To continue from my previous blog Next-generation healthcare – Software as a Medical Device (SaMD) in the Intelligent Industry, I will discuss the critical aspects of verification and validation of SaMD here.

In the medical world, there is a clear distinction between verification and validation. Verification is the process of ensuring that the design outputs meet the design inputs and validation is the process of ensuring that the medical software or device meets the intended purpose.

The governing body International Medical Device Regulators Forum (IMDRF) has come up with very specific regulations for clinical validation of SaMD. Many of the emerging technologies over the last few years for digital testing fall under the purview of verification activities. In the sections that follow, we will look at SaMD validation and verification.

Validation for SaMD

As per the IMDRF document (IMDRF/SaMD WG/N41 FINAL: 2017), the process of performing a clinical evaluation has significantly changed for SaMD, there should be a valid clinical association between the output of a SaMD and the targeted clinical condition. Also, SaMD should provide expected technical and clinical data.

A valid clinical association is an indicator of the level of clinical acceptance and how much meaning and confidence can be assigned to the clinical significance of the SaMD’s output in the intended healthcare situation and the clinical condition/physiological state.

Analytical validation measures the ability of a SaMD to accurately, reliably, and precisely generate the intended technical output from the input data.

Clinical validation measures the ability of a SaMD to yield a clinically meaningful output associated with the target use of SaMD output in the target health care situation or condition identified in the SaMD definition statement.

Being able to generate evidence to demonstrate the valid clinical association, analytical validation, and clinical validation of a SaMD is essential for establishing the SaMD’s value for users. The purpose of the assessment of the evidence is to select information based on its merits and limitations to demonstrate that the clinical evaluation evidence is high-quality, relevant, and supportive of the SaMD’s intended use.

Verification for SaMD

While SaMD is able to improve health outcomes using data, there are some underlying fundamental testing challenges faced by many SaMD builders. The biggest challenge involves integrating modern product development methodology — designed for an ever-evolving Internet of Everything world — with patient safety being paramount.

Also, with a whole new host of Android and iOS devices on which the medical software can work, it brings various other challenges such as device compatibility testing, upgrades, and backward compatibility testing, etc. Since many of these companies also deliver updates by mass and rapid distribution over the internet, tracking lifecycle-related aspects poses a challenge to a strict governing body such as the FDA. Apart from these, there are many other aspects, including usability, performance, maintainability, and security that come into the picture for SaMD.

The right approach

To resolve many of these challenges, there has been a tremendous boost to the DevOps and the agile methodology methods of testing. While not a new concept, DevOps principles have gained a tremendous amount of support with their consistent ability to reduce the amount of time from development to operations. Agile development promotes collaboration among various small teams to make quick and continuous delivery.

As QA can sometimes be a bottleneck, quality engineering allows the introduction of mobile app testing and automation earlier in the process. This has led to the rise of the Software Development Engineer in Test (SDET) role. The implications for verification are clear from this. Testing has come iteratively in nature, with quick turnout times for test cycles. It has also led to the rise of new methodologies such as Test-Driven Development (TDD) and Behavior-Driven Development (BDD).

There has been a gradual shift from performance testing to performance engineering. Performance engineering ensures the components of your network are functioning as intended. It offers testing teams more flexibility, data, and better opportunities to automate processes. The implications for verification are clear from this. Since performance becomes a key measuring metric right through the SDLC, the focus on meeting performance and other non-functional requirements becomes paramount and is tested at every stage of the SDLC.

When cost and market readiness are important, mobile app testing automation is imperative. Automated testing helps teams make the most of their testing resources and frees up test engineers, allowing them to focus on tests that require manual attention and human interaction. Many of the apps are also based on the microservices-based architecture and the Application Programming Interface (API) testing has also become significant.

There is also increased adoption of open-source tools. Open-source testing tools are extremely versatile. They cover testing for web apps and all mobile app types: native, web, and hybrid. Additionally, most open-source platforms offer code libraries for any programming language. They are also often customizable and adaptable to changes within the technological landscape. The important thing to note here is that the governing agencies require that companies perform Software Intended Use Validation (SIUV) and Software Of Unknown Provenance (SOUP) validation as necessary. While commercial off-the-shelf tools might have many of these test reports generated, the onus on validating these squarely lies with the medical device companies adopting these open source tools.

