To Personalize or Not To Personalize
Personalization or personalization at scale means different things to different companies and different industries. When defining what it means for you, it’s important to establish a thinking process that looks at all the inputs and outputs rather than grabbing some industry jargon and stringing it together. Define your strategy I see organizations purchase technology well before the strategy and short and long-term program execution plans are in place. Technology seems to get everyone excited, which is great for the software vendors, but it really distracts companies from the tough tasks of planning out exactly what needs to happen before and after technology gets acquired. Here, the old saying “if you fail to plan and you plan to fail” stands true. Organizations spend more time in evaluating feature functions in the form of RFIs and RFPs than relevant and timeline-based planning. Invest in experts The other notion of relying on internal skills doesn’t always stand true. You need real, experienced, pragmatic skills across “been there done that,” a lot more than you need highly-priced management consultant types who may have arranged the boxes perfectly in the slide decks but have no idea how to execute this in practice. Finding the right trusted deployment partner who can guide, support, transfer skills on this journey is vital. And it’s very often not the software vendor or the large SI that needs to be engaged. Chart out a growth plan Engaging real experts early in the cycle can help you understand what good looks like, what expectations to set internally, and when to expect returns to be flowing back. It also helps structure up the initial teams and allows for growth as the program expands. There are no features and functions in the technology stack that will help you with how to run internal enablement, adoption, and get all stakeholders aligned and on the same wavelength. Real planning means getting experts to help you with planning and designing the data and analytics pipeline to support the personalization/ CX program. Moreover, whatever you promised in terms of timeline delivery and ROI becomes achievable because you have done your homework. How Areteans personalizes transformation for its customers Areteans is supporting digital transformation journeys for leading global brands with a focus on building solution accelerators for target customers. By owning the very change our clients aspire for, Areteans not just plans, but maps implementations with a collaborative approach to delivery. By employing advanced artificial intelligence and robotic automation, We empower businesses to transcend just capabilities and achieve accelerated growth instead. Because results speak for themselves in the long run!
Enabling business transformation with 1:1 data personalization
Consumer behavior and digital connectivity have seen a massive shift in the past decade and every customer today is available on more than one digital touchpoint at a given moment. Given the competitive landscape of digitally active brands, companies that are not focusing on inspiring brand loyalty are risking high customer churn. This is because customer loyalty is seen to be directly linked to the level of personalized experience that is tangible for the consumer. In return, businesses are prioritizing 1:1 personalization for customer recall, growth, and profitability. How is data being used to reduce customer churn? To be available to the customers in their omnichannel journeys at any given point requires companies to gather proprietary data which is then harvested for insights that help understand the customer’s profile, behavior, and touchpoints better. Such contextual information is then channelized to plan pertinent actions in a customer experience journey, such as real-time engagement, cross-selling, upselling, building relationships, and hence retention. Which are the verticals that are keen to adopt 1:1 personalization? Every organization that touches a customer, whether is a citizen, a bank, an insurer, the government, or a retail organization, is looking to deliver a smarter, more engaging, and personalized customer experience. One of Areteans customers, a retail giant, was facing a unique challenge with high churn. Customers were leaving the organization and moving to their competing brands. Without a commercial thought process around value engagement and retention, this client was facing the complex challenge of not being able to flow with a sustainable business model due to the large scale of operation. Ad hoc decision-making on offers was not a viable solution as it was vital to understand unique customer behavior. High-value customers, price points, product choice, and their reasons for leaving were brought into consideration to strategize retention options. Areteans’ support enabled a focus on customers that mattered while allowing the low-value ones to churn, and the business was able to see a multifold increase in retention rates with an effective top-line and bottom-line growth. How is data harnessed to enhance customer journeys in real-time? Having customers connected at different touchpoints, whether from a call center or a website or through social media channels, engagement in the right way at the right time is the need of the hour. Right from geo-locations to CRM that tracks the lifecycle of a customer, data-driven decision-making is defining 1:1 personalization today. Banking and financial services is one such domain where Areteans has been driving transformation with their deep-domain knowledge and consulting expertise. When a customer is looking for a credit product, like a mortgage, loan, or credit card, an optimum offer in the form of bundled add-ons can be marketed to the customer, based on the dimensions of their interaction history. For existing customers, data on their spending capability can provide insights into building lucrative loan offers that they are likely to accept as the available data has already configured that possibility for them. Insights from call interaction histories help telecallers gauge the sentiment of the conversation to promote a narrative around the customer’s interest while they attend a transactional call and make the experience more interesting. Staying absolutely relevant to the customer The wealth of proprietary data that is obtained from online consumer behavior in the digital landscape allows organizations to be more responsive, more nimble, and more adaptive to the changing needs of the market. It enables them to offer the right experience with their known customers by presenting a choice of better prices, discounts, or freebies that keeps the customer engaged, returning, and loyal. It also helps the brands be adaptive and responsive against their competition. Contextual and situational data is adding more and more flavor to tailored experiences with deepening AI-based recommendations. Areteans has been playing an integral part in simplifying the increasing complexity in customer journeys to make decision-making easier. With AI and automation-led capabilities, Areteans is enabling a dynamic customer-centric world to drive value on the premise of contextual, relevant, and real-time outbound offers that help businesses achieve the growth they aspire.
