Creating Business Value Through IT
By Waqqas Mahmood, Director, Strategic Consulting, Marcum Technology
Business value includes any type of value that will add to the long-term health and success of the business. It is more than simply economic value and is measured through various elements such as customer experience, employee satisfaction, and increasing agility to keep up with consumer demands. Business value includes intangible and tangible assets, such as intellectual property and a business plan. Business value is often measured using a method called the balanced scorecard, and when it comes to IT, this scorecard has three key components: Customer Centricity, Data-driven, and Innovation-led workforce.
Customer Centricity
Providing a digitized end-to-end customer experience by leveraging the back office. Make and keep realistic promises on service, quality, and delivery. This will give you more credibility with your customers. By making and keeping promises to your employees, you can also build employee loyalty, confidence, and morale. Delivering consistent results is key to proving the reliability of your company, product, or service, and is a major intangible business value.
Beyond the usual requirements, we believe the value of understanding your customers is a massive competitive advantage for businesses. We believe that every customer-related business decision should be data-driven, or data-informed. The days of making business decisions based on gut feel, intuition, or whoever shouts the loudest should be long gone. That’s why we do what we do.
“Know Your Customer” (KYC) is the principle of collecting vital customer information to understand who is using a company’s products and services. That may mean knowing their names, personas, purchasing habits, preferences, or having financial information hashed in a database. It might also mean knowing customer identification numbers to ensure that duplicate names don’t cause issues. KYC compliance is an important part of doing business. To derive the greatest benefits, you need to implement KYC services provided by various system providers in your business processes to maintain the safest environment possible. Organizations should leverage an objective view when deciding an IT system to help with the KYC approach.
KYC has traditionally been a strategy used by an organization’s marketing and communication departments. However, with the advancement of Artificial Intelligence (AI) and Machine Learning (ML) technologies, the KYC strategy has become more mainstream across the organization. This larger footprint of KYC comes with its challenges and risks as well, especially around storing and curating data containing PCI/PII information.
Innovation-led workforce
Equipping sales and marketing/communication teams with solutions to improve effectiveness in their relationships with prospects, distributors and customers. Develop and encourage effective decision-making practices by employees. This can be achieved through leadership training programs, delegation of responsibility, and encouraging and supporting employees to take more day-to-day control of their own projects. This leaves top management free to focus more on strategic issues, and gives employees more experience and confidence, so they can step into higher roles. Giving employees opportunities for career advancement can also help you retain and attract the best workers and will add to your overall business value.
Increase your business value by building more capability within your business. This includes focusing on attracting and retaining good employees; making sure customers are satisfied and your business has a good reputation; having in place procedures that ensure high performance; encouraging collaboration and cooperation across the business; developing leaders who can support and motivate employees; and supporting employees to develop the skills and knowledge they need to innovate. All of these factors will increase your competitive advantage and add intangible business value.
Data-driven business
Digitizing R&D, connecting manufacturing, integrating supply chain, digitizing HR, finance transformation, equipping Legal. Use information technology to create business value by having an IT plan in place and investing to support the IT development that you need to meet the goals of your IT plan. IT systems that improve transaction speed, allow easier and faster information sharing, and are adaptable to changing business needs and conditions can also add value by increasing productivity and performance.
Connecting data from different sources to improve visibility can provide significant business value. Information produced using AI and advanced analytics helps you make better decisions and improve preparedness by simulating different what-if scenarios. Furthermore, when routine tasks are automated, and decentralized actions are enabled through personalized views, daily operations become more efficient. But achieving these benefits requires customer understanding and commitment.
