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Category: Innovation

Mountain communities and digitization: towards technological innovation

Posted on by Neosperience Team

Comunità montane e digitalizzazione

Tourism is on the upswing after the hard setback of the pandemic. Although people have returned to travel, however, tourists' choices and expectations have changed, opening up to scenarios that were unprecedented or underestimated a few years ago.

We have rediscovered the value of proximity tourism and we're more aware of the environmental impact of our trips; above all, though, tourism has gotten more and more digital, particularly if we take into consideration the customer experience that goes into the planning and conduct of the trip.

For this series of reasons, in a scenario that is still delicate and complicated by the coexistence of various factors of instability, territorial valorization has to deal with digitization and must adopt new technologies, individually integrated and customized.

Mountain tourism: innovation and challenges

Mountain communities, in which more than half of Italy's territory falls, constitute a territorial system endowed with a great tangible and intangible cultural heritage. Today more than ever, mountains play a crucial role within the Italian tourism scene, with a total volume of presences rapidly returning to pre-pandemic levels.

At the crossroads between natural scenic attractions, the presence of sports facilities and walking routes, and the emotional resonance of material culture and traditions, mountain communities represent a popular destination for many Italians in both the winter and summer seasons.

Added to this is a mode of land use closely linked to the post-pandemic scenario, which thins the boundary between tourism and residence: that of remote working. More and more Italians are in fact choosing to move away from big cities to go – or return – to live and work in small towns.

Mountain communities and digitization

With the Green Communities project, the PNRR embraces these trends and aims to "foster the sustainable and resilient development of rural and mountain territories that want to make balanced use of the riches they have."

Project funds will go towards the development of more than 30 projects to connect the territory through sustainable tourism, which together with energy, environmental, economic and social development plans will involve more than 500 Italian municipalities with a total investment of 130 million euros.

The big challenge for Italian mountain communities, however, is the need to bridge the gap in telecommunications that still divides them from large cities. This innovation can be only achieved at infrastructural level, as the result of a joint effort between the public and private sectors, in order to fully enable the potential of state-of-the-art tourism solutions.

Indeed, new technologies play a key role in creating memorable experiences that can connect visitors with the cultural heritage of mountain communities while helping to make these areas safer and better served for tourists and residents.

Neosperience has now established a very significant experience in this area. In light of it, we have developed several innovation scenarios for territorial systems, functional for the enhancement of tourism in mountain communities.

Gamification and AR/VR for immersive experiences

Comunità montane e digitalizzazione

We hear more and more about gamification, or the use of game-derived elements to increase participant engagement and motivation. Gamification is an innovative way of increasing audience engagement and can be applied to various products and services.

The application of these dynamics to mountain tourism makes it possible to create unforgettable travel experiences, but also to look at everyday places through different eyes, effectively offering an additional layer of interaction that allows users to experience firsthand the story of the place being visited.

The addition of Virtual Reality and Augmented Reality elements to mobile applications also transforms proximity tourism into a true adventure. Travelers of all ages can explore places of interest in new and fun ways, completing "missions" and collecting points.

Between local and global

A local gamification strategy such as the one just outlined can also be integrated with global solutions such as geocaching, a collective "treasure hunt" that has more than three million participants and relies on GPS technology for finding and exchanging notebooks (logbooks) and small gadgets.

Travel companies and private facilities such as hotels, mountain lodges and restaurants can also take advantage of gamification. Solutions such as our Nudging Gamification allow for the creation of mobile applications tailored to the specific identity and goals of customers.

With gamification initiatives, companies and facilities can increase guest engagement and loyalty during their stay, while also quickly and effectively collecting valuable customer data and quantitatively and qualitatively measuring the success of initiatives.

Finally, gamification can prove to be an important tool for raising awareness of environmental issues, with a view to so-called "responsible tourism." Indeed, the creation of a sense of empathy towards the nature and history of a place is even more immediate and spontaneous if travelers can interact with it themselves.

Artificial Intelligence for personalized tourism

Comunità montane e digitalizzazione

Artificial Intelligence is opening up new scenarios in several application sectors, including tourism. In this constantly changing world, still suffering from the travel restrictions of recent years, it has become imperative to keep up with the times and understand the new, often unpredictable habits of travelers.

Integrating Artificial Intelligence within one's systems allows one to establish an ongoing and lasting relationship with the customer, based on a deep understanding of their needs and preferences.

This argument applies even more in cases such as mountain communities: as we have illustrated in the previous paragraphs, often within an area coexist vastly different ways and times of visiting throughout the year.

Using data analysis and Machine Learning, Voice of Customer systems analyze the individual preferences of travelers to create customized packages, from the most rugged itineraries for experienced trekkers to days of pure relaxation for those unplugging from the city.

Specifically, in the case of accommodations and recreational facilities related to the travel, Voice of Customer evolves into Voice of Guest. Listening to the voice of the guest means acquiring and analyzing their habits, identifying the factors that influence each customer's preferences and choices.

Investing in state-of-the-art technological solutions thus propels the hospitality industry toward new business models, capable of reacting more quickly to changes in market dynamics and maintaining a competitive positioning.

Another help to tourism comes from chatbots and conversational agents. These forms of AI can answer travelers' questions and help them book flights, hotels and activities. Thanks to Natural Language Processing, these systems can overcome cultural and language barriers to better understand and fulfill everyone's needs.

