Insights to Outcomes is a unique function of the Customer Agility Framework ™ and is the central axis of all data systems and interactions involved in it. It focuses all work around attaining the Customer North Star in the first instance, then add the filters of the Business North Star and the Technical North Star to meet their strategies, target and capabilities.
Insights
Accessing and processing data and sifting with artificial intelligence to find opportunities and issues then refining through human unbiased skills to define meaning.
Outcomes
Defining the impact of change upon Brand Equity, Customer Engagement, Support Costs, Financial Impact, ROI, VFM, CSAT, NPS, ESG, PRI, Market Sentiment, Analyst Community, Shareholders and Customer North Star though real-time oversight (defined below)
Insight to Outcome Process
Depending upon what data sources are available different types of AI can be used along with data sources many already in use in organisations, the ones noted in the Customer Agility Framework ™are;
AI Tools for Interaction and Sentiment Analysis
Machine learning is an umbrella term for solving problems for which development of algorithms by human programmers would be cost-prohibitive, and instead the problems are solved by helping machines “discover” their “own” algorithms, without needing to be explicitly told what to do by any human-developed algorithms. Wikipedia
Neural Networks are a branch of machine learning models that are built using principles of neuronal organization discovered by connectionism in the biological neural networks constituting animal brains. Wikipedia
Natural language processing is an interdisciplinary subfield of computer science and linguistics. It is primarily concerned with giving computers the ability to support and manipulate speech. Wikipedia
Deep learning is part of a broader family of machine learning methods, which is based on artificial neural networks with representation learning. The adjective “deep” in deep learning refers to the use of multiple layers in the network. Methods used can be either supervised, semi-supervised or unsupervised. Wikipedia
Fuzzy logic is an approach to variable processing that allows for multiple possible truth values to be processed through the same variable. Fuzzy logic attempts to solve problems with an open, imprecise spectrum of data and heuristics that makes it possible to obtain an array of accurate conclusions.
In artificial intelligence, an expert system is a computer system emulating the decision-making ability of a human expert. Expert systems are designed to solve complex problems by reasoning through bodies of knowledge, represented mainly as if–then rules rather than through conventional procedural code. Wikipedia
Additional Data and Rule Sources
Brand equity, in marketing, is the worth of a brand in and of itself – i.e., the social value of a well-known brand name. The owner of a well-known brand name can generate more revenue simply from brand recognition, as consumers perceive the products of well-known brands as better than those of lesser-known brands. Wikipedia
Customer engagement is an interaction between an external consumer/customer (either B2C or B2B) and an organization (company or brand) through various online or offline channels. Wikipedia
Support Costs are all the additional costs represented by support systems and people to service Customer needs to allow them to utilize services or complete a transaction with a positive outcome and experience.
Financial Impact is the cost or profit loss that happens due to activity from change and run in an organization. This can be affected by external forces like market conditions as well as internal actions like product/service failure, recalls or product/service success.
Return on Investment (ROI) or return on costs (ROC) is a ratio between net income (over a period) and investment (costs resulting from an investment of some resources at a point in time). A high ROI means the investment’s gains compare favourably to its cost. As a performance measure, ROI is used to evaluate the efficiency of an investment or to compare the efficiencies of several different investments. In economic terms, it is one way of relating profits to capital invested. Wikipedia
Value for Money (VFM) in Business value for money is a measure of the benefit provided by a good or service to an economic agent. It is generally measured through units of currency, and the interpretation is therefore “what is the maximum amount of money a person is willing and able to pay for a good or service, in comparison to how much was spent to create it and run it?”
CSAT – Customer satisfaction is a term frequently used in marketing to evaluate customer experience. It is a measure of how products and services supplied by a company meet or surpass customer expectation. Wikipedia
NPS – Net promoter score is a market research metric that is based on a single survey question asking respondents to rate the likelihood that they would recommend a company, product, or a service to a friend or colleague. Wikipedia
ESG – Environmental, social, and corporate governance, also known as environmental, social, and governance, is a set of aspects considered when investing in companies, that recommends taking environmental issues, social issues and corporate governance issues into account. Wikipedia
PRI – Principles for Responsible Investment is a United Nations-supported international network of financial institutions working together to implement its six aspirational principles, often referenced as “the Principles”. Wikipedia
Market sentiment, also known as investor attention, is the general prevailing attitude of investors as to anticipated price development in a market. Wikipedia
Analyst Community brings together a vast array of economic and activity information to make an assessment of organisational and board effectiveness to advise investors on the suitability on an investment based upon performance and future initiatives.
