity threats in real-time by analyzing network traffic patterns to identify potential breaches, abnormal activities, and suspicious behavior.</p> <p>This proactive approach to security is essential in safeguarding networks against ever-evolving threats found in today's digital landscape, making it an area where the benefits of AI are especially compelling.</p> <p><strong>Automated Network Configuration</strong><br /> AI facilitates seamless integration and interoperability between diverse infrastructure components. This simplifies complex workflows and reduces technology deployment times.</p> <p>This functionality makes telcos more agile in responding to changing market dynamics and means that digital transformation initiatives of all kinds can be executed faster, ensuring organizations that are using AI effectively are several steps ahead of the competition.</p> <h2>Act Today to Transform Tomorrow</h2> <p>Sutherland offers a suite of autonomous network operation tools, known as Sutherland Netshield AI for Operators. Deployed together, this solution suite can transform network management by bringing the power of AI-powered predictive analytics and machine learning to telcos.</p> <p>Sutherland Netshield AI for Operators brings tangible business outcomes for users:</p> <ul style="margin-left: 30px;"> <li> <p style="margin: 0;">50% reduction in service-impacting equipment failures.</p> </li> <li> <p style="margin: 0;">60% decrease in time to resolve service-impacting issues.</p> </li> <li> <p>50% fewer tower repair dispatches.</p> </li> </ul> <p>This comprehensive solution comprises four key components:</p> <ul style="margin-left: 30px;"> <li> <p style="margin: 0;">Sutherland NetSentinel AI: Leveraging advanced algorithms to enable smarter business processes and the proactive identification and rectification of network service issues – resulting in huge increases in subscriber satisfaction rates.</p> </li> <li> <p style="margin: 0;"><a href="https://www.sutherlandglobal.com/products-x-platforms/smartleap-helptree" title="https://www.sutherlandglobal.com/products-x-platforms/smartleap-helptree">SmartLeap HelpTree</a>: A knowledge management platform powered by a robust decision network architecture. SmartLeap HelpTree provides step-by-step guidance for complex incident resolution and proactive maintenance, improving troubleshooting, engineering design, and provisioning processes.</p> </li> <li> <p style="margin: 0;"><a href="https://www.sutherlandglobal.com/products-x-platforms/sutherland-robility" title="https://www.sutherlandglobal.com/products-x-platforms/sutherland-robility">Sutherland Robility</a>: Built to facilitate faster and safer scaling of new technologies and capabilities by using intelligent automation, AI, and ML, this platform maximizes outcomes for enterprises. Sutherland Robility provisions automated networks and systems to manage administrative tasks, automates issue resolution for operational efficiency, and tests and deploys advanced software and applications.</p> </li> <li> <p>Sutherland NetDev XG AI: Bespoke solutions for application development and dedicated care support for developers – enhancing device health and automated issue resolution, and aligning code and framework with industry standards.</p> </li> </ul> <h3>Conclusion</h3> <p>AI-powered networks represent the future of network operations, offering telcos unparalleled efficiency, reliability, and security.</p> <p>However, the right approach is critical. Telcos need the right technology – and the right partner – to guide the process and ensure integration with existing networks is seamless, protecting previous IT investments.</p> <p>With 35+ years of experience in business optimization and extensive telecoms expertise, Sutherland is perfectly positioned to elevate your network operations with AI.</p>Mon, 18 Mar 2024 00:08:44 -0700{256B86A8-1A50-4495-BDD5-FC96A09B2CB8}https://www.sutherlandglobal.com/Insights/Banking-and-Financial-Services/leading-third-party-loan-servicing-companyLeading Third-Party Loan Servicing Company Overcomes Macro-Economic Challenges To Reduce TCO by 40%<div style="text-align:center;"> <p style="width: 100%; text-align: center; font-weight: bold;">The Challenge</p> <h2><strong>Addressing Financial Pressures With the Right Automation Expertise</strong></h2> <p>One of the largest third-party loan services in the US, this company offers auto loans and financial services to a client base of over 200k. US-based but with a global footprint, they’re experts at providing world-class customer experience, offering convenient tech-enabled solutions.</p> <p>Adverse macro-economic conditions impacted originators in 2022, however. With a legacy operating model, our client faced a real business challenge, unable to reinvent processes that were labor intensive, while, at the same time, struggling to acquire and retain the right talent.</p> <p>In an effort to drive efficiencies and gain a competitive edge, they attempted to implement automation on their own. However, they hit yet another obstacle with a lack of experience and disjointed and inefficient implementation that impeded their efforts. Their time-to-market was slow, and as delinquencies rose, resulting in higher collection volumes and costs, our client faced significant margin pressure.</p> <p>They were looking for a partner capable of recognizing outsourcing and transformation opportunities and swiftly implementing effective solutions.</p> <p> </p> <p style="width: 100%; text-align: center; font-weight: bold;">The Outcome</p> <h2><strong>Intelligent Automation-Enabled Savings and Efficiencies</strong></h2> <p>In search of a scalable, efficient model, this third-party auto loans servicer reached out to Sutherland. Our team of experts conducted an advisory assessment to evaluate their end-to-end processes and identified the best opportunities to implement automation. </p> <p>We developed a holistic roadmap for optimized outsourcing and transformation with a scope of over 400 FTEs in customer support, collections, finance and accounting, and legal and compliance. Simultaneously, we created Centers of Excellence across India, the Philippines, and Jamaica, and over 70 SOPs to help standardize processes and improve the agent experience.</p> <p>In addition, we mapped and defined operational standards with a global operating model of standardized processes. Leveraging lean Six Sigma methodology, we were able to remove redundant Non Value Add activities and reduce TCO.</p> <p>Our <a href="https://www.sutherlandglobal.com/products-x-platforms/sutherland-robility">Robility™</a> services team also developed bots in partnership with a leading automation platform to help eliminate manual data analysis within the vehicle auction accounting process. The hyperautomation solution reinvented inventory management, flagging data outliers automatically, and enabling quicker accounting of payments.</p> <p>With end-to-end process mapping capabilities, we identified operational efficiencies, re-engineered the process, and implemented a comprehensive operational framework to ensure compliance.</p> <p> </p> <p style="max-width: 700px; margin: 0 auto;"><em>"When our client came to us, they had previously tried and failed to implement automation across their operations. The difference with our process is that we look at operations end-to-end, dismantling any existing silos, and helping re-engineer processes. We look forward to working together to help them reach their goals."</em></p> </div> <style type="text/css"> .detail-layout .container .heading{ width: 100%; } .article-content p, .article-content ul, .article-content ol { text-align: left; } .hero-case-study-content .banner-heading h3 { font-size: 30px; } .case-study-banner { background-position: top; } .insights { display: none; } </style>Thu, 07 Mar 2024 08:39:45 -0800{83FA7672-92C6-4B56-82D6-1E65BCF91A18}https://www.sutherlandglobal.com/Insights/Banking-and-Financial-Services/leading-financial-services-provider-accelerates-operational-efficienciesLeading Financial Services Provider Accelerates Operational Efficiencies<div style="text-align:center;"> <p style="width: 100%; text-align: center; font-weight: bold;">The Challenge</p> <h2><strong>Modernizing Labor-Intensive Business Processes</strong></h2> <p>Serving over 11 million customers across the US and Canada, this digital bank is a top 25 U.S. financial holding company. They provide financial services and advice across industries, ranging from auto finance to corporate lending. </p> <p>Their ongoing success led to a growing volume of work. However, a vast amount of the processes in their back-office operations remained manual. Non-standardized business practices meant employees handled traditional workflow indexing and data extraction. Repetitive tasks were the underlying issue of their challenges: reconciliation processes were paper-based and the escheatment process was time-consuming for over 240,000 checks annually.</p> <p>They needed a seasoned partner that could reimagine their decentralized processes into a streamlined, homogenized suite of operations. </p> <p> </p> <p style="width: 100%; text-align: center; font-weight: bold;">The Outcome</p> <h2><strong>Automation Removes Repetitive Tasks for Holistic Transformation</strong></h2> <p>Our digital advisory services team performed a maturity assessment and examined existing technology vendors and licenses to redefine and implement an end-to-end optimized process that would improve productivity and throughput.</p> <p>We designed and deployed a revised quality control framework to reduce human errors and simultaneously increase regulatory compliance. <a href="https://www.sutherlandglobal.com/products-x-platforms/sutherland-prodigy">Our Prodigy™ platform</a> brought together document processing, data entry, and queue management to streamline workflows. </p> <p>Our team identified additional processes struggling to meet quality and compliance standards, creating bottlenecks across the value chain. Leveraging Sutherland’s own hyperautomation platform, <a href="https://www.sutherlandglobal.com/products-x-platforms/sutherland-robility">Robility™</a>, and implementing intelligent meta-bots, we automated previously manual escheatment check processing and reconciliations to save employees’ time and effort. </p> <p>Tapping into our automation and efficiency expertise, our client improved productivity by over 25%.</p> <p> </p> <p style="max-width: 700px; margin: 0 auto;"><em>"When a leading financial services provider came to us with completely manual and decentralized processes, we knew the exact solution for them. With a real need for better digitization workflow management and standardized processes, our team was able to offer their end-to-end advisory services and implement automation across existing inefficiencies. Utilizing our Robility™ and Prodigy™ platforms, we were able to provide time savings, improve productivity, and eliminate manual inefficiencies."</em></p> </div> <style type="text/css"> .detail-layout .container .heading{ width: 100%; } .article-content p, .article-content ul, .article-content ol { text-align: left; } .hero-case-study-content .banner-heading h3 { font-size: 30px; } .case-study-banner { background-position: top; } .insights { display: none; } </style>Thu, 07 Mar 2024 01:57:46 -0800{D412F84F-9059-4163-AFDD-BBB03ED5255F}https://www.sutherlandglobal.com/Insights/Banking-and-Financial-Services/fintech-2024-growth-opportunityFintech 2.0: 2024 Is a Growth Opportunity – Are You Prepared To Thrive?<p>The Fintech industry had a difficult 2023. Rising interest rates, higher inflationary pressure, mounting delinquencies, and dried-up low-cost funding made it difficult to raise capital, leaving a backlog of IPO-ready companies. </p> <p>Add to that some big failures in financial services – think FTX and SVB – and it’s easy to see why investors and customers lost confidence. The markets were nervous. Deposits shifted from Fintechs and banks as people chased high interest rates for their savings. And the industry was under a lot of pressure to accept less favorable buyout deals.</p> <p>In 2024, however, the outlook is brighter. The industry is seeing a significant uptick. But to ensure sustained growth through this year and beyond, there are several challenges Fintechs must watch out for and take action against. With the right strategy as a defense, Fintechs can thrive under the growth opportunity on the horizon.</p> <p><img style="width:100%;" alt="Fintech 2.0: 2024 Is a Growth Opportunity – Are You Prepared To Thrive?" loading="lazy" class="lazy" data-src="https://sutherlandglobal.azureedge.net/-/media/finxelerate/1082x566-inline-new-size-for-new-site.jpg?rev=5bf02627-c085-4607-863a-23c58f4e13e5&hash=32BED222FFC824EC725364CBA5D397D5" /></p> <h2>The Challenges Facing Fintechs in 2024</h2> <p>I see  six main hurdles that Fintechs need to overcome this year, which must be navigated as a whole to capitalize on the growth potential 2024 holds. </p> <p><strong>1. The Cash Runway Dilemma</strong><br /> Many Fintechs find themselves with less than 12 months of cash runway, highlighting the pressing need to balance growth and EBITDA. Navigating this dichotomy is crucial for survival and success.</p> <p><strong>2. Evolving Revenue Streams</strong><br /> With interchange erosion reducing the amount in fees Fintech companies can earn, the ongoing shift towards revenue models like SaaS from traditional software distribution will continue to gain momentum. Adapting to this is essential for sustained profitability.</p> <p><strong>3. Escalating Cyber Threats</strong><br /> The increasing prevalence of cyber threats, including deepfakes and voice clones, underscores the importance of enhancing data security and authentication measures. Fintechs must invest in robust cybersecurity frameworks to protect against emerging threats.</p> <p><strong>4. Regulatory Scrutiny and Compliance</strong><br /> More than <a rel="noopener noreferrer" href="https://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/over-60-of-fintechs-paid-at-least-250k-in-compliance-fines-last-year-alloy-report-finds-301900838.html" target="_blank">60% of Fintechs pay at least $250k in compliance fines</a> a year, with one-third paying over $500k. Data privacy, fair lending, digital assets, fraud, and chargebacks are just some of the areas regulators are clamping down on. New regulations on Open Banking and AI credit denials have also been proposed by the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB) adding another layer of complexity. </p> <p><strong>5. Customer Retention</strong><br /> With revenue and margin pressures on the rise, retaining customers and acquiring new ones without doling out significant sums of money in acquisition is a critical challenge for Fintechs. Developing new strategies to attract and hold onto Gen Z account holders is vitally important in 2024.</p> <p><strong>6. Talent Acquisition and Retention</strong><br /> Hiring skilled domain experts remains a challenge for Fintechs. Attracting and retaining top talent is crucial for driving innovation and maintaining a competitive edge.</p> <p>Although 2024 has brought challenges galore, it has also created many opportunities. The key will be strengthening your core business and operating model while increasing your focus on the customer and user experience at the same time. </p> <h2>Strategies for Fintech Success in 2024</h2> <p>Navigating the challenges above, and grasping the opportunities they create, will enable Fintechs to not just survive but thrive. But how should they go about it? </p> <p><strong>1. Build Trust </strong><br /> As the cost of acquisition is lower than the cost of building, Fintechs must brace for consolidation as M&A activities increase. In doing this, it’s important to maintain a laser focus on bringing deposits back to Fintechs, establishing credibility, liquidity, and investor confidence.</p> <p><strong>2. Understand and Retain Your Customers </strong><br /> Understanding Gen Z has been tough for Fintechs and Neo-Banks. Active social media monitoring and plugging data into overall customer journey mapping is important to understand these customers. Implement NBA (next best actions), predictive analytics, and AI/ML-based hyper-personalization models to create tailored offerings and products that attract and retain customers more cost-effectively.</p> <p><strong>3. Cost Discipline</strong><br /> Stringent cost management – not growth – has been the biggest contributor to profitability for Fintechs. 2024 is the year to prioritize efficiency in your business model by implementing digital accelerators such as automation and artificial intelligence, ensuring SLA compliance, and reducing errors. </p> <p><strong>4. Invest in Compliance and Regulations</strong><br /> Increase your focus on cybercrime, data privacy, fraud, and compliance. But remember, not everything needs to be built in-house. Explore Regtech solutions that can automate and streamline compliance processes. And consider participating in regulatory sandboxes that let you test and innovate within a controlled environment. </p> <p><strong>5. Fight Fraud</strong><br /> Fintechs have become easy and obvious targets for Fraudsters. In 2024, it’s essential to bolster your defenses by focusing on authentication measures such as MFA, FIDO2, 3DS, and decentralized authentication to protect legitimate users and weed out bad actors. Participation in Open Banking and fraud networks can further enhance your fraud prevention capabilities.</p> <p><strong>6. Invest in Cutting-Edge Technology </strong><br /> While some Fintechs have already invested in GenAI solutions, there are many areas you can explore  to better leverage this technology and further streamline your operating model. Hyper-personalization, BOT virtual assistants, metaverse-based avatars, and advanced credit scoring are avenues that can drive efficiency, reduce costs, and enhance customer engagement.</p> <p><strong>7. Become Agile and Scalable </strong><br /> Utilizing industry specialists, BPaaS solutions, and on-demand domain experts can help Fintechs create adaptable teams and operating models that can be expanded easily. These are crucial in responding to changing market dynamics.</p> <p><strong>8. Build Strong Support Structures </strong><br /> Although it’s often overlooked, building scalable support structures is essential for Fintech companies. Establishing efficient processes and departments for procurement, accounting, taxation, payroll, training, and compliance is key to sustained success. </p> <h2>Summing Up</h2> <p>Resilience comes from sound fundamentals, differentiated and innovative products, and a profitable P&L. In 2024, it’s therefore more important than ever that Fintech’s remain focused on innovation and maintaining a great product story. </p> <p>By converting challenges into opportunities, you can conquer the evolving financial landscape and emerge stronger than ever. And that’s where Sutherland FinXelerate – a suite of flexible, modular solutions, curated for Fintechs, can help transform your operating model, delivered by a partner that truly understands the needs of Fintechs – can help.</p>Tue, 06 Feb 2024 08:25:30 -0800{D86436B2-BD83-46CA-A9B2-F66AF94E1C2C}https://www.sutherlandglobal.com/Insights/Banking-and-Financial-Services/convert-aml-compliance-challenges-into-business-benefitsConvert AML Compliance Challenges into Business Benefits<p>We're all discussing transforming processes and systems to elevate customer experience, enhance operational efficiency, and boost organizational success. But, what's the key to getting it right?</p> <p>The compliance operations are seen more as a burden of doing business. More often than not, they work in silos, with their disparate processes and different priorities than typical banking business of garnering more business, retaining and delighting customers. Breaking this figurative mould and revisiting possibilities of enhancing compliance operations while aligning to overall business values, here is a webinar which tells us how and what of this approach.</p> <p>Listen to Sutherland's head of BFS Customer Success,<a rel="noopener noreferrer" href="https://www.linkedin.com/in/sumit-chopra-8aa6339/" target="_blank">Sumit Chopra,</a> in conversation with Director of FinScan Advisory Services <a rel="noopener noreferrer" href="https://www.linkedin.com/in/stephen-marshall-233183128/" target="_blank">Stephen Marshall</a> in <a rel="noopener noreferrer" href="https://www.acams.org/en/training/webinars/unlocking-growth-aml-risk-assessment-for-customer-experience" target="_blank">our recent webinar.</a> Stephen is an expert compliance and internal audit experience and he shares insights on how to build a comprehensive risk management strategy for AML compliance. While Sumit shares his managed services operations experience on how AI driven analytics, process excellence and understanding risk to better manage KYC and AML functions which can lead to better CX, reduce cost and drive business growth.</p> <p>Let's recap:</p> <h3>Navigating AML Compliance: Balancing the Pros and Cons</h3> <p>Stephen highlights the inherent challenges in pursuing value from AML compliance operations, shedding light on what to be mindful of despite the apparent benefits:</p> <ul style="margin-left: 30px;"> <li> <p style="margin: 0;"><strong>A Complex Regulatory Landscape:</strong> AML regulations and requirements not only vary across jurisdictions but are constantly evolving. It is challenging to navigate this complex landscape effectively – and to avoid hefty fines associated with non-compliance.</p> </li> <li> <p style="margin: 0;"><strong>Delivering Better Customer Experience:</strong> Achieving the perfect balance between risk mitigation and fulfilling KYC requirements is difficult. It can also often inconvenience legitimate customers, leading to dissatisfaction.</p> </li> <li> <p style="margin: 0;"><strong>Addressing Rising Costs:</strong> AML compliance costs have steadily increased due to demand for advanced technology, heightened monitoring, and expanded staff to align with regulatory standards. Enhancing efficiency and integration is vital to addressing this challenge.</p> </li> <li> <p><strong>Tackling Operational Inefficiencies</strong>: <a href="https://www.sutherlandglobal.com/insights/banking-and-financial-services/transform-aml-challenges-into-business-value">Siloed processes and systems</a> within organizations often lead to operational inefficiencies. This makes it challenging to gather holistic customer information and accurately assess risk.</p> </li> </ul> <h2>Data Quality Excellence</h2> <p>According to Stephen <a href="https://www.sutherlandglobal.com/insights/banking-and-financial-services/its-time-to-reinvent-aml">customer experience is the core of your </a>growth journey, in compliance operations, data quality is paramount—it forms the cornerstone for reliable insights, informed decision-making, and operational success. Accurate, consistent data underpins trustworthy analytics, fostering a robust foundation for successful business operations in a data-driven world.</p> <p> In this regard, Sumit and Stephen highlighted three key factors for success:</p> <ul style="margin-left: 30px;"> <li> <p style="margin: 0;"><strong>Holistic Data Gathering</strong>: It is critical to have a mechanism for comprehensive collection of information from various sources. This approach will ensure data driven insights and understand customer behaviour, enabling informed decision-making for enhanced business growth and elevate CX.</p> </li> <li> <p style="margin: 0;"><strong>Dynamic Learning:</strong> Modern AML systems need dynamic learning capabilities. This supports real-time data analysis, prediction, and adaptation, helping you to recognize any emerging risks and quickly adjust to changes.</p> </li> <li> <p><strong>Better Data Quality: </strong>Data quality is crucial to meet regulatory requirements and minimize the risk of penalties or sanctions. With regulations changing frequently, you need an agile, vigilant system capable of staying ahead.</p> </li> </ul> <h3>How Can You Ensure Both the Quantity and Quality of Data?</h3> <p>Choose versatile, tech-driven AML/KYC systems for seamless integration. Strengthen the link between <a href="https://www.sutherlandglobal.com/insights/banking-and-financial-services/customer-insight-and-aml-compliance-two-sides-of-the-same-coin">AML functions and customer interactions</a>, empowering sales and client teams to anticipate needs. For customers, it translates to an enhanced experience—no more redundant requests, faster access to desired products."</p> <h3>It is time to Reinvent AML</h3> <p>Managed services for KYC/AML streamline compliance by outsourcing regulatory tasks to specialized providers. Sumit spoke about a framework where the intelligent automation solution, optimizing data collection, reducing false positives, and revolutionizing AML/KYC compliance bring about a continuous monitoring, data verification, and risk assessment, enhancing accuracy and efficiency.</p> <p>Leveraging expert services, businesses can navigate complex compliance landscapes, reduce costs, and maintain a robust framework for KYC/AML requirements.</p> <h2>Looking Beyond Checkbox Compliance</h2> <p>Revamping your AML risk management is vital for dismantling siloes and tapping into revenue-generating opportunities. A customer-first approach is not just a best practice but a strategic imperative to move beyond checkbox compliance.</p> <p>To achieve this, integrate compliance practices seamlessly into core business strategies. Leverage data-driven insights and adopting innovative models with a customer-first mindset. In doing so, AML compliance can transform into a pivotal business asset. Its systems can make it easier to collaborate with other departments, achieving shared goals and establishing compliance as a foundational layer for business success.</p> <p><a rel="noopener noreferrer" href="https://www.acams.org/en/training/webinars/unlocking-growth-aml-risk-assessment-for-customer-experience" target="_blank">Catch up on our webinar to learn directly from the experts.</a></p> <p>Ready to turn your AML operations from a business constraint to a value driver? Get in touch to see how Sutherland can support your customer-centric transformation.</p>Thu, 11 Jan 2024 06:24:46 -0800{1D577EC7-D008-40B1-9076-034FF63366E9}https://www.sutherlandglobal.com/Insights/Communications-Media-and-Entertainment/6-reasons-why-effective-automation-requires-human-centered-experience-design6 Reasons Why Effective Automation Requires Human-Centered Experience Design<p>Experience-led business transformation — often powered by <a href="https://www.sutherlandglobal.com/transformation/intelligent-automation">intelligent automation</a> — is an integrated approach that involves business acumen, process consulting, data insight and design services to build automated experiences that grow value while strengthening the brand.</p> <p>There are several reasons human-centered Experience Design (XD) is crucial to delivering intelligent automation that achieves results.</p> <h2>1. Experience Design Makes Automation Effective Because It Involves The Expert Contributions of Many, Including Designers</h2> <p>An experience design approach to automation projects orchestrates a collaborative and interactive development timeline that involves business consultants, analytics experts, application developers and interface designers. Yes, design is a central part of the effort, but it is design work driven by business strategy and desired customer experience outcomes.</p> <p><img style="width:100%;" alt="6 Reasons Why Effective Automation Requires Human-Centered Experience Design" loading="lazy" class="lazy" data-src="https://sutherlandglobal.azureedge.net/-/media/images/leveraging-human-insights/blog4/fy224845inline1it-involves-the-expert-contributions-of-many-including-designers2000x1200.jpg?rev=8c04d50f-7c95-4cbc-aa3a-50d424144353&h=1200&w=2000&hash=3FA83B3C0DD7F120667B2D6760CEF7DF" /></p> <h2>2. Experience Design Makes Automation Effective Because It Enables Better Digital Solutions</h2> <p>Experience design is a strategic mindset that prioritizes a human-first approach to orchestrating any sort of customer (or employee) experience — whether physical, digital, customer-facing or back-office. It always begins with the humans involved in any interaction, on all sides of the relationship.</p> <p><img style="width:100%;" alt="6 Reasons Why Effective Automation Requires Human-Centered Experience Design" loading="lazy" class="lazy" data-src="https://sutherlandglobal.azureedge.net/-/media/images/leveraging-human-insights/blog4/fy22-4845_inline2_it-enables-better-digital-solutions_2000x1200.jpg?rev=1eced5e8-e3da-4fa4-a16f-bd274fc543ea&hash=3718A6A5A3670F348551360EDBE461EA" /></p> <h2>3. Experience Design Makes Automation Effective Because It Focuses on the Right Problems to Solve</h2> <p>Deep-dive discovery work enables an experience design team to see problems through the eyes of the consumer or end-user — exposing both causes and opportunities. Good <a href="https://www.sutherlandglobal.com/transformation/sutherland-labs/insight-and-design">customer experience design</a> identifies the real vs. perceived business problems presenting themselves to be solved. Only when the actual, underlying business problem — and customer objective — is identified can a truly transformational automation be built and introduced.</p> <p><img style="width:100%;" alt="6 Reasons Why Effective Automation Requires Human-Centered Experience Design" loading="lazy" class="lazy" data-src="https://sutherlandglobal.azureedge.net/-/media/images/leveraging-human-insights/blog4/fy22-4845_inline3_it-focuses-on-the-right-problems-to-solve_2000x1200.jpg?rev=96e65582-107e-4424-9f99-f53e869e5ff8&hash=CC108BF1A6FAAEE747F872476A638D7E" /></p> <h2>4. Experience Design Makes Automation Effective Because It Untangles Complexity and Connects the Dots</h2> <p>When a customer experience problem (and the processes touching it) crosses departments and divisions, you can’t always see your way clear to the solution. A multi-skilled team is needed to define a roadmap. Digging deeper than what’s only customer-facing brings the front-, middle- and back-office together into a single vision. By considering the full ecosystem, experience design can confidently empower more successful and seamless transformation.</p> <p><img style="width:100%;" alt="6 Reasons Why Effective Automation Requires Human-Centered Experience Design" loading="lazy" class="lazy" data-src="https://sutherlandglobal.azureedge.net/-/media/images/leveraging-human-insights/blog4/fy22-4845_inline4_it-untangles-complexity-and-connects-the-dots_2000x1200.jpg?rev=cdefa9b1-c851-44f4-925e-1bc49e5dbe3a&hash=DF421E7FFD92DED71A141050D48991A9" /></p> <h2>5. Experience Design Makes Automation Effective Because It Reduces Risk Through Agile Development</h2> <p>Surprisingly, about 40% of companies fail to speak or collaborate with end-users during the typical development process. A human-centric experience design approach must include ongoing usability testing for intuitiveness, effectiveness, stability, speed and accuracy throughout iterative development cycles to yield strong and clear data. By testing prototypes, potential risks can surface, allowing you to mitigate them while learning whether the added value is impacting your customers and employees.</p> <p><img style="width:100%;" alt="6 Reasons Why Effective Automation Requires Human-Centered Experience Design" loading="lazy" class="lazy" data-src="https://sutherlandglobal.azureedge.net/-/media/images/leveraging-human-insights/blog4/fy22-4845_inline5_it-reduces-risk-through-agile-development_2000x1200.jpg?rev=9faa3d6d-e425-4064-b89c-d007912b49ba&h=1200&w=2000&hash=27F3EB09116372B6D0AB8E6DFA88AA2D" /></p> <h2>6. Experience Design Makes Automation Effective Because It Delivers Sustainable Results</h2> <p>An important goal of experience design is simply to humanize technology by developing it in harmony with human capabilities and sensibilities. Teams must understand modern customers’ and employees’ unique circumstances and requirements to successfully keep the experience design solution alive, evolving and responding to evolving business challenges and customer needs.</p> <p><img style="width:100%;" alt="6 Reasons Why Effective Automation Requires Human-Centered Experience Design" loading="lazy" class="lazy" data-src="https://sutherlandglobal.azureedge.net/-/media/images/leveraging-human-insights/blog4/fy22-4845_inline6_it-delivers-sustainable-results_2000x1200.jpg?rev=374eaece-6a95-4a16-81bd-0a0634d9f354&hash=70768108A70BEC1567B7D03809FD9657" /></p> <p>To learn more about how you can leverage human insight (powered by human-centered experience design) to build automation that matters…</p> <p><a rel="noopener noreferrer" href="https://www.sutherlandglobal.com/business-process/customer-interactions-services" target="_blank">Find out more</a> about how we can help.</p> <style type="text/css"> .article-insight-hero-banner.article-banner.pickgradient { background-position: top; } </style>Mon, 08 Jan 2024 23:14:03 -0800{9C12B32A-9544-42FD-A224-DDE4C2803B2E}https://www.sutherlandglobal.com/Insights/Banking-and-Financial-Services/wp-isg-names-sutherland-a-leader-in-customer-experience-and-finance-and-accountingISG Names Sutherland a Leader in Customer Experience and Finance and Accounting<p>Sutherland has been recognized as a <a href="/sitecore/service/notfound.aspx?item=web%3a%7b9491BBFC-3057-493F-A3A9-C2F10ADB2C1B%7d%40en">leader in customer experience</a> and finance and <a href="https://www.sutherlandglobal.com/insights/banking-and-financial-services/case-study-a-nationwide-provider-of-tax-preparation-services-sutherland">accounting transformation</a> services by ISG, a leading global technology research and advisory firm. Two recent reports in customer experience and finance and accounting highlight Sutherland’s skillsets and capabilities that have earned the leader position.</p> <p>ISG formally awarded Sutherland as a leader in these categories on February 21, 2018. It is an incredible honor to achieve these awards and highly esteemed rankings by ISG, it is a privilege to share the reports and valuable insights with the greater industry as a whole.</p> <p><strong>Insights included in the </strong><strong><a href="/sitecore/service/notfound.aspx?item=web%3a%7b9491BBFC-3057-493F-A3A9-C2F10ADB2C1B%7d%40en">ISG ProviderLens™ Contact Center Customer Experience report:</a></strong></p> <ul style="margin-left: 30px;"> <li> <p style="margin: 0;">Alignment of enterprise requirements with provider capabilities</p> </li> <li> <p style="margin: 0;">Impact of technological advancements in the evolving CX landscape</p> </li> <li> <p>How digital enablement is critical in the transformation from customer service to customer experience</p> </li> </ul> <p><a href="/sitecore/service/notfound.aspx?item=web%3a%7b9491BBFC-3057-493F-A3A9-C2F10ADB2C1B%7d%40en">Click here to download the full CX report</a>.</p> <p><strong>The </strong><strong><a href="/sitecore/service/notfound.aspx?item=web%3a%7b468CE958-5163-4349-9769-59EA9E8A32EB%7d%40en">ISG ProviderLens™ Report: Finance and Accounting Outsourcing (FAO) Services</a></strong><strong> includes insight on:</strong></p> <ul style="margin-left: 30px;"> <li> <p style="margin: 0;">The growing trend towards clients needing innovative and technology-driven services</p> </li> <li> <p style="margin: 0;">Four client archetypes based on vertical-specific services to help key corporate decision makers determine the best fit for their organization</p> </li> <li> <p>Rankings of providers on their ability to provide process transformation services</p> </li> </ul> <p><a href="/sitecore/service/notfound.aspx?item=web%3a%7b468CE958-5163-4349-9769-59EA9E8A32EB%7d%40en">Click here to download the full FAO report</a>.</p> <p>At Sutherland, we pride ourselves on being a leading provider of end-to-end process transformation solutions that deliver improved results businesses can see, and improved experiences customers can <em>feel</em>.</p> <p>The ISG findings support the positive feedback we hear from clients each day. Learn more about our ongoing efforts in process transformation and automation at www.sutherlandglobal.com or follow us on LinkedIn</a> and <a href="https://twitter.com/SutherlandCorp">Twitter.</p>Fri, 05 Jan 2024 02:11:19 -0800{6F9A010D-0BA9-4994-94D4-5BF0DB7A94F9}https://www.sutherlandglobal.com/Insights/Banking-and-Financial-Services/customer-journey-mapping-how-to-get-startedCustomer Journey Mapping How to Get Started<p>Customers expect their needs to be satisfied every time they engage with a brand. If an organization fails to deliver at any moment, it could trigger the end of the relationship. Of course, it is quid pro quo. Satisfied customers demonstrate greater brand loyalty. For example, organizations that prioritize customer experience transformation achieve an <a href="https://www.iperceptions.com/blog/customer-experience-statistics">average annual revenue growth rate of 15%</a> over other companies. However, designing <a href="https://www.sutherlandglobal.com/services/customer-engagement-transformation">world-class customer engagements</a> that foster long-term relationships is not easy. It requires organizations to undergo a transformation process that begins with customer journey mapping.</p> <p><strong>What Is Customer Journey Mapping?</strong><strong></strong></p> <p>In its simplest form, a customer journey map can be sketched by hand or with Post-It notes. The process should identify the steps customers go through on the path to purchase. It might be the steps you take when choosing a <a href="https://www.sutherlandglobal.com/insights/healthcare/the-importance-of-customer-journey-mapping-for-digital-healthcare-sutherland">new health plan</a>. Or, when you buy a new car. Every user journey is different based on their preferences and intent. Consumer behaviors evolve rapidly and new touch points (voice, email, chat, social media) keep emerging that offer different avenues of interaction. As a result, <a href="https://www.sutherlandglobal.com/insights/healthcare/healthcare-customer-journey-mapping-sutherland">user experience maps have become more complex</a> to understand.</p> <p>In turn, companies are turning to more strategic approaches to <a href="https://www.sutherlandglobal.com/services/customer-engagement-transformation">improve their customer experience</a>. The art of creating a better user experience requires insights. That starts with understanding past behavioral patterns and motivations to purchase. The most accurate way to understand your customer is to scrape customer behavioral data and leverage advanced <a href="https://www.sutherlandglobal.com/insights/healthcare/case-study-analytics-for-better-insights-sutherland">analytics tools</a>, such as Google Analytics. This will allow you to map every engagement from the first point of contact to subsequent repeat engagements—a process known as customer engagement management. </p> <p><img alt="" style="width: 100%;" loading="lazy" class="lazy" data-src="https://sutherlandglobal.azureedge.net/-/media/sutherland/images/blog-images/customer-journey-mapping-blog-incopy-1200x627.jpg?rev=4a282ed3-670a-480c-b05f-c9d122c6e050&hash=8025843D1CF7812B44410CEF5E6D6760" /></p> <p><strong>Building a Customer Journey Map</strong></p> <p>To build a customer journey map, you first need to identify five key factors:</p> <ol style="margin-top: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 30px;"> <li dir="ltr"> <p><strong>Touch points</strong>: Customer touch points refer to the moments where consumers interact with your brand. For example, the first touch point might be clicking on a social media ad. The follow-up interactions may include marketing emails containing high-value content, like whitepapers or reports.</p> </li> <li dir="ltr"> <p><strong>Actions your customer will take</strong>: What are your customers doing before and after they purchase your business’s product or service? These actions may not even involve your brand. For example, a customer may have searched for the top services in your industry or read about a product from one of your business competitors.</p> </li> <li dir="ltr"> <p><strong>High points</strong>: Journey mapping forces you to get into the mind of your customers and identify how they feel at every point of their interaction with your brand. You’ll discover what outcomes make your customers feel satisfied with their overall experience.</p> </li> <li dir="ltr"> <p><strong>Low points</strong>: Low points or pain points refer to places of friction where the customer becomes frustrated with their experience. Identifying these bottlenecks or potential areas of improvement is critical to optimizing the overall customer experience.</p> </li> <li dir="ltr"> <p><strong>Gaps in the user journey</strong>: You may discover that your customers have needs that your journey does not currently provide. For instance, a customer might go directly to your blog for tips to resolve specific pain points but find they are left disappointed.</p> </li> </ol> <p>When paired with well-researched buyer personas–cards that describe your core customers’ backgrounds, motivations, needs, and behavioral preferences–mapping the customer journey enables you to step into the shoes of your customer. It is only when you have walked in your customers’ shoes that you can design a better customer journey.</p> <p>Watch the video below to see how Sutherland Labs approaches Customer Journey Mapping.</p> <iframe title="vimeo-player" src="https://player.vimeo.com/video/221407474" width="640" height="360" frameborder="0"></iframe> <p style="margin-top: 30px;"><strong>Designing an Empathetic Customer Experience </strong></p> <p>Designing a better customer experience requires an empathetic frame of mind. You need to be able to understand a user’s intent at every single touch point in their journey. This will allow you to develop accurate customer personas that enable you to foresee the next action your customer might take. The art to delivering this frictionless customer experience is ingrained in <a href="https://www.sutherlandglobal.com/insights/technology/blog-designing-inclusivity-how-to-make-design-thinking-a-process-that-includes-all-sutherland">design thinking</a>. Designers should focus on engineering new processes to improve the low points and emphasize the high points within the user journey.</p> <p>Here are three examples of how you can transform the customer experience:</p> <p>1. <strong>Removing customer low points with the help of AI</strong></p> <p>Customer low points tend to be connected to high-effort interactions. Customers get frustrated when they have to switch channels, are transferred between departments, or when they have to repeat information. In fact, Gartner found that “<a href="https://www.gartner.com/smarterwithgartner/unveiling-the-new-and-improved-customer-effort-score/">96%</a> of customers with a high-effort service interaction became more disloyal compared to just 9% who have a low-effort experience.”