Smart Security to prevent forest fires

Mountain communities and digitization

The danger of forest fires affects all mountainous areas of Italy. Climate change has contributed to exacerbating this risk situation over the past few years, necessitating timely solutions that can prevent either natural or human caused fires from breaking.

Forest fire prevention is more important than ever if the biodiversity of mountain communities is to be preserved and nearby urbanized areas secured. Technology can offer valuable help in this context.

This is demonstrated by the projects in which Neoscogen, a company part of Neosperience that specializes in Safety&Security and offers solutions for monitoring and automatic detection of relevant events in different areas, is engaged.

The Artificial Intelligence behind Neoscogen, in combination with special state-of-the-art thermal imaging cameras capable of detecting fire even kilometers away, makes it possible to monitor areas at risk and intervene promptly in case of emergency.

In case of fire, Artificial Intelligence can provide real-time analyses and determine the best containment and damage limitation strategy, alerting the relevant authorities and preparing evacuation measures.

The use of these environmental sensors is also crucial to identify fires even before the fire spreads, but also to gather valuable information on climate and vegetation for preventive purposes.

On-call transportation to facilitate travel

Mountain communities and digitization

From Northern to Southern Italy, public transportation management in small and medium territorial realities is still an open question.

In these contexts, it is necessary to rethink the transportation system to meet the needs of users – whether residents or tourists – with customizable, scalable and user-friendly DRT solutions.

EasyBus is the solution created by Somos, a Neosperience home-grown start-up linked to UniCal, which aims to make local public transport "tailor-made" through a suite of technological services: from a native app for booking seats to an AI system that monitors the service and highlights any critical issues in the frequency of rides.

Designed for congregation control during COVID emergency, EasyBus also finds an application for use in rural and mountainous areas, poorly served by the public transportation network, thanks to its geolocation service that allows passengers to be located and picked up directly from their location.

With Neosperience solutions we enable an empathetic, ecological and sustainable evolution of tourist flows, communities and territory. Our innovation proposals are supported and enhanced by new technologies and the desire to support the economic and cultural growth of territorial and tourism realities.

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10 Ways The Internet Has Changed The Way We Live (And Do Business)

Posted on by Neosperience Team

internet station

The full-length title of this article should be 10 ways the Internet and the smartphone have changed the way we live - as humans and customers - and how businesses must evolve to improve their customer experience and survive the digital transformation.

We all recognize mobile technology as the real game-changer in the creation of the world as we experience it today. The hidden truth, though, is that there would be no smartphone without the Internet revolution. We are the result of this revolution.

Can you imagine your life without the Internet?

We can start with one simple question: Can you imagine your life without the Internet? Just close your eyes for a moment and think about what life was before the web. You can barely remember that time if you were born and grew up before the Internet. If you are a digital native, this task is simply impossible.

Millennials - also known as digital customers - will never experience a world with no connectivity and mobile devices. Yes, there are still (small) areas of our planet not wired and cabled but - at least for us living in developed countries - it is hard to imagine a life before Google, Amazon, Apple or Facebook.

If you search on Google (where else!), you will find tons of experiments or researches about life without the Internet. They all come down to one single definitive truth: "I cannot even imagine my life without the Internet or the smartphone. It is an integral part of who I am." (Gallup)

The Internet is still relatively young (it just celebrated its 32th birthday in 2021) and yet the connectivity has already produced long-lasting effects. It all started with a cable plugged into the phone line, and now we possess the entire world in the palm of our hand.

There is one exact moment that changed things forever, and that was when the Internet came out of our home, held inside a small box called smartphone.

According to the "Worldwide digital population as of January 2021" by Joseph Johnson, we have reached 4.66 billion connected people in the world. In other words, almost 59.5%  of the worldwide population is now online, at home and on mobile devices.

Every single activity of our daily life is influenced by connected existence:

  • More than 50 million pieces of content are shared every day;
  • More than 1 billion websites are online;
  • More than 500 million Tweets are sent every day,
  • More than 50 billion pieces of content are shared on Facebook each month;
  • More than 15 billion items have been sold on Amazon in 2021, with 40% of those sold by third-party sellers.

What is true for people is, even more, true for organizations. The way you do business today is completely different from the best practices taken for granted only a decade ago. All certainties suddenly disappeared, washed away from a stream of connectivity. The Internet has brought treats but also huge opportunities, for those able to respond timely and unlock the power of emerging technologies.

The years pass by, but the rules of the competition remain the same: you succeed only if you can understand what is going on, if you adapt to the evolution of technology and behaviors, and if you answer to the unprecedented demands of new customers. Business and technology go hand in hand, and so does the customer experience.

Any analysis of how life has changed may look like a trip down memory lane, but it also helps you understand where we are all headed for as human beings, customers, and organizations. So, here are the 10 ways the Internet has changed (and will keep changing) the way we live.

The 10 ways the Internet has changed the way we live

 

RESEARCH

Where do you go when you are collecting information about a product or looking for an answer? Google, of course. The Internet has become the primary source of information, and search engines the main door to access it. Thanks to the smartphone, you have the complete knowledge in your pocket. Education, essays, product comparison, self-improvement tips, technical details, diets, do it yourself, lolcats, the Internet has it all. If you are a brand, you need to be there with meaningful contents.

COMMUNICATION

Do you still remember phone calls and letters? We have witnessed a complex evolution in the way we connect with other people and with companies. First came the chat rooms and forums, then - especially after the spread of smartphones - social networks and online communities. Face to face communication is still important but we increasingly rely on wide circles of strangers to decide what to do and what to buy. In the mobile era, communication is about building networks.

