IOT AND THE PAYMENTS INDUSTRY

Posted By Michael Navarrete on May 20, 2016

The following is an excerpt from a whitepaper that was published by iris Concise, the management consulting arm of iris Worldwide, a global creative agency. The full report, "IoT and the Payments Industry - Driving Value within the context of Customer Experience" can be viewed and downloaded here. A great deal has been written about the Internet of Things (IoT) over the past several years winning the attention of executives, technologists, and futurists alike. ​

The purpose of the whitepaper is to take an in-depth view of IoT and discuss its impact on Customer Experience in the Financial Payments industry. In this report, we answer three questions:

• How has IoT changed value-creation and the customer mindset?
• What are near-term trends that need to be watched?
• What are long-term challenges and opportunities?

In evaluating the questions above, our central finding is that the full potential of IoT is nowhere near complete realization. In fact, IoT’s role in delivering value and driving customer experience will only become more apparent as scale and inter-connectivity continue to grow.

Although we are not exactly in danger of having SkyNet take over – the machines are certainly talking to each other. In the next phase of the IoT transformation as it relates to the payments industry, we have landed on three key takeaways:

1. Invest in the Future: Senior Leaders and Executives should be evaluating how the new technologies, databases, device management, and business rules integrate with their business, partners, and external stakeholders in a way that will allow them to achieve real-time response and build to scale.


2. Shift your Mindset: the companies and executives get in front of the IoT growth will achieve a dramatic information advantage over their competitors, but doing so will require leaders to adopt a new dogma that embraces a data-driven locus of control.


3. Address Key Painpoints: key challenges are the evil-twin of key differentiators. Strategies that can successfully address this customer painpoints will effectually drive solutions that center on an optimized customer experience, win the hearts of customers, and improve operational performance.

And naturally, while all this change happens, don’t forget to keep your number one priority in mind: the customer…after all, that’s the whole point, right?

Mike Navarrete is a Director for iris Concise in the New York office.  He is the leader of the Customer Experience practice and advises executives and senior leaders in the areas of Customer, Marketing, and Digital Transformation Strategy.