Darren Cooper

“The first step in exceeding your customer's expectations is to know those expectations.”

Perhaps you’ve heard this quote by marketing guru Roy H. Williams. Even if you haven’t, you will most likely agree with it. Knowing who your customers are and what they want makes perfect business sense, since customer feedback can drive product direction, pave the way for better customer experiences and help identify new business channels and partners.

But how do you get to know your customer if you sell exclusively through distributors or retailers?  Are manufacturers disadvantaged by being disconnected from their consumers? How do they overcome this?

Although it’s been almost 28 years, since Bill Gates said, “Banking is necessary. Banks are not” (1990), they are more relevant than ever. The banking industry has in a lot of ways already felt the shaking in its foundation during some years, as innovative digital financial services providers – the so-called FinTechs - have entered the market and now to a certain degree compete with traditional brick and mortar banks. (Learn more about it in the blog post: Traditional banking vs new financial disrupters: Who’ll win the data battle?)

What exactly is party data? I get asked that question surprisingly often and have found that many - even in the Master Data Management (MDM) space - are not completely familiar with the term "party". I am of course not referring to the good times had with friends but rather the way in which we can describe the master data domain that predominantly looks after individuals and organisations. In this blog post, I will try to clarify exactly what party data is and why it's important to master it.

And What Their Competitors Don’t Understand

Delivering outstanding customer experiences (CX) continues to be the standard for most businesses competing in the digital economy. It’s easy to understand why. Businesses have long known that satisfied customers buy more often, in higher volumes, leading to long term value and loyalty.

This blog post is a summary of our recent webinar “Digital disruption for Product Information Management” presented by Darren Cooper, Director of Industry Solutions, Stibo Systems. To get even more insight on this topic, hear the full webinar (30 minutes) on-demand, and for free, here. 

It’s no surprise that product information managers’ jobs are getting a little more complicated these days. Products, offerings and services are becoming more complex to design, sell and monitor.  For companies who want to support digital disruptive products and services, Product Information Management (PIM) processes will need to evolve quite significantly.

Whether their customers are individuals or global enterprises, all industries now face a range of challenges and opportunities presented by a ‘digital-first’ world. As a consequence, traditional companies are looking for ways of complementing and differentiating their product-based business models with value-based services.  A recent Frost & Sullivan estimation foresees that 70 percent of Fortune 500 companies are expected to develop new business models that provide product-as-a-service.

The American food industry is gearing up to make the first changes to the standard nutrition label in more than two decades. The new FDA label requirements include updated daily values, an increased focus on calories per serving, and other significant modifications such as the addition of added sugars, nutrients and updated serving sizes. Manufacturers will need to have the new nutrition facts labels in place to consumers by July 26, 2018.

Digital Transformation has been a trending strategic initiative for most companies for quite some time now.  Some have almost completed their journey, while others are just beginning. The results of a recent study show that only 19% have adopted or are leading digital transformation in their companies, 34% are in the planning stages and 47% are just starting to wrap their heads around the topic.

A new breed of financial services providers is currently disrupting the industry - delivering a whole new way of meeting the needs of today’s consumers.

Crowd-sourced investment funds, independent online investment and wealth management advisers, and mobile-only banks such as Atom and Monzo live on their customer's laptops and mobile devices, offering more flexibility, agility and convenience than their physical counterparts.

Competitive forces, ever-changing consumer expectations and an overall shift in industry inertia has more and more consumer packaged goods and brand manufacturers looking toward direct-to-consumer (D2C) channels. The benefits of such a transition are clear, with an additional growth channel with higher margins being perhaps the most obvious. But in today’s landscape, experience is king, and by creating direct relationships with their customers, CPGs are able to assert full control over the brand experience they deliver. Likewise, being one step closer to their customer enables them to collect better consumer data, a critical asset in the industry’s rapidly growing digital future.