Customer success AI agents: transforming dealer and partner support in European manufacturing
As aftermarket revenues surge, Europe’s manufacturers must rethink support, according to Roshan Pinto, SVP & Head of Manufacturing at Tavant. AI agents are emerging as always-on partners, transforming dealer service, consistency, and customer trust after the sale. Europe’s manufacturing industry growth increasingly depends on what happens after the sale. Service and aftermarket revenues are rising faster than new equipment sales, and leading industrial players now generate one-third or more of total income from aftermarket services. For Europe’s vast service ecosystem from automotive to industrial equipment, this shift is structural: the vehicle fleet keeps getting older and complex equipment stays in service longer, expanding demand for timely, high-quality support. The opportunity is big; so is the operational strain on OEMs, suppliers, and dealer networks. Fragmented service systems and rising customer expectations are forcing OEMs to rethink their support strategies. It’s time to augment the frontline with Customer Success AI Agents: autonomous digital team members that understand context, act within enterprise systems, and learn continuously, so every dealer and partner interaction delivers consistency and builds trust. The dynamics shaping partner support today Aftermarket and dealer support operations across Europe and globally are navigating several converging dynamics: 1) Multiple systems, manual lookups Support teams often work across multiple platforms—CRM, ERP, warranty, and knowledge bases—to answer a single query. As volume increases, response times can lengthen, backlogs expand, and escalation costs rise. 2) Varied experiences across regions, languages, and channels A European dealer network spans languages, time zones, and tools. Manuals may exist in only one language, service advisories land late, and tone varies by region. Delivering consistency across channels requires multilingual, omnichannel capabilities. 3) Complex product lines; steep learning curves Ever-expanding SKUs and software-defined machines mean longer “time to competency” for staff, heavier reliance on scarce experts, and variability in fix rates—especially for first-line partners. Meet the customer success AI agents Imagine if every dealer and partner could access a tireless, always-on expert, one that understands the nuances of your products, speaks your partners’ languages, and never forgets a detail. That’s the promise of the Customer Success AI Agent. Learn more Manufacturers deploy agents that move beyond FAQs and manuals—learning from each interaction and adapting to product change. These agents are more than chatbots; they can: Distinguish emotions from transactional requests: Detect sentiment, adjust tone, and escalate when a relationship is at risk. Provide 24/7 multilingual support: Whether your dealer is in Lyon, Milan, or Warsaw, they receive consistent, expert assistance in their native language, at any hour. Leverage multi-agent collaboration: Advanced support leverages a team of specialized AI agents (for triage, troubleshooting, escalation, etc.) that work together seamlessly, ensuring every inquiry is handled by the best “virtual expert” for the job. Check out our monthly thought leadership webcast series showcasing how AI Agents are transforming manufacturing aftermarket operations. The technology behind customer success AI agents The capabilities behind these AI agents aren’t just raw computing power; it’s a stack of technologies purpose-built for manufacturing: Domain-tuned Large Language Models (LLMs): Unlike generic AI, these are fine-tuned on technical manuals, service histories, and even warranty data, so they understand not just language but the context of manufacturing and service. Deep system integration: AI agents can perform secure operations directly in your ERP or CRM, logging cases, checking inventory, or scheduling field service, without human intervention. Real-time analytics and anomaly detection: By scanning support tickets and IoT sensor data across your dealer network, AI agents surface emerging issues (e.g., a batch of faulty sensors in France) before they become costly recalls. Built-in compliance and knowledge management: With strict data protection standards like GDPR in play, today’s AI agents are designed with privacy, security, and auditability from the ground up. Benefits for OEMs, dealers and partners 1) Faster response and resolution – Automation clears queues, routes issues to the right expert, and resolves repetitive cases quickly and efficiently, giving service networks resilience as volumes and complexity grow. 2) Higher partner satisfaction & loyalty – Consistency across languages and channels builds trust. Faster time-to-answer and first-time-fix lift NPS. 3) ROI & continuous improvement – Service is now a growth engine, AI agents amplify that momentum by reducing cost-to-serve and creating a self-improving knowledge flywheel. Five AI agent capabilities powering customer success Leading solution providers bring these capabilities together through domain-trained, production-ready AI agents designed for manufacturing aftermarkets. Each capability directly contributes to stronger customer relationships and dealer success: 1. Early-Warning Insights Agent – detects emerging product issues by analyzing service and sensor data so OEMs can act before problems spread. 2. Knowledge Management Agent – summarises complex troubleshooting steps from manuals, videos, and historical cases, making expertise accessible to every partner. 3. Multilingual Support Agent – delivers consistent, high-quality guidance in German, French, Italian, and beyond, reducing errors and enhancing the dealer experience. 4. Ticket Triage & Technician Assist Agents – automate case prioritization and equip technicians with on-demand, step-by-step instructions, driving faster repairs and higher first-time fix rates. 5. Sentiment Monitoring Agent – spots and acts on signs of frustration or dissatisfaction before they escalate, protecting dealer relationships and loyalty. The new standard for European manufacturing support Europe’s aftermarket is expanding, and equipment is ageing, creating more opportunities to win or lose dealer loyalty. AI-powered solutions built with an agentic approach are purpose-built for this reality: domain-tuned, transaction-capable, multilingual, and compliance-ready, so your dealers and partners get fast, consistent, and trustworthy support. OEMs investing in Customer Success AI Agents today are setting a new standard—delivering faster, more consistent, and more empathetic service on scale. Those who act now will strengthen their dealer networks, reduce support costs, and unlock new revenue streams. The future of intelligent service is here—and it speaks your language. Ready to transform your aftermarket operations? Discover how Tavant’s Service Lifecycle Management solutions leverage agentic AI. Visit Tavant.com to learn more or request a demo. This article was originally published by Tavant on The Manufacturer.
AI pricing agents: optimising parts prices to maximize sales and market share
European manufacturers are adopting AI pricing agents to protect aftermarket margins, bringing real-time intelligence, discipline, and speed to parts pricing in an increasingly transparent digital market. Our partners at Tavant tell us more. European manufacturers are competing in a parts market that has quietly become digital-first. More enterprises now sell online, buyers compare prices in seconds, and discounting can slip out of control across thousands of SKUs. In 2023, almost one in four EU enterprises made online sales, evidence that the channel shift is pervasive even in traditional industries. At the same time, the aftermarket remains the earnings engine: across advanced industries, aftermarket EBIT margins average 25% versus 10% for new equipment, making pricing discipline in parts a board-level issue. Yet pricing at scale is hard. Large OEMs and distributors often make daily price decisions on hundreds of thousands of SKUs, with disparate ERPs and homegrown tools, creating leakage and latency. Add macro volatility and intensifying price transparency, and margin compression follows. The good news; done well, data-driven pricing routinely moves the needle. Bain’s longitudinal work suggests a one per cent improvement in realised price can lift operating profit by eight per cent, more leverage than similar gains in volume or cost. And deployments of AI-enabled pricing in the aftermarket have delivered two – six percentage points of margin uplift while preserving coherent price ladders and competitive guardrails. From pricing projects to AI pricing agents The pivot manufacturers are making is from episodic “pricing projects” to always-on pricing AI Agents that sense, decide, and act. Based on our Price.AI solution, these three AI Agent patterns consistently create outsized value: Competitor Price Scout Agent: Continuously collects, correlates, cleans, and image-maps competitor parts price data, then cross-references it with OEM part numbers and supersessions. The Scout flags anomalies (e.g., a dealer undercutting list by 12%) and feeds clean signals to pricing and e-commerce systems. Recommendation Agent: Generates context-specific price or offer suggestions in real time, for example, nudging the web store to present a targeted bundle discount for a price-sensitive segment, or advising the dealer to hold price where elasticity is low. Optimisation Agent: Continuously refines list, net, and promotional prices subject to guardrails (price ladders, competitive floors, and segment targets), using ML models that learn from demand, inventory, and competitive moves. These AI agents don’t replace people; they scale good pricing judgment. They monitor market signals, run what-if simulations, and propose changes with explanations (why the net price should move up/down, which features drove the recommendation), so commercial teams can approve with confidence and audit decisions later. Best-practice pricing platforms pair optimisation with explicit guardrails to keep recommendations aligned with strategy and compliance. What great looks like (and why it matters in Europe) Forward-leaning European manufacturers are building four foundations: Unified data fabric that blends historical sales, warranty/claims, and channel data with external price signals from dealers, marketplaces, and aggregators (think a “price harvester” that never sleeps). Demand and elasticity modeling that incorporates seasonality, product lifecycle, promotions, and, where available, IoT/telematics signals to forecast usage-driven parts consumption. Peer-reviewed studies show AI methods (ML/DL and hybrids) consistently improve forecasting accuracy over classical baselines in manufacturing supply chains. Real-time monitoring and alerts (a “price pulse”), so teams see threshold breaches as they happen rather than at month-end. Orchestrated workflows (pricing requests, approvals, exception handling) that mesh with CPQ/ERP, eliminating manual rekeying and cycle time, critical when an online buyer expects a price change to propagate instantly across web, dealer, and marketplace channels. The European context adds two imperatives. First, digital channels are mainstream: with nearly one in four EU enterprises selling online, price transparency is a given, your buyers will find the lowest price in seconds. Second, AI capability is scaling fast: 13.5% of EU enterprises (10+ employees) used AI in 2024, up from eight per cent in 2023. Early adopters will set the reference level for speed and precision in pricing. Designing agent-driven pricing that sales teams trust Trusted pricing is not just about algorithms; it’s about guardrails and governance: Guardrails: Maintain price ladders and competitive floors to keep relative positioning intact while agents optimize within bands, an approach mirrored in leading pricing toolkits. Explainability: Every recommendation should show the drivers, e.g., competitor index, inventory carry cost, lifecycle stage, mirroring the explanatory UI you’d expect in a pricing cockpit. Human-in-the-loop: Give sales visibility and override rights, but measure overrides. Track the magnitude of changes, the number of accepted/declined recommendations, and revenue impact by segment. Speed to value: Start with a high-leverage slice (e.g., top 10% SKUs by revenue and volatility). Well run digital pricing programs often show meaningful margin improvement within three to six months, if operating model and tech changes land together. A practical roadmap for manufacturers Baseline the leakage: Quantify list-to-net waterfall, quote-to-price latency, and promo ROI. Use the “power of 1%” to align leadership on the value at stake [3]. Stand up the Competitor Price Scout: Ingest dealer and marketplace prices; normalize via part numbers/supersessions; create an internal “competitive price index” for each SKU. Segment and simulate: Cluster customers/SKUs by sensitivity, then run what-if simulations to stress-test guardrails before you touch live prices. Activate the Recommendation Agent on one channel (e.g., web store), with clear A/B tests and approval thresholds. Scale to the Optimisation Agent across channels, automating routine moves while escalating edge cases to pricing managers. Embed in SLM: When pricing is integrated with service, warranty, and parts planning, you capture cross-functional benefits, better availability, fewer emergency shipments, and higher customer satisfaction. For reference architectures that connect these functions, see Tavant’s SLM and TMAP overviews. Where Tavant fits At Tavant, these AI agents are part of Price.AI solution within a broader Service Lifecycle Management offerings, spanning competitive price analysis, monitoring/alerts, what-if simulations, demand forecasting, and API-first integration, so pricing decisions flow across dealer portals, e-commerce, and ERP/CPQ without friction. If you’re exploring a pragmatic blueprint, the following resources outline how manufacturers operationalise this at scale. Conclusion In Europe’s increasingly transparent parts market, AI pricing agents turn pricing from an occasional project into a daily competitive muscle. They watch the market, anticipate demand, and recommend moves
How FinConnect is Transforming Financial Services through Efficient Partner Integrations?