SHOPPING

The success of Amazon, eBay, and online marketplaces says that visiting the physical location of a store is no longer mandatory if you want to make a purchase. Shopping for a particular item looks like a journey across channels: you can see a product in the store, search for information online, compare prices between retailers, make the purchase in-app and pick it up at the store. The disruption of the retail industry always implies the renovation of the retail customer experience.

TRAVELS

Not so long ago, the essence of travel was the idea of discovery. Is it still? Today, you can know everything about a place even before leaving home. And planning has never been so easy and cheap: You have websites for information, mobile apps for real-time discount and offers, virtual reality for a full 3D immersion. Even when you are there, mobile technology is there for you: Uber for affordable transfers, Airbnb for cheap stays, Google Maps to find the way, TripAdvisors for gourmet restaurants. Who needs travel agencies anymore?

ENTERTAINMENT

Remember when you had to visit the video store to rent a VHS, hoping that the movie you were looking for was not taken already? That is the past. With the Internet, you have everything you need in one place, and rarely you need something physical (i.e. a Dvd) to enjoy it. With the emergence of smart TVs and the new generation of gaming consoles, all you need is a connection, be it movie streaming (Netflix), music (Spotify), the sports experience or on-demand personalized contents.

FINANCIAL SERVICES

Once upon a time, people had to visit the bank to check the most basic financial operations. That was before the dawn of online banking, before the disintermediation. Before the ‘Uberization’ of retail banking. Technology trends have forced traditional institutions to face the challenge of evolution, transforming generic accounts into actual human beings. What they must do now is to stop focusing on products and money and start caring about the retail banking customer experience. In the name of innovation (mobile wallets, one-touch payments) and personalization.

RELATIONSHIPS

You do not need to know someone to love him/her. You do not need to feel the pressure of playing all your cards in a few minutes while waiting for the bus. Now you can find the love your life - or at least meet new friends - by simply downloading an app and filling out a profile. Be it dating or building professional relationships, there is a place for you online. This evolution has consequences for businesses: people now rely on a wider circle of trust, other people they barely know that can influence their decisions, one way or another.

HEALTHCARE

In the Internet age, everyone is a doctor. While you should not trust what you read online, when you feel symptoms of some sort, it is undeniable that technology has changed the medical experience and the relationship between doctors and patients. On the one hand we have the risk of misleading information; on the other hand, the emerging awareness that mobile devices can improve the quality of life and help prevent diseases. Wearables technology is the main driver of the self-tracking obsession; connected with health platforms (HealthKit), they will shape the future of healthcare.

MARKETING

When the way we communicate changes, marketing techniques change accordingly. If you try to employ traditional marketing ideas to today’s world, you will soon recognize they are outdated and inefficient. The reason is simple: customers have changed, their purchase behavior have changed. Even when they are in the store, they go online to compare products. The success of proximity marketing is due to the need (for companies) to engage customers with context aware contents, and delight them with meaningful and personalized experiences.

EMPLOYMENT

Do you really need to spend eight hours a day in the office to be productive? Twenty years ago, this questions made no sense at all. Of course, you needed to be there. Today things are different, and it is all about the Internet. The evolution of web-based tools and the growth of cloud services have made the physical co-presence unnecessary. We live and work in an ecosystem of constant connectivity, and this is bringing employers and governments to a complete change of perspective, in the name of flexibility. To improve quality of life and cut inefficiency.

Now it is your turn. Tell us how the Internet has changed the way you live and do business.

For every need you have, for every challenge you are facing, Neosperience has a suitable solution for your company. Select your goal and tell us how we can help you!

Select Your Goal
(The article was updated and republished on May 1, 2021)
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Italian Wineries and the next year opportunities

Posted on by Neosperience Team

vigna all'alba

The wine sector today

The wine sector has not yet risen from its lowest point, and is likely to return to pre-Covid levels only in 2021.

Current data - provided by the TradeLab analysis company - predicts a closure of 2020 for wines equal to -28%. This contraction, however significant, is better than one percentage point compared to previous forecasts, but still not sufficient. 

The main reasons for this collapse are due to the sharp decrease in consumption outside home, in the HO.RE.CA channel, due to the closure of the spaces and the clear decrease in foreign tourism. 

Regarding exports, the first half of 2020 saw a 3.4% decrease in value: the largest percentage collapse was that of the Chinese market (-40%). While large production companies are reacting a little better, small companies, those that put quality and territoriality first, are the most in crisis. 

But not everything is lost. Indeed, for many wine producers the coming months will be full of opportunities.

The substantial change in the types of consumption requires a change in the product proposals: in this context, the possibilities for the sector to return stronger than before are considerable.

In this article we will describe the growth opportunities for the wine sector in terms of product positioning, new market opportunities and experiential offerings, with an eye on both the digital world and the indispensable physical experience. 

 

Voice of Customer: listening to improve

vino tavola rotonda

The first thing companies should do today to get back on their feet is “try to understand” what is happening to their customers. The months of chaos we have all experienced have undoubtedly changed our habits, thoughts, behaviours and desires.

Companies cannot ignore these changes: it is necessary to understand which direction the public is moving in. This is the right time to stop and start asking yourself questions.