</p> <p>The bottom line is that customers want quick and easy answers. <a href="https://www.sutherlandglobal.com/insights/healthcare/artificial-intelligence-sutherland">AI solutions</a>, like <a href="https://www.sutherlandglobal.com/insights/technology/blog-chatbots-are-ushering-in-the-b2me-movement">chatbots or a virtual personal assistant</a>, are being introduced to provide customers with just that: real-time answers. One of <a href="https://www.sutherlandglobal.com/insights/technology/5-ways-chatbots-solve-business-problems-sutherland">the benefits of chatbots</a> is their ability to quickly triage customer service questions without a wait time, or rapidly connect them to the correct representative. This is just one option to help remove some of the low points from the customer journey.</p> <p>2. <strong>Increasing the high points with a personalized customer experience</strong></p> <p>The desire for personalized experiences is now an absolute expectation. While consumers expect their privacy to be protected, they also crave relevant information. <a href="https://us.epsilon.com/pressroom/new-epsilon-research-indicates-80-of-consumers-are-more-likely-to-make-a-purchase-when-brands-offer-personalized-experiences">Epsilon</a> found that 90% of consumers want more personalized experiences with brands. Meanwhile, <a href="https://www.slideshare.net/EpsilonMktg/the-power-of-me-the-impact-of-personalization-on-marketing-performance/1">80%</a> would reward brands for providing just that, saying they would be more inclined to do business with a company that provides a personalized customer experience.</p> <p>You needn’t look hard for evidence of the growing personalization trend. Two-thirds of consumers expect their favorite brands to know why they purchased a product or service, and 52% want companies to know their level of satisfaction, according to <a href="https://www.deloittedigital.com/content/dam/deloittedigital/us/documents/offerings/offerings-20190521-exploring-the-value-of-emotion-driven-engagement-2.pdf">Deloitte’s ‘Dynamics of Customer Loyalty’ report</a>. The key to providing these rich experiences is<a href="https://www.sutherlandglobal.com/insights/communications-media-and-entertainment/blog-why-leveraging-data-creates-more-personalized-customer-experiences-sutherland"> collecting and activating customer data</a>. It is no surprise then that <a href="https://www.gartner.com/events-na/applications/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2017/07/survey_analysis_customer_exp_323844.pdf">Gartner</a> predicts more than 40% of all data analytics projects will be based around customer experience by 2020.</p> <p>3. <strong>Closing the gaps with an omnichannel approach</strong></p> <p>The modern customer expects to be engaged on every channel. In fact,<a href="https://www.sutherlandglobal.com/insights/banking-and-financial-services/what-are-bpm-tools-sutherland"> omnichannel</a> customer engagement strategies retain an average of <a href="https://www.invespcro.com/blog/state-of-omnichannel-shopping/">89%</a> of customers, compared to a 33% retention rate for those without omnichannel solutions, according to <a href="https://www.invespcro.com/about/">Invesp</a>. For that reason, many organizations are undergoing <a href="https://www.sutherlandglobal.com/services/customer-engagement-transformation">customer engagement transformation</a>s by implementing omnichannel strategies.</p> <p>With the right customer experience management solutions, customer engagement transformation is not as complicated as it may seem. For example, existing channels, like social media and email, can be leveraged to effectively enhance customer satisfaction. These channels are extremely effective at simplifying points of tension in the customer journey, mitigating customer frustrations, and providing a more supportive overall customer experience.</p> <p>Conclusion</p> <p>Customer journey mapping is a tangible first step for any business beginning a customer experience transformation journey. By understanding every step in a buyer’s journey, you can unlock opportunities to innovate and drive <a href="https://www.sutherlandglobal.com/insights/banking-and-financial-services/case-study-prepaid-card-provider-sutherland">valuable customer outcomes</a> for your business. </p> <p><a href="https://www.sutherlandglobal.com/insights/technology/human-or-bot"><img alt="" style="width: 100%;" loading="lazy" class="lazy" data-src="https://sutherlandglobal.azureedge.net/-/media/sutherland/images/blog-images/blog-banner-journey-mapping.jpg?rev=8850d59c-779c-40bc-acab-9fbfffe9c02c&hash=F76A1E6B88DF4100AB35B4334DC4CA68" /></a></p> <style type="text/css"> .article-insight-hero-banner.article-banner.pickgradient { background-position: top; } </style>Fri, 05 Jan 2024 01:42:04 -0800{F7C2676D-2EEA-45BC-BD20-B61626A3BEE5}https://www.sutherlandglobal.com/Insights/Banking-and-Financial-Services/top-10-public-accounting-firm-counts-on-sutherland-for-client-services-capabilities-expansionTop 10 Public Accounting Firm Counts on Sutherland for Client Services Capabilities Expansion<div style="text-align: center;" class="insigts_cssss"><span style="text-align: center;"> </span> <p style="width: 100%; text-align: center; font-weight: bold;">The Challenge</p> <h2 style="font-weight: bold;">Creating a Global Delivery Center To Support Expansion</h2> <p>A top 10 public accounting firm, they operate throughout the US and around the globe, offering accounting, tax, audit, and CPA services for Fortune 50-1000 companies across a range of industries.</p> <p>Following a merger, the firm had rapidly expanded their managed service demands and footprint, and needed a global delivery center that could support this. At the same time, they sought to enhance cost efficiency in client service delivery, maximize their market competitiveness, and explore opportunities for automation in auditing and taxation.</p> </div> <div style="text-align: center;" class="insigts_cssss"> <br /> <p style="width: 100%; text-align: center; font-weight: bold;">The Outcome</p> <br /> <h2 style="font-weight: bold;">Establishing a Global Delivery Center and Driving Efficiency</h2> <p>Sutherland has fostered a longstanding technology consulting partnership with this client. This began by establishing a robust, global delivery center in India, operating as the strategic arm of their offshore operations. Our highly specialized global delivery center provides a full range of expertise in internal and external audit, tax, and regulatory compliance.</p> <p>Sutherland introduced digital analytics, automation, and AI tools into their financial advisory services. This helped streamline their financial practices, enhancing decision-making and driving efficiencies across advisory, tax, and assurance services.</p> <p>This partnership epitomizes the current trend for strategic alliances in the finance industry that have spurred due to the pace of change and scale needed for finance transformation. By leveraging our combined resources, capabilities, and shared objectives, we aim to increase competitiveness across the board through Sutherland’s consulting expertise, operations know-how, technological innovation, and smarter process design.</p> </div> <style type="text/css"> .article-content { width: 100%; padding: 0 50px; margin: 0 auto; max-width: 144rem; } .insigts_cssss p, .container.outcome--content { text-align: left; } .insights { display: none; } section#article-case-study-hero-banner_NewAI-DrivenLanguageTranslationToolLetsSpotifyGrowCustomerEngagementWhileCuttingCosts { background-position: top; } </style>Sun, 10 Dec 2023 23:10:27 -0800{A7ED80D8-83DD-44F1-B2E6-056BF8422785}https://www.sutherlandglobal.com/Insights/Banking-and-Financial-Services/the-rise-of-super-appsThe Rise Of Super Apps<p>By 2021 the term ‘Super App’ had become commonplace in China, but what can we learn from this growing trend? In this short series we try to unpick if SuperApps are a fad, or the future of app design.</p> <p>You might think of Super Apps as the russian doll of the homescreen app; one interface with layers of different services built into a single location on your homescreen.  The original and most successful example of a Super App originates from China in the form of ‘WeChat’ which was developed by Tencent at its Guangzhou Research center, and was launched to the Chinese market in 2011 and now boasts <a rel="noopener noreferrer" href="https://thefinancialbrand.com/72124/wechat-banking-payments-digital-messaging/" target="_blank" title="1 billion active daily users">1 billion active daily users</a>.  What began as an instant messaging service similar to WhatsApp, quickly grew to become an all encompassing platform for virtually any product or service.   Amongst other things the user can schedule doctors appointments, purchase insurance, check crowd density and even pay traffic fines. A large part of WeChat’s success is the integrated digital wallet ‘WeChat Pay’ - a single sign in model providing instant access to the users banking details, saving time and hassle when reentries don’t have to be made for every payment.</p> <p>Well known brands have already begun buying into Super Apps and household names have signed up to be part of the growing market, such as Tesla, TenCent Games and global ecommerce giant JD.  WeChat hasn’t quite been able to monopolize the market as other competitors have been vying for a spot in the growing industry and other notable names include Alibaba and Alipay - both similarly to WeChat were initially created for Chinese industries, but have begun to cross borders.  These apps have quickly become ingrained into users’ lives as they appreciate the ‘one-stop shop’ that a Super App can offer them when it is user friendly, functional and friction free.</p> <p><img style="width: 100%;" alt="The Rise of Super Apps" loading="lazy" class="lazy" data-src="https://sutherlandglobal.azureedge.net/-/media/images/the-rise-of-the-super-apps/inline-image01-2000x1200.jpg?rev=d1194308-87cc-4924-9b44-062c06239d4d&hash=B47563B7C688D3BD388EF7ADFBD8C5F5" /></p> <p>The question is - can these super apps have the same level of success in the West that they have seen in Asia?  Only time will tell but it could be said that their popularity has been in part due to the unique situation in China where the population's first contact with the internet is via mobile phones. They are effectively a user group with no previous desktop experience.  A mobile-first market, a largely unbanked population, and the important element of government backing allowed for the Super App concept to really take off.</p> <p>Despite the unique situation within China, there are signs that Super Apps have begun to gain traction in other parts of the world such as India, South America and Southeast Asia (see <a rel="noopener noreferrer" href="https://www.gojek.com/en-id/" target="_blank" title="Go-Jek">Go-Jek</a> and <a rel="noopener noreferrer" href="https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.grabtaxi.passenger&hl=en_GB&gl=US" target="_blank" title="Grab">Grab</a>). Key success factors in these areas include untapped markets where there is infinite room for emerging technologies, which have little preexisting tech infrastructure, and a cultural appetite for embracing new offerings.  These fast growing countries are becoming increasingly ‘connected’ which is allowing a boom in the tech sector and Super App companies are expanding aggressively to fill the gaps. Similarly to the Chinese markets, these populations are also largely unbanked.</p> <p>There’s many articles online that suggest that <a rel="noopener noreferrer" href="https://www.forbes.com/sites/michelleevans1/2018/03/21/four-reasons-why-super-apps-like-wechat-would-struggle-in-the-us/?sh=5d1d35d03154" target="_blank" title="Super Apps are unlikely to enjoy the same level of success in the West as they have seen in Asia and other developing countries">Super Apps are unlikely to enjoy the same level of success in the West as they have seen in Asia and other developing countries</a>.  Factors such as anti-trust regulation, cultural differences and privacy concerns are amongst some of the reasons why people believe that these apps are destined to fail.  However, it seems too easy to shrug off Super Apps as a purely emerging market phenomenon. Yes, the West might be moving at a slower pace, but we are starting to move towards a reintegration of services after decades of fragmentation. Banks, for example, are just one sector that need to be aware of the space that these apps are creating.  Uber (after starting up as an app that moved people from A to B), is beginning to look towards banking and the boom of digital first banks such as Monzo support the well established idea that <a rel="noopener noreferrer" href="https://www.finextra.com/newsarticle/38328/bank-execs-predict-branch-model-will-be-dead-within-5-years" target="_blank" title="we are moving away from the traditional brick and mortar style of banking">we are moving away from the traditional brick and mortar style of banking</a>.</p> <p>It is hard to speculate what role Super Apps might play in our complex digital world, but it’s a trend we’ll be exploring more. Watch out for our next posts where we will explore the user experience of Super Apps, as well as issues around trust and privacy for the user.</p> <p>Want to learn more about our Insight & Design services? <a rel="noopener noreferrer" href="https://www.sutherlandglobal.com/contact-us" target="_blank" title="We’d love to talk">We’d love to talk</a>.</p> <style type="text/css"> .article-insight-hero-banner.article-banner.pickgradient { background-position: top; } </style>Fri, 03 Nov 2023 05:50:11 -0700{6051B4E0-206E-4318-8986-9F7AA53707EE}https://www.sutherlandglobal.com/Insights/Banking-and-Financial-Services/sutherland-sustainable-business-model-sutherland3 Main Pillars to a Sustainable Business Model<p> At Sutherland, our corporate social responsibility strategy centers on three main pillars: community, workplace, and environment all of which lend themselves to making the world a better place and promoting a culture of sustainability.</p> <ol style="margin-left: 30px;"> <li> <h2>Community</h2> </li> </ol> <p>Sutherland’s community initiatives focus on promoting sustained and inclusive economic growth through education and technology. Through mentoring and learning programs that have grown organically out of a passion to make a difference, we have created thousands of partnerships and employee volunteers across our business, and enabled hundreds of underprivileged and marginalized youths worldwide. Sutherland’s education and technology programs have evolved into sustainable talent pools for the company that has translated to hundreds of graduates and dozens of full-time employees globally.</p> <ol start="2" style="margin-left: 30px;"> <li> <h2>Workplace</h2> </li> </ol> <p>At Sutherland we commit ourselves to a workplace founded on inclusive and ethical business operations and promoting equality for all. Within our own walls, workforce and supplier diversity are at the very core of our management philosophy. Our priority is to build a culture of transparency and respect that fosters innovation. We know that if we do not invest time and energy into building sustainable business practices, we will not attract or retain the bright minds that we need to continue to grow and sustain a successful business. By focusing on leadership and talent development through career pathing, we’ve developed a system that allows our most talented people to enable them to pursue their passions, develop their skillset, and surpass their professional goals.</p> <ol start="3" style="margin-left: 30px;"> <li> <h2>Environment</h2> </li> </ol> <p>As a global company, one of our key priorities is ensuring our operations are in tune with the environment. We have an obligation to advocate and uphold sustainable consumption and work to combat climate change. As part of our ongoing efforts to support environmental improvements, Sutherland participates each year in CDP (formerly the Carbon Disclosure Project), a global disclosure system that enables companies, cities, states, and regions to measure and manage their environmental impacts.</p> <p><a href="https://www.sutherlandglobal.com/insights/banking-and-financial-services/blog-5-ways-your-company-can-protect-the-environment-while-digitally-transforming-in-2018-sutherland">Sustainability</a> is about thinking of how our organization will continue to grow and thrive in the future and how we can have a positive impact on the communities and the environment in which we work. </p> <p>Melanie Wheeler, Head of Internal Communication, Engagement and Corporate Responsibility</p> <style type="text/css"> .article-insight-hero-banner.article-banner.pickgradient { background-position: top; } </style>Thu, 26 Oct 2023 03:49:17 -0700{95E3FDDD-2BB9-477C-9261-1C6C4C8DDDC7}https://www.sutherlandglobal.com/Insights/Banking-and-Financial-Services/blog-voice-tech-is-backNow Hear This - Voice Tech Is Back and Louder Than Ever<p>Reports of <a href="/sitecore/service/notfound.aspx?item=web%3a%7b8A24E149-C3FF-4E1A-A921-DF0BF9CD874F%7d%40en?utm_source=blog&utm_medium=textlink1&utm_campaign=digital_voice_wp">voice tech’s</a> death have been greatly exaggerated. In fact, the business of voice is experiencing a massive resurgence, thanks in large part to the growing popularity and prevalence of voice-enabled home computing systems like Google Home. The voice-first device market has burgeoned in recent years, <a href="http://uk.businessinsider.com/amazon-echo-vs-google-home-sales-estimates-chart-2017-5" target="new">growing 126% in 2017 over 2016</a> to reach more than 35 million units shipped in under two years. To put that figure in context—that’s a faster sales growth than the iPhone after its launch, which took three years to reach the 35 million mark.</p> <p><a href="/sitecore/service/notfound.aspx?item=web%3a%7b8A24E149-C3FF-4E1A-A921-DF0BF9CD874F%7d%40en?utm_source=blog&utm_medium=cta_banner&utm_campaign=digital_voice_wp&utm_content=top"><img alt="Voice Tech Is Back and Louder Than Ever" width="100%" loading="lazy" class="lazy" data-src="https://sutherlandglobal.azureedge.net/-/media/sutherland/images/blog-images/sutherland-voice-tech-blog-hero-960.png?utm_source=blog&utm_medium=cta_banner&utm_campaign=digital_voice_wp&utm_content=top&rev=22d6d655-1f3c-4088-8e1d-28ad808780ab&hash=3424104F07648E659CB4AFD95267347F" /></a></p> <p><a href="/sitecore/service/notfound.aspx?item=web%3a%7b8A24E149-C3FF-4E1A-A921-DF0BF9CD874F%7d%40en?utm_source=blog&utm_medium=cta_banner&utm_campaign=digital_voice_wp&utm_content=top">White Paper: Voice Is Back: This time, it’s louder than ever</a> </p> <p>Still, voice tech is a ways off from dominating the tech landscape and matching the heyday of its past influence—particularly that of radio and telephony. But for a platform that many wrote off as almost extinct, the renaissance of voice is an exciting prospect, and one with the potential to shift the paradigm of how we commonly interact with technology. <a href="/sitecore/service/notfound.aspx?item=web%3a%7b8A24E149-C3FF-4E1A-A921-DF0BF9CD874F%7d%40en?utm_source=blog&utm_medium=textlink2&utm_campaign=digital_voice_wp">Part one of our three-part white paper</a> series on voice tech by Sutherland Digital president, Andrew Zimmerman, examines just that: the rise and fall (and rise again!) of voice.</p> <p><strong>Journey Through the History of Voice Tech</strong></p> <p>Remember the good old days of radio dials and rotary phones? Empires were built off of these voice businesses. But in the era of text and visual dominated communication and on-demand entertainment, these once reigning technologies are all but old-fashioned. Still, it’s important to understand the <a href="https://www.sutherlandglobal.com/insights/technology/infographic-the-evolution-of-voice-tech">history of voice tech</a> and why it faced such a long decline because it greatly informs its future trajectory.</p> <p><strong>Introducing Voice 2.0</strong></p> <p>The way society has related to voice has witnessed many behavioral changes over the years. We are now experiencing an upswing thanks to the rapid and widespread embrace of “voice 2.0,” or voice-first technology. Thanks to voice-controlled smart assistants like Siri and Alexa and interconnected home devices, voice-first is establishing itself as a mainstream tech market contender <a href="https://www.sutherlandglobal.com/insights/healthcare/wef-2018-voice">with unprecedented rates of adoption</a>. The hype around voice is real!</p> <p><strong>Giving a Face to Voice Tech</strong></p> <p>Looking ahead to the future, voice-first is adopting an anthropomorphic design interface, which highlights how humans are starting to emotionally connect with these devices. In fact, a recent study found that 36% of people love their voice assistants so much that they wish they were real. Talk about catching feels. As voice tech continues to change behavioral and cultural norms, voice-first experiences will spread and evolve beyond their current capabilities, with a focal point on emotional conversation design. After all, what’s a voice without something resembling a face?</p> <p>Be sure to check out our <a href="/sitecore/service/notfound.aspx?item=web%3a%7b8A24E149-C3FF-4E1A-A921-DF0BF9CD874F%7d%40en?utm_source=blog&utm_medium=textlink3&utm_campaign=digital_voice_wp">“Voice Is Back – This Time, It’s Louder”</a>, and stay tuned for part two in our three-part voice tech white paper series.</p> <p><a href="/sitecore/service/notfound.aspx?item=web%3a%7b8A24E149-C3FF-4E1A-A921-DF0BF9CD874F%7d%40en?utm_source=blog&utm_medium=cta_banner&utm_campaign=digital_voice_wp&utm_content=footer"><img alt="Now Hear This: Voice Tech Is Back and Louder Than Ever" width="100%" loading="lazy" class="lazy" data-src="https://sutherlandglobal.azureedge.net/-/media/sutherland/images/blog-images/blog-voice-tech-fy18-cta-960x90.png?rev=a575e4d6-e4a1-4bba-a0f2-d8006f2bc23a&hash=72886A968F1EE2EA6AC940EC9D31410A" /></a></p>Thu, 26 Oct 2023 03:45:54 -0700{B1F4A3F2-842E-442B-B148-34A3030A8A7F}https://www.sutherlandglobal.com/Insights/Banking-and-Financial-Services/how-to-leverage-ai-for-smart-customer-engagementHow to Leverage AI for Smart Customer Engagement<p>For many years, the hype surrounding artificial intelligence (AI) overshadowed its real-world impact. More recently, AI is delivering on its much discussed <a rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_self" href="https://www.sutherlandglobal.com/insights/healthcare/artificial-intelligence-sutherland">promise</a>. This shift has resulted from an exponential increase in both computing power and available data. Today, <a rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank" href="https://www.forbes.com/sites/louiscolumbus/2019/09/08/state-of-ai-and-machine-learning-in-2019/#4ff3cbc51a8d">40% of marketing and sales teams</a> say that machine learning algorithms are critical to their success. And by 2030, PwC expects AI to contribute <a rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank" href="https://www.pwc.com/gx/en/issues/data-and-analytics/publications/artificial-intelligence-study.html">up to $15.7 trillion</a> to the global economy. </p> <p>However, our analysis is that businesses will need to more thoroughly understand how AI can drive real business impact to reach that lofty growth projection. For example, Gartner reports that only <a rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank" href="https://www.gartner.com/en/newsroom/press-releases/2019-07-15-gartner-survey-reveals-leading-organizations-expect-t">half of organizations</a> currently utilize AI in some form, and even those deploying the technology do so on a limited scale. With better knowledge of how AI can be applied in the workplace, we believe that companies will rapidly understand how it can be leveraged to increase productivity, improve decision-making, and <a href="https://www.sutherlandglobal.com/insights/technology/ai-for-good-how-to-leverage-ai-technology-to-enhance-customer-agent-experiences">drive more effective customer engagement</a>. </p> <p><strong>How AI Is Used in the Workplace</strong></p> <p>AI broadly refers to computer systems able to perform tasks that normally require human intelligence, including visual perception, speech recognition, and decision-making. Under this umbrella lie subset applications like natural language processing, machine vision, and deep learning. </p> <p>These subsets support a variety of use cases within the office. Generally speaking, the application of AI can be sorted into three categories by the hierarchy of its effect:   </p> <ol style="margin-top: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 30px;"> <li> <p>Organizational: At a high level, AI informs decisions, helps with demand forecasting, improves resource management and planning, and optimizes business processes.</p> </li> <li> <p>Employee Productivity and Experience: AI eliminates repetitive tasks that derail employee productivity, while providing insights that can actually increase worker efficiencies. AI can also serve as a knowledge base for employee onboarding, <a rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank" href="https://www.sutherlandglobal.com/insights/technology/ai-for-good-how-to-leverage-ai-technology-to-enhance-customer-agent-experiences">workforce training</a>, <a rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank" href="https://www.sutherlandglobal.com/insights/healthcare/artificial-intelligence-sutherland">help desk tickets</a>, and FAQs. </p> </li> <li> <p>: AI’s largest impact is arguably in <a rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank" href="https://www.sutherlandglobal.com/services/customer-engagement-transformation">customer engagement transformation</a>. It can <a rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_self" href="https://www.sutherlandglobal.com/insights/technology/improving-the-customer-experience-as-a-business-differentiator-sutherland">improve and automate</a> customer support and build customer relationships while providing personalization and predictive services. It can also help build data-informed <a target="_self" href="https://www.sutherlandglobal.com/insights/banking-and-financial-services/customer-journey-mapping-how-to-get-started">customer journey maps</a> through real-time customer sentiment analysis.  </p> </li> </ol> <p>Customer Experience </p> <p>These categories utilize different AI models, outlined below, which together encompass the large majority of AI uses across industries. </p> <p><strong>The Subsets of AI </strong></p> <p>Different AI models are better suited to achieve specific organizational outcomes. The following four AI fields currently have the greatest impact within the workplace. </p> <p><strong>1. Machine Learning</strong>: Machine learning (ML) algorithms learn from historical data and then extrapolate that data to answer new questions. This is employed in three distinct forms:</p> <ul style="margin-top: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 30px;"> <li> <p style="margin: 0;">Supervised Learning: In this training method, the AI agent learns from known data sets that include both an input and output. For example, an algorithm trained with height and weight data of a human population could predict one variable if given the other. </p> </li> <li> <p style="margin: 0;">Unsupervised Learning: This is when an algorithm is given only one input and instead learns by identifying patterns within the data. For example, an advertising platform could use unsupervised learning algorithms to segment the U.S. population into smaller groups with similar demographics and interests. </p> </li> <li> <p>Reinforcement Learning: This application allows an algorithm to achieve a complex objective over many steps. Correct moves are reinforced with a reward, while incorrect ones are penalized. This type of learning is behind <a rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank" href="https://developer.ibm.com/articles/cc-reinforcement-learning-train-software-agent/#history">IBM Watson’s defeat of former Jeopardy! Champions</a> and other instances where AI has defeated a human in a complex game, like chess.  </p> </li> </ul> <p><strong>2. Deep Learning</strong>: Deep learning is related to machine learning but uses neural networks with multiple layers to perform human-like tasks without human involvement. It combines both supervised and unsupervised learning to train an AI agent and is the primary technology behind self-driving cars. </p> <p><strong>3. Natural Language Processing (NLP)</strong>: NLP is the ability of an AI agent to understand and process human language. Underpinned by machine learning algorithms, NLP powers <a target="_self" href="https://www.sutherlandglobal.com/insights/banking-and-financial-services/how-virtual-assistants-enable-better-customer-experience">virtual assistant services</a> like Siri or Alexa. </p> <p><strong>4. Computer Vision</strong>: Computer vision is a subset of AI that focuses on enabling computers or machines to analyze and understand an image. This technology is behind red light cameras, quality assurance solutions, and other visual recognition tools. </p> <p>These four subsets often overlap and are combined to power a given product. As such, the definitions above are guidelines and not strict delineations. That’s especially true for NLP and computer vision, which require both machine learning and deep learning algorithms. For businesses, the application of the various AI subsets are broad and will continue to evolve. </p> <p><img alt="" style="width: 100%;" loading="lazy" class="lazy" data-src="https://sutherlandglobal.azureedge.net/-/media/sutherland/images/blog-images/workplace-ai-blog-incopy-1200x627.jpg?rev=909b1a45-9284-46c8-8723-164a91a71540&hash=42C0046BEBA845B89C171C909704239B" /></p> <p><strong>Three AI Use Cases at the Organizational, Employee, and Customer Level</strong></p> <p><strong>1. </strong><strong>Predictive Maintenance for More Productive Operations</strong></p> <p>At the organizational level, machine learning-powered predictive analytics and machine vision identify system components at risk of imminent failure. This proactive AI application increases efficiency, saves money and time, and reduces required human intervention at scale.</p> <p>Predictive maintenance is applicable to any large system, including assembly lines, factories, data centers, and even airplanes. It relies on deep neural networks that analyze large amounts of data to alert business leaders of potential failures before they can cause negative ripple effects across an entire system. </p> <p>By minimizing downtime and operating costs, <a rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank" href="https://www.mckinsey.com/~/media/mckinsey/featured%20insights/artificial%20intelligence/notes%20from%20the%20ai%20frontier%20applications%20and%20value%20of%20deep%20learning/notes-from-the-ai-frontier-insights-from-hundreds-of-use-cases-discussion-paper.ashx">one study</a> found that predictive maintenance could theoretically save between one and two percent of the value of an organization’s total sales. </p> <p><strong>2. </strong><strong>Process Automation Tools for Happier Employees</strong></p> <p>At the employee level, AI can <a rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_self" href="https://www.sutherlandglobal.com/insights/technology/blog-is-the-future-of-work-building-to-robot-coworkers-sutherland">augment rather than eliminate</a> the role of human workers. The most prominent example today is <a rel="noopener noreferrer" href="https://www.sutherlandglobal.com/transformation/intelligent-automation" target="_blank" title="intelligent automation">intelligent automation</a>, where manual processes are automated by a digital bot. This subset of automation fuses machine learning with robotic process automation for what’s known as intelligent or cognitive automation. </p> <p>Previously, robotic process automation was limited to rule-based tasks like data entry. But advancements in machine learning enable cognitive automation bots to complete more complex tasks. These include everything from report generation and invoice handling to advanced analytics. </p> <p>This results in a trickle down effect, where employee productivity and satisfaction increase and workers are <a rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_self" href="https://www.sutherlandglobal.com/insights/healthcare/roboops-embracing-intelligent-automation-for-higher-quality-business-operations">freed from simple, yet stressful tasks</a>. According to the Institute of Robotic Process Automation, the automation of these types of  tasks can reduce the average <a rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_self" href="https://www.sutherlandglobal.com/insights/technology/intelligent-automation-bringing-together-the-best-of-rpa-and-human-like-cognitive-tech">10% human error rate</a>, improving productivity by over 1000% in some cases and providing <a rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_self" href="https://www.sutherlandglobal.com/insights/healthcare/four-ways-to-measure-the-roi-of-an-rpa-deployment-sutherland">measurable ROI</a>. </p> <p><strong>3. </strong><strong>Machine Learning and Natural Language Processing for More Effective Customer Engagement</strong></p> <p>For as much impact as AI has within an organization, its greatest benefits are with the <a rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_self" href="https://www.sutherlandglobal.com/insights/communications-media-and-entertainment/designing-and-deploying-automation-to-improve-customer-experiences">customer experience</a>. AI enables excellent <a target="_self" href="https://www.sutherlandglobal.com/insights/banking-and-financial-services/customer-journey-mapping-how-to-get-started">customer experience management</a>, removing high-friction moments in the customer journey through improved customer support, and creating new high points through advanced personalization. </p> <p>AI can fill a variety of customer support roles. For example, it can create automated workflows that prioritize customer support tickets by levels of urgency, enabling staff to focus on the cases that most require their attention. AI-powered <a rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_self" href="https://www.sutherlandglobal.com/insights/technology/human-or-bot">chatbots and virtual assistants </a>can also provide customers with efficient, real-time self-service communication channels. A case study of this use of AI is BMW, which uses a <a rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank" href="https://www.sutherlandglobal.com/insights/technology/ai-and-customer-experience">customer support tool nicknamed DigitalGenius</a> that is underpinned by NLP and deep learning. The tool achieved a 1.2 second average customer response time and a 99.5% accuracy rate. </p> <p>Machine learning also assists with <a rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank" href="https://www.sutherlandglobal.com/services/customer-engagement-transformation">customer engagement transformation</a> through both personalization and prediction services. Organizations like Netflix and Amazon use recommendation engines to suggest similar shows to watch or products to purchase. On a more sophisticated level, prices and promotions can be customized based on consumer demographic data, <a rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank" href="https://venturebeat.com/2018/06/22/take-business-value-to-130-with-ai-powered-customer-retention-vb-live/">increasing conversion and retention rates</a>. For businesses exploring customer engagement transformation, AI opens exciting doors to enhance the overall customer experience and increase customer retention.</p> <p><strong>Conclusion</strong></p> <p>The AI frontier offers opportunities to simultaneously improve both business operations and customer experience. In fact, the two are inextricably linked. The continual investment in AI technology will improve legacy business processes and enable companies to better serve their customers. </p> <p>In today’s market, the average company currently utilizing AI has just four AI-driven projects deployed. <a rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank" href="https://www.gartner.com/en/newsroom/press-releases/2019-07-15-gartner-survey-reveals-leading-organizations-expect-t">Gartner</a> expects that number to rise by over 300% within the next three years. However, reaching that point will require companies to find the talent and knowledge necessary for successful, large-scale AI deployments—<a rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank" href="https://www.wsj.com/articles/mistakes-in-hiring-can-doom-ai-projects-11573209004?mod=djemAIPro"> a task that has so far proved challenging</a>. The companies poised to fully realize AI’s vast potential are those who invest early in piloting the AI solutions that are most suited to their unique business needs.</p> <p><a target="_self" href="https://www.sutherlandglobal.com/insights/banking-and-financial-services/wp-chatbots-for-business-impact"><img alt="" style="width: 100%;" loading="lazy" class="lazy" data-src="https://sutherlandglobal.azureedge.net/-/media/sutherland/images/blog-images/blog-banner-workplace-ai.jpg?rev=a7af141a-4c6f-4c24-b829-12789a4c43de&hash=AB2B9F5F0A1DB8A0D7DF147111E90C8A" /></a></p> <style type="text/css"> .article-insight-hero-banner.article-banner.pickgradient { background-position: top; } </style>Thu, 26 Oct 2023 03:44:04 -0700{E9AF28B2-17A6-46F0-98B2-0BE0296AAD69}https://www.sutherlandglobal.com/Insights/Communications-Media-and-Entertainment/blog-how-big-data-analytics-can-shape-bigger-and-better-business-processes-sutherlandBenefits of Big Data for Business Processes<p>It’s not an understatement to say that most <a href="https://www.sutherlandglobal.com/insights/technology/blog-the-future-of-enterprise-hinges-on-process-transformation-and-data">enterprises today have more data</a> than they know what to do with it. <a href="https://www-01.ibm.com/common/ssi/cgi-bin/ssialias?htmlfid=WRL12345USEN">IBM discovered</a> that we create nearly 2.5 quintillion bytes of data each day. To give you a better idea of the significance of 2.5 quintillion, picture 17 zeros behind 2.5. This massive number means that simply describing it as “data” is an inaccurate representation. Data sets this large and complex can make ordinary computing systems crash under their sheer digital weight. The only phrase to define them is big data.</p> <p><img alt="How Big Data Analytics Can Shape Bigger and Better Business Processes" width="100%" loading="lazy" class="lazy" data-src="https://sutherlandglobal.azureedge.net/-/media/sutherland/images/blog-images/in-blog-image1-rti-big-data-analytics-biz-process.png?rev=cbcf60b7-3a25-420c-90cc-88b62925522e&hash=3D3898E0ADE439D17B51FEB1CCCF1D22" /></p> <p>With mountains of big data stacking up for many organizations across the world, smart, innovative companies are leveraging it through big data analytics to inform operational strategies and drive transformation of business processes.</p> <h2>Big Data. Big Insights. Big Ideas.</h2> <p>Big data is being used to gain a competitive advantage, enabling companies to plan for growth, revenue and risk when it’s analyzed and harnessed effectively. To do so, a big data analytics system is necessary to gain real-time insights into what is and isn’t working for a given company and make effective, on-the-fly business decisions. It’s not enough anymore to simply collect data and process it at a whim—big data is facilitating a new wave of predictive and prescriptive insights that serve almost as a crystal ball into the future for companies to gaze into, confidently predict outcomes and implement fast decision-making to achieve these big data-driven prognostications.</p> <p>That said, it should come as no surprise that the effective, holistic deployment of big data analytics is one of the major methods for driving successful <a href="https://www.sutherlandglobal.com/insights/business-process-transformation/sutherlands-business-process-transformation">business process transformation</a>. To keep up <a href="https://www.sutherlandglobal.com/insights/technology/combatting-the-three-biggest-challenges-of-big-data">avoid challenges</a> in our rapidly evolving digital and technological landscape, businesses need insights from big data to remain relevant and more forward-thinking. Real-time data can also offer a more in-depth understanding into customer behaviors and preferences that allows companies to offer greater, more targeted value. This combination of strategic decision-making and customer insight from big data analysis allows a company to truly grow, scale and reach newer, more profitable heights.</p> <h2>Visualize. Analyze. Actualize.</h2> <p><a href="https://towardsdatascience.com/business-transformation-how-big-data-analytics-helps-f8460a1986d0">IDC reports that 71% of so-called big data innovators</a> (early adopters who prioritize big data analytics) employ advanced technologies and tools that offer them real-time visualization into big data and higher-level forecasting to reap the above benefits. Here are some other commonalities among companies taking this approach to influence business outcomes and revamp business processes for the better:</p> <ul style="margin-left: 30px;"> <li> <p style="margin: 0;">Receive support from all organizational levels championing big data analytics </p> </li> <li> <p style="margin: 0;">Achieve data mining in a more secure, timely and efficient manner, making big data analytics much more relevant to business goals </p> </li> <li> <p style="margin: 0;">Attain a faster ROI from big data analytics (generally within the first six months) </p> </li> <li> <p>Strive for continued advances in big data technologies to drive business growth and transformation </p> </li> </ul> <p><img alt="How Big Data Analytics Can Shape Bigger and Better Business Processes" width="100%" loading="lazy" class="lazy" data-src="https://sutherlandglobal.azureedge.net/-/media/sutherland/images/blog-images/in-blog-image2-rti-big-data-analytics-biz-process.png?rev=23d6c6f1-c4e5-4870-93c8-a29933c8eed1&hash=70D519F272427122D95FAF6A32225DC6" /></p> <h2>Harness Big Data with Advanced Analytics</h2> <p>At Sutherland, our unique approach to business transformation—combining big data analytics, machine learning and design thinking with process-level automation—has given us a critical competitive advantage, <a href="https://www.sutherlandglobal.com/insights/technology/blog-isg-names-sutherland-a-market-leader-in-financial-and-accounting-services-sutherland">according to ISG</a>. What results is more informed business insights, more confident decision-making and greater visibility across business operations for companies and customers alike. </p> <p>None of this could be achieved without a simple, comprehensive big data platform that offers predictive and prescriptive analytics. No matter how well your business is operating and performing, there’s always room to be better. </p> <p>That starts with embracing and leveraging big data analytics.