Data and services have become indispensable in the financial services industry, driving customer experience, operational efficiency, and intelligent decision-making. As the need for digital transformation grows, smart data and partner integrations are redefining the relationship between borrowers and lenders. At the heart of the transformation, intelligent data integration is a revolutionizing internal process. At Tavant, we understand the importance of intelligent data integration solutions, and FinConnect is the answer to simplify your lending experiences with vendors and best-in-class customer experiences. Let’s delve into the current trends, challenges, and solutions of financial transformation driven by intelligent data integration in this thought leadership article. The Role of Intelligent Data IntegrationFinancial institutions are turning to intelligent data integration to streamline their operations and deliver better experiences for customers. Let’s see how Tavant has come up with the data integration solutions with FinConnect: Real-time Analytics and Predictive Insights – Connected platforms enable financial institutions to monitor transactions and customer behavior in real-time. This capability improves agility and responsiveness. By integrating data analytics, organizations can forecast market trends, optimize portfolio performance, and anticipate emerging risks, thus staying ahead of the curve. Automation of Repetitive Tasks – By leveraging artificial intelligence (AI), financial services can automate all the time-consuming tasks such as fraud detection, compliance checks, and risk assessment. FinConnect processes mortgage-related data for automatic routine operations which allows organizations to focus on higher-value tasks. Improved Data Accuracy and Operational Scalability – Intelligent systems clean and verify the data, reducing manual errors and ensuring high-quality information. It is crucial to maintain the integrity of financial services, designed to scale, handle, and adapt to changing demands without compromising performance. Enhancing Customer Experience with Intelligent Data Let us understand how to enhance the customer experience using intelligent data and how FinConnect is using data integration solutions: Personalized Loan Options and Faster Approvals – Lenders can access customized loan products through connected data platforms. These platforms offer products tailored to the unique financial situations of borrowers. Traditional and non-traditional data sources (such as utility payments and rental history) provide lenders with creditworthiness. Enhanced Transparency and Seamless User Experience – Transparency and clear communication are what borrowers expect today throughout the lending process. You get real-time updates in the connected data platforms. Platforms like FinConnect eliminate paper documentation, automate document submissions, and provide intuitive interfaces, improving the user experience. Building Long-Term Relationships with the Vendors – Tavant views its vendor relationships as long-term partnerships rather than transactional collaborations, fostering mutual trust, improving communication, and enhancing the overall quality of service delivered to financial institutions. In turn, this long-term approach allows Tavant to continuously improve its offerings suitable for changing market conditions and customer demands. How does FinConnect Serving Data Integration Solutions? Tavant is shaping the financial transformation with the invention of platforms like FinConnect. Let’s understand some of the aspects of how it enhances the lending experience for lenders and borrowers: The Power of API Integrations in Modern Lending Application Programming Interfaces (API) create a connecting bridge between diverse systems and stakeholders. FinConnect integrates with more than 100 partners and vendors through APIs, acting as a one-stop solution for all things mortgages. FinConnect streamlines the data exchange systems driven by APIs. It facilitates faster underwriting, improves risk assessments, and enhances fraud detection. The product not only connects financial institutions to third-party services like credit scoring, compliance checks, and data verification, ensuring a smooth digital transformation. Let’s understand the ecology of FinConnect in the following diagram: Plug-and-Play Financial Services: Simplifying Lending Solution with FinConnect The introduction of “plug-and-play” is transforming the arena of financial services. It is a game changer for both borrowers and lenders. With platforms like FinConnect, you don’t need any technical overhauls to integrate new services, vendors, and data sources. This flexibility of the platform reduces inefficiencies and allows organizations to meet market demands quickly. Borrowers can enjoy faster access to credit by seamlessly utilizing the plug-and-play system. It is more transparent which increases operational efficiency and reduces the time-to-time market for new products and services. On-demand Data: Streamlining Lending Processes The availability of on-demand data from both sources and third-party vendors is beneficial for lenders as they get access to more accurate, creditworthiness, and timely insights into borrower behavior and market conditions. FinConnect adheres to the compliance and data verification tools and allows lenders to access real-time, accurate data, improves decision-making speed and reduces delays. With the help of on-demand data, streaming data analytics is easier and the outcome is faster. FinConnect integrates with ComplianceEase to ensure data governance and loan verification process, which makes it seamless for lenders. Ensuring Security and Speed in Loan Processing FinConnect securely ensures loan processing is done quickly. With the increased reliance on digital platforms, FinConnect provides robust security measures including end-to-end encryption. Tavant adheres to the following security measures: CCPA (California Consumer Privacy Act): For users located in California, Tavant follows CCPA regulations, giving them control over their personal information, including the right to know what data is collected and the right to delete or opt out of the sale of personal data. PCI DSS (Payment Card Industry Data Security Standard): For financial transactions, Tavant ensures that payment data is processed and stored in compliance with PCI DSS standards, minimizing the risk of fraud and data breaches. The Future of Digital Transformation with FinConnect by Tavant FinConnect by Tavant is leading the financial services landscape through intelligent data integration. Leveraging real-time analytics and enabling automation, it streamlines the lending experience. FinConnect not only modernizes lending but also fosters a more inclusive, transparent, and customer-centric financial ecosystem. Tavant, for instance, is leading the charge in digital transformation for the financial services industry. By combining real-time analytics, automation, and a powerful API ecosystem, FinConnect is empowering institutions to stay competitive and deliver exceptional customer experiences. Ready to transform your lending operations? Connect with us to see how FinConnect can help your institution thrive in the digital age. Contacts Swapna [email protected] FAQs – Tavant Solutions How
Lending 2.0: How Digital Transformation is Reshaping the Financial Landscape
Digital transformation has brought significant changes to the lending landscape, providing borrowers with easier access to credit, faster loan approvals, and lower costs. Moreover, the pandemic has accelerated the adoption of digital lending. In response to the epidemic, several lenders digitized face-to-face operations, such as mortgage applications, e-verification of income and assets, drive-by and automated appraisals, and hybrid closings. This reduced expenses, increased margins, and illustrated that lenders are incentivized to respond to changing customers’ needs. It’s also a wise approach, given that customer demand for digital mortgage experiences has skyrocketed since the pandemic. According to a survey by the National Bureau of Economic Research, there was a 6% increase in the use of online lenders in the US during the pandemic. This surge in online lending was likely due to several factors, including the closure of traditional lending firms and the increased need for access to credit because of the economic downturn caused by the pandemic. However, some challenges still need to be addressed to ensure that everyone benefits from these advances. Digital Disconnects in Lending • The average loan processing time remains two months. According to a survey by McKinsey & Company, borrowers are willing to pay higher interest rates for faster loan processing times. They want faster, more convenient service, transparency, control, and prompt information. Full-scale digital transformation is non-negotiable in the face of competitive pressure to operate profitably in a crowded marketplace and technically competent non-bank lenders. For most, the next stage is to rebuild the back office and focus on removing the biggest impediments to growth. • Siloed Working The legacy infrastructure underpins the newly digitalized customer-facing processes, and the systems and technology that drive mid and back-office functions need to integrate better with the solutions used. This misalignment between modernized customer-facing operations and largely manual, human-driven mid- and back-office processes can lead to inefficiencies and delays. Errors in manual back-office procedures cause multiday delays that slow down the entire origination process. • Poor CX Consumers are increasingly prioritizing convenience over price, and this tendency is already infecting the mortgage business. Positive word-of-mouth recommendations concerning service standards are almost as crucial to borrowers as low rates when selecting a loan. Sometimes, borrowers will penalize lenders for irregular contact, even if the loan is closed on time. To meet borrowers’ expectations across the customer journey, mortgage lenders must smooth out any flaws in the loan origination process and change to a customer-centric strategy. A Paradigm Shift in Lending The digital age has resulted in a fundamental shift in how financial services are provided and consumed. The transition from traditional lending to digital involves implementing digital technologies to automate lending processes, reduce costs, and improve customer experiences. This paradigm shift has brought about several critical changes, one of the most important being the democratization of lending. Borrowers now have access to more lender options than ever before, thanks to the proliferation of online lending platforms. These platforms include crowdfunding sites and peer-to-peer lending websites. This has resulted in cheaper interest rates and costs for borrowers due to increased competition in the lending industry. The application of digital technologies to simplify and expedite the loan process is another critical shift that has taken place. Automating the underwriting and credit scoring processes on online lending platforms through algorithms and machine learning has led to reduced expenses and a speedier approval process for loans. Borrowers can now evaluate the interest rates and terms offered by numerous lenders before making a choice, which has also contributed to improved openness in the lending industry. Artificial intelligence (AI) is being used to automate underwriting and credit scoring, resulting in faster loan approvals and reduced costs. According to a Boston Consulting Group analysis, AI-powered underwriting and credit assessment might result in up to 10% lower default rates and up to 40% reduced underwriting expenses. The lending industry is highly competitive, and businesses that don’t embrace digital transformation risk losing their competitive edge. Unlocking the Power of Digital Transformation: Revolutionizing the Way We Access Credit and Transforming the Future of Lending Faster Processing Time: Using digital technology in lending makes the process faster, and the turnaround time for loan approvals is shorter. This speed is a significant factor in customer satisfaction and retention. Better CX: Using digital technology enables lenders to provide better customer experiences. Digital lending allows for self-service options, giving customers greater control over their lending needs. Cost Reduction: Using digital technology in lending helps lenders save money on paper-based procedures like printing, scanning, and storing. Accurate Risk Assessment: Digital transformation in lending enables lenders to conduct more precise risk assessments using data analytics and machine learning algorithms. This improves the accuracy of lending decisions, reduces the risk of default, and helps lenders maintain a healthy loan portfolio. Increased Accessibility: Digital lending makes credit more accessible to underserved and unbanked communities. Using digital technology, lenders can reach out to these communities and provide them with the capital they require to expand their businesses or meet their financial objectives. Adapting to a New Landscape Digital transformation in lending has its challenges. Here are some of the major difficulties lenders face when implementing digital transformation that can be easily overcome. Data Security Concerns: Digital lending transformation involves using sensitive customer data. Lenders need to take extra precautions to ensure the security of this data. Integration with Legacy Systems: Many lenders have legacy systems that must be compatible with modern digital technologies. Integrating these systems with new digital platforms can be challenging but not daunting enough. Regulatory Compliance: Lenders must comply with the regulatory frameworks when implementing digital transformation initiatives. Compliance requirements can be complex and time-consuming but easily achievable. The Road Ahead for Lending Organizations Digital lending is an evolving space and provides a tremendous opportunity for fintechs to make further inroads. Due to the use of digital technology, the lending business has seen a significant upheaval in recent years. We find new age fintech players to be primarily focused on personal loans, including Buy Now, Pay Later (BNPL) business loans and supply
Decoding the Future of Fintech Lending
It’s 2005, and Linda is all set to purchase her first home, her “starter home.” She knows finding that perfect home won’t be easy. On top of that she knows closing on her mortgage is going to be a time-consuming process. She is exasperated and dreading the thought of going through many cumbersome manual processes and tiresome paperwork. There is nothing much she can do but patiently wait for the process to play itself out. Fast forward. It’s 2021. The pandemic has reshaped how we work, and the world is adapting to a new era of remote working. Amid the upheaval, like many others, Linda decides to move from her ‘starter’ home to her ‘forever’ home with a backyard and home office. She found the perfect home by searching Real Estate sites on her mobile phone, yes, she found her home on her iPhone. Next step is the dreadful mortgage, but thanks to her lender’s digitalized application and closing processes, the entire home-buying process is now simplified and much quicker; Linda is pleasingly astounded by how much mortgage lending has evolved over the years. Reaching the New Wave of Borrowers With Digital Mortgage Capabilities Today’s mortgage industry is on the cusp of digital re-imagination. Driven partly by the need to meet the growing demand from tech-savvy borrowers for a quick and seamless process and partially by the pressure to cut costs and enhance efficiencies. Lenders are looking to digitize their end-to-end mortgage process. That’s the dream state for a lender. Thus far, most of them have focused on the lending process’s front end, enabling digital loan applications and consumer portals. As competition intensifies, they shift to the next stage of digital transformation by turning to Fintech lending solutions that boost efficiencies in loan production and enhance the servicing experience. Fintech Lending- The Digital Focus of New-age Lenders According to the report titled ‘The Role of Technology in Mortgage Lending,’ fintech lenders have the ability to process loan applications about 20 percent faster than other lenders. Fintech lenders process mortgages faster than traditional lenders, measured by total days from submitting a mortgage application until the closing, the report indicated. However, switching traditional mindsets and operating models to deliver digital journeys at an accelerated pace is no easy feat for a financial behemoth. But modernizing the borrower experience is the need of the moment for all lenders. Fintech is playing an increasing role in shaping financial landscapes. A fintech mortgage provides faster, more accurate, safer, and more affordable options than traditional mortgage lenders. It enables lenders to create a better relationship with borrowers with quicker and more seamless, personalized experiences. It accelerates data gathering, helps borrowers with superior communication, and reduces avoidable steps along the way. Seizing the Benefits of Fintech Mortgage Lending Enhanced efficiency: Efficiencies produced by fintech lending solutions allow lenders to close on mortgage loans faster. Automating numerous back-office operations and centralized data solutions also enable lenders to leverage customer information more efficiently than ever before. It speeds up otherwise time-consuming operations and further helps in closing the loan process faster. Delightful customer experiences: A more agile, streamlined application process indicates customers may be more likely to perform a given task that serves the lender in terms of the number of applications closed and funded. No more fragmentation: Fintech mortgages replace the fragmented siloed solutions of traditional lending with an integrated, end-to-end digital solution. It leads to greater efficiency and productivity, along with quicker loan cycle times and faster closures. To the Future: Let’s fast-forward to 2030. Linda is in the process of refinancing her ‘forever’ home. She’s astonished by the impressive advancements in cycle times and service levels compared to her 2021 experience. Her lender leverages next-gen digital interfaces that allow her to have contextual chats in real-time. Her appraisal is done same day, by a drone. Her lender uses AI-based applications to drive intelligent decisions based to ensure that Linda meets specific credit requirements, saving her significant time and effort. Not just that, the blockchain technology is there to provide a single source of verified data such as her tax information, income, assets, property valuations, and so on, improving accuracy as well as fast-tracking the loan fulfillment process. The outcome: Linda e-closes her refinance in a couple of days, or perhaps even in a few hours, thanks to an integrated digital ecosystem. It truly is a “one-click” refinance. Are you ready for the digital future? As digitally connected millennials and Gen Z borrowers coming into the marketplace expect hyper-personalization and faster closings. Lenders seeking future-proof success have only one choice – move from a tactical to a strategic mindset, modernize processes, and embrace intelligent automation. Learn how Tavant can help you lay the foundation for an end-to-end digital mortgage; reach out to us at [email protected] or visit us here. FAQs – Tavant Solutions What future fintech lending innovations is Tavant developing?Tavant is advancing embedded lending solutions, API-first architectures, real-time decision engines, and predictive analytics for market trends. They’re building platforms that enable instant lending integration across various digital channels and ecosystems. How does Tavant prepare lenders for future fintech disruption?Tavant provides scalable cloud-native platforms, open API frameworks, and continuous innovation programs that help traditional lenders compete with fintech companies while maintaining regulatory compliance and operational excellence. What trends will shape the future of fintech lending?Key trends include embedded finance, buy-now-pay-later expansion, cryptocurrency lending, AI-driven personalization, regulatory technology integration, and the rise of neobanks offering specialized lending products. How will fintech change traditional banking?Fintech will push traditional banks toward digital transformation, force innovation in customer experience, create new partnership models, and require banks to become more agile and customer-centric in their lending approaches. What is embedded lending?Embedded lending integrates loan products directly into non-financial platforms like e-commerce sites, software applications, or marketplaces, allowing customers to access credit at the point of need without leaving the platform.
