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5 business transformation questions and answers

Business transformation is an enterprise-wide initiative requiring clear goals, planning and execution. To take a deeper look at the keys to successful transformation, we recently sat down with Conduent’s Senior Director, Growth & Strategy – Customer Experience Management, Karla Vasquez.

What is your overall pulse on business transformation?

Karla: Although transformation has been around for quite some time, it’s now in the spotlight. Everyone wants transformation because it enables businesses to streamline, especially in the world of call centers. But it becomes a matter of trying to understand what that means on a business level.

Analytics and data are necessary to make data-driven insights that feed transformation and produce the most bang for your budget. Transformation allows businesses to be nimble, scalable and improve efficiencies.

However, hurdles happen. People get stuck when they’re unclear about their priorities or strategic vision from a transformation perspective. If they’re not assigning or allocating the proper resources, that's another hurdle they must overcome.

Given your experience, what advice do you have for organizations in this space looking to move forward with business transformation?

Karla: In addition to a well-defined strategy that is understood from the top down, organizations need a clear vision and objectives that support their resource allocation. It is also extremely important to understand what your customers are saying. At transformation’s core, it’s imperative to focus on how to improve the customer experience. Central to this is understanding what motivates them.

Analytics help to drive everything related to transformation, whether it’s a transformation in processes, technology, or understanding what your customers want and need. Analytics also help define the transformation “What, Where, and How.” Transformation is the overall umbrella, but you can transform business processes just by changing workflows, tech or AI, for example.

Given your experience with customer experience partners, discuss their role/influence in the transformation process.

Karla: Collaborating with partners allows us to be nimble and scale quickly. Conduent has been selective in choosing partners that specialize in specific use cases, as it helps us to become more efficient and allows us to focus on what we do best – excelling in personalization and delivering solutions that fit our customers’ needs.

At Conduent, we like to say “We are powered by human insight, enhanced by technology, and fueled by AI.” This hits on what we think we do best, which is the human part, the people part. AI technology is only as good as the people behind it. You must have that brain power to fuel the decisions behind whatever technology tool you invest in, or it isn't going to work.

From a technological perspective, even from an AI perspective, what are the transformations that you know companies are implementing and relying on?

Karla: I'm seeing a lot of the same type of use cases from a technology standpoint. Transformation and technology are always evolving, so I think the next specific use cases are in the pipeline.

Conduent has decided to focus on the use cases that will benefit the call center the most, which are things like automated quality. We've implemented accent neutralization/smoothing in addition to chatbots. We’ve all been on a call where we can’t understand the agent we’re calling for help. It’s frustrating. We've done a lot of work in the email back-office chat translation. The next big thing people are going to want is real-time live translation, which instantly translates speech into your language of choice. Imagine the benefits of two people conversing in different languages yet understanding each other because of this cutting-edge technology. This emerging technology could be a real game changer.

If you were going to give a client advice on the most important things that you need to either do or start with in transformation, what would be?

Karla: Let’s start with AI. Everyone wants it because it’s the shiny new thing, but slow down and decide what you want out of AI and how it can be safely incorporated into the company. Outside of AI, leverage your data to determine what business functions need improvement and to make clear objectives for transformation. Ensure you have the proper resources and measure anything that you transform.

Conduent has a cadenced approach to determining which use cases are relevant. We perform an assessment of operations, training, workforce quality, knowledge-based management, and the voice of the customer.

We perform a holistic, 360º view to understand gaps and then tailor the solution to each client. We’ve got the experience because we’re global, and we work with a variety of clients across industries. This allows our clients to leverage our knowledge and best practices.

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