</p> <p><a href="https://www.sutherlandglobal.com/insights/banking-and-financial-services/wp-chatbots-for-business-impact"><img alt="Three Reasons AI-powered Chatbots are Changing the Face of CX" width="100%" loading="lazy" class="lazy" data-src="https://sutherlandglobal.azureedge.net/-/media/sutherland/images/blog-images/fy18-human-or-bots-cta.png?rev=5678dcfd-dd51-43bd-9fa4-02491775dde0&hash=7EB528B53B344839749EAB243913C3C7" /></a></p> <style type="text/css"> .article-insight-hero-banner.article-banner.pickgradient { background-position: top; } </style>Thu, 26 Oct 2023 03:42:08 -0700{F95FE524-B3BD-4CAE-ABBB-EB49138065D9}https://www.sutherlandglobal.com/Insights/Banking-and-Financial-Services/order-to-cash-from-a-customers-perspective-its-not-about-orders-its-about-customersOrder-To-Cash From A Customer’s Perspective: It’s Not About Orders, It’s About Customers<p>What a business does in the earliest days and weeks of its relationship with a customer really matters.</p> <p>Every action or initiative an organization takes during this period to understand a customer, serve them and meet or exceed expectations is critical. Indeed, it lays the foundation for how the brand and that new (or existing) customer will interact and experience moments of truth across a whole range of touchpoints across the organization.</p> <p><img style="width:100%;" alt="Order-To-Cash from a Customer’s Perspective: It’s Not About Orders, It’s About Customers" loading="lazy" class="lazy" data-src="https://sutherlandglobal.azureedge.net/-/media/images/digital-finance-customer-to-cash/fac2ca3inline012000x1200.jpg?rev=94a64821-de70-404f-930b-c5515ce0f181&hash=FF62124201342DB2992D61859E8C7232" /></p> <p>Most of the time, the business processes during this period — from customer onboarding to order management, billing and collections to reconciliation and reporting, and all the activities in between — are referred to as “Order-To-Cash” (O2C). But it makes much more sense to call them “Customer-To-Cash” (C2C).</p> <p>Why? Because these processes are really all about the <em>customer</em>!</p> <p>Yes, improving Order-To-Cash is about reducing days sales outstanding (DSO), arresting revenue leakage and timely and accurate management of deductions and disputes. All these outcomes are critically important. But getting <em>Customer-To-Cash</em> (C2C) right is about so much more!</p> <h2>Cash Is Critical, But So Is CX</h2> <p>When a business makes a sale, a relationship is established with an actual customer, not an order.</p> <p>Yes, each new sales order needs to be converted into cash effectively, and with speed. But securing the cash is only the near-term goal. The bigger, longer-term and — ultimately the more profitable objective — is securing and strengthening the brand’s seamless relationship with their customers.</p> <p><img style="width:100%;" alt="Order-To-Cash from a Customer’s Perspective: It’s Not About Orders, It’s About Customers" loading="lazy" class="lazy" data-src="https://sutherlandglobal.azureedge.net/-/media/images/digital-finance-customer-to-cash/fac2ca3inline042000x1200.jpg?rev=83dafb7e-8eb3-4e99-bd1d-1da135f60465&hash=AA743368895EB56BCE9A9F93C13B7E68" /></p> <p>It typically costs about five times more to acquire a customer than it does to retain and enrich them.<sup>[1]</sup> That makes early-stage interactions with new customers even more important. Why? Because the quality of those interactions will increase the likelihood of that customer becoming a repeat customer. And repeat customers mean more revenue at reduced acquisition cost.</p> <p>Optimizing each and every part of the Customer-To-Cash (C2C) process will mean:</p> <ul> <li> <p style="margin: 0;"><strong>Better experiences (for a customer)</strong> — Digitized operations and end-to-end customer management improve customer experience and maximize customer value.</p> </li> <li> <p style="margin: 0;"><strong>Improved decision making (that benefits a customer)</strong> — When management has better visibility into performance, business decisions are more informed and interactions are optimized across the revenue cycle.</p> </li> <li> <p style="margin: 0;"><strong>Streamlined operating results (that better serve a customer)</strong> — Deep functional and industry experience is central to redesigning processes and establishing cost-efficient, digital and continuously improving operations.</p> </li> <li> <p><strong>Optimized working capital (which can be reinvested to bring more value to a customer)</strong> — Greater debt collection efficiency, reduced delinquency rates and charge-offs, improved operational efficiencies with fewer manual interventions and arresting revenue leakage make for greatly improved working capital management.</p> </li> </ul> <p><img style="width:100%;" alt="Order-To-Cash from a Customer’s Perspective: It’s Not About Orders, It’s About Customers" loading="lazy" class="lazy" data-src="https://sutherlandglobal.azureedge.net/-/media/images/digital-finance-customer-to-cash/fac2ca3inline052000x1200.jpg?rev=4963b8f2-241c-4e71-a14c-b94c8423ccd3&hash=115766DADC9DCFFAFBACAAF5F68235C1" /></p> <p>Streamlined, customer-centric Order-To-Cash (O2C) — or rather “Customer-to-Cash” (C2C) — processes drive both customer satisfaction and brand loyalty, thereby maximizing profitable growth.</p> <h2>Delivering Success with C2C</h2> <p>Most customer-centric companies these days <em>use domain expertise, process excellence </em>and<em> technology innovation </em>to address the following challenges. Here are some of the actions they take to get results at each step of the C2C cycle along the way.</p> <p style="margin: 0;">1. <strong>Order Entry and Management</strong></p> <ul> <li> <p style="margin: 0;">Improve workflows by adopting a <strong>customer order portal</strong></p> </li> <li> <p style="margin: 0;">Digitize order documents by leveraging <strong>optical character recognition</strong> (OCR)</p> </li> <li> <p>Enable <strong>end-to-end data integration</strong> with CRM along with an AI chatbot for <strong>customer service</strong> that continually learns from each interaction</p> </li> </ul> <p style="margin: 0;">2. <strong>Credit</strong></p> <ul> <li> <p>Deliver <strong>real-time customer credit analysis</strong> by using a business intelligence dashboard for viewing credit exposure</p> </li> </ul> <p style="margin: 0;">3. <strong>Invoicing and Payment</strong></p> <ul> <li> <p style="margin: 0;"><strong><a href="https://www.sutherlandglobal.com/insights/products-x-platforms/2023/01/invoice-process-automation-with-sutherland">Automate e-invoices</a></strong> to support new business models</p> </li> <li> <p style="margin: 0;">Establish a <strong>customer portal</strong> for viewing invoices and posting payments</p> </li> <li> <p style="margin: 0;"><strong>Automate validation</strong> for invoice data</p> </li> <li> <p>Enable a <strong>chatbot</strong> for customer service</p> </li> </ul> <p style="margin: 0;">4. <strong>Collections and Disputes</strong></p> <ul> <li> <p style="margin: 0;"><strong>Drive insights</strong> by adopting smart collections based on predicted delinquency</p> </li> <li> <p style="margin: 0;"><strong>Enable</strong> an enhanced treatment strategy to improve collections</p> </li> <li> <p>Provide <strong>AI-enabled forecasting</strong> of bad debt expense by creating an <strong>automated dispute database</strong></p> </li> </ul> <p style="margin: 0;">5. <strong>Cash Applications</strong></p> <ul> <li> <p style="margin: 0;">Deploy<strong> automatic transaction-payment applications</strong></p> </li> <li> <p>Adopt a <strong>dashboard for tracking cash app metrics</strong> <strong>and trends</strong></p> </li> </ul> <p style="margin: 0;">6. <strong>Reporting</strong></p> <ul> <li> <p style="margin: 0;">Embrace a <strong>business intelligence dashboard</strong> with a <strong>holistic view of AR metrics</strong> to examine specific metrics and review issues</p> </li> <li> <p>Enable <strong>AI-based cash flow forecasting</strong> and <strong>automated report generation</strong></p> </li> </ul> <p> </p> <p>Level up your customer's experience with your business by adopting <a rel="noopener noreferrer" href="https://www.sutherlandglobal.com/transformation/intelligent-automation" target="_blank" title="intelligent automation">intelligent automation</a> processes. Doing so will increase productivity.</p> <p>Ultimately, whether we call it “Order-to-Cash” or “Customer-to-Cash,” the end-to-end process is all about improving customer outcomes. And it’s about delivering those outcomes in a way that empowers the brand — even in the midst of uncertainty, economic volatility or business model transformation.</p> <p><img style="width:100%;" alt="Order-To-Cash from a Customer’s Perspective: It’s Not About Orders, It’s About Customers" loading="lazy" class="lazy" data-src="https://sutherlandglobal.azureedge.net/-/media/images/digital-finance-customer-to-cash/fac2ca3inline022000x1200.jpg?rev=56c28b44-9c90-4b6e-9997-f27fa2a9cfb1&hash=0FBF8CBB3E734851778FD84BFFE3CDE2" /></p> <p>Want to learn more about how to transform your Order-To-Cash business to a Customer-To-Cash business? <a rel="noopener noreferrer" href="https://www.sutherlandglobal.com/contact-us" target="_blank">Let’s talk.</a></p> <a href="https://www.sutherlandglobal.com/contact-us" target="_blank"> </a> <div><a href="https://www.sutherlandglobal.com/contact-us" target="_blank"> </a><hr align="left" size="1" width="33%" /> <a href="https://www.sutherlandglobal.com/contact-us" target="_blank"></a> <p style="font-size: 14px;">[1] Forrester, Rethinking customer loyalty. <a rel="noopener noreferrer" href="https://www.forrester.com/what-it-means/ep04-rethinking-customer-loyalty" target="_blank">https://www.forrester.com/what-it-means/ep04-rethinking-customer-loyalty</a></p> </div> <style> .article-insight-hero-banner.article-banner.pickgradient { background-position: center; } ul li { margin-left: 30px; } </style>Thu, 26 Oct 2023 03:36:48 -0700{AB9970A1-60A3-4F9E-88DA-759C7BAEB56B}https://www.sutherlandglobal.com/insights/oil-and-gas/world-kinect-oracle-workload-migration-aws-cloudWorld Kinect Corporation enhances its operational efficiency and security by migrating Oracle Workloads On-premises to AWS Cloud<div class="container article-content"> <div style="text-align: center;" class="insigts_cssss"> <p>Discover how World Kinect Corporation achieved operational efficiency and bolstered security through the seamless migration of Oracle workloads from On-premises to the AWS Cloud. World Kinect Corporation (WKC) is a global energy management company, offering suite of energy advisory, management and fulfillment services, digital and other technology solutions, as well as sustainability products and services across the energy product spectrum. It caters to 160,000+ customers across 200 countries.</p> <p> </p> <p style="width: 100%; text-align: center; font-weight: bold;">The Challenge</p> <br /> <p>Outdated hardware was one of the biggest challenges affecting IT operations at WKC – especially, the unsupported Solaris operating systems, which posed a critical risk of business disruption along with overall security concerns.</p> <br /> <h2 style="font-weight: bold;">SUTHERLAND TRANSFORMATION</h2> <p>Phased Approach: To address the challenge above, it was imperative to transition from the existing On-Premises servers to the more resilient and flexible AWS Cloud Infrastructure services. Few specifics of the process involved:</p> <ul style="margin-left: 30px; text-align: left;"> <li>Phase 1 - Re-Platform from Solaris to Linux OS</li> <li>Phase 2 – Upgrade On-Premises: Oracle Upgrade Include EBS, Databases, WebLogic Stack and Code Refactoring.</li> <li>Phase 3 - Cloud Migration to AWS: Lift and Shift workloads to the AWS cloud platform in three waves to eliminate Risk and complexity.</li> </ul> <p>Collaboration for Platform Readiness: The combined effort of our team's timely expert recommendations, factoring in criticality and dependencies and an experience into how the interconnected components function in different environments was instrumental in the successful AWS implementation.</p> </div> <div style="text-align: center;" class="insigts_cssss"> <br /> <p style="width: 100%; text-align: center; font-weight: bold;">Outcome</p> <br /> <ul style="margin-left: 30px; text-align: left;"> <li>Increased Scalability & Flexibility: With the migration to cloud AWS, we achieved the ability to respond fast to changing business needs allowing us greater scalability and flexibility.</li> <li>Cost Efficiency: Effectively saved over 2.7 Mn in cost with pay-as-you-go pricing structure and better operational capabilities for WKC.</li> <li>Performance Optimization and Faster Disaster Recovery: Enhanced performance through careful optimization strategies ensuring high availability and robust disaster recovery solutions.</li> <li>Agility & Innovation: Experience simplified management and easy maintenance allowing for better agility and innovation within the processes in the new environment.</li> <li>Elasticity for Testing & Development: With AWS, test and development elasticity was enhanced significantly due to robust infrastructure and dynamic resource allocation for auto scaling.</li> </ul> </div> <style type="text/css"> .article-content { width: 100%; padding: 0 50px; margin: 0 auto; max-width: 144rem; white-space: pre-wrap; } .insigts_cssss p, .container.outcome--content { text-align: left; } .insights { display: none; } section#article-case-study-hero-banner_NewAI-DrivenLanguageTranslationToolLetsSpotifyGrowCustomerEngagementWhileCuttingCosts { background-position: top; } </style> </div>Wed, 25 Oct 2023 08:33:51 -0700{1BB7E95B-1050-4E8E-9BEC-FD92FAB6E1A8}https://www.sutherlandglobal.com/Insights/Banking-and-Financial-Services/the-most-important-quality-in-a-finance-employeeThe Most Important Quality in a Finance Employee?<p>As we enter an <a rel="noopener noreferrer" href="https://www.sutherlandglobal.com/insights/banking-and-financial-services/wp-chatbots-for-business-impact?utm_medium=cta&utm_source=blog&utm_campaign=chatbot-whitepaper&utm_term=organic&utm_content=cta-banner" target="_blank">increasingly automated world</a><a rel="noopener noreferrer" href="https://www.sutherlandglobal.com/insights/banking-and-financial-services/wp-chatbots-for-business-impact?utm_medium=cta&utm_source=blog&utm_campaign=chatbot-whitepaper&utm_term=organic&utm_content=cta-banner" target="_blank">,</a> talent cultivation and retention must adjust accordingly. This rings particularly true for finance and accounting (F&A) teams, who are often at the forefront of this digital transformation, with <a rel="noopener noreferrer" href="https://www.sutherlandglobal.com/insights/banking-and-financial-services/meet-your-new-cfo-a-futurist-and-strategic-business-partner" target="_self">CFOs playing a key role in driving the process throughout their organization.</a></p> <p>In fact, this digital transformation will create a new finance workforce, emphasizing the necessity of the learning worker. But therein lies the problem, as a <a rel="noopener noreferrer" href="https://www2.deloitte.com/us/en/pages/finance/articles/global-cfo-signals.html" target="_blank">Q3 2019 Deloitte report</a> stated that talent is “one of CFOs’ top internal risks.”  With so much change and with that change unlikely to slow, it’s important finance leaders are strategic in how they hire. They can’t hire for specific skill sets which may become obsolete, but instead need to build teams with workers that are willing to learn and adapt to change. </p> <p>Let’s explore what it takes to be a modern-day finance employee and how a willingness to learn will empower teams to succeed.</p> <p><img alt="Digital finance workforce is emphasizing the of hiring the learning worker" style="width: 100%;" loading="lazy" class="lazy" data-src="https://sutherlandglobal.azureedge.net/-/media/sutherland/images/blog-images/the-most-important-quality-in-a-digital-finance-employee/finance-employee-blog-incopy-1200x627.jpg?rev=19204403-6a86-41af-95ee-600dcaa1cf28&h=350&w=842&hash=46D72C35D75211EA09FAE999BA3667E0" /></p> <p><strong>Traditional Work, Transactional Staff</strong></p> <p>Rewind the clocks a few years back — job openings, core competencies, and organizational structures looked very different for F&A teams. In the past, the F&A staffing profile required finding the right mix of accountants and transactional staff; those that could handle the complex, labor-intensive, and detail-oriented tasks associated with traditional finance work. However, this job description is changing in the next-generation finance world. As organizations move beyond outdated infrastructure and leverage technology such as <a rel="noopener noreferrer" href="https://www.sutherlandglobal.com/insights/technology/behind-the-industry-shift-from-rpa-to-intelligent-automation-4-reasons-for-adoption">intelligent automation</a><a rel="noopener noreferrer" href="https://www.sutherlandglobal.com/insights/technology/behind-the-industry-shift-from-rpa-to-intelligent-automation-4-reasons-for-adoption">,</a> employees’ technical understanding and critical thinking skills must grow in tandem. </p> <p><strong>The New Norm</strong></p> <p>With such advanced technology now in play, ongoing learning and flexibility are the new currency for a long-lasting career. Now that the days of labor-intensive work are over, a significant amount of mental agility is required for F&A talent to succeed. The learning worker must instead be nimble, think quickly on their feet, quickly access information, leverage analytics to problem-solve, and predict the future. </p> <p>For management, leaders need to assess if they have the right staff with the necessary mix of skills to push their organization’s digital journey forward. A healthy mix of skills includes financial, analytical, technical, and business acumen, along with the aforementioned desire to learn and grow. These skills aren’t exactly a dime a dozen and can vary based off where a professional is in his or her career. For example, a younger accountant with technical skills may lack the business acumen only honed through a long career. Conversely, those with experience in business may lack the technical expertise of a recent Master of Accounting (MACC) graduate. A willingness to learn is still necessary — it’s just a matter of ‘what’ the worker needs to learn.</p> <p><strong>Products That Empower People</strong></p> <p>As employees express a  willingness to learn new skills and adopt cutting-edge technology, finance leaders must take a hard look at how they hire, train, and upskill talent. Moreover, leaders must examine the tools they’re equipping their people with to be successful. By pairing adaptable, eager employees with powerful, advanced technology, businesses ensure that they are prepared for whatever changes and new trends are ahead. The end result? Future-proofed finance departments primed to support their organization’s transformation journey.</p> <p>To learn more about how you can empower your F&A department to be successful, visit our page on <a rel="noopener noreferrer" href="https://www.sutherlandglobal.com/services/business-process-transformation" target="_blank">Business Process Transformation</a> or <a rel="noopener noreferrer" href="https://www.sutherlandglobal.com/contact-us" target="_blank">get in touch today</a>.</p> <p><a rel="noopener noreferrer" href="https://www.sutherlandglobal.com/services/business-process-transformation" target="_blank"><img height="100" alt="Business and Accounting Business Process Transformation" style="width: 100%;" loading="lazy" class="lazy" data-src="https://sutherlandglobal.azureedge.net/-/media/sutherland/images/blog-images/the-most-important-quality-in-a-digital-finance-employee/blog-banner-finance-employee.jpg?rev=88645eb3-a991-4c99-b046-182996eaa87f&h=100&w=910&hash=EEE243C05B5FFDEAC6A05379FB279CF2" /></a></p> <style type="text/css"> .article-insight-hero-banner.article-banner.pickgradient { background-position: top; } </style>Tue, 19 Sep 2023 07:08:55 -0700{68BD14A2-517F-4110-945C-37069D041542}https://www.sutherlandglobal.com/Insights/Banking-and-Financial-Services/3-reasons-intelligent-automation-is-the-future-of-finance3 Reasons Intelligent Automation Is the Future of Finance<p>Where a finance and accounting (F&A) department sits in terms of digital maturity often reflects where an organization sits as a whole. That’s because the modern-day Chief Financial Officer (CFO) is less often a bookkeeper and instead a strategic changemaker driving innovation and automation initiatives. </p> <p>As part of this broad mandate, CFOs are increasingly exploring <a rel="noopener noreferrer" href="https://www.sutherlandglobal.com/transformation/intelligent-automation" target="_blank" title="intelligent automation">intelligent automation</a> in order to boost productivity and improve executive decision-making. <a rel="noopener noreferrer" href="https://www.sutherlandglobal.com/transformation/intelligent-automation" target="_blank" title="Intelligent automation">Intelligent automation</a> fuses machine learning and <a rel="noopener noreferrer" href="https://www.sutherlandglobal.com/insights/banking-and-financial-services/how-to-leverage-ai-for-smart-customer-engagement" target="_blank">artificial intelligence (AI)</a> capabilities with process automation software, and, as such, represents the natural successor to robotic process automation (RPA), which is limited to rule-based functions.</p> <p>F&A processes are the perfect use case for intelligent automation because they are often complex, labor-intensive, and detail-oriented. While RPA struggled to make an impact given the high variability in F&A functions and use of unstructured data, intelligent automation handles such complexity with ease. Intelligent automation (IA) is where AI and more conventional automation meet.  And because F&A interacts with all parts of an organization, the successful deployment of IA across finance and accounting processes encourages awareness and implementation throughout an organization, improving overall operations as a result.</p> <p>If inefficiencies in your F&A function are standing in the way of growth at your business, intelligent automation can help. Let’s take a look at the three key benefits of intelligent automation that together drive better business outcomes.</p> <p><img alt="blog-image" style="width: 100%;" loading="lazy" class="lazy" data-src="https://sutherlandglobal.azureedge.net/-/media/sutherland/images/blog-images/digital-finance-blog-incopy-1200x627.jpg?rev=e76d65e6-31a2-4cff-a0c2-b0b683bd43cf&h=350&w=842&hash=A7A0DC83511ABBAC23A9B04E91304F3D" /></p> <p><strong>1. The Need for Speed</strong></p> <p>Intelligent automation solutions interface with existing systems and data just like a human would, but without the need for downtime. Unlike humans, these platforms operate 24/7 and can therefore complete tasks that would otherwise take human employees weeks to finish, or would remain altogether out of reach. For example, F&A departments in healthcare <a rel="noopener noreferrer" href="https://www.sutherlandglobal.com/insights/healthcare/blog-the-direction-of-healthcare-digital-future" target="_blank">use intelligent automation to consolidate patient payment data</a> from a wide variety of sources. The platform then provides a comprehensive risk analysis of patients and payers to reduce delinquent debt and total days outstanding. Similar risk analysis is common throughout F&A departments but requires access to usable data. With intelligent automation, that access is granted, enabling data-driven decision-making at scale and on-demand. </p> <p><strong>2. The Importance of Accuracy</strong></p> <p>Today, large organizations often <a rel="noopener noreferrer" href="https://www.itproportal.com/features/how-artificial-intelligence-is-shifting-the-model-risk-management-landscape/" target="_blank">use sophisticated risk modeling to guide decisions</a>, but these models are only as accurate as the data that guides them. And with humans making an estimated <a rel="noopener noreferrer" href="https://www.sutherlandglobal.com/insights/technology/intelligent-automation-bringing-together-the-best-of-rpa-and-human-like-cognitive-tech" target="_blank">10 errors per 100 steps</a>, the data driving these models often contain mistakes. Even a single data entry error can skew output dramatically. As the amount of data analyzed by F&A departments increases, the probability of a data entry error rises as well. Mistakes in data entry also extend beyond decision-making models to simple accounting errors, sometimes with multi-billion dollar effects. In 2014, for example, Bank of America <a rel="noopener noreferrer" href="https://www.cnbc.com/2014/04/28/bank-of-america-to-suspend-previously-announced-capital-plans.html" target="_blank">suspended its $4 billion stock buyback program</a> due to an incorrect adjustment related to the bank’s acquisition of Merrill Lynch. </p> <p>As the saying goes, “To err is human.” But with intelligent automation, to err is simply a failure to deploy the right technology. By implementing the right intelligent automation software, F&A departments can automate basic processes and build effective models, resulting in accurate analysis and informed decisions.</p> <p><strong>3. </strong><strong>The Impact on Employee Morale</strong></p> <p>Though its impact on speed and accuracy is significant, intelligent automation’s most important influence lies in improving the employee experience. </p> <p>F&A employees confront a variety of tasks each day that are low-skill but also high-stress. For example, these employees pull invoices to respond to audits — a process that's critically important for businesses. But no tax professional eagerly anticipates such a task. Instead, they’d rather serve as more strategic consultants who proactively (and more creatively) provide their organization with insights that drive business. That’s clearly a more valuable use of F&A professionals’ time.</p> <p>By automating data pulls and responses to basic inquiries from internal stakeholders, intelligent automation enables employees to spend their time and mental energy on more difficult, higher-value tasks. When routine and mundane tasks are left to “digital workers”— that is, automated team members trained to carry out a business process like any other, they’re faster and without mistakes.</p> <p>Digital tools, like intelligent automation, allow for the possibility of top-line revenue growth that exceeds any corresponding rise in expenses. The digital transformation of your F&A efforts let’s you get investment out of your support functions and into places better able to grow your business.</p> <p><span id="docs-internal-guid-78c65607-7fff-563b-b534-867e4b77b173">To learn more about intelligent automation, visit our page on <a rel="noopener noreferrer" href="https://www.sutherlandglobal.com/services/business-process-transformation" target="_blank">Business Process Transformation</a> or <a rel="noopener noreferrer" href="https://www.sutherlandglobal.com/contact-us" target="_blank">get in touch today</a>. </span></p> <p><a rel="noopener noreferrer" href="https://www.sutherlandglobal.com/services/business-process-transformation" target="_blank"><img alt="blog banner - digital finance" style="width: 100%;" loading="lazy" class="lazy" data-src="https://sutherlandglobal.azureedge.net/-/media/sutherland/images/blog-images/blog-banner-digital-finance.jpg?rev=76ec8f5d-7027-4908-8bf5-cf523c9689d7&h=100&w=910&hash=AE775CFEB9DA96B8FAFB26B7283E7612C7DB5B51" /></a></p> <style type="text/css"> .article-insight-hero-banner.article-banner.pickgradient { background-position: top; } </style>Tue, 19 Sep 2023 07:08:54 -0700{FD986B7E-A59B-4361-968C-411054A702FD}https://www.sutherlandglobal.com/Insights/Banking-and-Financial-Services/meet-your-new-cfo-a-futurist-and-strategic-business-partnerMeet Your New CFO: A Futurist and Strategic Business Partner<p style="text-align: center;"><em style="text-align: left;">This </em><em style="text-align: left;"><a rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank" href="https://www.financialdirector.co.uk/2019/11/12/meet-your-new-cfo-a-futurist-and-strategic-business-partner/">article</a> was originally published by Financial Director on November 12, 2019.</em></p> <p><span>Prior to the onset of digital transformation and recent technology advances, a Chief Financial Officer (CFO) was captain to an organization’s ship charting a company’s finance journey. In this traditional role CFOs had a clear direction for where to navigate based on past experience. They rarely steered the ship into murky waters outside of their conventional duties of financial planning and analysis.<br /> <br /> </span>Today digital natives are creating a tsunami, disrupting every industry. To remain relevant, companies need to quickly adapt to this new norm. To ride out the waves of innovation and automation every part of the organization needs to transform. This is having a profound impact on role of the CFO and entire finance organization. The next generation CFO has moved from accounting for company results to a bold, strategic leader defining the company’s future while continuing to maximize shareholder value.<br /> <br /> A recent McKinsey’s study indicates that the opportunity for CFOs to act as a leading change agent has never been greater, with more than half responding that they are actively involved in developing their organization’s digital strategy. The modern-day job CFO description goes well beyond reporting and analyzing results. As a futurist and digital officer, CFOs are now leading the automation and digitization charge responsible for determining how the organization can benefit from emerging technologies.<br /> <br /> <strong>Creating an agile, forward looking and decision centric finance organization<br /> <br /> </strong>In this fast-changing business landscape, CFOs need to make informed strategic decisions that deliver business outcomes. This requires their functional strategies to be aligned with the overall enterprise objectives.  It calls for a prescient vision from CFOs who can make quick and informed decisions. In order to keep up with the pace they need to embrace this shift and evolve alongside technology. Enterprises need to optimize their delivery model to enable CFOs to focus on complex, judgement intensive, and value-adding activities. <br /> <br /> Modern CFOs have oceans of data at their fingertips and need to embrace cognitive capabilities to mine meaningful insights to support business decisions. Along with this data explosion comes the responsibility to secure it. This forces CFOs to act as not only champions of their data, but also as compliance and control security owners to ensure information is protected from hacking, phishing and other external breaches.<br /> <br /> The evolution of intelligent automation supported by advances in robotic process automation (RPA) is having an unprecedented impact on the finance organization. These enhancements are ultimately reducing costs, reducing human effort, freeing employees up to perform more strategic work. CFOs need to build the right team with the proper mix of skills relevant in today’s hyper-digital, ever-evolving workforce. They need to create an agile, forward looking and decision centric finance organization. <br /> <br /> <strong>CFO: the futurist<br /> <br /> </strong>The CFO role is now a value creator and strategic partner to the business. This shift is happening quickly, forcing the traditional expectations of certain roles to evolve. In fact, according to Ernst & Young’s DNA of the CFO report, 69% of CFOs and finance leaders report they are already seeing this role fundamentally change as traditional finance tasks become more automated or managed in shared services centers.<br /> <br /> With this in mind, here are three crucial steps for CFOs to follow when looking to evolve as a futurist:</p> <ol style="margin-left: 30px;"> <li> <p>Cultivate an innovation-driven mindset: Given the rapid rate at which competition is heightening, innovation represents an absolute mandate for companies to survive. Organizations that are resistant to change are at a much higher risk of failure if innovation is not prioritized. It is therefore the CFO’s responsibility to drive a concerted effort in ensuring the right financial systems and processes are in place to achieve a clearer, more accurate, 360-degree view of the organization.</p> </li> <li> <p>Digest all the data you can for more intelligent decision-making: An increasing differentiator in the success of CFOs is how they effectively use data to drive insights. In particular, leveraging data analytics is worth its weight in gold when it comes to forecasting future trends and events. With predictive analytics, CFOs can make informed, critical business decisions and revenue projections based on current demands, rather than relying solely on past performance.</p> </li> <li> <p>Prioritize Customer Engagement:  Always keep customers at the forefront. They are the top priority of every organization, especially in what’s been coined the “age of the customer.” This era is one defined by rapid escalations in customer expectations, so much so that businesses not prioritizing the customer experience are being left behind in the dust. Part of this means ensuring the security and privacy of customer data and continually striving to bring value to customers.</p> </li> </ol> <p><span>With these key steps in mind, more CFOs are directing their financial fleet away from traditional accounting duties. Instead, they’re embarking on a journey toward becoming a new visionary to their organizations, one where they invest more time and energy into how to strategically transform their operations. With this, a new cross-functional role is emerging where CFOs have become fearless digital transformation leaders, launching widespread automation deployments and breaking down operational silos to align more teams through digitization. They are also transforming into big data miners who provide access to the right information, break down data and use predictive analytics to produce better insights.<br /> <br /> </span><strong>Modernizing the CFO’s job description<br /> <br /> </strong>Technology’s changing tides are modernizing today’s CFO job description, ushering in a new era where digitization is redesigning and delivering a more efficient operations. CFOs are now not just financial machinists; they are contemporary strategists, technology experts, data interpreters and digital transformation advocates who can look ahead and plan for the future.<br /> <br /> By adopting this futuristic mindset with an acceptance of new technologies and strategies, CFOs will become the digital officers and business leaders of tomorrow.</p> <p><a href="https://www.sutherlandglobal.com/insights/technology/blog-isg-names-sutherland-a-market-leader-in-financial-and-accounting-services-sutherland" target="_self"><img alt="" height="100" width="910" style="height: 100px; width: 910px;" loading="lazy" class="lazy" data-src="https://sutherlandglobal.azureedge.net/-/media/sutherland/images/blog-images/blog-banner-newcfo.jpg?rev=6b4153a1-52b4-4018-bd8f-eca5485c6470&h=100&w=910&hash=E3EF63E5DEBF4221517A12349DE7E0CC" /></a></p> <style type="text/css"> .article-insight-hero-banner.article-banner.pickgradient { background-position: top; } </style>Tue, 19 Sep 2023 07:08:54 -0700{BD19CE4E-209A-4C54-B8BF-7E82622E43FE}https://www.sutherlandglobal.com/Insights/Communications-Media-and-Entertainment/blog-design-thinking-strategy-for-success-sutherlandHow to Implement a Successful Design Thinking Strategy<p>A phrase like “<a href="https://www.sutherlandglobal.com/insights/technology/blog-designing-inclusivity-how-to-make-design-thinking-a-process-that-includes-all-sutherland">design thinking</a>” probably sounds to many like some throwaway fad or trend, one that promises way more flash than it does substance. That could not be further from the truth—in reality, design thinking is the first step in tackling major business disruptions. As an approach, design thinking diagnoses and solves business problems, but has gained relatively little fanfare for having been around nearly 50 years. However, with the digital world continuing to evolve and as people rush to embrace new technology, design thinking is poised to become the new normal for all business process design.</p> <p><img alt="A Successful Design Thinking Strategy Is Both Empathetic and Evolutionary" width="100%" loading="lazy" class="lazy" data-src="https://sutherlandglobal.azureedge.net/-/media/sutherland/images/blog-images/in-blog-image1-rti-design-thinking.png?rev=ecfd4846-6139-4522-970e-77fceacfdddf&hash=78290867B16F68BECD3AAAF57309E771" /></p> <p>With half a century under its belt, design thinking shouldn’t be as hard of a sell as it is. And yet, many companies fail to even consider this method when creating their products and services despite <a href="https://www.sutherlandglobal.com/insights/healthcare/driving-digital-disruption-part-3-why-agility-is-critical-to-successful-digital-transformation">irrefutable benefits</a>, such as:</p> <ul style="margin-left: 30px;"> <li> <p style="margin: 0;">Helping companies thrive in today’s digitally disrupted business environment</p> </li> <li> <p style="margin: 0;">Engaging organizations across disciplines and departments to reimagine end-to-end operations through an iterative design process</p> </li> <li> <p style="margin: 0;">Improving experiences through close examination of customer interactions via customer journey mapping to identify sentiment, motivation, expectation and pain points</p> </li> <li> <p>Promoting innovation that results in real value for customers</p> </li> </ul> <p>Any company should be jumping over the moon trying to attain these achievements. But embracing design thinking with guns-blazing isn’t the measured, calculated approach that will yield success. We’re here to explain how it should be done!</p> <h2>It’s All About the Strategy<</h2> <p>There’s a reason only a few companies have made true strides in profitability and scalability through design thinking, and it all boils down to approaching it with the right strategy. <a href="https://www.forbes.com/sites/taitran/2018/04/26/three-ways-to-infuse-design-thinking-into-your-marketing-and-storytelling/#3355ad2c6db8" target="new">For every Volkswagen or Coca-Cola</a>, there are tons of poor design thinking approaches. Ideally, a company should tackle design thinking with empathy and evolution in mind. That entails getting into the hearts and minds of customers and uncovering latent needs in order to develop a deep understanding of those being designed for, as well as regularly experimenting with this approach and constantly evolving in order to improve customer experiences over time.</p> <p>Empathy means walking a mile in a customer’s shoes to understand their everyday lives, desires and frustrations. From a marketing standpoint, design thinking with empathy in mind embodies storytelling and a human-centric approach. Meanwhile, <a href="https://www.mckinsey.com/business-functions/mckinsey-design/our-insights/more-than-a-feeling-ten-design-practices-to-deliver-business-value" target="new">as McKinsey points out</a>, the other major principle of design thinking is that it’s evolutionary. It’s less of a one-and-done initiative and more of a continuous design approach. Make no mistake about it—a successful design thinking strategy is <strong>both</strong> empathetic and evolutionary.</p> <h2>The Customer Is Always Right</h2> <p>Simply employing quantitative market research to target audiences is neglecting a crucial part of the human decision-making process: emotion. Design thinking can help illuminate this. As a tool for <a href="https://www.sutherlandglobal.com/insights/healthcare/blog-app-design-leaves-user-data-vulnerable">gathering insights around sentiment and behavior</a>, design thinking can offer businesses a window into not only how a customer might choose a particular product or service and the price they’re willing to pay for it, but also the reasons dictating why they made their choice. That’s invaluable information for any company to possess.</p> <p>Meanwhile, design thinking also emboldens companies to tell stories and craft messages based on customer desire. This can lead to more authentic, personal connections that leave companies better informed about their customers and leave customers feeling like they’re being seen, heard and catered to. The biggest thing to always remember when it comes to an empathetic design thinking approach is always placing the focus on the customer and what they want. Truly, nothing else matters.</p> <p><img alt="A Successful Design Thinking Strategy Is Both Empathetic and Evolutionary" width="100%" loading="lazy" class="lazy" data-src="https://sutherlandglobal.azureedge.net/-/media/sutherland/images/blog-images/in-blog-image2-rti-design-thinking.png?rev=a6f3c496-69ee-45fd-8179-eb68796406b1&hash=347196E7AFC94127B7EF4D6D7792FB56" /></p> <h2>Switching Design Gears</h2> <p>Design thinking should be much more than just a phase; it should be an active commitment. To get the most out of design thinking, <span data-sheets-formula-bar-text-style="font-size:15px;color:#ff5e29;font-weight:normal;text-decoration:none;font-family:''docs-Calibri'';font-style:normal;text-decoration-skip-ink:none;" style="color: #1f1f1f;">Companies can leverage </span><span data-sheets-formula-bar-text-style="font-size:15px;color:#ff5e29;font-weight:bold;text-decoration:underline;font-family:''docs-Calibri'';font-style:normal;text-decoration-skip-ink:none;" style="color: #1f1f1f;"><a href="https://www.sutherlandglobal.com/transformation/sutherland-labs/insight-and-design">design thinking services</a></span><span data-sheets-formula-bar-text-style="font-size:15px;color:#ff5e29;font-weight:normal;text-decoration:none;font-family:''docs-Calibri'';font-style:normal;text-decoration-skip-ink:none;" style="color: #1f1f1f;"> to combine</span> marketing and design research, social media listening, customer satisfaction surveys, warranty-data analysis, focus groups and other methods to always have a clear picture of customers’ needs, and then evolve their approach around those. A successful design thinking strategy should allow for design to occur throughout all stages of development and the customer experience centered around a given product or service.</p> <p>Customer preferences can rapidly change over time, so it’s important that design teams engage and iterate with customers and provide design delivery strategies that incorporate the latest technologies to continue meeting customers’ expectations. Change can be scary to some, but it’s an essential component of design thinking. Cultivating new ideas and design approaches will offer greater insights into what is and isn’t working and allow companies to refine and adapt their design offerings in a way that keeps customers coming back for more. Empathize, evolve, engage: that’s the design thinking way!