The concepts of ‘digital connectivity’ and ‘digital self-service’ which allow consumers to exercise choice and expose suppliers to difficulties in retaining control of the customer, are increasingly part of daily living.  Moreover, the demographic spread of demand for digital connectivity involves all age groups.  For example, of the 260 million users of Facebook, 12% of them are over 55 years old whilst the majority of Twitter users are over 35.

Now the challenge in the UK is to “get as many of the 17 million currently without access to the net online by the time of the Olympics in 2012”- (Martha Lane Fox – UK Digital Champion).

As the digital economy evolves there are inevitably winners and losers.  Market sectors such as Travel & Leisure, Retailing, Media and parts of the Financial Services have undergone a sea-change.  Ageing products, poor service and uncompetitive pricing are being challenged by both consumers and new market entrants.  For those companies left behind the impact has been severe.  Loss of market share and the decline of brand have led many of them to reappraise their operating rationale and even their long-term position in the market.

So who or what are the contributors to this self-service revolution?  Essentially, there is interplay of three basic elements – technology, consumer and suppliers – glued together by an insatiable desire for information.  When linked with other powerful market forces such as globalisation and global information access and distribution, they fundamentally reshape markets.  

Technology, by virtue of all its hardware and software forms, operating environments and low cost entry points, acts as the fundamental change agent in both leading and responding to consumer demand by virtue of its own inescapable growth laws (e.g. Moore’s law).  

Consumers meanwhile are harnessing the power and potential of technological innovations.  Hand-held mobile devices, downloaded software, vast information repositories, search engines and web-based product and services providers are all being harnessed.   The very concept of a customer relationship is being redefined with businesses.  

However, companies that lack the means to connect digitally with consumers are showing signs of strain.  There is evidence of in-built organisational inertia. The pace of change and speed in adopting new technologies is painfully slow.  Too often it is minimal investment, a grid-locked management structure and rigid ‘legacy’ operating environments that restrict a company’s ability to change.  All of which of course can make it unresponsive to rapid movements in the market and lead it in to trying to box the consumer into an ‘arthritic’ operating framework.

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Huzmah Ahmed -
About the Author:

Ian Marshall is an Associate at Business & Decision (www.businessdecision.co.uk), an international Conultancy and Systems Integrator.