Gartner says multi-experience (multiexperience) refers to “various permutations of modality (touch, voice and gesture), device and app with which users interact on their digital journeys.”
Sound a bit too technical?
My interpretation? Multi-experience is the demand by consumers to be able to interact in the medium they want. Yes, they are happy to engage vendors but the condition is via the medium they prefer. The conundrum for enterprises is to have a strategy that delivers a seamless experience for the customer across as many media or channels as possible: voice, video, mobile, social, virtual, physical, etc. Finally, it must be affordable, and available today.
The operative words here are “seamless experience”, preferably every conceivable channel or medium, without breaking the bank – so cost-effectively, and to do so “now” if the vendor wants a share of the customer’s wallet.
So a long and winding definition. Sorry about that.
Problem
- There are too many permutations when it comes to engagement channels
- Technology is evolving
- A seamless multi-channel strategy translates into an expensive, complex and risk-laden approach
- Regulation – privacy and data protection – is evolving too but not in sync with technology and business reality
During a talk with Mohan Veloo, vice president of technology for Asia-Pacific and Japan at F5 Networks, he pointed to a Harvard Business Review study in the US where 73% of consumers surveyed utilised multiple channels during their shopping journey – across online and offline mediums.
The focus, however, of the discussion is on the impact to the CIO and the IT team in understanding what multi-experience team, putting together a strategy that is aligned to this understanding, and getting the buy-in of multiple stakeholders: leadership and board, business units, finance, and customers. Shareholders are a problem for later.
The burden is heaviest on the application teams because they must interpret what product marketing is telling them and bring together technologies, including applications, to enable the creation of the final products (and or services), and to do so without disrupting business-as-usual.
For IT and the development team, what are the challenges/barriers that come with fulfilling a multi-experience goal?
Mohan Veloo: According to Gartner, the future of applications is multi-experience. While the end goals enterprises to aspire towards is a clear one, there are many obstacles along the way that can derail or delay these enterprises from reaching this end.
A key one would be that of network and application infrastructure. If the infrastructure in place to support and deliver applications to end users is not equipped to handle influx in traffic or new features and devices that the enterprise is adding on to meet user expectations, the end result would be an application that keeps crashing or lagging as users try to interact with it.
The fact is that any form of delay or downtime would have a negatively impact on the user experience and subsequently your business goals as well – be it employee productivity or customer experience.
This brings us to the next important aspect, user interface. It is important for enterprises to ensure that the user interface is adapted according to the device – a website interface would be much different from a mobile one. Force fitting one interface across multiple form factors would only cause friction in user experience that could even lead them to stop using your services.
Another key aspect that needs to be addressed would be that of security. Multiple touchpoints can provide threat actors with more avenues to launch attacks on your system.
As such, it is important for enterprises to evaluate the security needs across the different touchpoints to create robust security framework that can keep these threats at bay. In F5’s Curve of Convenience study, 73% of users surveyed in Singapore will drop an application if data security is compromised – emphasizing the gravity of having good security postures in place.
How does IT balance the need for engaging/seamless experience across platforms/devices while ensuring data security and privacy?
Mohan Veloo: The key here is to introduce security into the mix right from the beginning of the development process by adopting DevSecOps practices. Through automation, teams can easily integrate security policies that can run independently without needing IT teams to manually screen for threats and helps them in delivering services in a much efficient manner, especially during peak periods.
In addition to this, it is also vital for enterprises to take stock of their security solutions. Enterprises need to focus on having a select few vendors to tackle their security needs to ensure greater visibility into the performance of the solutions being deployed and prevent vendor sprawl. In addition, enterprises should consider avoiding point solution vendors in their security arsenal as this can complicate their operations and analytic processes.
What’s the right approach for CIO in putting together a multi-experience strategy?
Mohan Veloo: The most important factor to consider when putting together any multi-experience strategy is to understand the needs of the end users. Consider the following questions:
(a) Who are these end users?
(b) How are they interacting with and using your products?
(c) What is their feedback on your product?
These questions can set a good context as to what the enterprise needs to work towards and guide their strategies better. However, most importantly, ALWAYS remember to keep security as a priority.
