1. Mohammad Wasim shows how companies can use IT to
build stronger brand relationships with their customers
New Commerce:
TheWayForward
B
usiness is simple. Companies
connect with customers, and
customers connect with com-
panies via their brands. The
brand is everything in today's
digital world; and brand loyalty is
a recurring business. For instance, I
drive the Ford and I am so obsessed
with the brand’s engineering and the
service that it offers that I recommend
the same brand to others. When I buy
a second car, it too is a Ford.
Evolving nature of brand
alignment
Brand alignment used to be quite
simple in the past. In the ‘70s, people
bought commodities on the rec-
ommendations of their family and
friends. In the ‘70s and ‘80s, business
was achieved via all forms of media
whether print such as, newspapers,
pamphlets, and hoardings; or the
showroom window; or the audio vi-
sual medium such as the radio, and the
television; and even through websites
during the dot-com era in the early
‘90s. But they were isolated channels
of communication and functioned in
one way, which is primarily to give
information to the people about the
brand. The audio visual organisa-
tions broadcast their messages to the
consumers, irrespective of whether
the consumer was willing to listen,
just like the numerous pamphlets that
were distributed whether the con-
sumer read it or not and the billboards,
which people saw, but had the option
of ignoring them.
IT brings brands closer to
customers
IT innovation and proliferation has
brought the brand closer to the cus-
because to enable ‘brand interactive-
ness’ for all business functions of an
organisation, for all channels, is very
challenging. In the yesteryears, the
marketing function alone was respon-
sible for making consumers aware
of the brand, while sales pushed the
products down to the customers. IT’s
operations were to collate information
separately for different functions; its
core focus was to expedite operations
and keep the lights on. Businesses
functioned in silos and were losing
out on the opportunity to leverage
the information of other departments.
With little coordination of different
functions with each other, there was
duplication of effort by individual
functions, and hurt the overall effi-
ciency of the organisation. An organ-
isation’s functions need to be coherent,
with an eye for detail to map each busi-
ness function to multiple digital (on-
line, kiosk, email among others) and
conventional (like pamphlets, newspa-
pers, billboards) channels. Stitching all
these together on various technology
platforms (commerce, content, CRM,
social network, analytics, Business
Intelligence, recommendation and re-
view, and order management among
others) is a colossal and tedious task.
Businesses are striving hard to achieve
it. Some have done it well and are reap-
ing the benefits, for example Coca Cola
and Netflix, and others who ignored
it lost their ground like Block Busters,
and Wallstreet Journal
Going forward, business will be
more challenging where aspects of
doing business (product, transaction,
and relationship) have to be digitised
to ensure the company and brand is
experienced by the customers in the
relevant time and place. A consistent
tomers, and has unfolded a whole new
brand experience for them. The cus-
tomers have begun to feel the brand
need and are demanding greater in-
teraction with it. Today, the customer
has become the master, who either
enjoys the brand or shuns it. Back in
the ‘70s and ‘80s during the one-way
communication era, customers didn’t
have the opportunity to cross-question
or gather feedback from the other cus-
tomers about a particular brand. Now,
the technology-equipped and enabled
customer demands that business or-
ganisations speak to them, and when
they do so they must convince them
that their company is a lot more than
a mere mission statement, and more
than a shining logo; it is a brand that
engages the customer and interacts
with him or her.
Technology is making businesses
far more complex. Its fast pace is mak-
ing business organisations chaotic
insight
Business will be
more challenging
where aspects of
doing business
have to be
digitised to ensure
the company
and brand is
experienced by the
customers in the
relevant time and
place
20 CFOCONNECT  August 2011

2. brand experience across all com-
munication channels (conventional
and digital) has become of utmost
importance.
Here are the top four factors that
will put businesses on a competitive
pace
• Channel proliferation - Technol-
ogy progression has made gadgets
inter-operative and always connected
to the network. Devices like the tablet,
mobile, kiosk, interactive display,
IPTV, vending machines, and call cen-
tres among others, can talk with each
other all the time. These channels are
available to customers today. They ex-
pect information (in the form of blogs,
white papers, review, and comments,
among others) as well as the capabil-
ity to do transactions, at all times and
everywhere. It is very important that
the customer can experience the brand
consistently, at all times. For example,
while buying apparel, the customer
should be able to get all the details on
the apparel anywhere, and at all times.