With many of these latest trends being adopted into the verification of the SaMD ecosystem, many of the above-mentioned challenges are mitigated in the fast-paced world of SaMD. The techniques mentioned above help in the verification and validation of SaMD and ensure patient safety and regulatory compliance.

Vivek Jaykrishnan

Expert in Agile Testing, Cognitive QA, DevOps, Product Verification and Validation

As Senior Director – Technology in Verification & Validation Practice responsible for developing service offerings for multiple industries across Product Engineering verticals. As a Sogeti labs member contributing to thought leadership and trends in testing.
Other activities include :
Develop service offerings for V&V services and DevOps services across various domains including Mobile , Medical, Automotive, Industrial Automation, Enterprise Software and ISV.
Active participation for end to end pre-sales activities in coordination with cross functional teams such as sales, delivery, marketing. Leading the Test Centers of Excellence within the P&ES V&V Practice.
Prepare and review responses to Request For Information, Request for Proposals ,technical capability presentations. Ideate and develop Proof-of-Concept and Proof-of-Technologies within various customer accounts.
Spearhead the Cognitive QA activities applying concepts of analytics , AI and machine learning within the broader business unit. Spearhead the IOT and Smart Product testing service offering development within strategic business unit.
Deep technical involvement in developing industry specific test automation solutions for various customers. Mining of existing customer accounts to identify V&V pain points and opportunities. Develop partner ecosystem with test tool vendors.
Develop partner ecosystem with DevOps tool vendors Develop Product Integrity COE and Cognitive Testing COE Evangelizing emerging practices and technologies in V&V.

The cloud is the future of business. However, adopting it safely continues to be a struggle for many organizations. Recent Check Point research found that 75% of cybersecurity professionals are extremely concerned about cloud security.

It’s no wonder. Most organizations today use the cloud through a mixture of evolving hybrid environments and different cloud solutions. Without a unified view of what is in the cloud and where, organizations risk their sensitive data being exploited by cybercriminals – or even unintentionally leaked by employees.

Security is critical to innovation. To unlock the full potential of the cloud and improve enterprise agility, organizations need to consistently prioritize cybersecurity. They need to develop an approach that evolves with their company as they continue to innovate – and gives them much-needed visibility into their cloud environments.

Securing you cloud evolution
At Capgemini, we believe in a pragmatic approach to cybersecurity in the cloud, one that fosters digital trust in the business activities and transactions being undertaken. Our Cloud Security Services offer organizations a pragmatic and cost-effective solution. Whether you are just starting out on your migration to cloud, are re-evaluating your cloud architecture, or have already reached a mature position, Capgemini can help. In our approach. we make a difference between the situation of a  single, multi, or hybrid cloud. The context has a big impact on what are the best options and tool choices for a strong cloud security strategy. Our approach to cloud security takes the form of a four-stage roadmap:

Assess
Our Cloud Security Assessment provides you with insight into your current or planned adoption of cloud computing. We measure the maturity of your overall approach to cloud security and evaluate your existing cloud-based solutions (AWS, Azure or Google Cloud Platform) against cybersecurity benchmarks.

Advise
Our Cloud Security Advisory services are based on more than a decade of helping clients adopt cloud security. Based on our assessment, we help you develop the foundations on which to operate in the cloud. We advise on the design and construction of cloud security architectures to safeguard data and service across the cloud spectrum, and on all elements of cloud security. We also mitigate the impact of any skills gap in cloud security, providing knowledge transfer and the upskilling of in-house teams to help you move ahead with your cloud adoption and improve existing implementations.

Implement
Our Cloud Protection Services offer a range of solutions for identity and access management, data protection, application security and infrastructure security. Our teams can work either “ with” you to enable knowledge sharing, or
“ for” you – as a managed service provider – to implement secure cloud services.

Operate
To ensure the security of your cloud-based operations, our Cloud Security Monitoring solution makes security monitoring a key foundation of your cloud architecture. We use a combination of user behavior analytics, machine learning, and artificial intelligence to detect anomalies in user behavior, automatically investigate potential incidents, and prevent data breaches before they happen.