</p> <p style="margin: 0;"><strong>Related Links:</strong></p> <ul style="margin-left: 30px;"> <li> <p style="margin: 0;"><a href="https://www.sutherlandglobal.com/insights/healthcare/blog-app-design-leaves-user-data-vulnerable">How a Design Thinking Approach Could Protect Against Data Misuse</a></p> </li> <li> <p style="margin: 0;"><a href="https://www.sutherlandglobal.com/insights/healthcare/driving-digital-disruption-part-3-why-agility-is-critical-to-successful-digital-transformation">Driving Digital Disruption, Part 1: Innovative Design Thinking</a></p> </li> <li> <p><a href="https://www.sutherlandglobal.com/insights/technology/blog-designing-inclusivity-how-to-make-design-thinking-a-process-that-includes-all-sutherland">Design Thinking Isn’t Just What We Do, It’s Where We Work</a></p> </li> </ul> <p><a href="https://sutherlandglobal.azureedge.net/-/media/sutherland/files/whitepapers/wp-voice-everywhere-dilemma.pdf?utm_medium=blog&utm_source=footer-cta-banner-hyperlink&utm_campaign=voice-tech-blog2&utm_term=paid&utm_content=blog"><img alt="" width="100%" loading="lazy" class="lazy" data-src="https://sutherlandglobal.azureedge.net/-/media/sutherland/images/blog-images/blog-960x90-wp2-cta.png?rev=9bf53f6f-642a-47b6-950d-2f4451406902&hash=D007A0D0EA4FAF0D543747797DA92E77" /></a></p> <style type="text/css"> .article-insight-hero-banner.article-banner.pickgradient { background-position: top; } </style>Mon, 04 Sep 2023 02:58:08 -0700{3F1CA97E-CFC8-4664-9230-6F5FCD9E4777}https://www.sutherlandglobal.com/Insights/Communications-Media-and-Entertainment/blog-why-leveraging-data-creates-more-personalized-customer-experiences-sutherlandData & Personalization: Leveraging It Creates Better Personalized Experiences<p>Customization is like catnip to consumers—dangle it in their faces and watch them go nuts for it, desiring more and more over time. Look no further than the popularity of apps like Bitmoji, which allows people to create cartoon avatars of themselves for use in texts and on social media, and it’s evident that consumers crave experiences that are tailor-made for them and able to be customized to their preferences at a moment’s notice. A <a href="https://www.slideshare.net/EpsilonMktg/the-power-of-me-the-impact-of-personalization-on-marketing-performance/1" target="new">recent survey by Epsilon</a> found that a whopping 90% of consumers see the appeal of personalization, with 80% stating they were more likely to do business with a company that offers a personalized customer experience.</p> <p>Here’s the rub when it comes to consumers’ overwhelming desire for personalization: in order to have their cake and eat it too, it requires them to share some of their data with these companies. Data is the fuel that powers truly personalized <a href="https://www.sutherlandglobal.com/transformation/digital-engineering-services/customer-experience">digital customer experiences</a>. For the Spotifys and Amazons of the world to offer those perfectly curated playlists or suggest products that fit one’s style to a T, it requires leveraging personal consumer data to uncover preferences, patterns and behaviors in order to predict what they desire and, ultimately, give it to them without them having to ask.</p> <p><img alt="Why Leveraging Data Creates More Personalized Customer Experiences" width="100%" loading="lazy" class="lazy" data-src="https://sutherlandglobal.azureedge.net/-/media/sutherland/images/blog-images/in-blog-image1-rti-data-personalized.png?rev=55f23ba2-033b-4426-b440-c555cadb85de&hash=6D3D3560AADF3E4B7A73201756D99EEB" /></p> <p>In today’s crowded marketplace, <a href="https://www.sutherlandglobal.com/insights/healthcare/will-2018-finally-be-the-year-businesses-prioritize-customer-experience" target="_self">companies must prioritize customer experience</a> in order to remain competitive and sticky. By giving their customers a more personalized, customizable experience, they are satisfying their innate desires while providing them value such as better customer service, convenience and cost savings. However, that job doesn’t rest solely on the shoulders of a brand. Customers need to provide them with data points about themselves to give companies something to build a personalized experience around. And in today’s current climate of data breeches, that is understandably difficult for some consumers to reconcile.</p> <p>Data misuse and privacy are top-of-mind concerns for many lately, but consumers don’t have to sacrifice all of their personal information as the price for a great, personalized customer experience. It falls squarely on a brand to use the data consumers share with them responsibly and wisely. Companies should be sure to provide transparency around their use of this data and communicate to their customers what choices they have when it comes to their information being shared and used. These efforts can be bolstered with a <a href="https://www.sutherlandglobal.com/insights/healthcare/blog-app-design-leaves-user-data-vulnerable">design thinking approach</a> that empowers consumers with visibility into data usage and makes the process of signing off on how companies use their data simple and straightforward.</p> <p><img alt="Why Leveraging Data Creates More Personalized Customer Experiences" width="100%" loading="lazy" class="lazy" data-src="https://sutherlandglobal.azureedge.net/-/media/sutherland/images/blog-images/in-blog-image2-rti-data-personalized.png?rev=2ba6c723-53ee-4c0b-bd1f-06f83e05d9c3&hash=FAE6ABDA8A3B67DB3ECB6E74B83E2380" /></p> <p>Creating this sense of trust and security is undoubtedly a process, but it goes a long way toward cementing brand loyalty among customers. <a href="https://www.salesforce.com/blog/2017/07/customers-expectations-in-age-of-the-customer.html" target="“new”">Salesforce found that 70% of consumers</a> say a company that understands their individual needs impacts their loyalty. In turn, customers can feel confident knowing that their data will be used reasonably and responsibly for their overall benefit. And these benefits are nothing to scoff at. Be it increased customization, predictive services, discounts/special offers, <a href="https://www.sutherlandglobal.com/insights/technology/human-or-bot">streamlined chat/referral tools</a> or an overall engaging brand experience, it’s no wonder personalization is a huge consumer craze.</p> <p>To bask in such stellar customer experiences, consumers need to come to terms with the philosophy that if they give up a little bit of their data, they can receive quite a lot in return. <a href="https://offers.adobe.com/en/na/marketing/landings/_46316_real_time_marketing_insights_study.html" target="“new”">Adobe</a> found that 77% of marketers understand the importance of real-time personalization, but that 2/3 of them struggle to give consumers the personalized content they desire in real-time without data inputs from them. When it comes to personalization, it’s a two-way street. Remembering that businesses have much more to lose from mishandling the small nuggets of data a consumer offers up for a top-notch, personalized customer experience and that consumers have much more to gain should assuage lingering concerns and grant them greater peace of mind.</p> <p><strong>Related Links:</strong></p> <ul style="margin-left: 30px;"> <li> <p style="margin: 0;"><strong>“</strong><a href="https://www.sutherlandglobal.com/insights/technology/human-or-bot"><strong>Human or Bot? Three Reasons AI-Powered Chatbots Are Changing the Face of CX</strong></a><strong>”</strong></p> </li> <li> <p style="margin: 0;"><strong></strong><strong>“</strong><a href="https://www.sutherlandglobal.com/insights/healthcare/blog-app-design-leaves-user-data-vulnerable"><strong>How a Design Thinking Approach Could Protect Against Data Misuse</strong></a><strong>”</strong></p> </li> <li> <p><strong></strong><strong>“</strong><a href="https://www.sutherlandglobal.com/insights/healthcare/will-2018-finally-be-the-year-businesses-prioritize-customer-experience"><strong>Will 2018 Finally Be the Year Businesses Prioritize Customer Experience?</strong></a><strong>”</strong></p> </li> </ul> <p><em>Download the free chat bots whitepaper by clicking the banner below. </em></p> <p><strong><a href="https://www.sutherlandglobal.com/insights/banking-and-financial-services/wp-chatbots-for-business-impact"><img alt="Three Reasons AI-powered Chatbots are Changing the Face of CX" width="100%" loading="lazy" class="lazy" data-src="https://sutherlandglobal.azureedge.net/-/media/sutherland/images/blog-images/fy18-human-or-bots-cta.png?rev=5678dcfd-dd51-43bd-9fa4-02491775dde0&hash=7EB528B53B344839749EAB243913C3C7" /></a></strong></p> <style type="text/css"> .article-insight-hero-banner.article-banner.pickgradient { background-position: top; } </style>Mon, 04 Sep 2023 02:56:14 -0700{2137E5E4-DDFE-4B1E-85E4-B35BFF9A87AD}https://www.sutherlandglobal.com/Insights/Communications-Media-and-Entertainment/5-keys-to-content-moderation-in-online-communities5 Keys To Content Moderation In Online Communities<p>The global crisis brought on by the COVID-19 pandemic along with lockdown measures and social distancing norms has fueled the need for social interaction and connection. The world has seen an accelerated shift from offline to virtual social activities seeking that connection.</p> <p>Online communities offer people a platform not just to connect and interact but also seek information, knowledge and insights. The pandemic has advanced online communities to a “must-have” powerhouse and go-to source for intelligent conversations, deep learnings and meaningful connections.</p> <p>Among the must-haves for any successful online community, being <strong>engaging</strong> and <strong>relevant</strong> as well as<strong> safe</strong> and <strong>truthful </strong>are definitely at the top of the list.</p> <p>Community engagement is strongly dependent on the credibility and quality of your Subject Matter Experts (SMEs) who pitch in with well-researched and high-quality information that takes the engagement a level up and inspires insightful and thought-provoking conversations.</p> <p>Unfortunately, communities must deal with misinformative (and sometimes malicious) contributions too. Sadly, this behavior can take on a life of its own if not dealt with promptly. Worse still are small pockets of members who start mischief for mischief’s sake. Their behavior can be insidious, often starting out small but building momentum the longer they remain unchecked. This type of behavior spoils enjoyment for many members and discourages participation.</p> <p>In today’s social environment, the healthy growth of online communities depends on effective <a href="https://www.sutherlandglobal.com/transformation/sutherland-labs/content-services/content-moderation">online content moderation</a> (CoMo). And effective content moderation includes these key factors:</p> <h2>1. Weed out misbehavior. At its source. At once.</h2> <p>When misbehavior or misinformation pop up, there’s no time to lose. It needs to be dealt with immediately. Fortunately, there are proven technologies and techniques that can do the job. The Human + AI-powered CoMo model is a powerful combination that works particularly well.</p> <p>The first step scans new content with artificial intelligence (AI), natural language programming (NLP) and natural language understanding (NLU). For more on these technologies, see Key 3.</p> <p><img alt="5 Keys to Content Moderation in Online Communities" style="width: 100%;" loading="lazy" class="lazy" data-src="https://sutherlandglobal.azureedge.net/-/media/images/online-community-management/online-community-management-a2-blog_inline01-2000x1200.jpg?rev=6c0b362e-1c7a-418d-9f1e-f1897de994b8&hash=63D648CF4AFC7B356009D98715286F80" /> </p> <p>The next step is to engage your SMEs to quash misinformation as soon as it crops up in their conversations. Your community trusts SME knowledge — and they’re your best defense.</p> <h2>2. Fight falsehoods with vetted, validated truth</h2> <p>When contributions are made that are either untrue or not entirely accurate, SMEs or content moderators armed with the right information need to engage immediately with vetted facts that are validated for the community. SMEs then need to stay constantly engaged to tactfully keep conversations and content truthful, useful and enjoyable — the best way to retain your members.</p> <p><img alt="5 Keys to Content Moderation in Online Communities" style="width: 100%;" loading="lazy" class="lazy" data-src="https://sutherlandglobal.azureedge.net/-/media/images/online-community-management/online-community-management-a2-blog_inline02-2000x1200.jpg?rev=12613c0f-cb62-4322-bc15-58df848d6294&hash=098C997AFCD3719FD5AD8E3126CE1C20" /></p> <h2>3. Deploy AI/NLP/NLU in concert with human moderators</h2> <p> When used in the pre-moderation stage, AI and NLP/NLU can be powerful tools to quickly identify hateful, false, abusive, profane and egregiously inappropriate content. These tools are trained to spot somewhat obvious noncompliant trigger words, phrases, sounds and images.</p> <p><img style="width: 100%;" alt="5 Keys to Content Moderation in Online Communities" loading="lazy" class="lazy" data-src="https://sutherlandglobal.azureedge.net/-/media/images/online-community-management/online-community-management-a2-blog_inline03-2000x1200.jpg?rev=5d688196-5f1d-48f7-9974-c0a1c6ce616c&hash=EB3AEB922CDF9A35F2D50796132C977A" /></p> <p>Where AI tech hits its red line is when text is displayed over images, evaluating subtle contextual nuance, identifying slang/vernacular speech and uncovering certain “dog whistle” signal phrases and images. This is when instinct, feel, nuance and finesse (and even knowledge of local vernacular phrases) are required.<sup>[1]</sup></p> <p>To handle this type of content, human moderators shoulder the load. These experts are on guard around the clock to keep content safe, truthful, authentic and reliable for a voracious and vocal community audience.</p> <h2>4. Speak in the voice of the local community</h2> <p>This may not be obvious at first, but it’s essential. SMEs who speak local languages and dialects whenever possible improve engagement and help avoid misunderstandings.</p> <p><img style="width: 100%;" alt="5 Keys to Content Moderation in Online Communities" loading="lazy" class="lazy" data-src="https://sutherlandglobal.azureedge.net/-/media/images/online-community-management/online-community-management-a2-blog_inline04-2000x1200.jpg?rev=5b257068-cdae-40c5-bc45-da11d7e0ce15&hash=12579438ABB7A07D65544C25EAD66535" /></p> <p>As an added defense, deploy content moderators who fluently speak local languages and dialects and understand regional idioms and vernacular. Their fluency helps to quickly identify locally posted undesirable content and comments that could slip by less-fluent moderators.<sup>[2]</sup></p> <h2>5. Take good care of your moderators</h2> <p>A typical moderator makes hundreds of difficult judgment calls and sifts through large amounts of harmful and egregious content every working shift. No two are exactly alike. Working under pressure like this could cause some moderators to experience post-traumatic stress disorder, fatigue and burnout. That’s why maintaining moderators’ physical and mental well-being is a top priority for smart social brand communities.<sup>[3]</sup></p> <p><sup><img style="width: 100%;" alt="5 Keys to Content Moderation in Online Communities" loading="lazy" class="lazy" data-src="https://sutherlandglobal.azureedge.net/-/media/images/online-community-management/online-community-management-a2-blog_inline05-2000x1200.jpg?rev=bc3fbf02-d3bf-434f-a8f3-791ad3b05858&h=1200&w=2000&hash=303A5E5AD7AEEC1D28F582172B2F0373" /></sup></p> <hr align="left" size="1" width="33%" /> <p style="font-size: 14px;margin: 0;">[1] “<em>Social Media: Misinformation and Content Moderation Issues for Congress”</em></p> <p style="font-size: 14px;"> Congressional Research Service, January 27, 2021<br /> “For example, in the first quarter of 2020, AI technology flagged 99% of violent and graphic content and child nudity on Facebook for review before any user reported it. In contrast, Facebook’s AI technology identified only 16% of bullying and harassment content, suggesting content moderators are better able to identify this form of policy violation.”<br /> <a rel="noopener noreferrer" href="https://crsreports.congress.gov/product/pdf/R/R46662" target="_blank">https://crsreports.congress.gov/product/pdf/R/R46662</a> </p> <p style="font-size: 14px;">[2] <em>“Misinformation online is bad in English. But it’s far worse in Spanish.”</em> Washington Post October 28, 2021<br /> <a rel="noopener noreferrer" href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/outlook/2021/10/28/misinformation-spanish-facebook-social-media/" target="_blank">https://www.washingtonpost.com/outlook/2021/10/28/misinformation-spanish-facebook-social-media/</a></p> <p style="font-size: 14px;">[3] “<em>Information Quality and Content Moderation”  </em>Google You Tube pages 16-18 2020<br /> <a rel="noopener noreferrer" href="https://blog.google/documents/83/information_quality_content_moderation_white_paper.pdf/" target="_blank">https://blog.google/documents/83/information_quality_content_moderation_white_paper.pdf/</a> </p> <style type="text/css"> .article-insight-hero-banner.article-banner.pickgradient { background-position: top; } </style>Mon, 04 Sep 2023 02:36:30 -0700{8CFF1A52-CA9E-489D-A498-6BD6D38EB2ED}https://www.sutherlandglobal.com/Insights/Communications-Media-and-Entertainment/3-ways-to-future-proof-your-content3 Ways to Future-Proof Your Content<p>Ocean Spray’s viral TikTok moment. Zappos’ Customer Service for Anything hotline. Cottonelle’s #ShareASquare It’s fair to say the pandemic has fundamentally changed the way brands interact with their customers.</p> <p>It’s no longer enough to simply invest in content marketing, which <a rel="noopener noreferrer" href="https://elitecontentmarketer.com/content-marketing-statistics/#:~:text=70% of companies are actively investing in content marketing.&text=Approximately 60% of marketers rate,important to their marketing strategy#:~:text=70%" target="_blank">70% of marketers</a> are actively doing. Whether your end user is a system administrator or a traditional consumer, they’re all looking for one thing: connection. To foster that connection, brands must create content that is meaningful, relevant, personal, and adaptable.</p> <p>We refer to content with these traits as <strong>‘</strong><strong>future-proofed</strong></p> <p>Future-proofed content stands up against trends intensified by current times, such as the shift to ecommerce, which IBM reports has <a rel="noopener noreferrer" href="https://techcrunch.com/2020/08/24/covid-19-pandemic-accelerated-shift-to-e-commerce-by-5-years-new-report-says/" target="_blank">accelerated by five years</a>. It’s created in a manner that enables it to adapt to change, such as the increasing preference for video, which makes up more than <a rel="noopener noreferrer" href="https://www.webmarketingpros.com/internet-video-to-account-for-80-of-global-traffic-by-2019/" target="_blank">80% of online traffic</a>. And, future-proofed content enables brands to foster personal connections with their audiences, even on channels otherwise thought to be “consumers only” -- like Instagram, where users now visit at least <a rel="noopener noreferrer" href="https://blog.hootsuite.com/instagram-statistics/" target="_blank">one business profile</a> each day.</p> <p>So, how can brands design future-proofed content that engages current and future customers in a noisy, competitive digital landscape? Here are our top tips to do just that.</p> <p><img alt="Designing Future-State Content" width="842" style="width: 100%;" loading="lazy" class="lazy" data-src="https://sutherlandglobal.azureedge.net/-/media/sutherland/images/blog-images/cs---3-ways-to-future-proof-your-content/future-state-blog-102920_v1_incopy-842x350.png?rev=111f07c5-39cf-4314-843c-7f359fedfa8a&h=350&w=842&hash=6136E16A916806DFDE0C45E7221914DB" /></p> <p> <strong>1. </strong><strong>Get Digital</strong></p> <p>Personalized ecommerce content has come to the forefront of future-state content strategies for many brands. Online shopping has been on the rise for years – the number of digital buyers worldwide <a rel="noopener noreferrer" href="https://www.statista.com/statistics/251666/number-of-digital-buyers-worldwide/" target="_blank">has nearly doubled to 2.1B from 2014 to 2020</a> – and the current environment has only exacerbated that growth, driving online sales through the roof. However, many brands still struggle with the quality of their online content, and poor content experiences can cause shoppers to abandon their carts.</p> <p>When considering the home for your content, think about the experience first. Is it engaging? Informative? Does it offer opportunities for users to personalize their experience? There’s a reason why ‘Choose Your Own Adventure’ books were popular -- people enjoy mapping out their own paths.The same goes for content consumption habits online.</p> <p>Everything created must be tailored to meet the needs of the end-user. With ecommerce and direct-to-consumer on the rise, the time is now to focus on your brand’s online experience, where quality content -- and the experience within which it lives -- is central. Content for commerce solutions <a href="https://www.sutherlandglobal.com/transformation/sutherland-labs/content-services/content-for-commerce">Ecommerce content solutions</a> are another option for brands interested in enriching their digital content experience.</p> <p><strong>2. Give it Legs</strong></p> <p>Without a thoughtful content strategy in place, organizations operate on a shaky foundation. And, a thoughtful strategy doesn’t leverage resources to create everything from scratch or reinvent the wheel.</p> <p>A future-proofed approach is one that eliminates the guesswork. Putting the human at the center of your content engine is the best place to start. Analyze what’s working and what hasn’t, and create content that can be sliced, diced, and distributed across various mediums. A thoughtful strategy takes into consideration how users and business alike interact with what’s out there, designing an experience that optimizes for those key points of interactivity. </p> <p><strong>3. </strong><strong>Establish Guardians</strong></p> <p>Part of giving your content legs is understanding and caring for your online communities-- intimately monitoring their reactions, comments, likes, and dislikes-- yes, we’re talking about content moderation.</p> <p>While content moderation may have gotten a bad reputation in recent years, there are ways it can be handled with care. It’s one that brands simply cannot ignore, regardless of size or market share. In fact, content moderation is critical to protect engaged online communities that will build your brand and drive your business goals.</p> <p>We’ve penned a separate <a rel="noopener noreferrer" href="https://www.sutherlandglobal.com/insights/banking-and-financial-services/five-tips-for-engaging-customers-through-effective-content" target="_self">blog post</a> that advises how to engage customers through effective content -- including content management and moderation in a 24/7/365 world. It’s the reality we’re living in!</p> <p>Our final recommendation, in addition to the three tips above, is for brands not to shy away from outsourcing their content services.</p> <p>It goes without saying that the consistent development of high-quality content, coupled with a thoughtful dissemination strategy, is no small feat. It takes significant time, thought, and talent, and many organizations simply don’t have the internal bandwidth to execute at this level at all times. But it’s one of the only ways to engage customers, drive preference, and build a brand. </p> <p>In fact, future-state content is one of the best investments an organization can make to ensure their long-term viability.</p> <p><img alt="Designing Future-State Content" style="width: 100%;" loading="lazy" class="lazy" data-src="https://sutherlandglobal.azureedge.net/-/media/sutherland/images/blog-images/cs---3-ways-to-future-proof-your-content/future-state-cta-102920_v1_blog-banner.png?rev=f1840c92-a2d7-4286-887e-4b039a067464&hash=064463748820A6160F17D7D68911AF7D" /></p> <style type="text/css"> .article-insight-hero-banner.article-banner.pickgradient { background-position: top; } </style>Mon, 04 Sep 2023 02:27:41 -0700{CAA5B571-1A88-4130-A452-589409AC82D7}https://www.sutherlandglobal.com/Insights/Banking-and-Financial-Services/leveraging-analytics-in-healthcare-digital-era-sutherlandThe Importance of Analytics in Healthcare<p>Our last <a href="https://www.sutherlandglobal.com/insights/healthcare/blog-the-direction-of-healthcare-digital-future">blog post</a> was dedicated to the foundations of healthcare in the digital era. In this post – the second in our five-part series devoted to the future of <a href="https://www.sutherlandglobal.com/industries/healthcare/solutions">digital solutions in healthcare</a>, we’ll examine the role that analytics can play in strengthening that digital foundation.</p> <p>After all, with the capacity to improve patient outcomes, streamline care coordination, and minimize administrative costs, analytics are a key component of healthcare in the digital age. But too often, the promise of analytics is hobbled by ineffective underlying data.</p> <p>So let’s start this examination of analytics by exploring the best ways to leverage the data that you probably already have.</p> <h2>Getting Started</h2> <p>The power of your analytic output will always be dependent on the strength of the data that serves as its input. And the volume of data that can be mined for analytics has never been greater; everything from membership, pharmacy, and lab data, to data from electronic health records (EHR) is readily available. </p> <p>But despite the abundance of data, the full benefits of analytics frequently fails to materialize. Much of the information in EHRs, for instance, never enters the analytics lifecycle, but instead remains lost as unstructured data in the “text” and “notes” fields. Alternatively, the capture and cycling of unnecessary data hinders the gathering of actionable insights. In fact, well over 90% of data collected from EHRs is never applied to clinical functions, but is used instead for billing, scheduling, and other applications [source: American Hospital Association].</p> <p>Clean, effective data management that produces complete and consistent reporting is the key to analytics in the digital age. It is no longer enough to simply digitize health records or other sources of data. Instead, organizations should focus not only on the records themselves, but on the content they contain. Is all relevant data scrubbed and available for use? Is irrelevant data omitted? And is the data that is being used interoperable, so it realizes its greatest potential throughout your organization, touching both front and back office functions?</p> <p>Until clean data that is also interoperable becomes the norm, the full scope of cost savings and clinical improvements that analytics can provide will not be fully realized. </p> <h2>Gaining Actionable Insights</h2> <p>Once effective data management protocols are in place, it is time to use that data to gain actionable insights. To do that, organizations should emphasize agile analytic processes, design thinking, and rapid prototyping to realize the most quick and effective translation of data into action.</p> <p>Agile analytics based on short, iterative work cycles, allows for the rapid development of new insights. Design thinking, which identifies the operational barriers facing new insights and rapidly isolates the most elegant solution, increases both the speed and efficiency with which new insights can be made operational. The final step - maximizing the value of actionable insights - is through the application of rapid prototyping.</p> <p>Rapid prototyping allows the real-world use of insights so that they can be assessed and refined not only in terms of immediate operational efficacy but also in terms of your organizations’ overall clinical and savings goals. A more in-depth exploration of the real-world advantages of agile analytics, design thinking, and rapid prototyping is available <a href="https://www.sutherlandglobal.com/insights/healthcare/case-study-analytics-for-better-insights-sutherland">here</a>.</p> <p>But it is important to remember that agile analytics, design thinking, and rapid prototyping are not ends in themselves. After they are used to operationalize initial actionable insights, they can then be harnessed to leverage the value of an increasingly broad range of analytics-based improvements. For instance, predictive and prescriptive analytics can be channeled in support of a variety of clinical decisions, from helping to lower rates of unnecessary readmissions to realizing appropriate levels of post-acute care. Predictive and prescriptive analytics can also be applied to operational areas including billing and patient outreach.</p> <h2>Moving Forward</h2> <p>Today, the power of analytics to offer clinical and operational insights when and where they are needed most is no longer a market advantage: it is a competitive necessity. And tapping the power of analytics can begin with a simple maturity assessment to determine where on the analytics adoption spectrum your organization lies. Because when you know what your organization’s analytic strengths are today, you can make an informed decision about what direction you should take to maximize the value of your analytic position in the days to come.</p> <p>The reason this matters is because in the digital age, the future of analytics is the future of healthcare. As machine learning and artificial intelligence speed the development and reach of analytics even as they underscore analytics as a necessary tool of market survival, no organization can afford to be left behind.</p> <p>Want to find out more about how Sutherland can help you harness the power of analytics to transform your operations? Contact us at <a href="mailto:healthcare@sutherlandglobal.com">healthcare@sutherlandglobal.com</a>.</p> <p>Up next in our series? <a href="/sitecore/service/notfound.aspx?item=web%3a%7b073164F9-B5AE-4FE0-94B8-C92AEBC06688%7d%40en">The Direction of Digital Healthcare, Part 3</a>: an investigation of how your organization can benefit from the advantages of design thinking.</p> <style type="text/css"> .article-insight-hero-banner.article-banner.pickgradient { background-position: top; } </style>Mon, 04 Sep 2023 02:12:29 -0700{AB30BF23-3559-4B9F-A534-D9DBE13CE4B8}https://www.sutherlandglobal.com/Insights/Banking-and-Financial-Services/why-your-business-cant-modernize-without-digital-transformationWhy Your Business Can’t Modernize Without Digital Transformation<p>To keep up in today’s ever-changing digital economy, enterprises must constantly refresh business models and embrace digital maturity. This is achieved through <a rel="noopener noreferrer" href="https://www.sutherlandglobal.com/insights/banking-and-financial-services/what-is-digital-transformation-why-is-it-important" target="_blank">digital transformation</a>, which <a rel="noopener noreferrer" href="https://www.forbes.com/sites/brucerogers/2016/01/07/why-84-of-companies-fail-at-digital-transformation/" target="_blank">Forbes says</a> leads to 26% more profitability, 9% more growth, and 9% higher market valuation for businesses.</p> <p>Adopting a digital-first approach benefits businesses internally and also creates a better customer experience. Enterprises that refuse to join the digital transformation race risk falling behind in the market and losing customers to growing startups built on innovation.</p> <h2>Digital Transformation for Businesses</h2> <p>Digital transformation’s business value is irrefutable, but it can mean different things for different organizations. After all, a wide range of solutions lay under the digital umbrella. <a rel="noopener noreferrer" href="https://resources.idg.com/download/white-paper/2018-digital-business" target="_blank">IDG</a> discovered that digital transformation tends to mean one of the following three things for businesses:</p> <h3>1. Boosting operational productivity through technical innovation</h3> <p>Fifty-two percent of businesses think digital transformation means using new technologies to increase worker productivity. To ensure an easy end-to-end customer experience, companies must start by limiting manually intensive back-office processes. Manual processes often slow down productivity and tend to be prone to error.<span style="background-color: white;"></span></p> <p>IT business transformation often means leveraging technology to reduce the time employees spend on routine tasks and increase accuracy. For instance, businesses might improve the speed and reliability of operations by installing a <a rel="noopener noreferrer" href="https://www.sutherlandglobal.com/insights/technology/human-or-bot" target="_blank">robotic process automation</a> (RPA) solution to streamline large-volume, checklist-driven tasks. Additionally, implementing a <a rel="noopener noreferrer" href="https://www.sutherlandglobal.com/insights/technology/what-is-bpm-technology" target="_blank">performance monitoring tool</a> can help ensure teams stay on task and give leaders more visibility into workflows.</p> <h3>2. Maximizing the power of data to meet business goals</h3> <p>Forty-nine percent of enterprises believe that digital transformation involves finding <a rel="noopener noreferrer" href="https://www.sutherlandglobal.com/insights/technology/blog-the-future-of-enterprise-hinges-on-process-transformation-and-data" target="_blank">innovative ways to leverage data</a> to manage KPIs successfully. For starters, businesses need the right digital tools to collect data. But data loses its value when it just sits there. Digital transformation often means adopting tools that gather information, store data and help teams draw insights, turning metrics into results.</p> <p>For instance, a company might deploy a new tool that offers greater visibility into customer metrics in order to build <a rel="noopener noreferrer" href="https://www.sutherlandglobal.com/insights/communications-media-and-entertainment/blog-why-leveraging-data-creates-more-personalized-customer-experiences-sutherland" target="_blank">a personalized marketing strategy</a>. When it comes to data, many industries also have to follow strict regulatory requirements. Another data-focused benefit of digital transformation is helping teams meet process requirements by alerting them when there are gaps in the information collected.</p> <h3>3. Building a better customer experience</h3> <p>Digital transformation services include improving internal operations and business processes as well as <a rel="noopener noreferrer" href="https://www.sutherlandglobal.com/insights/retail-and-consumer-packaged-goods/3-ways-retail-digital-transformation-drives-white-glove-customer-service" target="_blank">increasing customer satisfaction</a>. Forty-six percent of organizations report that the purpose of digital transformation is to create a better customer experience. Consumers are used to easy digital experiences in all areas of their lives, and traditional businesses have to consider an omnichannel approach to keep up.</p> <p><a rel="noopener noreferrer" href="https://www.salesforce.com/blog/2017/07/customers-expectations-in-age-of-the-customer" target="_blank">Seventy percent of customers</a> report that companies build brand loyalty when they prioritize customer needs. Businesses can improve their customer experience by deploying a social media monitoring tool that boosts customer engagement or deploying an AI-powered <a rel="noopener noreferrer" href="https://www.sutherlandglobal.com/insights/technology/blog-chatbots-are-ushering-in-the-b2me-movement" target="_blank">chatbot</a> that allows customers to get answers to their questions automatically.</p> <p><img height="350" alt="What Does Digital Transformation Mean for Business" width="842" style="height: auto; width: 100%;" loading="lazy" class="lazy" data-src="https://sutherlandglobal.azureedge.net/-/media/sutherland/images/blog-images/what-does-digital-transformation-mean-for-business/digitaltransformation-for-business-blog-incopy-1200x627.jpg?rev=fbbb1546-df63-4bc2-a049-693bf0624b4f&h=350&w=842&hash=EE50B62CDF691D3B48415D3C29B77053" /></p> <h2>The Building Blocks of Digital Business</h2> <p>No matter what <a rel="noopener noreferrer" href="https://www.sutherlandglobal.com/transformation/digital-engineering-services" target="_blank">digital transformation services</a> mean to your organization, they will always require taking an enterprise-wide approach. For a successful digital journey, business transformation roadmaps should account for people, processes, and technology—the three building blocks of enterprise innovation.</p> <p><em>People</em></p> <p>When most people hear the word digital transformation, technology tends to be the first thing that comes to mind. New digital tools certainly play a dominant role in a business-focused <a rel="noopener noreferrer" href="https://www.sutherlandglobal.com/insights/banking-and-financial-services/how-to-build-a-successful-digital-transformation-strategy" target="_blank">digital transformation strategy</a>, but it’s important to consider the people who will be using the technology first-hand. <a rel="noopener noreferrer" href="https://www.mckinsey.com/business-functions/digital-mckinsey/our-insights/culture-for-a-digital-age" target="_blank">McKinsey’s survey</a> discovered that cultural and behavioral challenges are the number one obstacle that businesses face when attempting to digitally transform.</p> <p>To begin, businesses must prepare their teams for the changes they will have to adjust to and get them on board for innovation. True business modernization requires a <a rel="noopener noreferrer" href="https://www.sutherlandglobal.com/insights/communications-media-and-entertainment/how-to-digitally-transform-your-company-culture-sutherland" target="_blank">robust culture change program</a> where leaders can create a shared vision of the future with employees. Business teams will have to be open to experimenting, challenging traditional ways of thinking, and embracing failure.</p> <p><em><a rel="noopener noreferrer" href="https://www.sutherlandglobal.com/transformation/intelligent-automation" target="_blank" title="Intelligent Automation">Intelligent Automation</a></em></p> <p>When it comes to digital transformation for business, success comes from the inside out, as opposed to starting from the outside in. New technology innovations in the industry  require a disruption of traditional workflows. Changing <a rel="noopener noreferrer" href="https://www.sutherlandglobal.com/services/business-process-transformation" target="_blank">processes</a> that have been around for years can be overwhelming, and businesses often don’t know where to start. <a rel="noopener noreferrer" href="https://www.sutherlandglobal.com/insights/technology/how-digital-transformation-consulting-enables-innovation-in-the-enterprise" target="_blank">Digital transformation consulting</a> can help enterprises evaluate their traditional processes and determine primary areas for change. </p> <p><em>Technology</em></p> <p>Technology innovation in business is the secret sauce for digital transformation. <a rel="noopener noreferrer" href="https://resources.idg.com/download/white-paper/2018-digital-business" target="_blank">According to IDG’s report</a>, the top five transformation technologies that businesses have already implemented include:</p> <ul style="margin-left: 30px;"> <li> <p style="margin: 0;">Big data/analytics (59%)</p> </li> <li> <p style="margin: 0;">Mobile technology (59%)</p> </li> <li> <p style="margin: 0;">Private cloud (53%)</p> </li> <li> <p style="margin: 0;">Public cloud (45%)</p> </li> <li> <p>APIs/embeddables (40%)</p> </li> </ul> <p>To stay ahead of the curve, businesses should also consider new technologies before their competitors. IDG found that the top technologies that businesses plan to incorporate in the future are:</p> <ul style="margin-left: 30px;"> <li> <p style="margin: 0;">AI (56%)</p> </li> <li> <p style="margin: 0;">ML (55%)</p> </li> <li> <p style="margin: 0;">IoT (50%)</p> </li> <li> <p style="margin: 0;">Software-defined networking (45%)</p> </li> <li> <p>Software-defined storage (44%)</p> </li> </ul> <h2>Industry-Specific Digital Businesses</h2> <p>The key to mastering digital disruption is to leverage technology in industry-specific ways. According to <a rel="noopener noreferrer" href="https://www.forbes.com/sites/louiscolumbus/2018/04/22/the-state-of-digital-business-transformation-2018/#5c577ac95883" target="_blank">Forbes’ research</a>, some of the top industries that have either adopted a digital-first business strategy or are planning to include:</p> <p><em>Services (95%)</em></p> <p>For businesses that are in the services industry—everything from <a rel="noopener noreferrer" href="https://www.sutherlandglobal.com/industries/travel-and-hospitality/hospitality" target="_blank">hospitality</a> to logistics—technology-enabled solutions are crucial for efficiently getting demanding customers what they need. Digital tools, such as analytics and social media monitoring, can help service companies design more catered marketing campaigns that build customer loyalty.</p> <p><em>Financial services (93%) </em></p> <p>With the rise and popularity of FinTech companies offering new solutions and seamless digital experiences, traditional <a rel="noopener noreferrer" href="https://www.sutherlandglobal.com/insights/banking-and-financial-services/seven-proven-automation-strategies-for-banking-and-financial-services-sutherland" target="_blank">banking and finance</a> organizations need to modernize if they want their customers to stick around. <a rel="noopener noreferrer" href="https://www.sutherlandglobal.com/business-process/digital-finance" target="_blank">Digital transformation for financial services</a> helps ensure that customers and workers are happy by implementing omnichannel solutions to meet customer needs in real-time and streamlining front, middle, and back-office processes to reduce manual tasks.</p> <p><em>Healthcare (92%)</em></p> <p>The patient experience is at the center of the healthcare industry. <a rel="noopener noreferrer" href="https://www.sutherlandglobal.com/insights/healthcare/overcoming-healthcares-challenges-in-design-thinking" target="_blank">Digital transformation for healthcare</a> works to improve patient experiences by deploying tools that foster engagement, enable self-service, and protect their data while ensuring that operations meet regulatory requirements and that costs remain low.</p> <p><em>High tech (88%)</em></p> <p>Customers expect nothing less than a great experience from technology leaders. Whether you’re a software provider, app developer, or hardware manufacturer, digital transformation implements new tools that allow teams to draw insights from data, increase customer loyalty, and improve operations.</p> <p><em>Retail (86%)</em></p> <p>The <a rel="noopener noreferrer" href="https://www.sutherlandglobal.com/insights/retail-and-consumer-packaged-goods/3-ways-retail-digital-transformation-drives-white-glove-customer-service" target="_self">retail</a> industry looks completely different than it did a decade ago. Consumers are now digitally native and desire omnichannel solutions from brands. Technology can help retailers gain visibility into customers’ online behavior to increase lifetime value, open doors for new revenue opportunities, and build a better customer experience.</p> <h2>The Benefits of Digital Transformation for Businesses</h2> <p>When enterprises commit to digital transformation, they can increase revenue by up to 23%, <a href="http://https://www.forbes.com/sites/louiscolumbus/2018/04/22/the-state-of-digital-business-transformation-2018/#77501e0c5883">according to Forbes</a>. That alone is proof enough of the value of digital transformation. With a clear business transformation roadmap that accounts for people, processes, and technology, businesses can unlock all of the possibilities of modernization.