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    5 Ways to Avoid Becoming ‘Digital Prey’

    According to Forrester, every business will become either a digital predator or digital prey by 2020. To avoid demise, organizations will need to rapidly create new sources of value in their end-to-end customer experiences. True digital predators will be required to break down information and process silos and extend digital transformation initiatives to empower employees with the digital resources needed to win, serve, and retain customers.

    True digital transformation extends beyond the customer experience to also include employees and business processes. Recently, Alfresco commissioned Forrester Consulting to evaluate organizations’ evolving needs for technologies that support enterprise content and business processes. As IT leaders build upon their organizations’ digital business capabilities in the age of the customer, they must recognize the pivotal role that employees play in delivering superior customer experiences and, in turn, the role that employee-focused technologies play in creating more productive, agile enterprises. Bolt-on digital initiatives and legacy technologies perpetuate application silos that create barriers for efficiently completing work tasks.

    Future IT leaders will need to seek technologies that eliminate these silos in order to deliver the right information to the right person within the right application environment at the right time. In this slideshow, Thomas DeMeo, VP of product management at Alfresco suggests that firms looking to drive their businesses forward with digitally driven content and processes consider the following five recommendations.

    5 Ways to Avoid Becoming 'Digital Prey' - slide 1

    Driving Business Forward

    Click through for five recommendations organizations should consider to break down silos and provide better customer and employee experiences, as identified by Thomas DeMeo, VP of product management at Alfresco.

    5 Ways to Avoid Becoming 'Digital Prey' - slide 2

    Integrate on a Single Platform

    Tear down artificial barriers between content and process with a single platform.

    For years, technology management leaders have approached BPM and enterprise content management as distinctly different software domains, requiring distinct and separate disciplines. This separation is no longer sustainable, since digital business blurs the lines between process and content. To succeed with digital business, business leaders will need to evaluate and invest in solutions that merge process and content into a single, flexible platform.

    5 Ways to Avoid Becoming 'Digital Prey' - slide 3

    Create a Business Case

    Create a business case that accounts for direct employee benefits and downstream customer benefits.

    To further alleviate pain points and boost productivity, select technologies that deliver greater contextual awareness to employees. Empowering employees with the internal resources to win, serve, and retain customers creates external benefits such as increased customer satisfaction, higher retention and repeat business.

    5 Ways to Avoid Becoming 'Digital Prey' - slide 4

    Mine Unstructured Data

    Mine the landscape of unstructured content to deepen contextual awareness.

    The best way to increase contextual awareness for employees is to identify the sources of unstructured content that drive decisions connected to winning, serving and retaining customers. The majority of the Forrester survey respondents (67 percent) report that end users need to reference external content frequently or every time they complete a process. Yet when asked about executing a process, scattered content (49 percent) and lack of contextual information (47 percent) were cited as pain points. It’s imperative to take time to survey employees to gain insight into where untamed content and business processes hide, and to also understand which processes are most affected by siloed and hidden content. If available, use analytics to dig into existing content and process platforms and uncover patterns of work and communications, such as how documents are used, by whom and for which tasks.

    5 Ways to Avoid Becoming 'Digital Prey' - slide 5

    Simplify Content Integration

    Simplify content integration across end-to-end business processes.

    To deliver contextual awareness, look to integrate both structured and unstructured content across different business processes and systems. This level of integration will present the greatest challenge for building context-driven business applications. IT leaders will need to adopt platforms that expose content sources in simple ways and that can be configured and embedded in applications without the need for significant custom coding. Organizations seeking progress on their digital journeys should seek technologies that create greater information context in the moment.

    5 Ways to Avoid Becoming 'Digital Prey' - slide 6

    Extend Contextual Awareness

    Extend the benefits of context across all digital channels.

    Understanding customer journeys, intent, channels and behavior – data – is not a matter of gut feeling anymore. It’s imperative to thrive – and maybe even survive. Contextual awareness can shorten the time it takes employees to move from insight to action. However, this same contextual awareness can be extended to improve decision speed for partners, customers and employees in the field. Technology management leaders will need to invest in solutions that extend context to web and mobile applications that cut across multiple channels.

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