Kader Sakkaria and Imran are technology executives and business consultants who help businesses digitally transform. Both come from the financial services industry and are based in the Chicago suburb area. They specialize in cloud-first, API-first, and mobile-agnostic approaches to enterprise applications, with a focus on customer-centric design and scalable infrastructure.
Host: Richard Lowe | Guests: Kader Sakkaria and Imran
Conversation Transcript
Richard: Kader, what is digital transformation?
Kader: Digital transformation is the buzzword everybody’s been talking about for the past 10 years. It’s not a new concept. But it’s an interesting journey organizations have to take to focus on customer experience and deliver a customized experience by each channel the customer comes through. They need to feel they can do a transaction or process at any time, any place. In this age of cell phones and iPhones, the way we do our day-to-day work has transformed. It makes it more important for organizations to adapt and deliver the experience everyone is looking for.
When Transformation Fails: Government Websites
Richard: I had an experience today with the Florida unemployment website. It’s horribly slow, crashing, losing pages, probably 10 years old, written in ASP.NET. It’s gotten complaints all the way up to the senators and governor. There’s actually a law in Florida that says everything should move to the cloud. But they spent $7 million on servers and equipment. If it had been in the cloud, they could have used elastic capabilities and it would have performed well. Capital expenditures versus operating expenditures. And they’re trying to fix it by buying more servers and disks rather than moving to the cloud, which would probably be easier.
Kader: If we had planned the journey and worked toward better experiences, it would have been much more pleasant and appreciated right now. The challenge with a lot of organizations is the security concern. Government agencies have more personal information than most, so they need to be extra careful about data security. But cloud has become more secure over the years. There have been a lot of security parameters established around localization and PII data handling.
That’s what Imran and I have pushed within organizations: cloud-first, API-first, mobile-agnostic approaches. That way we can define user experience by the channel customers come through, scale up or down based on need, and focus on our assets. With COVID, a lot of organizations had to create work-from-home capability and scale up. Being in cloud environments significantly helped us scale and create that experience.
Richard: I have a client in Canada who suddenly had to move 1,000 people from office to field. They managed it within a couple of days because they’re cloud-based. They used bring-your-own-device where they could and gave people laptops where they couldn’t. Within a few days all 1,000 were working from home and doing well.
Publix is another example. That supermarket chain down here in Florida, their website’s been hammered because people are ordering stuff for delivery. It’s been performing very well. The customer journey is great, easy to use, fast, efficient.
Cloud Security Is No Longer the Argument
Imran: Managing scale for such a large audience is difficult. But the major problem older technologies are facing is that they weren’t designed keeping the customer in the picture. An unemployment website should know there will be peak spikes. Cloud has been there for many years now and it’s as secure as homegrown data centers. The argument of security on cloud versus on-premise is almost dying. The top organizations are all on cloud. Even the larger banks and financial institutions. It gives the flexibility to handle peaks, which almost every application is facing today.
Kader: Imran makes a valid point. We were both in financial services before. Banks were trailing behind, but they made the leap. A lot of them have moved to the cloud and are scaling. The experience with banks has been phenomenal. Deposits from home, money transfers to people in need, none of that has been impacted. Security has become part of the DNA of cloud, not separate from it. Post-COVID, the whole world is going to look at the digital footprint and the digital ecosystem. This pandemic has changed the goals and objectives of organizations going forward completely.
The Commute Is Over
Richard: I think this is going to change the United States and probably the rest of the world completely. I used to do an hour-and-a-half commute to and from work. 20 miles for an hour and a half in California. That’s probably going to be highly reduced. Smog is way down. If this becomes a permanent change, it could dramatically change the climate change picture. If we’re putting 30 or 40% less junk in the air, maybe that helps a lot.
Kader: Sometimes we say ideas were too advanced for their time. Imagine Peapod right now. They would be one of the largest online grocery chains. Some of these were much more advanced for their time, but at least the goals of the future have already been set up by COVID-19.
