티맥스소프트

by Kelly McClure, Vice President of Global Marketing

Recently, we identified the top 7 tech trends for 2021 based on research from Mulesoft, ZDNet, and others—customer experience, data integration, digital cultures, digital innovation, composable enterprises, automation, and microservices and service mesh. Every one of these trends has a digital component, a reflection of how the view of digital transformation transitioned from “it’s in the works” to “we have to do this now.” Putting off the digitization of processes, such as checking equipment out of a lab or a loan application, could have meant the end of a business, and even now, in 2021, it still could.

The need for disruptive innovative digital transformation isn’t going to go away anytime soon. Businesses who want to stay ahead in an uncertain climate will need to be on-trend. The good news is that we have the prescription for success—the migration of legacy apps and databases to a modern, cloud infrastructure. This has inspired us to write a series of articles that tackles each of the seven trends and explains how modernization and migration can make them happen. Let’s start with customer experience (CX).

Are you multi-experienced? CX defined

Because of the pandemic, customers have become more dependent on their devices, using them to open a checking account, order restaurant deliveries, plan home renovations, and so on. Customer experience has never been more important. A recent Forrester survey concluded that 88% of IT decision-makers believe that CX will be their competitive differentiator and advantage in 2021.

So, what is CX, exactly? Hundreds of different definitions of customer experience are out on the web. Smarter CX has one we really like: “CX is the creation of memorable and personal interactions so that customers want to spend more time with a particular company.” These interactions deliver a multi-experience journey, whereby customers can engage with the company multiple ways, such as:

• Brick-and-mortar store visits
• On mobile apps
• In social media
• In a web or text chat
• In support forums or contact centers
• Clicking an ad
• Via IoT devices (for example, scanning a QR code to pay for a purchase in a store)

Creating a CX journey that increases engagement and sales

Creating a journey that includes most or all of these interactions is no small feat. A mobile app that is easy to use is often at the heart of it, but you will lose customers if it does not integrate with and behave the same as an ecommerce website or a customer can’t ask questions immediately in a chat, for example. According to Gartner, to deliver the ultimate CX journey, you need scalable development of fit-for-purpose apps that span all the way customers engage--including custom mobile apps, responsive web and PWAs, immersive, and conversational app support.

Gartner’s definition only includes one aspect of delivering CX—how to build applications that make it easy for customers to do business with you or contact you with questions and concerns. It takes more than a snazzy development platform to make sure customers have personal and memorable interactions with your business. Those applications need to connect with your business systems quickly and easily. Therefore, your CX strategy will go nowhere without a modern and agile infrastructure.

Yet, many companies are still using legacy systems to run their business. These systems are often hard-wired, have monolithic architectures that are difficult to change, and are difficult, if not impossible, to integrate with modern technologies. They struggle to work with real-time information and, in some dramatic cases, can’t provide electronic output. Then there’s legacy code. It is often a black box, so trying to integrate it with more modern code can bust your IT budget and exhaust your resources.

Cloud migration and legacy modernization to the CX rescue

The cloud offers the elasticity, reliability, and scalability needed for customer experiences that enable your company to stand out in the competitive crowd. Migrating applications to the cloud with a legacy modernization platform and modern database management system is one of the fastest ways to improve all the ways your customers engage with your company.

The combination of a legacy modernization platform and a modern RDBMS provides customers with modern, easy-to-use, and high-performing interactions—without starting from scratch. This combination is a sensible option that enables organizations to take advantage of cloud’s benefits quickly and painlessly. No workload or application is left behind, and any future applications built in the new infrastructure can use legacy data that is easily accessed.

Create memorable and personal CX with TmaxSoft

Two TmaxSoft products, OpenFrame and Tibero, can provide the legacy modernization platform and RDBMS to help you build the experience your customers crave. Learn more about the benefits of modernizing your infrastructure in this eBook.

About Kelly McClure

Kelly McClure is the Vice President of Global Marketing for TmaxSoft. Her 20-year marketing career spans both Fortune 1000 companies and fast growth technology startups. Kelly is responsible for leading TmaxSoft’s marketing strategy. She is experienced in aligning marketing and sales, building relevant content and messaging and developing integrated lead generation campaigns. Before joining TmaxSoft, Kelly served as the Vice President of Marketing for 10th Magnitude and held senior marketing roles with DataStax, BMC Software and Micro Focus. Kelly has a bachelor’s degree from Purdue University and an MBA from Loyola University Chicago.​