Preparing for 2022: A five-point focused plan for businesses
By Sumit Saxena – CEO Merren
For businesses, year-end is a wonderful time to look-back and plan forward. Especially during the volatile times we live in. In the first two years of this decade, some businesses witnessed a decline during the pandemic, while some flourished and found new opportunities. It all boiled down to one thing – the ability of the business to adapt to current circumstances and realign themselves to the shifting customer needs. As the world adapts to the ‘new normal’, businesses in India have huge opportunities in front of them – to build from India to the world. Software-as-a-Service (SaaS), one of the fastest-growing segments of IT, is one segment that has taken a lead on this trend. But more industry segments would follow.
It would not be easy. It would require major mindset shifts if we have to take on the world. Here are five things businesses will have to do to leverage this opportunity
Adopting world-as-a-market mindset
With technology penetrating across borders in the business world, many companies are discovering that their customer base is shifting considerably, from domestic to global. Companies that would best leverage this would be those who shed their comfort zone of the current market and look for global opportunities. This requires a mindset change that would not come easy.
Realigning customer centricity in message and medium
Aligning with the build for the world mindset, companies would have to up the marketing game. With this expansion of markets, it will also be critical to never lose sight of how to deliver value to the customer while managing a heterogeneous mix of cultures and preferences.
Fortunately, the online platforms have aided businesses to reach a far larger audience with agility and economically. That’s the power of digital platforms that brands are already tapping into to become a preferred choice. Customer-centricity would demand that both marketing communication and experience management happen on platforms that customers are comfortable on.
Social media platforms like Facebook reach 1.9 billion people every single day, while LinkedIn currently has a total of 774 million users. If you are a B2C company, can you ignore Facebook? Or if you are a B2B firm, can your marketing strategy be built without Linkedin (or Twitter). Messaging apps like WhatsApp have 2 billion users globally. If you are building for the world, would you not want to leverage this reach?
Relearning sales in the world where physical location is redundant
From the buyer’s end, people have had a taste of the borderless world. E-commerce sites like Amazon have made consumer products available to global audiences already. The COVID-19 crisis and the consequent travel restriction have done the same for B2B products and services.
Online B2B sales is no longer an exception, it is increasingly a norm. The need for “face-time” will be replaced by FaceTime (or Zoom, Google Meet, Microsoft Teams- your pick). This means relearning the sales process- from prospecting, demonstrating, negotiation to finally closing a deal.
Consequently, a lot of sales automation tools have cropped up to help companies make this shift smoothly. Adopting them would be another mindset change that companies would learn to make
Obsessing over UX and CX
Today, everything centers around a good customer experience. If you have a great product that is difficult to learn and use, you will lose users. The global audience is far less forgiving of a poorly designed user-interface than the Indian one. That’s where UI/UX obsession needs to come in for the Indian companies looking global.
In fact, the customer experience would have to be managed through the entire user journey and not just during the product usage. Companies would have to measure their performance on customer experience during the purchase cycle, the adoption period and after sales support process. Indian companies would have to up their game on customer experience management if they have to meet the expectation of the demanding global audience
Investing in Security & Consent
Amongst the many reasons why Apple stands out as a company, is the trust and assurance comforting its audience that the company is constantly undertaking efforts to keep their customers safe. Data security and personal privacy data often get taken for granted. As companies start to look beyond the Indian market, yet another mindset change required would be to put value to consent, privacy and data security.
Proactively adopting international standards around data security and privacy will help ensure that the customer data is safe. The fact that the customer’s consent is respected would be an important aspect for safeguarding brand values and brand needs to grow.
