Unlocking Value in Retail: Omni-Channel

Retail has undergone a sea-change over the last half-a-decade, than what it has witnessed or progressed in half-a-century. The pace at which the innovations and changes have tread, especially during the pandemic, the retail segment has adapted to changes in consumption, consumer behaviour, channel integrations, and accelerated customer expectations around speed and convenience. In fact, the race to shorten click-to-customer cycle time is arguably the single greatest influence on the shape of future omni-channel supply chains. Needless to say, the bar continues to rise for retail and direct-to-consumer brands.

The challenges of accelerated delivery entails speed, freebies, delivery benefits, supply chain operations, inventory management, complex SKU control, demand forecasting, and governing execution.

A one-size-fits-all approach does not address complex issues like these, especially in today's time. Despite the many challenges of providing ever-faster omni-channel order fulfillment, there are primarily a few key characteristics that define fast and efficient fulfillment models --

a) segmented approach in shaping the delivery-speed promise

b) selective yet judicious network expansion

c) refined inventory analytics, automation and/or robotics

d) mitigated last-mile connectivity by balancing platform services and regional carriers

What or Who is a Product Manager?

For as long as I have been a product manager the role, the term, the definition of a ‘product manager’ has been the subject of much deliberation and debate. Is it a part or whole of new product development, business justification, planning, verification, forecasting, pricing, product launch, and marketing at all stages of the product life-cycle. While at the basic level, it is paramount for a role to have definition to avoid chaos and bring clarity to the KRAs. At the same time, it is also hazy to comprehend the logical flow of the expertise and where or how you fit in the scheme of affairs in the organisation.

What I encountered and inferred from my recent interactions with aspiring product managers, mid-level successful PMs and the likes, the role is difficult to write a formal ‘specification’ for and it has been bastardised as organisations have introduced the role type/title without fully understanding it. It’s a role that’s been confused by recruiters who have been tasked with hiring for a diverse range of jobs that have been forcibly preceded or appended with the word ‘product’. It’s even been re-branded many times over within the product community — terms such as ‘product owner’ now carry disdainful undertones or ‘customer evangelist’ add superfluous vagueness.

If I quote Marty Cagan from his speech - "What has not changed is my overarching belief that behind every great product, there is someone, usually someone behind the scenes, working tirelessly, that is playing this critical role. They usually have the title ‘product manager’ but they might be a startup co-founder or the CEO, or they might be in another role on the team and stepped up because they saw the need. The title is not important; the work they do is."

Even, in the remotest manner, if you ever are in need to articulate and encapsulate the responsibilities, skills, and character traits of an individual or team, maybe just for the sake of it, what I feel can be captured with is LIT-2 MVP

L: Leader, Lover (of the product/solution)

I: Integrative, Influencer

T: Thinker, Team Player

M: Maker (Innovate a Solution)

V: Visionary

P: Pragmatic

How different are Sales & Business Development

Put in simple textbook terms, Business Development is the process of finding the match between a product (or solution) and a segment in the market. Sales is the process of systematically generating revenue with the product (solution) in the chosen market segment in the race for market leadership. 

Unlike many other parallel discussions and definitions, I beg to differ that they are part of a chronological format of BD (generate leads), followed by sales (convert leads). Business Development is much more personalized, complementary service vis-a-vis sales.

Personally, I take an extra lens to differentiate and understand better. Business development, being personalized, customized versioning of your product/solution can be attributed to B2B/Corporate "Sales".

In fact, one of the most counter-intuitive truths of marketing is that B2B is often far more personal than B2C. Selling to a business really means selling to the director of a part of the business, the CEO, other CXOs or a small business owner. 

For high value B2B sales (to the tune of ~10,000 to a few millions, depending on the industry), the conversion cycle is relatively long and may include a large amount of interpersonal contact between the individual/team and the point of contact person at a particular company or the client.

This often comes as a surprise to new entrepreneurs, who often have more experience as a consumer than as a corporate buyer or seller.

B2C marketing and sales might feel personal, but it isn’t, because B2C communication is by nature a wide net, the marketing being more about archetypes and personas. Marketing might feel personal to the consumer, but really they are just in a big bucket with others similar to them. In this case, effective marketing is not about getting to know the individual well but rather gaining an awareness of clusters of people — how to group and sort people so they can be targeted en masse.

So, while B2B Sales (Business Development) include a decision making process that characteristically needs more than one individual signing off, B2C Sales is concerned about selling of products or solutions to one individual consumer, as a part of group of similar individuals

New-Age Technology in Traditional Insurance: Artificial Intelligence

In today’s digital era, technology has affected the way we live, learn, play, and conduct business. The insurance industry has been swept up in these changes and is in the midst of a massive digital transformation. In a bid to cater to the evolving demands of consumers, insurers are adopting emerging technologies including Artificial Intelligence (AI), Automation, Big Data Analytics and Block-chain to transform IT systems.

With increased awareness and resources about the game-changing influence of AI in the Insurance industry, the trust in the calibre and numerous opportunities brought forward by AI & ML are being welcomed. Worldwide spending on cognitive and AI systems is expected to increase manifold in the next few years, with total spending predicted to reach $77.6 Billion in 2022 while health insurance alone would create a $7 Trillion market by 2027.

Insurance companies, as on today, face 3 major challenges:

• Reaching out to prospective customers at the right time
• Providing the right set of products that suit customer requirements
• Fastest claim support to loyal customers and rejection of spurious claims

To make the system more refined and efficient, insurers should opt for stable and consistent AI-powered solutions that can penetrate the layers of confusion and propel clear value proposition towards customers.

