In This Blog:
- Why are innovation and strategy so important for modern businesses?
- What are their benefits?
- Examples of solutions to better help your business strategize and innovate
What is ‘Strategy’?
Strategy for a business is the drafting and implementation of a plan geared towards achieving short or long term goals, especially in instances of uncertainty about the path future circumstances and events are likely to take.
What is ‘Innovation’?
Innovation for a business is when management and those in charge adopt, adapt to and implement technology, policies, processes, tactics, products or services that help them grow, increase profitability and succeed.
Why Do Modern Businesses Need Both?
The world is changing at a pace that is becoming increasingly difficult to keep up with, and yet keeping up is the only way modern businesses can guarantee survival, competitive advantage and a high success rate. With uncertainty, doubt and hope for the future always in attendance, strategic moves become paramount as they help plan the course ahead. These moves are formulated by analyzing customer traffic, business trends, untapped markets, customer insights and feedback, etc.
A forward thinking business also prioritizes innovation, as deploying and utilizing new and improved technologies, processes, techniques, etc. allows them to keep abreast with the competition. It is essential for a modern business to achieve a synergy and comfortable working balance between innovation and strategy as the key to value creation. Thereby ensuring that they have the planning and the means to execute it, such that they can remain competitive in their rapidly evolving markets.
The demands made by the modern customer, directed at modern industries, corporations, companies and businesses, are also in constant flux. They depend on the needs of the moment, and the needs of the current moment, post-pandemic 2021, are sustainability, consistency, convenience and safety. How to best ensure that one’s chosen service or product provider has or will implement policies to cater to these demands, is by observing their business innovation strategy.
A well-designed strategy will account for these needs, alongside the needs of the business itself, its employees and its industry. The above also requires innovation in order to be possible. Without the right tools, implementation will be more tedious and less effective.
Relationship Between Business Strategy and Innovation
To be clear, both are necessary and mutually interdependent. To decide what innovations are best for furthering corporate goals, business strategy must be consulted to ensure the right moves are being made. And to decide what strategy will focus on and prioritize, innovation trends must be studied and analyzed to understand what the needs of the future are likely to look like.
Benefits of Effective Business Strategizing
- Determining a future course of action to follow for success
- Increasing employee engagement
- Clarifying what resources, tools and technology will be required
- Making informed decisions
- Standing out from the rest of the competition
- Measuring success
1. Determining a future course of action to follow for success
By drafting and finalizing a strategy, businesses set goals to be achieved. This gives employees, staff and management a purpose, clear directions and a set of ideals to work towards.
It also alerts them to what needs attention and improvement by highlighting hurdles and what metrics to measure and report on. This sets the tone for day-to-day working, and eliminates any confusion as to the organization’s purpose and challenges.
2. Increasing employee engagement
With information, comes purpose and power. By being aware of the plan going ahead, employees and management can be sure of their purpose, their responsibilities, what is expected of them, and what they must achieve. This will result in higher rates of driven and focused employees, job satisfaction, reduced role ambiguity and increased employee productivity.
3. Clarifying what resources, tools and technology will be required
With a business strategy in place, management can determine what human, physical or financial resources will be needed to achieve their long term goals. This will help them be proactive, prepared and ready for any major developments or changes.
4. Making informed decisions
Strategizing helps when new opportunities arise and management needs to decide whether to pursue, shelf or reject them. A set plan will aid them in accepting only those opportunities that are aligned with their business goals, keeping their vision intact and clear .
Strategy will also allow them to steer clear of reactionary decision making, and give them increased flexibility in further planning and process optimization.
5. Standing out from the rest of the competition
Without a decided business strategy, companies are likely to look to their competitors as examples of what to and what not to do when choosing the course ahead. This prevents them from making unique choices, and makes it difficult to differentiate them from the competition.
However it must be clarified that comparing and contrasting one’s business strategy with that of a competitor is important as a means of keeping tabs on the competition and guaranteeing that the best possible course is being followed.