The Areteans Journey
What started with a team of ten people with a mission to help enterprise digital transformation, is now 800-strong in just 6 years!
Co-owning and co-creating success at Areteans
Co-owning and co-creating success at Areteans 2021-09-14 | Management We have always been passionate about the power of co-ownership. Areteans is a space for the doers, achievers, and challenge seekers. When each of us strives to do whatever it takes to reach a goal, the outcome is astounding. We encourage you to help create a deep, lasting impact you can own. Co-ownership makes way for every single idea, decision, and plan that can help us achieve success. Here is how we can put ‘Co-own’ into practice. Taking responsibility of work We are ardent believers in taking ownership of what we do, regardless of departments, levels, and teams. This would mean treating customer goals as our own and pursuing them with equal passion. Taking initiative is a great first step to establishing ownership. Exploring the full potential of your roles and responsibilities is one of the most empowering things you can do. It is this mindset of ownership that has enabled us to build strong, cohesive client relationships where we share responsibility for the outcomes and celebrate successes together. Independence of thought Co-ownership is possible only when you have the freedom to think for yourself, make informed decisions, and implement plans on their basis. Nurturing our independence of thought can help drive innovation. It allows us to find new, effective solutions to challenges that arise. It inspires us to stay flexible and forward-looking. Our energy is directed towards achieving goals rather than being restrained by any procedure. When you can give your ideas a chance, you feel invested, and own your outcomes completely. Whether it’s asking questions, making risky choices, or attempting new problem-solving strategies, don’t hold back. Your unique style of thinking helps us drive innovation. Accomplishment The ultimate impact of co-ownership is co-creating outcomes. We are a responsible partner to all our clients. This helps us align on the bigger picture, move cohesively towards our goals, and avoid unnecessary friction. We foster this attitude within Areteans as well. You are a co-owning partner in every project you take up. Your every contribution is valuable. Our successes are yours. In other words, you have enabled more accomplishments than you may have realised. We are excited for the future of Areteans and we are thrilled to have you by our side, co-owners. Let us continue to build the organisation, environment, and impact we believe in, together. “Take initiative. Be proactive. Co-own your impact”
‘Catalyse’ in your daily professional life
‘Catalyse’ in your daily professional life 2021-08-31 | Management What does transformation mean to you? This is a question we have asked ourselves multiple times at the organisational level, as we re-envisioned our dream for Areteans. It is one we implore you to ask yourselves so that you can catalyse the change you want to see in your professional journey. Identify challenges and chart your growth plan What holds you back from becoming the employee you could be? Begin by reflecting on the challenges and roadblocks you face in your daily work-life. These may stem from a need to upskill or attitudes, beliefs, or behaviours that hinder your progress. Once you’ve acknowledged the gaps, you can set long-term and short-term career goals and map out the steps to achieve them. The best plans indicate a direction, but allow flexibility in execution and adapt to new information and situations. Actively seek out feedback There is an opportunity to receive constructive criticism everywhere. Let go of the idea that it is a formal, one-way process. After any challenging task or discussion, ask your peers and leaders what they thought. Don’t hold back on your questions. The more information you have, the easier it will be for you to implement changes. Feedback is a great way to assess the progress you’re making towards your goals and what you may need to change. Build genuine relationships Our most important assets at Areteans will always be our employees. This is why we advise you to leverage it! Talk to people beyond your immediate teammates and seniors. Ask them about their work, strategies, and attitudes. There is something to learn from everyone. Your understanding of Areteans and your work is sure to deepen and become more interdisciplinary. It’s motivating to find role models and mentors in your fellow colleagues. It also makes networking that much easier. When you find people whose goals and values align with yours, you can identify and discuss challenges, brainstorm solutions, and hold each other accountable for the progress you’d like to make. Take up new projects or responsibilities If your manager approaches you regarding additional responsibilities or a new project, go ahead. While these opportunities may depart from your original plan, they can spur your growth dramatically. They are a testament to your talent and potential. You have the chance to learn something different from