With our philosophy to “think like an attacker,” we protect our clients through a combination of threat intelligence, robust architectures, and a highly industrialized and automated service delivery model. Our approach exploits unified and standardized cloud security processes to speed up delivery from our world wide network of 24/7 global cyber defense centers.

To find out more about how we can help you with cloud security, click here.

Follow Geert van der Linden on LinkedIn and Twitter.

Geert van der Linden

Expert in Cybersecurity Consulting, Service Offerings, Strategy

I will help clients to deliver a secure service to there customers and help them with a secure transformation and digitalization.
I have created the security strategy for the group and the CIS SBU. I have managed to grow the security business YoY with 70%.
I have managed the implementation of this strategy. Due to the implementation of this strategy we are now recognized by the Analysts; Gartner, Forester, IDC, NelsonHall etc as a leader in cybersecurity.

Marketing is all about speed. Customers won’t wait for a week or more for you to respond to a query, complaint, or request. Emails are too slow. For impact, a Tweet needs a Retweet within half an hour. And your customer interaction should be put in context to deliver a personalized experience. All of this implies the ability to adapt and respond to changing scenarios quickly and easily.

What I’m describing here is an adaptive marketing organization. It’s how a brand stays relevant and continues to make an impact. But being an adaptive marketing organization demands change. Silos within the business must be broken down. Resources need to be flexibly allocated to meet a specific purpose (a brand launch, campaign, new product, etc.). With this high flexibility comes the need for direction and stability, thus a stable marketing core organization should be established.

So, let’s begin with the silos. As we shape a new era in personalized marketing, a broader spectrum of functions and teams needs to be involved beyond just marketing. Campaign planning, content, branding, service, sales, IT — these typically operate in functional silos. Multiple interfaces slow down decision making processes and fail to generate the right content. Each silo leverages data and content differently.

A functioning marketing ecosystem

It’s a mess. But it doesn’t have to be. Coherent interaction between all the different channels can be empowered by data and digital technology. In Capgemini’s new Point of View Putting your Customer First we describe this as Connected Marketing. And I believe this becomes possible within an adaptive marketing organization. One that brings together the right resources, with access to the right data for a single purpose in a functioning marketing ecosystem.

What do I mean by a single purpose? It could be to launch a new product. Or to revamp the brand. It might be something smaller, like answering a line request, such as creating product-specific social media posts. Resources from the different functions will be needed to answer questions, validate content, ensure the right channels of engagement are used, etc. Once this purpose has been achieved, they go back to their functions until called on for the next one.

This is Connected Marketing. It’s where all the people needed to solve a problem and deliver the purpose are quickly assembled in the same room. The four characteristics of an adaptive marketing organization are:

• Clear responsibility for the purpose has been established;
• The circle of people from across functions is empowered to take the right decisions;
• The team is given the freedom to innovate and find appropriate, out-of-the-box solutions;
• Everyone moves in just one direction reflecting the strategy, brand promise and specific purpose.

Allocating resources to the purpose

An adaptive marketing organization doesn’t make the existing marketing organization structure obsolete. Rather it represents a different layer of organization and collaboration needed to fulfil the relevant purpose. As I pointed out in the characteristics above, achieving this begins with establishing who is responsible for that purpose or product.

This person will be responsible for resourcing and then steering the project, which is a very similar role to a Product Owner. In this instance, our Product Owner needs support in staffing and prioritizing the initiative, so must liaise with the HR or resource management function, as well as with the core marketing organization. The resource allocation reflects how an adaptive marketing organization draws people from across previously unconnected silos to deliver the designated purpose. An appropriate budget will be allocated, and team members empowered to move out of their day-to-day roles to focus on the outcome being sought.

Flexible resource allocation is not just about internal teams. It might also require a reset of existing agency models, including how marketing co-operates with, governs and remunerates external agencies. At Capgemini, we work with our clients to help them embed external agencies in the Connected Marketing ecosystem, ensuring a perfect match between the business and its agencies.

Making a cultural change

We’re also aware that Connected Marketing requires a new mindset and cultural change — empowering people to work flexibly. As we point out in our Point of View, highly engaged teams show up to 22 percent greater profitability and are almost five times more likely to perform their best work. Marketing organizations need to proactively work to uplift employee engagement as they step out of their comfort zones to deliver each purpose.

