the fundamentals of digital transformationdigital transformation is more than a single technology....

1© 2018 Avaya Inc. All Rights Reserved.

The Fundamentals Of Digital TransformationCommunications solutions that move at the speed of your customer — purpose-built for a smart, digital world


The global transformation to digital has real consequences.

Smart people now expect anytime, anywhere responses.

Smart businesses now predict customer needs and preferences.

Smart stores now tailor offers to valued customers. Smart cities

now facilitate commerce and citizenship. The opportunities for

all are virtually unlimited.

Nothing can be taken for granted.

In this smart digital world, experience is everything. Customers,

employees, members, citizens, partners and vendors are moving faster

than ever and demand digital experiences that are contextual,

persistent and proactive. Having rapidly adopted smartphones,

tablets, chat, texting (SMS), video and social media, they

expect support across almost any technology and channel.

In fact, eight out of 10 consumers would be more loyal to

organizations if those organizations were easier to deal with.1

Customer perceptions and actions are shaped by the amount

of effort they must expend to obtain service. With this

understanding, organizations realize that to be successful

they must move at the speed of the customer.

It’s no longer just about people communicating with people.

It’s machines communicating with people, machines

communicating with other machines, and apps communicating

with everything. Your communications capabilities are put to the

test every day all day. The headlines tell the story: Companies now

rise and fall based on how they communicate with and among their

customers, employees, investors, regulators and other stakeholders.

As the world becomes more digital — smarter, more mobile

and hyper-connected — Avaya rises above the others.

We’re a catalyst and ally. We blend advanced technology with

the best and brightest people to elevate communications to an

experiential level. Ultimately, we help our customers realize their

potential for growth, innovation and profitability. We do these

things so that virtually every form of communications in the smart,

digital business world can become more natural, more productive,

and more of an experience in and of itself.

This eBook offers insights on how you can take advantage of

Avaya innovations to build your own smart digital world.

Digital Offers Unlimited Potential for Growth, Innovation and Profits

Companies now rise and fall based on how they

communicate with and among their customers,

employees, investors, regulators and other stakeholders.


Nine out of 10 businesses today are undergoing some form of digital

transformation and that customer experience is a stated top priority. What is

puzzling is how few companies actually map their customers’ journeys to guide

their customer engagement strategies.2 How can this be?

Contact centers are often where the disconnect starts.

Even so-called “multichannel” or even “omnichannel” environments are usually

disparate, patched-together point solutions acting independently and in silos. It’s

no wonder communications break down within contact centers, between contact

centers (when a company has more than one), and between subject matter

experts, both within the contact centers and other areas of the enterprise. These

disruptions frustrate your customers and contact center agents alike. Ultimately,

customer satisfaction and net promoter scores suffer.

Avaya bridges this digital divide with the industry’s first pure-play, end-to-end

customer engagement platform: Avaya OceanaTM Solution. Avaya Oceana comes

to you “out of the box” with complete, integrated, multi-touch support for all

media — e-mail, chat, SMS, intelligent chatbot, co-browse, social media, voice and

video — across various devices. It integrates seamlessly with other Avaya

customer engagement solutions and third-party apps, enabling you to deliver a

unified omnichannel experience integrated at both the channel and data levels.

You gain unprecedented flexibility to customize workflows so you can design

and execute business strategies that deliver optimal customer experiences and

produce superior outcomes when and how customers want them.

Avaya OceanaTM — At the Heart of Digital Transformation

A Digital Wave — The Oceana Family

Beyond multi-touch communications capabilities, Avaya

Oceana offers a range of tools and resources to create

individualized customer experiences based on a

contextual, 360-degree view of your customers’

journeys. The Oceana family includes:

• Avaya OceanaTM — our advanced,

multi-touch digital communications

experience solution for contact centers.

• Avaya OceanaTM Workspaces — a browser-based

desktop that enables contact center agents to handle

multiple interactions across channels simultaneously

through a single workspace and delivers a full view of

a customer’s journey across all touch points.

• Avaya OceanalyticsTM — breaking down

the silos around traditional analytics tools through

flexible collection, consolidation, normalization,

processing and analysis and generating rich

visualization of data to fuel real-time decision making.


Digital transformation is more than a single technology. It’s all

about reimagining the way you do business, re-engineering certain

processes and creating alignment between areas of the enterprise

that may have always functioned independently. True transformation

means addressing several important challenges:

Legacy processes. The old adage that automating a bad process

still produces a bad process is especially true in digital transformation.

With the new technologies available today, legacy processes may

not be necessary — or even appropriate — going forward. Why require

five steps to get customer support if only two are needed? If one-third

of your contact center agent time is spent on solving the same

problem over and over, why not digitally educate and equip your

customers to resolve that problem themselves, at their own tempo,

only engaging experts and agents when they are truly required?

