The goal of every enterprise is to server their customer which ultimately influences and benefits the end customer, which is generally the common man also known as the end user, residing in a home. Over the years, with advancements in international business and technology, enterprises have to server a wide variety of end users with varying preferences. To satisfy these preferences, enterprises follow a pro-active approach to know the customer better and thereby satisfy his need. This generally leads to a situation where different enterprises know the same customer differently. This happens because of the context of the relationship that the customer has with the enterprise. For e.g. my behavior of grocery shopping is dynamic and I might choose to either shop online or choose one of the many nearby options and the choice is usually determined by various factors – mostly personal and social. From this, if a company tries to arrive at a shopping pattern of a specific user segment, this might lead to an incorrect understanding!
From my observations, it is generally noticed that end users have a lot of option to choose from. However with changing personal and social scenarios and expectations, the preferences of the end user changes at a faster pace. This often leads to a situation where the end user usually does not have the choices that are relevant to the decision he needs to make based on the current context.
This changing preference also poses a challenge to the enterprise, as enterprises usually work with historical information and customers are usually looking at products that satisfy their present and future needs.
Let’s briefly turn our focus to the changing complexities of a home. With the innovations happening in the home appliance front, the home is increasing becoming a complex place – complex because of the increasing number of “intelligent” appliances making it difficult for a person to plan his/her activities and also manage the appliances. It is also complex because these “intelligent” appliances generate information that is useful but needs to be individually consumed and processed by the user. These appliances know your current needs and behavior within a limited context but are unable to fit this information into a wider context. These appliances may be connected to internet, but then that is just for monitoring and switching on / off remotely! There is an effort to make the appliances talk to each other, but would that alone help?
Appliances have become a part of our life and an integral part of our home. To borrow a quote from Anirban Dey’s blog on Super human computing,
it is man with machine, instead of man vs. machine
To enable man and machine to work together, there is a need to enable people to better manage and make better use of their appliances. An ERP solution for a home user would be like asking him/her to carry a mountain on their shoulders. But it is also becoming a necessity to bring the power of enterprise management systems to the home user.
The combination of cloud and big data could help bridge the disconnect. Imagine a scenario where home appliances are managed by applications on the cloud and where the information from these appliances are processed without compromising on user/home privacy. Such an architecture, that also takes into account user/home privacy and security, would greatly help in bridging the disconnect between the end user and enterprise. SAP Cloud powered by HANA could help in bridging this disconnect.
Behavioral patterns and decisions at home could influence the planning, production and marketing of products in real time. At any given time, the customer would have the choices that are most relevant. The home is the future of the enterprise!
I hope to detail my thoughts in future blog(s).
