SAP COMMERCE CLOUD INTEGRATION ROADMAP PART 1: INTEGRATIONS IN THE CLOUD

SAP continues to execute their cloud vision: to converge the SAP family of applications with SAP Cloud Platform at the center. As the SAP Customer Experience (CX) portfolio evolves, customers are better enabled for self-service of their cloud applications. Recent evolutions of SAP Commerce Cloud have introduced a fundamental change in the way SAP Hybris is implemented; all new SAP Commerce Cloud instances will now be hosted in SAP Cloud Platform, on public cloud infrastructure.

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RCI Technologies

RCI Technologies, Inc. has been in business for 38 years providing Business and Technical Solutions to State, Federal and Commercial clients . RCI is a Minority Woman Owned Business committed to service excellence. Our mission is to thoroughly understand our clients’ needs and requirements while delivering the right solution, the first time, every time.

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Software, Low-Code App Development, Application Development Platform

Are Telcos Ready for a Quantum Leap?

Article | August 23, 2023

Quantum technologies present both an opportunity for telcos to solve difficult problems and provide new services and a security threat that could require extensive IT investment. Are Telcos Ready for a Quantum Leap? When Andrew Lord, Senior Manager, Optical Networks and Quantum Research at BT, first started presenting quantum technologies at customer events six or seven years ago, his was the graveyard shift, he says, entertaining attendees at the end of the day with talk of 'crazy quantum stuff.' "But that is no longer the case," says Lord. "Over the last two years, I've noticed a shift where I now speak before lunch, and customers actively seek us out." Two developments may be causing the shift: Customers’ growing awareness of the threats and opportunities that quantum computing presents, plus a recent spike in investment in quantum technology. In 2022, investors plowed $2.35 billion into quantum technology startups, which include companies in quantum computing, communications and sensing, according to McKinsey. The public sector has also been digging deep into its pockets. Last year, the United States added $1.8 billion to its previous spending on quantum technology, and the EU committed an extra $1.2 billion, the consultancy noted, while China made total investments of $15.3 billion. According to Luke Ibbetson, Head of Group R&D at Vodafone, quantum computing's promise lies in solving a probabilistic equation within a few hours. This task would take a classical computer a million years to accomplish. This breakthrough would enable telcos to address optimization problems related to network planning, optimization, and base station placement. The flip side is that a powerful quantum computer could also break the public-key cryptography that protects today’s IT systems from hackers. As a spokesperson at Deutsche Telekom remarks: “Telcos will have to react to the threat of quantum computers to communication security because their core business model is at risk, which is offering secure digital communications.” The idea of quantum computing posing a security threat is not new. In 1994, Peter Shor, a mathematician working at AT&T Bell Labs, showed how a quantum computer could solve the logarithms used to encrypt data. “His work simultaneously ignited multiple new lines of research in quantum computing, information science, and cryptography,” according to an article by the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, where Shor is currently working. Beyond The Lab What has changed nearly thirty years on is that quantum computing is creeping out of the lab. Sizeable obstacles to large-scale quantum computing, however, remain. Quantum computers are highly sensitive to interference from noise, temperature, movement or electromagnetic fields and, therefore, very difficult and expensive to build and operate, especially at scale: IBM’s latest quantum processor, for example, operates at a very low temperature of approximately 0.02 degrees Kelvin. When Deutsche Telekom’s T-Labs tested telco use cases, it found quantum computing coped well with small problem statements. “However, when the problem size was scaled to real-world problem sizes, the quality of the QComp solution degraded,” according to the spokesperson. The company is now awaiting the next generation of quantum computing platforms to redo the analyses. All of this means, for now, quantum computers are not large and powerful enough to crack Shor’s algorithm. The question is, when will someone succeed? The Global Risk Institute tracks the quantum threat timeline. In its latest annual report, the organization asked 40 quantum experts whether they thought it likely that within the next ten years, a quantum computer would break an encryption scheme like RSA-2048 in under 24 hours. Over half the respondents judged the event to be more than 5% likely, and almost a quarter considered it to be more than 50% likely. Any breakthrough will come from a relatively small number of actors. Today, governments and academic institutions are home to around half of the 163 projects accounted for worldwide by Global Quantum Intelligence, a research and analysis company, according to its CEO, André M. König, with big technology companies and specialized startups accounting for the rest. Q2K Nonetheless, the impact of quantum computing could be widespread, even if relatively few of them are built. The challenge of preparing for a post-quantum future is often called Q2K in reference to the Y2K bug. In the late 1990s, many (but not all) governmental organizations and companies spent millions of dollars on Y2K systems integration to ensure that IT programs written from the 1960s through the 1980s