The customer at the center: how CIOs enhance the customer experience while transforming the business

CX technologies are among the top five driving enterprise IT investments worldwide: in the post-Covid scenario, digital and omnichannel interactions have become the trump card for user loyalty. The crucial test for the CIO is when the company implements a new operating model or opens new revenue sources: it will be essential to govern data transfer and architectural change without affecting the customer experience.

Companies capable of offer a superior customer experience have growth rates five times higher than their competitors, and in managing CX, the CIO plays a key role, wrote Forrester Research ("Improving CX Through Business Discipline Drives Growth") in 2019. Five years later, in 2024, these statements are more than relevant today. In the research "State of the CIO 2023" by Foundry, technologies to optimize the customer experience are among the top five driving enterprise IT investments on a global scale in 2023 and 2024, and 51 percent of IT managers say they expect their involvement in enterprise customer experience strategies to increase.

In this growing relevance of experiences, Covid has been a watershed: CX has become increasingly digital or managed through digital tools, and the IT director is the first to be called upon in creating an experience that builds user loyalty and fuels business.

"We were the first digital hardware store in Italy with our e-commerce channel, launched as an extension of the physical store in 2002. But after Covid, top management decided to implement a further, radical transformation and we became a marketplace," says Federico Samà, E-commerce Manager of BricoBravo, an Italian DIY (do-it-yourself) and Home&Garden e-commerce company. In this business model transformation, BricoBravo's IT, headed by Samà, also made a key contribution on CX.

CX as business transformation

"The products are similar and the difference is played out on the customer experience," points out Professor Federico Rajola, president of Cetif (research center ofUniversità Cattolica in Milan, in Italy's largest specializing in the sector Finance) and author of the book "The Organization of the Information Systems Function in Banks" (Franco Angeli, 2003). "Consumers are used to the kind of experience created by digital giants such as Amazon and Apple and want to find it possibly in every online service. Platforms become, thus, key to managing customers and personalizing their experience, to the point of gradually turning every company into a tech company. Technology is the business, and companies that sell a product or service become platforms themselves, because that is the added value."

In deciding to become a marketplace, BricoBravo's management responded to a definite market trend that became apparent after 2020: online sales were growing, and sellers wanted a customized page from which they could manage their product and related elements, such as price, delivery, and user experience, without the mediation of the retailer.

In this process, BricoBravo not only had to establish the marketplace and its expertise, but also to safeguard the CX of retailers and their customers in the transition from the previous IT system to the new one. The change was not trivial, because it first required the disposal of the substantial third-party product inventory (which BricoBravo had, as a retailer); in addition, the IT team, which has about 10 people with skills in business development, personalized customer care, data entry, and marketing, had to redesign all flows and manage the transfer of data from the old system to the new platform. After two years of transition, needed mainly for stock disposal but also for work on data and processes, came the implementation of the marketplace platform, which took 5 months. 

When SaaS scalability is indispensable

"BricoBravo's strategy is clear: we are just a showcase for our retailers. In our opinion, being a retailer when you are a marketplace is unethical and not even functional for business," says Samá. "From this position comes the choice of technology, a platform SaaS that allows us to manage site traffic and scale as we grow. Previously," the manager continues, "the IT department was in charge of managing the servers, but now we have freed ourselves from those tasks, including physical and digital security. The marketplace allows us to onboard sellers and generate sales, and in this context, IT takes on an increasingly strategic role."  

The e-commerce platform chosen by BricoBravo is the one provided by VTEX (SaaS and multi-tenant), which, Samà points out, "Allows us to quickly open seller accounts with which retailers manage their catalog, sales and payments independently and in a personalized way. In two years, we have grown from 3,000 to 700,000 products on the site, and some have heavy catalogs: a robust platform that helps preserve the experience for retailers and their customers is essential in this growth process."

The technology partner provides the platform, the CMS (Content Management System) and the OMS (Order Management System), which has the ability, critical to BricoBravo, to split the same order across different sellers. In fact, the customer can place the same order from different sellers, and the platform must then split the payments as well. 