your regular responsibilities. Don’t let fear hold you back from exploring. Every project helps you grow. Keep up self-education Our final tip to help you truly internalise ‘Catalyse’ as a tenet of your professional life is to keep educating yourself. This could be with the help of a mentor, through an online course, or keeping up with industry trends via articles and videos. There are ample resources available on the internet to help you become a well-rounded employee. Choose a mode and subject that works for you and embark on the endless journey of learning. Don’t forget to have fun! We believe that when you invest in yourself, you invest in Areteans. When you release the limitations you have placed on yourself to reach for your full potential, the ripple effects on the organisation are beyond imagination. “Take charge to drive change”
Collaborate: The best way to achieve our goals
Collaborate: The best way to achieve our goals 2021-09-07 | Management When we work together, we create magic. Our results exceed anything we could have done ourselves. We are also more creative, productive, communicative, and engaged. This is why our second pillar, Collaborate, is so important. We pride ourselves on Areteans’ cohesive culture, and we are eager to continue nurturing this environment. A team-oriented atmosphere is usually warm, encouraging, and empowering. You want the best for your colleagues and they want the best for you. Here are some ways to inculcate ‘Collaborate’ as a practice. Appreciating everyone’s unique strengths Every single one of you has unique perspectives, skills, and proficiencies. We believe in appreciating and leveraging these strengths. Celebrate the capabilities of your colleagues, whether it’s through public appreciation or a one-on-one meeting. Connect these strengths to the Areteans’ vision and mission. Research validates that recognition is one of the most influential factors of employee satisfaction. Never hesitate to let someone know they’re doing well! Inculcating team spirit to achieve our goals In our opinion, developing team spirit means understanding your personal targets and responsibilities without working in silos. Ask colleagues for their inputs on your work and vice versa. Use brainstorming sessions to solve problems. Share educational resources with one another. Conduct fun learning sessions on a rotational basis. Use team meetings as a collaborative tool at your disposal. You can always use another opinion. Create a supportive community Areteans recognises the diversity of our people. We seek to learn from each one of you, and we implore you to do the same. Workplace friendships can be deeply rewarding. Get to know your colleagues beyond their titles. Uplift each other by celebrating professional and personal successes We end this with a challenge for all of you. Pick one habit that will help you be more collaborative. This could be asking for help more often, requesting feedback, praising colleagues, or participating in meetings. Implement this for one month and note the difference. You’ll be inspired by the change you see. “Working together towards common goals”
How Robotic Automation can help in your Digital Transformation Journey
How Robotic Automation can help in your Digital Transformation Journey 2021-01-19 | Dheeraj Verma Robotic Automation, a forward-looking software design technology, has been a buzz word for quite some time but only a few industry leaders fully appreciate the potential of this technology. Robotic Automation enables organizations to digitally transform and automate mundane rules-based business processes/manual work by bridging the gap between different legacy systems. RPA implementation helps organizations to streamline business operations and reduce costs. Many organizations have large volumes and highly transactional processes functions as part of their daily operations which consumes a lot of time for their employees. These processes are usually simple or medium complex, primarily driven by defined business rules where human decision making or judgment is not required. These process functions are tedious and error-prone as employees must navigate through multiple legacy interface systems, which are expensive to/cannot be integrated, to fetch the data. Inaccurate data leads to rework thereby increasing the operating costs for the organization. Forrester, a leading market research company, forecasts the RPA market to skyrocket to $12 billion by 2023 from merely $250 million in 2016. This is because RPA’s applications are boundless. RPA platforms help create bots that interact with several legacy software applications and mimic humans to automate repetitive work. What Pega’s RPA solution has to offer? Pega’s Robotic Process Automation can help organizations to automate volume heavy manual process functions thereby eliminating the need for users to rummage through different legacy systems and hence making the operations error-free, saving on operational costs, and giving more time to employees to work on productive work. Pega provides two different categories of Automations — Robotic Desktop Automation (refereed also as Attended