</p> <p><img alt="" style="width: 100%; height: auto;" loading="lazy" class="lazy" data-src="https://sutherlandglobal.azureedge.net/-/media/sutherland/images/blog-images/what-does-digital-transformation-mean-for-business/blog-banner-dt-for-business.jpg?rev=3746ead6-a50a-47d1-8678-8f965936c18f&h=100&w=910&hash=D0AE661AA86BE62EF9101F9328EAE3AA" /></p> <style type="text/css"> .article-insight-hero-banner.article-banner.pickgradient { background-position: top; } </style>Mon, 28 Aug 2023 00:26:34 -0700{758E49A9-2FE8-4712-9875-AF66E959D18A}https://www.sutherlandglobal.com/Insights/Banking-and-Financial-Services/how-virtual-assistants-enable-better-customer-experienceHow Virtual Assistants Enable Better Customer Experience<p>In today’s digital economy, consumers expect companies to leverage the latest technologies and engage at every possible touchpoint. That requires an omnichannel engagement strategy to create seamless experiences that benefit both the brand and its clients. In fact, companies that implement omnichannel engagement solutions retain on average a whopping <a rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank" href="https://www.retaildive.com/spons/three-reasons-to-adopt-an-omnichannel-marketing-strategy-backed-by-data/554569/">90% more customers than those using just one channel</a>. For those that don’t, that percentage falls to a slim 33%. Ultimately, companies that fail to incorporate new and emerging channels into their customer journey will fall behind their more innovative competitors. </p> <p>Virtual personal assistant solutions are becoming increasingly important in customer experience transformation. By 2021, Gartner estimates that <a rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank" href="https://www.gartner.com/smarterwithgartner/27297-2/">15% of all customer service interactions</a> will be handled entirely by some form of virtual office assistant—an increase of 400% from 2017. More broadly, the “intelligent assistant” business is predicted to grow to over<a rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank" href="https://www.tractica.com/newsroom/press-releases/the-virtual-digital-assistant-market-will-reach-15-8-billion-worldwide-by-2021/"> $15 billion</a> by 2021, and by that same year, <a rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank" href="https://www.gartner.com/en/newsroom/press-releases/2019-01-09-gartner-predicts-25-percent-of-digital-workers-will-u">25% of digital workers</a> will employ a . </p> <p>Forward-thinking enterprises understand that a virtual office assistant can help them stay ahead of the curve. For companies late to the party, developing the right strategy for deploying the technology is essential. With that in place, any company can leverage virtual assistant technology to create integrated, personalized, and efficient digital experiences that encourage customer loyalty. The starting point, however, is understanding what exactly virtual assistants are and what business value they add.</p> <p><strong>What Is a Virtual Assistant & What Do They Do?</strong></p> <p>If you’ve ever asked Siri a question or Alexa to play a song, then you’ve already used a virtual assistant. Virtual assistants are software agents that perform human-like tasks based on voice or written commands. They can live on any device connected to the internet, such as smartphones, desktops, or in-home speakers. </p> <p>In the past, administrative assistant tools were limited to text-based solutions like <a rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank" href="https://www.sutherlandglobal.com/insights/technology/5-ways-chatbots-solve-business-problems-sutherland">chatbots</a>. But with new advances in AI at the workplace, voice assistants are quickly taking over. In fact, <a rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank" href="https://www.gartner.com/en/newsroom/press-releases/2019-01-09-gartner-predicts-25-percent-of-digital-workers-will-u">Gartner</a> predicts that 25% of employee interactions with apps will be through voice assistant technology by 2023. Crucially, unlike the majority of other channels, a <a rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank" href="https://www.sutherlandglobal.com/insights/healthcare/wef-2018-voice">digital voice assistant</a> eliminates the need for a user-interface screen. </p> <p>Even more importantly, the integration of natural language processing (NLP) allows individuals to <a rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank" href="https://www.sutherlandglobal.com/insights/banking-and-financial-services/blog-voice-tech-is-back">speak to digital voice assistants as they would a human</a>. With NLP, virtual assistants intake a user’s command and apply algorithms to decipher language and formulate a response. Many listen for a specific keyword or phrase (e.g. “Hey, Alexa”) and once they recognize that code word, a server interaction initiates to carry out a specific assignment. </p> <p>These communication skills enable intelligent assistants to <a rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank" href="https://www.sutherlandglobal.com/insights/banking-and-financial-services/blog-voice-assistants-become-the-office-admins">perform rudimentary work or administrative tasks</a>. In a consumer’s personal life, these services can range from turning off lights to making phone calls or even posting to social media accounts. In the workplace, smart assistants can reserve office space, take notes, and assist with scheduling meetings. Industries including healthcare, banking, and retail are already harnessing the power of these digital voice assistants. Here are a few specific examples of what virtual assistant services can do: </p> <ol style="margin-top: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 30px;"> <li> <p><strong>Keep users organized</strong>: Commercial real estate firm JLL created <a rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank" href="https://www.computerworld.com/article/3403681/jll-creates-smart-office-ai-voice-assistant.html">personal voice assistant JiLL</a> to simplify organization and create seamless employee experiences. The conversational AI assistant  helps employees locate and book spare desks, set up meetings with coworkers, and submit help desk tickets. </p> </li> <li> <p><strong>Automate repetitive tasks</strong>: Finance and accounting departments across all industries are using virtual assistants to <a rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank" href="https://www.sutherlandglobal.com/insights/banking-and-financial-services/seven-proven-automation-strategies-for-banking-and-financial-services-sutherland">automatically create monthly reports</a> that highlight key trends. </p> </li> <li dir="ltr"> <p><strong>Perform manual tasks</strong>: <a rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank" href="https://www.forbes.com/sites/andriacheng/2018/06/19/amazons-marriott-deal-is-way-beyond-alexa-as-your-new-hotel-butler/#25134491721e">Amazon’s Alexa for Hospitality Initiative</a> brings the popular voice assistant to hotels to perform manual tasks for guests, such as adjusting room temperatures or scheduling housekeeping services. </p> </li> <li dir="ltr"> <p><strong>Record and process data</strong>: In healthcare, <a rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank" href="https://www.sutherlandglobal.com/insights/healthcare/blog-ai-voice-assistants-in-doctors-office">doctors are using voice assistants</a> for various data administrative tasks, such as recording patient data, requesting additional tests and medications, or setting new appointments. </p> </li> <li dir="ltr"> <p><strong>Research information</strong>: Virtual assistants work to find answers to basic questions for users and point them to the right resources without them having to lift a finger or query various search engines. </p> </li> </ol> <p>All of these examples require a digital voice assistant to <a rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank" href="https://www.sutherlandglobal.com/insights/technology/ai-and-customer-experience">understand and respond to the natural cadence of human language</a>. That’s what makes intelligent assistants so useful in the home, at the office, and increasingly, as part of a company’s customer engagement journey. </p> <p><img alt="" style="width: 100%;" loading="lazy" class="lazy" data-src="https://sutherlandglobal.azureedge.net/-/media/sutherland/images/blog-images/virtual-assistants-blog-incopy-1200x627.jpg?rev=ee346d9d-33d4-4018-8fb1-fdfb3580b598&hash=E117B161E2BF4673DDDAF8C3AA0787D8" /></p> <p><strong>How Virtual Assistants Are Transforming Customer Engagement </strong></p> <p>Customer engagement transformation is the logical outgrowth of the rapid proliferation of virtual assistants within both the enterprise and home. In fact, in 2017, the voice-first device market <a rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank" href="http://uk.businessinsider.com/amazon-echo-vs-google-home-sales-estimates-chart-2017-5">grew by 126%</a>, reaching more than 35 million units shipped in under two years. That’s <a rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank" href="https://www.sutherlandglobal.com/insights/banking-and-financial-services/blog-voice-tech-is-back">faster growth than the iPhone</a>, which took three years to hit 35 million phones shipped. As consumers grow accustomed to virtual assistants in their home and work, they come to expect the same service from the brands they interact and engage with. That’s possible because, <a rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank" href="https://www.sutherlandglobal.com/insights/healthcare/blog-evolution-of-voice-assistants">on a technical level</a>, there’s little difference between an individual asking Alexa to read the feed of their social media accounts and a consumer asking a given brand for product details or prices. </p> <p>Therefore, one of the strongest business values of digital assistants is how they are paving the way for <a rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank" href="https://www.sutherlandglobal.com/services/customer-engagement-transformation">customer engagement transformation</a>. Smart assistants can transform the way brands interact and engage with clients by: </p> <ul style="margin-top: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 30px;"> <li dir="ltr"> <p><strong>Empowering customers to serve themselves</strong></p> </li> </ul> <p>Across industries, customers want effective self-service options and their desire for these solutions is only growing. In retail, for example, <a rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank" href="https://www.retaildive.com/news/study-73-of-consumers-want-self-service-technology/546044/">73% of respondents prefer self-service technologies</a> over engaging with actual human associates. And in banking, a traditional late technology adopter, clients <a rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank" href="https://thefinancialbrand.com/73616/customer-experience-trends-in-banking/">prefer to complete routine interactions</a> through AI-powered tools by a wide margin. In fact, <a rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank" href="https://www.bain.com/insights/evolving-the-customer-experience-in-banking/">Bain & Company found</a> customers show high levels of annoyance when unable to do so. Digital assistants can function as the self-servicing applications these customers want when handling lower-level concerns like technical problems or frequently asked questions. They simplify customer experience management by reducing support tickets and enabling customer service agents to spend more hours resolving high-impact problems. </p> <ul style="margin-top: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 30px;"> <li dir="ltr"> <p><strong>Building seamless digital experiences </strong></p> </li> </ul> <p>Customers are accustomed to <a href="https://www.sutherlandglobal.com/insights/technology/true-omnichannel-customer-experience-is-table-stakes-today">digital channels in all areas</a> of their lives. Brands that fail to deliver seamless experiences across these channels will be <a rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank" href="https://www.sutherlandglobal.com/insights/technology/how-digital-transformation-consulting-enables-innovation-in-the-enterprise">left behind</a>. That makes the ability of virtual assistants to simplify the customer experience one of their biggest draws. With digital assistants, customers receive support in real-time, from the comfort of their own home, while doing other things simultaneously. This sort of low-effort utility explains why Google found that <a rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank" href="https://www.thinkwithgoogle.com/consumer-insights/voice-assistance-consumer-experience/">72%</a> of people who own smart assistants use them on a daily basis. Similar to the role of social media now, companies need to start implementing virtual assistant solutions to successfully meet their customers where they are—in this case, that’s “in the air.” </p> <ul style="margin-top: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 30px;"> <li dir="ltr"> <p><strong>Creating customer interactions that are more human</strong> </p> </li> </ul> <p><a rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank" href="https://www.sutherlandglobal.com/insights/healthcare/artificial-intelligence-sutherland">AI allows brands to create human-centric customer experiences</a>, and virtual assistants are a great example. In fact, <a rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank" href="https://www.thinkwithgoogle.com/consumer-insights/voice-assistance-consumer-experience/">Google reports</a> that 41% of people who use a voice assistant say it’s similar to speaking with a friend. One reason that communicating with voice technology feels like interacting with a real person is that companies can customize the tone of their virtual assistant. In doing so, they bring customers closer to their brand in a way that feels authentic. Additionally, advanced virtual administrative assistant technology grows smarter over time. It learns with every action to anticipate a task before a user even thinks of it. As a result, it creates a more personalized experience than traditional channels like email or social media. </p> <ul style="margin-top: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 30px;"> <li dir="ltr"> <p><strong>Integrating with other channels to build a better user experience </strong></p> </li> </ul> <p>Virtual personal assistants can integrate with almost any other digital channel. Some of these potential channels for integration include apps, websites, social media, or even IoT devices, such as a kiosk or self-checkout machine. For instance, Amazon’s Alexa integrates with a variety of third-party devices, ranging from Fitbits and laptops to camera systems and thermostats. As a result, customers are empowered to use these devices in new ways that maximize their benefits. Smart assistants also have the power to transfer data across channels to eliminate silos. For example, Microsoft’s Cortana integrates across desktop, mobile, and speakers so that events added to one channel appear on all platforms. This integration creates a more efficient user experience overall by saving customers time and effort. </p> <p><strong>Overcoming Potential Challenges</strong></p> <p>The above are just a few ways that intelligent assistants promise to revolutionize the customer engagement journey. However, as a relatively recent technology, virtual assistants present <a rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank" href="https://www.sutherlandglobal.com/insights/healthcare/blog-evolution-of-voice-assistants">new challenges</a> that must be solved to fully realize their business value. For instance, some users are worried that they are <a rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank" href="https://www.cnet.com/news/cnet-asks-does-it-bother-you-that-smart-devices-are-always-listening-in-on-you/">being “listened” to</a> by digital assistants and have privacy concerns. Digital assistants may also present obstacles for industries with stricter data regulations, such as healthcare’s HIPAA guidelines.</p> <p>To successfully overcome the challenges associated with virtual assistants, organizations must work with the right virtual assistance technology provider and have a clear strategy in place. Prior to implementation, enterprises need to identify stakeholders, choose the business areas that are a good fit for the technology, and decide on the type of virtual assistant that will enable them to meet their objectives. </p> <p>This due diligence is worthwhile because when businesses get digital assistants right, the possibilities are endless. </p> <p><a target="_blank" href="/sitecore/service/notfound.aspx?item=web%3a%7b8A24E149-C3FF-4E1A-A921-DF0BF9CD874F%7d%40en"><img alt="" style="width: 100%;" loading="lazy" class="lazy" data-src="https://sutherlandglobal.azureedge.net/-/media/sutherland/images/blog-images/blog-banner-virtualassistant.jpg?rev=798d2d27-7659-4820-a020-4961fbc3bc4d&hash=CFC96FB19BFC4685EC7C9FD6D6B89D6B" /></a></p> <style type="text/css"> .article-insight-hero-banner.article-banner.pickgradient { background-position: top; } </style>Fri, 18 Aug 2023 02:57:56 -0700{61020815-29E0-4001-9443-D9B143D56631}https://www.sutherlandglobal.com/Insights/Communications-Media-and-Entertainment/blog-voice-tech-is-a-helping-hand-in-enterprise-lendingVoice in the Enterprise Lending Welcome Helping Hand to Employees<p>Employees today are busier than ever. On a daily basis, employees face mounting pressure to work harder, smarter and faster in an effort to keep up with today’s changing world. What’s worse? Our most valued resource – time – is often spent on mundane work. Administrative tasks clog up our days, jeopardize our creativity and take us away from projects that bring out our passions. Instead of professionally thriving, we’re often just trying to survive the workday by constantly keeping up with our overstuffed inboxes and ensuring our calendars are up-to-date.</p> <p><img alt="Voice in the Enterprise Lending Welcome Helping Hand to Employees" width="100%" loading="lazy" class="lazy" data-src="https://sutherlandglobal.azureedge.net/-/media/sutherland/images/blog-images/in-blog-image1-rti-voice-helping-enterprise-employees.png?rev=2ee6d5e1-153d-46e5-adf8-0738a7465b73&hash=77F7B7B5AE0176C1E41CD79A0D879AE7" /></p> <p>What’s a workforce to do? Lean into technology! More specifically, voice technology. When it comes to how employees get work done in the enterprise, voice tech is taking siege and changing the way we do even the most basic of tasks. Over the last several years, voice-first interactions through devices such as Siri, Google Home and Amazon Alexa have become commonplace. More recently, Siri and Alexa have become increasingly active in enterprise. In fact, Gartner predicts that nearly <a href="https://www.gartner.com/smarterwithgartner/gartner-predicts-a-virtual-world-of-exponential-change/" target="new">30% of all web browsing</a> will be screenless by 2020. At this rate, voice tech will be as relevant at work as it is at home.</p> <p>While much of the buzz around voice technology remains consumer-centric, Siri, Google Home and Alexa are increasingly commonplace in the enterprise world. Employees, who are used to hands-free and voice-first technology at home, are beginning to bring the expectation of a similar experience into the workplace in an effort to cut down on mundane tasks. That’s all due to voice technology’s ability to free up people’s hands, place experiences “in the air” and automate and perform tasks with merely a simple voice-activated cue.</p> <p>While voice tech for enterprise continues to be evolve, the workplace comprised only <a href="https://searchenginewatch.com/2016/06/03/what-does-meekers-internet-trends-report-tell-us-about-voice-search/" target="new">3% of voice tech usage in 2016</a>.</p> <p>What’s behind the sudden lift in voice tech usage in enterprise environments since 2016? Voice technology continues to prove to be an effective means for enterprises to circumvent the perils of antiquated, legacy tech that burdens their employees. Moreover, the increased usage of voice tech at work actually bolsters an employee’s ability to better perform their job, lighten their administrative workloads to focus on more creative, strategic tasks and, ultimately, foster a better employee experience.</p> <p>Overall, the driving force behind the increasing presence of voice tech in the workplace is the automation and interconnectivity that voice-first technologies like Alexa and other digital assistants bring to a business. <a href="https://www.sutherlandglobal.com/insights/banking-and-financial-services/blog-voice-assistants-become-the-office-admins">Three out of ten organizations</a> have already implemented AI-powered voice assistants and chatbots to help automate menial tasks and empower employees by granting them more convenient ways to do their work, overhauling the employee experience at these companies for the better. The ability to literally call out to a device to check your schedule, book a conference room, record notes during a meeting, quickly reply to an email or inquiry, etc. is making these mindless work nuisances faster, more efficient and, dare we say, even fun for employees.</p> <p><img alt="Voice in the Enterprise Lending Welcome Helping Hand to Employees" width="100%" loading="lazy" class="lazy" data-src="https://sutherlandglobal.azureedge.net/-/media/sutherland/images/blog-images/in-blog-image2-rti-voice-helping-enterprise-employees.png?rev=896f1a6d-9e78-4d91-b646-b61a7e3d5cf8&hash=7A5603BE26644D7CAD9D28D2876D4642" /> </p> <p>Currently, the <a href="https://mspoweruser.com/microsofts-cortana-is-the-leading-voice-assistant-in-enterprise/" target="new">reigning enterprise voice champ is Cortana</a>, a surprising top-dog considering its lack of notoriety compared to household names like Alexa and Siri. Still, as voice interactions and commands in the enterprise achieve greater efficacy and sophistication thanks to advancements in the AI, machine learning and natural language processing algorithms that power these devices, we could very well be on the precipice of a new frontier for how work gets done across all jobs, industries and tasks.</p> <p>Something as simple as a voice assistant can facilitate this welcome change, offering a better way for employees to do their job, lightening their load by automating and/or offsetting tasks to their own personal, voice-activated His Girl Friday. As a result, employees not weighed down by the time-consuming demands of administrative work tend to be happier and more fulfilled in the long-run. For any enterprise that prides itself on bolstering their employees to do their best work possible, introducing voice tech into the mix is an obvious choice.</p> <p><strong>Related Links:</strong></p> <ul style="margin-left: 30px;"> <li> <p style="margin: 0;">“<a href="https://www.sutherlandglobal.com/insights/banking-and-financial-services/blog-voice-assistants-become-the-office-admins">How Voice Assistants Are Becoming the Office Admins of the Future</a>”</p> </li> <li> <p style="margin: 0;">“<a href="https://www.sutherlandglobal.com/insights/healthcare/blog-evolution-of-voice-assistants">Talking Back: The Evolution of Voice Assistants Hinges on User Experiences</a>”</p> </li> <li> <p>“Voice Is Back: The Voice-Everywhere Dilemma”</p> </li> </ul> <p><a href="https://www.sutherlandglobal.com/insights/banking-and-financial-services/wp-chatbots-for-business-impact"><img alt="Three Reasons AI-powered Chatbots are Changing the Face of CX" width="100%" loading="lazy" class="lazy" data-src="https://sutherlandglobal.azureedge.net/-/media/sutherland/images/blog-images/fy18-human-or-bots-cta.png?w=100%25&rev=5678dcfd-dd51-43bd-9fa4-02491775dde0&hash=07D92F4F2AE56A361D613AA1E6BD0911" /></a></p>Fri, 18 Aug 2023 02:37:06 -0700{3E16FF98-61DD-45A2-815D-E2A116D39C6B}https://www.sutherlandglobal.com/Insights/Banking-and-Financial-Services/seven-proven-automation-strategies-for-banking-and-financial-services-sutherland7 Proven Banking Automation Strategies that Work | Sutherland<p>If our <a href="/sitecore/service/notfound.aspx?item=web%3a%7bD403AFAD-5D90-40DF-A958-BB7CF7C027EA%7d%40en">first</a> and <a href="https://www.sutherlandglobal.com/insights/banking-and-financial-services/knowledge-is-power-how-to-leverage-data-analytics-in-financial-services-sutherland">second posts</a> in this digital series for financial services companies didn’t offer enough ideas, we’re looking forward to sharing ideas on the trending topic of automation.</p> <p>Addressing today’s demand for lower cost, streamlined and more accurate automated services, automation is one of the transformational technologies such as automation have matured over the last few years making it a much more desirable and viable option for banks and financial institutions to reduce costs and improve accuracy. Increasingly popular, automation delivers advanced operational and process analytics, and ensures technical viability without the need for interfaces at more lucrative price points than previous automation approaches. </p> <p>Seven of the most applicable automation techniques for financial service organizations include the following:</p> <ol style="margin-left: 30px;"> <li> <p style="margin: 0;"><strong>Robotic process automation (RPA):</strong> If you’re looking for a way to reduce costs and improve the speed and accuracy of your organization’s operations, RPA is a great way to achieve your goals. RPA can also improve the accuracy and speed of operations across a bank’s front, middle, and back office by reducing or eliminating manual tasks. This technology is typically best suited for larger volume, checklist-driven tasks that are repeatable and documentable.</p> </li> <li> <p style="margin: 0;"><strong>Data quality:</strong> A holistic customer view is critical, though consolidating and maintaining master data is a struggle for many organizations. To achieve this, financial services companies seek support in aggregating data and provisioning a holistic customer view across data sources via an automated programmatic layer, can be an effective tool in maintaining data quality.</p> </li> <li> <p style="margin: 0;"><strong>Intelligent data:</strong> Context aware data can be implemented to achieve better and faster results. This kind of an automation will fulfill data and regulatory gaps without manual intervention.</p> </li> <li> <p style="margin: 0;"><strong>Policy/procedural definition and implementation:</strong> To comply with regulatory requirements or related policies/procedures, data gaps can be identified in the information collection process and automated alerts can be generated for completing the process and improving the quality of the submission. This prevents processing delays by implementing event monitors and testing for the status of the event in the case management system. Once implemented, the system will execute specific actions and your organization can rest assured that data collection methods will meet regulatory and process requirements.</p> </li> <li> <p style="margin: 0;"><strong>Workflow automation:</strong> Document analysis, behavior, patterns, from multiple sources can be integrated to automate generation of documents, reports, audit trails and notifications. Tasks can be assigned automatically that may typically get stuck in people’s inboxes for a long time, causing delay in process due to inaction.</p> </li> <li> <p style="margin: 0;"><strong>Social media data:</strong> Automating the analysis of social content has become increasingly important for financial services monitoring. Customer provides profile data and many platforms share data through single-sign on through an API. Changes in behavior as well as changes to profile (such as address) can be tracked and analysis can be provided on these unique information patterns to analyze news, social media and web information through automated processes.</p> </li> <li> <p style="margin: 0;"><strong>Link analysis:</strong> This is primarily useful for investigation, research and reviews. This link analysis provides a unified vision of relationships between customers and all customers’ accounts inside and outside the organization. Identifying customer links with bad actors, dubious jurisdictions, criminal histories, companies and analyzing the ultimate beneficiary ownership is valuable in incorporating this type of data in customer segmentation and scoring models.</p> </li> </ol> <p>Now is the time to leverage automation approaches in your business. Companies leveraging automation gain from benefits including error-reduction, improved quality, and compliance management. The industry’s most innovative companies are finding ways to work faster, more efficiently, and without error. Now is the time to leverage automation techniques and drive new efficiencies to your organization. Learn more about automation in our recent white paper, <a href="https://www.sutherlandglobal.com/insights/banking-and-financial-services/why-your-business-cant-modernize-without-digital-transformation">“Embracing Digital to Transform the Banking and Financial Services Industry.”</a></p> <style type="text/css"> .article-insight-hero-banner.article-banner.pickgradient { background-position: top; } </style>Fri, 18 Aug 2023 01:28:59 -0700{D048BE9B-668A-449A-98AB-0C0CEAA67829}https://www.sutherlandglobal.com/Insights/Banking-and-Financial-Services/sutherland-robility-increases-efficiencies-for-leading-lending-platformSutherland Robility™ Increases Efficiencies for Leading Lending Platform<div style="text-align:center;"> <label for="h2" class="outcome--content--label wow fadeIn heading">The Challenge</label> <h2 class="outcome--content--title wow fadeIn main-heading">Reducing Manual, Repetitive Processes</h2> <p>Mosaic is a leading financing platform for U.S. residential solar and energy-efficient home improvement projects. </p> <p> Mosaic sales administrators were required to respond to different types of requests, like onboarding and add-on needs in the Salesforce platform. These service request queues had to be constantly monitored by the sales administrators. Additionally, servicing each inbound request entailed repetitive tasks like data entry in the installer fields and adding products. The sales agents needed to verify account details and set up a customized portal for each partner, which took about 20 minutes per request.</p> </div> <style type="text/css"> .detail-layout .container .heading{ width: 100%; } .article-content p, .article-content ul, .article-content ol { text-align: left; } .hero-case-study-content .banner-heading h3 { font-size: 30px; } .case-study-banner { background-position: top; } h1.article-details-title { font-size: 2.5rem; line-height: 4rem; } </style>Thu, 10 Aug 2023 02:56:26 -0700{FFA32129-1638-4DB5-97AA-8A1E74604EE8}https://www.sutherlandglobal.com/Insights/Banking-and-Financial-Services/leading-provider-of-consumer-financing-sutherlandAutomating Processes for a National Financial Services Provider<div style="text-align:center;"> <label for="h2" class="outcome--content--label wow fadeIn heading">The Challenge</label> <h2>Less Expenditure, More Efficiency.</h2> <p>Genesis Financial Solutions were looking to make their credit dispute management process more efficient and reduce operational expenditure. The company had to regularly deal with large volumes of dispute cases and consultants had to manually respond to each of these requests. </p> <p>They needed a solution for their dispute management process that guaranteed accuracy, strengthened customer relationships, and helped mitigate the negative effects of the pandemic.</p> </div> <style type="text/css"> .detail-layout .container .heading{ width: 100%; } .article-content p, .article-content ul, .article-content ol { text-align: left; } .hero-case-study-content .banner-heading h3 { font-size: 30px; } .case-study-banner { background-position: top; } </style>Thu, 03 Aug 2023 06:04:48 -0700{DE52FB3B-5458-48D3-9894-455E3602A997}https://www.sutherlandglobal.com/Insights/Banking-and-Financial-Services/4-steps-for-fast-moving-fintechs-to-scale-grow4 Steps For Fast-Moving Fintechs To Scale & Grow<p><img style="width:100%;" alt="4 Steps for Fast-Moving Fintechs to Scale & Grow" loading="lazy" class="lazy" data-src="https://sutherlandglobal.azureedge.net/-/media/images/banking-end-to-end-support-for-fintechs/4-steps-for-fast-moving-fintechs-to-scale--grow.jpg?rev=52ee65cb-b8bd-45d1-b314-c2d546333386&hash=37811912443573EC489499E14BCCCF27" /></p> <style type="text/css"> .article-insight-hero-banner.article-banner.pickgradient { background-position: top; } </style>Tue, 25 Jul 2023 09:07:34 -0700{9ECF9410-9F5A-4F6E-B4CB-1D7C227D4505}https://www.sutherlandglobal.com/Insights/Banking-and-Financial-Services/finally-a-customer-to-cash-solution-actually-built-around-the-customerFinally A Customer to Cash Solution Actually Built Around The Customer<p>Many organizations today are making big investments in business processes that start and finish before a customer ever buys something from you.</p> <p>Identifying new prospects, converting them to leads and offering them the right products and services is all quite important. By all means: Make those investments! Your marketing and sales success depends on it.</p> <p>But while your relationship with a prospect begins when you first engage them in the sales process, they don’t become an actual paying “customer” until they buy something from you.</p> <p><img style="width:100%;" alt="Finally, A Customer-to-Cash Solution Actually Built Around The Customer" loading="lazy" class="lazy" data-src="https://sutherlandglobal.azureedge.net/-/media/images/digital-finance-customer-to-cash/digital-finance-customer-to-cash-inline03.jpg?rev=5f8e9fac-52bf-46fb-a75c-fa1335657e68&h=1200&w=2000&hash=46D7BA209C1803C886E8E86ABD9D8A05" /></p> <p>It’s only then that your future with that customer formally begins.</p> <p>So, what you do in the early days and weeks of that relationship to better serve them and meet their needs is critical. It lays the foundation for how you and that customer will interact across the many parts of your business moving forward.</p> <p>In most instances, this early-stage process is called “order-to-cash” (O2C). At Sutherland, we prefer to call the process “customer-to-cash” (C2C). Why? Because we believe our approach is really all about the customer (not the “order”). And we want to make it clear that business relationships start — and end — with customers.</p> <p><img style="width:100%;" alt="Finally, A Customer-to-Cash Solution Actually Built Around The Customer" loading="lazy" class="lazy" data-src="https://sutherlandglobal.azureedge.net/-/media/images/digital-finance-customer-to-cash/digital-finance-customer-to-cash-inline09.jpg?rev=ab0b20eb-2ba9-4765-92d3-82693d5a9f28&hash=3918C81CD926C85B2FFB80EF64249FAC" /></p> <p>It’s like the old saying: “You don’t get a second chance to make a first impression.” C2C is that first impression.</p> <h2>Why Optimize Your C2C Process?</h2> <p>The individual functions that make up the end-to-end customer-to-cash process can naturally be improved by integrating the available technologies and digital solutions. Streamlining the C2C process nearly always cuts costs, saves time, minimizes errors and ensures that performance data can make a bigger impact.</p> <p>Reducing days sales outstanding (DSO), eradicating revenue leakage and better handling deductions and disputes (DDO) are all metrics that must be prioritized. And getting real results on each matters — often to the tune of millions of dollars in reduced operating expense and increased working capital. This can mean revenue acceleration and growth!</p> <p><img style="width:100%;" alt="Finally, A Customer-to-Cash Solution Actually Built Around The Customer" loading="lazy" class="lazy" data-src="https://sutherlandglobal.azureedge.net/-/media/images/digital-finance-customer-to-cash/digital-finance-customer-to-cash-inline04.jpg?rev=e3873fa2-4d56-4d71-ac62-1232c8f73ea5&hash=ECED043A8BFC512A0AE67B74C43EC8B4" /></p> <p>But the goal here is not just about efficiency and cost savings. It’s about delivering high-quality experiences to customers at a critical time. And doing so in a way that empowers your brand to get to better know your customer along the journey — whether that customer is an end consumer or another business.</p> <p>Customers that think like consumers expect a trading relationship to be simple and self-exploratory. However, most businesses are organized by functions and don’t have a simplified way for consumers to engage with the right resources or understand next steps.</p> <h2>Why C2C Matters</h2> <p>From first impression to long-term relationship, the following table outlines how the process fits together for most organizations. A customer-centric mindset can make all the difference—instead of simply focusing on what happens at each step, the table identifies customer experience expectations along the way.</p> <table cellspacing="0" cellpadding="0" border="1" width="100%" style="font-size: 22px; line-height: 30px;"> <tbody> <tr> <td>   </td> <td> <em>What happens</em> </td> <td> <em>What customers want…</em> </td> </tr> <tr> <td> <strong>Customer acquisition</strong> </td> <td> Acquiring a new customer </td> <td> <strong>Personalized experience</strong> </td> </tr> <tr> <td> <strong>Order management and fulfillment</strong> </td> <td> Orders processed based on individual requirements </td> <td> <strong>Accurate, on-time delivery whether physical or digital inventory</strong> </td> </tr> <tr> <td> <strong>Credit</strong> </td> <td> Automated credit management </td> <td> <strong>Real-time credit analytics</strong> </td> </tr> <tr> <td> <strong>Invoicing and payment</strong> </td> <td> Accurate, timely invoicing and payment processing </td> <td> <strong>Correct and convenient payment options</strong> </td> </tr> <tr> <td> <strong>Accounts receivable</strong> </td> <td> Assure timely collection </td> <td> <strong>Helpful digital reminders</strong> </td> </tr> <tr> <td> <strong>Chargebacks and reconciliations</strong> </td> <td> Cash flow disruption </td> <td> <strong>Statement access, empathetic approach to resolving disputes</strong> </td> </tr> <tr> <td> <strong>Reporting and data management</strong> </td> <td> Performance tracked across processes, analytic insights </td> <td> <strong>Convenient, real-time, multi-channel access to status, ETA, exceptions</strong> </td> </tr> </tbody> </table> <p> </p> <p>C2C activities impact operations throughout the organization — areas like supply chain, inventory management and resource planning. Problems in one area can easily lead to problems in another.</p> <p>And, of course, invoicing and accounts receivable determine a business’s cash inflows. Making it easier for your customer’s AP department to remit on time will positively impact your working capital.</p> <h2>How to Grow Both CX and Working Capital</h2> <p>C2C technology and process enhancements address pain points that result in revenue leakage, lack of visibility across revenue streams and customer frustration with complex invoicing.</p> <p>What you must do, however, is transform processes — not just address individual problems. Only then are you better able to respond to the unknowns of marketplace changes. And you must do that in a more customer-centric way.</p> <p>What stops so many businesses from improving their customer-centricity? Often, it’s not having the tools and capabilities needed to evolve C2C processes while undergoing complex strategic, business model and operational changes.</p> <p>To overcome those challenges, you need:</p> <ul style="margin-left: 30px;"> <li> <p style="margin:0;">Domain and functional experience to establish a cost-efficient, technology-powered, continuously improving C2C operation</p> </li> <li> <p style="margin:0;">Greater accuracy for better working capital management</p> </li> <li> <p style="margin:0;">Better visibility for improved decision making</p> </li> <li> <p style="margin:0;">Digitized ops that make proactive end-to-end customer management possible</p> </li> <li> <p>A customer journey map that documents interaction points to make informed transformation priorities and differentiated experiences</p> </li> </ul> <p>Unfortunately, for most organizations that’s a tall order. What can businesses do to be better prepared for market conditions while better understanding their customers?</p> <h2>How to Optimize Your C2C Process</h2> <p>The good news? Sutherland can provide the playbook to navigate business model transitions by helping clients redesign their processes and provide an integrative C2C solution that leverages industry-leading tech and functional expertise.</p> <p>We can help you improve DSO and cash flow by reducing revenue leakage, improving working capital management and establishing cost-efficient, automation-enabled back-office operations.</p> <p><img style="width:100%;" alt="Finally, A Customer-to-Cash Solution Actually Built Around The Customer" loading="lazy" class="lazy" data-src="https://sutherlandglobal.azureedge.net/-/media/images/digital-finance-customer-to-cash/dfac_inline-image_10.jpg?rev=2b405c71-09ee-4186-9356-c817f06684ea&hash=F561DCE3FAB69C22FBA354E102AD07C4" /></p> <p>A streamlined <em>and</em> customer-centric C2C process will drive both customer satisfaction and customer loyalty, maximizing profitability over the long term. Customer loyalty leads to growth, and happy customers are the lifeblood of every business.</p> <style> td { width: 33.3%; border: 1px solid #000; padding: 10px; white-space: none; } .article-insight-hero-banner.article-banner.pickgradient { background-position: bottom; } @media (min-width: 1600px){ .styles-2019 .insights-text-content ul li { font-size: calc(1.8rem + .2vw); line-height: 1.5; font-weight: 300; }} </style>Tue, 25 Jul 2023 09:07:34 -0700{AA0F38F2-DEE1-4AAF-842C-C18E8E6E1628}https://www.sutherlandglobal.com/Insights/Banking-and-Financial-Services/three-rules-for-customer-experience-transformation-in-financial-servicesThree Rules For Customer Experience Transformation In Financial Services<p>Digital technologies are transforming financial services and shaking up how business is done. In fact, 80 percent of Americans today prefer to manage their finances digitally [1]. Banks and financial institutions (FIs) must go beyond the usual to attract and retain such digitally transformed consumers.</p> <p>Customer experience (CX) transformation is critical to banking success in this highly competitive environment and any transformation must prepare a bank for the future with a roadmap for continuous improvement. It must also provide a unified customer view, enable conversations based on customer needs, bring totality to customer offerings and engage customers based on relationships. Banks that can establish customer connections will differentiate themselves in the marketplace.