would be able to recognize dates after December 31, 1999, all while being uncertain of the scale or the impact of the risk if they didn’t. ‘Q2K’ differs in that there is no specific deadline, and the dangers of a major security breach are much clearer cut. However, it is similar in demanding a lot of work on aging systems. “Cryptography is used everywhere,” points out Lory Thorpe, IBM’s Director of Global Solutions and Offerings, Telecommunications. She adds, “Because telco systems have been built over periods of decades, people don’t actually know where cryptography is being used. So, if you start to look at the impact of public key cryptography and digital signatures being compromised, you start to look at how those two things impact open source, how that impacts the core network, the radio network, [and] OSS/BSS, network management, how the network management speaks to the network functions and so on.” This complexity is why some analysts recommend that telcos take action now. “You’re going to find tens of thousands of vulnerabilities that are critical and vulnerable to a quantum attack. So, do you have to worry about it today? Absolutely - even if it’s in 2035,” says König. “Anyone who has ever done [IT implementation projects], and anyone who’s ever worked in cybersecurity [knows], tens of thousands of vulnerabilities that are critical [requires] years and years and years of just traditional integration work. So, even if you’re skeptical about quantum, if you haven’t started today, it is almost too late already.” Don’t Panic! For the past two to three years, Vodafone has been preparing to migrate some of its cryptographic systems to be quantum-safe, according to Ibbetson. He believes there is no need to panic about this. However, telcos must start planning now. König said, "The telecoms industry as a whole is not moving as quickly as some other sectors, notably the banking, pharmaceutical, and automotive industries. In these sectors, post-quantum security planning often involves CEOs at a very strategic level." For this reason, Vodafone joined forces with IBM in September 2022 to establish the GSMA Post-Quantum Telco Network Taskforce. “Even though many industries are preparing to be able to defend against future quantum threats, we didn’t see anything happening particularly in in the telco space, and we wanted to make sure that it was a focus,” says Ibbetson. “Obviously it will turn into an IT-style transformation, but it’s starting now with understanding what it is we need to mobilize that.” AT&T has also been working to pinpoint what needs to be addressed. Last year, the company said it aims to be quantum-ready by 2025, in the sense that it will have done its due diligence and identified a clear path forward. Minding Your PQCs Companies across multiple sectors are looking to post-quantum cryptography (PQC) to secure their systems, which will use new algorithms that are much harder to crack than RSA. König contends that PQC needs to become “a standard component of companies’ agile defense posture” and believes the development of PQC systems by software and hardware companies will help keep upgrade costs under control. “From a financial point of view, vendors do a fantastic job bringing this to market and making it very accessible,” says König. Lord, who has been researching quantum technologies at BT for over a decade, is also confident that there is “going to be much more available technology.” As a result, even smaller telcos will be able to invest in securing their systems. “It doesn't need a big boy with lots of money [for] research to do something around PQC. There’s a lot of work going on to ratify the best of those solutions,” says Lord. There are several reasons why eyes are on software based PQC. Firstly, it can be used to secure data that was encrypted in the past, quantum computing advances will make vulnerable in the future. In addition, the quantum-based alternative to PQC for securing network traffic called quantum key distribution (QKD), comes with a huge drawback for wireless operators. QKD is hardware-based and uses quantum mechanics to prevent interception across optical fiber and satellite (i.e., free space optical) networks, making it secure, albeit expensive. But for reasons of physics, it does not work on mobile networks. Setting Standards Given the importance of PQC, a lot of effort is going into standardizing robust algorithms. The political weight of the US and the size of its technology industry mean that the US government’s National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) is playing a key role in the technical evaluation of post-quantum standardization algorithms and creating standards. NIST expects to publish the first set of post-quantum cryptography standards in 2024. In the meantime, Dustin Moody, a NIST mathematician, recommends (in answers emailed to inform) that companies “become familiar and do some testing with the algorithms being standardized, and how they will fit in your products and applications. Ensure that you are using current best-practice cryptographic algorithms and security strengths in your existing applications. Have somebody designated to be leading the effort to transition. QKD There is no absolute guarantee, however, that a quantum computer in the future won’t find a way to crack PQC. Therefore, institutions such as government agencies and banks remain interested in using QKD fiber and satellite networks to ensure the highest levels of security for data transmission. The European Commission, for example, is working with the 27 EU Member States and the European Space Agency (ESA) to design, develop and deploy a QKD-based European Quantum Communication Infrastructure (EuroQCI). It will be made up of fiber networks linking strategic sites at national and cross-border levels and a space segment based on