For instance, information on the fabric
used, availability of sizes at different
outlets, the reviews on it, and also
the facility where the customer can
buy it without human intervention.
The interactive experience should
not only be limited to the customer’s
computer, but also from other portal
devices (like tablets and mobiles), and
even kiosks in malls or the roadside.
Walls Ice-cream does this very well - its
ice-cream vendors build relations with
their customers by giving out free ice-
creams accompanied with a big smile.
They also do commerce transaction
by selling the ice-creams and taking
feedback from their customers.
• Convergence - Different business
functions need to converge on prior-
ity, as business decisions taken by
departments in isolation will lose the
competitiveness that it will gain from
technology advancement. All the
C-level executives need to be in the
same room to understand and align
with each other to propel the boat for
maximum returns. CIOs will be able to
architect, rationalise, consolidate, and
integrate all the functions together. A
good data curator will be able to loop
all the data from different functions
into one central system and provide
intelligence for the company to take
strategic decisions. An un-orchestrat-
ed approach will give an opportunity
to the customer to poke fun at (the
brand).
• Hyper-personalisation - Today,
the customer is multifaceted and
wears different personalities. Each
personality is unique with respect to
human likings and the mood that the
person is in. With technology (phone,
chat, and video call) the world has
become a much smaller place as it
also provides the platform (Facebook,
Twitter, and Linkedin, among oth-
ers), to people to engage in business.
Technology allows businesses to reach
out to their customers depending on
the time of the day, to which it has
mapped a certain expected mood
of the customer. For instance, in the
morning, the customer is expectedly
a sportsman, willing to engage in se-
rious conversation around his sport,
and he may even be willing to buy
it. But during the course of the day,
customers are focused on their busi-
nesses and wish not to be disturbed
for any other activity than work. Any
attempt to reach out to customers for
brand connection (marketing or sell-
ing) during this period may adversely
impact the brand relationship. In the
evenings, the customers are expected
to be relaxing, either catching up with
their friends over social networking
sites, or uploading photos, or chatting
with people back in their home town.
This is the right time to give them the
brand experience. Companies also
need to understand the change in the
behaviour and mood of their custom-
ers, in relation to the time of the day in
order to be able to serve him the most
relevant business information. For
example, most online retailers have
started advertising on social networks,
but they usually publish static content
through the day when their customers
are at work. However, whatever time
of day, the data that they post on their
websites has to be relevant, so that the
customer will be inclined to visit their
site when he is in a mood to listen,
talk, and interact. It is highly lightly
to influence and connect him or her
to the brand at that time.
• Intercept marketing (influenc-
ing than targeting) - Learn the art of
influencing and the science of put-
ting hooks in the customer's mind
so that when the customer decides
to do a transaction later, the hooks
come into play and influence him or
her towards the brand. For example,
creating an online fan club for an
automobile company and gradually
letting the fans understand the USP
of the brand’s products, which later
influence the customer when he or she
wishes to buy a car. Targeting custom-
ers in groups has resulted in broadcast
and mass messaging, but such efforts
often go to waste and are shortlived.
At times, this approach may even
make some customers unhappy as the
information is forced on them. Such
customers may unknowingly drift
away from the brand.
Conclusion
We are not very far off from the
time when a channel as simple as a
vending machine will hold the stakes
for all business units of an organisa-
tion. The vending machine will do
commerce transactions (sales) by
dispensing goods; build relationships
(marketing) by interacting with the
visitors by issuing coupons or gifts;
collect customer (operations) data for
analytics; build a community of like-
minded customers; and even offer
concierge services or act as a friendly
information kiosk. It may even carry
out Corporate Social Responsibility
(CSR), for the brand. n
insight
Mohammad Wasim
Director, SapientInfrastructure
Practice Lead
August 2011  CFOCONNECT 21