The Voice of Customer can absolutely help: this is the branch for the collection of feedback and desired users (prospects, customers, employees) with the aim of providing a better user experience (UX), but also aimed at collecting information to support marketing and branding strategies. 

Thanks to digital technology, market research is now much cheaper and more effective. Through major social networks, email, whatsapp, chatbots, but also Amazon Alexa, you can relate one-to-one with your users. Starting from the data collected, it is possible to discover relevant and potentially disruptive information, especially today.

It is therefore essential for the wine sector to start from listening to what the present has to say to us.

 

Digital Commerce: selling without the intermediary of third parties 

Another factor that can no longer be postponed is the adoption of a digital sales channel. Having a Digital Commerce where you can sell your wine to the general public and professionals has become essential. 

This period has allowed millions of Italians to discover the value of Digital Commerce: therefore, it is difficult to go back to pre-pandemic habits. Of course Digital Commerce does not necessarily have to be an exclusive platform for individual producers.

To improve its effectiveness, it would be better to create hubs of more players who together decide to join forces: doing so would reduce costs, increase the visibility of the platform and give more choice to consumers and merchants. An example? A platform that unites all Piedmontese producers of Barolo.

What other benefits does Digital Commerce provide? Obviously it allows wineries to expand their market, differentiate the public and eliminate the expenses of third party operators, whether they are restaurants, wine bars or large retailers. 

In addition, being able to create a direct relationship with the public helps to create all those loyalty dynamics so dear to the company's income statements.

From this point of view, it is necessary to devote a specific study to what is called a subscription economy.

 

Product Subscriptions: Building Lasting Relationships

abbonamento vino

The subscription economy - which has been booming for some years - is an opportunity which, if well exploited, can be a major economic discriminator. What is it? It is simply the offer of a subscription to the products to the customer, in exchange for a discount. We are well aware that this mode of sale is already widespread within the wine sector. Many families, every year, call the trusted manufacturer to stock bottles. 

Digital, however, makes a qualitative leap to this service. In fact, as we have already said, the greater probability to create a loyal relationship with the customer improves the probability that a subscription will take place. Obviously all this applies to both B2B and B2C audiences.

Digital Commerce and Subscription Economy go hand in hand, and in our opinion it is right to implement both once you decide to move a part of the business online. 

 

Gamification: entertaining and engaging the public

Gamification consists of offering to the customers an experience, digital or physical, that aims to involve them through a "game”. Marketers have always known that linking product experience to fun is a winning tool to gain public trust and appreciation. Thanks to digital the possibility of engagement is considerably greater, and allows customers to be reached wherever they are.

Prize games, competitions, badges, trophies and competitions are not to be underestimated if you want to increase your customers and make them loyal to your products. Until a few years ago, only large companies were able to bear the costs for activities of this type: today this is no longer the case. 

In addition, the games themselves have also changed, which over the years have become increasingly engaging: if previously we were limited to collecting stickers, today we can create interactive competitions (contests on social media, in-app games, etc.).

Ultimately, playing today has never been so beneficial for companies.

 

Internationalisation: taking Made in Italy all around the world

Made in Italy has a future only as long as it can attract and involve even the most distant peoples.

To make this, you need to continually renew your offer and distribution channels, to be relevant in the digital age. One of the most complex markets for Italian companies, both culturally and because it is highly digitised, is the Chinese one. 

As we pointed out in the introduction to the article, the Chinese market was the one that experienced the steepest collapse due to the pandemic: -40%. 

As the first country to suffer from the consumption crisis caused by lockdown, China was also the first nation to emerge from it, and to resume growing and buying as usual: at the moment, foreign alcohol purchasing rates are growing rapidly.

The Chinese market was the fastest growing market in wine consumption worldwide. Although the pleasure of wine is universal, in order to be able to communicate with the Chinese people it is necessary to have a valid cultural knowledge of the country: for this reason it is not advisable to engage in promotional and internationalization activities without relying on external consultancy companies, which are able to support and recommend the best strategies. 

Value China, a subsidiary of Neosperience and composed of young Italian-Chinese, has recently implemented a digital promotion program dedicated to Italian wineries. 

Winease offers Italian producers the opportunity to learn directly about Chinese consumers, to discover the most effective ways to communicate with them and to use the most suitable tools to promote their uniqueness.

Through partnership with Wechat, China's largest social media platform, Interwine, the largest and oldest professional wine fair in China, and Putaojiu.com, China's leading press release platform in the wine sector, Value China is able to support and guide Italian winegrowers in conquering the market.

 

Conclusions

Ultimately, the growth possibilities for the sector are considerable and necessarily pass through the implementation of strategies focused on digital channels.

Understanding the public, engaging and retaining customers, eliminating third-party brokerage, joining stronger and more structured hubs, selling online and reaching distant and untapped markets: these are the guidelines for the wine sector that guarantee immediate success against a medium-term investment.

If you have any questions, please contact us and we will be happy to answer your questions.

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The Top 10 Strategic Technology Trends For 2019

Posted on by Neosperience Team

Gartner has just released its insight for the ten key trends you can’t afford to ignore in the next year. These Gartner Top 10 Strategic Technology trends are expected to impact and transform industries through 2023.

The core concepts presented are all about shift and change and disruption, as technology is becoming an inextricable part of our world.

Three themes dominated the speech:

  • Intelligence. Increasingly the engine that drives future capabilities. An intelligence-ai driven future;
  • second is digital, in an increasingly blended fashion;
  • then mesh, as the importance of ecosystems.