satellites. EuroQCI will reinforce the protection of Europe’s governmental institutions, their data centers, hospitals, energy grids, and more,” according to the EU. Telecom operators are involved in some of the national programs, including Orange, which is coordinating France’s part of the program called FranceQCI (Quantum Communication Infrastructure). Separately, this month, Toshiba and Orange announced they had successfully demonstrated the viability of deploying QKD on existing commercial networks. Outside the EU, BT has already built and is now operating a commercial metro quantum-encryption network in London. “The London network has three quantum nodes, which are the bearers carrying the quantum traffic for all of the access ingress,” explains Lord. For example, a customer in London's Canary Wharf could link via the network to the nearest quantum-enabled BT exchange. From there, it joins a metro network, which carries the keys from multiple customers “in an aggregated cost-effective way to the egress points,” according to Lord. “It is not trivial because you can mess things up and [get] the wrong keys,” explains Lord. “You really have to be more careful about authentication and key management. And then it's all about how you engineer your quantum resources to handle bigger aggregation.” It also gives BT the opportunity to explore how to integrate quantum systems downstream into its whole network. “What I'm telling the quantum world is that they need to get into the real world because a system that uses quantum is still going to be 90%, non-quantum and all of the usual networking rules and engineering practices apply. You still need to know how to handle fiber. You still need to know how to provision a piece of equipment and integrate it into a network.” SK Telecom is also heavily involved in quantum-related research, with developments including QKD systems for the control and interworking of quantum cryptography communication networks. Japan is another important center of QKD research. A QKD network has existed in Tokyo since 2010, and in 2020, financial services company Nomura Securities Co., Ltd. tested the transmission of data across the Tokyo QKD network. As the EU’s project makes clear, satellite is an important part of the mix. Lord expects satellite-based QKD networks to come on stream as of 2025 and 2026, enabling the purchase of wholesale quantum keys from a dedicated satellite quantum provider. Back in 2017, China already used the satellite to make the first very long-distance transmission of data secured by QKD between Beijing and Vienna, a distance of 7,000km. Securing The Edge There are additional efforts to secure communications with edge devices. BT’s Lord, for example, sees a role for digital fingerprints for IoT devices, phones, cars and smart meters in the form of a physical unclonable function (PUF) silicon chip, which, because of random imperfections in its manufacture, cannot be copied. In the UK, BT is trialing a combination of QKD and PUF to secure the end-to-end journey of a driverless car. The connection to the roadside depends on standard radio with PUF authentication, while transmission from the roadside unit onward, as well as the overall control of the autonomous vehicle network, incorporate QKD, explains Lord. SK Telecom has developed what it describes as a quantum-enhanced cryptographic chip with Korea Computer & Systems (KCS) and ID Quantique. Telefónica Spain has partnered on the development of a quantum-safe 5G SIM card and has integrated quantum technology into its cloud service hosted in its virtual data centers. Given China’s heavy investment in quantum technologies, it is no surprise to see its telecom operators involved in the field. China Telecom, for example, recently invested three billion yuan ($434m) in quantum technology deployment, according to Reuters. Quantum in The Cloud Some of America's biggest technology companies are investing in quantum computing. Today, it is even possible to access quantum computing facilities via the cloud, albeit at on small scale. IBM's cloud access to quantum computers is free for the most basic level, rising to $1.60 per second for the next level. And it is just the beginning. America's big tech companies are racing to build quantum computers at scale. One measure of scale is the size of a quantum processor, which is measured in qubits. While a traditional computer stores information as a 0 or 1, a qubit can represent both 0 and 1 simultaneously. This unique property enables a quantum computer to explore multiple potential solutions to a problem simultaneously; and the greater the stability of its qubits, the more efficient it becomes. IBM has a long history in quantum research and development. In 1998, it unveiled what was then a ground-breaking 2-qubit computer. By 2022, it had produced a 433-qubit processor, and in 2023, it aims to produce a 1,121-qubit processor. Separately, this month, it announced the construction of its first quantum data center in Europe, which it expects to begin offering commercial services as of next year. Google is also firmly in the race to build a large-scale quantum computer. In 2019, a paper in Nature featured Google’s Sycamore processor and the speed with which it undertakes computational tasks. More recent work includes an experimental demonstration of it’s possible to reduce errors by increasing the number of qubits. Microsoft reckons that "a quantum machine capable of solving many of the hardest problems facing humanity will ultimately require at least 1 million stable qubits that can perform 1 quintillion operations while making at most a single error." To this end, it is working on what it calls a new type of qubit, a topological qubit. Amazon announced in 2021 an AWS Center for Quantum Computing on the Caltech campus to build a fault-tolerant quantum computer.