A Shareholder of corporate stock refers to an individual or legal entity that is registered by the corporation as the legal owner of shares of the share capital of a public or private corporation. Shareholders may be referred to as members of a corporation. Wikipedia
Implementation
Artificial Intelligence (AI) is used to seek patterns in customer (interaction and sentiment) data as opportunities, issues and risks. Other data sources including CSAT, NPS, ESG, PRI, Market Sentiment, Analyst Community, Shareholders sentiments are added. Then this WHAT data is refined through User Experience Research techniques to understand WHY (context, human perceptions and human value) they are important.
WHAT and WHY two methods have existed as long as there have been data research, they are Quantitative and Qualitative research, they are not only complementary they are essential to avoid making the wrong decisions. If data leads without human context, well I expect you can imagine, one leg chairs may become the standard manufactured item based on cost, but would be unusable based on the human lense. Further bias is a real problem in both data and humans thankfully User Experience Research has built in bias control methodologies to eliminate personal agendas and cultural bias. This data was then tested with target audience test groups to confirm resonance with the themes and be able to garner customer solutions to retest the AI data. This is a daily and continuous activity to ensure alignment with customers.
The Customer Agility Framework ™at this point enters all these Customer Requirements that combined creates the Customer North Star (customer requirements persona) into a Work Orchestration (previously case management and now extended) system to initiate new work for the organization or enterprise. The Customer North Star is also used to define the Organizational Agility (Customer Journey Groups and Customer Journeys), Financial Agility (OKRs) and Operational Agility strategic and production OKRs (which will be refined during the flow of work). The key characteristic of this way of working is to ensure that all information, decision making and insights affect the final outcome. This provides complete traceability to enable continuous optimization.
As each type of worker acts upon the Customer North Star it evolves and is modified by their roles, unique insights, brilliance and constraints to ensure that the work that is defined meets Customer, Business and Technical criteria to a defined set of acceptable criteria for each North Star. Further adoptions take place during solutioning and delivery with all changes, and additions annotated in context of the visible North Stars.
This is a massive simplification and enables solutioning and delivery to no longer require management since all the critical information relating to work is present in the Work Orchestration. Solutioning and delivery workers are supported by four types of people to make decisions;
Customer Journey Business & Technical Mediators who understand the full context of business and technical strategy as it impact the Customer North Star.
Solutions Coaches who understand in detail both the technical strategy, its implications on existing systems, their current capabilities and horizon plans the become fully effective. They act as sounding boards not leaders or managers but as specialised colleagues (as coaches), vendor and regulatory (as advisors) supports.
Customer Agility ™Agile Coaches who understand in detail both the end-to-end Insight to Outcome system and everyone’s activities and roles, they are able to support with a deep knowledge of how everything works and who the key support people are for each team they work with.
Skills Facilitator who understands both the current Business and Technical strategies and the Business, Technical, Solutioning and Delivery skills and investigates the future requirements and work with the Centres of Excellence teams to ensure that training is commissioned and the Human Resources are advised of mid and long term recruitment needs.
As part of Work Orchestration some elements or items of work may either not proceed or may have the potential to become something else. This is a constant loss in all organizations Customer Agility Framework ™ redresses this by allocating all of these to Invention Assets within Work Orchestration so that they can be used to create Communities of Practice to test them and potentially build Proof of Concepts (POC).
Additionally all staff are able to draw down expertize from Centres of Excellence which are very small teams (5-6 people) who are subject matter experts collating training materials, updating them, commission new ones for they skills they have themselves.
In concert with the flow of work Governance and Risk are continuously engaged in real-time thorough Work Orchestration, to varying degrees depending upon the Governance type and Risk level. Agile by design is a real-time risk management system through daily team meetings.
Finally all retrospectives in Business, Technical, Solutioning and Delivery create rules and insights that are added to the Work Orchestration System in two version, unique to the team since it is critical to not use retrospective information as a comparison tool and general level insights across all teams from a Customer Journey, Customer Journey Groups.