Unleash the Power of Data-driven Decisions in Lending
How Cloud Technology Can Leapfrog Your Business IQ
Agility. Innovation. Intelligence. When working in tandem, these three concepts can spell success for any business. But without these capabilities, businesses falter in the eddies of unfavorable market conditions. When business leaders get together, the discussion often gravitates to how companies can nurture and empower new ideas and implement them faster because this is what keeps any business competitive. Business Success…and the stumbling blocks called data Across the globe, enterprises are investing heavily in AI, ML, and technologies for improved efficiency, in solutions that communicate with each other seamlessly, and in strategies that empower employees to ideate and innovate. And yet, there’s still a hurdle that most companies continue to stumble over: data. A recent IDC research into enterprises showed that 50% of employees are overwhelmed by the amount of data, while at the same time, 44% say they don’t have enough data to support decision making! What cloud technology can mean to business growth Businesses everywhere are going through a period of transformation. Clunky old legacy systems are being digitally overwritten. Decades-old data silos are shrinking under a barrage of data management solutions. And all of these transformative capabilities are being held up and supported by the cloud. More than a storage system If you’ve been thinking of the cloud as an efficient way to store data, it’s time to upgrade that thinking. The cloud is a platform that can handle data and while also supporting the solutions that process and use that data. By leveraging cloud capabilities, businesses can scale their capabilities up or down with less risk and pursue their business goals while keeping costs low. No downtime Imagine a credit reporting company trying to move 18 years of customer data for 330 m American customers US from GVAP archives. By using cloud technology Tavant was able to dynamically adjust the size of the computing cluster to accommodate the changing workload without interrupting production. Remote access and security The global pandemic has put greater focus on cloud capabilities as companies are forced to maintain data security while enabling employees to work remotely. Consider the competitive advantage experienced by businesses that already had a secure, remote work environment in place before 2020. CAAS (containers as a service) Businesses can also benefit tremendously from container applications which are now being offered by many cloud providers. As consumable services, these CAAS can be deployed by DevOps directly on top of the cloud application layer. Each app is wrapped in a standardized configuration, significantly improving security, scalability, and load times and providing an efficient alternative to virtual machines. In fact, Gartner predicts that by 2023, 70% of global organizations will be running more than two containerized applications in production, up from just 20% in 2019. Smart businesses are getting smarter with cloud technology Regardless of the business size, cloud technology now offers an easy way for businesses to innovate, respond quickly and empower employees from anywhere. For the first time ever, we have a level playing field from which companies of any size can leapfrog their way into the future and create new business opportunities for themselves using cloud technology. The only question is, who will leverage cloud capabilities efficiently to get there first? SOURCE: https://blogs.idc.com/2020/05/15/defining-the-data-native-worker-gen-d/ https://www.entrepreneur.com/article/345826
Building a Successful Customer Experience in Today’s Banking
Delivering similar experiences to Neobanks and Fintechs is not as challenging for traditional banks as some in the industry believe. The race is intensifying between Banks, Neos, and Fintechs vying for the customer’s attention and wallet! I’ve always been passionate about leveraging technology in building better products and witnessing how more and more financial brands are using technology today to carve their own digital journeys and enrich their customers’ experiences. Conducting Financial Transactions with Unprecedented Ease and Speed My enterprise sales career in Fintech and Digital Banking is mainly fueled by a desire to impact both consumers’ and businesses’ approach to banking and how so many of us in this industry are making it safer, clearer, faster, and easier to conduct financial transactions today. Selling across the financial verticals, I’ve had both the pleasure and honor to interact with some of the most fascinating and bold decision-makers who are shaping tomorrow’s financial services industry as we know it. Meeting the Expectation of the Digital Customer: Now And in the Future Recently, while reading through what some of our favorite Neobanks are up to these days, I came across a phrase that I often hear but sometimes don’t really attribute the focus and truth that stands behind that simple statement… “The priority is to build a successful customer service brand that offers banking and financial services, then the other way around.” I couldn’t agree more. And the current pandemic, still surging amongst so many of us only strengthens the notion where we must accelerate within our digital transformation process to achieve those journeys that our customers so much rely on. As many of us in the financial services sector are focused on mapping our digital journeys, some believe that those who are “digital to the core” have been able to successfully carve their own winning strategies and steadily acquire an increasing market share. And then there are the non-digital at the core. The overwhelming majority, from community-focused to household brands, most of these banks and credit unions share one commonality between them. Being around for much longer and focusing on both their physical and digital consumer experiences, they all gained, over time, the ultimate trust and confidence of the customer. But if we break it down, being “digital to the core” simply means having access to all the building blocks that help create offerings that are fundamentally digital, faster to market, and provide an engaging, yet the simplified journey to our customers. Breaking it down even further, it is not extremely challenging for a traditional bank to create digital products and journeys. An example where banks of all sizes and budgets can launch new products and experiences would be to implement the following strategy. 1. Launch a DAO (digital account opening) process through automation, where new accounts can be launched within minutes without manual review. 2. But don’t stop there. The next natural step is the implementation of DLO (digital lending origination) process, allowing banks to digitize current lending programs and launch profitable products such as instant, unsecured small personal, and SME loans. 3. Third-party integration – the essential plugin that most Neobanks rely on to extend third-party Fintechs into their own platform as part of their digital value proposition. It is a lot less cumbersome than many believe for traditional banks to emulate a similar experience. 4. Integration with the core of choice and existing third-party service providers who providing essential banking services to-date. Choosing an off-the-shelf tech stack will not deliver the transformation banks expect, may delay launch deadlines, and increase the initially forecasted budget. What Next? To make this work, banks should consider choosing those technology partners who can add professional services to their product stack offerings. A consultative approach combining product stacks with the outsourced talent to digital transformation is a must for any bank when considering a cost-conscious approach and time to market. At Tavant, we focus on helping traditional banks carve their own digital journeys and enrich the experiences offered to their consumer-facing channels by implementing the technology mentioned above stacks while adding a consultative approach strategy. Our partners at Tavant happen to be some of the most renowned brands in financial services and small banks who are quietly enabling their digital transformation. We take pride in being a mid-size and super-focused technology provider by approaching transformation projects; we have in-depth knowledge, passion, and proven industry results. To learn more, reach out to us at [email protected] or visit us at www.tavant.com. FAQs – Tavant Solutions How does Tavant help banks build successful customer experiences?Tavant provides customer experience platforms with omnichannel integration, personalization engines, real-time analytics, and customer journey optimization tools. Their solutions enable banks to deliver consistent, personalized experiences across all touchpoints while gathering insights to continuously improve customer satisfaction and engagement. What customer experience technologies does Tavant offer for modern banking?Tavant offers AI-powered chatbots, predictive customer service, personalized product recommendations, mobile-first interfaces, real-time notification systems, and comprehensive analytics dashboards. These technologies help banks understand customer behavior, anticipate needs, and deliver proactive, personalized service. What makes a successful customer experience in banking?Successful banking customer experience includes seamless omnichannel interactions, personalized service, fast problem resolution, transparent communication, intuitive digital interfaces, proactive support, and consistent service quality across all touchpoints and channels. How has customer experience changed in modern banking?Modern banking customer experience has shifted toward digital-first interactions, real-time services, personalized offerings, mobile accessibility, self-service options, and proactive communication. Customers expect instant access, transparent processes, and personalized financial guidance. What technologies improve banking customer experience?Technologies improving banking customer experience include AI-powered chatbots, mobile banking apps, predictive analytics, personalization engines, biometric authentication, real-time notifications, video banking, and integrated omnichannel platforms that provide consistent service across all channels.
The Big Leap: Tavant Accelerates Growth; Surpasses Significant Milestones
2020 is now – finally – hindsight. It was undeniably a year of unprecedented disruption. Merriam-Webster recently announced that the Word of the Year for 2020 is pandemic. However, my personal vote goes to perseverance. Despite the challenges and twists and turns, Tavant is so proud to have achieved several major milestones last year –thanks to the perseverance of our team. These significant milestones demonstrate our commitment to enabling clients across multiple tech industries to rapidly accelerate their digital transformation journey and provide the best possible customer experience. Aligned with this trend, the key milestones that helped fuel the company’s unprecedented growth include: Product adoption and new product launches The debut of the digital software factory Launch of Banktech business Key strategic alliances 20 prestigious industry awards including Stevie® Award for AI and Machine Learning Reflecting on significant milestones in 2020: Tavant saw a surge in growth and increased adoption of its flagship AI-powered product suite, Tavant VΞLOX. Tavant’s core growth acceleration also came through its Digital Software Factories (“Digital Factory”) at its new technology innovation center in Dallas. Tavant further expanded its fintech and digital lending business by launching its Proptech business, bringing technology and innovation together to address common customer challenges in this burgeoning sector of Real Estate. Furthermore, at the American Banker’s Digital Banking 2020 conference, Tavant announced its expansion to new business lines with the launch of its Banktech practice in New York. Tavant expanded its industry-leading aftermarket product suite beyond warranty with salesforce connectors like Field service, B2B, and CPQ, available on the service cloud. They work seamlessly in conjunction with Tavant Warranty and support the entire gamut of Service- lifecycle management for a wider and faster digital transformation. Tavant Warranty got featured in Salesforce road to recovery apps. 2020 proved to be a year of key successful alliances. The company teamed up with Microsoft and Land O’Lakes Inc. to help farmers generate new insights from their crops, leveraging AI technologies. Tavant entered a strategic partnership with Softworks AI to deliver the touchless mortgage promise. The company also launched FinDecision, which improves loan quality while enhancing the overall borrower experience. Additionally, Tavant FinConnect and FinLeads made their debut on the Salesforce AppExchange, the world’s leading enterprise cloud marketplace. Early 2020, the company got recognized for driving fintech innovation forward during the year and bagged a few major fintech industry awards. Additionally, it was named to prestigious IDC FinTech Rankings by IDC Financial Insights. Tavant was also named the winner of a Stevie® Award in the 18th Annual American Business Awards® in the Business Technology category for Artificial Intelligence/Machine Learning solutions. Furthermore, Tavant’s next-gen quality engineering (QE) business was recognized by Everest Group in its PEAK MatrixTM assessment report. Tavant was also recognized as a leader in the IDC MarketScape for manufacturing warranty and service contract management applications and made it to the IDC TechScape: Worldwide Service Life-Cycle Management and Servitization Optimization in Manufacturing, 2020, where it was mentioned in Service Analytics and Business Intelligence and Warranty Software sections. The company was also mentioned in the aftermarket, professional, and life sciences services section in the IDC Market Glance: Next-Generation Automotive and Transportation Strategies report. Empowering businesses to build resilience for today and what is ahead. Tavant is grateful to its associates, partners, and community for navigating through the pandemic together. This adversity presented a historic opportunity for innovation and digital transformation. Tavant is uniquely positioned to leverage its technical and domain expertise to drive value for all its partners. We built a solid foundation in 2020 and are planning to continue to execute our strategy in 2021. We aim to empower companies to accelerate their digital transformation journey to respond, recover, and thrive in the new normal reality in a most secure and cost-effective way. These significant milestones are a true testament to how our customers bolster their digital strategy to improve profitability and enhance their customer experience using Tavant’s products and solutions. We will continually support your digital journey and help you rise to new levels of business resiliency, and stay relevant in an uncertain world. To learn how we help our customers use digital to create value by reinventing the core of their business, visit www.tavant.com or reach out to us at [email protected].