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Software, Future Tech, Application Development Platform

Empowering Industry 4.0 with Artificial Intelligence

Article | July 24, 2023

The next step in industrial technology is about robotics, computers and equipment becoming connected to the Internet of Things (IoT) and enhanced by machine learning algorithms. Industry 4.0 has the potential to be a powerful driver of economic growth, predicted to add between $500 billion- $1.5 trillion in value to the global economy between 2018 and 2022, according to a report by Capgemini.

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Low-Code App Development

How Artificial Intelligence Is Transforming Businesses

Article | April 20, 2023

Whilst there are many people that associate AI with sci-fi novels and films, its reputation as an antagonist to fictional dystopic worlds is now becoming a thing of the past, as the technology becomes more and more integrated into our everyday lives. AI technologies have become increasingly more present in our daily lives, not just with Alexa’s in the home, but also throughout businesses everywhere, disrupting a variety of different industries with often tremendous results. The technology has helped to streamline even the most mundane of tasks whilst having a breath-taking impact on a company’s efficiency and productivity

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The advances of AI in healthcare

Article | February 11, 2020

With the Government investing £250 million into the project, the Lab will consider how to use AI for the benefit of patients – whether this be the deployment of existing AI methods, the development of new technologies or the testing of their safety. Amongst other things, the initiative will aim to deliver earlier diagnoses of cancer. It is estimated that in excess of 50,000 extra patients could see their cancer being detected at an early stage, thus boosting survival rates. More specifically, a study has shown that AI is quicker in identifying brain tumour tissue than a pathologist.This would have a positive knock-on effect in other areas, such as enabling money to be saved (that otherwise would have been spent on further treatment) and reducing the workload of staff (at a time when there is a crisis in NHS workforce numbers).

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Spotlight

RCI Technologies

RCI Technologies, Inc. has been in business for 38 years providing Business and Technical Solutions to State, Federal and Commercial clients . RCI is a Minority Woman Owned Business committed to service excellence. Our mission is to thoroughly understand our clients’ needs and requirements while delivering the right solution, the first time, every time.

Related News

Software, Future Tech, Low-Code App Development

Neptune Software Delivers Innovative No-Code Tools for Business Technologists and Enterprise Developers

Prnewswire | August 08, 2023

With the rapidly evolving digital landscape, IT departments often find themselves struggling to keep up with the ever-changing demands of businesses. Meanwhile, communicating what users with minimal technical know-how need from IT teams creates roadblocks and time-sucks. Bridging the gap between IT and business users is a necessity, one that Neptune's newest expansion in their offerings succeeds in providing. Neptune App Builder facilitates a combination of design thinking, rapid prototyping and frontend development, allowing both business users and IT specialists to collaborate to go from an idea to a fully working digital user experience within hours. "Our no-code app builder empowers users to showcase their app requirements from a user perspective," said Ole-Andre Haugen, Chief Technology Officer at Neptune Software. "By providing capabilities that are easily understandable to non-technical individuals, our tool enables them to effectively communicate their needs to technical teams. This bridge between the two worlds encourages collaboration, leading to more aligned and successful app development projects." With the no-code app building feature, users can quickly start a fast app development journey, even with minimal technical knowledge. A simple drag-and-drop designer, coupled with pre-made application building blocks, enables true rapid application development, allowing users to build applications for mobile, tablet, and desktop simultaneously, once, and ensuring a seamless user experience across devices. Neptune app builder also allows the user to seamlessly transition from the app development stage to production. Forward-compatible technology ensures that everything developed within Neptune app builder can be reused, eliminating the need for re-engineering or switching to other competitive no-code mockup tools. And, Neptune app builder helps transform user ideas into functional prototypes and mock-ups within seconds that are compatible with the rest of the Neptune DXP platform. This allows IT teams to involve business users early on to collaborate and provide immediate input on how the solution can better work for them, resulting in a more effective end product. An intuitive toolset that's user-friendly and time-saving, Neptune No-Code App builder is a game-changer for collaborating teams across developers, IT and users with minimal technical experience to turn their enterprise app ideas into reality. By empowering business key users and fostering collaboration with IT departments, this tool bridges the gap between technical and non-technical teams. About Neptune Software Neptune Software is a rapid application development platform vendor with more than 730 enterprise customers and over 4 million licensed end users globally that empowers IT departments to deliver tangible business outcomes. Neptune Software offers with its Neptune DXP, a leading low-code, SAP-centric, enterprise app development platform to digitize and optimize business processes and user interfaces - at scale and with ease. Neptune DXP provides a fast and cost-effective way to industrialize the development of custom applications - saving companies time and money on development, integration, and operations.