Culture. Change is hard. People become entrenched in — and obstinate

about — the way things have always been done. New technologies and

processes can be threatening, especially if they eliminate or

substantially change existing roles and responsibilities. Have you

figured out how to help employees embrace new ways of conducting

business?

Leadership and governance. Changing the business in fundamental

ways requires executive buy-in, sponsorship and steady leadership.

Should you transform all at once or take measured steps? Who will

lead the effort, and will that person have authority to make tough

decisions? Will the initiative support and enhance business goals and

strategies? How will you measure progress and what mechanisms are

in place to address problems that arise?

Knowing your customers. Digital transformation can enable mass

personalization on a grand scale. Yet if you don’t “know your

customers” really well, how can you possibly decide what they want,

how to present it to them, and how to make it profitable? Do you have

a firm grip on the big data that infuses your organization?

Implementation and ongoing process improvement. Most businesses

today run lean and employees are stretched to the max. So how can

you institute transformational change over a period of months and

possibly years while conducting business as usual? What strategic

mix of internal and external resources can help you operate and

achieve short-term wins that feed long-term progress?

Addressing these and other transformation-related challenges can

be daunting. However, in our work with businesses around the world,

we have discovered five key steps organizations can take to minimize

disruption, boost adoption of new digital capabilities and leverage

technology advances for competitive advantage. Read on to learn more.

Challenges of Taking Legacy Experiences to the Digital World

With the new technologies available today, legacy processes

may not be necessary — or even appropriate — going forward.


STEP 1: Discovery: The Ounce of Prevention That’s Worth a Pound of Cure

The starting point for any digital initiative should be a clear

understanding among business leaders of your organization

(not just the IT folks) about the nature, direction and projected

outcomes of the transformation. A discovery process is essential

to achieving this understanding.

Discovery should involve key stakeholders, especially senior

executives, from across the business, even areas you wouldn’t

normally include. Digital transformation typically affects most

parts of the business. Their input provides the foundation for:

• Gaining executive alignment on what is going to change,

what the envisioned process will look like and, most importantly,

what outcomes it will produce.

• Identifying legacy processes that exist today, gaps between

those processes and the envisioned digital processes, the steps

necessary to bridge those gaps, and the financial and business

results of making the change. Key elements in discovery include:

A Situational Assessment enables executives to weigh in on business

drivers and expectations, as well as the agendas and requirements of

other stakeholders. Other “in-flight” projects that might impact the

digital transformation can be identified and relevant contact center or

unified communications requirements can be assessed. All of these

should be mapped to short-term and long-term business goals and

key business strategies to ensure alignment.

Analysis and Opportunity Prioritization is the process of defining

needs, potential solutions, their impacts, and alignment with existing

and planned technology. This is where gaps between existing and

planned processes are analyzed and prioritized. Target applications

and technology architectures (including current and future reference

architecture) should be identified at this point, along with technology

solutions that are to be deployed to meet strategic objectives, including

customer experience improvement and operational savings.

Road Map and Recommendation is the final step before solution

implementation. The detailed road map is prepared to show migration

from current to the target digitally enabled environment. A phasing

strategy sequences projects to accelerate predicted outcomes and

mitigate risk. A project feasibility report describes the initiative time

line, projects, dependencies, costs and controls. And a rollout plan

includes key performance indicators, a feedback mechanism at

specified milestones, and a tracking methodology that monitors,

measures and reports on initiative outcomes.

Figure 1. Solution Road Map Development

Situational

Assessment

Analysis and

Opportunity

Prioritization

Road Map and

Recommendation


STEP 2: Customer Experience Strategy: Walking in Your Customers’ ShoesHave you ever tried to connect with your organization’s customer

service department online, via phone, or via the mobile app?

Do you have a mobile app that is integrated across the customer

experience? Building a customer experience strategy is a vital step

for envisioning the digitally transformed environment and under-

standing its impact on the way customers interact with your business.

A customer experience strategy has three equally important components:

Customer journey mapping. Who are your most valued customers

and how do they engage your organization? As they proceed through

the sales funnel, make purchases and engage with your customer

support personnel post-sale, where are bottlenecks and disconnects

that disrupt the customer experience and the velocity of interaction?

Where do customers get frustrated? What parts of the process

delight them? When you clearly segment your customer base and

analyze their paths along the end-to-end customer journey, you

will reveal opportunities for process improvement, digitalization

and automation, and ultimately ways to distinguish your organization

from competitors.