1. The uninterrupted flow of business information: Insurers and insurance companies are surrounded by piles of data and many other scattered management segments. Leveraging the data processing capability of AI, insurers can operationalise a strategically built sophisticated environment where information concerning the business and customer interactions can flow seamlessly on a common platform.
2. Automated claim support:AI-based chat-bots can be implemented to improve the claim process traditionally managed by multiple employees. Driven by AI, excessive human intervention can be circumvented and can get alerted and reported on the claim, capturing damage, updating the system and communicating with the customer all by itself. Such effortless process will have clients filing their claims without much hassle.
3. Interactive power of Insurance chat-bots: Due to lengthy documents, complex policies and tedious instructions, customers often develop a fear and feel confused and daunted at the idea of settling for an Insurance policy. They need human-like interactions that enable both smooth transaction and solution education. Intelligent chat-bots serve as a virtual assistant and can be integrated with the channel of your choice (Website, Facebook, Slack, Twitter etc.) to guide customers with quotes, policy explanations and purchase of insurance covers.
4. Advanced underwriting: Using AI & ML, insurers can save a lot of time and resources involved in underwriting process and tedious questions and surveys and automate the process. Insurance bots can automatically explore a customer’s general economy and social profile to determine their living patterns, lifestyle, risk factors and financial stability. Since AI is more capable of strict scrutiny of gathered data, it can predict the amount of risk involved, protect companies from frauds and give justified insurance amount to customers.
5. Predictive Analytics for proactive measures: Predictive Analytics backed by Machine Learning is now the heart of intelligent services across many business verticals. Insurers can leverage AI’s unique potential to scour through piles of claim data and coverage patterns to be more proactive and anticipate risks at individual level before they actually transpire.
6. Marketing and relevant products: Insurers need to capitalize on a vital marketing strategy which goes beyond the traditional cold calling approach. Customers today seek sophisticated, luxurious and extremely personalized services with custom sales tactics. Using the combined power of predictive analytics, NLP (Natural Language Programming) and AI in the insurance industry, agents can gain access to the full profile of customers and prospects which can be further analysed to generate mature insight, accurate predictions on customer preferences and what exact products or offers should be added in their marketing activities.

Trends that will drive savings for insurance carriers, brokers and policyholders, plugging into existing transformations within the insurance industry:

1. Behavioural Policy Pricing: Chat-bots and other client-interactive tools will provide personalized data to pricing platforms, allowing safer drivers to pay less for auto insurance (known as usage-based insurance) and people with healthier lifestyles to pay less for health insurance.
2. Customer Experience & Coverage Personalization: AI will enable a seamless automated buying experience, using chat-bots that can pull on customers’ geographic and social data for personalized interactions. Carriers will also allow users to customize coverage for specific items and events (known as on-demand insurance)
3. Faster, Customized Claims Settlement: Online interfaces and virtual claims’ adjusters will make it more efficient to settle and pay claims, while simultaneously decreasing the likelihood of fraud. Customers will also be able to select whose premiums will be used to pay their claims (known as peer-to-peer (P2P) insurance).

The Future of AI in Insurance

While challenges appear to dismay the present market, insurers still like to view the potential of AI in the Insurance industry with optimistic eyes. To reap full range of benefits, insurance companies need to devise an enterprise-level strategy to implement AI in such a way that it offers more than just customer experience.

The next step of using AI in the insurance sector is not so much about innovating but about integrating. AI has the potential to transform the insurance experience for customers to a fast, on-demand, and more affordable activity. Tailor-made insurance products will attract more customers at fairer prices as we can no longer have one-size-fits-all insurance. Most importantly, the AI solutions can make it easier for customers to interact with insurance companies. This could result in people being more likely to purchase insurance.

Futuristic Lifestyle: Post COVID Ecosystem

Owing to the global pandemic of COVID-2019, innovations, creativity, contrivance, and personalisation are gaining steam like never before. Corporate, services providers and individuals alike are factoring in personalisation in day-to-day affairs whether it is for interactions, customizing websites, customizing social interfaces, conceptualising marketing pedagogy & practices or horizontal spread of deliverables.

As a matter of fact, even before the pandemic situation had kicked in, personalisation was an oft-used buzzword. You have fashion and wellness goods to suit your style, situation, and type of requirement, at the same time gift items could be customised since ages, today even the marketing is hyper-localised and customised (remember Cadbury Celebrations ad during Diwali-2020?)

The pandemic has been able to bring to forefront and expedited the overall awareness, interest and desire for health and wellness related queries and related activities, be in exercising, maintaining physical fitness, watching your weight or to the more intensive taking care of the balanced intake of proteins, carbs, fats and vitamins in your diet. This no longer stays restricted to a select few so-called fitness enthusiasts/freaks. In the same breath, regarding lifestyle modification, we have the notion that avoiding junk food and exercising is enough. People who exercise may succumb to the same strenuous exercises and those who adopt a new “healthy dietary style” may become victims of metabolic diseases like diabetes, hypertension etc., because it is almost impossible to consider one-size-fits-all attitude and the exercise and diet which suits one person may not suit the other.

This fact brings out the importance of personalisation or customisation. Companies are up for the challenge and are already offering free consultations to find apt products which suit the client. Similar to how medical science is moving towards precision medicine for a better outcome, the wellness sector is treading towards adoption of personalised lifestyle management for solving problems related to lifestyle diseases.