Gareth Richardson, CEO & Founder,Marketlinx

Due to the accelerated rise of new technologies and ever-increasing consumer demands, rapid change has become the new norm.

A significant number of organisations are struggling to keep pace and constantly devise innovative strategies that deliver high quality services and garner customer loyalty.

According to Forrester ‘every company now continuously reinvents its business with technology at the core — or watches while its customers defect and its markets are disrupted’.But with all the hype around emerging technologies, machine learning and AI, companies find it increasingly challenging to wade through a marketplace full of complex technology suppliers, to find and decide which technology is the right fit for their company’s requirements both short and long term,which will also save time and cut costs.

As a result, in many cases, organisations get stuck with unsuitable solutions that instead of driving productivity are, actually, hindering efficiency.

Furthermore, for too many years companies have been using the same practices when it comes to cost reduction, vendor selection, evaluation, approval of vendors and so on. However, the IT industry has seen some tremendous changes in the past decade and these processes are not effective anymore.

What worked two years ago might already be obsolete.

If IT leaders don’t do their homework and stay up to date with the latest market trends they are destined to fail.

By learning and testing new approaches constantly, organisations can predict market disruption, adapt to new trends and enjoy long term success.

So how do modern CIOs and IT sourcing managers, who all too often are under high pressure to deliver complex technology systems with tight deadlines, ensure that they’re sourcing the optimal technology for the company’s objectives and development plans?

Sourcing experts

Thankfully, as technology evolves so do service providers.

Slowly but surely the market is disrupted by agnostic IT sourcing companies that help CIOs and vendor managers to discard cumbersome and expensive tender programmes, reduce costs and save time.

In order to gain significant results through a sourcing strategy such as this, CIOs must rely on the right set of experts.

Associating with competent IT sourcing providers is a fundamental step. When it comes to sourcing, there is no place for a one size fits all approach. This is because every organisation is different. So are their objectives and spending capabilities. Sourcing experts help devise innovative strategies that can capture the company’s requirements and align them to the right suppliers.

Customer satisfaction

When it comes to high performance tech infrastructure many companies invest their resources internally, looking to streamline internal processes and save costs through automation. But agile, forward thinking organisations first look outwards and focus their approach on creating and implementing a customer centric strategy that will keep customers happy and loyal.

They do this because they understand that for savvy customers, price is not the principal driver of decisions anymore, value and customer service are more important.

But how should CIOs and IT managers design high performance tech infrastructure focused on the customer and its interaction with the brand on all communications and sales channels?

Omnichannel customer services

A crucial part of a customer centric strategy is the contact centre – the voice and face of the company. Many companies are still running premise based contact centres and are struggling to migrate to the cloud in order toimprove the customer experience, scale up or down according to business needs, and save costs and time.

Some organisations underestimate the impact of contact centres on customer experience but in a highly competitive arena where customers are bombarded with thousands of offers every day, if the contact centre experience is not up to scratch, consumers will quickly look elsewhere.

Furthermore, because contact centres deal with sales, providing information, solving problems, capturing data and researching innovative ways to improve the customer journey, they play a pivotal role in understanding customers’ needs, creating a personalised experience and overall shaping the business strategy.

As a result, companies that understand the huge competitive value of providing customers with a high quality seamless experience on many different communications and sales channels are placing contact centres at the top of their priority list.

This is where IT outsourcing consultancies play a crucial role in helping CIOs access and assess accurate data about various providers and the most efficient technology platform that would enable an organisation to set up omnichannel interaction platforms that empower employees to communicate more effectively and efficiently with customers.

Regardless where CIOs and IT managers choose to focus their efforts and resources, the reality is IT outsourcing is not a choice anymore. With maturing cloud based services and the arrival of new technology and suppliers, there are simply too many options to consider and the stakes are too high to manage everything internally.

The key thing is finding a trustworthy sourcing company that truly understands business priorities and is committed to finding the best suppliers aligned with the company’s needs, strengths and weaknesses.