In the last couple of years, Systems of Engagement or SoE has been getting extremely popular in the field of business and consumer applications. Thus, it has been an occurring topic of conversation for many business organizations and consumers. SoE refers to a completely new generation of IT systems to support knowledge workers and consumers in achieving certain objectives. SoE can optimize the effectiveness of a user by providing him with required flexibility and responsiveness to deal with the changing business world.
With flexible and faster responses from your employees, it becomes easier to enhance customer engagement, and improve customer experience. Nobody wants to keep waiting to get a response from your business. Prompt and accurate responses always lead to better customer experience and loyalty. Thus, the importance of SoE in the modern business world can not be overlooked.
Why are Systems of Engagement Getting Popular?
The primary reason for the increasing popularity of SoE has been its direct impact on customer experience. As mentioned above, SoE can impact your customer’s overall experience in dealing with your organization. Other reasons for the increasing demand of SoE have also been discussed.
SoE are also getting more popular because Systems of Record are built out to the maximum extent. They offer a diminishing competitive advantage for most business organizations. Due to Cloud delivery models, they’re also becoming commoditized. This decreases the competitive return on investment. In simple terms, Systems of Record gradually grew out of time when businesses were able to achieve greater efficiency through innovative and modern IT systems.
Social tools and consumer smartphones have also created higher expectations from the IT infrastructure. Thus, the emphasis has been shifted onto the systems which provide a higher degree of effectiveness to both business organizations and consumers. As compared to Systems of Record, SoE support an efficient model of continuous interaction.
How are They Constructed?
In order to achieve the above mentioned results, companies need to make some technological improvements on traditional Systems of Record. Currently, there are 4 important new technology trends which are key enablers for SoE. These include :
● Mobile devices which can effectively provide a ubiquitous entry points for a consumer, and even provide him with richer context for the standard service provider. This allows better targeted services.
● Social tools which can provide a business organization with People Integration capabilities. This can easily glue together many different complex elements associated with the human workflow. It helps achieve the desired outcome.
● Big Data and Analytics to provide business organizations with richer capabilities. This helps businesses engage with users and support broader context. It also allows companies to proactively interact with users regarding various relevant and beneficial services.
● Cloud computing as an effective, common and efficient delivery model for consuming all the services in a very consistent way. Regardless of the location of a user, Cloud computing enables a business organization to move Systems of Record outside the premises, and focus on SoE.
Impact on Systems of Records
The increasing popularity of SoE does not mean that Systems of Record is completely obsolete. Systems of Record still has an important role to play because of robust quality and efficiency. Therefore, it will continue to support business processes. For instance, a retail outlet will still have to maintain inventory levels, and a bank will still have to process transactions. The real power of this emerging trend will be the integration of the efficiency of Systems of Record with the interactivity of SoE.
It is worth mentioning that all parties can benefit from SoE. This is a certain upside of SoE for the consumers and organizations which provide services. Systems of Engagement effectively focus on competitive differentiation, while giving better returns to people using them, rather than just relying on the company providing service.