In 2019 we will look at these three things coming together in an increasingly integrated fashion.

1: Autonomous things
Whether it’s cars, robots or agriculture, autonomous things use AI to perform tasks traditionally done by humans. By 2021 10% of new vehicles will have autonomous driving capabilities.

2: Augmented analytics
Data scientists have increasing amounts of data to prepare and analyze. Organizations can miss key insights from hypotheses the data scientists can't explore. That’s why “By 2020, more than 40% of data science tasks will be automated.”

3: AI-driven development
Developers will embed AI into applications and use AI to create AI-powered tools for the development process.

4: Digital twins
A digital twin is a digital representation that mirrors a real-life object, process, or system. The focus today is on digital twins in the IoT, which can improve enterprise decision making by providing information on maintenance and reliability, Expect this to grow in 2019.

5: Empowered edge
Expect information processing and content collection and delivery placed closer to the sources of the information, with the idea that keeping traffic local will reduce latency. “Technology and thinking will shift to a point where the experience will connect people with hundreds of edge devices.”

6: Immersive technologies
Conversational platforms, which change how users interact with the world, and technologies such as augmented reality (AR), mixed reality (MR) and virtual reality (VR), which change how users perceive the world, will lead to new immersive experiences.

7: Blockchain
The blockchain is a type of distributed ledger, an expanding chronologically ordered list of signed, permanent transactional records shared by all participants in a network. Expect blockchain to take off in many industries in 2019.

8: Smart Spaces
Connected to the digital twins concept, a smart space is a physical or digital environment in which humans and technology-enabled systems interact forming an open, connected, coordinated and intelligent ecosystem.

9: Digital ethics and privacy
Customers will have a growing awareness of the value of their personal information and will be increasingly concerned with how it’s being used

10: Quantum computing
Still not ready for prime time, quantum computing will evolve, as an exponentially scalable and highly parallel computing model.

Last but not least, seven digital disruptions you might not see coming in 2019, as they are infused in your day-to-day experience,
and their expected impact:

1

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Gartner Symposium – Strategic Predictions For 2019 and Beyond

Posted on by Neosperience Team

The future is filled with disruption. But pending disruptions are taking on new forms. This is the tipping point for Gartner's keynote about top strategic predictions for 2019 and beyond, live from Barcelona.

In essence, here is a selection for you of the most relevant insights from Gartner Symposium/ITxpo.

  • AI evolves into augmented intelligence and is affecting human lives as the presence of technical skills is slowly increasing within organizations.
  • People-oriented cultures resist the dehumanization of the individual, and as a result, culture and privacy become more and more connected.
  • Processes become products, and markets consolidate as customers continue to adopt new technologies.
  • As a result, all organizations have explore AI steadily, and both develop and supplement AI skills with AI automation technologies provided by expert vendors in the different fields (i.e. digital customer experience.
  • Acting more and more with a systemic vision, organization have to learn how to introduce products based on internal processes and data by leveraging the cloud and ecosystems of digital giants.
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Digital Innovation In Retail – Towards An Empathic Customer Experience

Posted on by Neosperience Team

alejandro-alvarez-150148-unsplash

What will the future bring for leading brands in the retail and fashion industry?

With the rise of e-commerce giants like Amazon, Alibaba, and eBay, the retail scenario is rebuilt on a digital foundation, where competition is played on the ability to meet an entirely new set of behaviors, expectations, and priorities of today's shoppers.

On-demand services and instant gratification available at any time are giving customers an ever greater control over their purchase journey and increasing their power towards brands. Speed, ease, contextual and individual relevance have passed within a few years from being valuable nice-to-have to essential must-have.

However, few are really trying to bridge the gap between insight and action, and it's the case of leading companies that are using technology to innovate their customer experience with a human-centric approach, changing how they interact and engage with today's customers.

Timberland launched a context-aware email marketing campaign, shaping ads for different weatherproof products to match each user's position and weather conditions in real-time.

Since at least 2013, Amazon takes notice of our shopping behavior and tailors recommendations for every one of us. And as we continue browsing, the fitting personalization goes on.

Even customer support has become much smarter. On companies' websites and e-commerce, chatbots and virtual assistants use natural language processing to help customers effortlessly navigate questions, FAQs or troubleshooting.

In the offline world, we see stores and shop windows coming to life with digital signage interactive systems and 3D contents on augmented and virtual reality. And even behind the scenes, store analytics is becoming a common practice that will soon have nothing on online analytics, helping retailers to better understand shoppers behavior and measure the impact of different areas in the store environment.

It is easy to see how all these applications have one thing in common: AI.

Artificial intelligence is disrupting the retail industry as it enables marketers to automate and bring on a large scale something that until a few years ago required effortful small-scale processes. That is tailor-made experiences, custom-designed for each individual.

But there is still something wrong with AI today. A missing piece to move from the now outdated customer-centric approach to a people-centric path, more consistent with the evolving needs and wants of today's shoppers. It is predicted to be the future of AI, that will progressively bridge the gap between the offline and the online world. That missing piece is empathy.

We have identified 10 key factors for an empathic customer experience. You can find them in the "Digital Innovation in Retail & Fashion" report, now free to download.

 

Schermata 2018-09-17 alle 15.40.21

Photo by Alejandro Alvarez on Unsplash

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Ethereum – How The Blockchain Is Leading The Way To The Future Of Business

Posted on by Neosperience Team

 

ethereum-blockchain

Blockchain is certainly one of the most hyped words of the last couple of years. Everybody is talking about blockchain - often confusing it with the Bitcoin - and how this technology may change our world, and the way we do business, in the next future.

