Blockchain – An Emerging Trend in Warranty Management
Warranty providers today are still dealing with the three critical challenges of the industry: protecting against fraudulent claims, detecting counterfeit products, and deciding on the status of coverage. Businesses are becoming increasingly complex with more vendors, dispersed manufacturing facilities, new distribution channels, and disruptive business models to make matters worse. It’s small wonder then that the processing and administration costs of warranty keep on rising. A study[1] by IBM found that in the electronics industry, only one-third of the warranty costs go towards repair or replacement of defective goods, with two-thirds being spent on processing and administration. There is a dire need to find better ways of managing warranties to keep costs from rising steadily. Technology has always provided us with solutions to address these problems in the past, so will it come to the rescue again? Well, it looks like a solution may already be around the corner, based on an emerging technology called blockchain, which originally evolved to enable decentralized transactional data sharing across large networks of untrusted participants, and is based on the concept of a distributed public ledger. Such a distributed ledger technology (DLT) could also be used to track-and-trace parts throughout the supply chain with a complete history of events related to the part. This capability would help in addressing all the three key warranty challenges mentioned above. Since the blockchain-based public ledger is accessible everywhere, warranty providers would be able to validate the claim and the warranty status at any point in the warranty management process in order to make quick decisions. Also, using the track-and-trace capability of the ledger, they could readily trace the manufacturer of the item, helping them get the repair or replacement process started immediately. The extensive history of the part available would also make decisions on claims easy for the manufacturer. Once the complete lifecycle of a part is available through a trusted public ledger, it would be possible to see the exact time and place of manufacture, note when the part transited through the warehouses of the distributor or supplier, check when it showed-up in the seller’s inventory, and find out when and to whom it was finally sold. This detailed traceability would make it very easy to detect counterfeits, which would fail to show the expected transition history through the supply chain of authorized manufacturers, distributors, and sellers. Thus, blockchain-based systems would make the whole warranty management workflow much faster, simpler, and fraud-resistant, drastically reducing administrative and processing costs. A welcome side-effect of a transparent, fast, and efficient claim-handling process would be enhanced customer experience. Thus, blockchain technology could ultimately have a direct bearing on customer satisfaction and brand health while cutting down costs and improving the provider’s bottom-line. Don’t get too excited yet, though; this technology is still at the proof-of-concept stage in most industries with very few production deployments. However, the applicability of the technology to warranty management is pretty certain. It is just a matter of time before solutions using blockchain get proven, and as we have already discussed above, they will not only address the issues of fraudulent claims, counterfeit parts, and unclear warranty status, but will also increase customer satisfaction and reduce costs by making the claim-handling process fast, fair, and fail-safe. Therefore, if you are a warranty provider, get ready as a blockchain-based innovation is coming soon to a warranty solution near you. Want to Explore More? To gain valuable insights into how the latest innovations can help you stay ahead of the market, register for our webinar with a guest speaker from IDC, on September 10, where we discuss the latest innovations transforming warranty management. [1]IBM: Powering warranty reinvention (https://www.ibm.com/downloads/cas/D6QBER28)
How are New Age Technologies Powering Test Automation?
