The Agricultural Revolution took thousands of years to run its course.

The Industrial Revolution required a few centuries. The Information Revolution, propelled by mobile technology, is reshaping our world on the order of decades.

For the first time in history multiple waves of key technological innovation are taking place simultaneously. In his book “The Singularity Is Near”, Ray Kurzweil forecasts that technological singularity – a hypothetical moment in time when artificial intelligence will have progressed to the point of a greater-than-human intelligence – will take place around 2045.

Not only the pace of technology innovation is speeding up. The pace of customer adoption is speeding up as well. Nowadays, we are seeing mature products being wiped out by new technologies with ever-shorter product life cycles. Entire product lines and whole markets are being created or destroyed overnight. They don’t follow conventional strategic paths or normal patterns of market adoption. In the age of Facebook, Twitter, and Tumblr, products can infect the whole world in a matter of days.

DIGITAL IS CHANGING THE USER EXPERIENCE

But in the end, it’s not about the technology. Customers massively adopt these new technologies for one reason: user experience. Digital transformation is forcing businesses to rethink what their customers value and how to meet those needs.

Today’s user experience needs to be contextual, anticipatory and frictionless. User research lies at the heart of ultra-contextual design. It requires a deep understanding of the way your users interact with your product and a clear sense of where those interactions might be improved.

The Uber experience has impacted consumer expectations across industries: if people can call a driver, organize a ride within minutes and pay for their trip at the tap of a button, why shouldn’t all service brands apply this same methodology?

DIGITAL IS CHANGING OUR BUYING BEHAVIOR

The Internet has shifted the power from sellers to buyers. The shift in consumer decision making means that marketers need to view the change not as a loss of power over consumers but as an opportunity to be in the right place at the right time, giving them the information and support they need to make the right decisions.

What we think and feel about our interaction with an organization’s products and services is increasingly important due to the rise of social media. How we research, evaluate, purchase, and engage with brands has changed as well.

GOOGLE IS THE NEW YELLOW PAGES.

On average, customers progress nearly 60% of the way through the purchase decision-making process before engaging a sales rep. Potential customers are readily turning to their personal networks and publicly available information – increasingly via digital and social media channels – to self-diagnose their needs and form opinions about purchases.

This is not only happening in B2C. With up to 60% of B2B customer buying decisions being completed before engaging with your sales teams, customer insight, mobile, and integrated digital marketing executions are key priorities to establish brand preference and accelerate purchase decisions.

DIGITAL IS NOT A FEATURE

Taking the above into account, companies should ask themselves to which extend their business is already “digitally proof.” A good starting point is looking at every single customer touchpoint in the customer journey and make sure it’s as frictionless as possible. If it isn’t frictionless, you can be sure there might be digital answers to that. Make sure you find those answers before a digital native startup does.

Digital is not a feature, it’s a means that allows you to meet and exceed customer expectations in the twenty first century.

KEY TAKEAWAYS FOR DOING BUSINESS IN THE DIGITAL AGE:

  • Re-envision your current business model in order to meet and exceed the digital customer experience
  • Digitization isn’t a one-stop journey but a continuous process to create competitive advantages
  • The sales funnel is dead and has become non-linear
  • Media consumption changed – Google is the new Yellow Pages
  • 75% of users never scroll past the first page of search results
  • Identify the customer experience gaps by taking a user-centered approach to understand the customer needs and behaviors
  • The most urgent place to apply digital thinking is through mobile devices – increasingly the entry point to a business
  • Use data to fuel real-time contextual marketing engine
  • Most trustworthy sources are the ones you don’t own
  • Don’t just look to your own industry for ideas