</p> <p><img style="width:100%;" alt="Three Rules For Customer Experience Transformation In Financial Services" loading="lazy" class="lazy" data-src="https://sutherlandglobal.azureedge.net/-/media/images/banking-cx-and-channel-strategy/banking-cx-channel-strategy_inline_image01_2000x1200.jpg?rev=67c5dd79-0292-4c75-be37-aba5db0643f8&hash=B34E2EAE4EAB8DC08FD66F57D2A23D97" /></p> <p>While all banks have the potential to improve, their CX transformation initiatives can be measured by:</p> <ul style="margin-left: 30px;"> <li> <p style="margin: 0;">How easy it is for customers to communicate using their channel of choice and continue that conversation in another channel without losing context</p> </li> <li> <p style="margin: 0;">The customer value delivered through personalized and contextual engagement using customer data</p> </li> <li> <p>How legacy systems are leveraged to deliver modern, transformative customer experiences</p> </li> </ul> <p>Here are three rules to create a truly transformational customer experience.</p> <ol style="margin-left: 20px; list-style-type: decimal;"> <li> <p><strong>Make communication easy and convenient for customers</strong></p> </li> </ol> <p>Banks need to provide consumers with easy access via their mobile devices from anywhere, provide the flexibility of speaking to a live expert at any time and offer the ability to communicate using their channel of choice — all while making the whole experience quick and seamless. While most banks offer multiple channel options including social media, email, voice, chat, text, etc., not all are successful in making everything work together. Creating digital touchpoints are just pieces of a puzzle; delivering a consistent experience across all channels puts those pieces together for a complete picture.</p> <p><img style="width:100%;" alt="Three Rules For Customer Experience Transformation In Financial Services" loading="lazy" class="lazy" data-src="https://sutherlandglobal.azureedge.net/-/media/images/banking-cx-and-channel-strategy/banking-cx-channel-strategy_inline_image02_2000x1200.jpg?rev=5a096c8b-e4c1-4ec6-b5ae-700ab93c5f74&w=100%25&hash=956EA261457A329917DC77B27D9C93CE" /></p> <p>CX is key to customer retention and acquisition, and leaders drive more revenue than those that lag. With better CX, the path to purchase increased by 40 percent for a leading bank [2]. This leader’s channel strategy maps a customer’s unique journey across online and offline channels, allowing them to better understand and anticipate customer needs and reduce outbound calling requirements. By integrating conversational AI, interactive voice recognition, in-app messaging and self-service portals, banks enable their customers to connect with personalized engagement quickly and conveniently.</p> <ol start="2" style="margin-left: 20px; list-style-type: decimal;"> <li> <p><strong>Strengthen relationships by understanding customer wants and needs</strong></p> </li> </ol> <p>Banks have traditionally based their engagement on their retail customers’ life goals. For example, a student may need an education loan; an entrepreneur may seek a line of credit; an employee may want a car loan. CX is taking on a new definition in this changing environment — and banks need to be able to anticipate their customers’ needs based on their existing relationships.</p> <p><img style="width:100%;" alt="Three Rules For Customer Experience Transformation In Financial Services" loading="lazy" class="lazy" data-src="https://sutherlandglobal.azureedge.net/-/media/images/banking-cx-and-channel-strategy/banking-cx-channel-strategy_inline_image03_2000x1200.jpg?rev=cadc2721-2566-49a4-bc70-419fc47036b8&hash=5783072D8FFEAA7AE31BCF3AB4CB6089" /></p> <p>Customers overwhelmingly show that they want service that’s both personalized and trustworthy. In a survey by <em>Financial Brand</em>, nearly 66 percent of FIs that are increasing their CX budgets are working to leverage customer data for real-time personalization [3]. Banks must be well equipped to leverage internal and external customer data or risk falling behind FIs that are adopting innovations to enhance product offerings and improve overall service quality while engaging customers on a deeper level.</p> <ol start="3" style="margin-left: 20px; list-style-type: decimal;"> <li> <p><strong>Leverage legacy systems to deliver modern, transformative customer experiences</strong></p> </li> </ol> <p>Traditional banks have a complex structure of legacy systems and technologies that have pulled their weight in the past. Today, these older, siloed applications create operational gaps and inefficiencies that impede operations and present additional challenges to integrating back-office through front-office processes.</p> <p>Banks invested in these systems and built their processes around them. Because most banks want to maximize their existing investments, working with legacy systems is a critical component in CX transformation. Banks must implement the internal changes necessary to adapt to the pressures of external environments by adopting intelligent automation solutions that can integrate processes for better speed, efficiency and responsiveness.</p> <p><img style="width:100%;" alt="Three Rules For Customer Experience Transformation In Financial Services" loading="lazy" class="lazy" data-src="https://sutherlandglobal.azureedge.net/-/media/images/banking-cx-and-channel-strategy/banking-cx-channel-strategy_inline_image04_2000x1200.jpg?rev=38d4c055-4252-4cf4-8891-f94e499c1e92&hash=635DD79A732D813BD6528CE28DAEE987" /></p> <p>Process automation enables them to integrate legacy systems without undertaking a major IT overhaul. This allows banks to bring back-office, middle-office, and front-office operations up to date and creates organizational agility that supports a truly seamless, personal and transformative customer experience.</p> <h2>CX transformation is a continuous journey</h2> <p>Exceptional CX is essential to generating trust and loyalty as well as facilitating long-standing and mutually satisfying banking relationships. The question is whether banks can continuously adapt to changing customer expectations. As banks work to evolve, they may find that learning as they go can be slower and more likely to inhibit growth. Partnering with organizations can help them adapt, scale and produce results in a world of ever-changing consumer trends.</p> <p><img style="width:100%;" alt="Three Rules For Customer Experience Transformation In Financial Services" loading="lazy" class="lazy" data-src="https://sutherlandglobal.azureedge.net/-/media/images/banking-cx-and-channel-strategy/banking-cx-channel-strategy_inline_image05_2000x1200.jpg?rev=98910e36-c932-4c29-b56e-482898cdb0ec&hash=7FD6703B4ECF91873C5221A487F6BDE5" /></p> <hr /> <p style="font-size: 14px;">[1] <a rel="noopener noreferrer" href="https://www.forbes.com/advisor/banking/digital-banking-as-new-normal-2021-what-to-expect/" target="_blank">https://www.forbes.com/advisor/banking/digital-banking-as-new-normal-2021-what-to-expect/</a><br /> [2] <a rel="noopener noreferrer" href="https://www.forrester.com/blogs/why-invest-in-customer-experience-eu/" target="_blank">https://www.forrester.com/blogs/why-invest-in-customer-experience-eu/</a><br /> [3] <a rel="noopener noreferrer" href="https://thefinancialbrand.com/115512/customer-experience-trends-in-banking-for-2021/" target="_blank">https://thefinancialbrand.com/115512/customer-experience-trends-in-banking-for-2021/</a> </p> <style> .article-insight-hero-banner.article-banner.pickgradient { background-position: top; } </style>Tue, 25 Jul 2023 09:07:34 -0700{14BBC030-9344-43E8-8D71-C9CB8A367AA3}https://www.sutherlandglobal.com/Insights/Banking-and-Financial-Services/collaboration-not-conflictCollaboration, Not Conflict: How AML Compliance Can Support Business Growth<p>Banks and financial institutions around the world are throwing huge sums at AML compliance by adding more people, processes and technology. Yet expectations, particularly regarding customer risk, keep increasing across the board.</p> <p>Financial institutions are expected to manage the risks associated with their clients and counterparties in an environment where bad actors are more sophisticated, and good customers are frustrated with the efficiency of the onboarding and ongoing servicing experience. Faced with tightening regulations, inefficient processes and steadily increasing operating costs, the message to business leaders is clear: a new model is needed.</p> <p>Fragmented systems and processes are one of the biggest contributing factors to the pain financial institutions are facing. Data collection tasks are being repeated across different departments. The information needed to manage risk and maintain compliance – that can also be used to drive other benefits – is not being shared.</p> <p>Client expectations are increasing as they interact with digital native organizations that are better able to customize their experience and leverage the information they collect. The business is frustrated because the time to revenue for a new relationship is getting longer as more scrutiny is applied to the onboarding and account opening processes.</p> <p>A better approach to managing AML and KYC processes can change the relationship between compliance and the business to a partner helping facilitate growth instead of a blocker preventing growth.</p> <p>A more effective AML program is needed, delivered through the integration of the different systems and technologies currently used. This will help financial institutions reduce the cost of compliance and drive new efficiencies. But integrating these siloed systems can also set the stage for enhancing the customer experience and unlocking new revenue opportunities.</p> <p>Let’s look at some of the challenges financial institutions face with AML compliance and assess how a customer-centric model built on automation and AI can turn them into business value.</p> <p><img style="width:100%;" alt="Collaboration, not Conflict: How AML Compliance can Support Business Growth" loading="lazy" class="lazy" data-src="https://sutherlandglobal.azureedge.net/-/media/banking-kyc-aml/sutherland_banking-aml_kyc_mofu-blog_inline1_28feb23.png?rev=2eaddb09-4336-4cea-843a-751e7729a92a&hash=00BACF0DA0FB221895A074BE5A0B72A2" /></p> <h2>Friction in the Onboarding Experience</h2> <p>In today’s increasingly competitive market, the onboarding process can make or break the client relationship. Clients already view these processes as tedious. But that tedium soon turns to frustration when non-integrated systems result in redundant requests for information, as well as drawn-out processes.</p> <p>Multiple studies indicate that banking customers are willing to change institutions based on the quality of the onboarding and servicing experience. Clients are often asked to provide the same information and documents they provided previously when opening a new account, which creates the impression in the customer's mind that the institution doesn’t understand them or their financial needs.</p> <p>By taking advantage of an intelligent automation solution, such as Sutherland AML, financial institutions can integrate siloed AML systems and introduce new, more efficient digital workflows. In turn, KYC data collection processes can be heavily streamlined.</p> <p>Document management solutions and natural language processing capabilities can extract essential information from client-provided documents and insert those elements into the onboarding and customer management systems. As information requests are minimized, data verification and validation can be automated against internal systems and third-party databases.</p> <p>The result: a better customer experience thanks to less friction in the onboarding process and more efficient processes – thereby reducing time to value.</p> <h2>False Positives Lead to Customer Frustration</h2> <p>Many financial institutions treat AML screening and identity verification as distinct processes. However, when it comes to AML, this lack of integration leads to alerts that are based on incomplete data. AML staff have to spend time collecting data from outside the organization or systems that are not integrated to get a complete picture of risk and separate the alerts that matter from ones that just add to the noise.</p> <p>By integrating the AML silos of KYC, transaction monitoring and sanctions screening through automation – and by applying a layer of AI to help detect, investigate and report adverse events that need further assessment – financial institutions can significantly reduce the instances of false positives.</p> <p>Clients have behavior patterns that can be modeled in the solution. The better the business and compliance understand those patterns, the better they can reduce false positives and serve the client’s needs.</p> <p>Fewer false positives translate to fewer cases and a better user experience. More efficient digital processes also drive efficiencies across the board, reducing manual execution and lowering operating costs.</p> <p><img style="width:100%;" alt="Collaboration, not Conflict: How AML Compliance can Support Business Growth" loading="lazy" class="lazy" data-src="https://sutherlandglobal.azureedge.net/-/media/banking-kyc-aml/sutherland_banking-aml_kyc_mofu-blog_inline-2_28feb23.png?rev=567fc6c4-e273-4232-9f95-bab3bb1815af&hash=A540171C429F3AC30800ADD6E6C6FB2B" /></p> <h2>AI-driven Controls Can Identify Hidden Risks</h2> <p>Changing regulations are putting additional pressure on financial institutions. In the US, for example, new rules around identifying the Ultimate Beneficial Owner (UBO) of legal entities mean that compliance risk is increasing. Automation and AI can improve the effectiveness of controls, thereby reducing the AML risk that can lead to greater regulatory scrutiny and fines.</p> <p>Combining new digital workflows for KYC data collection with automated monitoring capabilities lets financial institutions identify hidden risks. Through a holistic view of each client and the network of stakeholders surrounding them, it’s easier to understand how risk changes in line with variations in client activity.</p> <p>This benefits customer relationship management teams, too, as financial institutions can use these insights to better understand each customer’s risk profile. This makes it easier to focus on expanding relationships with customers likely to drive the most business value and not with those who present undue AML risk.</p> <h2>AML Must Deliver a Good Experience</h2> <p>Today’s customers have big expectations. They want to see customized financial products and offerings that are based on an understanding of who they are and what they need. In other words, they expect systems to be joined up behind the scenes so that their bank ‘knows’ them.</p> <p>Data collected about a customer can satisfy both compliance requirements and changes in customer expectations. By ensuring data quality through automation and new smart data flows, financial institutions can gain a more complete picture of each customer – both from an enhanced risk identification perspective and in ongoing relationship management.</p> <h2>From Cost Center to Business Value Driver</h2> <p>Automation and AI give financial institutions the capabilities they need to enhance data efficiency and navigate the challenges associated with fragmented systems and processes. Applying intelligent automation tools to the end-to-end process can allow the business and the risk and compliance organization to partner to manage risk better and create a superior customer experience.</p> <p>By layering an advanced solution like Sutherland AML on top of their existing tech stack, it’s possible to introduce a new digital model for managing AML risk that not only unlocks operational efficiencies but drives new revenue opportunities.</p> <p><a href="https://www.sutherlandglobal.com/partnerships/finscan" target="_self">Click here</a> to discover more about Sutherland AML. Or download our <a href="https://www.sutherlandglobal.com/insights/banking-and-financial-services/convert-amlkyc-challenges-into-business-value" target="_self" title="latest whitepaper">latest whitepaper</a> to learn more about the value of transforming AML compliance with intelligent automation and AI.</p>Wed, 19 Jul 2023 03:52:09 -0700{379E8D40-85F8-4731-AA6F-0B4B3C30FE9E}https://www.sutherlandglobal.com/Insights/Banking-and-Financial-Services/transform-aml-challenges-into-business-valueTransform AML Challenges Into Business Value With Sutherland AML<p><img style="width:100%;" alt="Solution Overview: Transform AML Challenges Into Business Value With Sutherland AML" loading="lazy" class="lazy" data-src="-/media/Images/AML-CHALLENGES/Sutherland_Banking solution overview_page1.webp" /> <img style="width:100%;" alt="Solution Overview: Transform AML Challenges Into Business Value With Sutherland AML" loading="lazy" class="lazy" data-src="-/media/Images/AML-CHALLENGES/Sutherland_Banking solution overview_page2.webp" /></p> <div class="ready-to-transform-cta"> <a href="https://sutherlandglobal.azureedge.net/-/media/Images/AML CHALLENGES/Sutherland_Banking AML_KYC campaign_Solution Overview_DRAFT_14Mar23.pdf?rev=6297e663-4206-4e08-85f0-e3f00d850102&hash=B480BE491E1AA9EF5B54D6559D9D11BD" class="cta-link transform-link">Download PDF</a> </div> <style> .ready-to-transform-cta { display: inline-block; margin-bottom: unset!important; margin-bottom: unset; } .ready-to-transform-cta .transform-link { float: right; background-color: #de1b54; color: #fff; text-transform: uppercase; font-size: 18px; font-weight: 700; border: none; border-radius: 5px; cursor: pointer; padding: 15px 45px; text-decoration: none; border: 1px solid transparent; } </style>Wed, 19 Jul 2023 03:52:09 -0700{ADB49A0A-20EA-46C2-9453-860994C813D1}https://www.sutherlandglobal.com/Insights/Banking-and-Financial-Services/the-future-of-work-is-bound-in-blockchainThe Future of Work Is Bound in Blockchain<p>When it comes to the future of work, enterprises need to hit it with a block – blockchain, that is. The still nascent technology is finally coming into its own, and savvy business leaders are seeing the true value of blockchain and how it can be applied to solve real business problems. Horses for Sources (HfS) predicts that enterprise blockchain services will skyrocket by more than 100% in 2018 to cross the billion-dollar mark. Moreover, they prognosticate that blockchain will actually outpace <a href="https://www.sutherlandglobal.com/insights/healthcare/roboops-embracing-intelligent-automation-for-higher-quality-business-operations">robotic process automation (RPA)</a> on the market. Just how will blockchain break free and rise the ranks? By overhauling the customer experience for the better and revolutionizing the workplace.</p> <p><strong>The Basics of Blockchain</strong></p> <p>Before diving into the ‘how’ of blockchain, let’s tackle just what the heck it is. Blockchain is a global online database that continuously grows by adding to its list of records (known as blocks) to create a trusted and undisputed digital database that is linked and secured using cryptography. Think of it as an open digital ledger that can record information and transactions between two parties in a verified and permanent manner.</p> <p>Blockchain is an important tool for establishing a common digital history, which is increasingly necessary because digital transactions and assets can easily be faked and duplicated. Blockchain counteracts this concern without the use of a trusted intermediary so that all parties reach a consensus on a common digital history.</p> <p><strong>How Blockchain Can Revolutionize the Future of Work</strong></p> <p>Blockchain is a tool increasingly used by enterprises in their <a href="https://www.ibm.com/blogs/insights-on-business/retail/digital-transformation-speed-customer-experience/?cm_mmc=PSocial_Twitter-_-Consumer - Retail_Consumer - Retail-_-NA_NA-_-23139833_Tracking Pixel&cm_mmca1=000020WC&cm_mmca2=10003589&cm" target="new">digital transformation strategies</a>. Not only does it provide opportunities to improve customer experience, but the emerging technology also has huge ramifications when it comes to the future of work.</p> <p>For example, blockchain can greatly remedy the pesky scourge that is human error and remove cumbersome and repetitive information requests. One simple typo or input mistake can completely ruin a dataset. Blockchain consolidates all relevant data without the need for humans to type, input or process it themselves, greatly increasing the efficiency and speed around data input, storage and organization.</p> <p>In a similar vein, blockchain is great at mapping data history by building that history on top of itself, rather than wiping it out whenever a new version is created and saved. This means not a single piece of data gets disrupted or lost over time, be it customer information, transactions, product delivery dates and more. With blockchain, data is forever! This grants customers more transparency into their transactions and the products or services they purchase. Conversely, it greatly relieves the burden on human employees within a company to organize and keep data correct and up to date.</p> <p>Speaking of employees, blockchain can alleviate a number of soul crushing tasks. Between creating and remembering multiple different passwords to continuously having to reload and sync files, employees spend more time than they’d like on these time-consuming headaches. With blockchain, employees can develop a unique, secure profile at their company and use it for any and everything. An organized system that manages all aspects of an employee’s work life and streamlines cumbersome processes – how could any company say no to blockchain for facilitating that?</p> <p><strong>Locking Down Blockchain in 2018</strong></p> <p>Based on expert predictions like the one from HfS, all signs point to blockchain having a breakthrough 2018. Even still, it’s a technology that’s bubbling under the surface and being widely underutilized, despite the attractive use cases like the ones mentioned above. As more companies become familiar with the power of blockchain, the technology will undoubtedly evolve to greater heights and become a driving force in the future of work. With blockchain poised to make it rain for enterprises, those that underestimate or eschew this emerging technology will wind up in a chain of fools.</p> <p><em>Stay tuned to the Sutherland blog for more on blockchain and the future of work, and be sure to follow our social channels (Facebook</a>, <a href="https://twitter.com/SutherlandCorp">Twitter, <a href="https://www.linkedin.com/company/sutherland-global-services">LinkedIn</a>) as well.</em></p>Fri, 30 Jun 2023 02:57:07 -0700{9BB9C6F4-70D5-4E75-A736-ED3A2C4578C0}https://www.sutherlandglobal.com/Insights/Banking-and-Financial-Services/what-are-bpm-tools-sutherlandWhat is BPM Software & How Can it Help Businesses<script type="application/ld+json"> { "@context": "https://schema.org", "@type": "Article", "mainEntityOfPage": { "@type": "WebPage", "@id": "https://www.sutherlandglobal.com/insights/technology/what-is-bpm" }, "headline": "What Is BPM Software?", "description": "Business process management software is a process automation tool that helps businesses map out their day-to-day business activity & processes.", "image": { "@type": "ImageObject", "url": "https://sutherlandglobal.azureedge.net/-/media/sutherland/images/blog-images/what-is-bpm-software/002-what-is-bpm-software.png?la=en&rev=190daec2-2963-4aa7-ba26-67312fa873f5&hash=8F1C6F898EC143D18D765D3483123B0E1473DDF4", "width": 1200, "height": 627 }, "author": { "@type": "Organization", "name": "Sutherland Inc" }, "publisher": { "@type": "Organization", "name": "Sutherland Inc", "logo": { "@type": "ImageObject", "url": "https://sutherlandglobal.azureedge.net/-/media/sutherland/images/og-images/og-twitter.png", "width": 453, "height": 283 } }, "datePublished": "2019-04-29", "dateModified": "2019-08-29" } </script> <p><span style="text-decoration: underline; color: #1155cc;"><a rel="noopener noreferrer" href="https://www.sutherlandglobal.com/" target="_blank">Business process management</a></span> (BPM) as a methodology and as a practice is all about transforming the way business gets done. Defining the strategy and goals for <span style="text-decoration: underline; color: #1155cc;"><a rel="noopener noreferrer" href="https://www.sutherlandglobal.com/insights/technology/what-is-bpm" target="_blank">BPM process management</a></span> is the first step in this always-on business process model. The next is deciding the business transformation framework for achieving those goals and improving business processes.</p> <p>While <a rel="noopener noreferrer" href="https://www.sutherlandglobal.com/insights/banking-and-financial-services/what-are-bpm-tools-sutherland" target="_blank">business process management software</a> helps to enable BPM in an enterprise, successful BPM requires additional workflow management tools in order to execute its full potential. These include artificial intelligence (AI), omnichannel, and other technologies and solutions. This blog will tackle a common question around BPM: what are BPM tools and how can businesses use them to affect <span style="text-decoration: underline; color: #1155cc;"><a rel="noopener noreferrer" href="https://www.sutherlandglobal.com/services/business-process-transformation" target="_blank">workflow and business process change?</a></span></p> <h2>BPM Automation Tools</h2> <p>Business process management tools automate, measure, and optimize complex business processes to operate more efficiently and effectively to achieve business goals. By examining a business’ workflows, BPM tools can provide valuable metrics and insights on how to improve processes and boost both business operations and a bottom line. In the simplest terms, <a href="https://www.sutherlandglobal.com/insights/technology/what-is-bpm" title="What is BPM Software?">BPM software</a> assist with business process modeling, where a company works to design new and improved processes, as well as the management of processes and workflows.</p> <p>BPM management tools are a key component of BPM methodologies and overall business strategy. While the benefit of BPM tools can be a bit difficult to quantify, their real ROI is in the business value they provide. This is everything from increased <span style="text-decoration: underline; color: #1155cc;"><a rel="noopener noreferrer" href="https://www.sutherlandglobal.com/services/customer-engagement-transformation" target="_blank">customer satisfaction</a></span> to more streamlined workflow management and process execution to cost reductions.</p> <p>Most valuable of all is the competitive advantage BPM tools can provide your business. An enterprise on the cusp of cutting-edge <a rel="noopener noreferrer" href="https://www.sutherlandglobal.com/insights/technology/what-is-bpm-technology" target="_blank">BPM technology</a> and tools can constantly adapt process improvement that will push them far past their competitors. That’s why <span style="text-decoration: underline; color: #1155cc;"><a rel="noopener noreferrer" href="https://www.rtinsights.com/digital-transformation-using-bpm-applications/" target="_blank">nearly four out of 10 businesses</a></span> have already or are planning their business process model to adopt BPM tools. The main BPM solution currently redefining the BPM process globally is artificial intelligence.</p> <p><img alt="What Are BPM Tools?" width="100%" loading="lazy" class="lazy" data-src="https://sutherlandglobal.azureedge.net/-/media/sutherland/images/blog-images/what-are-bpm-tools/bpm-blog-3-incopy-1200x627.png?rev=79da6e9c-f2b2-47a1-8c94-f5506f7b2735&hash=59C046D1B9E9BA7C67D0D62CAAEB251E" /></p> <h2>More Intelligent BPM with AI</h2> <p><span style="text-decoration: underline; color: #1155cc;">Artificial intelligence</span> continues to influence the business transformation strategy landscape. In a utility sense, AI is one of the most important tools for enabling and implementing successful BPM. AI facilitates all the prominent advantages that come from BPM solutions and tools, including greater efficiency, lower operational costs, and stronger customer experiences. Why? AI can analyze a given business process or workflow and extract real-time data from them at speeds faster than any human process could, with less risk for error. An AI-backed approach to data and analytics is therefore a critical component for the way in which businesses improve their processes with BPM software.</p> <p>Real-time data insights fueled by AI enable businesses to make more informed, data-driven decisions on the fly. This is in large part achievable because of machine learning (ML) algorithms. ML gives AI engines the ability to monitor, manage, and optimize the efficiencies of any process you automate as part of a BPM strategy. AI and ML tap into all of an enterprise’s business activity to derive analytics and insights. From there, these tools can offer recommendations on how to best improve processes and workflows in order to maximize efficiency.</p> <p>Essentially, AI’s impact on business process management is a three-step process:</p> <ol style="margin-left: 30px;"> <li> <p style="margin: 0px;"><strong>Prediction </strong>– AI and ML algorithms can spot patterns more easily than humans. This is particularly useful in BPM for identifying any potential bottlenecks within a workflow that may arise in the future.</p> </li> <li> <p style="margin: 0px;"><strong>Decision – </strong>Businesses can then decide how to address process change based on AI-backed predictions. This is also true of the recommendations businesses want to provide to their customers. Using data, AI algorithms confidently predict customer behavior and preferences, which can inform how you choose to interact with them next.</p> </li> <li> <p><strong>Action – </strong>AI enables businesses to create search algorithms in order to take action toward improving a process. Integration of problem-solving and optimization solutions with these algorithms results in a highly informed, data-backed BPM strategy for boosting business activity.</p> </li> </ol> <h2>Omnichannel Customer Views</h2> <p>Customers today expect a seamless, consistent brand experience across all the various channels they use. This includes everything from social media, email, call centers, chatbots, and self-help kiosks. Utilizing the data from BPM tools like AI, businesses can create a comprehensive, 360 view into each customer. What results is a deeper understanding into how the customer acts and responds across all the channels they use to interact with your business—otherwise known as an omnichannel view.</p> <p>When embarking on <span style="text-decoration: underline; color: #1155cc;"><a rel="noopener noreferrer" href="https://www.sutherlandglobal.com/services/business-process-transformation" target="_blank">business process transformation</a></span> and management, an omnichannel strategy should not be overlooked. It provides key insights into customers so that businesses can better serve them. Additionally, the integration of all the various channels and models a business uses results in a stronger, more consistent <span style="text-decoration: underline; color: #1155cc;"><a rel="noopener noreferrer" href="https://www.sutherlandglobal.com/services/customer-engagement-transformation" target="_blank">customer experience</a></span>.</p> <p>Business process management solutions like data models and visualization tools assist with the creation of omnichannel customer views. They provide deeper insights into customer preference and behavior. Businesses can then refine business processes and workflows to better match customer expectations and demands. What results is the ultimate goal of BPM transformation: greater business outcomes.</p> <h2>Other Notable BPM Tools</h2> <p>Beyond AI and a 360, omnichannel view of customers, there are additional BPM tools that drive business process transformation and management, including:</p> <ul style="margin-left: 30px;"> <li> <p style="margin: 0px;"><strong>Robotic process automation </strong>– routinely automates manual tasks for greater output and efficiency</p> </li> <li> <p style="margin: 0px;"><strong>Data analytics </strong>– cultivate real-time insights that inform better business process modeling and decision-making</p> </li> <li> <p style="margin: 0px;"><strong>Public/private cloud </strong>– provides a development environment for building and designing new processes, workflows, dashboards, and applications</p> </li> <li> <p style="margin: 0px;"><strong>Open source solutions </strong>– pre-built and based on existing standards, these can easily be integrated into existing systems or processes</p> </li> <li> <p><strong>Microservices and containers </strong>– quickly place and implement new applications or processes in the business workflow they’re needed most</p> </li> </ul> <p>The business impact and value of BPM tools is undeniable. Because business process management is fundamentally continuous, tapping into all of the available technology at your disposal is essential. The adoption of tools to stay ahead in this ever-evolving digital era and facilitate new ways of doing business should be a top priority for all businesses. With such a wealth of technology, software tools, and solutions available, <span style="text-decoration: underline; color: #1155cc;"><a rel="noopener noreferrer" href="https://www.sutherlandglobal.com/services/business-process-transformation" target="_blank">transforming your business processes</a></span> has never been easier. If you are still curious about BPM learn more about <a href="https://www.sutherlandglobal.com/insights/technology/what-is-bpm">what BPM software is</a> and how it operates.  </p> <style type="text/css"> .article-insight-hero-banner.article-banner.pickgradient { background-position: top; } </style>Fri, 30 Jun 2023 02:38:06 -0700{C5D4C24C-84BD-4150-A21A-0691D0881E7F}https://www.sutherlandglobal.com/Insights/Banking-and-Financial-Services/what-is-digital-transformation-why-is-it-importantWhat is Digital Transformation & Why is it Important<p>Digital transformation (DX) is the process of using digital tools and technologies to create new — or modify existing — business processes, culture, and customer experiences. Forward-looking enterprises turn to <a rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank" href="https://www.sutherlandglobal.com/services/customer-engagement-transformation">digital transformation services</a> to unlock greater business opportunities. That’s because digital transformation solutions enable new capabilities and innovation by revamping the legacy systems bogging down a given process. Ultimately, this facilitates new, improved ways of conducting business that bring additional value to the customer.</p> <h2>Digital Transformation for Business</h2> <p>The importance of digital transformation cannot be understated. In 2019, 62% of executives had a transformation program in place to digitize their business, according to a Gartner survey. Many executives believe this level of investment in digital tools and technology will be the <a rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank" href="https://go.forrester.com/blogs/15-12-08-the_state_of_digital_business_2016_to_2020/">driving force of their revenue by 2020</a>. The World Economic Forum estimates that the value of digital transformation for both industry and society will top <a rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank" href="http://reports.weforum.org/digital-transformation/aligning-incentives-maximizing-gains-to-society-and-industry/">$100 trillion by 2025</a>.</p> <p>Still, <a rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank" href="https://www.zdnet.com/article/digital-transformation-gut-check-sorry-state-or-natural-selection/">Forrester notes</a> that a major roadblock for the full embrace of digital transformation is confusion about what exactly it is. Digital transformation looks different for every business across every industry. Aligning your company with expert <a rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank" href="https://www.sutherlandglobal.com/insights/technology/how-digital-transformation-consulting-enables-innovation-in-the-enterprise">digital transformation consulting solutions</a> is essential to the success of your company's migration. However, boiling down digital transformation to its building blocks can bring some clarity to this initiative. Essentially, the business mandates governing digital transformation are:</p> <ol start="1" style="margin-left: 30px;"> <li> <p style="margin: 0;"><a rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank" href="https://www.sutherlandglobal.com/services/business-process-transformation">Rethinking inefficient business processes</a> and the digitization of legacy systems.</p> </li> <li> <p style="margin: 0;">Collaboration among cross-functional teams for increased innovation.</p> </li> <li> <p style="margin: 0;">Experimentation with emerging digital technologies, real-time data and analytics, artificial intelligence, machine learning, and social media.</p> </li> <li> <p>Becoming more agile to increase <a rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank" href="https://www.sutherlandglobal.com/services/customer-engagement-transformation">customer satisfaction and engagement</a>.</p> </li> </ol> <p>Keeping the above four things in mind ensures a winning <a rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank" href="https://www.sutherlandglobal.com/insights/banking-and-financial-services/how-to-build-a-successful-digital-transformation-strategy">digital transformation strategy</a>. Digital transformation success for enterprises results in new technology innovations in business. For a smaller business, success could be something as simple as going paperless.</p> <p>Regardless of business size, savvy leaders should leverage and integrate digital technologies into all areas of their business when possible. This digital disruption of the status quo can seem daunting for many businesses at first. However, with the right digital transformation roadmap and strategy guiding you, the endeavor will reap major benefits and give you a competitive advantage in your industry.</p> <p>Beyond the implementation of new technology, digital transformation can encompass anything from designing new business models, a change in leadership, or the digitization of assets. Bottom line: embarking on a transformation strategy with the goal of improving the experience of your company’s customers, supply chain, partners, employees, and stakeholders is the very essence of digital disruption and transformation.</p> <p><strong><img alt="Business Guide to Digital Transformation" style="width: 100%;" loading="lazy" class="lazy" data-src="https://sutherlandglobal.azureedge.net/-/media/sutherland/images/blog-images/business-guide-to-digital-transformation/digitaltransformation-blog-incopy-842x350.jpg?rev=e4ff2724-8fe8-4524-8ad5-c5caed4c2ec0&hash=D87792F695346372E3DA7CAD49F88502" /> </strong></p> <h2>How Do Digital Transformation and Customer Experience Intersect?</h2> <p>With such a rapid proliferation of technology, businesses should take stock and leverage digital tools that will foster a <a rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank" href="https://www.sutherlandglobal.com/search-results?query=customer+experience">better customer experience</a>. Brands live or die by whether or not they can match customer expectations. The current market saturation means customers have more options than ever before—and what they truly crave is a seamless, digitally-powered customer experience.</p> <p>Where does the digital disruption of the customer experience start? Businesses must change the way they deliver their products and services to be properly aligned with customer expectations. This often means incorporating newfound digital technologies that foster an engaging customer journey. For instance, experiences powered by apps like the one Amazon Go stores offer is a perfect example of a digital transformation operating model that encourages greater customer engagement.</p> <p>Beyond mobile apps, tools like artificial intelligence, machine learning, and social media allow companies to provide better customer service and create more personalized experiences. However, it’s imperative to process customer data to better understand customer behavior and the experiences they crave. From there, companies can utilize these insights to overcome the challenges they’ve been facing and transform their customer experience. In today’s digital age, an experience that’s both unique and reliable will be the one that keeps customers coming back for more.</p> <h2>What’s the Value of Digitally Disrupting Business Processes?</h2> <p>Business processes power every aspect of your company. If they’re outdated or overly complex, most likely they’re negatively impacting operations and, ultimately, your bottom line. That’s why change is always welcome when it comes to business processes. Companies that fail to revamp or change legacy systems are the ones that will be left behind in the digital age.</p> <p>But with a digital transformation roadmap, companies can start to <a rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank" href="https://www.sutherlandglobal.com/services/business-process-transformation">rethink processes</a> and build digital solutions that foster greater levels of success. It’s about deciding where to apply emerging technologies and restructuring business models to accommodate them for maximum value. Oftentimes, this is where you can map out a new, revamped process that offers your business a competitive advantage.</p> <p>Similarly to customer experience, businesses can start to <a rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank" href="https://www.sutherlandglobal.com/">change and transform complex business processes</a> by utilizing data and analytics. With real-time insights, companies possess immediate visibility into the processes and operations that are lagging. If the problem becomes recurring, it’s a tell-tale sign that a particular process is ripe for change. The disruption of a core business process can be daunting. However, the strategic implementation of technology to transform or automate it represents a better, more resourceful approach than simply letting an inefficient process continue to underperform.</p> <h2>It Starts with Your Unique Vision</h2> <p>Before building any sort of digital transformation strategy or roadmap, business leaders need to ask themselves one question: “What does digital transformation look like for my company?”</p> There is no tried and true answer for this question. The execution and tactics that go into pulling off digital business transformation vary by industry, but the underlying goals remain the same. It’s important for leaders to clearly identify solid, measurable KPIs—each with a clearly-defined business outcome—and then create a transformation program that works to fulfill them. From there, the starting point to digital transformation is well within grasp. <p> </p> <p><img alt="" style="width: 960px; height: 100px;" loading="lazy" class="lazy" data-src="https://sutherlandglobal.azureedge.net/-/media/sutherland/images/blog-images/business-guide-to-digital-transformation/cta-blog-banner-digital-transformation-options-v1.jpg?h=100&w=960&rev=313c7531-76f0-432c-bf43-3cfec8935aeb&hash=8FF58D4133AE5DC054A95D7488139E8D" /></p> <style type="text/css"> .article-insight-hero-banner.article-banner.pickgradient { background-position: top; } </style>Fri, 30 Jun 2023 02:30:51 -0700{5CFF0C71-616A-423B-A71F-FCEED61184BB}https://www.sutherlandglobal.com/Insights/Banking-and-Financial-Services/five-tips-for-engaging-customers-through-effective-contentFive Tips for Engaging Customers Through Effective Content<p>According to research from <a rel="noopener noreferrer" href="https://www.pwc.com/future-of-cx" target="_blank">PwC</a>, 1 in 3 customers will leave a brand they love after just one bad experience, and 92% will abandon it after just two or three negative interactions.