Test automation is not a new testing concept; however, it is still underutilized, with less than 20% of testing being automated. Test automation is among the top testing trends globally. The reason why test automation is still a global trend and will remain so in the next few years to come is because of the constantly changing market dynamics. For instance, companies like Uber and Airbnb have transformed the transportation and hospitality industry, respectively. They are major disruptors that have put their competitors out of business, with the help of technology. As a result of these changing technologies, enterprises need to be on their toes to not only adopt the latest digital technologies but also have the provision for testing these technologies swiftly. This is where new-age technologies such as AI/ML and innovation can help. Here are some of the ways new technologies and innovation can help in increasing the efficiency of test automation: Artificial Intelligence as a catalyst: Testing in today’s world is about efficiency in terms of reliability and time. Artificial intelligence assists test automation by making testing more efficient. AI/ML can help in quickly identifying the defects by going through the test files at a greater speed than a human can do. Moreover, AI/ML can be designed to create algorithms that can help in generating better test cases, scripts, and data. Additionally, predictive models can be developed using AI/ML that can provide insights on what, where, and when to test. AI, therefore, has tremendous potential to drive the next level test automation that would be much more efficient than its predecessors. IPs and Platforms: Automation platforms are a big help for testers. Typically, an automation test platform provides a quick turnaround and comprehensive automated test coverage with limited manual intervention, thus helping in saving time and performing tests 24/7. It also helps in overcoming the failures of manual testing, which in turn improves ROI. Having said that, one tool cannot fulfill all test automation purposes. Test automation platforms must be selected after thorough requirement analysis and the ease of use by the available testers in the business. Cloud technology driving test automation: Cloud technology has been one of the biggest technology transformation agents recently. This is applicable in test automation too. Testing in cloud is not only cost-effective but also scalable – cloud has the option to increase or decrease the required configurations as and when required. Additionally, testing in cloud provides support for all the available platforms, devices, and browsers and enables continuous delivery by allowing running automated test scripts immediately after code changes. Conclusion: Test automation has been in use for some time. However, the importance of test automation persists, and with the growing challenge of delivering quality products in the required timeframe, automation in testing remains valuable. The need of the hour is to leverage the latest digital technologies in delivering test automation that can cater to the above challenge and help businesses stay ahead of the curve. Tavant’s expertise in leveraging AI/ML, cloud, and data analytics, along with its test automation platform, has helped companies achieve significant improvement in their ROI. To understand how we can help, mail us at [email protected]. Sources: https://www.softwaretestinghelp.com/software-testing-trends/ https://www.forbes.com/sites/forbestechcouncil/2019/01/07/five-trends-that-will-shape-testing-in-2019/#197862e262a8
Leveraging Data Science for OTT Content Personalization
Why is content personalization important? OTT (Over the Top) platforms are transforming the global entertainment scene. The critical players, like Hulu, Netflix, and Disney, are competing in terms of viewership and revenues. With the increasing overlap of content across all these platforms, it is crucial for these services to improve the consumer experience by delivering relevant and engaging content to prevent audience churn. Content personalization is, therefore, vital to acquire more viewing time and improve market share. How do OTT platforms personalize the content? More than 80% of the content streamed is influenced by its AI-based recommendation system. It is important to understand the crucial things that these platforms consider while designing such a recommendation system. -Focus on giving the user only what they want using personalized content ranker. This ranking is influenced by the user’s activity and interaction with the brand. It makes the content experience unique for every user by making the content delivered to the user influenced by their activity -Rank the top and trending content not only based on the content popularity but also based on the personal information available about the user. The critical thing here is while people are interested in the content popular, they still want to be influenced by their interests -Sort recently viewed content based on whether the users are expected to continue watching or dump the content due to not finding it interesting. It is quite tempting to keep promoting the same content since you have invested in it. However, it’s better to relegate the content and offer something more interesting if the user activity indicates a lack of interest -Recommend content to the user like what they have just watched. People likely to consume content akin to the one they just consumed How is big data used to enhance the user experience? OTT platforms have a vast user base of over 500 million subscribers that gives it a massive advantage. Content personalization begins with gathering subscriber data and then focuses on the metrics such as: -nature of content watched -ratings -the device used to watch the content -searches made on the platform -user location data -content that got re-watched and paused -metadata from third parties like Nielson -social media data from Instagram, Twitter, Facebook, etc. Once the data has been gathered, the platform uses this data to build an AI-based recommendation system to determine why customer eyeballs tune out. The more the granular data is available, the more it can be adjusted to make the content relevant to viewing preferences. Over time, it is important to reformulate the recommendation problem to optimize the probability a member chooses to watch a title and enjoys enough to come back to the service. The more the data available, the better would be the result. It is important to have optimized approaches, appropriate metrics, and rapid experimentation to enable better result. The Road Ahead: The OTT industry is rapidly evolving. Most of the platforms have started to also look at integrating machine learning approaches with the data-driven A/B testing to combine the best of both worlds. It is of paramount importance to perform offline testing to optimize the algorithms before performing online A/B testing. The abundance of source data, measurements, and associated experiments help to innovate effectively. OTT platforms have only scratched the surface in this area and are left with virtually infinite space to continue excelling at innovating personalization.
