Category: Digital

Technology evolution in digital era is so fast that the greatest challenge is updating business and strategies at the same speed.

Every sector has been disrupted and thus, nothing will remain the same.

In the case of the retail sector, current times have prompted futuristic applications of cloud, physical and virtual space integration, virtual shelves, sensors in stores that enable limited actions, increasingly smarter virtual assistants, all of which to service multi-channel and digital consumers.

What supports this new design are disruptive starts, including the Internet of Things (IoT) artificial intelligence (AI), cloud, Beacon, augmented reality, chatbots, cognitive computing platforms and Analytics. It is interesting to learn more about such recent applications in the e-Book Digital retail, the desire revolution, here on the blog Tudo de TI.

The customer is also a star.

In this scenario, the customer is, or should be, at the core of every digital retail strategy. They are the ones who make the rules. Therefore, whoever delves deeper into behavior study and anticipates the expectations of the customer has a competitive edge.

According to a Salesforce survey, The AI Revolution: Insights into the next era of customer relationship, 80% of the responding companies believe AI has a positive impact on their sales team’s productivity, and 74% noticed an increase in sale speed.

Moreover, the survey discloses that the customers themselves are more flexible. Approximately 60% of them are willing to share personal data in exchange for a customized or online store and purchase experience. Through this, they hope that companies will use their data intelligently.

Another survey, The Importance of Innovation in the Mobile Customer Journey, performed by Ingenico ePayments, a payment processing service company, reveals that retailers (54%) are planning investments in gamification. Others bet on chatbots to make customer interactions more effective. Everyone is searching within technology for more interaction with the consumer.

By 2020, according to a Salesforce survey, 51% of consumers and 75% of corporate buyers expect that companies will anticipate their needs and make relevant suggestions accordingly. This means that companies will need to offer a full and customized experience through the entire purchase process.

Would you like to learn more about new era retail? Access Digital retail, the desire revolution.

The banks that have adapted have already understood that IT has become a company’s main business, as it attracts new customers (whether current bank account holders or not), increases revenues and reduces costs. If we evaluate the potential for brand perception in the market, digitalization means a company is more attractive to customers. The more innovative, the higher its attraction power to partners and further business.

For larger and more traditional banks, this posed an important challenge as they work off of heavy legacy systems subject to strong regulation by the Central Bank. These regulations are often older and based on several specific updates with regard to mergers and acquisitions over the last decades.

In a brief survey, I found 90 financial institutions that ceased to exist in the last 20 years, most of them acquired or merged. This has been deeply relevant for the IT market for years, however as acquisitions occurred quickly, legacy systems were more impacted with updates.

In a country where the five largest banks possess 80% of assets and where approximately 65% of transactions are already performed through digital channels, extremely severe impacts to the infrastructure, to operations, and to the back office were seen in the last few years.

Another relevant point to be highlighted are fintechs. As the operations of major retailers grew (and became more expensive), startups rose as a successful business model with high attractiveness and low operational costs. At a certain point, it became evident that larger companies could overtake smaller ones, however the faster ones could not be contained. Banks could no longer ignore this ecosystem.

Within this complex scenario, companies tend to aim at cost balance towards investment rerouting. In recent IDC global consulting on ICT market in Brazil, it was highlighted that 2018 is the year for IT investments to reduce operational cost and to improve productivity.

Integrators with a capacity to offer full solutions stand out in this competitive market as fintechs become increasingly present. Considering that Resource IT has introduced in the last CIAB (Latin America’s greatest even with regard to bank technology) a digital subscription solution.

If the agreement has already been signed digitally, part of the storage chain is eliminated providing more efficiency and productivity to these institutions. It is based on the main customer pillars: security, high availability, cost/benefit ratio and legal support.

Thousands of agreements are still signed on paper, collected by expert companies for document custody and then digitized and stored for at least five years upon its settlement. If you consider a real estate loan, there are numerous years’ worth of stored agreements. Digitalization via scanner generates larger files that occupy more storage megabytes.

Our solution foresees signature acknowledgment (graphometric), biometric authentication (finger or face print) and tokenization as viable options. Voice biometry has also become an option for telemarketing operations.

It is worth noting that everything depends on successful diagnostic and customer requirements. Our role is consulting, thus, supporting and directing the customer to the best solution as the main goal. It has to add to this package a significant added value: passion. This soft skill makes a crucial difference.