Our New Deal change approach makes our clients’ people the heroes of change, winning their commitment. This increases their engagement with new ways of working within a broad Connected Marketing ecosystem. They may need to adapt to new work processes, organizational structure, digital architecture, governance, leadership, and culture.

Clearly, becoming an adaptive marketing organization requires some big changes but it’s worth it. Greater agility between functions, both internal and external, will enable the swift development of personalized, intimate, and digital customer interaction.

Download our  ‘put your customer first with connected marketing‘ whitepaper to learn more.

Please get in touch to find out more about Capgemini’s approach to building an adaptive marketing organization within a functioning marketing ecosystem and about segmentation and profiling in Capgemini’s Connected Marketing offer.

This blog is authored by Markus Cramer, Senior Director Innovation & Strategy — markus.cramer@capgemini.com

Markus Cramer

Expert in Strategy and Transformation

I am supporting clients from strategy definition to operating model implementation. I am helping my clients to make their organizations more adaptive and innovative. In addition to these focus areas I have a proven track record in Carve-Out projects and Post Merger Integration.

Conquering the false positives in web application security

Development teams continuously develop pioneering solutions to stay ahead in an increasingly competitive global market. As software applications grow to meet changing business requirements, it is vital to support the critical development path with appropriate testing strategies. The predominant problems that arise in software provide the motivation to use application security testing services. They streamline manual effort and enhance automated tactics to analyze code from within. This helps security experts detect vulnerabilities and flag and rectify them along the way, thereby improving coding best practices and helping to maintain the software quality of the product.

Agile software development is an efficient method of bringing an application to market at speed because the scans are executed as soon as a particular code feature is complete. There are several application security testing tools, including web application firewalls (WAFs), web application security scanners, and so on available to leverage the testing process efficiently.

These tools eliminate time-consuming manual security assessment activities by filtering out false alarms from reports and targeting real vulnerabilities for further analysis. This allows testers to focus instead on critical security threats.

SAST as well as SCA or DAST tools are high-value assets. From the diagram above, we can see that as maturity grows, the use of more powerful tools or overarching solutions happens in tandem with clients’ stringent security goals.

However, due to weak signature patterns used in certain scanners’ vulnerability checks, there arises the challenge of high rates of false positives scaling up at full speed. Incorrect flags raised for vulnerability are efficiency disrupters for developers and security teams.

When a security scanner reports a lot of false positives and the development team is spending too much time chasing false alarms, productivity falls and does not generate business value!

False positive an investment rather than just another expense

Embedding false positive management within the software development path and testing process helps strengthen applications, capitalizing on saving the team from faltering in their quality. This activity comes at a cost but makes the apps more secure, enabling a consistent user experience and strengthening resilience against cyber-attacks. Coordinating FP detection associated with clean-up operations early in the SDLC incurs initial costs. The desired endpoint is to stimulate business readiness when it comes to go live. Investing in app security testing on-demand packaged services is also a winning cost- optimization strategy. Such services encompass the complete end-to-end assessment process, identifying and removing false alerts from scan reports. They eliminate repetitive testing activities, thereby allowing security experts to focus on fixing real vulnerabilities. Scanning tools, intrusion prevention systems (IPSs), and web application firewalls (WAFs) are some of the tools that effectively perform security assessments to prevent or mitigate security risks and achieve sustainable software security and quality.

Managing false positives

Managing false positives brings enormous business benefits. With increased automatic scans, labor costs are reduced at different levels in the SDLC cycle. Developers and testers save time by filtering multiple false positives and confirming triage issues. They look into and fix the real vulnerabilities, which in turn enhances software quality and improves application security.

The possibility of missing the vulnerabilities becomes smaller and threats are detected at the initial stage, thus keeping cost to a minimum and increasing the efficiency of the software development lifecycle and enabling product delivery within the timelines. By maintaining application security, it is possible to resolve critical issues. This, in turn, helps companies to maintain a good reputation and ensure client satisfaction. An efficient development and testing approach help bring the product to market faster, making it easier for customers to buy the product and thereby investing in the success of your organization.

Simple and efficient guidelines to minimize the impact of false positives

Open pragmatic paths. Don’t expect alarms to pop up any time or anywhere without notice. Be prepared and flexible. Have a game plan in place otherwise you will be spending time and energy hunting for false alerts rather than identifying real threats.