</p> <p>To hit the mark on a top-notch engagement, organizations must commit to building a compelling customer experience. This requires a tailored strategy for every audience type – one that’s infused into every customer interaction and business decision. The primary way to create such an experience? Content. </p> <p>However, a successful content strategy is no easy feat, and many businesses over promise and under deliver on their approach. Not only do they struggle with developing content, but they also lack the expertise and bandwidth to manage, monitor, and produce content that engages with key target audiences.</p> <p><img style="width: 100%;" alt="Tips for Engaging Customers Through Effective Content" loading="lazy" class="lazy" data-src="https://sutherlandglobal.azureedge.net/-/media/sutherland/images/blog-images/tips-for-effective-content/contentservices-blog-070920blog-name-blog-incopy-842x350.png?rev=47f1f640-7367-49d4-982c-eb1a971b8727&hash=A0031B058FFBF743A5A22E1A1F9C01D9" /></p> <p>Content may be king, but it’s a crown not easily attained. The key to the throne is a proper plan of attack, which includes these five strategies:</p> <ol style="margin-left: 30px;"> <li> <p style="margin: 0;"><strong>Enhance Your Content with SEO: </strong>Your business needs to first reach readers in order to connect with them, which is why Search Engine Optimization (SEO) must be a foundational piece of your content strategy. SEO is a huge vehicle for driving organic traffic to your website, if done correctly. To execute an effective SEO strategy, weave keywords and rich phrases into every piece of relevant content. Be sure to do this thoughtfully so that the content still feels natural and flows nicely. </p> </li> <li> <p style="margin: 0;"><strong>Strengthen Content’s Impact via Social Media:</strong><strong> </strong>While a steady cadence of blogs, whitepapers, videos, audio, and infographics on a business’s website is an important ingredient to a successful content strategy, you must also take a strategic approach to the main distribution of long-form content – social media. Take the time to properly create compelling and timely social media posts, actively engage in trending conversations, and respond to customer inquiries and complaints on behalf of clients on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, YouTube, and any other relevant platforms. Since many customers live in a social-first world, it's now a required place to strengthen the connection between brands and customers. </p> </li> <li> <p style="margin: 0;"><strong>Manage Your Content in a 24/7 World:</strong> As content surges across digital media, fake news and misinformation spread exponentially. Organizations must stay ahead by adopting an effective approach to <a rel="noopener noreferrer" href="https://www.sutherlandglobal.com/offerings/content-services/content-moderation" target="_blank">content moderation</a>. From filtering malicious social media posts and product reviews to keeping up the 24/7 influx of user-generated content, organizations must find a way to effectively moderate content. Our advice? Leverage the right balance of human and machine, as AI solutions support human moderators by efficiently rating content for authenticity and determining accuracy. This makes the moderation process smarter and more agile. </p> </li> <li> <p style="margin: 0;"><strong>Ensure a Human-Centered Design Approach</strong><strong>:</strong> <a rel="noopener noreferrer" href="https://www.sutherlandglobal.com/insights/communications-media-and-entertainment/blog-design-thinking-strategy-for-success-sutherland" target="_blank">Design thinking</a> should be at the root of your content strategy. Marketing and design research, social listening, customer satisfaction surveys, warranty-data analysis, focus groups, and other methods will ensure a clear picture of your customer base. By adopting this approach, you craft messages based on customer needs and desires. </p> </li> <li> <p><strong>Enlist Third-Party Expertise:</strong> Organizations don’t need to carry the full responsibility of content production on their backs. To keep up with high demands, partner with a content service vendor, such as <a rel="noopener noreferrer" href="https://www.sutherlandglobal.com/offerings/content-services/content-moderation" target="_blank">Sutherland</a>, that produces and manages compelling content at scale. These content services are customizable to meet the individual needs of clients. Leverage these services to optimize how customers, employees, partners, and the business interact in order to achieve business outcomes at scale. </p> </li> </ol> <p>These five steps will help lay the foundation for meaningful and interactive customer experiences. It will help your business find its voice and speak to customers in a way that’s truly meaningful. From there, customer engagement will come naturally, which will pay dividends in the long run.</p> <p>Strong customer engagement is vital for cultivating loyalty and building long-term relationships. With an engaging content strategy in place, enterprises gain a competitive advantage in the marketplace by building trust with their customers through unique, consistent, and personalized experiences. </p> <p><img style="width: 100%;" alt="Tips for Engaging Customers Through Effective Content" loading="lazy" class="lazy" data-src="https://sutherlandglobal.azureedge.net/-/media/sutherland/images/blog-images/tips-for-effective-content/blog-banner-content-strategy.png?rev=739f817a-c1f0-4527-8467-9ddcd4bac231&hash=A95DD6F96B8F8FD89CAE2CB83C2D1E39" /></p> <span id="docs-internal-guid-b7cf2a07-7fff-658e-ec10-dcaafb3fb93a"> </span> <div> </div> <span id="docs-internal-guid-b7cf2a07-7fff-658e-ec10-dcaafb3fb93a"> <style type="text/css"> .article-insight-hero-banner.article-banner.pickgradient { background-position: top; } </style> </span>Fri, 30 Jun 2023 02:12:40 -0700{B80D16E4-E4AC-4488-84DD-1E35E3F2A005}https://www.sutherlandglobal.com/Insights/Communications-Media-and-Entertainment/apple-reaches-settlement-with-qualcommApple and Qualcomm Sign a Truce for 5G<p>News is buzzing this week over Apple and Qualcomm’s ongoing legal disputes, which came to an abrupt settlement on April 16th in court. For more than two years, the two tech titans have battled it out over Qualcomm’s no license, no chip policy, leaving Apple pretty irked (to say the least).</p> <p>The saga shaped into a longstanding, epic legal battle, with Apple feeling slighted over having to pay licensing fees for the rights to use some of the core chip technology patented by Qualcomm. The settlement comes as a shock to most, only a few moments after an Apple attorney kicked off the trial with a <a rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank" href="https://www.reuters.com/article/apple-qualcomm-trial/apple-likens-qualcomm-chips-to-fried-chicken-as-trial-begins-idUSL1N21Y0VU">Kentucky Fried Chicken analogy</a> to explain how the telecommunications company went out abusing its market power. </p> <p>Yet to everyone’s surprise, both parties took the higher road, set their fast-food differences aside, and came to a reconciliation just after opening remarks. <a rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank" href="https://www.cnbc.com/2019/04/16/apple-qualcomm-settle-royalty-dispute-sources-say.html">CNBC</a> reports that the terms of the agreement included a lofty payment of $6 billion dollars from Apple to Qualcomm, a six-year licensing agreement that can be extended by two years and a multiyear chipset supply agreement.</p> <p><img alt="Customer experience meet the 5G effect" width="100%" loading="lazy" class="lazy" data-src="https://sutherlandglobal.azureedge.net/-/media/sutherland/images/blog-images/apple-newsjacking-blog-incopy-1200x627.png?rev=67b4415e-ecdf-4436-b854-ca1f1c7ea5b5&hash=09CD52ED73F2D815E808F745FD6B30F8" /></p> <p>With the legal saga seemingly over, the settlement solidifies Qualcomm's position as a dominant player in 5G, a new generation of advanced wireless networks. It has also geared up much speculation around the rollout of 5G technology, and if it can come to fruition by 2020. The technology promises a new standard for network connection and telecommunications, allowing users to seamlessly browse the internet, upload or download files, and use data-intensive applications with much faster wireless connection and speed. </p> <p>Throughout all the technologies that will benefit from this wide-scale adoption, perhaps none will have the most impact than augmented and virtual reality. <a rel="noopener noreferrer" href="https://www.sutherlandglobal.com/insights/technology/blog-three-ways-augmented-reality-can-bring-your-customer-experience-to-life">Augmented reality</a> (AR) has spearheaded a revolution in terms of what it means to market and sell a product by making the end-to-end experience much more interactive, tangible and life-like for customers. Virtual applications are seemingly limitless and are gaining momentum in mobile devices, connected vehicles and even smart tables.</p> <p>Yet among these new technological advancements also comes a logistical roadblock to rising data demands, which can slow down wireless connections and create a disoriented, unstable visual environment to participants using AR technology. 5G networks will be able to provide the necessary bandwidth and low latency for these virtual experiences to feel seamless. The more easily an AR experience <a rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank" href="https://www.sutherlandglobal.com/services/customer-engagement-transformation">can be personalized to an individual customer</a>, the more likely it will be successful. </p> <p>Though much is still up in the air about 5G’s roll-out, Apple’s recent settlement has lit a fire under the race to widespread adoption. As long as these players continue to innovate and make big strides, the integration of 5G wireless systems will prove to be a new driving force for the development of immersive virtual customer experiences.</p> <style> section#article-insight-hero-banner_Applereachessettlementwithqualcomm { background-position: center; } </style>Fri, 30 Jun 2023 01:06:25 -0700{061C88D4-9E2B-4EEA-AB6A-AFF81D9518BD}https://www.sutherlandglobal.com/Insights/Banking-and-Financial-Services/how-to-build-a-successful-digital-transformation-strategy5 Steps to Execute Successful Digital Transformation Strategy<!--<script type="application/ld+json"> { "@context": "https://schema.org", "@type": "Article", "mainEntityOfPage": { "@type": "WebPage", "@id": "https://www.sutherlandglobal.com/our-thinking/what-is-a-digital-transformation-strategy" }, "headline": "5 Steps to Execute Successful Digital Transformation", "description": "Creating a digital transformation strategy is necessary to successfully execute digital transformation. Do you know the four steps to success? Learn more.", "image": { "@type": "ImageObject", "url": "https://www.sutherlandglobal.com/our-thinking/what-is-a-digital-transformation-strategy https://sutherlandglobal.azureedge.net/-/media/sutherland/images/blog-images/what-is-a-digital-transformation-strategy/digitaltransformation-contentcluster-blog-header5.jpg?h=438&la=en&mw=1000&w=842&rev=86fb32ee-af1e-4e3f-972f-b74b85674c3b&extension=webp&hash=005062E8764E3BF066498B337DDC0A14965AD4CF", "width": 842, "height": 438 }, "author": { "@type": "Organization", "name": "Sutherland Inc" }, "publisher": { "@type": "Organization", "name": "Sutherland Inc", "logo": { "@type": "ImageObject", "url": "https://sutherlandglobal.azureedge.net/-/media/sutherland/images/og-images/og-twitter.png", "width": 453, "height": 283 } }, "datePublished": "2019-07-02", "dateModified": "2020-01-31" } </script> --> <p><a rel="noopener noreferrer" href="https://www.forbes.com/sites/blakemorgan/2019/05/13/40-stats-on-digital-transformation-and-customer-experience/#6e5ffd766475" target="_blank">IDC reports</a> that 85% of enterprise decision-makers believe they only have two years to make significant progress in digital transformation before they fall behind competitors and suffer financial consequences. For reference, 56% of CEOs report revenue growth after implementing digital improvements, <a rel="noopener noreferrer" href="https://www.gartner.com/en/newsroom/press-releases/2017-04-24-gartner-survey-shows-42-percent-of-ceos-have-begun-digital-business-transformation" target="_blank">according to Gartner</a>. That business value and ROI can’t be overlooked.</p> <p>For successful execution, businesses need a clear digital transformation agenda and strategy in place to reap its benefits and gain a competitive advantage in today’s digital economy. Building a digital transformation strategy seems more complex than it actually is. This blog will break down the practices and considerations business leaders should follow in order to transform and achieve the digital disruption that will help them survive.</p> <h2>Digital Transformation Strategies & Frameworks</h2> <p>Leaders must approach digital innovation with a strategic mindset . As the <a rel="noopener noreferrer" href="https://www.imd.org/research-knowledge/articles/why-you-will-probably-live-longer-than-most-big-companies/" target="_blank">average lifespan of S&P 500 companies has fallen to just 18 years</a>, business transformation and digital disruption are more important than ever before. However, research shows that many businesses proceed blindly into this journey. <a rel="noopener noreferrer" href="https://www.7wdata.be/article-businessagility/gartner-idc-and-forrester-on-the-future-of-digital-transformation/" target="_blank">Forrester reports</a>that only 27% of businesses have a digital transformation strategy in place when launching their digital initiatives.</p> <p>Essentially, only three out of every 10 businesses approach their digital transformation efforts with an actionable plan to follow. Is it any wonder then that <a rel="noopener noreferrer" href="https://assets.kpmg/content/dam/kpmg/pdf/2016/05/global-transformation-study-2016.pdf" target="_blank">less than half of organizations surveyed</a> expect to realize sustainable value from digital transformation? The squandering of business opportunity here is staggering, but the good news for businesses just starting out on their digital journey is that they’re primed for actual success. All they need to do is carve out a strategic roadmap before implementing their digital technologies and initiatives.</p> <p>A digital transformation strategy or framework will help a business in any industry estimate the budget for their initiatives, anticipate any possible risk, and ultimately facilitate their desired outcomes and goals. By following these five steps, business leaders can lay the foundation and structure for a digital transformation strategy that will produce real change and success.</p> <h3><img alt="What Is a Digital Transformation Strategy" style="width: 100%;" loading="lazy" class="lazy" data-src="https://sutherlandglobal.azureedge.net/-/media/sutherland/images/blog-images/what-is-a-digital-transformation-strategy/digitaltransformation-contentcluster-blog-incopy-1200x6275.jpg?rev=23c72232-54f8-4682-90a8-0c956c01d67e&hash=A63A8DDF36320C24BB6E392AACF8CA3A" /> </h3> <h3>Step 1: Establish Your Strategic Direction and Vision</h3> <p>Before constructing a digital transformation strategy, leadership should meet to establish the strategic direction and vision for this initiative. Start by identifying the problems and bottlenecks you wish to solve for, and which of your <a rel="noopener noreferrer" href="https://www.sutherlandglobal.com/services/business-process-transformation" target="_blank">business processes</a> ladders to each. Then, solidify your objectives and outcomes.</p> <p>Be sure to think long-term and really focus on the experience you want to create for your brand, customers, and employees. If you’re a small or midsize business, you might want to concentrate your efforts more locally. Large-scale enterprises should definitely think more globally. Lastly, identifying the gaps in business models where digital transformation can help you achieve a competitive advantage will inspire new business opportunities. Ensure your business possesses the capabilities to realistically fill those gaps and meet your endgame.</p> <h3>Step 2: Define Your Customer Journey Map</h3> <p>Digital transformation must facilitate an improved <a rel="noopener noreferrer" href="https://www.sutherlandglobal.com/services/customer-engagement-transformation" target="_blank">customer experience</a> for any business. To start, develop a customer journey map as part of your digital transformation strategy. This will ensure that the experience your customers receive—both existing and prospective—remains top of mind. Think about how implementing digital technologies can create newer, more exciting avenues of engagement for customers. Be mindful of any potential gaps to bridge that could lead to a more seamless experience.</p> <p>You should be meeting your customers where they’re interacting with your brand, and offering all the avenues of communication they’re using to engage with you. That could be everything from social media to <a rel="noopener noreferrer" href="https://www.sutherlandglobal.com/services/digital-transformation/chatbots" target="_blank">chatbots</a> to contact centers to advanced <a rel="noopener noreferrer" href="https://www.sutherlandglobal.com/insights/healthcare/blog-evolution-of-voice-assistants" target="_self">digital voice assistants</a>. Innovation is the key to success here because customers crave unique, personalized experiences. Bottom line: every digital transformation strategy should be customer-centric.</p> <h3>Step 3: Get Your Company Culture on Board</h3> <p>Becoming a digital business means embodying the tenants of digital transformation both inside and out. In order for a company to digitalize, the leaders and company culture they foster for employees must as well. <a rel="noopener noreferrer" href="https://futurumresearch.com/digital-transformation-cannot-succeed-without-the-right-culture/" target="_blank">Half of all companies surveyed</a> point to company culture as the biggest factor that contributed to their successful execution of digital transformation, while <a rel="noopener noreferrer" href="https://www.computerweekly.com/news/252451957/Gartner-Symposium-2018-Why-culture-hacks-spell-digitisation-success" target="_blank">46% of CIOs</a> report that culture change is their biggest roadblock to success. Significant culture changes must occur in order for your digital technologies and initiatives to prove effective.</p> <p>The culture and ecosystem of a company must feed into and bolster digital transformation efforts, otherwise they simply won’t stick. For starters, employees must be open to change and understand the reasons for changing. Once they’re onboard, leadership can work on fostering a more collaborative, open environment that welcomes a collective braintrust of ideas. A company culture that embraces change, encourages participation, and gets employees excited and passionate about digital transformation is more primed for success.</p> <h3>Step 4: Prioritize Digital Initiatives and Technology Investments</h3> <p>Next, you’ll need to prioritize the initiatives that make up your digital transformation strategy and the technology you’ll invest in to achieve them. These technologies and solutions can range from things like artificial intelligence, machine learning, and robotic process automation. Each piece of technology should be assigned to revamp, optimize, or automate a business process to encite transformation.</p> <p>Attention should be paid to both short and long-term initiatives, with digital technologies and solutions applied to each. You should always be able to connect every initiative and tool back to a business function or outcome, where the end goal is advancing your digital transformation objectives and improving all touchpoints that make up both your business processes and customer experience. Whether the technology or initiative benefits your customers, employees, or your business itself, there should be a clearly defined roadmap that strategically moves you from planning to execution all the way to outcome.</p> <h3>Step 5: Build Your Execution Team</h3> <p>Last but not least, you’ll need a clear plan for how you’ll execute your digital transformation strategy and who all will be responsible for it. Only <a rel="noopener noreferrer" href="https://futurumresearch.com/key-stats-2018-digital-transformation-index/" target="_blank">40% of companies report</a> having a dedicated digital transformation team, indicating a clear lack of preparation for the majority of businesses. Establishing effective leadership at the top is essential. This could be anything from an expert CIO or CDO to a team of qualified, outside specialists that you employ for their digital transformation services. Expertise and organization at the top will ultimately trickle down to the individual stakeholders and employees you’ve assigned to manage and oversee each digital initiative.</p> <p>You also need to ensure that there’s <a rel="noopener noreferrer" href="https://www.sutherlandglobal.com/insights/communications-media-and-entertainment/blog-future-of-work-will-require-constant-learning-sutherland">constant reskilling and training</a> in order to effectively implement future change. Remember, digital transformation isn’t a one-and-done thing; it’s a constantly evolving process. By weaving the tenants of digital transformation into the very fabric of your business, you’ll foster a digital culture that’s always focusing on and working toward digital innovation.</p> <h2>Conclusion</h2> <p>The only way to drive measurable results through digital transformation is with a well thought out strategy in place. By following the five steps above, you can build a digital transformation strategy that increases business efficiency, improves your customer experience, and helps your company scale to greater heights. Discover how <strong>digital transformation services</strong> can transform your business.</p> <style type="text/css"> .article-insight-hero-banner.article-banner.pickgradient { background-position: top; } </style>Fri, 30 Jun 2023 00:05:14 -0700{34954D2C-5ACD-41F7-9162-1FD8F551C8BB}https://www.sutherlandglobal.com/Insights/Banking-and-Financial-Services/the-guardian-of-customer-experience-highlights-from-our-content-cafeThe Guardian of Customer Experience: Highlights from Our Content Cafe<p>We recently hosted an enlightening discussion between our own Donna Tuths, Chief Transformation and Innovation Officer, and Melissa O’Brien, Vice President of Customer Engagement, Retail and Travel Strategies at <a rel="noopener noreferrer" href="https://www.hfsresearch.com/" target="_blank">HFS Research</a>, as part of our first Sutherland Content Café about the evolving role of content moderation. Melissa leads HFS’ customer experience (CX)-focused initiatives, exploring the trends and change agents that drive CX across the enterprise. </p> <p>Brands face a daunting challenge in managing content across channels. It’s no secret that the volume and complexity of online content — particularly user-generated content — have exploded in recent years across <a rel="noopener noreferrer" href="https://www.sutherlandglobal.com/insights/communications-media-and-entertainment/twitters-new-audio-feature-reignites-the-content-moderation-challenge" target="_self">platforms like Twitter</a>, Facebook, YouTube and Instagram. Compound this with the rise in “fake news,” <a href="https://www.sutherlandglobal.com/insights/banking-and-financial-services/ai-the-modern-day-defender-against-misinformation">misinformation and harmful content</a>, and the need to effectively moderate content for both public and private good is clear. </p> <p><a rel="noopener noreferrer" href="https://www.sutherlandglobal.com/offerings/content-moderation" target="_blank">Content moderation</a> is one of those change agents that has become foundational to brand strategy. </p> <blockquote>“Content moderation is an important part of digital CX, and it’s crucial to a company’s brand.” - Melissa O'Brien</blockquote> <p>The benefits are profound for companies to protect their content realm — from resonating with the right audiences, to avoiding regulatory issues and improving brand perception.</p> <p>Watch the video of the conversation below to learn about:</p> <ul style="margin-left: 30px;"> <li> <p style="margin: 0;"><strong>Pillars of a strong content moderation strategy</strong>, including trust and safety, talent development, AI capabilities, agility and more.</p> </li> <li> <p style="margin: 0;"><strong>Steps to build effective brand “guardians”</strong> with proper recruitment, training and tools.</p> </li> <li> <p><strong>The right balance of human and machine</strong> to deliver effective moderation at scale while protecting human moderators, and more.</p> </li> </ul> <style> .embed-container { position: relative; padding-bottom: 56.25%; height: 0; overflow: hidden; max-width: 100%; } .embed-container iframe, .embed-container object, .embed-container embed { position: absolute; top: 0; left: 0; width: 100%; height: 100%; } </style> <div class="embed-container"><iframe src="https://player.vimeo.com/video/439312698" frameborder="0"></iframe></div> <p style="margin-top: 30px;"> As content-related challenges continue to proliferate, brands can no longer afford to overlook the role of moderation in underpinning employee and customer experiences.</p> <p>Missed out this time and want in on the discussion? We’ll host more online events to dive deeper into cutting-edge tools and strategies — starting with an upcoming session on <strong>“What Role Do Machines Play?”</strong> Follow us online and across our channels (<a href="https://twitter.com/SutherlandCorp"><span style="color: #1155cc;">Twitter</span>, </a><a href="https://www.linkedin.com/company/sutherland-global-services/"><span style="color: #1155cc;">LinkedIn</span></a>, <a href="https://www.facebook.com/Sutherland-Global-388462191504598/"><span style="color: #1155cc;">Facebook</span></a>) for updates and more insights.</p> <style> .embed-container { position: relative; padding-bottom: 56.25%; height: 0; overflow: hidden; max-width: 100%; } .embed-container iframe, .embed-container object, .embed-container embed { position: absolute; top: 0; left: 0; width: 100%; height: 100%; } .article-insight-hero-banner.article-banner.pickgradient { background-position: top; } </style>Fri, 30 Jun 2023 00:01:39 -0700{62F39EB0-93C7-4211-BC38-063E921CC130}https://www.sutherlandglobal.com/Insights/Communications-Media-and-Entertainment/blog-the-cynicism-contaminating-corporate-social-responsibility-and-citizenship-sutherlandLoyal contact center team delivers outstanding customer experience.<p>It’s easy for people to shrug off a corporation actively seeking to do good in the world as a desperate attempt for favorable PR to disguise their true intentions: making a profit. And they’re not necessarily wrong. Every company wants to be profitable, that’s no secret. But oftentimes, many companies don’t truly have a grasp on what it means to be socially responsible and a good corporate citizen in a way that can combat this cynical viewpoint. The common misconception is that CSR is charity, and consumers tend to roll their eyes at this sort of forced goodwill. Meanwhile, corporations aren’t mindful of the fact that CSR is actually a business investment that can sometimes lead to bigger profits when done correctly while, of course, <a href="https://www.sutherlandglobal.com/insights/healthcare/blog-why-csr-is-the-new-first-line-of-defense-against-environmental-risks-sutherland">contributing some much-needed good into the world and helping society for the better</a>.</p> <p>Therein lies the rub. Making money while helping people is perceived as fundamentally selfish in most cases. It’s a long-held, cynical view of the world that has been reinforced time and time again by the greed that corrupts many a people and business. But that’s not a universal inevitability, especially when you look at a corporation’s role in being a good citizen. And make no mistake, whether you agree with it or not, <a href="https://www.huffingtonpost.com/adam-winkler/corporations-are-people-a_b_5543833.html" target="new">legally corporations are people</a>.</p> <p><img alt="The Cynicism Contaminating Corporate Social Responsibility and Citizenship" width="100%" loading="lazy" class="lazy" data-src="https://sutherlandglobal.azureedge.net/-/media/sutherland/images/blog-images/in-blog-image2-csr-cynicism-rti.png?rev=31b5006a-892b-42b0-b8e3-505788b21be5&hash=1309D9D36EE0496F0DCAC46E34C089A4" /></p> <p>That means just like the rest of us, they can choose whether or not to be socially responsible citizens. But unlike humans, corporations need one thing and one thing only to survive: profits. So, to disparage a company for being socially responsible in ways that will bolster their bottom line would be akin to blaming a person who chooses to recycle and compost for continuing to breathe while doing so. You’re essentially faulting each party for doing good while they keep their survival instincts at heart. That’s not selfishness, that’s self-preservation. If a company isn’t making money (or a human isn’t inhaling oxygen), then they won’t be around to actually affect change in the world.</p> <p>And that’s the whole point of corporate citizenship—this idea that they have obligations to society as a whole, and not just to themselves or their customers. This is usually accomplished by taking a stand on an ethical or social level and responsibly working toward change that will benefit society as a whole, be it <a href="https://www.sutherlandglobal.com/insights/banking-and-financial-services/blog-5-ways-your-company-can-protect-the-environment-while-digitally-transforming-in-2018-sutherland">protecting the environment</a> or <a href="https://www.sutherlandglobal.com/insights/healthcare/blog-why-protecting-data-is-critical-for-csr-moving-forward-sutherland">advocating on behalf of people’s rights</a>. Of course, by integrating this mentality into an overall business model, corporations can do good while growing, scaling and driving profits, even if the jury is still out on just how beneficial CSR is to a company’s bottom line.</p> <p>For example, <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2017/06/26/business/dealbook/can-good-corporate-citizenship-be-measured.html" target="new">a study conducted by Bank of America</a> found that healthcare, consumer and tech goods companies scored highly on environmental, social and governance (ESG) but underperformed their peers in the short-term. That in and of itself is proof that some altruism does inform a company’s reasoning to be socially responsible. The silver-lining is that these same companies with higher ESG scores were generally more stable and typically ended up providing higher future returns throughout all industries. Still, the mixed results about whether CSR boosts a bottom line causes a majority of investors to disregard these initiatives, seeing them as invaluable.</p> <p><img alt="The Cynicism Contaminating Corporate Social Responsibility and Citizenship" width="100%" loading="lazy" class="lazy" data-src="https://sutherlandglobal.azureedge.net/-/media/sutherland/images/blog-images/in-blog-image1-csr-cynicism-rti.png?rev=5abbbde9-2cb1-4428-9390-c2f0030d8054&hash=9FE52C88E3BA359C83F6CB9CAC15EF50" /></p> <p>This notion is flat-out wrong. While embarking on CSR and becoming a good corporate citizen may not yield immediate dividends, it can incite benefits down the road. Millennials overwhelmingly prefer companies and brands that take an environmentally-friendly and socially responsible stance. In fact, <a href="http://www.hrdive.com/news/study-81-of-millennials-want-companies-to-be-good-corporate-citizens/437220/" target="new">81% expect companies to pledge a commitment to corporate citizenship</a>, and nearly two-thirds would take a pay cut to work for a socially responsible organization. These expectations and concerns around CSR can influence how much money a consumer is willing to spend as well. <a href="http://www.nielsen.com/us/en/insights/news/2015/green-generation-millennials-say-sustainability-is-a-shopping-priority.html" target="new">Nielsen</a> found that 72% of Generation Z and 51% of Generation X would pay more for services and products from a company that embodies CSR.</p> <p>What company can argue with customers on this? After all, they are always right. And if they’re willing to pay more money to a competitor that goes out of their way to do good at potential risk to their bottom line, that certainly would appear to mitigate those concerns from a money-making standpoint. It turns out there is a cure to the inherent cynicism contaminating the heart of CSR, and that’s just to go out on a limb and try to be a responsible corporate citizen that gives back or helps people in some way, shape or form. If not, the tide of consumer favorability could turn on you rapidly, and nothing is a greater detriment to a bottom line than that.</p> <p style="margin: 0;"><strong>Related Links:</strong></p> <ul style="margin-left: 30px;"> <li> <p style="margin: 0;">“<a href="https://www.sutherlandglobal.com/insights/healthcare/blog-why-protecting-data-is-critical-for-csr-moving-forward-sutherland">Why Protecting Data Is Critical for CSR Moving Forward</a>”</p> </li> <li> <p style="margin: 0;">“<a href="https://www.sutherlandglobal.com/insights/healthcare/blog-why-csr-is-the-new-first-line-of-defense-against-environmental-risks-sutherland">Why CSR Is the New First Line of Defense Against Environmental Risks</a>”</p> </li> <li> <p style="margin: 0;">“<a href="https://www.sutherlandglobal.com/insights/banking-and-financial-services/blog-5-ways-your-company-can-protect-the-environment-while-digitally-transforming-in-2018-sutherland">5 Ways Your Company Can Protect the Environment While Digitally Transforming in 2018</a>”</p> </li> </ul> <p><em>To read about how bots are solving business problems for the better, check out Sutherland's VP of Innovation, Philip Say's, latest white paper, <a href="https://www.sutherlandglobal.com/insights/banking-and-financial-services/wp-chatbots-for-business-impact?utm_medium=cta&utm_source=blog&utm_campaign=5ways-chatbot-blog&utm_term=organic&utm_content=cta-banner">"Building Better Bots for Maximum Business Impact."</a></em></p> <p><a href="https://www.sutherlandglobal.com/insights/banking-and-financial-services/wp-chatbots-for-business-impact?utm_medium=cta&utm_source=blog&utm_campaign=5ways-chatbot-blog&utm_term=organic&utm_content=cta-banner"><img alt="Three Reasons AI-powered Chatbots are Changing the Face of CX" width="100%" loading="lazy" class="lazy" data-src="https://sutherlandglobal.azureedge.net/-/media/sutherland/images/blog-images/fy18-human-or-bots-cta.png?rev=5678dcfd-dd51-43bd-9fa4-02491775dde0&hash=7EB528B53B344839749EAB243913C3C7" /></a></p> <style type="text/css"> .article-insight-hero-banner.article-banner.pickgradient { background-position: top; } </style>Wed, 28 Jun 2023 06:16:33 -0700{BBCA290C-4F1F-4D4D-9502-7B27146A09FC}https://www.sutherlandglobal.com/Insights/Communications-Media-and-Entertainment/blog-the-rise-of-voice-assistants-screams-for-corporate-social-responsibility-sutherlandVoice Assistants and Consumer Data Privacy<p>As voice assistants like Siri, Alexa and Google Home continue to play ever more prominent roles in the lives of consumers, privacy concerns around the capabilities of these voice assistants are taking hold. These devices are permeating our homes at an astronomical rate. Despite leveling off in the smart speaker market in North America, <a rel="noopener noreferrer" href="https://omdia.tech.informa.com/pr/2022-may/omdia-smart-speaker-revolution-ending-in-north-america-but-global-growth-promises-brighter-future" target="_blank">Omdia reports an estimated 190 million smear speakers shipped globally in 2021.</a></p> <p>It’s clear that we’re moving into a voice-dominated society. With this approach to interacting with technology, companies need to prioritize corporate social responsibility to establish trust amongst its customers and protect their rights to privacy and freedom of speech. Applications of voice-first technology can be ethically malleable in nature, meaning tech companies can sway easily into murky, corrupt territories when it comes to these devices. That’s why the brunt of responsibility falls solely on corporations to ensure they’re developed and designed in a human-centered way that prioritizes and protects the customer and their data first and foremost.</p> <p><img alt="The Rise of Voice Assistants Screams for Corporate Social Responsibility" width="100%" loading="lazy" class="lazy" data-src="https://sutherlandglobal.azureedge.net/-/media/sutherland/images/blog-images/in-blog-image1-rti-voice-assistant-csr.png?rev=5019e280-f5ef-4744-b7da-25420f54b6c1&hash=8224E904BC5A8E59593F9B270B2F02C0" /> </p> <h2>Are the Billions Being Heard?</h2> <p><a rel="noopener noreferrer" href="https://serpwatch.io/blog/voice-search-statistics/" target="_blank">The latest data shows there are 4.2 billion digital voice assistants worldwide, with Siri and Google Assistant having a 36% share of users.</a></p> <p>Despite the success companies need to vigilantly take stock of the limitations of voice-first technologies. This cognizance goes a long way toward preparing companies for any potential hacks or nefarious uses of voice assistants. Only then can companies map a strategy for how to protect customers should the worst-case scenario occur. And make no mistake, the odds are ever in a hacker’s favor. Cybersecurity isn’t a hot topic in tech just because; with more connected devices infiltrating our lives, these days a hack is usually a matter of when, not if.</p> <p><img alt="How Voice Assistants Are Becoming the Office Admins of the Future" width="100%" loading="lazy" class="lazy" data-src="https://sutherlandglobal.azureedge.net/-/media/sutherland/images/blog-images/in-blog-image1-voice-tech3.png?rev=a2a170a1-f1e0-4d4c-86ee-ecbc910b6546&hash=1CA5E273D2384BE3B824494DC44BA55C" /></p> <h2>Is This Thing On? (Usually, yes.)</h2> <p>This is a particularly relevant concern for voice assistants and devices, especially those with an always-on microphone that are actively listening to customers without explicitly being in use. Why are these devices always listening? What are they doing with the information they overhear? Are customers being recorded, and if so, for what purpose? These are some of the most pressing questions arising from voice assistants and ones that companies need to be wholly transparent about answering. The common response is that these devices can respond more accurately through active listening that’s bolstered by machine learning, and while that’s all fine and dandy, consumers have a right to know if they’re being recorded and what’s being done with the information these devices are logging.</p> <h2>It Starts with Transparency</h2> <p>Full transparency should be at the foundation of any company looking to embody corporate social responsibility. Even if the voice technologies a company develops are hacked or misused, a company that is completely forthcoming about the intricacies of its products and can establish trust amongst its customers can easily come out on the positive end of consumer sentiment. </p> <p>Companies should also keep a design thinking approach in play while developing voice-first products with customer experience and their privacy as the utmost consideration. Cybersecurity breaches are bound to happen with almost any device, but corporations that make it a point to be socially responsible can lessen the negative impact and remain a reliable, trusted voice in this sector.</p> <p><a href="https://www.sutherlandglobal.com/insights/banking-and-financial-services/wp-chatbots-for-business-impact"><img alt="Three Reasons AI-powered Chatbots are Changing the Face of CX" width="100%" loading="lazy" class="lazy" data-src="https://sutherlandglobal.azureedge.net/-/media/sutherland/images/blog-images/fy18-human-or-bots-cta.png?rev=5678dcfd-dd51-43bd-9fa4-02491775dde0&hash=7EB528B53B344839749EAB243913C3C7" /></a></p> <style type="text/css"> .article-insight-hero-banner.article-banner.pickgradient { background-position: top; } </style>Wed, 28 Jun 2023 05:27:30 -0700{8A271346-3EB7-492F-808B-4790A21FEF05}https://www.sutherlandglobal.com/Insights/Communications-Media-and-Entertainment/blog-future-of-work-will-require-constant-learning-sutherlandLearning New Skills Will Help Advance Your Career<p>Historically, new technologies both displace and create jobs, leading to disruption in the labor market. As technology continues to invade every facet of our lives, the future of work becomes more dependent, reliant and, ultimately, ensnared by it. We’re barreling toward a future where rejoicing and screaming “school’s out!” after earning our degrees and getting our very first jobs doesn’t spell the end of our education. In order to maintain an upper hand over technology in the workforce, people will need to continually update their skill sets. And as things stand now, traditional employees are getting schooled by freelancers when it comes to hitting the books and learning new skills.</p> <p>In 2018, according to <a rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank" href="https://www.recode.net/2018/5/30/17385116/mary-meeker-slides-internet-trends-code-conference-2018">Mary Meeker’s latest Internet Trends report</a>, freelancers were twice as likely to have upgraded their skills in the past six months. In fact, one-in-five of those freelancers participated in skill-related education within the past week of being surveyed as opposed to only 6% of traditional employees. To say these typical nine-to-fivers are becoming complacent when it comes to their skill sets is no joke, and this complacency acts as quicksand that drags them down as the technology-fueled future of work begins to rapidly take shape. Today, this trend is even more acute.</p> <p><img alt="License to Skill: The Future of Work Will Require Constant Learning" height="alt='License" width="100%" loading="lazy" class="lazy" data-src="https://sutherlandglobal.azureedge.net/-/media/sutherland/images/blog-images/in-blog-image1-rti-skillset-future-work.png?rev=53ffb0c7-d0d0-47f1-be21-183023f04f8d&hash=F6A2F7287649D7289CA82614A74BA7E6" /></p> <p>Freelance workers are embodying a “carpe diem” mentality when it comes to the future of work, embracing technology and on-demand work to earn extra income, gain more flexibility and put their different skills and assets to use in the workforce. Meeker found that the freelance workforce showing three times faster growth than the total workforce, with a 23% growth in 2017 alone. Early estimates predict there will be nearly seven million on-demand workers by the end of 2018.