Automation) and Robotic Process Automation (referred also as Unattended Automation). Attended automation are typically targeted towards front office/operational activities where it is not possible to automate the end to end business process. In such cases the Attended bots work along-side agents in assisting them to fetch information from multiple applications, improving productivity and quality of agents work. Attended bots will have to triggered by the agents in need basis, provide agents with realtime process inputs, and automates routine activities within the processes in a fast and accurate manner. Attended bots can run on agents’ workstations or on the cloud. Unattended automation is used to fully automate high volume, repetitive, frequent, and simple processes/activities where the tasks can be defined as step by step business rules. As the name suggests these bots are not supervised or supported by humans and they operate in the background. Once programmed, these bots can be scheduled or triggered based on some defined events and normally used to perform batch or bulk operations. Unattended bots can run on dedicated workstations, cloud, web, or server and can replace work performed manually by users with a fully automated process. Top use cases/processes across industries where Pega’s Robotic Automation can be used Human Capital Management Talent Acquisition/Recruitment – Bots can help the HR managers to search for the right candidates based on defined parameters. Once the prospect is identified, the bot can automatically fetch the data Payroll – Bots can be configured to automatically scrape the data from the timesheets and calculate the pay for employees at the end of each month. They can also generate payslips and send it across to employees in a matter of seconds. Insurance Industry Insurance Claims: Insurance claim verification and processing is high data-intensive, manual, tedious and lengthy process. RPA can help insurers in automatically retrieving the relevant data from different sources thereby reducing the processing time and hence improving customer experience. Premium renewals- Bots can be configured to identify the renewal dates of policies and automatically send reminder emails/trigger an IVR call for renewal of policy without any human intervention. Banking and Financial Services KYC- Know your customer process is a stringent and mandatory regulatory procedure for financial institutions and for most of these FIs the cost of running these checks can be significant. RPA can help in collecting and verifying the data of customers against internal and external systems for record checks. Credit Card Processing – Processing time for credit cards can be reduced from days to a few hours by designing Bots to collect customer documents, perform credit checks, and background checks by getting data from various systems and to decide if customer is eligible for a credit card or not. Retail Inventory Management – Inventory data is maintained in different systems, software Bots can help in identifying right stocks and push alerts/notifications when there is shortage or overflow. Reporting – RPA bots can extract data from sales systems and help business categorize multiple reports based on products, categories, regions etc. BOTs help in saving countless hours of manual work in preparing these reports for monthly or quarterly analysis Health care Medical Billing – Billing process by healthcare providers is a multi-step process that involves the use of billing codes for each procedure, processing with the insurance provider, and calculating the out of pocket expenses. This requires collaboration and data collection with internal and external stakeholders. Software bots can automate this process and hence reduce the time for generating the bills. Discharge Instructions – RPA Bots can ensure that the Discharge instructions are accurately provided for each patient and provide reminders for pick up of medical reports, medicines, and upcoming appointments Attended and Unattended bots have unique benefits and the combination of both makes a holistic RPA solution for an organization. Unattended bots free up employees’ productive time from manual & repetitive work, on the other hand, attended bots help employees perform other tasks in an organized way. Hence both bots together add up to create a perfect value proposition to digitally transform operations for the organization. About Areteans Areteans is a Gold Pega partner which is 100% focused on Pega. We are enabling our customers globally to transform & evolve digitally by implementing Pega solutions ranging from simple to complex enterprise implementations. We possess deep expertise in delivering Pega CRM suite of applications ranging from
The Digital Transformation Wave
