New research commissioned by EASY Software UK has shown that the majority of UK firms are successfully collecting experience data from their stakeholders, in particular employees – but Brexit and COVID-19 are also being defined as major challenges

New survey findings on the status of digital transformation and experience management in the UK highlight multiple challenges plaguing on-going digitisation on customer and other key stakeholder experience efforts, but also show a reassuring level of digital maturity. 

That’s out of data just released by EASY Software which paints a fascinating portrait of how British businesses are working with experience data, on on-going capture and analysis of how their brand is seen by core stakeholders like partners, customers and employees.

For instance, the majority of UK businesses say they now regularly collect experience-related data — 76%, with the main group which UK businesses now poll data from is the employee (60%). This is important, say respondents, as using experience data means businesses can interact better with customers, employees and partners (84%) while applying experience data to optimise operations was identified as a KPI by a similarly high proportion (82%). The major challenges confronting those responsible for experience data collection were identified as:

• Multiple regulatory problems, e.g. data protection and the on-going impact of GDPR (35%)
• IT Infrastructure, systems and tools being missing or insufficiently developed (31%)
• Poor data quality (29%).

When asked about the perceived greatest advantage of collecting experience data responses included, “You should collect data in order to improve your services both for customers and staff as companies can get a tunnel vision,” and, “To tailor our procedures to give a bespoke experience to our customers, suppliers and our staff (all the better to retain the best qualified staff)”. 

The study also reflects a perhaps surprisingly-high level of success with digitisation of processes, which seems to have started well before the lockdown started. For example, when asked about satisfaction with how well the respondents think they’re harnessing IT to manage end-to-end processes that start and end with the customer, the majority claimed to be ‘completely’ or ‘somewhat’ digitised (83%). 

Nonetheless, external factors are clearly weighing on the UK c-suite. Asked about what they see as their greatest challenges over the next 12 months, respondents list the aftermath of Brexit (65%), the impact of coronavirus (49%) and cybersecurity threats/data breaches (47%) as their top three worries. On how vulnerable they are to losing customers from these challenges, businesses are not strongly pessimistic, but are worried nonetheless (45% are somewhat concerned; 17% are very concerned).

Keeping the experience momentum accelerating

“This survey has highlighted the fact that for UK firms, experience management is a well understood and utilised concept, despite regulatory challenges, and digitisation is firmly under way despite budgetary constraints,” says UK’s CEO Andy Boulton. “The high number of respondents recording employees as the key source of experience data shows the rise of employee experience in the age of ‘the Glassdoor effect’. 

“But our findings also show a challenging business outlook in the UK, given Brexit looming and COVID-19 changing the business climate so dramatically. 

“To keep the digitisation and experience momentum accelerating, some radical process overhaul and technology spend needs to be set in motion.”

The findings were collated online by independent research specialists Censuswide during March 2020, covering middle and senior management in 500-plus companies with at least 100 employees in the Technology, Telecommunications, Finance, Manufacturing and Retail sectors. 

The full UK survey report is available here

thedmcollaborators Editor