Omnichannel and the single view of the customer

Customer experience is also imperative for Euronics Italia, the home appliance and electronics distribution group, which has developed its digital ecosystem around the concept of customer-centricity.

"We have focused all our attention on customer experience, analyzing in a timely manner the interactions with our e-commerce platform, to constantly improve the user experience," says Umberto Tesoro, Digital Director of Euronics since July 2022. Tesoro's task is to develop the e-commerce channel and design the company's digital ecosystem by presiding over all channels through which consumers contact the group.

"The idea is to create a unique customer view that takes into account the collection of all our consumers' data regardless of whether they interact with Euronics online or offline," the manager points out. This is achieved through "a data platform that enables effective consumer segmentation."

Euronicssta developing its online presence and digital assets by fully embracing the Salesforce ecosystem for its e-commerce platform, CRM, and consumer data collection (while of course complying with privacy and data processing regulations). On this basis, in 2021, the group launched a completely revamped e-commerce channel, while in February 2023 it released a new loyalty program and a completely redesigned app revolving around the goal of facilitating product purchase.

Tesoro emphasizes the centrality of technology as a driver for the business: "My role isdirectly reporting to the Ceo, precisely in recognition of the strategic dimension of digital assets, which make it possible to build a direct relationship with customers and a virtuous circle between online and offline. Suffice it to say that 30 percent of online sales see the item picked up in the physical store through book-and-collect."

The strategic role of IT on data

But even in the presence of a partner who gives flexibility with its technology and makes its expertise available, the strategic work of in-house IT remains: it is the CIO who leads with its long-term vision, deciding and planning future technological and organizational developments.

"The digital journey is never totally smooth if you have a strong IT legacy," Samá points out. "Obstacles, however, are overcome if you stay focused on four essential elements: maintaining SEO positioning and performance, managing data migration, preparing vendors with training activities, and ensuring the customer experience."

BricoBravo has a customer base of 600 thousand users, which IT migrated from the old to the new platform. The strategic role of Samà's team was to pull data from the previous systems and transfer it to the new format, setting priorities.

"Some data is lost, it is physiological, or it is too expensive to transport," Samá points out. "So you have to be able to select what you can leave out and what, on the other hand, is strategic to keep. For example, we left out the part about collecting points from sellers' customers-we started from scratch."

The customer care part is also supported with data analytics and artificial intelligence.

"Through VTEX's AI and marketing automation, we are able to create, subject to data consent, a profile of customers so that we can then suggest the purchase of products that are in line with previous choices or interests that emerge from research and purchases," says Samá. "The analytics activity, on the other hand, we conduct on products and product categories to study their trends and understand which ones need more visibility on the marketplace."

Providing partners and customers with smart management tools gives the end user control over the service they have purchased and builds a relationship of trust.

CIOs hunting innovation for "exceptional experiences"

Once again, it was the critical pandemic period that showed the strategic importance of these tools. As the online channel became a priority, automation and AI enabled businesses (from banks to healthcare companies to retailers) to self-service capture user identification data, assist call center operators, or continue to sell by leveraging nonphysical channels.

There is a prime example of how customer experience gives competitiveness: that of Campari and Moët Hennessy who, in a joint venture, have invested in wine delivery startup Tannico, eventually rising to 100 percent ownership at the end of 2022.

As Giorgio Ciron, director of InnovUp, an association that represents and unites the Italian innovation supply chain, points out, "During the lockdown, being able to have an e-commerce platform with a solid customer experience made a difference for these wine and spirit players." And it convinced Campari and partner to take over the company with which a virtuous circle of open innovation had been triggered to build a high-end online portal capable of offering consumers not only many different brands, but "exceptional shopping experiences."

"Even when you have the ability to innovate in-house, it is always useful to look into the ecosystem," the InnovUp director points out.

In companies that look to partnerships and open innovation to strengthen the ability to create experiences, the CIO's role will consist of "believing in innovation that comes from outside to have the commitment of the whole company," Ciron says. "The CIO must act as an interpreter between two worlds that speak two different languages, that of the more structured company and that of the lean, fast-paced innovative enterprise."

A task very much in line with the current role of the Chief Information Officer, less and less a "technician of IT" and more and more a "liaison between IT and business".