Europe
4. July 2014

Customer 4.0 - Part 1

An industrial revolution, such as the introduction of the PC in the 1970s, is characterised by massive changes in user behaviour. With the emergence of the Internet and the explosive spread of mobile devices, our way of life has changed irrevocably. Which trends are driving this trotting formation process from today's perspective?

AN INDUSTRIAL REVOLUTION, SUCH AS THE introduction of the PC in the 1970s, is characterised by a massive change in user behaviour. With the emergence of the Internet and the explosive spread of mobile devices, our way of life has changed irrevocably. To this day, the media and retail industries have had to live through this change in user behaviour in all brutality. This led to successes such as Rocket Internet, Spotify, Buzzfeed & Co.  This massive, underestimated change in our minds will lead to the 4th industrial revolution and thus to a digitization of ALL industries. Traditional industries underestimate the speed and dynamics of this development; business models will change from products to solutions, industries will be reconfigured through solution-oriented eco-systems, and anything that can be digitized will be digitized.

Which trends are driving this transformation process from today's perspective?

Trend #1 - Technology Rules

Technology will be the decisive success factor for business processes. Traditional processes are broken down into value contributions and replaced by innovative technologies (e.g. SaaS, DaaS, etc.), improved (e.g. security) and revolutionized (e.g. home tech). technology enables the simple connection of complex business processes on multiple platforms, devices and computer languages (e.g. API's, Zapier). The results are increased efficiency, customer 4.0 focused solutions, lower CapEx and more flexible use cases. In the past, the CLAAS GROUP exclusively offered agricultural machines with after-sale services. With the new needs of farmers, the CLAAS Group has become one of the pioneers in the digitisation of its industry. Today, CLAAS customers are offered solutions (e.g. harvest efficiency increase of 2% p.a.) in the form of a technological eco-system comprising machines, satellite software, data services, telemetry and OR applications.

Trend #2 - Mobile ONLY

With the meteoric spread of mobile devices, PCs and laptops will be replaced or skipped in the medium term. Mobile devices and applications will control companies (e.g. relateIQ, Number26, WeChat) and households (e.g. Nest, Hue). The same applies to the private consumption of products, services and digital content. Mobile Only applications for interactivity, commerce, advertising, enterprise, content, data solutions, etc. will therefore grow massively. Even established Internet companies with a leading market position in the desktop will undergo a massive structural change to Mobile Only, which will once again exert pressure on "Economics". German media companies are still facing this mobile structural change.

Trend #3 - Sharing & Collaboration

The trend of sharing and community benefits is unstoppable in the age of digitization. The term "property" is replaced by "use". This means that books are no longer physically owned, but a right of use is acquired in the cloud on a mobile device. At the age of 18, every young person wanted a car. Today, these ownership wishes were replaced by car sharing providers Car2Go, DriveNow, Multicity etc. When Airbnb introduced its marketplace for the day-to-day use of private real estate, there was great scepticism. In this case, too, the concept of ownership changed and one of the most successful marketplaces for the use of private property was created. Comparable developments can be seen in the music (e.g. Spotify), fashion (e.g. Dresscoded), commercial real estate (e.g. WeWork) and IT industry (e.g. Amazon Web Services, Dropbox etc.); other industries will follow!

Trend #4 - (Self-explanatory) User Interfaces

The mobile device (Smart Phone, Tablets) accompanies us today 7 days x 24 hours. The user interface and user guidance of the mobile devices has permanently changed our behavior. As a result, we find products that require explanation disturbing. We are looking for simple solutions and lasting experiences. Apple has changed the world for all industries and redefined the term user interface with its solutions.  The owner's manual is dead. Porsche is one of the most successful sports car manufacturers in the world. In 1971, the cockpit of the 911 had 10 switches on the dashboard and drove at a speed of 165 km/h - high German engineering performance made a racing car roadworthy. About 30 years later the 911 drove twice as fast, had over 50 switches and an operating manual of about 1,000 pages. With today's 911 user interface, the Customer 4.0 will feel a sense of interference, because the demands on the 911 are those on a mobile device. The first translations of this trend can be found in the dashboard of the Tesla S, Volvo XC 90 or Mercedes S-Class: not a single switch! In the area of Customer Relationship Management (CRM) - whether software or software as a service - the optimization of user interfaces on all platforms is repeatedly discussed. Many medium-sized companies fail in advance due to the user interface of data integration from Salesforce.com, Microsoft and Co.'s. RelateIQ from Palo Alto has revolutionized data integration for CRM within 3 years - data integration in 3 seconds per data source. RelateIQ integrates through simple logins Outlook, MS Exchange, every mobile device (today one of the essential data storage of employees), Google and Facebook (social media platforms are the Outlook.pst files of the Millenials and younger).

The article was originally published in Berlin Valley News in August 2015 (German)!