Wimsheim, 19. June 2018
Those who know their customers, get the business!
For small and medium-sized enterprises, the digitalization of processes offers a significant potential to succeed in a competitive environment. For many entrepreneurs, however, a lack of human resources and too much new area in IT are more of an obstacle than a catalyst for change. IT service providers support the development of holistic business concepts. Identity recognition is the cornerstone for digitization: only those who are able to derive knowledge about the customer in real time can address the customer individually.
Step by step into the digital world
“Particularly medium-sized companies that rely on the scalability of their business cannot do without customer identity management systems today,” explains Sadrick Widman of cidaas. However, many decision-makers are able to imagine what digitization really means only when they see concrete examples of other companies. They then recognize which transformation has occurred and, if so, even realize how an entire industry is changing: for example through Amazon, Uber, or Airbnb. In the industrial nation of Germany, digitalization is currently still too closely associated with the changes in individual business processes or their further optimization. But digitalization is more than that. As the chart shows, the challenges are tasks for IT experts and specialists both.
The number of employees, especially in medium-sized companies, is often very limited, so the implementation of digital transformation is for many a challenge that can hardly be overcome at first sight. External IT specialists such as WidasConcepts offer comprehensive and cost-effective support tailored to medium-sized companies. Individual digital solutions are quickly created for the company in order to deploy them promptly in the market, be it in the B2B or B2C area – after all, it’s about completely new user experience for the customers. Particularly lucrative from the perspective of SMEs: the expansion of the chosen model is carried out step by step. “Minimal Viable Product” is the name given to the approach in which the digital solution is quickly used with basic features and then matures into a unique digital solution in subsequent small stages.
Digitalization is leading to the erosion of customer and user identities through new technologies. Customers no longer interact with companies personally, face-to-face communication has become a thing of the past, but customer feedback still remains. Traditional user logins are outdated; they do not meet the newly defined requirements in terms of security, user experience and, above all, “Know Your Customer”.
For this reason, identity recognition is the cornerstone of digitalization: Whoever knows the customer does the business! Those who are able to derive knowledge about the customer in real time can also respond personally to the customer. Speed and professional competence are of fundamental importance here: with the appropriate know-how and the ability to analyze data quickly and implement suitable measures, companies have the necessary lead over their competitors.
Modern systems for user identification can usually be easily implemented via secure interfaces into existing channels, such as employee, customer, supplier and partner portals. Permissions are always granted by the company. High-quality solutions can be integrated into day-to-day business and can be deployed in the shortest possible time: with an unmodified user interface and support for the company’s own apps and interfaces (APIs).
Customer Identity Management as an opportunity for SMEs
Especially for small and medium-sized enterprises, intelligent, digital production processes offer great opportunities to survive the competition. Recognizing customer behavior is also a fundamental task in the digitalized corporate world. The faster the analysis is carried out, the faster the results can be used profitably for day-to-day business and marketing.
With the Customer Identity Management solution required for this, cidaas opens up the potential for new markets. With a Customer Identity Management System, SMEs can offer additional services for their products and manage dealers or suppliers more securely and quickly.
The service package includes ergonomic logins for the customer as well as unique user identification. Specific customer movements and information in web shops, apps or other sales channels can be evaluated in detail. The user actively decides which information he wants to disclose. Every single detail opens up the potential to create offers tailored to the customer’s specific needs. In addition, the company can derive measures to have a lasting positive influence on customer relations. Each registered user is individually supported across all channels. If satisfied customers become loyal business partners, they are usually willing to share further details about themselves – because they recognize their profit from the personalized approach. Small and medium-sized companies that rely on external partners benefit from the latest software versions provided by IT specialists in the form of regular updates. cidaas, based in Germany, use local servers and offers the highest security standards.
A study1 on the topic of digitalization for small and medium-sized enterprises shows why digitalization in German small and medium-sized enterprises is still a long way from becoming a self-runner: 88 percent of the decision-makers surveyed in companies describe digital transformation as a challenge; for about 2/3, “risk-taking” is a closely related term. A further one-third even have anxieties in relation to technological changes, and just as many respondents said that they feel isolated from the topic.
1 The Psychology of Digitalization – What Digitalization Feels like for Midsize Companies, Innovation Alliance, YouGov, supersieben, 2017.
Press contact cidaas: Nicole Bräuner, +49 (0) 7044 95103-162, Mail: nicole.braeuner@widas.de