EIC Speaker Spotlight: Gerald Horst

Well, every year, PWC is surveying CEOs across the globe about their strategic priorities in this new normal this year, actually over more than 5,000 CEOs, which is more than ever before responded, by the way, half of them were, are CEOs from Europe. And first of all, we found out, most of them are very positive about the economy and the business outlook for their respective firms.

And almost half of them are in investing double with double digits numbers in digital transformation, especially since most of these companies, that transformation efforts due to the pandemic, by the way, digital transformation, we define it as any large scale change to the way a company operates their business. And that is supported by the development of an enabling technology. So why are companies investing in, in digital transformation?

We learn from the investigation that, and some, like many of them are already on a transformation journey that they are hoping to realize different benefits in two years from now, including cost savings, revenue, growth, product innovation, brand enhancement, gathering data, and improve their decision making. But what is apparent is that the organizations want to transform to make the best of technology advantages, right?

There's a lot changing AI 5g, and they want to use digital to enhance the customer experience, provide a more competitive set of products and services to their customers, generate data and improve their offer by creating a customer insights and, and really acting upon the information they have at hand. So it's interesting because we also wanted to know by, by surveying companies and understanding in the digital transformation and understanding who actually the winners are, right.

And winning means growing in a disruptive market, achieving the objectives that they set out for themselves at the beginning of the transformation. And we asked them specifically about what the success factors are. And we got over 500 responses from CEOs and there were five key things. First and foremost is that the winning companies actually put customer at the center of the transformation. They really, really see focus on the customer experience. They know the customers very well and they understand the changing customer needs and behaviors.

So secondly, they also understand that trust is a key market differentiator. So winning companies have a clear purpose in life and they keep the promises to their customers and to their employees. And thirdly, the winning companies are the one that are investing in enterprisewide process and data capabilities. They connect front end with backend. They secure their critical infrastructure and enable all that through key technology implementations.

And this is probably one of the most difficult tasks because doing company-wide activities going after a company-wide objective requires companies to really break down the silos, right? Both functional and political. So it's all about stakeholder management. And I think forwardly it's about leadership, right?

I mean, CEOs who sponsor digital transformations, they need to play an active role in the transformation programs and they should not delegate. And then last minute least of course, the role of technology, we acknowledge that as much as technology is supporting the vision, it is also the ability to differentiate themselves when use that technology.

Well, like I said, much focus is on AI and 5g yet winning companies have more focus on technologies that enable the digital experience for both the customers and their employees than to focus on technologies that drive efficiencies and savings. So, like I said, companies that are going through a digital transformation and who are actually the winning companies, they put the customer in the center, relentless focus on customer behavior on customer needs.

If you're in an industry, you know what customer identity and customer I management is all about companies that are successful in transforming are clearly looking for a common set factors when they select technologies, ease of use and fast approaches are considered the most important attributes to encourage adoption of technologies by customers and made the most essential features to get really right upfront and implementing customer identity access management is, is providing exactly that. And moreover it optimizes security and privacy capabilities, which is adding to the trust factor.

Like I said before, trust is a competitive factor. This brings us to the topic of zero trust.

Well, identity really is the new parameter. If you look at it from a customer's perspective, I was the own business business online, but also is the new parameter from an organization's perspective that is securing its business. It has been investigated that by 2023, I believe 75% of security failures will result from inadequate, inadequate management of identities of excess and privileges. This is growing right.

I mean, we can see a staggering amount of, you know, hacks attacks, et cetera. Happening every day, we are learning fast, that many breaches that cybercrime has actually become an industry. And the breach are mostly the direct cause of week or compromised access and identity management processes. So I've discussed the topic of zero trust over the past year, quite a few times in webinars. It's what actually stands for trust nobody or nothing comes from both internal and ex external network. So from this identity is the new parameter.

We need to verify the identity of the requested before granting access is clear, and we need to make sure that any access provided is compliant to rules regulations. All right, now we know from experience that our clients need to find the correct balance between customer experience security and cost when they are transforming the front end.

And when they're introducing consumer identity management solutions, this needs to involve a lot of stakeholders, you know, ranging from financial to it, to marketing, to compliance, to security, and as such, you need to really break down those, those silos in organizations, functional political silos, to get them all aligned and to enable their company-wide transformation. And this means that you have to work on having a common vocabulary and have these stakeholders understand each other for that purpose.

We and PWC, we really looked at this at this challenge and we, we developed over the past two years customer identity game, which is a form of gamification that is very innovative and accelerates the, the start and the facilitation of the identity programs that we are doing with our clients and the technology implementations that come from it. And by playing games with our stakeholders, they do actually come to this common vocabulary and they really understand each other.

They understand the role of digital identity and the strategy they have to automate related onboarding as an example, much faster than before. And the design and the implementation of solutions is also much done, much more effective and playing games is fun.

Well, I mean, my answer would say that all business to consumer companies are adopting, you know, to changing customer and market conditions. So they are, are really implementing consumer identity and management programs. They're integrating it well, they're implementing CRM solutions, whether they're integrating it or not.

That's, that's, I think a little bit further down the road, but of course you've seen that in financial services and also in retail, but especially in financial services, banks, insurance companies, they have been implementing consumer identity access management way before others, you know, due to competitive pressures, but also to compliance needs. They have, Well, Absolutely.

I think, you know, like I said before, what you see is that companies are going through digital transformations for a number of reasons, the companies that are actually doing that successfully need to put the customer in the center of that transformation. They need to understand what their customer actually needs. It's all about ease of use. It's about building trust. It's about automating processes and making it agile and, and speed up those processes.

So yes, CRM is going to be increasingly important for that because basically that's what, you know, CRM is offering, right? It's, it's offering ease of use. It's offering faster processes. It's offering trust by, by means of security and, and, and privacy capabilities. Yes. So I do believe that cm is increasingly gaining important. It actually is a critical success factor for any digital transformation that is going to be successful.

Yes, of course, clearly platforms like Salesforce and ServiceNow that you mentioned are increasingly supporting clients, transform their business into new, online business models, which is why these providers themselves also are offering wider and deeper IM and cm capabilities than ever before. And as PWC, we have both, you know, both these platform teams and skills, and we have these identity teams and skills in house.

We get more questions from clients that are utilizing Salesforce platforms, for example, and they ask us to investigate whether cm from Salesforce can actually deliver the ROI that they are looking for. So, I mean, I look very forward, very much forward to being in Munich. I hope that it will be, you know, a physical event and I, I really hope to, to present and, and look out, look forward to that.

I, I will, in my presentation make clear that implementing powerful customer identity and access management and integrating marketing and customer relationship management functions with customer identity and access management, if done well, of course is critical success factor for any digital transformation. And it will help business owners achieve the ROI that they're looking for. I will also share how to get in terms of an effective way to implement CRM and integrate CRM.

And especially I will focus on how to break down those silos and those functional and political silos bring stakeholders together, manage their expectations, keep them aligned. And thirdly, I will discuss a very interesting client case basically to clarify my messages, all that in 20 minutes, making identity matter together with PWC. I look forward to it. Thank you.