Competing in the Social Era: Charting Your Digital AgendaAs social and mobile technologies transform our lives, businesses need a forward-thinking plan to achieve desired outcomes.

• Cognizant 20-20 Insights

As digital technology becomes forever enmeshed in our society, it is increasingly important for all types of companies to create an agenda charting how they will take advantage of — and profit from — these developments. Even countries and geographic regions are creating digital agendas to ensure their citizens can fully exploit the advantages of modern technology. Everyone from the CIO of the United States to the CEO of Burberry has a plan for capitalizing on digital and turning its use into a competitive advantage.

Technology Forces at Work We have already seen the profound effects of digital technology on consumer life, specifically:

• Broadband and wireless Internet access are permeating every available living space, even appliances, accessories and automobiles. It will soon be unthinkable in most locales for Internet access to be less than readily available, and free.

• Mobile devices and mobility are redefining the way consumers access and expect to see infor-mation, and business users are right behind consumers in their appetite for mobile data.

• Cloud is increasingly seen as an option for organizations looking for ways to lower costs,

enable business transformation and jumpstart new business models.

• Social media and communities are enabling consumers to increase the influence they have over current and future products and services. Consumers have brought real-world influence to the virtual space.

• Digital channels are getting increasing attention in terms of budgets and focus as compared with traditional channels. These include social media and communities.

These forces necessitate that businesses build a digital agenda to address consumers and dif-ferentiate themselves in light of increased com-petition, enabling competitive advantage and a superior customer experience.

Underlying Your Digital Agenda Establishing a digital agenda can be looked at through three layers:

• Layer 1: The source layer comprises enter-prise information and data originating from internal or external sources, as well as data assets residing in disparate formats and loca-tions. This type of data may be unstructured or structured, transactional or not. Large compa-

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nies now have so much data that it is officially deemed “big data,” and data stores will only get bigger over time, adding to the manage-ment challenge.

According to the IDC Digital Universe Study from May 2010, the world’s data will grow to 35 “zetabytes” (35 trillion gigabytes) by 2020, from a base of 0.8ZB in 2009.1 Seventy percent of this data will remain unstructured, necessi-tating different analytical models and engines to effectively profile and segment customers for marketing campaigns.

The vast volume of data also provides invaluable insights into customer behavior at additional digital touchpoints, where each interaction is a data point. Future customer profiles will be built using both structured and unstructured social data. When applied to the universe of data, analytics helps determine the new experiences and offerings companies should develop, and what type of conversion is necessary to make these new offerings available on the consumer’s desired platform.

• Layer 2: The production layer uses data from the source layer to design and build digital interactions to be consumed in the third layer, the consumption layer. The production layer has three core engines:

> Digital analytics management: This engine translates the source feeds into meaningful insights to devise interaction strategies, define the right marketing mix and build customer segments and profile models. The analytics system also receives feedback from the consumption layer to measure the success of interactions and campaigns to truly quantify return on investment.

> Digital content management: This engine is used to develop, manage and distribute digital assets and content across channels in the form that is required by the consum-er. This engine yields the information the consumer wants in the right place, at the right time, in the right format, within the right context.

> Enterprise marketing management: This engine is used to plan, budget, design, ex-ecute and capture responses for all digital campaigns and interactions.

The core engines are driven by the orga-nization’s digital strategy to define the consumer interactions. Some of these

strategies include location-based services, gamification, augmented reality (AR), digi-tal commerce, social currency, loyalty and advocacy, digital ads and search engine optimization/search engine marketing (SEO/SEM). These will shape future con-sumer interactions on digital channels.

• Layer 3: The consumption layer consists of the Web, social and mobile channels upon which consumers receive messages. Today, a digital consumer typically picks one of these three channels as his or her preferred channel of interaction. Each channel has its own set of tactics and mechanisms available to transmit the message (for example, Web banners, podcasts, video, apps). The consump-tion data is fed back into the production engine to generate insights and measure interaction success.

Today, once they have pinpointed consumer interests using analytics, most companies use Web, social and mobile as the platforms for transmitting the content consumers seek. Tradi-tionally, marketing platforms, content platforms and analytics engines have been used in a dis-connected mode. The next phase of evolution of marketing ecosystems will be to build synergies and integrations between these platforms to drive interaction with consumers over digital and traditional channels (see Figure 1).