Imran: Some of these changes are going to be permanent. Organizations that were strict about working from home had different policies. But this shows people can be constructive and efficient working from home. Losing a couple of hours every day, five days a week just to commute, no productivity, sitting in a car. People started using mobile phones in the car because they were bored for 45 or 50 minutes. Some of this change is going to be permanent, and we should be excited for that.
Zoom Steps Up and Admits Its Problems
Richard: I got an email from Zoom. They admitted they were no way prepared for this. Everybody’s using Zoom now for homeschooling and business. The email went into how they had to expand their network multiple times over, that security holes were identified and fixed fast, and they were soliciting feedback. That’s the support side of the digital transformation journey. If you’re not quick to support things and ready to admit there were issues, customers won’t come back. If you’re honest, people come back. Zoom said they had problems, fixed them, still have problems, and are fixing them. The increase was an order of magnitude higher than a month ago.
Imran: The trend has changed. Previously, users wanted everything perfect. But in the last five to 10 years, especially millennials, they like to see improvements and be part of the improvement. Organizations willing to share bugs, holes, and issues are doing much better than those that aren’t ready to share. Mobile industry has taught users that every six months you’ll get something better. Every invention needs a progress path. Feedback mechanism is very important. Digital transformation is not a one-way path. It needs to listen to what is happening after you do something.
Kader: One of my professors at Northwestern University described this. A large tractor manufacturing company built a phenomenal feature-based product. Everything you could want. But they couldn’t understand why the features weren’t being used. The professors went in and found that about 90% of the buttons were covered with duct tape. The farmers and helpers were so confused by all the controls that they taped over everything they didn’t need and only used what was operationally necessary. You can’t give customers too many features of what you think they need. You have to give them what they want.
Kids, Homeschooling, and Agile Thinking
Richard: My neighbor just started homeschooling her kids and is thrilled. What used to take the whole day in school, the child finishes in an hour and a half at home. They don’t have the distractions of school. Of course they’re missing socialization. But this is probably going to permanently change society because people are finding homeschooling actually works. Now they’re with their families again, which is a major shocker, and they have to adjust to having everyone home.
Kader: I agree. That phrase from Jurassic Park comes to mind: “Life always finds its way.” I have three kids and I’m looking at what they’re doing. Not much distraction. They’re spending more time on creative, interesting things they didn’t have time for in their normal routines. My son has been creating stuff around the house that I’m proud to display.
My son was trying to build a floating board with just straws. He had so many iterations. He came to me asking, “What do you think about this?” Then his mom. It’s like this digital life of doing things more agile. Start with a base, get feedback, build on top, get feedback. You come back with a much better product. You can see it in your own kids right now.
Kudos to Zoom, Teams, WebEx, Google Meet. All these tools have stepped up for the educational process. And they’re getting live feedback from customers right now. That gives a much better path to define the product feature roadmap.
Understanding What Your Customer Actually Wants
Richard: A retail chain I worked at did a survey of how to make stores more efficient. They hired a team to observe people as they walked around. They found that 90% of the time people turn right when they enter a store. The first thing people want to see is flowers, which makes them feel good. Then produce, because it makes them feel healthy. Then junk food, because they’ve done something healthy so they can reward themselves. We found that out from customer surveys, watching customers shop, and experimenting.
You can do the same thing on websites with shopping cart analysis and data analytics. Maybe customers are abandoning your pages. Maybe they’re not getting to the bottom of long pages. Maybe you don’t take American Express and you’re losing 20% of your customers. A company like Amazon has figured this out. You can do just about anything on their website and it’s easy.
Imran: People get very attached to their ideas. They think their ideas are the best. When you design products and features, understanding what your customer is looking for is critical. I’ve designed and developed many applications from web to mobile, and I’ve always struggled to keep people on the journey of how the customer is thinking.
At the core level, customers right now are thinking about communication and how more than 10 or 15 people can talk on Zoom. I’ve seen Zoom and Microsoft Teams start doing digital backgrounds so you don’t see what’s behind your camera. But no one has figured out how to mute other people. Half the time in meetings people are saying, “Can you please mute?” That’s what users are actually thinking about. Keep the customer at the core and keep it simple.