6. Measuring success
When a business knows what its goals are, it can measure its success against them. By having a scale to compare what has been achieved against what should be achieved, it is simpler to gauge what other efforts are needed, what areas need work, and where further improvements can be made.
Benefits of Adopting And Adapting To Innovation
Guaranteeing business growth
Innovation helps businesses grow, keep up with competitors and stay up-to-date. It is the best means by which to rapidly expand and scale one’s business.
Ensuring competitive edge and relevancy
With constant evolution in the corporate world, remaining relevant is a tough but necessary task. Adaptation to new technologies, processes and business models is the best means to meet new customer demands and industry requirements.
Innovation forces industries to change and improve for the better. It is the impetus and the catalyst all in one. For both an established company to stay competitive and for a new company to carve out a space for themselves in the industry, innovation is the key.
Furthermore, innovation allows companies to differentiate themselves and their products and services from those of the competition. Delivering value to customers is the main focus, and using memorable means to do so can strengthen brand identity and recognition and improve customer loyalty and onboarding.
Increasing profitability
Innovation is geared towards solving the issues and problems companies face. And one of the major concerns is high costs and low profits.
With innovative practices, products and services, businesses can look forward to improved employee productivity due to improved allocation of resources, reduced operational costs and increased turnover and profitability.
Innovation also enables companies to better exploit economies of scale, by improving production capacity and the flexibility of the business.
Handling legal and environmental issues, and adding value
Innovation is an essential means of upholding sustainable and environmentally safe production practices. This in turn helps companies to comply with changing legislation regarding products and service delivery.
Innovative processes are a signal to customers that your company is willing and able to survive and thrive in a modern world. They add value to the products and services it provides, and customers will be prepared to pay more while feeling increased loyalty towards your business.
How Can Your Business Better Strategize?
To better strategize, your business must have the tool to measure, analyze and report on necessary metrics.
Spectra Reporting and Dashboards
Wavetec’s Spectra enterprise software monitors, measures, and analyses while customers are in the queue or on-premises, producing business intelligence reports through its centralized reporting system. It boasts integrations with all applications, thereby creating a frictionless customer experience.
Spectra comprises ticketing and mobile queueing products, live dashboards and reporting tools, and integrates Web TSU API’s with client information for a seamless experience. And can be viewed from the central controls, and relevant action can be taken in real-time to manage better.
These offer insights on:
- Customer flows
- Staff performance
- Teller performance – employee productivity vs customer inflow
- Service area resource optimization and efficiency
- Future predictions and projections
For more information on what Spectra dashboards will work best for your bank, read our blog.
How Can Your Business Become More innovative?
By adopting new software, hardware and technology! Following are some examples.
WhatsApp Queuing
Wavetec’s WhatsApp Queue Management solution is designed to operate as a fully integrated system that enables your customers to contactlessly join a queue. It is built on the premise of innovation, geared towards improving customer flows and increasing staff productivity.
A typical customer journey flow using this system is as follows:
Arrival
The customer arrives on premises and scans a displayed QR code to open a WhatsApp chat conversation with the business. The system greets them, and after asking questions pertaining to the service or product they wish to purchase and who they wish to be served by, they are issued an electronic ticket that secures their place in the virtual queue.
They receive real-time WhatsApp notifications of queue updates as they wait remotely.
Being Served
The customer’s e-ticket was integrated with digital signage and lobby leader calling applications, and so when their turn arrives, they will be directed to the required counter.
After being Served
After having been served, the customer will be asked for feedback on the quality of their visit via WhatsApp chat.
WhatsApp Appointment scheduling
Based on the same premise as the above, now appointments and bookings can be scheduled, cancelled and rescheduled via WhatsApp chat. This will allow customers to arrive on premises at their own convenience, aid management in anticipating and better preparing to serve them, and manage and monitor customer flows, traffic and queuing.
Read our blog for more information on how appointment scheduling can improve retail bank operations.
Wavetec has been on the forefront of technological development with constant innovation. Our solutions are geared towards serving and equipping businesses that want to create positive customer experience, and enhance their performance, productivity and profitability.
Read more: How to use WhatsApp in different business areas to improve customer experience.
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