CONCORD OP-ED
The risk mitigation portion of our brain often tells us to hunker down and avoid making any sudden moves when it looks like the bottom of the market could fall out. So, what’s a person to do? Let the market pass and wait until things look more stable to make investments? It sounds reasonable, but you might miss out on more than you save. If history has taught us anything, times of turmoil tend to create the strongest, most resilient companies. With that in mind, you can make smart technology investments that will position your business for immediate and longer-term success while being prudent and minimizing risk. Significant new transformational investments in ERP or other cloud platforms may not make sense at this time. However, getting the most out of your current technology investments, making it easier for your customers to work with you, and enabling agility across your organization will position you to win and allow you to do more with less. To make your company more resilient, efficient, and innovative, I recommend reviewing your approach in three critical business aspects – experience, data, and cloud. Success requires significant technology depth, a unique perspective, and domain expertise focused on solving critical business and technology issues. Perhaps more importantly, you need to do the “hard work” necessary to integrate disparate systems, platforms, and data sources, all while delivering a human-centered user experience to customers and employees.
Unlocking Resilience, Efficiency, and Innovation in Difficult Times Technology investments during times of economic uncertainty can feel risky, but there’s far more to lose by hunkering down.
Building Momentum with User Experience Quick Wins
Any step to reduce customer friction in engaging with you is a solid investment; the right user experience initiatives will simplify your customer’s experience with your company. Conveniently, there’s ample opportunity to tackle projects with a low degree of difficulty that will provide powerful results. Working towards continuous improvement on your website or portal is one of the most impactful initiatives you can undertake without a massive lift. Regardless of your industry, your customer-facing sites and portals can be better, faster, and easier to use. There are three quick win opportunities I recommend considering: Simplifying site navigation. Revisiting your navigation isn’t a heavy lift to implement, but it makes a massive difference in site accessibility and customer experience. Optimizing site taxonomy. Reviewing your site taxonomy to ensure the content you’re displaying reflects what’s on the page makes your site easier to use and influences your search engine rankings. Improving site search. You can reduce the time your user spends on the site or portal and improve their overall satisfaction with the experience by providing helpful and accurate results. Improving your digital experience leads to greater customer satisfaction and reduces costs for your organization. Truly a win-win scenario.
Florin Ibrani, Chief Executive Officer, Concord
T he upcoming year is poised to present a variety of challenges from a planning and investment perspective. Market uncertainty isn’t new; we consistently cycle through economic ups and downs. It might feel a bit different this time around, however, given the range of economic, social, and political challenges. For many in leadership positions, this might be the first time you’re experiencing an operating background this challenging and uncertain.
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