Is the Pandemic Accelerating Digital Disruption?
The pandemic has caused not only a global economic decline but a complete disruption in the way we rely on to communicate with our clients and prospects alike. This is the time when customer loyalty and conviction can be easily won or lost. And for those of us who have not perfected their omnichannel reach or launched their desired digital strategy – you are running against the clock!! We can all admit that none of us was ready, and many were knocked off balance, shifting from standard daily routines to a completely virtual workplace environment. Between longer working hours from home and reinventing the way we meet and communicate, there is no doubt COVID introduced a state of disruption upon all of us. As I see it, COVID didn’t disrupt the way we do business with our customers and colleagues. COVID simply accelerated the “State of Disruption” that many of us knew we’ll have to face sooner rather than later. The only question we should all be asking ourselves is how ready we are in our current “state of disruption”. Even those of us who practice ‘digital disruption’ are not always ready. I still catch myself sometimes telling clients I’m ready to book a flight and meet at their earliest convenience. Of course, reality sets in when I am politely reminded a video conference would suffice just fine. It’s never easy to face uncertainty, but during these challenging times, experience shows us that there’s also no better time to build and prepare for the next phase in our future. Outmaneuver Uncertainty with Tavant Organizations from across the world are working hard right now to serve their customers and frontlines. And many rely on partners like Tavant to ensure they receive the support, top IT talent, and cutting-edge financial technologies to help them get back to what matters most in an efficient and minimally invasive manner. Tavant’s partners happen to be some of the most renowned brands in financial services, professional sports, digital media, and even motion pictures brands. Rising to the challenge and remotely supporting partners during COVID is not easy and new challenges present themselves almost daily. However, the critical components that create Tavant’s formula for success somehow outweigh the risks and allow us to deliver WINS, even during these unprecedented times. Many of our clients refer to Tavant as truly an extension of their internal teams. And in an event such as COVID-19, we knew early on that formula to succeed and deliver results required us to reimagine how we do business by shifting technical capabilities and entire teams from brick-and-mortar locations to virtual. We realized from the get-go that in order to deliver disruptive innovations in a virtual environment, we had to prove to ourselves first that our virtual business model works and works well. Some of the new user experiences and operational excellence models we are deploying for partners entail: Digital account opening (DAO) with hyper-personalized customer recommendations AI-powered lending solution for digital loan origination (DLO) and auto-decisioning capability for consumer & commercial banking customers Digital engagement platform with API first approach and over 125 leading ecosystem partners for end-to-end compliance, KYC, and BaaS (banking as a service) capabilities. Add connectors to launch customized products and deliver personalized experiences Salesforce driven, Tavant’s Customer 360° solution for a complete customer and workforce view, as well as engagement across all digital channels At Tavant, we are always focusing on each other – supporting, informing, and inspiring our people. The most important business lesson anyone can learn from today’s pandemic is the importance of planning ahead, conditioning, and adopting new policies, operational procedures, and digital technologies to meet the rising levels of omnichannel expectations from our customers, no matter where they are and what they need. Moving forward, we remain diligent to continue and evaluate our clients’ exposures to technological vulnerability, risk and monitoring the stability of legacy systems while tracking and advising on various digital transformation paths moving forward. To all our clients, prospects, and industry colleagues leading their paths across the world, we wish good health and fortune to all the teams. Tavant is Helping Businesses Navigate the Pandemic Tavant is helping clients outmaneuver uncertainty in both the short- and long-term. We’re supporting organizations to emerge stronger and flourish in the days ahead. You can count on us to help your company stabilize revenue, keep pace with evolving demand and forge new, disruptive, and sustainable growth pathways. Through it all, we are here to help. For a deeper discussion, please mail the author Michael at [email protected] FAQs – Tavant Solutions How did Tavant help lenders adapt to pandemic-accelerated digital disruption?Tavant provided rapid digital transformation solutions during the pandemic, enabling lenders to shift to remote operations, implement touchless loan processing, and deploy digital-first customer experiences within weeks. Their cloud-based platforms allowed lenders to maintain business continuity while meeting increased demand for digital lending services. What pandemic-resilient features does Tavant offer for future disruption preparedness?Tavant offers cloud-native architecture, remote workforce enablement tools, automated processing capabilities, and flexible deployment options that ensure business continuity during disruptions. Their platforms provide scalable infrastructure, secure remote access, and automated workflows that maintain operations regardless of external circumstances. How did the pandemic accelerate digital transformation in lending?The pandemic accelerated digital transformation by forcing immediate adoption of remote operations, touchless processes, and digital customer interactions. Lenders rapidly implemented online applications, digital document processing, and virtual closings to maintain business operations while meeting social distancing requirements. What digital lending changes from the pandemic are permanent?Permanent changes include widespread adoption of digital applications, remote loan processing, virtual appraisals, electronic closings, and hybrid customer service models. Many customers now expect digital-first experiences, and lenders have maintained these capabilities as standard offerings. How can lenders prepare for future disruptions?Lenders can prepare for future disruptions by investing in cloud-based systems, implementing automation, establishing remote work capabilities, creating flexible operational processes, and maintaining robust cybersecurity measures. Building resilient, adaptable technology infrastructure is essential for business continuity.
Embrace CX Equivalent to AI & UX to Reinvent the Future of Fintech
Making Transformation Real The pace of digital transformation has intensified dramatically and empowered customers to engage at their convenience with organizations with whom they interact and transact across multiple channels. Amidst this, there is an unstoppable rise of automation, analytics, and AI, and with that comes unprecedented levels of speed – the speed of accelerating business, generating ROI, making intelligent decisions, meeting evolving customer expectations, and bringing new products and services faster to market. AI, AI Everywhere Today, even the most advanced digital technologies are usually reactive rather than proactive. Think of intelligent digital assistants such as Alexa, Siri, or Cortana, you just need to give them a command, and they’ll respond to it instantly—ordering a product you’ve requested, say, or placing a call. However, when powered by transformational technology, these virtual assistants can become more intelligent and proactive. Soon, your virtual assistant might observe that you’re running low on a particular product and suggest that it place an order for you—or tell you how you can find the best value by adjusting your purchase habits. Or imagine that you enter a retail store, browse shelves aided by an intelligent digital assistant, and once a purchase decision has been made, you simply walk out of the door with the product. Across the BOARD With more and more modern consumers expecting a response to their queries in less than an hour, the digital technologies will prove game-changing. Organizations must unlock digital transformation — and leverage the advantage of AI and machine learning. As more and more organizations are pushing for differentiation, AI-driven CX is a pivotal area. Needless to say, AI and ML will exponentially improve CX through intelligent chatbots and virtual assistants. It will help push margins regardless of industry or sector type. Given the current experimental status, early adopters will have a clear mover advantage. For FinTech companies, this indicates a new way to attract eyeballs, emotionally connect with customers, and build an everlasting relationship. How is AI causing a seismic shift for CX? Beat fraudsters before they strike with Predictive Insights and Real-time Analysis Analytics tools collect evidence and analyze data necessary for conviction. Subsequently, AI tools learn and monitor user’s behavioral patterns to identify rarity and warning signs of fraud attempts and incidences. Claims management can be built up using Machine Learning (ML) techniques in different stages of the claim handling mechanism. By leveraging Enhancing CX with Predictive Analysis Predictive analytics in financial services can directly impact overall business strategy, revenue generation, sales nurturing, and resource optimization. It can undeniably act as a game-changer by enhancing business operations, improving internal processes, and outperforming competitors. Predictive analysis gathers and arranges the data, analyzes it using our leading-edge algorithms and technology, and briskly deploy customized, prescriptive solutions unique for each customer. It can help calculate credit scores and help organizations prevent bad loans as it uses a massive amount of data to find patterns and predict insights. These insights and results can reveal what is going to happen next: what the customers are willing to buy, how long your employee might last, and so on. Delightful CX through UI/ UX Creating intuitive experiences with the help of smart UI and UX designs to enable your business to render excellent customer experience. If you engage with users through seamless navigation, layouts, directions, etc. it will help you enable superior customer experience. UI and all kinds of assistants stand at the forefront of all Fintech as a service. No matter how complex the formulae are, how bizarre the analysis is, or how advanced technologies used — the customer still needs to navigate it and utilize everything properly. Regardless of the industry, the business will perform better only if the customer feels valued. And that value can only be brought by delivering unique CX. All over Déjà vu again! Companies – fearful of straggling behind – scrambled to build online footprints back in the 1990s, when the WWW was the digital frontier. In today’s digital era, AI is causing a similar seismic shift. When keeping customers happy has never been tougher. They’ve more of everything: devices, information, channels, and choice. They also have more power. They can switch brands on a whim – and if they don’t like something, they will broadcast the fact over social channels. What’s more, customers’ expectations are ascending ever higher. They have witnessed how digital disruptors deliver frictionless, connected, automated, and personalized Customer Experiences (CX) – and they expect you to do the same. Such is today’s CX challenge. But as with any challenge, it’s perfectly surmountable. Indeed, if organizations embrace AI + UX and act fast and transform their enterprise to a data-driven, connected and adaptive CX infrastructure, not only will they secure the customers they have, but also win the new ones.
Top 5 Salesforce Trends that Will Shape 2020
Salesforce has become a business-critical application in an age of digital transformation, where once 24/7 management for Salesforce was uncommon, it’s now becoming a new expectation–impacting the broader ecosystem, as well as the teams, partners, and companies that surround it. Why does Salesforce continue to astound reviewers across the board? What is it exactly about? Ease of use, Customized CRM, Automation, or Analytics? All the answers are resounding yes, but there’s something more than that. No doubt, Salesforce is an important part of business success and strategies with over 150,000 customers and their success stories and positive reviews. But the other side of this success can be explained as- Salesforce = Industry + Innovation. Here are the top 5 Salesforce trends, which are revolutionizing businesses today to support the above equation. Enabling AI with Salesforce Einstein – Vision, Prediction & Voice Do you know, how quickly AI-powered apps can be built for employees, partners, and customers on an incredible artificial intelligence platform? From machine learning and natural language processing to computer vision and automatic speech recognition – with Salesforce Einstein brings you the power to think, see, and act to success. Three methodologies, which are nailing the entire innovation are: 1. Einstein is a key catalyst for Salesforce: o Einstein Prediction Builder and next best action What if someone could predict the future? Yes, Salesforce Einstein leverages past data through machine learning to predict future activities with minimal programming. It helps predict business outcomes, create custom AI models on any Salesforce field or object with just clicks and not to code. With a guided approach, it works with yes/no types of questions and predicts numerical data. It provides a scorecard of the expected accuracy of the prediction and provides key insights from the results. o Einstein Vision See from the far! This methodology is beneficial to keep track of the entire conversation about your brand on social media and more. Image recognition in your apps by training deep learning models is another plus. This is to recognize your brand, products, and more. We can apply in our application workflows like visual product search, identifying the product, and automated planogram analysis. Einstein Image Classification leverages pre-trained and customizable models to recognize and classify images specific to your business, at scale. While Einstein Object Detection leverages customizable models to recognize and count distinct objects within images, providing granular details like size, count, and location of each object. o Einstein Voice Talk to an AI assistant is just like experiencing a real conversation. Talk to Einstein Voice Assistant to get daily briefings, make updates, and drive dashboards. It also helps create and launch your own custom, branded Voice Assistants with Einstein Voice Bots. With Service Cloud Voice, Voice assistant, and Voice skills, it will serve the customer in a whole new way. Needless to say, Einstein Voice is a game-changer with the power of the voice and the intelligence of Einstein. 2. Accelerating transformation with Salesforce – A digital reinvention Today’s business world is undergoing the process of transition. With newer technologies evolving, industries across the globe are determining new processes as older ones may no longer be enough. Customer expectations are constantly evolving. They are more connected, informed, and unprecedentedly technologically savvy that they expect the organizations to be likewise up to date. Digital transformation starts with customers. Digital transformation is as much a cultural shift as a technological shift. Leveraging the industry-leading Salesforce solutions and its innovative applications is one of the best ways to achieve quality, efficiency, and scalability faster. Salesforce helps you make it easier for businesses to sell more and grow with the help of CRM solutions. It helps you focus on individual relationships with customers, service users, colleagues, or suppliers. It even helps in finding new customers, winning their business, and providing support and additional services, and much more. 3. Designing Seamless Customer Experiences – Customer 360 Journey This is a customer-driven era where customers expect connected experiences across channels and departments, and no matter what, you want to fulfill that. Being a #1 CRM, Salesforce enables your organization to meet these expectations by building online customer communities for clients to share their ideas and resolve a problem. These communities allow agents as well to connect more easily with customers through a variety of channels and resolve even the most critical problems of customers in just a few clicks. Design experiences across channels to help your business drive customer delight and deliver the seamless experiences they expect. 4. Unifying the Customer Experience – MuleSoft Capabilities with Salesforce As we discussed, customers expect connected experiences. They want to avoid experiencing the layers where your systems and departments meet. MuleSoft’s Anypoint Platform and Salesforce Integration Cloud help connect every experience by making it easy to connect any application, data, and device with APIs — Application Programming Interfaces. APIs take requests and tell a system about the user’s needs and requirements, conveys system response to that user as well. This process helps optimize a reusable process and enables organizations to accelerate IT delivery, increase organizational agility, and deliver innovation scalability. MuleSoft works as a Salesforce Connector. It can connect any system, application, data, and device to unleash the power of the Customer 360. The integrated capabilities of MuleSoft and Salesforce enable companies to unlock data across systems, develop scalable integration framework, and ultimately create differentiated, connected experiences at a rapid pace. 5. Data Virtualization: Multi-Org Strategies with Salesforce and Heroku Multi-Org Strategy enables a customer to own multiple Salesforce Org. Data and applications are split in different Orgs based on various factors like business units or product lines. Salesforce Multi-Org. The strategy helps you with data separation, reduces the risk of exceeding Org limits, improves time to market, gives freedom to innovate, simplifies Org-wide setting management, reduces the risk of teams to be impacted by shared updates, reduces complexity within a single Org and more. Here comes Heroku Connect to make a difference. It helps Salesforce to share data with your Salesforce
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.