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SAP acquires Qualtrics in $8bn deal to deliver stronger brand and customer experiences

Cloud Tech | November 12, 2018

SAP has announced the acquisition of research management software provider Qualtrics for $8 billion (£6.2bn) with the aim to ‘deliver the transformative potential of experience and operational data.’ Qualtrics, based in Utah and Washington, offers a platform which enables organisations to conduct internal and external surveys, gauging customer experience, employee expectations and brand advocacy. With SAP claiming its software is involved to some degree in more than three quarters of the world’s transactions, the two companies say their combined product sets will offer unparalleled reach into the decisions behind them. “The combination of Qualtrics and SAP reaffirms experience management as the groundbreaking new frontier for the technology industry,” said Bill McDermott, SAP CEO in a statement. “SAP and Qualtrics are seizing this opportunity as like-minded innovators, united in mission, strategy and culture. “We share the belief that every human voice holds value, every experience matters and that the best-run businesses can make the world run better,” added McDermott. “We can’t wait to stand behind Ryan [Smith, Qualtrics CEO] and his amazing colleagues for the next chapters in the experience management story.” Writing in a blog post, Robert Enslin, president of the cloud business group at SAP – where Qualtrics will be housed – noted the importance of emerging technologies in marrying experience and operational data. “The next evolution of enterprise applications has begun with a real-time connection between the X-data in the system of action and the O-data within the system of record,” wrote Enslin. “Our ability to apply intelligence and machine learning atop these co-joined data sets unleashes the unprecedented power of the new experience economy.” Across SAP, the need to inject automation and artificial intelligence into systems of record and enhance long-standing customer relationships has long been apparent.

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Five key elements to a successful connected enterprise

Cloud Tech | September 28, 2018

Consumers are using technology to their advantage. With it, they are less tolerant, less loyal and more promiscuous. They have learned how to exercise control over brands. In this kind of environment, it’s important to remember that the success of any customer-facing organisation depends on the experience they deliver. Consumers want meaningful, timely, and personalised engagements, and to gain this, businesses need a single view of the customer and a relationship that goes beyond a single transaction. New technologies, cloud-native applications and ‘always-on’ connectivity provide the core ingredients companies need to diversify their services and become customer-centric. This demands a truly holistic experience that puts people, not processes, at the forefront of decision making and customer communication. To operate a connected enterprise, you must tick off the following five considerations: The consumer is the boss – and can walk away at any time. They determine how they want to interact and demand seamless engagement across any channel. To engage customers, organisations must understand them individually, comprehensively and consistently at any point in time. A complete view of the consumer, across the business, is the only way to extract actionable data that leads to customer retention.

Read More

Software, Future Tech, Low-Code App Development

Neptune Software Delivers Innovative No-Code Tools for Business Technologists and Enterprise Developers