Let’s not bury our heads in the sand. False positives are a major issue and implementing standard tools or one-size-fits-all security testing services is not the best solution. Be careful about implementing anything that might undermine operational excellence or limit security assessments to the level of “too generic” use cases which are likely to be effective at generating false positives.

Set a clear vision of which threats to detect. Get a jump-start by assessing the security needs for your business and spotting potential risks. Then, fine-tune your scan engines to detect the critical threats you want to eradicate in order to ship to production with confidence. This will help scale down false positives.

Enforce threat screening to bring security risks to the fore. This reduces the time security experts spend on false alarms and keeps them focused on fixing weaknesses embedded in areas that are vital to the business. Since risks are prioritized, more resilient and secure systems with very low FP rates are built.

Click here to learn more about our uniquely effective Application Security Testing service.

Author

Jean-Alain Julie

Head of Application Security Testing

The retail world has undergone huge shifts in the past decade, all of which have been accelerated by the pandemic. With the rise of social media and ecommerce, there is a power struggle in the industry. Retailers used to create trends. Now, consumers are leading and influencing market shifts.

With so many touchpoints and channels available for consumers, retailers are under immense pressure to quickly react to customer fluctuations and create a frictionless experience end to end: from a seamless end-user journey to fast deliveries to real-time marketing and an agile supply chain.

Underpinning these innovations is a move to the cloud.

The future of retail

The cloud retail market is expected to be valued at $51.7 billion by 2025, according to Market Research Future. However, the state of play in the sector is uneven. Digital natives and direct-to- consumer retailers have been quick to mobilize the benefits of the cloud. It’s part of their online operating model. But for traditional players, the move is not so simple. Legacy systems and internal silos often mean that cloud migration is complex and difficult.

Nevertheless, the cloud is the future of the retail landscape. Digital has revolutionized the customer experience, changed the way organizations understand and apply data, and transformed traditional operating models. It’s the key to performance, differentiation, and competitive advantage today. To fully take advantage of digital and retain customers with differentiating experiences, retailers need to shift to a cloud-first way of working.

So how can the cloud be a critical enabler for frictionless retail?

1. Anyplace, anytime: Global cloud infrastructure allows retailers to expand their presence into new markets, collaborating with different regions – and customers in these regions – regardless of distance or time zones.
2. Cost-effective: Retailers can reach up to 77% cost savings through optimization using the cloud.
3. Real time: Through using cloud across functions such as marketing, sales, and finance, retailers improve their employees’ access to real-time insights. This enables the business to respond instantly to changes in customer patterns, societal trends, and other business shifts.
4. Agile: Deployment is fast – sometimes at the click of the button – giving companies the much-needed dexterity to respond to evolving market conditions, competitive challenges, or scalability requirements.
5. Breaks down silos: With employees able to access data in one place through cloud portals and applications, teams are no longer siloed by departments or geographies. The result is improved internal synergy, in turn offering customers a more holistic, relevant experience.
6. Futureproof: The cloud is the basis for a wealth of emerging technologies that are changing the nature of business, including the internet of things, AI, and edge computing. Using the cloud helps retailers become more innovative and take advantage of these developments – in-store and online.

Your trusted partner

While the benefits are widespread, the cloud can be an overwhelming journey to face alone. Retailers need a trusted partner which has the experience, understanding, and foresight to help them understand where they need to go with the cloud and, more importantly, how to get there.

The key to achieving these goals is an end-to-end approach. Everything needs to work together: clouds, legacy IT assets, and applications, the omnichannel customer experience, vendors and suppliers, platform services such as asset management, development processes, tools, and technologies.

That’s what Capgemini brings to the table, and why Capgemini stands apart in the fast-evolving retail market. Capgemini is purpose-built to guide retailers as they master these market shifts and tech-triggered trends. Our team of retail and cloud experts works with you to create a digital vision and a transformation road map. We equip you to start projects today that ladder up to long-term strategic goals.

To find out more about how we can help you, visit our Cloud Services or Capgemini Retail page.