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.
Top 5 Sales Challenges that Salesforce Can Resolve Effectively
Impeccable customer service isn’t just a way of building customer loyalty; it’s also what sets you apart from your competitors and reflects your digital readiness. Salesforce® has been the game changer in achieving this. Today, customers expect you to deliver the right answer the first time, every time, on whichever channel they choose. Keeping up your customers’ expectation means more than just providing the right answer at the right time. It indicates delivering a personalized experience for every customer and efficiently collaborate internally. Gathering customer’s data at this stage is important to be able to qualify your lead effectively. Businesses must boost their sales process and invest in the right tools and intelligent technology to stay ahead in the digital world. Organizations not well-equipped for this face regular challenges like: No single unified view– One of the main challenges lies in integrating data from various disparate sources and create a single unified view. For example, a customer’s data might be stored in a CRM, or their order history information might be in a custom legacy system, their purchase data might be lying in some POS system such as Shopify during their social media data on Instagram, Facebook, Twitter and the like. Lead qualification is a crucial part of the sales process. Long customer decision time frames-Long sales cycles are a nightmare for all sales staff, which means delayed ROI and uncertainty about winning the deal. If the existing systems can’t provide complete visibility at each stage, the customer acquisition cycle prolongs. Disjointed sales processes- It results from the fact that every sales team member without unified software for streamlining sales management, applies different methods to handle the sales process. Bringing transparency to the sales process- Managing nitty gritty about deals, the accounts they are dealing, and the number of potential sales scattered can be quite a challenge for sales managers. The communication gap between sales and marketing- Sales and marketing being two different worlds existing in parallel with each other is the status quo. The lack of communication between these two important teams eventually leads to their poor performance. According to the [i]E-consulting study, four out of five US customers don’t believe that the common brand understands them as an individual. Personalization depends on your customer and in many cases, that’s where small and large companies fall short. Another report by a major analyst indicates that organizations that deploy CRM strategies such as Salesforce will return at least 25 percent better ROI than those that don’t. The Salesforce solution has the capabilities to enable you to successfully manage your sales process throughout the stages of qualifying to closing and follow-up. Understand your potential on Salesforce A robust 360-degree view helps businesses to reduce costs by providing a single source of clean, integrated customer data. Successful organizations understand the potential of Salesforce goes beyond it and know ways to integrate & enhance their existing system’s capabilities. It undeniably enables organizations to drive better marketing, increase sales growth, understand their customers’ behavior deeply and, most importantly, deliver unique personalized customer experience. In conclusion Investing in reliable automation software such as Salesforce undeniably pays off in the long run while providing employees with the right tools. Applications developed and integrated on Salesforce enable organizations to achieve shorter sales cycles, create efficient proposals, and improve sales and marketing collaboration. Tavant’s FinLeads product does all of this and goes beyond it. It’s a Salesforce-based customer engagement and aggregation platform that acts as one-stop-shop for Sales & Marketing teams to quickly convert your leads to customers. To gain more insights, visit our Salesforce partnership and FinLeads pages or just say [email protected] to schedule a meeting. [i] https://www.mckinsey.com/business-functions/marketing-and-sales/our-insi…
Re-invent Dealer Experience with AI Platform
The automotive and automotive aftermarket industries are some of the oldest and most established industries. Historically, these industries have faced less disruption than their equally-established counterparts. But aftermarket industry as a whole is drastically affected by several major disruptions, in particular, digitization, shifting competitive dynamics, and changing consumer preferences. And, unlike other sectors, it is changing faster, and the shift has been dramatic. First, new players are beginning to enter the automotive market and established companies have been changing their business models – a trend that is expected to continue in the future. When it comes to consumer preferences, millennials are less interested in car ownership while stricter regulations on emissions are giving rise to electric vehicles. Additionally, with the sudden expansion of next-gen technologies such as AI, IoT, cloud computing, and human-machine interfaces, the automotive aftermarket is facing a wide range of challenges. Some challenges faced by enterprises today in the aftermarket industry include: Aftermarket processes suffer from high latency and lagged response due to legacy and disjointed systems, Lack of customer analytics across channels Increasing regulatory, quality and environmental compliance needs Long cycle time for ‘detection to correction’ in case of issues to be resolved Revenue leakage to spurious spare parts in the market Lack of feedback system for gauging the effectiveness of change management, warranty management Legacy systems are not enabling the customer to do self-service Yet, along with these challenges, warranty management remains one of the industry’s most important and imperative issues. Auto manufacturers and their dealers must leverage an effective warranty management system to win and retain customers. Adopting a few important approaches can help businesses address these challenges, optimize their warranty costs, and enhance their customer experience. Consolidate warranty systems & processes Build extensive validations into the claims entry processes to capture accurate and consistent claims data to manage entitlement verification, pre-warranty authorization, claims verification, and approvals automatically. An efficient and streamlined claims process is important to automate warranty management. Instead of maintaining several systems, centralize all aspects of warranty management including analytics, registration, claims, part returns, and supplier recovery. An integrated system that provides a single view of all information will undeniably cut down duplicate manual efforts and also improve the data consistency. Minimize repeat part returns to reduce warranty cost Companies should only request returns if they need to perform failure analysis or drill down the trends in consumption to proactively identify future problems. For this, it is crucial to automate your supplier claim process to: Decrease the amount of time from failure to claim Minimize the corrective action cycle to avoid continuing to manufacture defective products Reclaim more warranty costs faster from a broader base of suppliers Create a more credible and cleaner supplier claim data Promote supplier collaboration in cut down warranty costs Improve Warranty, Quality, and Reliability Analysis Gaining good failure data from customers, dealers, and distributors will enable brands to enhance product quality and recover a higher percentage of warranty costs from suppliers. Businesses need to analyze warranty data to identify and address emerging issues and factors contributing to warranty costs. Also, to prevent further warranty failures, organizations need to monitor key warranty metrics such as warranty as a percentage of revenue, cost per unit (CPU) Incorporate warranty management into your analytics and decision support systems Managing a warranty in a reactive mode is no longer adequate in today’s digitalized manufacturing industry, which is under a lot of pressure from evolving customers’ expectations. Companies need to react to customer demand more efficiently, and for this, they need to have proactive warranty management to make an analytics-driven decision in three significant areas, such as: Issue prediction, detection, and warning Warranty and accrual forecasting Service parts demand management and service contract optimization Based on this data, organizations can anticipate emerging issues and determine potential recall, predict future warranty costs, scrupulously forecast spare parts demand, and subsequently, plan inventory and production accordingly. Build customer experiences from meaningful insights Businesses must integrate the customer data, store the information in place and keep it integrated for a personalized experience to delight their customers. Get a unified 360-degree view of your data to enrich personalization, segmentation, behavior analysis, and loyalty programs to improve your customer experiences. The Road Ahead: The digital transformation can lead to a significant opportunity for aftermarket businesses to streamline their operations. It can be done by shedding non-value-adding functions and unlocking capital from redundant infrastructure while taking in a broader service portfolio that contributes to better margins. The task of optimizing controls on warranty spend is daunting. The needs of the dealer as well as customer experience, both are of paramount importance at every stage. However, leveraging an intelligent aftermarket platform, organizations can realize a significant reduction in warranty costs, increase operational efficiency while improving product quality and customer satisfaction. Reshape business with AI Our customized warranty solution with its artificial intelligence and machine learning capabilities can help you increase aftermarket revenues, calculate accurate warranty pricing – as well as manage claims and warranty reserves. Tavant Warranty On-Demand is an AI-powered enterprise warranty platform offered on the Salesforce cloud. The on-demand platform offers end-to-end warranty lifecycle management and is the only solution of its kind on the force.com platform. It provides cross-functional integrations with legacy and ERP systems for data consistency and integrity and enables organizations to reduce warranty costs, increase supplier recovery, and improve aftermarket efficiency. Want to Explore More? To gain better insights and to learn how to optimize your warranty cost mail us at [email protected].
Empower your Aftermarket Business with Intelligent Decisions
The Changing Aftermarket Industry According to a global strategic business [i]report, the global automotive aftermarket industry is expected to reach $722.8 billion by 2020. This rising demand for aftermarket parts and services is driving new growth and revenue opportunities for automotive aftermarket organizations. Moreover, digital transformation is re-imagining the automotive industry. Platform-based innovation and hyper-connectivity are shaping the new world of the automobile. Interestingly, aftermarket, the secondary market of the automotive industry is also experiencing this paradigm shift from traditional legacy systems to the digitalized world powered by AI, Machine Learning, IoT, Big Data, Analytics and Mobility. Rising Customer Expectations There is a significant change in the customer buying behavior which has acted as a catalyst in the progress of automotive aftermarket. Interestingly, today’s consumers are keeping their vehicles longer and are more aware of the importance of preventive maintenance and scheduled servicing to maximize the lifetime value of their vehicles. Furthermore, in today’s modern parts marketplace, the millennial customers have become more sophisticated and mobile-oriented while staying connected with their local automobile retailer. They are more in control of the buying process than ever before – with the ability to price, source, and obtain products and parts from a wide variety of sources, including spurious parts suppliers who don’t have the same overheads as the OEM. Needless to say, the consumers are now expecting a seamless experience spanning via omnichannel including physical retail supply shops, apps, websites and so on. Data, Data Everywhere The exponential growth of connectivity and data in manufacturing is drifting aftermarket services towards a new era. The next generation of tools and processes is equipped with next-gen technologies that enable unprecedented collection and transmission of data, which can be exploited to improve aftermarket operations. However, the aftermarket value chain is still highly segmented in disparate data silos. Each player focuses on its perimeter, where it exercises a strategic control thanks to its assets (parts IP, integrated offering, global network, and so on). Business models are still primitive and rely on service contracts (diagnosis, repair, parts, and maintenance) using a transactional mode (cost per operation). Artificial Intelligence & Machine Learning to Rescue Leveraging IoT technologies and platforms built into devices have increased the potential for new revenue streams through innovative data sharing/insight opportunities. And the good news is the large volumes of data generated by IoT devices can now be understood, acted upon and monetized with the help of AI and ML. Organizations can consider integrating IoT data with the existing warranty data to obtain new insights into their customers, products, and operations. In turn, this can lead to optimized product service, enhanced support processes, and the provision of new and differentiating customer experiences, all of which can help in driving revenue. Eventually, improved warranty performance has a direct impact on the customer experience; for example, if a consumer feels that a company acknowledges when products fail to meet up with their expectations, they are more likely to stay in the future, building brand loyalty. The time to act is Now If you are looking to implement a world-class warranty solution without investing heavily in infrastructure or the resources required to deploy & maintain the solution at your premises; our on-demand solution is tailor-made for you. By applying AI and machine learning algorithms to massive amounts of customer data, Tavant’s enterprise warranty solution TWOD on the Salesforce Cloud combines its warranty solution expertise with industry best practices to offer end-to-end warranty lifecycle management. It provides enhanced visibility and proactively populates business opportunities for the sales, service, and marketing teams in their CRM. Want to Explore More? To delve deeper, attend our engaging session on ‘Artificial Intelligence, Machine Learning and the world of making smarter, faster and better decisions’ at WCM 19 and learn how to unlock your sales and revenue potential or just say [email protected] to schedule a meeting.
