Andreas Petersson points to three major digital trends that will form 2019.

Andreas Petersson is partner at eCapacity and head of Analytics. We met him for an interview on his thoughts on what trends will drive the digital landscape in 2019.

Trend 1: One size does not fit anyone, in 2019 this is truer than ever before

“1:1 and personalization is not new but with today’s easy accessed advanced analytics technologies there is a clear trend for actually utilizing it to improve your customer experience”, says Andreas Petersson:

“We also experience a strong, nearly exponential, increase in the demand for personalized experiences from customers. A new norm seems to have been established, that if the service or product offer is too complex, customers simply go somewhere else.”

Andreas Petersson, partner at eCapacity and head of Analytics

Andreas continues: “Today customers can also choose from a wide selection of advanced and personalized experiences offered by companies following the models originally introduced by Google, Amazon, Netflix and more. So for our clients, which are typically some of Scandinavia’s biggest enterprises, it is a necessity to transform customer facing products, services and experiences during the coming years.”

Tag management and data quality is becoming more critical machine work

“We experience a heavy increase in the demand for our services that secure data quality and availability. This is the foundation on which more and more commercial core activities are based so naturally secure the quality becomes more and more of a focus for enterprises. Our clients also want to give their customers a coherent and personal experience across devices and channels. As a customer I should be met with relevant and valuable content when it is convenient for me. Furthermore, I want the same value of my experience regardless of where I am in my customer journey and if I am surfing on my mobile or sitting at my desktop. Such an orchestration requires precise, accurate and available data.”

See how eCapacity can help you get (better) control of your company’s digital marketing with tag management

Simplicity also goes for products, says Andreas: “A product with too many add on choices that is not relevant loses over simple and tailored product offers where it is obvious that the company had my interest at heart while design the experience. Here digital data play an important role to support companies in exploring and innovating their products and services and something we are being asked to support many of our clients with. It is a trend in general that will continue and is being specifically felt among our banking and finance clients at the moment.”

Trend 2: The digital transformation is a process and not a single event

“Traditional strategy work has been complete organizational overhauls the took months to make and years to execute” Andreas says. “More and more companies are now moving into shorter strategic iterations often evolving around finding new opportunities for growth or exploring new ways of selling or packaging products and services”. The time between strategy and execution is shortened down significantly and there is a shift in focus towards test-learn-adjust cycles. The obvious advantage is that it becomes easier to accommodate for rapid and not so disruptive changes in demand. But it also means, that digital transformation isn’t just something you do once. It’s an ongoing process. This kind of adaption will therefore likely be the new norm and never stop.”

Organization and deeply specialized competences

The organisational effects are clear, according to Andreas: “Large companies are very aware that they need to be able to adapt faster than what their size often allows them to. That is why you see fundamental changes to organizations and ways of working today. Yousee is a good example of this where they took on a new philosophy around the agile tribes approach, in order to get away from silos in the organization and create a cross functional culture that finds the right skills wherever and whenever it is needed.”

“At eCapacity we feel the trend as we are being asked to support or clients in areas where special and deep knowledge is required and where our typical modus operandi is collaborating across many functions in an organization from IT, to ecommerce and marketing. The stronger the push is to transform an organization towards agility and fast execution the stronger the need is for specialists that have commercial understanding of the business and hands on experience with what buttons to push and for what cases to test and learn on.”

Trend 3: Digital as driver for growth in 2019

Everyone wants to grow everywhere. But right now, according to Andreas, “the growth agenda is present in almost every strategy document and boardroom”. And digital is in many cases the driver for this discussion:

“This causes a willingness to invest and to learn new things in large and small companies. But it also puts pressure on the same areas to deliver the expected returns of digital investments and to do so fast. For several companies this is also an effect of previously healthy growth curves that over the past 1-2 years have begun to stagnate and sometimes turn in the wrong direction.”

There are many reasons why the expectations on digital are reasonable. “One reason is related to the fact that pockets of growth opportunities today do not only stem from the development of a few commercial focal hubs like USA. Today growth can be found – or lost – everywhere like Asia, Central and East Europe for example. Digital is important here as it provides companies with the ability to scale and localize fast.” Andreas continues:

“Many companies have also made considerable investments in infrastructure and IT to modernize and accommodate for new technology. It goes for CRM, PIM, DAM, DMP as examples and now there is an expectation that these investments start to pay off.

And it is impossible not to mention the big tech giants’ development. Their role is constantly growing in significance and dominance over the digital space. Even if many of them do not have an active role in Scandinavia today the general understanding of their ability to explore data driven business models fueled by enormous and active user volumes is increasing. For some they are a potential threat in the near future, in the way they aggressively conquer markets near us like Great Britain or Germany. For others the threat is very near and very real already now. Regardless, in whichever category you belong the paradigm shifts have started, everyone seems to have realized, that the battle for the good customer experience is exceedingly digital. That’s why there is a call to arms. My guess is this will drive the commercial agenda not only in 2019 but in many years to come.”

Call Andreas

Are you interested in what eCapacity can do for you? Call Andreas Petersson directly on +45 51 71 43 63 – or send him an email at ap@ecapacity.dk.