Rens Huizenga

Expert in Cloud Native, Cloud Services

I support customers to move their application landscape to the cloud. Based on the cloud strategy, the business case and assessment performed, a cloud transformation roadmap is drafted during the detailed assessment phase consisting of:
Apps Migration to Cloud : to create and execute an applications migration project that takes all perspectives into account —business, technical, financial, staffing, end-user, and service provider—so you can maximize the business value and minimize the costs, complexities, and disruptions.
Application Modernization Services: to design the right strategy for rehosting, redeploying, revising, refactoring, rebuilding, and/or replacing applications via the cloud to optimize the cost and efficiency of your entire application portfolio.
Cloud Native build: to rebuild applications from scratch on the cloud platform

A hybrid workforce model established on a robust, frictionless HR infrastructure gives employees secure digital access to HR processes at any time, from any place, and using any device. The result? An improved employee experience and a more intuitive, seamless way of working.

Did John Maynard Keynes really once say: “When the facts change, I change my mind”? Apparently, no one’s sure. But either way, it doesn’t matter, because there’s a truth in that simple statement that we all recognize.

The world of work is a case in point. Until recently, people sat together in open-plan offices and meeting rooms, and anything else was, well, unusual.

And then the global pandemic arrived. The facts changed, and people changed their minds. What had been unusual became not only acceptable – but normal. Indeed, a report by the Capgemini Research Institute (CRI) – to which I contributed – tells us that three-quarters of organizations expect 30% or more of their employees to be working remotely, and over a quarter put the figure at 70%. The report tells us the functions in which this is most likely to happen include IT, finance, and accounting.

The opportunities…

Minds have changed not just because the facts did, but because of the benefits organizations have seen. According to the CRI report, over six in ten organizations saw productivity gains in Q3 2020 because of remote working, and average productivity gains ranged from 13–24%. Almost 70% of organizations said they thought those gains would be sustainable beyond the pandemic.

It’s not just about productivity, either. The more remote working there is, the greater the likely savings in areas such as real estate, facilities management, and business travel.

… the challenges…

However, a new normal brings with it a need for new ground-rules. In HR in particular, organizations can’t expect office-based practices and expectations to continue without change.

During the pandemic, the CRI report tells us many employees, and especially those in their 30s, have reported feeling burned out as a result of remote working. They feel stress from an expectation of being “always on.” Some of them feel they’re not trusted, and that they are being micromanaged as a result. And some new joiners feel lost. They don’t feel they are truly on board.

… and the way ahead

The CRI report considers how a new, hybrid workforce model can address these challenges, while maintaining and even enhancing the opportunities. I’d like to focus on one aspect of it.

The hybrid model is predicated on establishing a consistent HR platform that can support everyone, regardless of their circumstances. Consistency can only be achieved if a robust, seamless digital infrastructure can be put in place – so that employees can have secure digital access to business processes at any time, from any place, and using any device. At Capgemini, we call it frictionless HR.

A frictionless HR infrastructure needs to be agnostic, using smart technologies to help everyone feel they truly belong, whether they are onboarding, or engaged in learning and development, or undertaking performance management, or seeking information about compensation, benefits, or wellbeing.

The Frictionless Enterprise

Implementing a frictionless HR model, can help organizations transition towards a concept we call the Frictionless Enterprise  – an approach that seamlessly connects people and processes, intelligently, and as and when needed. It dynamically adapts to the circumstances of individual organizations, and addresses each and every point of potential operational friction to deliver an improved experience and a more intuitive way of working for employees.

In the articles that follow in this section of Innovation Nation, several of my colleagues and others write more on this topic. We cover how frictionless HR can be achieved, and the key criteria for its delivery in terms not just of the technology platform, but of the service partners who help to deliver it. We look creatively at what it might achieve, and we look, too, at the human needs it can meet. And there are technology assessments, interviews, and a useful infographic too.

In short, there is plenty of information here. And, as John Maynard Keynes is believed to have said, information is the basis on which good decisions can be made.

To find out how Capgemini’s Digital Employee Operations enhances your employee experience through implementing next-generation, digital HR operations, contact: stephan.paolini@capgemini.com

Learn more about how we implement ways to detect, prevent, and overcome frictions in our clients’ business operations, helping our clients to move towards realizing – what we call – the Frictionless Enterprise.

