Revenue growth amid competitive and economic pressures is every company’s top priority

Phil Zammit, Vice President for the APAC theatre, Avaya, says companies don’t need to break the bank with rip-and-replace projects.

Revenue growth amid competitive and economic pressures is every company’s top priority.

There are a plethora of factors making this tough to achieve. Financial uncertainty and inflation are the norm, driving up the cost of goods and services. Supply chains, while no longer at their worst, remain unstable.

And crucially, the struggle to recruit and retain top talent is ongoing, adding complexity to the ability to meet diverse customer expectations.

Customer services makes and breaks companies. Having a great product is one thing, but it’s a completely different challenge to supplement that product with a proactive service capability to keep customers happy.

Combined with the aforementioned headwinds, these issues highlight the importance of a holistic approach to customer experience (CX) – an approach that seamlessly integrates CX with employee experience (EX) and business growth. It’s a mindset that recognises the relationship between the three as foundational to sustainable growth and beating the competition.

The push for this foundation shows no signs of slowing. Analyst firm Gartner predicts IT spending in Australia will jump 7.8% year-on-year in 2024, exceeding $133 billion. Significant portions of these budgets are allocated to bridging the gap between current CX and EX platform capabilities and the ever-evolving needs and expectations of these stakeholders.

However, the prospect of abrupt changes in business communication infrastructure carries high risks, including potential disruptions to operations and customer service continuity. This fear of instability hinders innovation and the ability to drive new business outcomes. Attempting to do everything at once only heightens that risk.

Metcash’s experience serves as a cautionary tale. The wholesale distributor embarked on a digital transformation plan to replace multiple systems with a single operating platform, resulting in a $200 million cost blow-out. Both forecast expenses and timelines far exceeded initial expectations.

In the current climate of uncertainty and risk, it’s crucial to ensure transformation strategies are progressive and pragmatic.

Ripping and replacing effective technology investments introduces new risks to day-to-day operations and customer service continuity. This instability can domino across internal teams and external stakeholders, hurting CX and inhibiting potential future innovation and business outcomes.

A pragmatic transformation approach allows organisations to forge ahead into new territories through targeted tests and pilots. It allows new services and channels to be introduced in specific use cases so that businesses can explore advanced capabilities, like generative AI, without disrupting daily workflows.

It’s about building on what is already proven to work by leveraging familiar processes, systems, and technology as a baseline for new capabilities.

The pressure to correct existing and establish new revenue streams is at an all-time high, which is why many companies are tempted by technology hype cycles. But in most cases, the safest route to innovation is to identify specific teams or departments, sometimes even single use cases within them, and evolve parts of their job functions before deciding whether that innovation should be scaled to a broader audience.

Taking a pragmatic approach is especially crucial with high-impact technologies such as generative AI. For example, an organisation looking to boost employee productivity by feeding accurate, up-to-date data to their workers can test large language models (LLM) within specific thresholds. Once these test cases have been evaluated and improved, they can be extended to other teams without causing disruption.

Driving revenue and growth amid competitive pressures requires balance. By prioritising a holistic integration of CX, EX and business growth and approaching transformation pragmatic, businesses can navigate today’s complexities, pave a road for future innovation, and ensure progress is sustainable.