Channel alignment. The holy grail of customer experience,

of course, is to create a seamless experience regardless of the

device, location and even time of the customer’s interaction. With

an understanding of customer segmentation and customer journey,

you will have the information needed to align all channels and deliver

a consistent experience for both the customer and the business.

Imagine, too, capturing customer, business and situational context

across all touch points. You can use those “bread crumbs” to gain

360-degree customer context and further enrich the customer journey.

Routing. A key to optimizing customer experience is making sure

customers can get to the right resource at the right time, including

reaching beyond the call center deeper into the enterprise for

knowledge workers who can answer questions and address issues.

That ability to access the right resource is impacted by many factors —

time of day, day of week, holidays, type of customer, type of issue,

type of resource required…the list goes on. It’s important to have a

routing strategy that accounts for all these factors, as well as tools

that give business users in your organization — not just the IT

professionals — flexibility and control over routing decisions.


STEP 3: Integrated Customer Experience: Making It Easy on YourselfWhether yours is a “greenfield” implementation or refinement of

an existing environment, customer experience will be defined largely

by how well different solution elements work with each other. How

do you want customers to engage with your contact center agents,

and through which parts of the engagement architecture do you

want different types of transactions to be conducted? Will contact

center agents be housed in one or more locations, or will they be

a more mobile workforce operating from home?

Integration will also play a large part in your costs, both upfront during

deployment and with ongoing maintenance. But bottom line, customers

don’t care what solutions you use — only that those solutions enable them

to interact with you and remain invisible during the customer experience.

This is only possible if your technology platform has three characteristics:

open, modular and easily extensible. It should support the design,

creation and deployment of advanced applications, without

developers having to acquire specialized communications expertise.

By being open, the platform will be much easier for your organization

to leverage and integrate with virtually any third-party data and

applications. For example, many organizations today use customer

relationship management platforms such as Salesforce.com.

Your customer engagement solution should easily integrate with

those and other existing applications, whether front office or back

office, to extend your investment in technology and still make the

transition to a digitally enabled state.

Being modular means the platform allows you to select a range

of capabilities over time to meet your company’s goals and initiatives

and drive business results that will change over time. It should enable

use of simple pre-built applications so you can build your own apps or

integrate with other apps, whether from Avaya or third-party

providers.

Extensible means having a platform on which your organization can

expand and adapt as your business changes, shaping new, innovative

and differentiated customer and employee experiences, as well as

accommodating new and future requirements.

Figure 2. The Avaya Program and Project Management Methodology

Presales

Predictable

Initiation

Planning

Execution

Closure

Pro

ject

Co

ord

inat

ion

Pro

ject

Man

agem

ent

Pro

gra

m M

anag

emen

t

Reliable Repeatable Efficient

• Understand business objectives and requirements• Define engagement scope • Develop statement of work and related pricing• Prepare return on investment analysis when appropriate

• Establish project structure • Create basic governance plans, including the project,

communications and risk management plans

• Review statement of work and delivery dates with you• Introduce project team members and their roles• Review project design and overview of project governance, including

project management support and change management processes• Perform Network Readiness Assessment to determine network

capabilities for voice and video traffic• Deliver project plan

• Verify the solution is fully delivered• Seek feedback from you about project delivery, timeliness and quality• Transition to ongoing support

• Install and configure the Avaya solution• Execute cutover and migration to the new solution, including

training, troubleshooting, technical support and issue resolution


STEP 4: Solution Deployment: Step-wise, Not a Giant LeapDigital transformation of customer and employee engagement processes are

high-profile initiatives that impact large areas of the enterprise. Many issues

will need to be addressed, from strategic direction to business operations to

cultural and global considerations. Stakeholders will have competing priorities. So a step process — a gradual migration to digital rather than “rip and replace” — is preferable.

A proven implementation strategy, along with an effective project

management approach and resources, can address many typical

implementation issues and provide a framework for adding new features and

functions to your customer experience. With such a strategy you can also avoid

cost overruns, scheduling delays and extended periods of downtime — constant

threats during any solution deployment.

An effective program and project management approach provides both the

implementation methodology and resources needed to drive consistency, quality

and efficiency through your deployment. Such services should be scalable to match

the requirements of your deployment. They should include highly skilled and

experienced professionals to help you deliver the business impact and outcomes

your company expects.

Above all, the approach should be predictable, reliable and repeatable.

Predictable means services that minimize risk to your organization by being

delivered according to plans and schedules that you review and agree to. Reliable

means delivering results on time, adhering to the schedule and managing issues

that arise in a timely manner. Repeatable means using proven processes that reflect

industry-leading best practices.