Stephan Paolini

Expert in People & Performance Strategy

I help build solutions to accelerate implementation and provide change efficiency in complex environments. I go beyond operational performance to create renewed and collective social performance that successfully transforms organizations.

This blog is written by Christian Bohm, Senior Management Consultant.

Omnichannel marketing is more than a myth; when well designed and implemented, it unleashes unforeseen value across organizations. The COVID-19 pandemic has exacerbated the disruption of consumer behavior, making omnichannel marketing a necessity and creating an opportunity to redefine customer engagement ambitions.

But what does successful omnichannel marketing look like?

Attempting to be everything everywhere for everybody will not work for the simple reason that complexities are continuously rising and that there are seemingly endless ways to connect with customers. However, to foster customer relevancy, companies need to focus on the right measures at the right time and develop the ability to provide their customers frictionless and personalized experiences when they travel across touchpoints, offline and online. Studies reveal that omnichannel marketing is still a priority on CMOs’ agendas. According to Gartner’s 2020 Marketing Agenda Poll, “Marketers’ top four priorities for the next 6-11 months include: how can we accelerate sales conversations? [71%], how can we differentiate value proposition? [68%], how can we get value out of personas/ journey mapping? [54%], and how can we orchestrate messaging across online and offline touchpoints [45%]?” (source:https://www.gartner.com/en/marketing/insights/articles/3-questions-cmos-must-answer-in-2020)

Only the customer matters

The world has shifted from a simple product-centric to a more complex relationship-centric economy where consumers are empowered, well-connected and informed, have shorter attention spans and non-linear purchase patterns. Conclusively, when viewed through the customers’ eyes, marketing must no longer be linear but must orchestrate all channels perfectly around the individual journeys. Compared to single-channel approaches, omnichannel marketing has the potential to sustainably increase customer spending, improve shopping experiences, reduce time to market, enhance customer retention, and raise employee productivity. Together with our clients, we experienced increases in conversion rates by 14%, mobile conversion rates by 113%, and the average order values by 40%. Also, it is no secret that people like personalized offerings and are often willing to pay more for a personalized product or service. A study by the Harvard Business Review also revealed that the number of channels used by customers directly correlates to his/her value to the company. Hence, “(…) customers who used four+ channels spent 9% more in the store, on average, when compared to those who used just one channel” (source: Harvard Business Review, 2017).

Closing the information gap

As stated in Capgemini’s blog “Creating valuable insights in times of uncertainty,” many global operating retail brands are still underinformed about their customers. This phenomenon is not only valid for retail brands, but a common pattern throughout almost all industries. Developing a tailor-made omnichannel marketing strategy helps companies future-proof their internal structures, build necessary capabilities, and establish a robust IT infrastructure as facilitation to close the knowledge gap. Anything that neither contributes to the company’s customer intelligence or improves the cross-channel performance should be thoroughly questioned; the allocation of resources is crucial. Basic considerations of strong omnichannel marketing strategies are:

• Establishing an always on, highly-connected yet simple ecosystem
• Providing consent-driven personalization experiences across touchpoints
• Implementing synergized connection between data, analytics, experience platforms, and touchpoints
• Creating an environment where customers have fun associating themselves with the brand.

Leading consumer product brands are at the forefront of demonstrating how innovative omnichannel marketing is done. Sportswear manufacturer adidas launched its new “Glitch App” in the UK, breaking the pattern of football boot releases through an invite-only app and allowing shoppers to design their own individual football boots ready to be picked-up in-store (source: https://www.wpp.com/featured/work/possible-adidas-glitch). Cosmetic brand Sephora merges clients’ online and offline shopping experiences with their “Beauty Bag App,” allowing clients to access their favorite products whenever and wherever they need it (source: https://www.retaildive.com/ex/mobilecommercedaily/sephora-streamlines-shopping-experience-with-new-mobile-digital-effort).