The Digital Transformation Wave 2020-09-25 |Business Architecture Team If a digital transformation were to be defined:- Briefly it could be defined as the integration of digital technology into all areas of a business that fundamentally changes how the businesses operate and deliver value to customers. In today’s world, everyone is talking about digitization of services and the ease of accessing it remotely. With the unexpected appearance of the recent pandemic situation of the novel coronavirus, businesses around the globe feels the need of digitization more than ever. Digital Transformation with Pega – Latest Advancement Pega as most of us know has digitized thousands of businesses around the globe ranging from midsegments to multinational giants. In this space, we are going to see how the latest advancement of Pega is helping businesses in faster delivery and greater savings with its agile, low code, fully scalable intelligent automation. Pega “The always evolving tool” has recently imbibed the following to make their software more agile and lightweight so that the businesses take lesser time to reach the market. Pega Process Fabric:- With the recent release of the Pega process fabric now Pega can articulate the business architecture weaving together the business processes, case management, and workflow across all systems and platforms. Along with process fabric, the following has been scaled up / changed recently to suit business needs aptly Scaling up of Low Code Feature:- The current Pega 8.4 comes with Low Code – No Code features where most of the development is at configuration level and does not involve any hands-on coding as such, except heavy customizations. With this Low Code- No Code approach Pega would enable IT leaders to embrace full-featured low-code platforms for the ability to create enterprise-class software quickly. This would help the businesses in getting their software ready with robust and scalable features would be the quickest one to reach the market. RPA now transformed to Intelligent Automation:- Now the organizations and businesses can shift from modern, unified architectures that connect the front- and back-offices, bring together critical capabilities like process orchestration, AI, and case management, to enable platforms that automatically present the right tools or services in an as-a-service operational structure. Pega Marketing:- Now enables one to one capability of that of an AI-based tool which will continue to help marketers make sense of consumer data and context to determine the most empathetic and ethical way to engage with each person. Areteans & Pega: Journey of a Digital Bank As a Pega Gold Partner, Areteans is always very proud and happy to be a continuous part of the digital transformation journey for one of the largest Digital Bank of South Africa. This bank operates fully digitally and is branchless, hence the need for a proper Business Process Modelling implementation was very critical and sensitive. As Pega fitted exactly into their strategic objectives the robust implementation of their omnichannel modules and applications in Pega were very important. Areteans helped them scale up their objectives and the bank achieved to onboard a million customers over a period of just one year. The benefits achieved by the Bank by using Areteans services and Pega were the following but was not limited to it. Pega’s cloud-based solutions as was proposed by Areteans seamlessly merged with the bank’s cloud-only digital infrastructure and services which provided scalability of operations. Areteans gathered and structured the requirements quickly to give hand in hand solutions which were implementation ready for faster time to market. The technology behind the services needed to be dynamically scalable and agile to support the digital expansion of the bank. Areteans leveraged Pega’s Low Code -No Code platform which enabled swift changes in quick turnaround time while assuring continued quality service to the bank’s customers Since the bank provides branch-less banking, the back-office service center is used to serve the customers where they use Pega CS-FS. By using Pega’s industry solution of Customer Service for Financial Services (CS-FS) the service center representatives could serve customers better and faster in a first contact resolution with advanced case management features. Financial risk management was critical, Areteans provided seamless coordination with Risk and Fraud Management to resolve customer issues The capabilities of using bots for customer interactions, using machine learning and AI to intelligently aggregate, route, and resolve customer queries/requests or complaints, etc all were used in omnichannel modules for the bank. With a fast-increasing customer base and a growing bouquet of product offerings, Areteans was the right partner to realize the bank’s future goals. Keep watching this space as we get ready for more “Build for Change”: Pega About Areteans Areteans is a Gold Pega partner which is 100% focused on Pega. We are enabling our customers globally to transform & evolve digitally by implementing Pega solutions ranging from simple to complex enterprise implementations. We possess deep expertise in delivering Pega CRM suite of applications ranging from Customer Service, Sales Force Automation, Marketing & Decisioning applications across Banking & Financial Services, Insurance, Telecom & FMCG. We also deliver innovative & specialized Pega accelerators which can jump start customer journeys build in our own R&D Innovation Labs.