by Patricia Lundy

Last year, Transform Tour visited San Francisco and Boston, but this year, we turned it into a one-stop, completely virtual event. The focus of this year’s event was on how to reimagine our future—the future of technology, the future of work, the future of networking, and the future of how people connect and interact with one another in the post-pandemic era. 

Our guest panelists shared their advice on how their companies are reimagining their own future. We took their insights and pared them down into 3 major takeaways:

1. Don’t hold onto old priorities—it’s time to be agile
2. Support your customers through personalized experiences
3. Get started with automation—don’t be afraid to fail, because the wins are worth it

Let’s take a look at what Josh Waldo of Nintex, Kira Makagon of RingCentral, and Chris McLaughlin of Nuxeo had to say about these three key pieces of advice. 

1. Become An Agile Business: Let Go of Old Priorities

If there was ever a time that your organization needed to be flexible, it’s now. COVID-19 restrictions, regulations, and social norms can change on a moment’s notice. With new outbreaks surging in Europe and in some parts of the U.S., it’s clear that we still have a long way to go in terms of recovery. The future is uncertain, and this is where being agile takes on a clear competitive advantage. 

Chris McLaughlin, Chief Marketing & Product Officer at Nuxeo, advised businesses to let old priorities fall to the wayside and focus on the new priorities. This means prioritizing transformation in parts of your business that have been neglected—these parts may now be the key to sustaining your business throughout the pandemic. And most importantly, your focus should shift to enabling a better digital customer experience. 

In today’s environment, Chris made the very astute point that it’s easier to upsell to existing customers vs. trying to acquire new customers. How are your current customers coping with changes brought on by the pandemic? You should know these answers inside and out. When your customers’ needs change, your priorities should shift alongside them. 

2. Supporting Your Customers Means Thinking Outside the Box

The previous point flows nicely into our next key takeaway—now is the time to reimagine the way you support your client base. Kira Makagon, Chief Innovation Officer at RingCentral, shared that her customers who were already in the cloud when COVID hit were much better off than customers who weren’t. If you’re a cloud provider or cloud-based technology provider, make it easier for your customers to make transitions quickly—there really is no better time than the present. RingCentral’s technology enabled one of the largest providers of specialized pediatric care to seamlessly move patients from offices that were busy to offices that were less busy so they could see a doctor without having to wait. 

Chris advised organizations to focus on their website experience—since this is often where new and old customers alike go to access information. Put together a more personalized approach by deploying a chatbot and creating a more engaging online interface with your company.

Finally, realize your customers need to digitally transform faster than ever before. Josh Waldo, Chief Customer Officer at Nintex, shared how Nintex has taken more initiatives during COVID to help customers transform faster. Some of the things they’ve done include taking payment gates off of instructor-led training and increasing the number of classes and instructors across the company. This has allowed them to train over 10k people in the Nintex community.

Josh also advised audience members to evaluate if your customers are sitting on phenomenal technology assets that they are not leveraging or haven’t deployed—are there parts of your product/solution that your customers are failing to take advantage of? Take steps to help your customers be successful with your technology. Nintex rolled out a program to offer free consultations to clients who were running into business problems. 

The key takeaway here is to make sure that your customers are getting the maximum value out of their purchase with you—or they might begin to look somewhere else.

3. The Key to Automation Is to Fail Fast

Our last takeaway is about not being afraid to implement technology to transform your processes and your business. Our experts shared similar pieces of advice: you can’t wait to get started. 

Chris shared an important observation: “digital transformation is a journey, not a destination.”

Josh shared that it’s important for your organization to first map out your processes. Next, prioritize the processes based on importance across stakeholders and start automating from the most important down. To make it easy, pick 1 thing to start, automate it for the quick win, and go from there. It’s best to pick the processes that have a direct impact on your customers—as Kira shared, you want to work closely with your customers and keep them updated on the changes you’re making. Transparency is key—especially when it’s to your customers’ benefit.

Some organizations may be hesitant to deploy new technologies or may even avoid transformative technologies entirely because they seem daunting to implement and deploy. But the truth is, it’s absolutely doable. Find the confidence to get started by talking to an Aragon analyst for a free inquiry.

Bottom Line

Now is the time to take chances—because staying stagnant presents more risk to your business than trying something new. Evaluate what direction your business needs to head in for 2021. Look at manual, analog processes that can be automated and transformed, and keep your customers top of mind to support their changing needs. 

To catch the rest of our panelists’ expert insights, watch the playback of Transform Tour 20 on-demand!

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P.S. Don’t miss out on more insights that will be shared at Aragon Transform on December 2nd and 3rd! Register here.