Brands with a digital presence emerged at the top when it came to leveraging their situation in business during the pandemic. The way business is done today showcases an extremely dynamic and ultra-competitive landscape. Traditional businesses without a digital presence got relegated to the sides and lost out to those with a digital presence. A good example of how business is shifting towards digital is e-commerce. It showcases how a sustainable digital infrastructure for brands can change the tide when it comes to conducting business.

Having all-wireless access, next-generation network, and hyper-converged IT infrastructure creates an intelligent digital infrastructure meant to offer better-operating efficiency and user experience without costs being too much of a concern. Besides better decision-making abilities, going digital lets brands build an intelligent ecosystem for the future. The adoption of SaaS product solutions has kept brands away from building in-house infrastructure while going on to achieve excellent results in customer experience or CX from their digital transformation.

Driving growth

Businesses built around native and intuitive customer experiences are the ones that will stand out. Great outcomes of a customer’s experience can be handled with much ease on a digital platform. The customer data insights available to brands help their marketing and delivery teams make better sense of how they are performing. It helps in improving customer interaction, dealing with competition in a better fashion, and having a true picture of their customer’s world in real-time. The absence of a digital presence also means the absence of access to data which for a brand would only mean basing business decisions on a whim.

Often this could be contrary to its long-term interests. To remain in business having access to data is important for any brand. Quick and quality decision making for instance has become a norm for businesses that have adopted digital strategies and made their systems more efficient than before. Such a digital approach ensures a common view across logistical functions leading to improved production, a boost in sales, and improvisation in product marketing to achieve growth.

Securing the future

The one thing that brands should ensure is their access to first-party data. Access to accurate, relevant data will help create customer experiences that naturally bring down the brand’s customer acquisition cost. Quality real-time customer engagement and retention would seal the future of a brand. Both information and business are likely to be lost with an unhappy customer. Other benefits of first-party data include personalised web and mobile experiences, customer shopping history, and online shopping patterns. Brands that know of these insights can use targeted advertising tools to specific customers, offering exclusive discounts, and more.

First-party data helps plan a strategy and deliver real-time quality engagement to the customer. Building a sustainable digital infrastructure is the future for every brand as a digitally native first approach will bring brands closer to the millennials and Generation Z. The data insights will let brands understand these customers using their smartphones for every search and shop move, better.

With over 55% of US consumers preferring to shop online according to a 2022 Raydiant study on US consumer behaviour it is no secret that millennials are the largest shoppers at over 20%. And so, building on a digital infrastructure equips brands to meet their long-term business growth sustainably, while getting to know their customers better and also being in control of every step from product design and creation to bettering last-mile customer delivery.