Decentralization, transparency and ledger immutability are among the promises this disruptive technology intends to fulfill. At the same time blockchain technology is still in its early stages of development. This is the first in a series of articles dedicated to this fascinating - but in some respects still very obscure - topic.

Among many blockchain networks already live, Ethereum is surely one of the most interesting and promising. From a technological standpoint Ethereum has been praised also by the Chinese Government in a recent assessment of blockchain networks.

Ethereum is a decentralised virtual machine empowered with blockchain technology on which developers and companies will deploy smart contracts and has the potential to become one of the cornerstones of 2.0 web architecture.

One of the major obstacles faced when analysing blockchain networks is that in most cases there aren’t comprehensive reports that take into account all the primary/material aspects required to assess multidisciplinary architectures such as Ethereum (IT, financial and legal analysis among others).

Many different elements shall be taken into account (such as the ecosystem the relevant blockchain network intend to deploy, the composition of the development team and the use of the funds raised in the context of the ICO) in order to have a comprehensive and useful framework to understand such projects.

Furthermore, following the issue of the white paper, many projects rely on blog posts, webinars and interviews to inform their communities about the progress in the roadmap; gathering and reshaping the information in an easy-to-read document is certainly not an easy-to-do task.

If on the one side one of the most common buzzwords among the blockchain / cryptocurrency community is “DYOR” (do your own research) on the other side most of the potentially interested people and companies do not have the time, knowledge and/or resources to do their research on a myriad of projects. In fact, DYOR means to carry out your own due diligence for each project, and if due diligence is not your core business it is likely that this will take a lot of time and effort.

Black Swan DAR is issuing a series of professional reports on blockchain networks that focus on smart contract deployment (such as Ethereum). Due diligence is an investigation and analysis activity carried out by third party independent professionals to evaluate risks and opportunities underlying a transaction.

All the reports are drafted under the same framework, in order to make comparative analysis easier and intuitive. The Ethereum report is divided in 10 different sections related to, inter alia, the ecosystem, the token and its function within the blockchain network, the team, the use of proceeds from the ICO, strategic partners, etc..

The first section of the report is an executive summary, in which the most significant issues and red flags arose out of the due diligence process are gathered. For example, with respect to Ethereum, Black Swan DAR notes that:

(i) Ethereum is an open source multi-layered project which purpose is to create a flexible and distributed platform for decentralized applications (so-called dApps) and smart contracts; the project is open source and is community-driven, with the Ethereum Foundation acting as the leader.

Ethereum combines a generalized peer-to-peer networking platform with a blockchain architecture to deliver a decentralized consensus-based, full-stack platform for developing, offering and using smart contracts and dApps. In order to achieve the flexibility required to deploy smart contracts of any kind Ethereum has a built-in fully fledged quasi-Turing-complete programming language;

(ii) the Ethereum framework includes several different components that, together, are the foundational layer for smart contracts deployment. Among the core components of the framework it is opportune to name, among others, the cryptographic tokens, the address system, the network of validators (miners), the consensus algorithm, the blockchain ledger and the Ethereum virtual machine;

(iii) as Ethereum is a general purpose, programmable, blockchain network, its reference market is the aggregate market for all blockchain applications, including dApps and smart contracts that may be developed over time;

(iv) scalability is perhaps the main issue related to blockchain projects, including Ethereum. The scalability issue was envisaged to be solved in 2017 with the implementation of the PoS (proof of stake) consensus algorithm. Unfortunately, the debate about whether to proceed with PoS and how to build the consensus algorithm is still open, and there is no clear solution planned for the road ahead.

Other sections of interest are surely the section related to the Ethereum ecosystem, in the context of which a thorough analysis of the project is carried out, the section related to the token, in which the function and value of ETH are explained, and the section related to the strategic partners of the projects, useful to understand which players are entering the playing field to support Ethereum.

It might be a breakthrough technology but it is safe to say that, today, the blockchain looks like teenage sex: everyone talks about it, nobody knows how to do it, everyone thinks everyone else is doing it and so claims to do it. These free reports can help you understand what the fuss is all about, and how you can do it safely and productively.

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Read These Essential Books And Start 2018 With Momentum

Posted on by Neosperience Team

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What is the best way to jump start your new year's resolutions? Reading insightful and enlightening books, of course.
In this whirlwind of social and technological disruptions, digital leaders must focus on the continuous improvement of themselves, if they aim at improving their strategy.

We all know how important is to learn from the experiences of the others, and b
ooks can help you achieve a more profound and accurate vision of your environment, customers, and business. Here is our list - revamped for 2018 - of the essential books that will inspire you and the ones around you all year long.

We originally published this list at the end of 2015. Of course, a lot has happened in the last two years: the smartphone has definitely become our daily companion;
new technologies have taken the center stage (i.e. the Internet of Things) and old one have gained a new bright light (virtual and augmented reality).

Ultimately, the social rules have evolved and people too.
Many books have tackled the challenge of the digital disruption and its consequences on our life as human beings, customers, entrepreneurs.

To be truly effective in understanding and engaging your digital customers, you need to be willing to learn. Learning is so important, in fact, that we have included it as one of the seven steps in the DCX 7-Steps Checklist, a step-by-step guide to deliver an amazing digital customer experience.

