Solid data for digitization

With which inquiries do customers approach you, with visions of new business models or the fear of competitive disadvantages in the course of digitalization?

Holger Stelz: Customers do not explicitly say they are afraid of digitization. In most cases, the customer doesn't even realize at first that they have to deal with the topic.

But he realizes very well that data, for example about his own customers, are in different silos - and sees the need to bring this data together.

This is also often the project entry point for us. We then combine these different data into a golden record. The Golden Record gives our customers a 360-degree view of their customers.

However, this requires collecting not only master data, but also transaction data, such as transaction data and interaction data, in order to learn much more about the individual customer.

And only through an all-round view can the company get to know its counterpart even better.

Do the requests mainly come from the specialist departments, from IT or from the management?

Stelz: The requests come primarily from the specialist departments. Digitization means that the C-level or management are increasingly getting involved as sponsors of individual projects.

At this level, digitization has absolutely led to a rethink.

In the past, decision-makers tended to want less to do with data and data management and saw it more as an IT task. Today, we find the sponsors at the management level at the very top, while the requirements come from the specialist departments such as marketing or sales.

Is the IT department an enabler or a brakeman?

Stelz: I believe that the IT and marketing departments will have to grow much closer together and also work much more closely together in the future. One will not be able to do without the other.

However, no department needs to fear for its job, these will only be described differently in the future and function differently.

Wolfgang Martin: For companies that come from industries where marketing is particularly important, such as online retail, marketing has now taken the leading role.

The bottom line is that IT has already become part of marketing there. In the UK, this is already happening at one company or another.

So where is the friction between IT and marketing in Germany?

Martin: Marketing knows that the company must quickly adapt to its customers and their wishes, and it is also necessary to test something out. Companies must be able to inspire their customers.

IT is still concerned with security, everything must run reliably. There is still a lot of development using classic methods such as waterfall. Not every IT department has yet arrived at agile development, which is why they are then immobile. This definitely has to change.

If an IT department, as at Uniserv customer DPD, is open-minded and uses cloud and mobile computing as well as agile methods, then there is perfect cooperation between IT and marketing.

Stelz: Our customer DPD, for example, has taken the all-important step of appointing a Chief Digital Officer (CDO).

How often do you encounter CDOs at your clients' sites?

Stelz: Still very rare. That's why we have also developed a course of study with the Stuttgart Media University, which we sponsor.

The course trains data scientists and business analysts, who will later develop into one or another CDO.

The training will certainly take some time, but from our point of view it will be worth it. In addition, we will be offering Germany's first independent CDO Circle (working group) for precisely this new challenge starting in December.

We also developed the format with the Stuttgart Media University. With this approach, we give today's CDOs, but also CDOs-to-be, a forum to exchange ideas with subject matter experts, analysts and university professors in a moderated discussion environment.

The aim of the event is to develop a joint master plan in a digitalized business world for the corporate realignment that is recurring at ever shorter intervals and is essential for survival.

Martin: Of course, we have to bring about this change in the minds of the employees in the sense of a digital transformation. The driver for this must be to be customer-centric, customer-obsessed.

The decisive trigger and success factor at DPD was that they recognized: It is not the customer who orders a parcel who is DPD's customer, but the person who receives the parcel - in other words, the customer's customer.

And that's who you have to make happy so that your customer is happy and your business runs. These are considerations that must take place in the minds of decision-makers and employees so that silos are broken down.

Are security concerns standing in the way of digitization in Germany in particular?

Martin: Often, IT still has reservations when it comes to the topic of security, so that projects only progress slowly. Companies need to modernize their IT, i.e., use agile development methods, cloud and mobile technologies.

In my view, these are success factors that will enable companies to master digitization. The vast majority of Facebook users disclose virtually everything on Facebook. There are no longer any security concerns.

If I trust Facebook despite all the privacy clauses, then I'm giving my data away.

Stelz: This is precisely the point of the customer journey: when the customer realizes that there is a company that only asks for as much data as it needs to provide him with the best possible service, then the customer develops trust and also discloses his data.

This is the only way companies can develop consumers into loyal customers - the product portfolio is secondary for the time being.

Martin: Three or four hundred years ago, the big problem for banks was to make customers understand that their money was safe in a bank.

Now it's the problem of companies like Google and Facebook to make it clear to customers: I am as secure for the data, the raw material of the digital revolution, as the banks are for the money.

However, these new rulers in the digital age must also show that they deserve this trust, just as a bank had to show the same.

Incidentally, this comparison also shows that there will never be one hundred percent security.

Does Uniserv also accompany and advise its customers on organizational issues that the digital transformation brings with it?

Stelz: This is where our Ground Truth solution methodology comes in.

Smart Customer MDM from Uniserv is first of all a software solution. Based on this, further technologies and a great deal of solution know-how are necessary in order to combine customer master data with transaction data in such a way that a real and useful insight into the customer emerges afterwards.

And in order to achieve precisely these insights, so that companies as well as customers benefit equally from these insights, we have designed the Ground Truth. It is based on the entire know-how of Uniserv.