The Gig Economy Explosion
Richard: This pandemic is driving something else. People need income now, and they’re turning to the gig economy. They’re finding companies that need telecommuting support. They’re selling services on the internet. If you know how to draw, you go to a gig website and sell your drawing expertise. If you know how to proofread, write music, do video, whatever, you can advertise it. Virtual assistants is a great thing. Taxes, all kinds of stuff people are willing to pay for. My neighbor works for one of the big banks. They’re hiring call center people like crazy. Walmart too. Probably Amazon.
Kader: A little over a year ago, Imran and I were talking about how HR would have to look at talent pools going forward. This whole gig economy where you create a job and somebody takes the piece of work, finishes it, checks it back in, and gets paid once it’s validated. Companies are going to say, “I have a project. Rather than ramping up all these people, I’m going to post it and someone can take the job.” My prediction was three to five years. Based on this pandemic, it might accelerate much sooner.
Richard: Back in the Great Depression, people earned income by shoveling coal and doing whatever they needed to in the community. Today they’ve got the whole world at their fingertips. It’s almost going to be like a global barter system.
Kader: I agree. This is how barter systems used to be, but very localized. This is going to be a global barter system.
The Internet Holds Up
Richard: I’m actually amazed that the communication system has been holding up. I’m getting good response time. Overall, the internet seems to be performing well considering how many people jumped on it in days.
Kader: It’s been pretty good. Our neighborhood had some fiber laid down, which gave us the bandwidth. But from a corporate perspective, a lot of their bandwidth was based on people using it at work. Corporate infrastructure teams had to reallocate bandwidth so external connections from home could be productive instead of everyone using it at the office.
Imran: I had a couple of disasters in two weeks where my internet was not working for a few hours. But my provider sent an SMS right away saying they knew about the outage and expected a fix in two hours. It actually got fixed within an hour both times. Previously the conversation was about electricity. Now both electricity and internet have become integral. If you keep your customer and audience inclusive, people forgive. They know things aren’t easy.
Richard: I receive the same kind of messages from my provider. If the internet goes down: “It’s down, a car hit a pole, team’s on the way, expect it up in three hours.” And then updates every step. That’s part of the customer journey. Even hotels do it now. Marriott sends text messages along your entire route. “We know you’ve arrived at the airport, your bag is waiting.” Through the whole journey to the hotel to the room. People are involved too. That’s what makes businesses compete. Hotels have to compete with Airbnb. Taxis have to compete with Uber and Lyft. They compete by providing better service and understanding what customers want.
Mobile and the Tilted Head Syndrome
Richard: As I walk around now watching people stuck in their houses and yards, they are all on their cell phones. FaceTiming all the time. Young people, old people. Group conversations, games, movies on their little screens. Even when they go shopping, their phones remind them of specials. Geofencing, where you can make an ad appear only in a specific area. When people drive past the store they get a coupon. All of these things are part of digital transformation.
Kader: Sentiment tracking has become pretty prevalent. In an airport, you walk out of the restroom and there are three buttons: how was your experience? They put them right outside TSA checkpoints too. Instant feedback right when you experience something, not asking people to recall the experience later. You can leverage artificial intelligence to see when to pop that feedback request to users.
There’s something called Tilted Head Syndrome, where everyone’s on their phones with their heads tilted down. We went from the Industrial Revolution to what is now an Information Revolution. Where is the information now? That’s what’s driving everybody, and what organizations are looking at as they transform into a digital footprint.
Closing Words
Richard: Digital transformation is now, and it probably just got accelerated by several years. This won’t be over tomorrow or next month. It will change the world. Digital transformation will make this a different experience than the epidemic of 1918. People can stay home now because they can work from home and school from home. It’s not always comfortable, but it’s a new world.
Kader: When you have a disruption, disruption always starts causing innovation. This is going to create much better innovation. We can start looking at the world in a new way. Stay safe, stay healthy, and stay home so we can keep the curve down.
Imran: It was a very good conversation. Hoping we’ll have more.
Learn more about Kader Sakkaria on LinkedIn and Imran on LinkedIn.
Find Richard Lowe at TheWritingKing.com.