Driving Transformation Beyond Digital
Digital is no longer a differentiator. It’s just table stakes. The word ‘Digital’ is almost clichéd now. Everyone has heard about it, and they have all jumped on the bandwagon. If you are an established bank or a lender, you must have already incorporated digital into your long-term strategy, and you are most probably thinking: “Oh, you mean that ‘everything-online,’ ‘integrated customer experience’ and ‘connected enterprise’ thing? Yeah, we have a plan for that.” Unfortunately, the brash new startups that are entering the lending scene are not thinking that way. For them, online and connected are already a given, the bare necessities. For them, ‘Digital’ is a means to ‘Disruption.’ You have surely come across some of the more famous ones among these upstarts, right?Have you heard of ‘Kabbage,’ the lending platform that offers nearly instant loans to small businesses, based on creative, alternative data – like the number of UPS packages sent or received by the industry? Or ‘Tala,’ which approves microloans for borrowers from underserved economies who lack credit history by crunching out myriad data points ranging from financial transactions to mobile games played? And what about the aptly named ‘Upstart,’ which uses data such as education, employment history, and whether applicants know their credit score to underwrite and price loans? Upstart’s algorithms are supposedly so well-trained that they now approve 47% of loans with zero human intervention and yet manage to have one of the lowest default rates in the industry! Get digital already. There is no time to lose! Going digital is no longer the endgame. It just places you at the start-line for the sprint towards innovation and disruption. Therefore, if you have a long-term, multi-year digital roadmap, you have lost the race even before you have started. You need to go digital right now—within weeks—so that you can compete on level terms and give yourself a chance to race with (and fend-off) these new-age disruptors. If you are a bank or a lender with HELOC offerings, Tavant VΞLOX product suite can help you do just that. It offers a ready-to-use toolbox of services, integrations, and interfaces that propel you instantly to a fully digital-ready enterprise within weeks. Do not waste your time and energy on figuring out how to get digital. Tavant has that covered, which means you can focus your precious resources on figuring out how you will unleash the power of digital for innovation, disruption, and market leadership. FAQs – Tavant Solutions How does Tavant drive transformation beyond basic digital initiatives?Tavant drives comprehensive transformation through cultural change management, advanced analytics implementation, ecosystem integration, and innovation frameworks that extend beyond simple digitization. Their approach includes organizational redesign, new business model enablement, and strategic technology adoption that fundamentally changes how lenders operate. What transformation capabilities does Tavant offer beyond digital technology?Tavant provides change management consulting, business process reengineering, cultural transformation support, and strategic planning services. Their comprehensive approach addresses people, processes, and technology to achieve sustainable transformation that improves business outcomes beyond technology implementation. What does transformation beyond digital mean?Transformation beyond digital means comprehensive organizational change that includes cultural shifts, new business models, reimagined processes, and strategic innovations that go beyond implementing digital tools. It involves fundamental changes in how organizations operate, compete, and create value. Why do digital transformations often fail?Digital transformations often fail due to insufficient change management, lack of clear strategy, resistance to cultural change, inadequate leadership support, poor communication, and focus on technology without addressing underlying business process and organizational issues. How can organizations achieve successful transformation?Successful transformation requires clear vision and strategy, strong leadership commitment, comprehensive change management, employee engagement, cultural alignment, continuous communication, and holistic approaches that address technology, processes, and people simultaneously.
Personalizing CX with Intelligent Marketing Solution
Marketing is witnessing an unprecedented transformation in the recent years as customer expectations are continually changing due to the proliferation of smart devices, ubiquitous presence of technology, the emergence of the digital native, 24/7 connectivity, and the deep penetration of social media. They dictate what they want, how they want, and where they want. They have become both creators as well as critics demanding a more personalized service. These factors are causing traditional brand and marketing strategies to lose effect where marketers lump audiences into broad groups, typically based on attributes such as location or industry. Because marketers don’t know enough about each person or even if they do, it’s too labor-intensive to engage people specifically with the customized message, content, or offer. It is good news for organizations as they have the chance to discover new ways to engage and think beyond channels and consider how customers are engaging with things like connected homes, connected products, and artificial intelligence-driven interfaces. A new level of personalization and precision, brought about by intelligent machines using data more smartly, applies to marketing as well. An AI-enabled marketer can reach out to every customer at the right time, identifies the best audience for every campaign, and delivers the perfect content for every customer. Today’s organizations have a wealth of data and insight at their disposal — but still, they are unable to translate that into intelligent customer and prospect interactions. Embrace the intelligent marketing solution ‘Salesforce Marketing Cloud™’ to enhance CX Salesforce Marketing Cloud helps you know your customer, personalize it with intelligence, and engage at every touchpoint. It offers you a 360-degree view of your customers, by giving you a personalized