Last week I crashed the party at the Episerver family reunion to get some updates on the state of omnichannel and digital business development in Denmark and beyond.
This was a day of celebration focused on episerver partner cases, trends and standouts.
So, what’s new in the world of omnichannel?
Episerver as a CMS provider will continue a focus on 1. Analytics 2. Machine learning, and 3. AI, some of which are already being tested and implemented, and which naturally have interesting perspectives for the future of omnichannel. A continued focus on data and analytics was also recurring throughout the day:
Data is useless if you don’t have the tools and the knowledge to work with it
(also see: last years report omnichannel state of the nation 2017, where data was the weakest link, and the new project http://www.dataforbusiness.org)
Culture still eats strategy for breakfast
Are you sick of hearing this Peter Drucker quote at every single conference? Well, it doesn’t make it any less true.
(The new digital transformation from altimeter group backs this up. They found that culture and lack of digital literacy and talent are the main challenges in digital transformation initiatives. This includes the ongoing (mis)conception that digital is an expense rather than an investment. (See the report here))
Nykredit: creation of a customer-centric content hub
Nykredit, also the award winner for Danish CMS of the year, shared their journey toward creating a customer-centric content hub.
To me, their journey really highlights the importance of working with people, culture, and strategy, not just technology. In addition to utilizing episerver CMS, Nykredit also went through a process of optimizing how they work with the creation, optimization and editorial processes:
They went on field trips to newspaper newsrooms to learn from their setups.
They work with different editor group setups, including managing editors, writing editors, and subject specialists.
And they’ve worked hard to motivate and activate internal ambassadors in order to share knowledge and stories.
Storytelling & The individualized customer journey
As we’ve covered before, storytelling isn’t dead.
What we didn’t cover was storytelling throughout the individualized customer journey. Technology, AI, and machine learning is making it possible to individualize the content along each step along the journey. Exemplified through Arla Unika, Helle Jensen from Creuna showed us a sublime example of storytelling that appeals to the senses.
By creating a customer journey with content that appeals to all the senses, the webshop appears as a natural extension of the physical store. Each product has rich descriptions, including how the cheese tastes, smells, and feels, as well as suggestions for pairing wine or beer with each individual cheese.
Closing facts: Mobile First
According to Stine Reesen from Dis/Play, 61% of mobile consumers won’t return to your site after having a bad mobile experience. So, what’s a bad mobile experience? It could be as simple as a loading time of more than than 3 seconds. As consumers we have become increasingly impatient, less loyal, and have exceedingly high expectations. As Helle Jensen from Creuna said:
Expectations are a bitch
@chriskja 