This week, Avionos attended Acquia Engage in Boston. Acquia Engage is a “customer conference designed to showcase creative, forward-thinking digital experiences that Acquia customers and partners are creating today, fueled by the power of cloud and open source technologies.” At this year’s conference, leaders in digital transformation took center stage to contribute three days full of education, collaboration, networking and more. While it was a jam-packed three days, our Avionos team took away some key points and topics.
B2B/B2C becomes B2One
The biggest threat to industries today is the issue of not being customer-centeric. Newcomer brands did not kill traditional retailers.
- Apple did not kill the music industry, being forced to buy full length albums did
- AirBnB did not kill the hotel industry, limited availability and pricing options did
- Amazon did not kill other retailers, bad customer service and experience did
- Uber did not kill taxi businesses, limited taxi access and fare control did
Customer expectations have changed. Personalized content, frictionless experiences and real-time interactions are what people consider standard.
You’re never too big to be agile
The question was raised: Many companies now realize success comes from being customer-centric, but how do you make your team think in terms of customer-centricity? The speed at which you can change your systems is constrained by the speed at which you can structure your teams (or business).
How does a business become more agile? Consider:
- If it feels uncomfortable, maybe it’s not the right fit
- Get feedback
- Perform customer and user surveys early and often
- Adjust business communication style based on insights
- Slow down to speed up
- Too often, people prioritize speed over depth
- Work upstream and foster collaboration between creativity and technology
Interestingly enough, the ideal methodology discussed for agility is the iterative, rapid innovation method that we use here at Avionos. Supporting creative iteration with development allows for scale, repeatable, customer-centric decision made with a technical application in mind.