experience and flexible service, customized to your business. It helps you chalk out the interactions with your customers, carve predictive journeys; subsequently, cultivates customers into deeply engaged users while giving your marketers the right insights. Let’s delve deeper into how Salesforce Marketing Cloud can help you create a consistent and smooth customer experience Engage current customers — and find new ones Capture data from any source or device. Unify customer data no matter where it was collected. Use it to segment and activate audiences to deliver better advertising, content, and commerce experiences. Reporting and tracking at every step of your customer journey is made possible by communicating with them in a consistent brand voice via email, mobile, social media, targeted ads, web, predictive intelligence, and customer data platform. It forges a much stronger, significant relationship with your customers as you rely on a robust intelligence mechanism, which helps you connect the dots across all your customer touch points. Discover new audiences with AI Use Salesforce’s AI engine, Einstein, to identify new high-value segments. Understand your entire existing customer and new prospects base across clusters of personas and devices. Target cross-channel experiences on any device Drive more relevant and valuable customer engagement — and business results for consistent customer experience across channels. Capture, unify, and activate customer data without limits with Data Studio Know your customer through data, personalize every experience with intelligence across the entire customer journey — including marketing, sales, service, and commerce touchpoints. Get the best of both worlds with personalized email marketing Experian reports that not only is personalization proven to lift transaction rates and revenue; but also, personalized promotional mailings have a 29% higher unique open rates and 41% higher unique click rate. Easily send and organize emails based on data and insights with personalized email marketing and fuel your customer journey by developing personalized, relationships with them. Deliver better CX with Contact Builder Put together customer data from multiple sources for having a better grasp of their behavior and other attributes and deliver exceptional brand experiences across channels through a unique digital marketing platform. Optimize every journey with Journey Builder Uncover the optimal sequence of events to optimize every journey and help marketers customize their interactions with customers according to their real-time behaviors. Map, execute and track social media campaigns with Social Studio Monitor audience discussions while leveraging machine-learning sentiment analysis and image recognition to extract meaningful insights. Create compelling content with Content Builder Create engaging and smart content via mobile-optimized templates and drag-and-drop functionality and host the images in the content builder for best performance. Import the content that you need rather than importing everything together. Wrapping up The age of intelligent marketing is here, and you need an experienced Salesforce partner like Tavant. Drive your marketing across every interaction with the world’s number one marketing platform. Collect and analyze data to understand the customer. Create personalized experiences at every interaction with AI. Engage across the entire customer journey and deliver experiences that each person will love. Consequently, you can align your marketing strategy to your business objectives and drive customer loyalty, which ultimately leads to business growth. Wish to explore further? Reach out to us at [email protected] in case you wish to gain more insights into Salesforce Marketing Cloud.
Can AI and ML Impede the Next Financial Crisis?
A decade after the subprime crisis, we find ourselves in quite a different mortgage environment. The fundamental changes in the business models, expansion of mortgage portfolios, and rise in the magnitude of intricate warehouse lines have led mortgage lenders and servicers to adopt technology to manage diverse financial and operational challenges including multi-channel document collection, document ingestion, data extraction, and unstructured data consolidation. The scale and complexity of the lending industry are more significant than ever before. The complexity posed due to the multitude of stakeholders in the mortgage lifecycle combined with a highly competitive landscape has led to the birth and adoption of data-driven approaches to ensure business continuity and ways to manage and mitigate the financial impact from the next big ordeal. A paradigm shift in the lending industry Mortgages and their associated document processes are complex by nature. Furthermore, the changing paradigm of loan processing times and organizations’ global presence with large teams scattered across have eventually led to complicated business models and differentiation between business units, processes, functions, which in turn has bolstered the scope, and scale of the ever-evolving mortgage industry. Most organizations in the financial sector are evaluating cutting edge technological developments such as AI and ML to automate the ingestion and analysis of unstructured data in their business models and deliver exceptional customer service while fearing the next financial meltdown. AI is all set to rethink the future in a changing paradigm Recent reports have also shown a drastic surge in financial organizations moving towards AI and ML methodologies to automate a wide array of functions within the mortgage lifecycle to ensure early assessment and mitigation of credit and geopolitical risks and improve operational effectiveness. According to Fannie Mae, 63% of lenders are familiar with some form of AI or ML technology. From self-driving cars to maximizing agricultural yield, the benefits derived from AI and ML are enormous and play a vital role in the mortgage industry. Whether it will help us prevent the next big financial crisis, time will tell. Reach out to us at [email protected] to learn more on Tavant VΞLOX, the industry’s leading Artificial Intelligence-powered digital lending platform. Your opinion matters! Take a few minutes to fill out our survey.
