The impact of digital transformation is wide and all-encompassing; recent research suggests that digital transformation has enabled one third of organisations to provide better safety as well as contributing to developing smarter, more sustainable cities[1]. The same survey confirms that at business level, 88% of businesses positioned digital transformation as the CEO’s top priority[2].

Grasping digital opportunities and facing possible digital threats and challenges with an open and forward-thinking mind are key to thriving in today’s unprecedented acceleration of digital transformation. As a matter of fact, social distancing caused by the COVID-19 pandemic has seen many businesses confront their digital lacunae to keep up with new data volumes and multichannel demands. Technological improvements that had long been postponed have now become urgent and now play a critical role in determining competitiveness.

Digital resistance

Recent research by Gartner confirms that 69% of shared services leaders say it is important they address the lack of alignment between current technology needs and future success[3]. The global health pandemic has accelerated the need for new functionalities and tools that not only keep the customer satisfied but help improve processes and increase transparency and productivity. The market has seen who is ready to take things to the next level and who is lagging behind; to stop a migration of customers to digital-native competitors, organisations and businesses need to take action now and bridge the digital gap with new entrants fast.

New business scenarios

As a result, there is increasing demand for more user-friendly front-ends that allow users to carry out all sorts of operations from any device, any time of the day or the night. New platforms for digital touchpoints must therefore be designed to maximise ease of use and user experience quality, while integrating legacy back ends in near real time with APIs.  As more and more users turn to digital to carry out self-service operations such as checking the status of their claim, or their bank balance 24/7 over a wide range of devices, the need to develop engaging and intuitive front-ends becomes more pressing. Embracing innovation nowadays means more than just surviving; it means thriving, satisfying the needs of customers and staying competitive.

In particular, onboarding is often a source of irritation for customers in both banking and insurance as customers would like to get it done as rapidly and smoothly as possible. By carrying out the process from their own home, where they have access to any required documents, customers save time and are less inconvenienced. At the same time, advisors are less involved and are also able to focus on more complex and value-adding tasks than data entry, making digital onboarding a win-win service.

Video collaboration tools are an exciting new enabler for digital onboarding, but the integration of video tools is rapidly revealing a much broader potential and is being deployed for video appraisals of accident damage, for example.
Another increasingly relevant use of video integration is the capability to run video meetings with clients and other experts and then seamlessly integrate them into the CRM system. These meetings range from video support and desktop sharing while quoting a policy, to actual video consultancy sessions. Video that is shared between agents or advisors and the customer over a screen may be browsed and commented together and forms a key part of customer experience, so it needs to be part of the CRM system providing a more complete customer view and driving better decision making.

Businesses need to offer innovative and more advanced front-ends for external users without ignoring the fact that internal teams also need to be able to work remotely and have full access to a wide range of customer information. To achieve this 360° view of the client’s situation access to a whole range of customer information, often archived in various back-end systems in different formats, is key. Profiled cockpits and dashboards can gather all this information in a single location as well as including deadlines, notifications and suggestions on next-best actions for the sales agent to act upon.

Finally, the availability of quality data is also critical to fighting fraud , an activity that requires access to a full set of updated client information -such as previous claims or historical transactions for example- 24/7. Fraud can be contrasted more effectively and successfully if this data is updated in near real time and if it is integrated with data from third parties (IoT, geo-localisation data, Big Data or Open data sources). New framework architecture, such as data lakes, help gather and analyse these volumes of data rapidly and without putting pressure on back end systems.

Conclusions

To respond to the market’s evolving needs and achieve full digital transformation, defining and implementing a digital strategy as well as investing in modernising existing technologies, are decisive steps. Businesses are called upon to innovate and be proactive in their introduction of tools that enable new business scenarios in order to grasp the opportunities provided by accelerated digital transformation, rather than passively bear it as a challenge to be overcome.