Transforming Customer Experience with AI
Eighty-five percent of customer relationships will take place without human interaction by 2020 and AI-derived business value will more than triple to $3.9 trillion by 2022, according to Gartner. By 2019, 40 percent of digital transformation initiatives will be supported by some cognitive computing or AI effort as predicted by IDC. Furthermore, Servion has forecasted that AI will be able to power 95 percent of all customer interactions by 2025 and it will do it so effectively that customers will not be able to ‘spot the bot.’ Many organizations are at the center of this digital transformation and are turning to the emerging technologies such as chatbots, intelligent ad targeting, recommendation engines, personalized communications, and image recognition to gain business value, bolster their relationships, differentiate themselves from their competitors, and increase revenues. AI is quickly becoming a mainstream technology in consumer devices and services. In 2018, the business conversation in boardrooms on Twitter, LinkedIn, blogs, print media, and conference keynotes about AI, machine learning, RPA, chatbots, and virtual assistants have reached the new pinnacle. Surprisingly, nearly two-thirds of consumers are already using AI without even realizing it with products such as Alexa, Siri, Cortana, and Watson. Thanks to the adaption of AI into CX, we are witnessing how enterprises are attempting “true” personalization with predictive capabilities in real-time. This indicates better listening to your customers, understanding the context and providing them with a CX. Organizations are embracing AI to enhance the customer experience by: Intelligently augmented self-service technologies Collating data to enable price and feature comparisons Gathering data by smart assistants Using sentiment analysis to track customer emotions and respond accordingly Forecasting customer needs and then responding proactively Gaining more information about the customer based on data patterns Discovering user interaction on websites to determine if they need help Giving recommendations based on the behaviors of similar customers How can AI Enhance CX? Customer Insights Bring Important Findings for Businesses Leveraging AI can help unleash actionable customer insights that can help in driving impactful business decision-making. AI has also transformed how organizations get customer insights. Leveraging the vast amount of data that is available on customers today, AI can keep a track on trends and predict what customers’ need in the future. One of the best examples of this is Spotify, which used data from its more than 100 million customers to create a compelling ad campaign. The Use of Personalization Improves Customer Experience In customer experience, personalization is a significant advantage to AI. Modern customers expect offers to be tailored to their needs—a blast email with some general offer won’t appeal to nearly as many people as a targeted offer that directly addresses what precisely a customer wants. However, creating those personalized experiences is extremely difficult and tedious for humans. AI can quickly sift through millions of pieces of information to figure out exactly what matters to customers to create a personalized experience. Process Automation Increases Business Efficiency Streamlining repetitive tasks is a big change happening across industries. Deploying AI to automate the process efficiently and effectively can save time and increase efficiency. It provides a seamless experience for the customer by having a near 0% error rate. Additionally, it becomes easier for service representative relaying information and responding to the customer’s needs. This efficiency enables them to take care of more people in a much shorter amount of time. By automating processes and allowing for real-time data integration, communications are significantly improved. Looking ahead AI is undeniably a powerhouse when it comes to customer experience. This technology will not only allow organizations to create faster, more personalized experiences but will also help in gaining customer insights to deliver better customer experience in the future. Companies must unleash the potential of AI and act now to reap its possible rewards to gain a better competitive advantage in their business. Reach out to us at [email protected] to know how we can enable your business garner customer loyalty, improve experiences, and help you stay relevant in the business.
Customer Experience (CX) – The Secret Sauce of Digital Transformation
The past few years have seen a tumultuous change in the mortgage industry as many servicers struggle to keep pace with stringent regulatory requirements, increasing per-loan servicing costs, operational challenges, fragmented view of the customer and rising consumer expectations. But what if this reaction could be less about just keeping up with the changes and more about a paradigm shift to a focus on what the borrower wants and needs? Recently, when Fannie Mae surveyed mortgage executives, one of the notable points of the survey was the use of next-gen technologies to improve the consumer experience across the loan life-cycle. However, most lenders agreed that there are many significant barriers including cost, implementation, and integration issues that are holding them back. 38% agreed high costs is the biggest challenge 23% said implementation of next-gen technologies is too difficult 20% found integration as a complex issue Two-thirds of lenders have not used next-gen technology vendors at all So, what are the ingredients of the ‘Secret Sauce’? Well! It’s the Customer Experience, which is a Journey of Expectations Personalization is more important than ever Customers expect personalized services, and it can be difficult for consumer lending organizations to deliver. Not because they do not have the desire, but because of legacy systems and regulations that restrict them to the traditions of the past. These constraints hold them back, even while they recognize that location and products alone are not enough to attract and keep empowered customers. A Good CX Means a Loyal Customer The customer is equipped with loads of information before even making the first contact; they are not that loyal as they look for the best deal and are likely to maintain a relationship with more than one financial institution. A recent report from Deloitte (Reshaping the retail banking experience for the customer of tomorrow) reveals the importance of positive customer experience: 90% of customers trust a recommendation entirely; they are seven times more likely to trust a reference than an advertisement. If a customer encounters poor customer service, he or she may never come back and will advise their friends as well to do the same. Transform Destination into a New Beginning Of course, integration of multiple systems is complex and one of the major challenges faced by lenders. But that should not impact the experience when it comes to quickly processing a loan. Think if your customers get an even better digital experience towards ending of processing cycle, the chances are bright when they are looking for next loan. The opportunity for change: How many loans originated this year? How much do you want to grow loan revenue? How many loans are processing on average? Do you want to raise this number? How long does it take to process a loan? Average wait time and processing cost? Are you expected to reduce these costs? If yes, then by how much? The answers to these questions can help you refine your vision for the future of your lending activities, and nurture discussions with your solution partner helping to pave the way to measurable improvement. LOOKING AHEAD The digital transformation underway in the mortgage industry is undeniably not a fad. Digital solutions address numerous industry challenges. The technology and process transformation will provide a single view of the customer and personalize the customer experience, spur innovation within services and products offerings, increase compliance and cut down origination costs. Lending companies and mortgage servicers must embrace digital solutions to stay relevant. Migrating from a legacy mortgage model to a digital-solutions-based model will require dedicated organizational alignment. Remember, digital is not just a box to be checked or leveraged only for pointed solutions to specific problems. Are you off late having a train of thought? How to modernize, measure and manage a mission-critical runtime environment and partner ecosystem that is high-performing, robust, efficient and responsive to change? Tavant’s AI-powered digital lending solution can help you: Reduce application processing time Reduce the cost of the overall process Better control over the process and reduced error rates High visibility on loan application status across the organization Increase customer satisfaction and business, and enhance employees’ efficiency Do you wish to explore further? E-mail us at [email protected] to schedule a meeting. Innovative Lenders have altered their way of doing business to not only roll with the industry changes but also thrive in – and even help drive – the transformation. We will discuss this in our next blog.
The Magic of Clubbing Customer Experience & Text Analytics
Analytics-driven customer experiences are redefining the Customer Journeys in the Digital 2.0 world now. According to Gartner, “By 2020, with the help of AI, customers will be able to manage 85% of their relationship with the brand without interacting with a human.” Today’s digital-savvy customers live in an omnichannel world and transact with businesses in many ways. When they set out to accomplish a task over time, they expect a seamless hand-off among devices and channels. The entire journey needs to be consistent, contextualized and connected to satisfy these increasingly demanding and fickle customers. Customer experience can drive superior revenue and is critical to growth and competitive differentiation for business. Data insight is one of the primary tools for CX enhancement. An enhanced CX clubbed with an in-depth data is an opportunity window for smooth customer journey. However, the practical challenge for organizations is to integrate all their digital and traditional channels to manage a friction-less experience. It is likely that data is trapped in siloed systems across marketing, sales, commerce, and service. Unlocking the potential of unstructured data hidden in the customer journey If structured data is so big, then unstructured data is enormous. It is known that organizations exploit only structured data that represents only 20% of the information available. That suggests that 80% of the data is lying mainly in unstructured form and there is a tremendous potential waiting to be leveraged in the analysis of unstructured data. Unstructured data usually includes comment boxes in feedback forms, is undoubtedly a significant way to gather consumer views on a brand or a service. Unstructured data is highly valuable when merged with structured feedback since it helps in visualizing the consumer’s journey with the brand. Making sense out of unstructured feedback is hugely complicated and organizations that decode this, gain a better grasp of the customer experience. Moreover, when monitoring customer feedback, the element that brings a couple of benefits is Text Analytics. This Text Analytics can help bridge the gap between customer expectations and the experience provided during entire customer journey. These days customer feedback data are coming from the emerging channels such as social media and mobile devices enabling companies to rely more on text analytics. Organizations that are quicker to identify emerging trends have drastically improved the survey experience with much shorter questionnaires where their questions are getting answered easily and are also realizing the potential of non-verbal expressions like emoticons in conveying customer’s sentiment in feedback. Business Value of Text Analytics Analyzing the overall sentiment of the conversation and ‘what, who, where, when, why’ transforms the unstructured data into structured data and enables organizations to pay attention to all of the conversations. An essential goal of analyzing unstructured data such as customer complaints, opinions or comments is to catch the pulse on what users perceive about an entity. It also helps organizations recognize what do the customers think of the various attributes of a company’s product such as quality, price durability, safety, ease of use. The key to digital transformation lies in combining the Text analytics pieces together with a well-thought customer journey at a strategic level. In conclusion The use of text analytics is burgeoning quickly, and organizations are unleashing the potential that is possible if textual data are analyzed and integrated with decision making. Given the exponential growth of unstructured data both outside and within the organizations, text analytics will continue to expand. Organizations need better insightful text analytics to understand the most relevant drivers to improve the customer experience, ultimately leading to ‘Delightful Customer Journeys’. Text analytics is undeniably actionable if it supports decision making optimally and if the results of the analytics can be shared in a way the business is empowered to act.
How to Increase ROI by Efficiently Capturing Leads From All Sources?
Lead generation is as old as the book, but in recent years digital channels have added a whole new chapter. Industries like consumer lending, automobiles, software, manufacturing and many others have turned to the Internet to generate sales leads. However, according to Econsultancy, only about 22% of businesses are satisfied with their conversion rates. Furthermore, for every $92 spent acquiring customers, only $1 is spent converting them. A key challenge- Capturing and measuring leads from various channels Online leads go cold fast. These are sobering facts. Moreover, capturing and measuring leads from various marketing channels and campaigns is the key challenge for most of the organizations. Apparently, data is all scattered and organizations are finding it difficult to capture and measure leads from disparate channels. Leads are not automatically getting distributed to team members, and this is hampering rapid response and revenue. This also makes data sharing between teams extremely cumbersome. Why is Follow-up of leads faltering? The main reason behind this is that the sales and marketing teams are not on the same page. There is a double entry of data and scattered and complicated data management process that is reducing the response time drastically. There is no systematic process to create rules to distribute leads to teams and no automated follow-up task alerts or e-mail notifications to initiate e-mail drip campaigns; subsequently, these causes are leading to the time-consuming setup and costly maintenance. In conclusion The need of the hour- Your leads deserve timely follow up To speed up your borrowing experiences by overcoming the inadequacies of worn-out legacy systems, we will soon be launching a secure, reliable, scalable, interoperable, cloud-based solution. It is natively built on Salesforce platform, allowing for origination, underwriting, and servicing end-to-end. The system is economical to operate and can dramatically change your go-to-market strategy which helps users connect with consumers more quickly. This results in increasing the effectiveness of your sales operations & improves organizational efficiency. Want to learn more? You are just a step away. We would be glad to arrange a meeting with you. Say [email protected] for more information.
