Digital capabilities are rapidly evolving, especially in the areas of equipment finance software, mobility, big data, and cloud technologies, which offer equipment finance firms entirely new ways of understanding, serving, and engaging their clients. The pursuit of greater customer centricity will be aided by these capabilities. Despite this, many businesses are unsure about how to proceed, given the range of possibilities and the speed with which the technology is evolving. However, the ability to think things through fully and at an unhurried pace is a luxury that is difficult to come by.
With today's digital landscape, customer expectations continue to grow, as does the ease with which a customer can identify a competitor who outperforms and move their business.
Equipment finance's most customer-centric players will be tomorrow's winners. In all critical areas, such as product selection, availability, interaction experience, service quality, channel accessibility, and communication, they will have developed a comprehensive understanding of their customers and can satisfy their wants and needs in a way that meets, if not exceeds, expectations.
As equipment finance companies strive for greater customer centricity, most will be propelled further into the digital space. The most effective strategy would be bold and proactive—even when mistakes are inevitable. There is a lot of potential for early-mover advantages for those who move quickly. Indeed, a few companies are already pushing the envelope on this front and reaping the rewards.
With the development of digital capabilities today, equipment finance companies can break some of the key compromises they have historically faced to achieve greater customer-centricity. A company's interactions with customers have been governed by operational limitations of legacy leasing technology in the past.
Companies have been hampered by legacy equipment finance software systems and back-office constraints (for example, independent computer systems and data centers siloed by business lines), limiting their choices when designing and delivering products, targeting, communicating, and providing service levels. Providing customers with products that meet their specific needs when, where, and how they choose has remained more of a dream than a reality for years.
However, today's digital capabilities and equipment finance software are changing the game. By enabling the delinking, and then loose rejoining, of content (which is consumed), experience (which is consumed), and platform (which is consumed), equipment finance companies can liberate themselves from these constraints.
With ubiquitous mobile internet access through smart devices, cloud technologies, and service-oriented architecture, content (including products, services, and information) can be modularized, packaged, and delivered in new ways, opening new options for greater customer-centricity.
Consider a customer-centric service such as locating the nearest charging station for your leased EV (electric vehicle). Today OEMs and leasing companies can provide customers with the added advantage of not only knowing where the nearest charging station is located. In addition, they can also augment that information with suggestions of the nearest restaurant or place to pick up groceries while your vehicle gets started.
Not too long ago, getting such information into customers' hands would have been an incredibly challenging process. Nowadays, however, it is straightforward. As a result, lessors can deliver this service without having to make any material investment by "mashing up" digitally enabled capabilities that others provide—such as mobile data access via the mobile phone service provider, app stores for software delivery, GPS technology built into smartphones, and a digital map provided by third-party web services. The auto leasing company/OEM must only provide charging station location data and create the app that provides the desired customer experience.
There will, undoubtedly, be some great opportunities for tomorrow's champions of customer-centricity in this new reality. What capabilities will the digitally enabled players of the future possess and utilize? Big data is increasingly being used by companies to understand customer and prospect communications and feedback, including those received via social media. Using data collected from multiple sources, modern-day leasing technology, and insight-driven analytics, they can create, deliver, and communicate customized products, services, and delivery methods.
To determine how to improve the caliber of their interactions with customers, companies will combine these with customer-relationship management software, which captures and analyzes every transaction they share with them. To gain new insights, they will model and test new products regularly, creatively, and efficiently-in specific regions, among specific customer cohorts, and for specific time periods to gain new insights. Customers will experience a unified and user-friendly experience across all channels, leading to higher customer satisfaction and lower cost-to-income ratios.
It is true that digital capabilities and advanced equipment finance software platforms are linchpins, but they alone do not enable meaningful levels of customer-centricity. To become truly customer-centric, organizations must undergo significant changes, such as reorganizing around customers rather than products or channels. To ensure a paramount focus on the customer's interests is deeply ingrained in the organization's DNA, the company's culture must be overhauled. Is it necessary to change the company's focus from 'How can we sell more of product X, Y, or Z' to 'What does the customer really want and how can we provide it?
To achieve greater customer-centricity, it is essential to actively engage with digital capabilities, which can also serve as a catalyst for wider customer-centricity efforts. To get started, take a critical look at your company’s value chain, and figure out how digital capabilities can be leveraged to support one or more of your core strategic goals.
Make sure you define your objectives clearly: for example, we will use digital technologies to gain a better understanding of retirement-focused product preferences, which we will use to improve our products, our customer experience, and our market share. As a rule, companies should start down the digital path toward greater customer-centricity with a focus on gaining a better understanding of customers. Use your company's internal best practices to conduct a pilot once you have set an objective.
About Odessa
Headquartered in Philadelphia, USA, Odessa is a software company exclusively focused in the leasing industry. The Odessa Platform powers a diverse customer base globally, providing end-to-end, extensible solutions for lease and loan origination and portfolio management. Odessa facilitates business agility through rich feature sets including low-code development, test automation, reporting, and business intelligence to ensure organizations can more effectively align business and IT objectives.