Know yourself, know your customers, know your context. Stay current; embrace the constant flow of digital innovations; enhance the user experience at every single touch point of the customer journey.

We corssed the threshold that separates the old world (with traditional business patterns and marketing funnel) and the new world (where empowered digital customers dictate the brand agenda).

Changes happen so fast that even the most successful brands - Apple, Google, Amazon - do not rest on their laurels. Digital business is a work in progress, by definition.

The next disruption may come from unexpected places: the Internet of Things, psychographics, machine learning and predictive analytics, proximity marketing, wearable technology, cloud computing, innovative social media, virtual and augmented reality.

None will ever grow by staying closed in his comfort zone. You must confront with the best-in-class, because the only way to see the future is by standing on the shoulders of giants. Here is our updated list of the essential readings you should not miss.

THE LIFE PROJECT, HELEN PEARSON

"The Life Project: The Extraordinary Story Of 70,000 Ordinary Lives", by science journalist Helen Pearson, narrates the longest-running study of human development in the world, started in 1946 and grown to encompass five generations of children. This is the tale of these studies and the remarkable discoveries that have come from them.

PRE-SUASION, ROBERT CIALDINI

Included in the list of the best business books of 2016, "Pre-suasion: A Revolutionary Way To Influence And Persuade" is the latest effort by social psychologist Robert Cialdini, author of the renowned "Influence". The book explains how to capitalize the "privileged moment for change" to deliver your message in the most effective way. To change minds but also states of mind.

DISRUPTING DIGITAL BUSINESS, R “RAY” WANG

In the world where companies no longer control the conversation, they need to learn how to create an authentic experience for their customers. Digital leaders must shift from creating promises to keeping promises. In this era of social connections and constant connectivity, the experience becomes the main competitive differentiator, influencing the way brands plan and execute their strategy.

DEEP THINKING, GARRY KASPAROV

We all know Garry Kasparov as the greatest chess player of all times. With his book, titled "Deep Thinking: Where Machine Intelligence Ends And Human Creativity Begins", he also proves himself to be a great explorer of the artificial intelligence. The story starts in 1997 with the chess match against the IBM supercomputer Deep Blue, a watershed moment in the history of technology.

THE THANK YOU ECONOMY, GARY VAYNERCHUK

The entrepreneur Gary Vaynerchuk proclaims, with data-driven evidence, that we have entered into a new era for business. In this one, companies need to scale their communication to a one-to-one level, no matter how big they are and how much money they invest. The best way to do it is to harness the power from social media, used as a word-of-mouth and customer experience platform.

THE TELOMERE EFFECT, ELIZABETH BLACKBURN & ELISSA EPEL

Have you wondered why some sixty-year-olds look and feel like forty-year-olds and why some forty-year-olds look and feel like sixty-year-olds? Molecular biologist Elizabeth Blackburn received the Nobel Prize in Medicine for her discovery of telomeres. In this book, with the help of her colleague Elissa Epel, she highlights how the changes we can make to our daily habits can protect our telomeres and increase our health spans.

THE STARBUCKS EXPERIENCE, JOSEPH MICHELLI

Why should I pay more for an average coffee? The secret behind the 'Starbucks formula' lies in the ability to turn the ordinary into extraordinary, focusing on the overall customer experience rather than the product. If you want to understand what loyalty means in the digital era, Starbucks is your landmark brand: personalized experiences, employee engagement, omni-channel customer journey.

THE NORDSTROM WAY, ROBERT SPECTOR

Nordstrom, a very well-known retail brand, is universally recognized as one of the best examples of customer service excellence. In fact, all other companies use it as a cornerstone, aiming at becoming the “Nordstrom of their industry”. What is the secret of this enduring - even in economic turmoil - success? The direct link between empowering your employees and creating a long-term relationship with your customers.

MASTERING LEADERSHIP, ROBERT J. ANDERSON & WILLIAM A. ADAMS

Is leadership a competitive advantage, or is it just costing you in terms of time, money and personal development? Today's escalating complexity puts leadership effectiveness at a premium. Mastering Leadership involves developing the effectiveness of leaders - individually and collectively - and turning that leadership into a competitive advantage. This book aims at offering "an integrated framework for breakthrough performance and extraordinary business results".

THE CUSTOMER MANIFESTO, PAMELA HERRMANN

Let’s start with two numbers: 80 percent of businesses believe they are providing superior customer experience, yet only 8 percent of their customers agree they provide it. The disconnect is due to the fact that amazing customer experience is not the result of a program, it is the effect of a human and personal connection, across all touch points. This is where successful entrepreneurs start, to grow their business.

THE CUSTOMER EXPERIENCE FIASCO, ANDREW REISE

To learn the foundations of an amazing experience for customers, you must learn not just the best practices and success stories, but also the misguided adventures. Using a fictional situation, the book - written by the experts of Andrew Reise Consulting - tells the story of how you can start from a fiasco (a YouTube video, in this case) to build a successful customer experience strategy.

OUTSIDE IN, HARLEY MANNING

This book is about the power of putting customers at the center of your business. Customer experience is the most powerful - and yet misunderstood - element of corporate strategy today. Your business value is not established just by the quality of the output (your product) but also by the quality of the connection between you and your customers (the experience). Identifying and solving the problems inside your organization has the potential to increase dramatically sales and decrease costs.

