Scaling Up For The Digital Decade

Last decade, we started to see new emerging digital innovations. Now is the time for these to scale up and completely revolutionize industries, experiences, and the global consumer

Whilst many industries have remained true to their core offerings, market makers have made moves to augmenting digital at the heart of what they do. Recent actions to embed private health cards in the Apple wallet, the sale of Afterpay boosting digitally-led fintech appetite, and the introduction of vaccine cards/passports are all hot topics, spurring the trends of a digital revolution. Given the hustle which the pandemic has created towards generating critical opportunities for digital, some of the “next big things” to drive transformation in this decade could be;

• The digital delivery of performances, exhibitions, events, and experiences.Recently, world-renowned festivals such as Tomorrowland in Belgium have transformed their formats into a sci-fi performance with incredible stagecraft and digital emersion at the core of the viewership. High-quality audio and mesmerizing experiential ingenuity created a new trend for large festivals to develop new digital experiences (including mixed reality or XR). These open new revenue streams for creative organizations, with a symbiotic shift to digital art and boundless creativity. For brands, this provides an experience that benefits them commercially in recouping costs of their festivals by delivering a digital experience and engaging the global audience and communities.
• Immersive Media: XR (mixed reality), the augmentation of an experience between a customer and a brand, is more significant than ever before. Linked to the rise of 5G, this allows brands to tell a deeper story, using a rich mix of imagery, video, audio files, and interactive experiences. The emergence of new formats of ad streams in adopting variable options, including the 6-second snippets, generates greater diversity and new engagement opportunities. Network technologies have made significant headway into reducing lag, buffering, and increasing quality.
• New retail purchasing experiences: The adaptability of click-and-collect towards all manner of retail has made “no-touch delivery” a possibility. Groceries, trade hardware, and food delivery, have greatly benefited from this trend, with Woolworths, Bunnings, and Deliveroo as respective examples of these types of businesses. Many digital pure-play businesses can leverage existing retail footprints and traffic to collaborate with front-of-house retailers to expand channels and solve their operational pain points.
• Enhanced phygital experiences: Provide better services through technology to assist customers with pre and post-performance experiences by integrating with way-finding, parking, and mapping technology. New digital experiences in physical locations will also help accessibility and inclusion for all types of personas and demographics in attendees. The 49ers in the USA are an example, having used Bluetooth beacons and an app to enable easy navigation through their stadium.
• Making it personal: Harnessing full and creative use of customer data to identify individualistic preferences and providing iconic experiences creates a leading brand association and culture of identity. Ticketing recommendations, exclusive events in loyalty programs, and iterative product customizations are great examples of where deeper insights will generate synergy for digital innovation, multi-channel visibility, and multi-product engagements.
• Hyper blending traditional hardware with digital: With the emergence of new technologies in glassware such as the TCL NXTWEAR G, the use cases for augmenting a “3D cinematic experience” could have applications in both consumer and enterprise prospects. With the rise of digital twins and threads, expect to see greater virtualization of hard assets to provide dynamic and proactive insights. Imagine if you could go cyber traveling into Italy from the comfort of your home.
• Digitizing documentation and ID: The reduction of plastic with the significant uptrend of sustainability has created a burning platform for a push to digitize the wallet fully. Phones have become the logical new tenant of this documentation, thereby increasing their role in identity governance, PII, and data responsibility in the form of GDPR and Data privacy acts in respective geographies. This positions brands such as Apple, Samsung, Google, LG, Huawei, Oppo, and others to gather deeper user intelligence. However, these brands could partner with telcos on the security and harmonization of local data to manage compliance and risk.
• Bot it wherever you can: Making quality digital experiences available enables leveraging robotic process automation, even for internal customer support teams, by improving databases and online customer management systems. Customer support is then redirected through web saving resources like online, e.g., the chat could help patrons in more valuable and efficient ways. In addition, ticketing and levels of support are ripe for generating benefits with a digital-led mindset.
• Digitally engage your community: Encouraging new touchpoints and improving existing ones with an engaged audience can generate deep insights and brand advocacy. There are perfect opportunities to develop market testing and customer sentiments towards introducing more offerings, products and services customers are unaware of. With the expansive network of new social networks, the opportunity to engage the global audience is higher than ever before.
• Overarching more than enterprise organizations: The ecosystems we live in today are leading to new and emerging experiences and technologies every day. The digital world can create expansive new opportunities and challenge existing business models by driving collaboration and great propositions across industries and sizes. Expect to see digital innovations radically transform how we live and work, with experiences at the heart of the transformations.

WONGDOODY (powered by Infosys) and Infosys Consulting have collaborated on this article to generate new thinking and thought leadership. Please reach out to our experts to learn more about how we can help you and your business.