Despite being a rainy Monday morning in Birmingham amidst a disrupted transport system this year’s Advanced World was well and truly buzzing. One thousand customers joined us on our journey to see how digital transformation can – and already has for many - become a positive force of business and organisational disruption. When we look back at the fact that the simple smartphone has been around for just over 10 years, yet it has literally changed our world – how limitless then is the opportunity for technological transformation in the workplace. We are without doubt witnessing a staggering pace of change as we enter the 4th Industrial Revolution whether viewed as daunting or an exciting opportunity, it is certain to continue to gather pace and disrupt business as we know it.
It was therefore fitting that our overarching theme at Advanced World this year was ‘making the complex simple.’ With so many innovators leading the way – early technology adopters literally at the cutting edge of change –we had a host of ‘imagineer’ customers sharing their achievements in this area. From AI innovations in the legal sector through to customers as diverse as PRS (Performing Rights Society), Edgbaston Cricket and Ribston Hall High School showing how they are working with us to use data, the Cloud and technology to drive excellence for their organisation and make a positive impact for their end customers.
At the same time, industry experts came together to share best practice on some of the UK’s most pressing digital issues – such as preparing for GDPR, how to create the best journey to the Cloud or to start a digital transformation process, as well as looking at the industry topics such as Industry 4.0 and the future of finance. There were also debates on chatbots and adaptive experiences, and whether these are the next big thing around innovation to exceed customer expectations.
And given customer expectations have risen to challenging heights in the digital world, I was personally proud to share the progress that the entire team at Advanced has been able to achieve since our last customer event. Being laser focused on our very own customers, we have been forensic about transforming customer services and support – and the positive impact this is delivering. Case backlog has been reduced by 35%, call wait times have been reduced by over 50% and 25% more cases are getting resolved on the first query. Customer satisfaction on support calls is at a high of 9.4 out of 10. At the same time, our NPS scores have leapt up with a 24 point improvement.
With our next NPS survey going out in June, we will not be taking our foot off the pedal with our relentless focus on continual improvements. And this is also being driven by a concerted investment in the Cloud – we’ve had record levels going into research and development, increased by £600k to £720k. Just as the workforce is transforming with machine learning and artificial intelligence, we are transforming our product portfolio as part of our accelerated journey to the Cloud, ensuring it embraces the latest innovations.
We know that a great customer experience, around new channels and technologies, are putting customers firmly in the driving seat. It is exciting to see our very own ‘imagineers’ customers make a real difference, simplifying business and society together – and in the words of our CTO Jon Wrennall, making a Great Britain - happy days!
This year’s Advanced World has been the biggest ever event we have run and the feedback from customers has already been incredibly positive. With Advanced World 2019 already on our horizon, please share more thoughts and views of the event. And for those of you who missed it, we will soon be sharing a show reel of some of our highlights – where you can see how reimaging your business can help you be bold, brave – to reinvent, recharge and reshape your business.