</p> <p>This massive boom is due in large part to advances in technology, which 77% of respondents acknowledged in 2018 as a tool that it makes it easier to find freelance work. The future of work and the professional lifestyle that freelance work and technology continue to usher in are causing job expectations to evolve beyond just monetary-based considerations – in 2018, 51% would change jobs for access to a flexible schedule while 35% would switch so that they could <a rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_self" href="https://www.sutherlandglobal.com/products-x-platforms/sutherland-anywhere/editorial-landing/how-to-future-proof-your-remote-workforce">work from home</a>.</p> <p>That was then, this is now. Today, with remote becoming even more prevalent, the need to embrace technologies such remote video, collaboration tools, virtual workspaces and more is becoming mandatory.</p> <p>As technology continues to disrupt the workforce and require that workers possess newfound skills to keep up with its advancements, a crippling skills gap is beginning to form that has dire consequences for long-term economic growth. Now, the problem with employment isn’t so much that there’s a lack of jobs, but rather a lack of workers with the skills necessary to succeed in the jobs that are becoming available. <a rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank" href="https://www.mckinsey.com/industries/social-sector/our-insights/closing-the-skills-gap-creating-workforce-development-programs-that-work-for-everyone">McKinsey reports</a> that nearly 40% of American employers struggle with finding people who possess the skills they need, even for entry-level jobs. The price tag for this skills gap? <a rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank" href="https://www.brookings.edu/blog/brown-center-chalkboard/2017/03/02/educational-equality-and-excellence-will-drive-a-stronger-economy/?utm_medium=social&utm_source=twitter&utm_campaign=gs">Brookings Institution reports</a> it’s an astronomical $1 trillion a year.</p> <p><img alt="License to Skill: The Future of Work Will Require Constant Learning" width="100%" loading="lazy" class="lazy" data-src="https://sutherlandglobal.azureedge.net/-/media/sutherland/images/blog-images/in-blog-image2-rti-skillset-future-work.png?rev=0c45a35d-afcd-44fd-b837-34a10e0e42a3&hash=DD5780852331F83F24380166BD96B1E0" /></p> <p>Increasing specialization of work is arising due to new technologies and the evolving nature of work, so much so that <a rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank" href="https://www.weforum.org/agenda/2016/01/the-10-skills-you-need-to-thrive-in-the-fourth-industrial-revolution">WEF predicted</a> by 2021 that 35% of skills considered important today will have changed. This is exasperated by traditional work restrictions like place and time, which are huge factors spearheading the growth of the freelance workforce. With the ability and freedom to work where they want and when they want, freelancers are capitalizing on this flexibility and refocusing their energy toward reskilling to maintain viability in today’s workforce while bolstering themselves for the future of work.</p> <p>With much of today’s work being creative or knowledge-based, freelancers are seizing the opportunity to learn new skills and apply those to different gigs where they can exercise the freedoms and benefits this type of work provides. Increasingly, employers are more concerned about the availability of talent and skills, rather than where and when a person actually works. This is evident in findings from <a rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank" href="https://www2.deloitte.com/insights/us/en/focus/human-capital-trends/2016.html">Deloitte</a>, which reports that 51% of executives plan to either “increase or significantly increase” their hiring of freelance workers throughout the next five years.</p> <p>As employers steadily embrace the future of work and the new skills it will require, employees need to follow suit and start proactively taking steps to reskill themselves or face increasing irrelevancy in the workforce. Technologies like <a rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_self" href="https://www.sutherlandglobal.com/insights/technology/blog-how-ai-and-rpa-can-improve-work-life-balance-and-advance-your-career-sutherland">AI and automation</a> will continue to evolve, requiring more skill-intensive and diverse duties. This means the disappearance or extensive metamorphosis of some of today’s jobs. People that find themselves in these jobs will have to continuously learn and update their skills in order to stay afloat in this ever-changing workforce. The professional well-being of many, not to mention the health of the global economy, depends on this. Welcome to the future of work!</p> <p><a href="/sitecore/service/notfound.aspx?item=web%3a%7b893B27A9-0D00-4735-94D0-8594B19729C5%7d%40en?utm_medium=cta&utm_source=blog&utm_campaign=voice-tech-wp3&utm_term=organic&utm_content=cta-banner"><img alt="" height="alt='Voice" width="100%" loading="lazy" class="lazy" data-src="https://sutherlandglobal.azureedge.net/-/media/sutherland/images/blog-images/fy18-2703_960x90-cta.png?h=alt=&hash=C82E8EC8B4A5E4E9F1610B3F3407D47E4992C611&hash=C82E8EC8B4A5E4E9F1610B3F3407D47E4992C611'Voice&w=100%&rev=1af785d6-b3bf-4abf-8847-5949dd4302de" /></a></p> <style type="text/css"> .article-insight-hero-banner.article-banner.pickgradient { background-position: top; } </style>Wed, 28 Jun 2023 05:07:40 -0700{D23900B2-7ED9-4575-99EC-0B67C0FCE5F9}https://www.sutherlandglobal.com/Insights/Communications-Media-and-Entertainment/amazon-creates-wireless-earbuds-for-alexaAlexa Going Wireless in New Earbuds from Amazon<p>Move over, AirPods—Alexa will soon be buzzing in consumers' ears if Amazon has anything to say about it. In a new effort to take digital <a target="_self" href="https://www.sutherlandglobal.com/insights/banking-and-financial-services/blog-voice-tech-is-back">voice assistant</a> Alexa mobile, <a rel="noopener noreferrer" href="https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2019-04-04/amazon-is-said-to-ready-airpods-rival-as-first-alexa-wearable" target="_blank">Bloomberg reveals Amazon</a> is hard at work developing wireless earbuds similar to Apple's popular AirPods.</p> <p>Amazon's earbuds will look and feel like the AirPods we're all familiar with, designed to nestle inside a user's ears without wires or clips. But with Alexa built in, the earbuds will allow people to use their voice to order goods and access music, weather, and other information while on the go.</p> <p>Users will be able to summon the digital assistant by simply saying "Alexa” out loud, followed by the command they want performed. There will also be physical gesture controls, such as tapping the earbuds in order to pick up a phone call, hang up, or switch between songs or podcasts.</p> <p><img height="675" alt="What Amazon's Latest Move Means for Voice Tech" width="1200" loading="lazy" class="lazy" data-src="https://sutherlandglobal.azureedge.net/-/media/sutherland/images/blog-images/amazon-wireless-earbuds/newsjackingamazon1200x675v111-29a3949f5a9d4d1b94855d5aef8a36e3.png?rev=f972b804-e2b2-4b6d-a07b-d9ad71062f33&hash=36774A16F2BE3D8DB70A06777D8C70BE" /></p> <p> These earbuds represent a major shift outside of the home for Amazon's consumer products. It also highlights the growing demand for voice-activated and controlled technology that's not tethered to a physical location. A <a rel="noopener noreferrer" href="https://voicebot.ai/2018/11/13/new-report-over-1-billion-devices-provide-voice-assistant-access-today-and-highest-usage-is-on-smartphones/" target="_blank">recent report</a> shows there are more than one billion devices today that provide access to a voice assistant. The highest usage of these assistants is on smartphones, indicating that people want to tap into the power of their voice while they're on the move.</p> <p>Currently, Siri is the reigning queen of voice assistant usage on smartphones, while Alexa leads when it comes to smart speakers. That could all change should Amazon's earbud offering nail the seamless application of contextual voice control and functionality at a lower price point than AirPods.</p> <p>Still, Amazon faces an uphill climb. Unlike Apple or Google, Amazon lacks its own smartphone or mobile operating system. These have been huge boons for Siri and Google Assistant to reach their level of popularity and ubiquity, since the respective digital assistants are already embedded in millions of Apple and Google mobile devices. Since the earbuds won't have built-in cell connectivity, they'll have to be paired with Apple and Google devices for Alexa to work.</p> <p>There are a number of ways Amazon could come out on top with their wireless, voice-first earbuds. For starters, creating a voice-activated device that can cut out superfluous background noise, respond appropriately to contextual information, and accurately identify a user's voice would make the usage of <a href="https://www.sutherlandglobal.com/insights/healthcare/wef-2018-voice" target="_self">voice assistants in public spheres</a> more effective and manageable. Should Amazon create a great <a target="_self" href="https://www.sutherlandglobal.com/insights/healthcare/blog-evolution-of-voice-assistants">user experience</a> that cuts down on the awkwardness of using voice-first devices in public, it would fundamentally change the way we interact with technology using our voice.</p> <p>Paying special care and attention to <a target="_self" href="https://www.sutherlandglobal.com/insights/technology/voice-techs-next-big-hurdle-is-inclusivity">make these voice-enabled earbuds inclusive</a> to all swaths of the population could be another huge differentiator for Amazon. That means taking hearing impaired individuals into account and creating an experience and interface that is just as seamless for them. This also includes making sure Alexa is responsive to everyone who uses the digital assistant, regardless of their unique dialect or accent</p> <p>There's great potential for Amazon to make a splash in this market and redefine the <a target="_blank" href="/business-process/customer-interactions-services">voice customer experience</a>. Sales of wearable earbuds reached 12.5 million in the fourth quarter of 2018, with AirPods holding 60% of this market. Should Amazon's earbuds be a truly voice-first experience—one that's inclusive and intuitive in their utility—we could all be whispering into Alexa's ear very soon, and vice versa.</p> <p><img height="90" alt="Voice is Back: The Voice-Everywhere Dilemma" width="960" loading="lazy" class="lazy" data-src="https://sutherlandglobal.azureedge.net/-/media/sutherland/images/blog-images/blog-960x90-wp2-cta.png?rev=9bf53f6f-642a-47b6-950d-2f4451406902&hash=D007A0D0EA4FAF0D543747797DA92E77" /></p> <style> section#article-insight-hero-banner_AmazonCreatesWirelessEarbudsforAlexa { background-position: center; } </style>Wed, 28 Jun 2023 02:21:00 -0700{0BEFE745-E4BE-450E-BE2F-F4CC880B465C}https://www.sutherlandglobal.com/Insights/Banking-and-Financial-Services/how-influential-is-the-cfo-in-digital-transformationHow Influential Is the CFO in Digital Transformation<p>Across industries and organizations, digital technology is disrupting and transforming job functions and responsibilities. Though the specifics of these <a rel="noopener noreferrer" href="https://www.sutherlandglobal.com/insights/banking-and-financial-services/why-your-business-cant-modernize-without-digital-transformation" target="_self">digital transformations</a> differ, the goal is nearly always the same: to unlock <a rel="noopener noreferrer" href="https://www.sutherlandglobal.com/insights/banking-and-financial-services/why-your-business-cant-modernize-without-digital-transformation" target="_self">more efficient, more intelligent, and more productive</a> operations and processes. This is as true in the boardroom as it is in the data center. However, while digital transformation is often discussed in terms of the data center, it’s the boardroom that must understand, drive, and successfully adapt to a more digital-first world.<br /> <br /> But who is responsible for <a rel="noopener noreferrer" href="https://www.sutherlandglobal.com/insights/technology/how-digital-transformation-consulting-enables-innovation-in-the-enterprise" target="_self">advancing an organization’s digital strategy</a>? Conventional wisdom holds that it’s the Chief Operations Officer, Chief Information Officer, or even the Chief Human Resources Officer. But increasingly, the C-suite member most responsible for digital transformation is instead the Chief Financial Officer.<br /> <br /> CFOs are perhaps the perfect advocate for change because finance operations are increasingly being transformed by intelligent automation. These technology breakthroughs allow CFOs’ attention to focus on high-value tasks such as data-driven forecasting and decision making based on real-time insights. Here, we’ll explore the evolving role of the CFO and its impact on both the finance function and broader organization.<br /> <br /> </p> <h2>The Changing Role of the CFO</h2> <p>Yesterday’s CFO directed financial planning and analysis, accounting for past results and forecasting for the future on a regular cadence. They rarely looked for innovation opportunities, instead falling into the familiar, if reductive, accounting stereotype. Today’s top CFOs, however, share little with their staid predecessors and are instead <a rel="noopener noreferrer" href="https://www.sutherlandglobal.com/insights/banking-and-financial-services/meet-your-new-cfo-a-futurist-and-strategic-business-partner" target="_self">more akin to chief futurists and digital finance officers</a>.<br /> <br /> As part of this new role, CFOs lead automation and digitization initiatives, act as an evangelist for digitally-enabled business models, and directly support business unit strategy and performance. Most importantly, they act as a strategic partner to the CEO by providing real-time, data-driven insights in support of key decisions.</p> <p><a id="huge impacts on order-to-cash, procure-to-pay, and record-to-report"><img style="width: 100%;" alt="CFO Role in Digital Finance" loading="lazy" class="lazy" data-src="https://sutherlandglobal.azureedge.net/-/media/sutherland/images/blog-images/influential-cfo-in-digital-transformation/cfo-in-dx-blog-incopy-842x438.jpg?rev=7c59396a-b87e-45e8-9adc-e92c1c2528f0&hash=5F90B634C09CDFC0DDD016614657A7D1" /></a></p> <p>The ability to provide these big data insights increasingly separates top digital finance leaders from their less proficient peers, enabling them to advance both strategic and operational initiatives. On a strategic level, CFOs guide their organizations’ digital roadmap by using advanced analytics to evaluate the profit potential of various digital technologies. This allows the CFO and their team to “invest” in and encourage the right digital business models and transformation initiatives. On a day-to-day level, CFOs improve operational decision-making by analyzing performance in real-time and based on current conditions, not solely on past performance. With such a broad mandate and potential for impact, the CFO’s role now includes being a data interpreter, technology expert, contemporary strategist, and critically, digital transformation advocate.<br /> <br /> However, finding this caliber of digital finance leader is difficult. Research from the <a rel="noopener noreferrer" href="https://www.gartner.com/smarterwithgartner/3-key-take-aways-from-gartner-cfo-finance-executive-conference-2019/" target="_blank">2019 Gartner CFO and Finance Executive Conference</a> found that just 22% of CFOs are personally effective, measured by the extent to which they drive efficient growth and perform against CEO expectations. Meanwhile, 47% of CFOs believe their current finance function is unequipped to meet the demands the future will place upon it, according to <a rel="noopener noreferrer" href="https://www.ey.com/en_au/advisory/is-the-future-of-finance-new-technology-or-new-people" target="_blank">EY’s 2019 DNA of the CFO report</a>. While the CFO who is both a digital finance and transformation leader is currently more the exception than the norm, that will change as the finance function evolves and the benefits of digitization become clear.  </p> <p>Why Digital Transformation Matters in Finance <br /> <br /> The following benefits explain why a digital finance department is so advantageous to the modern business:</p> <p> <strong>Automation</strong></p> <p>In recent years, automation has advanced beyond <a rel="noopener noreferrer" href="https://www.sutherlandglobal.com/insights/technology/behind-the-industry-shift-from-rpa-to-intelligent-automation-4-reasons-for-adoption" target="_blank">simple rule-based functions</a>. By combining machine learning with robotic process automation, digital finance departments now automate complex yet relatively low-skill and labor-intensive tasks, with <a rel="noopener noreferrer" href="https://www.sutherlandglobal.com/insights/technology/blog-isg-names-sutherland-a-market-leader-in-financial-and-accounting-services-sutherland" target="_blank">huge impacts on order-to-cash, procure-to-pay, and record-to-report</a> processes and transactions. In fact, research from the <a href="https://www.mckinsey.com/business-functions/strategy-and-corporate-finance/our-insights/memo-to-the-cfo-get-in-front-of-digital-finance-or-get-left-back">McKinsey Global Institute</a> found that 42% of finance activities can be fully automated while another 19% can be mostly automated. Intelligent automation software, for example, processes invoices, pulls information for audits, prepares tax documents, and aggregates financial information from disparate sources. It also answers low-level financial inquiries from various business units and completes each of the above tasks with <a rel="noopener noreferrer" href="https://www.sutherlandglobal.com/insights/banking-and-financial-services/3-reasons-intelligent-automation-is-the-future-of-finance" target="_blank">greater speed and accuracy</a> than possible by even the best human employee. That speed and accuracy pays real dividends; <a href="https://www2.deloitte.com/content/dam/Deloitte/ca/Documents/Analytics/ca-en-analytics-finance-analytics.pdf">Deloitte</a> reports that companies who release their earnings faster may have a higher price-to-earnings multiplier, outperform industry average EBITDA, or enjoy a significant cost gap advantage. Likewise, a 2010 study from <a rel="noopener noreferrer" href="http://www.columbia.edu/~dn75/Analysis%20and%20Valuation%20of%20Insurance%20Companies%20-%20Final.pdf" target="_blank">Columbia Business School</a> identified accounting quality as one of four key drivers of valuation within the insurance industry.  </p> <p>Additionally, by improving accuracy and speed, automation frees employees to focus on higher-level, strategic activities that create a more productive, cost-effective workforce. For example, Sutherland worked with one <a rel="noopener noreferrer" href="https://www.sutherlandglobal.com/our-work/case-study-a-leading-oil-and-gas-manufacturer" target="_blank">leading oil and gas company</a> to improve productivity by 50% through the automation of key activities. Similarly, <a rel="noopener noreferrer" href="https://www.sutherlandglobal.com/insights/healthcare/blog-the-direction-of-healthcare-digital-future" target="_blank">healthcare organizations deploy intelligent automation</a> to consolidate patient payment data from disparate sources and provide comprehensive risk analysis, which finance employees scrutinize to reduce delinquent debt and total days outstanding.</p> <p><strong>Data and Analytics</strong><br /> <br /> The ability to effectively mine big data is a core requirement for today’s digital finance department and the most cited number one priority among CFOs surveyed as part of EY’s <a rel="noopener noreferrer" href="https://www.ey.com/en_au/advisory/is-the-future-of-finance-new-technology-or-new-people" target="_blank">2019 DNA of the CFO report</a>. It’s easy to understand why. With real-time information via prescriptive analytics, CFOs receive continuous visibility into the financial strength of their business, allowing them to monitor day-to-day operations as well as spot missed payments and duplicate expenses.<br /> <br /> Meanwhile, advanced analytics improves everything from demand forecasting to product pricing and risk mitigation. Powered by machine learning and other artificial intelligence algorithms, these platforms pinpoint relationships between seemingly unrelated variables and crunch vast amounts of data to draw insights that would otherwise remain invisible to humans.<br /> <br /> Car companies, for example, combine historical sales data with aggregated web search/sentiment data to improve demand forecasting accuracy. Recognizing that people undertake a significant amount of online research before purchase, this approach improved prediction accuracy <a rel="noopener noreferrer" href="https://hbr.org/2016/05/where-predictive-analytics-is-having-the-biggest-impact?elqTrackId=aba15a588fa6454ab829d581e3ab8d71&elqaid=50061&elqat=2&source=:ow:ms:pt::" target="_blank">by 40% for vehicle makes</a> with relatively small market shares. Although the effect was smaller for the most popular models on a national scale, even a small increase in accuracy helps organizations cut costs by employing a just-in-time inventory model. In another sales-related example, <a rel="noopener noreferrer" href="https://www.mckinsey.com/business-functions/strategy-and-corporate-finance/our-insights/memo-to-the-cfo-get-in-front-of-digital-finance-or-get-left-back" target="_blank">a consumer goods company</a> built a forecasting tool that predicts the impact of price changes on sales volume for a given product. The tool analyzes a variety of data including macroeconomic, geographic, and demographic factors to arrive at the optimal price.<br /> <br /> Of course, automation and analytics are inextricably linked within the digital finance department. By automating time-consuming yet critical processes, including the structuring of data for analysis, automation enables an emphasis on data and analytics. Conversely, analytics boosts automation initiatives by showing the clear benefit of digitization. This positive feedback loop helps explain <a rel="noopener noreferrer" href="https://www.mckinsey.com/mgi/overview/in-the-news/the-most-digital-companies-are-leaving-all-the-rest-behind" target="_blank">the gap between</a> digitized organizations and their analog competitors. CFOs, therefore, must pursue digital transformation in order to optimize the present while anticipating the future.<br /> <br /> <strong>The Sutherland Approach</strong><br /> <br /> All too often, however, companies fail to move beyond strategy into real-world efficiency, process improvement, and measurable results. The Sutherland approach is designed to overcome just this barrier. It combines design thinking with automation and artificial intelligence capabilities to improve performance in sales and operations planning, order to cash, and source to pay. The goal is a true digital finance department linked closely to its organization’s overarching business strategy.<br /> <br /> Ultimately, alignment between the business and its finance team is the “true north” towards which CFOs must steer their teams and the reason they must advocate for digital transformation initiatives. To learn more about how digital finance departments can act as a strategic advisor to their business, <a rel="noopener noreferrer" href="https://www.sutherlandglobal.com/contact-us" target="_blank">get in touch</a> with our digital finance experts today. </p> <p><a rel="noopener noreferrer" href="https://www.sutherlandglobal.com/insights/technology/blog-isg-names-sutherland-a-market-leader-in-financial-and-accounting-services-sutherland" target="_self"><img style="width: 100%;" alt="Transform Finance Into a Strategic Business Partner" loading="lazy" class="lazy" data-src="https://sutherlandglobal.azureedge.net/-/media/sutherland/images/blog-images/influential-cfo-in-digital-transformation/12-blog-banner-cfo-in-dx.jpg?rev=9a7b9c06-efc7-460f-9ae4-9bc15123aedd&hash=580AD043BEE6E3C2996E0F0950BE7E39" /></a></p> <style type="text/css"> .article-insight-hero-banner.article-banner.pickgradient { background-position: top; } </style>Wed, 28 Jun 2023 02:15:59 -0700{553B0CD5-F987-47F7-A7F6-DAE9A0B34F88}https://www.sutherlandglobal.com/Insights/Banking-and-Financial-Services/ai-the-modern-day-defender-against-misinformationAI: The Modern-Day Defender Against Misinformation<p>The 2016 Presidential Election changed everything. It bred paradigm shifts across all sectors, including the uprising of fake news within digital media. The phenomenon spread misinformation across the internet, with <a rel="noopener noreferrer" href="https://www.statista.com/statistics/649234/fake-news-exposure-usa/" target="_blank">52 percent of Americans</a> feeling that online news websites regularly report fake news stories in the United States.</p> <p>Now, organizations and users alike buckle under the burden of misinformation. Users must somehow find a source of truth, while organizations strive to protect brand reputation and customer experience from the impact of false information. </p> <p>But where does one even begin? </p> <p>Start by understanding the root of the issue – why misinformation is so abundant. From there, apply those insights and leverage a modern solution to eradicate the side effects of misinformation. </p> <p>Let’s take a closer look.</p> <p><strong>Fake News Finds a Foothold</strong></p> <p>As society embraced a new technological era, digital channels and user-generated content exploded. As a result, information traveled at the speed of light. That information wasn’t always accurate.</p> <p><img alt="" style="width: 100%;" loading="lazy" class="lazy" data-src="https://sutherlandglobal.azureedge.net/-/media/sutherland/images/blog-images/ai-for-good/ai-defender-blog-052120_v1_incopy-842x350.png?rev=17d9829d-83d7-4fc5-afd8-91b9f098f1ce&hash=06523BA6FAF2D5CEA41B7D24C136E340" /></p> <p>Be it fake news about a brand or a pressing global issue like COVID-19, users experience a near-constant slew of fabricated online posts, created solely to mislead and misinform. This information typically materializes as clickbait, either designed for economic gain through advertising or to further a political agenda. As such, posts tend to be sensational in nature. So it’s no surprise that <a rel="noopener noreferrer" href="https://www.cigionline.org/internet-survey-2019" target="_blank">86% of internet users</a> have fallen for fake news tactics at least once. </p> <p><strong>Barriers to Effective Content Moderation</strong></p> <p>In today’s uncertain online environment, it is more important than ever to discern between real versus fake, to stop misinformation’s spread. But with organizations dealing with 10 times the amount of content they did previously, this isn’t exactly a cakewalk. Manually reviewing each piece of content – as well as filtering malicious and inaccurate social media posts and product reviews – is time-consuming and cumbersome.</p> <p>It’s no surprise that content moderation remains a mounting challenge for organizations. </p> <p>Many have implemented measures to ensure trust and address safety concerns among customers. Some of these measures include setting policies such as protection insurance, requiring background checks and verification, and conducting a manual review of rumors and fact-checking.</p> <p>However, as the volume of content grows by the day, so does the feat of manual verification and authentication. Organizations must rethink their approach to content moderation. </p> <p><strong>Misinformation, Meet AI </strong></p> <p><a rel="noopener noreferrer" href="https://www.sutherlandglobal.com/insights/banking-and-financial-services/how-to-leverage-ai-for-smart-customer-engagement" target="_blank">Artificial intelligence (AI)</a> is arguably one of the most effective tools to combat fake news today. Leveraging deep-learning algorithms, AI solutions help organizations efficiently rate content for authenticity and determine accuracy. These AI-based platforms also continuously analyze and learn to recognize certain patterns and words through automated cognitive intelligence, making the moderation process quicker and smarter each time. </p> <p>With a deep understanding of these far-reaching benefits, Sutherland introduced a <a rel="noopener noreferrer" href="https://www.sutherlandglobal.com/offerings/content-moderation" target="_blank">Content Moderation solution</a> to vet and filter out contentious, harmful, and inappropriate content, thus creating a safe and trustworthy online environment for organizations and their communities.</p> <p>While content moderation’s future is AI-defined, it is important to strike a balance between human and machine. As such, organizations must deploy a combination of human and AI content moderation capabilities. Agents leverage empathy and situational thinking, while AI safely, accurately, and effectively vets high volumes of multimedia content. Together, they create experiences engineered for the future.</p> <p><strong>Accurate Information, Better Experiences</strong></p> <p>Through this combination of human and AI, organizations stagnate the spread of misinformation and focus on what matters – creating valuable content and a quality customer experience. Content moderation empowers both brands and users alike, leading to accurate representation and informed decisions.</p> <p>To learn more about how AI enables your organization to effectively moderate content across various channels, <a rel="noopener noreferrer" href="https://www.sutherlandglobal.com/contact-us" target="_blank">get in touch</a> with our experts today.</p> <p><a rel="noopener noreferrer" href="https://www.sutherlandglobal.com/offerings/content-moderation" target="_blank"><img alt="" style="width: 100%;" loading="lazy" class="lazy" data-src="https://sutherlandglobal.azureedge.net/-/media/sutherland/images/blog-images/ai-for-good/ai-defender-cta-052120_v1_blog-banner.png?rev=fa1bb0fb-7261-4f82-87c8-44ca36df8529&hash=D785107DE9BDBE66371457E391858D3C" /></a></p> <style type="text/css"> .article-insight-hero-banner.article-banner.pickgradient { background-position: top; } </style>Wed, 28 Jun 2023 01:53:03 -0700{37342F4F-CEFE-4048-ABD7-E3CC60387C9E}https://www.sutherlandglobal.com/Insights/Banking-and-Financial-Services/how-ai-revolutionizes-business-intelligenceHow AI Revolutionizes Business Intelligence<p>The objective of a revolution is a better construct, a new norm, or a complete change. A revolution transforms outdated into optimal.  </p> <p>The business intelligence revolution currently underway places today’s organizations at the precipice of a fundamental shift—a change in the way they understand their business. The leader of the coup? Artificial intelligence (AI).</p> <p>AI is upheaving the way businesses garner insights and utilize data by embedding prescriptive and predictive analytics within traditional business intelligence (BI) tools. </p> <p>Alone, BI is a set of tools and solutions designed to analyze and describe past and current performance. Business leaders use BI’s data visualization and analytical capabilities to understand “what was” and “what is.” These insights inform future actions based on a view of the current business context.</p> <p>AI only <a href="https://www.sutherlandglobal.com/insights/technology/behind-the-industry-shift-from-rpa-to-intelligent-automation-4-reasons-for-adoption" style="color: #0060ff;" target="new">improves access to this data</a>, empowering leaders to build an even more holistic picture of their organization. In that sense, AI proves the importance of BI tools for forward-thinking organizations. </p> <p>But a revolution is radical, complete, and fundamental. While AI has already begun to create change, the next wave of business intelligence software—imbued with machine learning and advanced analytics—will be nothing short of revolutionary. Let’s unpack the wave of change impacting business intelligence and explore where the revolution goes from here.</p> <p><strong>What Is Business Intelligence? </strong></p> <p>It’s now common knowledge that data <a href="https://www.sutherlandglobal.com/insights/technology/behind-the-industry-shift-from-rpa-to-intelligent-automation-4-reasons-for-adoption" style="color: #0060ff;">drives smarter decision-making and greater profitability</a>, but the value of big data was not realized overnight. In fact, modern BI platforms are largely responsible for the explosion in data usage throughout the enterprise. Broadly speaking, BI platforms, dashboards, and solutions enable quicker access and analysis of an organization’s data. These tools and methods are broken down into the following categories:</p> <ul style="margin-left: 30px;"> <li> <p style="margin: 0;"><strong>Business intelligence dashboards</strong> offer quick, easy-to-digest big data summaries.</p> </li> <li> <p style="margin: 0;"><strong>Visualization tools</strong> represent datasets in a variety of visual ways, including heat maps, charts, and scatter plots. Along with dashboards, visualization platforms are the most common BI tools.</p> </li> <li> <p style="margin: 0;"><strong>Reporting</strong> allows teams to automate manual tracking of various activities, including sales and delivery operations and marketing campaigns. Reporting is a core component of BI and may also be represented within a business intelligence dashboard. It is also the accessible summary of data intelligence that is used by business leaders to inform key decisions.</p> </li> <li> <p style="margin: 0;"><strong>Data mining </strong>falls under the BI umbrella and involves collecting relevant information and insights. In fact, data mining actually results in business intelligence. That’s because the act of data mining culminates the information used to draw business insights.</p> </li> <li> <p style="margin: 0;"><strong>Extract-transfer-load (ETL) tools</strong> extract raw data from one or more sources, transform it, prepare it for reporting and analysis, and store it in a data lake or data warehouse.</p> </li> <li> <p><strong>Online analytical processing</strong> <strong>(OLAP) </strong>is the technology behind many BI applications and is an approach to data analysis that allows users to analyze data from multiple perspectives.</p> </li> </ul> <p>Ultimately, BI’s value proposition is its ability to democratize data usage and provide data insights to non-technical employees and managers—and to do so quickly and at scale. <a href="https://www.tableau.com/learn/articles/business-intelligence-examples" style="color: #0060ff;" target="new">Chipotle</a>, for example, used the BI tool, Tableau, to consolidate disparate store data sources and obtain a unified view of their various restaurants. With easy access to data, decision-makers accelerated reporting on key projects from quarterly to monthly, gaining a more up-to-date business case for Chipotle leaders to make strategic business decisions.</p> <p><strong>The AI Revolution in Business Intelligence</strong></p> <p>While the business intelligence systems described above are useful in tracking a company’s success over time and creating a data-driven business, their value is inherently limited by their descriptive nature and reliance on an employee’s ability to ask the right questions. Sales managers and other business users can, for example, easily analyze whether their customer acquisition strategy is working but lack insight into “why?”, “how?”, and “what’s next?”. AI helps answer these higher-level questions. And by integrating BI, business analytics, and artificial intelligence into one seamless, self-service BI platform, a true business intelligence revolution occurs.</p> <p>In fact, just as BI software democratized access to business data, AI-driven business intelligence democratizes access to machine learning-powered predictive and prescriptive analytics. These algorithms drive enormous value; however, with <a rel="noopener noreferrer" href="https://www.itpro.co.uk/careers/28929/data-scientist-jobs-where-does-the-big-data-talent-gap-lie" style="color: #0060ff;" target="_blank">data scientists in short supply</a>, it’s costly and difficult to build models from scratch. That’s where modern BI systems come in to help guide users on their data queries.</p> <p>Predictive analytics accomplishes this by crunching enormous amounts of data to identify trends, relationships, and other insights a human never could due to the sheer volume of required steps. Predictive analytics models learn from historical data sets to then predict future outcomes. These models are based on past data as well as the relationship between data points, which machine learning helps identify. In manufacturing, for example, algorithms analyze machine usage, factory temperature, past failure rates, and a wealth of other information <a rel="noopener noreferrer" href="https://www.sutherlandglobal.com/insights/banking-and-financial-services/how-to-leverage-ai-for-smart-customer-engagement" style="color: #0060ff;" target="_blank">to identify components at risk of imminent failure</a>. One study found that such an approach could theoretically save <a rel="noopener noreferrer" href="https://www.mckinsey.com/~/media/mckinsey/featured%20insights/artificial%20intelligence/notes%20from%20the%20ai%20frontier%20applications%20and%20value%20of%20deep%20learning/notes-from-the-ai-frontier-insights-from-hundreds-of-use-cases-discussion-paper.ashx" style="color: #0060ff;" target="_blank">between one and two percent</a> of the value of an organization’s total sales. This type of predictive analytics applies to <a rel="noopener noreferrer" href="https://www.sutherlandglobal.com/insights/banking-and-financial-services/how-to-leverage-ai-for-smart-customer-engagement" style="color: #0060ff;" target="_blank">a wide range of use cases</a>, from inventory and sales predictions to customer churn and even Netflix recommendations.</p> <p>While related to predictive analytics, prescriptive analytics specifically focuses on actionable recommendations. This type of analytics engine utilizes machine learning algorithms to examine vast amounts of structured and unstructured data and then run “if, then” scenarios to prescribe the optimal course of action.</p> <p>Prescriptive analytics has a variety of use cases in the real world, from product pricing to business processes improvement. <a href="https://www.sutherlandglobal.com/our-work/greater-productivity-through-digital-transformation" style="color: #0060ff;">Sutherland, for example, worked with one insurance company</a> to transform its claims process through a holistic analysis of current operations. The Sutherland analytics engine learned from unstructured data—in the form of customer and agent feedback as well as demographic data—to find process inefficiencies and quickly deliver prescriptive solutions to various pain points.</p> <p>Put together, prescriptive and predictive analytics take business intelligence a step further, moving beyond the purely descriptive usage of traditional BI platforms. That’s why the application of AI to BI is considered a wholesale change, not just a minor improvement.</p> <p><strong>AI + BI = A True Competitive Advantage</strong></p> <p>Ultimately, the BI revolution puts machine learning models in the hands of everyday employees, arming them with data-driven insights that improve productivity and profitability. From descriptive analytics and reporting capabilities to actionable recommendations and data-driven forecasting, AI-driven business intelligence is one way organizations overcome a shortage in data scientists, make the most of the data they collect, and seize a competitive advantage.</p> <p>To learn more about Sutherland business intelligence solutions and the application of AI-driven analytics, <a rel="noopener noreferrer" href="https://www.sutherlandglobal.com/contact-us" style="color: #0060ff;" target="_blank">get in touch</a> today.</p> <p><a rel="noopener noreferrer" href="https://www.sutherlandglobal.com/transformation/sutherland-labs/analytics-and-ai" target="_blank"><img alt="How AI Revolutionizes Business Intelligence" style="width: 100%;" loading="lazy" class="lazy" data-src="https://sutherlandglobal.azureedge.net/-/media/sutherland/images/blog-images/how-ai-revolutionizes-business-intelligence/13-blog-banner-aiandbi.jpg?rev=f10236d4-fb13-43c7-8177-5b60a4bde43e&hash=AB6F125A68A9117CF9861E33A12C984D" /></a></p> <style type="text/css"> .article-insight-hero-banner.article-banner.pickgradient { background-position: top; } </style>Wed, 28 Jun 2023 01:04:55 -0700{D6C64032-2793-4464-B205-F8EA0C99E1B1}https://www.sutherlandglobal.com/Insights/Banking-and-Financial-Services/transforming-customer-experience-for-global-remittance-serviceTransforming the Customer Experience for a Global Remittance Service<div style="text-align:center;"> <p style="width: 100%; text-align: center; font-weight: bold;">Challenge</p> <h2><strong>Facilitating Further Growth Without Business Service Disruption</strong></h2> <p>Growing over 40% per year, our client was truly global, with international money transfers to over 170 countries, in 75 currencies from 21 sending countries.</p> <p>As their customers needed to receive remittances in matter of hours globally, customer service was the difference between growth and stagnation.</p> <p>But, with little customer insights, a lack of personalization, and limited channel strategy, further growth had a complex and costly task. Our client faced high remittance timelines and struggled to scale to a fully global presence – especially in India and Latin America.</p> <p>They needed a way to overhaul their back-office operations. Not only to redesign existing processes for efficiency while reducing the total cost of ownership, but to introduce the 360-degree visibility needed to enhance the customer experience.</p> <p> </p> <p style="width: 100%; text-align: center; font-weight: bold;">Outcome</p> <h2><strong>Collaborating to Deliver Seamless User Experiences</strong></h2> <p>In a joint Sutherland Labs Design thinking workshop, we created a robust future-state operating design.</p> <p>A hub and spoke model with micro hubs in Colombia, Egypt, and India was set up to serve the client’s growth markets alongside a true omni-channel solution, harmonizing customer interactions without additional capital expenditure.</p> <p>A 360-degree customer journey map was introduced, integrating Speech Analytics and Conversational AI.</p> <p>We mapped customer experiences across the app usage. This streamlined interactions, reduced remittance times, and increased self-service rates, enabling an enhanced user experience.</p> <p> </p> <p>All were delivered with no business service disruption.</p> </div> <style type="text/css"> .detail-layout .container .heading{ width: 100%; } .article-content p, .article-content ul, .article-content ol { text-align: left; } .hero-case-study-content .banner-heading h3 { font-size: 30px; } .case-study-banner { background-position: top; } .insights { display: none; } </style>Thu, 22 Jun 2023 06:47:20 -0700