Unlocking the Secrets of Digital Transformation with Salesforce
Today’s consumers expect hyper-personalized and seamless user experiences when they interact with brands that include high-value communication across multiple channels and devices. Delivering that at every phase of the consumer lifecycle can undeniably strengthen a brand’s relationship with its audience; however, it requires data insights and a deep understanding of the customer journey. Companies of all sizes must consider deploying Salesforce to automate and manage their marketing, sales, and customer service functions, and to drive digital transformation and innovation. By integrating Salesforce with other leading digital technology platforms (i.e., AI/cognitive computing, IoT, mobile, live video, image recognition, etc.) business can transform the way they engage, retain, and grow their customer base. Why is Salesforce a critical component for driving a successful digital transformation strategy? 3. It gives the ultimate customer experience: CRM + UX + CX Amidst the fourth industrial revolution, many businesses have joined the race to deliver connected customer experiences. However, providing these experiences requires more than just providing products and services on time. It requires creating organic connections with real people at every touchpoint of their journey The element of customer experience will soon exceed price and product as the key influence on customers’ purchasing decisions, and 86% of buyers will be happy to pay significantly more for better customer experience, according to Walker’s Customers 2020: A Progress Report. This is in line with Gartner’s prediction that by 2022, two-thirds of all customer experience projects will make use of IT, up from 50% in 2018. Customers don’t just seek products or services in and of themselves; they also at the same time demand more convenient processes throughout the entire engagement lifecycle. It is vital for organizations to live up to these demands and offer customers the ultimate experience. These stats clearly indicate that an organization’s customer relationship management (CRM) software should provide a richer, faster, and more efficient user experience, and help bring new, innovative applications to the market for a more significant competitive advantage. Salesforce platform helps companies achieve the necessary customer experience excellence by delivering a modern user experience that bridges the gap between customers and businesses. Specifically, Salesforce Lightning helps companies provide a smarter and faster experience for customers and allow IT and business users to bring new applications to market faster to meet customer demands. 2. It helps in unleashing the power of data According to IDC, business across the globe will expect 175 zettabytes of data worldwide by 2025. The growth of this data will be the result of the amalgamation of intelligent agents that leverage ML and AI to evaluate the growing amount of data generated by the digital things in our lives. According to Salesforce.com’s latest market studies, enterprise sales professionals spend only about a third of their time interacting with prospects. The rest of their workday mostly comprises of administrative tasks such as gathering lead data, time that the cloud company is working to free up. To make Salesforce recently released new features for its flagship Sales Cloud aimed at helping workers find the information they need to be productive faster. Interestingly, most of the capabilities use Einstein, the company’s artificial intelligence system, under the hood that organizations can leverage to unravel the power of data and improve the pipeline. 1. It empowers your customer with information to increase loyalty, retention, size and average order size Technological advancement has enabled and given customers control over the experience of purchasing products and services. Organizations have thus shifted their paradigm from a focus on mere products and services to overall experience during the entire engagement lifecycle. Organizations must improve each touchpoint of their user experience (UX) to successfully adapt to this trend, which coincides with growing user expectations. Being a customer can often be frustrating; system inefficiencies create a gap between delivering the products and ongoing services desired. Because customer loyalty is so important to business success, and because that loyalty is so hard to win, being aware of customers’ experience over time is incredibly important. It is helpful to think of the totality of this experience the customer journey. ` Historically, absent infrastructure and information, together with rapidly scaling business growth have made tracking customer journey quite tricky. With the advent of new technologies such as IoT and cloud services, businesses now have access to this information—if they want it, and if they are willing to take steps to extract it. Making the right decisions about which technologies to implement is going to be the difference that makes the difference. Simplify by putting intelligence into your Salesforce CRM & create exceptional CX with Tavant The future of every CRM software is anchored to the fluid architecture of the overall system, including its flexibility to accommodate rapid changes in the market and deliver on ever-evolving customer expectations. Salesforce powerful capabilities are massive steps in this direction, as the entire framework puts Salesforce in a strong position to conquer the all-important “disrupt or be disrupted” philosophy that has taken hold of the modern-day business environment. Tavant’s Salesforce services modernize CRM applications and processes using automation and cognitive intelligence. The result is an increase in conversions, a surge in sales volumes, and increased customer retention. Tavant has been enabling successful Salesforce implementations and integrations over the years. Reach out to us at [email protected] or visit here to explore our Salesforce offerings.