Building blocks to getting your omnichannel strategy right

With four integral building blocks, your company can set the foundation for omnichannel marketing excellence and transformation towards true and consistent customer centricity. Here is a summary of our four integral building blocks:

1. Contextualization and insights: Gain understanding of your different customer segments, including their needs and preferences. Define high-priority journeys that key personas go through when interacting with your brands. Identify signature moments to build deep, long-lasting relationships between your customers and your business.
2. Omnichannel operations: Get your organization’s operating model and teams omnichannel-ready by breaking silos and adapting agile ways of working to harmonize departmental cooperation throughout the entire activation process. Evaluate and prioritize marketing and sales activities, optimize touchpoint impact, and establish a data-driven mindset.
3. MarTech architecture: Develop a strategic approach towards marketing technology and define the technical infrastructure to sync across all channels by integrating state-of-the-art technology to improve all facets of marketing efforts.
4. Data management: Unlock your full data potential by integrating consent management, data profiling, data source management, and big data analytics as part of the overall data management approach. Collect existing data and uncover and define new data sources. Document the data in all its facets and make it readily available. Unlock organizational data silos between countries, lines of business, and projects.

No time to waste

We are conscious about the fact that implementing a true end-to-end omnichannel marketing solution is a transformational tour de force affecting the development of organizational structures and capabilities, IT infrastructure, and a data-driven mindset. The good news is that not everything has to be done at once. By focusing on the big impact areas first and incrementally going through the remaining key stages of becoming truly omnichannel, a customized step by step transformation is feasible. Once started you will soon see the first tangible results in your customer relationships and improvements in terms of loyalty, sales, and brand awareness.

Download our  ‘put your customer first with connected marketing‘ whitepaper to learn more.

Get in touch to learn more about segmentation and profiling in Capgemini’s Connected Marketing offer.

Contact:

Christian Bohm, Senior Management Consultant.

Customers can easily lose their patience with digital applications that do not offer them the speed and intuitive experience that is customary with market leaders such as Chase, Amazon, or Google. This means that businesses really cannot afford to tolerate any issues that may arise within applications and services that directly affect the experience of their customers.

Despite the large number of monitoring tools within most enterprises today, high impact outages are still all too common. This is why we need to take a hard look at how we monitor – or rather – observe. Usually, systems are defined by three properties – functionality, performance, or testability. But now, it’s essential that we add observability to this list. In simple terms, observability entails linking applications performance through to business transactions and KPIs.

With digital transformation agendas demanding speed and stability, it’s crucial that digital-age applications be observable and disseminate information about their performance and functioning. Coding for digital applications is not complete until monitoring analytics is built into the code to attain a holistic view of the health of key business services. This is why observability is essential for a successful DevOps-based operating model.

Monitoring of enterprise networks, infrastructure, and legacy applications is still critical in the current environment. Gartner reports that many enterprises already have over 15 monitoring tools on average. So, there’s no dearth of data available from different domains to attain a clear, business-performance-connected state of observability.

Data already available with IT organizations can provide useful insights, however, it’s near impossible to deal with this torrent of data. Technologies such as AI and ML can help uncover useful insights from this data through reducing clutter from various events, minimizing false positives, detecting anomalies, and eventually applying root-cause analysis for expedited issue resolution.

For example, I was recently talking with an eCommerce business unit leader who was looking to pin down exact rates of cart abandonment stemming from system performance and slowness. So, we applied AI to attain deep insights into IT infrastructure and application performance in conjunction with user transaction journey to rapidly provide answers. Businesses are less concerned about CPUs and more interested in how their end customers and suppliers are impacted by business applications performance.

AI and ML-driven solutions give you the ability to extract, correlate, and baseline business outcomes from application performance – and this provides actionable insights to drive results and alert you on critical business metrics. Business-value-chain performance can be baselined at a more granular KPI level and can be monitored with unique approaches to AI technology. Additionally, AI makes user-experience mapping possible and can provide a holistic visual view of user experiences throughout an entire application.

To summarize, monitoring is essential, but digital applications following DevOps constructs require observability to get deep insights into application and business performance. Just as the sum of the whole should be greater than its parts, data aggregation and analysis from different IT domains will have much greater value when it is extracted – rather than sitting in silos – and AI can deliver this value.

ADMnext can help you formulate a successful strategy that looks to mining and analyzing data via advancements in Big Data, AI and ML algorithms, and visualization techniques. In part three of this series, I’ll delve into the orchestration pillar of the AIOps framework. In the meantime, please contact me here to get started on building your AIOps strategy – and be sure to visit us at ADMnext here.