A New Platform to Deliver Superior Customer Experiences

A few weeks ago, I talked about the new platform and the new technology era of business applications. The new platform must enable business applications to drive optimal business decisions and improve customer experiences. It must provide a breadth of application services that enable businesses to rapidly build intelligent business applications that can adjust rapidly to changes in their business environment.

Several weeks ago, at EMC World 2011, I gave a presentation on How to leverage Documentum xCP and the 5 Cs (correspondences, capture, case, content and compliance) to deliver superior customer experiences while improving business efficiencies.

In my presentation I started with a personal experience. A few months ago, I got an automated phone call from my bank telling me that my debit card had been deactivated and to press 1 if I wanted to reactivate it. Puzzled, I decided to call my bank instead. First, regular customer services was closed; so I decided to get routed to the service where you report card losses. After a 15 minute process, I finally got in touch with a customer representative who told me that this was a scam they were aware of and that they had issued a press release to warn their customers about the scam. Yes, you read right: a press release... As educated and responsible consumers and customers, we are expected to monitor the press releases of the companies we do business with, no less.

Well, in the day and age of personalized services and hyper social interactions, needless to say we expect more. This is where the new platform comes into play.  Imagine what my bank could have done had they been using that new platform:

1. They could have been monitoring social channels and their own customer data to look for patterns that their brand was being used for mischievous purposes.  That's where Big Data comes in.   Leveraging data computing appliances and predictive models, corporations can be on the look for significant patterns or events that are likely to impact their businesses.
2. Once, my bank has found evidence that a scam is underway, they could have leveraged the intelligent correspondence management and process capabilities of xCP to send me multi-channel personalized communications and to make sure that I was aware of the scam.  In those communications, they would have provided me with instructions on how to deal with the situation.
3. They could have been proactive in identifying customers that were victims of the scam and opened cases to help those customers deal with the situation, cancel their debit cards and issue new ones
4. They would be delivering better customer experiences, ensuring the loyalty of their customers while protected their business against potential charges of negligent behavior.

This is the power of the new platform.  Gain insight from social and business data, and take actions on that insight to deliver superior customer experiences.  As the success of companies like Zappos shows, companies that can successfully deliver those superior experiences create long term sustainable competitive advantage.

The New Technology Era of Business Applications

After a long hiatus, I have decided that it was time to start blogging again. Last time I posted a blog post was more than 2 years ago. Time flies...

We live in an exciting technology era. Technology transformation is accelerating and what is unique about this transformation is that all layers of the technology stack are experiencing significant changes at the same time. Jeetu Patel wrote a good blog post introducing the Post PC-era. For business applications this has significant implications.

1. The new platform: Business applications require a new platform. That new platform must be scalable, elastic, and rapidly respond to the needs of the business. It also needs a rich set of services to enable businesses to rapidly deliver applications that meet their most critical needs. At EMC Information Intelligence Group, we are investing on both those fronts:
   1. At EMC World, we announced EMC OnDemand to take EMC Documentum into the New Platform era.
   2. Documentum xCP was mentioned in every one of our executives keynotes (by Joe Tucci, Pat Gelsinger, Paul Maritz). xCP provides the breadth of services that enables to rapidly deliver business applications that meet the critical needs of the business. At EMC World, I had a presentation on leveraging the 5Cs (correspondence, capture, case, content and compliance). Those are cornerstone services for the new platform.
2. The new developer: The new developer needs new tools to create applications at a new level of abstraction and to enable her to focus on solving business problems rapidly and not as much on coding or the technology. The new developer needs powerful composition tools. Check out how xCP can empower the new developer to rapidly create sophisticated business applications.
3. The new user: Choice computing is critical to the new user. Check out Jeetu Patel's Blog post on the new user. The new user wants pervasive access to information, user interfaces that are catered to her needs. She needs to make decisions rapidly and needs the right insight to make the right decision with confidence. To that effect, EMC IIG had some significant partnership announcements at EMC World. But beyond the right user interface, the new user needs instant access to the right data, with the insight that enables her to take the right action. She needs to be able to turn information into business advantage. I presented at EMC World on how xCP can enable the new user to do just that

Those are exciting times at EMC IIG, the innovation machines is humming and we are taking part of the transformation of the business application platform on those 3 fronts. This represents an incredible opportunity for the future. I am exciting to be part of this transformation and to lead the development of next generation technology that will enable it.