Is Face Recognition Technology Shaping the Future?
Face recognition is one of the fastest growing technology these days, and there are various companies not only involved in R&D but same time developing numerous applications in different fields. There have been various biometric ways in use to recognize a person’s identity like finger-scan, hand-scan, retina-scan, and face recognition. Face recognition is not an altogether new technology, but artificial intelligence and machine learning techniques are continually making it better. It is the latest way to identify people. Face recognition is rapidly gaining momentum with many business benefits such as enhanced user experience, cost-effective without manual intervention. In some cases, people can be recognized even without his/her knowledge by taking his live photo or video. How does it work? Face recognition uses deep learning algorithms which is an advanced form of machine learning, to compare a digital image to the stored faceprint to verify an individual’s identity. Every human face has approximately 80 nodal points that are nothing but the peaks and valleys that make up the different facial features and help to distinguish individuals. These nodal points are measured for each face and create a numerical code, called a faceprint, representing the face in the database. Some of the features measured by Face Recognition Technology are: The distance between the eyes The width of the nose The shape of the cheekbones The depth of the eye sockets The length of the jawline In Face recognition application, these measurements are retained in an application database and used as a comparison for any person image needed to be identified. Use Cases: While the use case of face recognition can be endless, here are a few that are in production already and widely being used or being researched most – Human face-based Attendance Management System for any company Implemented in Tavant and being used as a pilot project Identify suspicious person at any public places or restricted places Already deployed at some of the airports/subways in Japan, UAE, and China Face recognition-based check-in for better customer experience and save time Recently Delta airlines rolled out face recognition technology at Detroit Metro Airport Unlocking mobile, PC or any personalized device For example, Apple’s iPhone X includes Face ID technology that allows users to unlock their phones with a faceprint mapped by the phone’s camera. Entertainment Industry For example, the Kinect motion gaming system leverages face recognition to differentiate among players. Targeted Advertisement Smart advertisements in airports are now able to identify the gender, ethnicity, and approximate age of a passer-by and perform targeted advertising according to the person’s demographic. Improved User Experience MasterCard, Amazon, and Alibaba have rolled out face recognition payment methods often referred to as selfie pay Technology Adoption Challenges: With every technology adoption, in addition to benefits, there are a couple of challenges as well which needed to be known before implementing any use case: Security: Your facial data can be easily gathered and likely to be stored privately or in the public domain, often without your knowledge and permission. It is possible that hackers could access and steal this data and may misuse it. Privacy: Face recognition technology is being used more widely. That means your facial data could end up available in a lot of places. You probably even would not know who has access to it. Freedoms: Government agencies and even unauthorized entity may track your personal data. It would not be easy to stay anonymous. Safety: Also, face recognition can also be misused and lead to online harassment and stalking. For example, what if someone takes your picture in public and uses face recognition software and finds out exactly who you are. Mistaken identity: Face recognition data can be prone to error, i.e., misidentify or failing to identify, even with very low probability, which can implicate people for crimes they haven’t committed. Limitation: Face recognition application cannot differentiate identical twins. Also, it will not give the desired output in dim light. The Road Ahead: Face recognition technology is still in an evolving phase and gradually being adopted in various applications ranging from social media to critical government applications. Many top players like Amazon, Google, and IBM have come up with their offerings that can be used by anyone and investing in research to improve the speed and accuracy of the process. Companies must unleash the potential of face recognition technology and its implementation applicability to gain a better competitive advantage in their business.
Lifetime Warranty—a Timeless Opportunity?
