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How Digital Should Your Business Be?

ARTICLE BY

  • Sedick Isaacs
  • Head: Takaful Africa
  • Bryte Insurance

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As the financial industry rushes towards digitalisation, it’s important to take a step back and consider what that shift should look like in your business.

 “With customer engagement channels expanding, more straightforward and seamless interactions are becoming more commonplace.”

The business sector is continuously evolving, with new innovations impacting – and mostly empowering – this evolution. Digitalisation may not be new, but it is consistently and rapidly advancing, extending its reach and effectively integrating (sometimes obtrusively) into every aspect of life. Technology such as artificial intelligence comes with some major risks, but the innumerable opportunities it presents, when properly utilised, far outweigh these.

Investment considerations

Like any business decision, the cost-benefit analysis is a critical determinant of the level of technology adoption. However, a longer-term outlook is essential, especially in current times. Technology is deeply ingrained in all our lives and continues to impact consumer behaviour and expectations. As consumers, we all want support/products/services rendered almost instantly. Technology is empowering us to be savvier. We can look at the finer details – comparing prices, benefits, checking reviews, etc. – much faster and more effectively than ever before.

Keeping pace

With this in mind, businesses that do not accelerate their digitalisation effort – and equally, their change management and training efforts – risk becoming irrelevant and stagnating. Systems will have to be not only scalable but also agile for future enhancements. Increasingly, companies are allocating more money towards digitalisation, with some implementing end-to-end digitalisation.

Thanks to the progress being made, digitalisation is bringing about a new ecosystem that interacts with multiple customer needs via an omnichannel approach. It also enables connections with various business transactions operating across various organisational groups.

Invisible threats

In leveraging the opportunities of the digital era, it is vital to also safeguard against rapidly escalating levels of cybercrime. Businesses must invest adequately to secure consumer and business data. Diligently managing data transfer – not just within the business but also across its value chain – and investing in the most updated antivirus software, early detection technologies, and the right expertise to monitor and fix any exposures as they arise, are imperative. As risk managers, we need to work closely with clients to expand awareness of evolving cyber exposures and the various ways to mitigate against these.

Customer retention

Customer retention is multifaceted. It often involves the right balance between cost, quality, customer experience, and general responsiveness. It also demands due consideration of the customer’s needs/wants today and in the future. In many ways, the digital era makes it easier for businesses to access information relating to the target audience’s wants, needs, interests, concerns, biases, and more. Understanding and extracting the insights appropriately can help bolster product or service relevance and enhance the brand’s overall experience.

With customer engagement channels expanding, more straightforward and seamless interactions are becoming more commonplace. Traditional mediums are being less favoured, but that does not change the importance of excelling in customer service and addressing needs promptly. Through machine learning and Artificial Intelligence and platforms such as WhatsApp, website chat boxes, and social media, businesses are effectively and instantaneously engaging customers and enhancing user experiences. Digital has become an intrinsic contributor in enhancing business outreach capabilities and optimising the receptiveness of audiences.

However, as humans, we also seek physical interactions and connections, so as much as some things will continue to change, some will remain the same. It’s all about balance, which can only be effectively achieved by understanding the preferences of audience segments – and at times, that of the individual stakeholder. For service-driven industries, like insurance, it entails using a range of channels and conveying the same message through multiple platforms but in formats that suit the platform – for example, an SMS update of a new service, a social media post with top-line information and links to detail on a website, or a launch event.

Technology is a fantastic tool that has the potential to enhance how we do business in many areas, but it will only be effective if we remember the basics of customer centricity.

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