The Fusion of AI and Cloud Computing in Consumer Lending
Digital transformation is the key to any organization’s survival. Compared to other industries, the consumer lending industry is slow in the process of transitioning from legacy platforms to digitized environments, 87% of the banks still use legacy systems. Consumer lending and servicing is loaded with data, involves long process times, and is driven by stringent compliance requirements. There is an increased need to move away from manual lending process to a more automated, digitized consumer lending ecosystem to drive efficiencies, reduce costs, and streamline process outcomes. Enabling an end to end digital integration facilitates more seamless and engaging customer experiences, fundamentally changing the business core of the lending industry. Leveraging AI and Cloud Computing to infuse sustainable value Though the permeation of these technologies is on the lower side in the lending industry, Cloud Computing and Artificial Intelligence are slowly playing significant roles in transforming the operational and business models of this space. According to a Gartner study, by 2020, banks can offer advice by using AI chatbots that can learn about customer’s user habits. Companies paying equal attention to security in parallel, when we see 65% of FS companies said they have adopted cloud-based security (source: pwc). Cloud Computing platforms are enabling the rapid deployment of services by seamlessly connecting and configuring virtualized technology resources, augmenting faster time to value and reducing the cost of ownership. Consumer Lending firms leveraging AI and Cloud While lending firms are building digital capabilities to harness more intelligence on customer needs, they are also actively leveraging Artificial Intelligence to deliver more personalized, context-aware services to their customers. An ideal mortgage lending scenario is loaded with data attributes, making it an ideal destination for AI algorithms to analyze customer behavior and buying probabilities, enabling lenders with more decisive insights for informed decisions. AI areas of impact include Compliance, Marketing, Portfolio Management, Origination, Capital Markets, and Servicing. What changes move to the cloud? Key benefits of adopting a cloud platform include higher participation levels across various businesses, quicker access to relevant information, and improved collaboration across time zones, enabling speedy decision making, cloud repositories are scalable, centralized, facilitating data integrity and security while preventing data theft. Centralized data access streamlines document management lifecycle and promotes transparency within borrowers, lenders, investors, and regulators. In conclusion, Consumer lending businesses can leverage the symbiotic power of AI and Cloud to drive business impact. With a huge amount of centralized data accumulated in the cloud, AI can access this data to develop better CX strategies. The merger of AI and cloud is bound to influence the evolution of intelligence-driven ecosystems and will lead the next wave of technological disruptions in the consumer lending space. FAQs – Tavant Solutions How does Tavant combine AI and cloud computing for consumer lending?Cloud-native AI platforms provide scalable processing, real-time analytics, and machine learning for high-availability, secure, and rapid lending decisions. What advantages does Tavant AI-cloud fusion provide to consumer lenders?Reduced costs, faster time-to-market, enhanced security, automatic updates, and the ability to handle peak volumes seamlessly. How does cloud computing benefit consumer lending?Reduces IT costs, improves scalability, enhances security, enables faster feature deployment, disaster recovery, and third-party integration. What is AI-powered consumer lending?Uses AI to automate credit decisions, assess risk, detect fraud, personalize offers, and optimize pricing with faster, more accurate results. Is cloud-based lending secure?Yes, through encryption, multi-factor authentication, audits, compliance certifications, and advanced threat detection.
Digital Innovation FAQs Part II: Customers, Experience and Disruption in Consumer Lending
This is Part II of the Digital Innovation FAQs series. Part I talked about innovation, millennials and technology trends. You can find Part I here:Digital Innovation FAQs Part I. #4 So where do you start? How do we define the digital transformation strategy? Every company has its unique brand values and strengths. They also have some vision and strategy in place. In our Digital Experience (DEX) workshops, we work together with our clients to find the synergy and opportunities… by understanding their customers, their brand values, we go on the discovery, a journey, to see the opportunities where digital experiences can create the most value and impact. There is a fair bit of research and homework involved. In fact, some of our clients proactively do their own research and have figured out customer journeys and digital opportunities and pain points as well. The digital strategy is aligned with the overall strategy. We help with the strategy to account for any digital considerations and many companies already recognize this very well. Understand the customers, embrace the brand values and keep it simple. Strategies built around that can then focus on execution and give great results! #5 So give us an example of brand values. For example, take “trust” as a brand value. It’s still a very people-centric industry… real people dreaming about their own home and they trust lenders… real people who help them. The people in any company work a lot to get the trust of their consumers. Every channel, retail or digital, every interaction, every experience should build trust. Trust is precious… very hard to build but fundamental from a value perspective. Transparency is another. Most customers cannot understand the lending process and regulations. Lenders spend a lot of time educating customers when their time could be better spent helping them buy their dream home. By being honest, by being clear about steps, fees, regulations, you build more trust. #6 And, what is simplicity? Simplicity here can help by making information simple and clear. Lenders can then spend their time helping customers. Customers feel empowered because they understand and feel in control. You get operational efficiencies just by simplifying the information. Simplify the process, reduce the steps, make it easy to use, easy to apply, easy to approve… make it simple. You get more customers, more referrals, more business… lots of happy people. That is what digital experiences and transformation all about… happy customers! #6 That sounds simple… Why don’t we see more of that? That’s why you need to be strategic… have a clear digital strategy with priorities in place. It’s human to want more. The key is to focus on a few, experiment till you get it right and then scale it for your company. Listen to your customers. Look for business value and impact when evaluating projects and assessing where you are. #7 Can you show us more? Yeah, sure. Take a look at our Digital Practice @ Tavant for our offerings and case studies. We will be very happy to reach out and discuss… get it touch! ‘Customer journeys’ is one of the cornerstones of our Digital Experience offerings. We will be publishing a whitepaper on customer journeys soon.
Redefine Digital Mortgage Experience with Encompass® COE
Digital Transformation is set to transform the mortgage industry by addressing issues ranging from customer experience, regulatory compliance, asset quality & risk, to efficiency and cost management. Lenders must embrace digital transformation or risk becoming irrelevant. Organizations that do not formulate a comprehensive digital strategy may lose business to competitors. The National Association of Realtors® reports that 90% of all home buyers search online for their home. For 42% percent of that group, the internet was their first step in the home buying process — before contacting an agent. According to the Ellie Mae Millennial Tracker™ report, tech-savvy Millennials represent the primary home-purchasing segment of the population (Millennials accounted for 84% of closed home loans in January 2017). Millennials these days depend on intelligent personal assistants such as Apple’s Siri, Amazon Alexa, Google Personal Assistant, and Microsoft Cortana. Apparently, many of these assistants function on devices that don’t even have specific screens and provide only a single “answer” to the customer’s query — as opposed to a list of results. Put another way, if the online listings for your mortgage business don’t include things such as your specialties, your credentials, and the languages you speak, your customers will not be able to find you if they search using those parameters. Improving customer experience is paramount to meeting the expectation of today’s consumers. According to published reports, 48 percent of US consumers believe companies need to do a better job of integrating their online and offline experiences. Digital natives such as eBay, Amazon, and Google have been leading the pack in remodeling consumer expectations for cross-channel convenience. In today’s evolving mortgage industry, to gain a competitive advantage, organizations must transform the customer experience. Positive customer experience can have profound impacts on your organization’s growth. Delightful customer experience is a long-term competitive advantage you can leverage to differentiate yourself in the market. While this may sound little daunting, companies are in the process of revitalizing their customer experiences every day. Are you looking to capitalize on the digital transformation? Embrace digital transformation and enhance your lending experience with Tavant Encompass Managed Services Tavant is a trusted Pro Partner that helps lenders to accelerate the deployment, customization, and adoption of Ellie Mae’s Encompass® all-in-one mortgage management solution. Our seamless integration with the Encompass ecosystem enables operational efficiency, reduced cost, effective maintenance, enhanced performance leveraging custom applications. We help our clients to easily adopt and leverage Encompass upgrades. We offer flexible and transparent delivery models to provide them with a mix of onshore, near-shore and best-shore managed services. FAQs – Tavant Solutions How does Tavant help lenders redefine their digital mortgage experience through Encompass COE?Tavant provides Encompass Center of Excellence (COE) services that optimize mortgage workflows, implement best practices, and maximize platform capabilities. Their expertise helps lenders transform their Encompass implementation to deliver superior digital mortgage experiences through process optimization, automation, and user experience improvements. What specific Encompass COE services does Tavant offer for digital mortgage transformation?Tavant offers Encompass configuration optimization, workflow automation, integration development, user training, performance monitoring, and continuous improvement services. Their COE approach ensures lenders maximize their Encompass investment while delivering efficient, compliant, and customer-friendly digital mortgage processes. What is an Encompass Center of Excellence (COE)?An Encompass Center of Excellence (COE) is a specialized team or service that provides expertise, best practices, and ongoing support for optimizing Ellie Mae Encompass (now ICE Mortgage Technology) implementations. It focuses on maximizing platform capabilities, improving workflows, and ensuring optimal system performance. How does a COE improve digital mortgage experiences?A COE improves digital mortgage experiences by optimizing system configurations, implementing best practices, streamlining workflows, ensuring proper integrations, providing ongoing training, and continuously monitoring performance. This results in faster processing, better user experiences, and improved operational efficiency. What are the benefits of having an Encompass COE?Benefits include optimized system performance, improved user productivity, better compliance management, enhanced customer experience, reduced operational costs, and maximized ROI on technology investments. A COE ensures continuous improvement and optimal utilization of Encompass capabilities.
Digital Innovation FAQs: Customers, Experience, and Disruption in Consumer Lending
Digital Experience (DEX) decides your next strategic move today. Customer journeys have taken the front seat and are fueling the disruptive force. Consumer Lending organizations looking to connect the dots of digital innovation often ask me to address these FAQs #1 What is Innovation? This is the most asked question in our Digital Experience (DEX) engagements. Simply put, ‘innovation’ is about new ideas that generate value for both the customers and the organization. In our DEX workshops, which are typically about 4-6 weeks, we work with our clients to understand their customers and their brand values… it makes innovation and the opportunity space tangible. That helps us generate innovative ideas that unlock value for both customers and business and reflect their brand values. Everyone wanted to be Apple. Decades later, there’s still one Apple. Google, Amazon, Facebook… they all did what they are good at… even Microsoft now. The key is to stay focused on your customers, listen to them and stay true to your brand values and capabilities to deliver great digital experiences. A lot of the opportunities in regulated industries like financial services and consumer lending are in making complicated things simple: – simple to understand, – simple to buy, – simple to sell. Beyond that, digital experiences are about helping borrowers focus on buying their dream home and helping brokers and loan officers to build relationships by focusing on what their customers want and freeing up time… instead of worrying about document verification, regulations or what are a hundred things to check. That’s where the most significant opportunities lie. #2 How do you deal with Millennials? Customer Experience starts with understanding customers, and it’s no different for millennials, though many of us are not millennials. Interestingly, we find millennials also want good relationships with their mortgage lenders and brokers. A recent Fannie Mae survey found that almost 2 out of 3 customers relied on real estate agents and lenders for information. Millennials are also looking for help from lenders, brokers first and they appreciate transparency. Of course, they are more than happy to use digital channels to complete forms, but they also want to talk to their loan officers and brokers. They complement each other quite well, and we try to ensure the digital ecosystem is there to enable this interaction and deliver exceptional experiences. …what about loan officers and brokers? Do you still need them? They are vital to the experience! Contrary to what many lenders think, our research finds most customers (borrowers) are commonly influenced by them, and they remain the most trusted, along with friends and family. They remain some of the delightful experiences that we design for. Fannie Mae also found that over 90% customers (including millennials) want to use in-person channels at key points…they want to talk to their lenders. This is not about a loan approval; this is about buying your dream home. #3 What about the latest trends… Design Thinking, Artificial Intelligence (AI), Big Data? It’s about the relevance of the trends. We stay on top of the latest trends and set some of them as well. At Tavant, we work with clients on defining customer-centricity programs and the omnichannel strategies that can enable great experiences. The focus is on customer and business value and finding relevant solutions; the digital experience is really about the customer experience. Lemonade, perhaps, is one of the better examples of that. They use chatbots to settle claims within minutes, and most of their customers are honest because of that little behavioral tweak where they ask customers to pledge to be honest first. Technology by itself uncovers excellent operational efficiency. That remains a focus but, in our DEX engagements, we try to define digital experiences that unlock immense value. We have been fortunate to work with clients who trust us with cutting-edge technology and setting the benchmarks in these areas. Design thinking, the blockchain, behavioral design, big data, AI…they will transform digital experiences as we know it today. We see tremendous opportunities in some of these trends and innovation, but it is all about what is relevant to our clients. The strategy has to be based on the company’s brand values, its culture and how it is most pertinent to their customers. #4 But where do you start? What next? More on strategy, simplicity, and execution in my next post. Stay tuned! Digital Innovation FAQs Part II FAQs – Tavant Solutions How does Tavant enhance customer experience through digital innovation in lending?Tavant creates omnichannel experiences with personalized loan recommendations, real-time application tracking, instant approvals, and seamless digital onboarding. Their innovation lab continuously develops customer-centric features based on user feedback and market trends. What disruptive digital innovations does Tavant bring to consumer lending?Tavant introduces voice-activated loan applications, biometric authentication, AI-powered financial advisory, blockchain-verified credentials, and augmented reality property evaluations to revolutionize the lending experience. How is digital innovation changing customer expectations in lending?Digital innovation has raised customer expectations for instant responses, personalized offers, transparent processes, mobile-first experiences, and seamless integration with their digital lifestyle across all lending touchpoints. What digital features do customers want most in lending?Customers prioritize instant pre-approval, mobile applications, real-time status updates, digital document upload, rate comparison tools, and personalized loan recommendations based on their financial profile. How do traditional lenders compete with fintech companies?Traditional lenders compete by adopting digital technologies, improving customer experience, leveraging their trust and stability advantages, forming fintech partnerships, and investing in innovation while maintaining regulatory expertise. What advanced customer experience innovations does Tavant offer beyond basic digitization?Tavant provides predictive customer service, proactive financial health monitoring, AI-driven cross-selling, personalized payment scheduling, and integrated financial wellness tools that go beyond traditional lending to support customer financial success. How does Tavant help lenders stay ahead of customer experience disruption?Tavant offers continuous innovation programs, customer journey analytics, A/B testing frameworks, and emerging technology integration services. They help lenders anticipate and respond to changing customer needs before disruption occurs. What is the next phase of digital transformation in lending?The next phase includes hyper-personalization, conversational AI, embedded