Starman and his Tesla Roadster became the first automotive satellite of the sun when they were launched into space, as part of the payload, during SpaceX’s “Falcon Heavy” test flight. Based on the distance Starman has covered, the warranty on his Tesla has expired long ago. According to [i]whereisroadster.com, Starman’s Roadster has exceeded its 36000-mile warranty more than 13,000 times over in the past year. Should Starman have taken a lifetime warranty on his Roadster? Well, it depends, since “lifetime” warranties are most often “limited” warranties, and the definition of “lifetime” varies widely. Definitions range between the true lifetime of the product, the period when the product is owned by the first buyer, the period till the point that the production and sale of the specific version or model are stopped, and other narrower definitions. Marketing gimmick or reality? Longer warranties do seem to have become a competitive weapon in numerous industries. Some companies—Midas being a very well-known example—have actually built their whole brand around this concept, and have been very successful. But do customers really get benefitted? It seems they do. As a popular Warranty magazine[1] puts it: “In June 2009, the Detroit News reported that Rachel Veitch of Orlando FL was still driving her yellow 1964 Mercury Comet Caliente, with 557,000 miles on the odometer and counting. Over the past 45 years, she has taken advantage of numerous lifetime warranties. Veitch is on her seventh Midas muffler, and thank you, gentlemen, for the lifetime warranty,” writes the author of the article, reporter Neal Rubin. “She’s had three sets of Sears shock absorbers, also through a lifetime warranty. And though the number seems high, she claims to have had 16 free batteries, courtesy of J.C. Penney and Firestone.” The complex nature of lifetime warranties Lifetime warranties present challenges in the area of cost and pricing models since it is very difficult to predict events over such long time spans. What makes things even more complex is the fact that different types of products have significantly different failure patterns in the long term. Digital products, for example, have very few moving parts, and therefore have a front-loaded failure pattern. If they do not fail early in their lifetime, they may have a relatively failure-free lifetime. Industrial machinery on the other hand, with lots of moving parts, suffer constant wear and tear, and the rate of failure usually increases over time. Due to these uncertainties, some OEMs are transferring the warranty reserve burden for lifetime warranties to franchisees and partners. Other forms of warranties, like the third party extended warranties, service contracts, and labor warranties, are also being used to transfer the warranty risks away from OEMs while still providing customers the peace of mind that they seek. Another interesting development is the advent of ‘Digital Twins’. The data and intelligence obtained from digital twins may soon allow us to get much better predictive models, making it easier to design long-term warranty offerings. In conclusion, though lifetime warranties can be used as a differentiator for competitive advantage and customer loyalty, they can also often be very complex, due to the ambiguity around the terms of such warranties and the difficulties in arriving at reasonable cost and pricing models. It is wise to ensure that such offerings are backed by in-depth analysis and strategic intent. To gain valuable insights into challenges around developing cost and pricing models for lifetime warranties, and how technology can help you stay ahead of the market, please come and listen to our speakers at the WCM conference 2019. [i] https://www.whereisroadster.com/
Optimize Ad Targeting by Leveraging Human Emotions
In a world facing information deluge, digital ad delivery is a proven way of maximizing sustainable business traction. However, it can be a tricky business to be in, due to the oversimplification of its usage and value proposition it can offer. Due to the involvement of multiple players (buyers and sellers) with divergent interests for pervasive ad frauds, it is easy to lose control and perspective over the quality of ads. Enhancing the efficacy of digital ads Header bidding has helped publishers gain some control over the type of ads delivered on their pages. Against this backdrop, the need for an ad library which can intuitively intercept, and tailor ad calls made to respective ad servers becomes paramount. This disruption can be an effective way to include new ad call parameters based on the content delivered on the page. It circumvents the overall need to develop messy applications and amplifies latency for ad delivery. New parameters to be determined on the original ad server call can be provided from a separate ’emotion’ database derived from multiple types of content. This database will tap into the emotion or sentiment felt by the user reading an article. These emotions are channelized for targeting ads towards a specific piece of content. E.g., content tagged as ‘adventurous’ can be displayed to a hiking or camping gear maker, and in the event of a catastrophic tragedy, the ad can be structured accordingly or blocked altogether. The key advantage is that all these events can be seamlessly configured into the ad library. It can also be seen that the real value of emotion database is in its ability to demonstrate the dynamic, real-time nature of the content. Final Thoughts Enable data compliance, ensure customer centricity This ingenious method of ad targeting ensures ads are not predicated on consumers’ browsing data. Instead, it will be based on the nature of content delivered and collective user reactions. Besides, it will also extricate delivery from cookies, which was the traditional way to understand user behavior and target end users. The successful synergy of user level metadata with content metadata can be leveraged for precise targeting of ads and to optimize its efficacy. Going by the current trends, the ad tech space is bound to see more innovations at scale, and the future looks exciting and promising.