The Importance of Equipping Your Implementation Team

Your implementation team is under enough pressure

without being hamstrung by a lack of resources,

especially tools that can address common

implementation challenges. One way Avaya answers

this requirement is by building Avaya Oceana on

Avaya Breeze™, the industry’s first communications-

oriented, standards-based, open platform. With Avaya

Breeze, partners and customers, without deep

telephony knowledge, can implement innovative

solutions enabling organizations to accomplish their

objectives. Any developer familiar with web

technologies can build Avaya Breeze Snap-ins to

extend Avaya Oceana and solve unique problems

with minimal effort.

Avaya Oceana also includes powerful, user-friendly

workflow design tools via Avaya Engagement

Designer. Through the simple drag and drop design

interface of Engagement Designer, the right resources,

content and context can be brought together across

CRM and other systems to deliver a holistic customer

engagement environment. Flexible workflows that can

easily change with business requirements dramatically

reduce costs and increase the speed of implementing

customized customer journeys.


STEP 5: Solution Optimization: Controlling Your DestinyAt the speed of business today, even the smallest outage or disruption

can cost hundreds of thousands, if not millions, of dollars in product

sales, service opportunities and brand reputation damage. This is why

businesses increasingly expect proactive support — the identification of issues before they can create an outage, and constant

improvement of the technology.

Both can be achieved if you take front-line experience and lessons

learned and bake them into remote network access tools that not only

detect problems proactively, but also programmatically resolve those

problems in minutes. At Avaya, we call this Secure Access Link (SAL).

Our SAL Gateway enables us to deliver rapid problem resolution,

problem prevention and solution optimization.

Not all remote network access solutions are equal. Three key attributes

determine their effectiveness:

How smart they are. There should be flexible deployment options with

minimal hardware and software requirements. It should enable efficient

and timely delivery of service packs for software updates and easily

integrate with automated and advanced diagnostics solutions. And

when support is required, it should allow your personnel to connect

with the vendor’s experts with a single click.

How much control they give you. The solution should give you total

approval/denial control over who accesses your network. If you do

grant access, the solution should track and provide a detailed log of

support activity so you see which vendor personnel did what and

when while logged onto your network.

How they provide security. The solution should have no inbound

connections into your enterprise — all connections should be strictly

outbound from your data center so you have the ultimate control.

The solution should feature “host containment” to automatically

prevent support personnel from “host-hopping” from server to server.

Each support session should be encrypted and then quickly torn down

when concluded. And, finally, the solution should require two-factor

or multi-factor authorization by any vendor support personnel who

request a support session.

Today’s cyber threat environment demands that you secure your

networks and applications, yet still have access to rapid and

responsive technical support. If your communications solutions are

smart, give you control and provide the level of security you need,

when a problem arises or when new innovations are available, you can

get the support you need without unnecessary delays.

When Secure Access Link is used, Avaya customers enjoy

42 percent faster resolution time on major outages and

50 percent faster time when SAL is available to Tier 4

engagements vs. those without SAL.

Trust Avaya Because Experience is Everything

The global transformation to digital is creating amazing opportunities

today: digital commerce, digital entertainment and digital communications.

Far more than a trend, digital transformation is the foundation of how

successful organizations will stay relevant in the future.

What’s the role of Avaya in this new, smart digital world? We are delivering

unique business value with our smart digital solutions.

It starts with Avaya Breeze, our technology platform that simplifies

application development while delivering built-in capabilities for enhanced

mobile, customer-facing and cloud requirements through

its preprogrammed tools and Snap-ins. With it, you can add to just about

any business process and “pull things together.”

Avaya Oceana addresses the customer-facing side of your business. This

digital customer engagement platform provides a clearer, more complete

view of your digital customers’ activities. It helps you drive customer

satisfaction, loyalty and lifetime value. It helps you create a competitive

differentiated brand experience while optimizing your agent and resource

productivity. Above all, it helps you produce better business outcomes at

the speed your customers demand.

It’s a whole new, smart world. Let’s build it together. The insights offered

in this eBook are a starting point for your own digital transformation. To

learn more, contact your Avaya Account Manager or Avaya Authorized

Partner. Or visit us online at www.avaya.com/oceana.

Above all, Avaya Oceana helps you produce better

business outcomes through a clearer, more complete

view of your digital customers’ activities.

Learn MoreFor more information on digital transformation, Avaya Oceana and other customer experience capabilities from Avaya, contact your Avaya

Account Manager or Authorized Partner, or visit us online at Avaya.com/oceana.

© 2018 Avaya Inc. All rights reserved.All trademarks identified by ®, TM or SM are registered marks, trademarks and service marks, respectively, of Avaya Inc.11/19 • CC7986EN

http://www.Avaya.com/oceana

the fundamentals of digital transformationdigital transformation is more than a single technology....

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