Prnewswire | August 08, 2023

With the rapidly evolving digital landscape, IT departments often find themselves struggling to keep up with the ever-changing demands of businesses. Meanwhile, communicating what users with minimal technical know-how need from IT teams creates roadblocks and time-sucks. Bridging the gap between IT and business users is a necessity, one that Neptune's newest expansion in their offerings succeeds in providing. Neptune App Builder facilitates a combination of design thinking, rapid prototyping and frontend development, allowing both business users and IT specialists to collaborate to go from an idea to a fully working digital user experience within hours. "Our no-code app builder empowers users to showcase their app requirements from a user perspective," said Ole-Andre Haugen, Chief Technology Officer at Neptune Software. "By providing capabilities that are easily understandable to non-technical individuals, our tool enables them to effectively communicate their needs to technical teams. This bridge between the two worlds encourages collaboration, leading to more aligned and successful app development projects." With the no-code app building feature, users can quickly start a fast app development journey, even with minimal technical knowledge. A simple drag-and-drop designer, coupled with pre-made application building blocks, enables true rapid application development, allowing users to build applications for mobile, tablet, and desktop simultaneously, once, and ensuring a seamless user experience across devices. Neptune app builder also allows the user to seamlessly transition from the app development stage to production. Forward-compatible technology ensures that everything developed within Neptune app builder can be reused, eliminating the need for re-engineering or switching to other competitive no-code mockup tools. And, Neptune app builder helps transform user ideas into functional prototypes and mock-ups within seconds that are compatible with the rest of the Neptune DXP platform. This allows IT teams to involve business users early on to collaborate and provide immediate input on how the solution can better work for them, resulting in a more effective end product. An intuitive toolset that's user-friendly and time-saving, Neptune No-Code App builder is a game-changer for collaborating teams across developers, IT and users with minimal technical experience to turn their enterprise app ideas into reality. By empowering business key users and fostering collaboration with IT departments, this tool bridges the gap between technical and non-technical teams. About Neptune Software Neptune Software is a rapid application development platform vendor with more than 730 enterprise customers and over 4 million licensed end users globally that empowers IT departments to deliver tangible business outcomes. Neptune Software offers with its Neptune DXP, a leading low-code, SAP-centric, enterprise app development platform to digitize and optimize business processes and user interfaces - at scale and with ease. Neptune DXP provides a fast and cost-effective way to industrialize the development of custom applications - saving companies time and money on development, integration, and operations.

Read More

SAP acquires Qualtrics in $8bn deal to deliver stronger brand and customer experiences

Cloud Tech | November 12, 2018

SAP has announced the acquisition of research management software provider Qualtrics for $8 billion (£6.2bn) with the aim to ‘deliver the transformative potential of experience and operational data.’ Qualtrics, based in Utah and Washington, offers a platform which enables organisations to conduct internal and external surveys, gauging customer experience, employee expectations and brand advocacy. With SAP claiming its software is involved to some degree in more than three quarters of the world’s transactions, the two companies say their combined product sets will offer unparalleled reach into the decisions behind them. “The combination of Qualtrics and SAP reaffirms experience management as the groundbreaking new frontier for the technology industry,” said Bill McDermott, SAP CEO in a statement. “SAP and Qualtrics are seizing this opportunity as like-minded innovators, united in mission, strategy and culture. “We share the belief that every human voice holds value, every experience matters and that the best-run businesses can make the world run better,” added McDermott. “We can’t wait to stand behind Ryan [Smith, Qualtrics CEO] and his amazing colleagues for the next chapters in the experience management story.” Writing in a blog post, Robert Enslin, president of the cloud business group at SAP – where Qualtrics will be housed – noted the importance of emerging technologies in marrying experience and operational data. “The next evolution of enterprise applications has begun with a real-time connection between the X-data in the system of action and the O-data within the system of record,” wrote Enslin. “Our ability to apply intelligence and machine learning atop these co-joined data sets unleashes the unprecedented power of the new experience economy.” Across SAP, the need to inject automation and artificial intelligence into systems of record and enhance long-standing customer relationships has long been apparent.

Read More

Five key elements to a successful connected enterprise

Cloud Tech | September 28, 2018

Consumers are using technology to their advantage. With it, they are less tolerant, less loyal and more promiscuous. They have learned how to exercise control over brands. In this kind of environment, it’s important to remember that the success of any customer-facing organisation depends on the experience they deliver. Consumers want meaningful, timely, and personalised engagements, and to gain this, businesses need a single view of the customer and a relationship that goes beyond a single transaction. New technologies, cloud-native applications and ‘always-on’ connectivity provide the core ingredients companies need to diversify their services and become customer-centric. This demands a truly holistic experience that puts people, not processes, at the forefront of decision making and customer communication. To operate a connected enterprise, you must tick off the following five considerations: The consumer is the boss – and can walk away at any time. They determine how they want to interact and demand seamless engagement across any channel. To engage customers, organisations must understand them individually, comprehensively and consistently at any point in time. A complete view of the consumer, across the business, is the only way to extract actionable data that leads to customer retention.

Read More

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