I LOVE YOU MORE THAN MY DOG, JEANNE BLISS

The theory is good, case studies are even better. This book is all about true stories that can teach you how to improve your strategy. In the end, you will understand the difference between having customers who like you and customers who love you (truly, madly, deeply). Loyal and engaged customers are the key, and the author has studied tons of companies to identify the five decisions that drive extreme customer loyalty, in good times and bad.

INBOUND MARKETING, BRIAN HALLIGAN & DHARMESH SHAH

Inbound marketing is a new paradigm in the relationship with customers, a methodology that replaces interruption with communication and value creation. This book, written by the two founders of the automation platform Hubspot, gives you all introductory hints to change your content strategy and ultimately attract, convert, close and delight. Transforming your customers from complete strangers to loyal promoters.

TO SELL IS HUMAN, DANIEL PINK

If you need a fresh look at the art of selling in the age of digital disruption, this book will offer a new perspective, based on the idea that we are all salespeople. Among all other things, the author describes the six successors to the elevator pitch, the three rules for understanding another's perspective, and the five frames that can make your message clearer and more persuasive. Because, in sales, numbers matter.

Of course, there are lots of great readings we did non include in this brief list. Please, use the comments to suggest your personal favorites.

Photo by Aaron Burden on Unsplash

Download The 7 Pillars Of The New Customer Loyalty to define the foundations on which to build your engagement and loyalty strategy, create innovative experiences and establish a lasting and valuable relationship with your customers.

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AWS re:Invent 2017 – Tales From The Future Of Cloud

Posted on by Neosperience Team

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In the weeks leading to the AWS re:Invent 2017, we have seen many speculations about the nature of the announcements that Amazon would do during its annual event. The first few days have maintained, if not exceeded, the expectations.

There is a constant element behind all the news emerging about Amazon's Cloud: a significant shift towards the 'applications' side of the technology. Follow us as we unveil the future of Amazon Web Services and the entire Cloud world.

The general trend sees Amazon more and more focused on providing companies with technologies that increase the engagement and improve the customer experience. From this point of view, we could even dare to say that AWS is becoming more ‘customer-centric’.

This broader trend translates into a specific attention to the technologies that affect the customer behaviors online and offline (and are affected by them in return). It is easy to see that video content and AR, VR, and mixed reality have taken the center stage in the last couple of years.

Many companies are trying to take advantage of the potential of these immersive technologies, which so far have proved to be too complex and expensive for general use. The great players - Google, Facebook, Microsoft, and now Amazon - are trying to close this gap, providing affordable tools (in terms of costs and complexity) available for a broader audience.

AWS Elemental MediaConvert is the way Amazon wants to capitalize on the obsession that both customers and Brands have for video contents. The new suite, formed largely on the back of the acquisition of Elemental Technologies in 2015, is a file-based video transcoding service with broadcast-grade features:

“It allows you to easily create video-on-demand (VOD) content for broadcast and multiscreen delivery at scale. The service combines advanced video and audio capabilities with a simple web services interface and pay-as-you-go pricing. With AWS Elemental MediaConvert, you can focus on delivering compelling media experiences without having to worry about the complexity of building and operating your own video processing infrastructure.”

While we do not have more than the announcement right now - even though Elemental has been around for a while - there is a major strength in the proposition: the ability to create high-quality, end-to-end video processing workflows in the cloud without upfront investment for video processing infrastructure (you pay based on the duration of video that is processed and the features you use).

If you read the description carefully, you will see how Amazon is now “into competition to some extent with the likes of Google’s YouTube and its efforts to work with media companies and other creators to build and host live streams and ad-based videos. Interesting timing, given all the negative press YouTube has had over the kind of content that it’s been hosting over the years.” (TechCrunch)

The second product launched at the AWS re:Invent 2017 - this one entirely new - is called Amazon Sumerian and is, in some extent, a straightforward response to the announcements made by Mark Zuckerberg during the last Facebook’s F8 event. The topic is, of course, virtual reality, augmented reality, and mixed reality.

Amazon Sumerian lets you create highly immersive and interactive scenes on VR, AR, and 3D applications without requiring any specialized programming or 3D graphics expertise. The scenes can then run on different hardware - Oculus Rift, HTC Vive, and iOS mobile devices, while the support for Android ARCore will come soon. All this starting from the libraries of pre-built objects that make the creation effortless and less expensive.

If you look at the bigger picture, it is easy to understand where Amazon is heading: In a world where the new wave of technology has a lot of time-consuming processes behind it, Amazon aims at becoming the one who can modernize and simplify that — thereby becoming the default platform for creating applications on that new tech. Elemental and Sumerian score two points. And now the ball goes to the opponents.

For a deeper coverage live from the AWS re:Invent, you can also follow Luca Bianchi, CTO of Neosperience, on Medium.

Download The 7 Pillars Of The New Customer Loyalty to define the foundations on which to build your engagement and loyalty strategy, create innovative experiences and establish a lasting and valuable relationship with your customers.

The 7 Pillars Of The New Customer Loyalty
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Strategic Predictions For 2018 and Beyond From Gartner Symposium

Posted on by Neosperience Team

 

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The future is filled with disruption. But pending disruptions are taking on new forms. This is the tipping point for Gartner's keynote about top strategic predictions for 2018 and beyond, live from Orlando.

Here is a selection for you of the most relevant insights from Gartner Symposium/ITxpo, where the world’s top digital professionals gain a strategic view of the emerging trends shaping technology and business.

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