7 Mistakes That Are Stopping Your Retail Customers to Digitally Connect With You
Do you think you know your customers well? Are you confident you understand how they experience your brand in a myriad of online and offline interactions? Well, here’s some sobering news: Even if you think that you have a firm grasp on your customer experience, that’s all going to change sooner than you think. Customer experience has undeniably become the next battleground for business and the quintessential scale to pick between brands. According to Forrester, 72% of businesses say that enhancing the customer experience is their top priority, while only 63% prioritize on implementing technology investments to reach their goal. Interestingly, market leaders are decided based not just on which company has the superior product at the lowest price, but on which company manages its connection with customers the best as ‘The Great Wall of Digital’ is being built between organizations and customers. How are you responding to the change? Do you feel disconnected with your retail customers? A few considerations 1. Not keeping it Simple Solution– Today’s customers expect an easy-to-use interface across all channels, an exciting in-store experience, and fast service 24/7. Yet many organizations, especially incumbents, struggle to meet these expectations because of not so it user-friendly and intuitive interface. Remember, a simple user experience unfolded with crisp and clear user interfaces goes a long way in the saga of man-machine interactions. 2. Not establishing an emotional connection with your customers digitally Solution: Embedding technology in your day-to-day marketing operations doesn’t mean you’re sacrificing a human connection. That indicates treating every touchpoint with your customers like a face-to-face conversation. With customer data easily available, organizations can tailor their content to connect with customers on a more personal and emotional level. 3. Not getting a unified view of the customer Solution: Remember that data integration is the secret sauce to the customer journey. You should connect disparate data silos for a comprehensive look at your customers—gather customer insights and interactions in one place and get a 360-degree view of your customers to anticipate their requirements and optimize the customer experience. 4. Not providing consistent omnichannel CX Solution: No matter what industry you operate in, your customers expect to be able to engage with you effectively across multiple channels. Why? Customers typically want to get what they want from your business quickly, efficiently and on their terms – be this on your website, via your mobile app or by engaging with your customer-care team by phone, live chat or any other means. Creating a single, uniform face to your customers that delivers them with a consistent experience as they move across channels is, therefore, key to success in this omnichannel world. 5. Overlooking Personalization- the hidden ingredient to engage your customers Solution: You need to build an insightful and personalized shopping experience that connects digital, in-store, and back office operations. You must adapt to constantly changing needs, and provide phenomenal customer service by leveraging the Next-Gen technologies and innovation. Consider offering more product selection and recommendations by combining the best of online and in-store shopping. 6. Not building immersive retail experiences Solution: You need to elevate buying behavior by deeply engaging your customers through personalized retail experiences. Seek more control over store operations through automation and advanced analytics capabilities. You must provide your customers the adaptability to make a purchase in-store, pick up in other locations, or have it delivered to their doorstep. 7. Not calming your impatient customer Solution As it turns out, intensely digital customers are also intensely impatient. They’re also not as wedded to digital experiences as we would like to believe. To retain this fickle and fast-moving group engaged, you need to focus more on dazzling them with superior digital service across all channels of interaction. In Conclusion: If you think the digital era is causing a disconnect between your brand and your customer, think again. Too many companies squander the treasure that is customer feedback. Remember, customers feel disconnected when you fail to think through the degree of effort it requires to do business with them, you don’t provide user-friendly technology solutions, you don’t simplify every touchpoint and you don’t provide the personal touch. That’s what causes a disconnect between the two of you! The solution is to get closer than ever to your customers and that too, so close that you tell them what they need well before they realize it themselves. Create a digital strategy that places customers at its center to drive innovation that they will value, and then operationalize the model consistently. Extraordinary digital connections can undoubtedly deliver extraordinary results.
4 Ways to Harness the Power of Digital Transformation in the Aftermarket Industry
Reality Check The automotive aftermarket is undergoing dramatic changes in evolving customer expectations, acceleration of technological innovation, and shifts in competitive power. These changes are revamping the way business in the automotive aftermarket is conducted and value is created. Interestingly, Auto aftermarket sales becoming an omnichannel experience.Today’s consumer visits and researches a variety of channels — including websites, catalogs, social media, advertisements, and stores — before making a purchase. Furthermore, online channels are also giving customers quick access to the information on the prices of parts while online forums are giving customers a peer perspective on the quality/value of workshops. Before moving further, let’s quickly define “Aftermarket” The aftermarket, which is a broad term, can be at times, an afterthought in the automotive world and many consumers may not even be aware what the term means. However, it represents an enormous industry that offers significant value in improving the driving experience. Aftermarket parts are replacement parts that are made by a company other than your vehicle’s original manufacturer. The need of the hour is modernization of legacy systems in the aftermarket industry With legacy and disjointed systems, aftermarket processes suffer from high latency and lagged response. This may be because of restrictive technologies and interfaces or high cost of wrap up solutions. For example, waiting time for a service ticket is so high that it may dissuade the customer from reaching out to OEM or their dealers. Moreover, legacy systems do not enable the customer to do self-service. Additionally, without digital technologies, the customer interaction with a dealer or an OEM is constrained by time and geographic reach. This is where the digital transformation plays a vital role!!! It leads to a better understanding of the customer, helps in personalizing responses, streamlines operations, enhances customer experience and improves revenue by serving manifested and latent demands. Digital technologies allow companies to derive total life cycle value of their incumbent customer base. So how digital transformation is changing the Aftermarket landscape 1. Social Media UPS Online shoppers survey shows online buyers are diligent about research, extensively use online reviews, ratings and social media. Interestingly, 70% of business buyers purchase from an online catalog rather than through another channel. By using social media and analytical tools customer touch points can be identified as social media has made customers more comfortable with connecting and engaging with one another and sharing their concerns and thoughts. Also, with the help of social media, aftermarket suppliers can eliminate the unwanted waiting and reneging. 2. Mobility and connected devices High smartphone adoption, millions of connected devices using IoT and other technologies and ubiquitous connectivity are creating new opportunities at multiple levels for OEM’s. These technologies are reorganizing and redefining internal and external structure and the process of companies. Mobile is critical in the shopping journey and mobile phones account for 34 percent of retail e-commerce sales transactions. That percentage is expected to increase to 48 percent by 2020. Needless to say, to stand out from competitors, a business needs to provide a smooth, frictionless experience and customer engagement by providing quick product searches, delivery and in-store pickup options, and mobile-friendly access to online sites. 3. Cloud Cloud and IoT enabled infrastructure enables a highly cost-effective, rapidly responsive and elastic IT, better aligned with the business needs. Cloud enables aftermarket business to innovate faster while leveraging existing systems and capabilities. Cloud-based tools provide visibility to aftermarket suppliers for every party in the supply chain to look at same data and analytics so that defects can be detected and corrected early in the chain. 4. Data & Analytics Digital technologies connect ecosystem-wide processes so that assets are efficiently managed using predictive analysis of potential errors and initiate. Aftermarket digital transformation pushes business strategies to evolve from selling a product or service to a customer experience-centric value proposition. By using data and advanced analytics, aftermarket suppliers can accurately forecast demand, deepen customer engagement and can also drive loyalty and sales. The Bottom Line: Digital Disruption is forcing companies to recognize the aftermarket’s enormous potential and understand the entire lifespan of a sold product, including supplies, repairs, selling and servicing spare parts, installing upgrades, handling inspections and add-ons, training, and customization. To stay competitive, it is imperative for aftermarket suppliers to change their mindset, create a vision, invest in digital content and analytics, lean on data to stay in touch with customers permanently, provide service through the traditional and digital channel and deliver exceptional aftermarket capabilities coupled with self-service.
Why Cloud Paradox in the Digital Age?
Don’t let fear keep you from harnessing the power of the cloud When cloud computing was initially introduced, many organizations didn’t understand the capabilities of this technology and were extremely apprehensive about placing their data on an external server mainly due to security reasons. As technology has improved and as the business world has become increasingly dependent on remote teams and off-site workers, accessing critical company data from the cloud has become crucial. Organizations are still unsure about moving to the cloud. Are you concerned about having your data in the cloud? If yes, then discover the truth about cloud computing! According to the study by Cisco, more than 83% of all data would be based in the cloud within the next three years. While a study by Gartner reveals that by 2019, more than 30 percent of the 100 largest vendors’ new software investments will have shifted from cloud-first to cloud-only. Gartner also predicts more cloud growth in the infrastructure compute service space as adoption becomes increasingly mainstream. Furthermore, a recent IDC survey on cloud market predictions indicates that 50% of IT spending and 60% of IT spend will be on cloud-based infrastructure by 2020. Additionally, rising demand from the migration of infra to the cloud as well as from compute-intensive workloads such as Artificial Intelligence, Analytics, and the Internet of Things— both in the enterprise and startup arena — are further driving this growth. Sadly, in a world where security breaches at large organizations dominate the headlines, the ambiguity that encloses cloud computing can make securing the enterprise seem daunting and a few organizations are still apprehensive and not able to maximize the full value that the cloud offers. And some businesses still remain apprehensive. Common Concerns In no particular order, businesses hesitant to adopt cloud computing are often concerned with: Security. By far the biggest concern. Are you afraid that your data will not be as safe in the cloud, as it is in on-premise systems? Control. Do you feel that you will lose control of your data if you move it to the cloud and it’s more assuring to know that you have it nearby? Compatibility. Do you fear critical applications will not be compatible with cloud computing solutions? A Passing Fad. Apparently, Do you strongly feel that the cloud is just another passing phase? Put your doubts about the Cloud to rest Cloud is undoubtedly a way for your organizations to cut down your operational cost and streamline your business process. However, before jumping on a bandwagon, it is better if you look at some of the key benefits of transitioning to the cloud: Cloud is secure: Surprisingly, according to Gartner, through 2020, public cloud infrastructure as a service (IaaS) workloads will suffer at least 60% fewer security incidents than those in traditional data centers. While 60% of organizations that implement relevant cloud visibility and control tools will experience only one-third fewer security failures by 2018. Needless to say that the cloud is more secure than traditional approaches. Reduced cost– A study commissioned by Cisco shows that on average, the most “cloud advanced” organizations see an annual benefit per cloud-based application of $3 million in additional revenues and $1 million in cost savings. These revenues boosts have been largely the result of sales of new products and services, acquiring new customers faster or due to accelerated ability to sell into new markets. Decreased headcount: With significantly fewer servers to look after, and with standardized platforms, you will subsequently find you require fewer IT staff. In fact, many organizations figure out that they can reduce their staff maintenance by 50 percent. Quicker deployments: Cloud may or may not have a drastic impact on application performance, but in just about every case, you’ll be able to get them up and running much sooner. Creating—and eliminating— environments for new applications is a much faster process, allowing your development team to use their time most efficiently. Improved Agility. Cloud computing drastically increases application delivery as there’s no associated waiting time to access or allocate the infrastructure. Subsequently, by embracing continuous delivery and cloud DevOps, your business can significantly improve its agility. 20%+ faster time to market for new services 50% fewer application failures and faster recovery time (in 10 minutes or less) 30% more frequent new code deployments and a 38% improvement in overall code quality High Availability: The complete cloud computing facilities are routinely protected from system failures and outages using redundant network switches, servers, and storage facilities. In particular, by leveraging off-site backup and redundant servers and storage facilities make these well-equipped cloud computing facilities less vulnerable to disaster or malicious attack. Fewer servers: Moving infra, application, and platforms to a cloud model can undoubtedly help you with enormous savings, as you can stand down or redeploy servers that were previously hosted applications now moved to a shared model. Final Thoughts It’s time to try the cloud! Legacy systems often prevent responsiveness and derogate service levels and a lack of speed or agility often results in inconsistent and disconnected experiences for users, partners, and employees. Moreover, aging systems should not prevent you from harnessing digital technologies. However, the big question that often worries every business is what should and what shouldn’t be moved to the cloud. The answer has proven to be remarkably simple. Everything is potentially cloud-able – bizarrely, even mission-critical survival solutions like disaster recovery. The need of the hour is to focus on delivering solutions faster to meet customer demand in today’s hyper-competitive market and make a big difference. Stay tuned for Part 2 blog post on Application Modernization and Cloud Connection of our Cloud Computing blog series!!!