As usual, Apples recent product announcements have caused a stir. Apple continues to better itself, with its iPhone 6S expected to beat previous Apple records for the number of pre-orders.
The consumer tech firm doesnt drastically change its hardware, but it does improve its user experience and operating system. Many businesses see Apple as leading the way in technology innovation and the brand creates a sense of disruption by giving consumers what they want, before they even know what theyre looking for.
Apples mantra for innovation has spearheaded a new way to drive business success; differentiating based on customer experience.
For example, private car hire and travel were industries that werent necessarily in need of a shake-up, but Uber and Airbnb have turned these industries upside down by thinking about how to improve the customer experience, just as Apple created a mobile phone more intuitive than any before them.
These smaller companies are shaking up traditional industries, unleashing new and agile competition for larger players.
To stay relevant, businesses must address their customer experience and constantly innovate to ensure that they remain ahead of any encroaching competition. Here are four top tips for businesses to be more disruptive:
1. Close the communication gap
The division of accountability is often a major inhibitor to the creation of innovative processes. Instead businesses need to encourage roles and departments to be broken down so that there is further collaboration, which in turn leads to innovation.
Talented people exist across the whole of a business, but the absence of cross-department relationships can prevent skills from being shared.
For example, the marketing department will be trying to drive innovation within its customer relations programme, but we often see that theyre doing this in isolation from IT and customer service, who have access to data on customer interactions that could enhance this marketing project.
Collaboration across businesses and the new perspectives this brings is a part of almost every successful innovation project by looking to see if the answer exists within your business you can solve problems much more quickly.
2. Remember, innovation is a process
Once different departments are collaborating, it’s important to remember that innovation is a process. Businesses need to be constantly thinking about how they can cause market disruption, because it’s not going to happen overnight.
There are a few reasons why innovation can fail to materialise within businesses. Firstly, there is often more focus on the outcome of innovation, rather than its creation. Businesses have punchy targets to meet, so teams tend to concentrate on reaching these short term goals, rather than embarking on innovative transformation projects.
For example, if a marketing team with monthly targets to hit is faced with digitising customer touchpoints, the team is more likely to dedicate resources to utilising existing channels, even though embarking on a new project could increase customer relations and improve the business for the long term.
Businesses on a path to transform themselves should consider whether their business structure is organised for disruption and innovation to be a true possibility. In its purest form, innovation is the introduction of new things or methods and this comes when changes are made progressively, which collectively will drive the business forward.
3. Identify innovation champions within your business
Business and society hold innovation high as one of the most important components for success. However, in reality, how do you prove the business case for innovating Getting the rest of the business on board can be one of the most challenging things about embarking on an innovation project.
There must be a central team that presents a vision of the project, and the business transformation that the innovation will enable. Identifying the transformation champions across departments such as IT, Marketing and Business Development is vital to making any innovation project a long-term success.
These are the people that are dedicated to seeing through the benefits that change will bring and can highlight the value of transformation across the business.
Many large businesses have appointed a Chief Digital Officer, in charge of changing the business through technology. However, you cannot appoint a CDO and expect digitisation instantly and from them alone. To achieve real and long term change in the business, there needs to be participation from key stakeholders across the organisation.
4. Be customer-centric
Early IT projects focussed on the technology, but businesses can only innovate if they think about their customers and how their behaviour is changing. Most businesses achieve customer satisfaction by being able to anticipate the interaction the customer has with your organisation and ensuring it is relevant and effortless.
However, McKinsey believes that this narrow focus on maximising satisfaction at particular moments can create a distorted picture, which suggests that customers are happier with the company than they actually are. It also diverts attention from the bigger and more important picture: the customers end-to-end journey.
The customer experience is what businesses need to look at in order to innovate.
According to Brian Solis of the Altimeter Group, the thing about customer experience is that it happens with or without a formal CX strategy. Whether businesses like it or not, customers have an experience through every encounter they have with a company. The question to answer is: what is the experience customers have today and what could or should it be tomorrow?
Companies will often find there is a gap between desired experience and reality. They need to use this to uncover new opportunities and to compete for customer loyalty and advocacy through innovation.
Every business can be a disruptor if it champions business transformation internally. A sustained approach to innovation means that all businesses are able to compete with leading players and first-to-market start-ups like Uber disrupting the status quo. If you continually develop, innovate and disrupt your own industry; you can’t be displaced.
Stephen Morgan is the co-founder of digital transformation business Squiz