The Digital Agenda in ActionTo explore this idea further, let’s look at a high- profile retailer, a seller of luxury cosmetics. As most retailers do, this company has large databases of customer information. It enriches the customer data with information culled from social interactions, and then it performs analytics, defines segmentation and designs offers for its marketing campaigns. So, the next time the consumer walks into a shopping mall, the retailer is aware of her presence and sends an alert regarding a discount or another incentive to her smartphone via location-based services and invites her to walk into the store.

Once inside the store, the AR kiosk displays a selected range of cosmetics based on her profile, for her to virtually “try on” and share with her friends on social sites for instant recommenda-tion. Delivering this personalized experience and instant gratification is what helps drive the creation of customer advocates who will carry the company’s banner, insulating the brand from shocks. These advocates are “customers

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for life,” who can be expected not only to spend their cosmetics dollars with the brand, but also influence purchase decisions in friend/peer networks toward the brand.

An example from the life sciences industry shows how this might work in the B2B arena. A phar-maceutical company retains a wealth of informa-tion in its master database, including data from patients, doctors, pharmacies and other constitu-encies. That sort of information is all internal and structured in nature.

But the pharmaceutical company also has a great deal of information external to the community that is unstructured (for example, posts from online communities discussing specific diseases and medications). The company can build an enhanced physician profile using structured and unstruc-tured data, design targeted messaging to be used during the medical representative’s next visit or send the physician an invitation to a medical conference in his vicinity, based on the level of participation on a particular disease community. The centerpoint of the company’s digital agenda is its successful use of social and mobile platforms, as well as its corporate Web site.

Without the concept of a digital agenda and strategy, there will likely be a number of non-integrated initiatives exploiting these platforms in a haphazard way. These can have profound

negative effects, including confusing your target customer and market. You need to reduce this risk by putting in place an overarching digital strategy to rationalize and consolidate all of the different perspectives into one. Your digital agenda will not only establish the technologies and tactics to be used to grow the business, but it will also inform mitigation strategies in the event of negative events.

Six Steps to Your Digital Agenda 1. Understand the online spaces your digital

consumers inhabit.

2. Define your platform. Once you know where your consumers are located, identify the platforms — Web, social and mobile — on which they want to engage with you.

3. Create a portfolio of your digital assets (Web sites, social communities, mobile apps, customer databases, technology platforms, tools, resources and processes) within your organization.

4. Define a plan to convert these digital assets to the consumption layer, based on market requirements.

5. Leverage your digital platforms to increase awareness, visibility and agility.

6. Create a roadmap for a phased implementation.

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About Cognizant

Cognizant (NASDAQ: CTSH) is a leading provider of information technology, consulting, and business process out-sourcing services, dedicated to helping the world’s leading companies build stronger businesses. Headquartered in Teaneck, New Jersey (U.S.), Cognizant combines a passion for client satisfaction, technology innovation, deep industry and business process expertise, and a global, collaborative workforce that embodies the future of work. With over 50 delivery centers worldwide and approximately 140,500 employees as of March 31, 2012, Cognizant is a member of the NASDAQ-100, the S&P 500, the Forbes Global 2000, and the Fortune 500 and is ranked among the top performing and fastest growing companies in the world. Visit us online at www.cognizant.com or follow us on Twitter: Cognizant.

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It is no longer practical to delay the creation of a digital agenda for your organization. The challenges come in the form of changing mindsets, as well as redefining business processes and execution methodologies. As digital technology becomes ever more entrenched in the way we work and live, it is more and more important for all types of companies to chart out how they will take advantage of — and profit from — these devel-opments.

Traditional operating models need to be replaced by collaborative and agile platforms for organiza-

tions to design and execute their customer inter-action strategies and keep abreast of the dynamic and complex marketplace. Companies of all sizes, across a multitude of different industries, are following consumers in laying out their digital strategies. If you have not already done so, it’s time to act.

To learn more, read the white paper, Charting Your Digital Agenda: Six Technology Trends Driving Competitive Advantage, Now and in Years to Come.

Footnotes 1 “The Digital Universe Decade: Are You Ready?” IDC, May 2010,

http://www.emc.com/collateral/analyst-reports/idc-digital-universe-are-you-ready.pdf.

About the AuthorsDileep Srinivasan is an Assistant Vice President for CRM and Social CRM in Cognizant’s Customer Solutions Practice. He specializes in helping organizations across industries apply traditional and emerging social CRM tools to generate long-term business value. He can be reached at Dileep.Srinivasan@cognizant.com.

Ashish Rathi is a Consultant with Cognizant Business Consulting’s Digital and Social Practice. He spe-cializes in helping organizations across industries apply digital and social strategies to drive consumer engagements and interaction experience. He can be reached at Ashish.Rathi@cognizant.com.