The chances of success and survival for companies as well as their business and revenue models increase substantially if they are continuously questioned and systematically tested against the backdrop of disruptive competitors and increasingly informed customers.
In all industries, new competitors are constantly challenging the existing rules of the game by either positioning themselves at the customer interface, attacking particularly profitable market segments or completely digitizing established business models. Established companies are thus often pushed back to less profitable areas of the value chain.
So how can existing business and revenue models be successfully digitized and embedded in extended ecosystems so that the customer can be offered a rewarding needs-based benefit experience?
The ultimate aim is to understand and serve customers holistically in their benefit structure to increase resilience against disruption. This is also the answer to the question of how companies can meet the increasingly complex needs of customers. Broadening the perspective to include existing platforms or the possibility of establishing one's own ecosystem with partners is of crucial importance.
Mere presence in comprehensive ecosystems or on neutral platforms does not yet create a digital business model. Customers are disappointed when they experience, for example, quality deficits or time delays, caused by digital processes are interrupted directly after the digital "shop window". Numerous digitization projects in companies fail because they do not take the end-to-end perspective of central customer processes and are not completely thought from the customer's perspective. Instead, existing processes are only partially automated and integrated into complex process architectures via numerous interfaces. Only an end-to-end digital customer experience creates customer enthusiasm - anything else creates frustration, especially as customers increasingly transfer customer experiences from outside the industry to all existing customer relationships.
In addition, the use of future-oriented technologies such as artificial intelligence will only make sense if all data collected at customer contact points will be meaningfully linked with existing process data in an end-to-end data mode. This will generate superior customer insights and is therefore a prerequisite for sustainable competitive advantages in a digital world.
Customers are increasingly hybrid. This means that companies must address their customers in the customer journey - be it online or offline, but also that all relevant data must be made seamlessly available at all points of contact. Hybrid customers want to continue their journey with a customer representative or sales advisor at the same point at which they left after an online access to the company. This raises the challenge for a full integration of all sales channels. For every business, the seamless integration of face-to-face sales is the central challenge both for sales and for the necessary future transformation.
In terms of growth, successful companies are focusing above all on broadening the sales perspective and tapping into new customer segments. Sales via distribution partners and cooperations are increasingly becoming an essential part of the answer. What appears to be very simple at first glance, however, requires strategic and corporate cultural questions to be answered to be successfully implemented:
Which partners are the right ones? How do existing channels work together with sales partners? What do revenue models and pricing look like? How can higher risks be controlled and cushioned? How can the reservations of the sales team "not invented here" be successfully countered?
