By Shridhar Iyengar, Vice President, Digital Experience Practice, Infosys
The words digital and experience have become ubiquitous in the modern world. As we step into 2024, let us understand what Digital Experience (DX) can offer.
DX will expand from the traditional focus on customer experience to include stakeholder experience to a broader array of people, from end-customers to distribution partners, suppliers, employees, and shareholders. It will ensure a seamless experience for acquiring new stakeholders, selling to them, and servicing their needs.
Marketing will play a pivotal role in creating these experiences while optimising costs and ensuring a significant return on investment. Organisations will want technology consultants to continue to help them operate, transform, and innovate their businesses and also expect them to optimise the money invested in digital transformation over the last few years.
As a result, these are the four primary trends that will begin to emerge in the coming year.
Consolidation and optimisation of digital technology spend
2024 is poised to be a year of consolidation and optimisation. Following the widespread adoption of digital technologies during the pandemic, organisations are now scrutinising their tech spending. There is a realisation that while survival necessitated suboptimal choices, now there is room for optimisation. The rationalisation of the technology landscape will ensure seamless integration between online and offline channels.
For instance, as retail businesses work with their offline footprint, more customers would prefer to browse online and purchase in-store, moving away from the pandemic trend of browsing and buying online. That experience can easily break if the new e-commerce and legacy back-end systems powering the supply chain from the warehouses to the store aren’t seamless.
Hyper personalisation as the new norm
Hyper-personalisation has been existing for a while and is now becoming the norm. Tailoring experiences to individual preferences is crucial, but the challenge lies in data quality. Regardless of the platform used, poor-quality data yields subpar results. Forward-looking organisations will invest heavily in improving the quality of hyper-personalisation by focusing on the accuracy and relevance of sourced data. Also, enterprises will balance hyper-personalisation with privacy by being transparent and mindful of what data they collect, educating their stakeholders on data usage and assuring them control over their data, and investing in data security measures.
Modernisation of ecosystems as a continuing challenge
While many enterprises have taken giant strides in modernising their ecosystems, this is not the norm. There remains a significant challenge, especially in industries where the customer demographics are vastly diverse or businesses that operate in different geographies with various regulations.
Industries such as insurance, manufacturing and healthcare are classic cases in point. Many institutions cannot throw away the old and embrace the shiniest digital trend because they have customers across different generations. Such instances provide rich opportunities for digitalisation and create a future for these industries.
Emergence of Generative AI
Ultimately, Generative AI is positioned as a central theme for 2024, with its impact spanning marketing, content generation, supply chain management, and more. Generative AI’s proliferation will be fast, but its adoption is still nascent, with considerations around security and the careful use of enterprise data in driving Generative AI models.
