DRIVING DIGITAL TRANSFORMATION WITH A COHERENT REGISTRATION STRATEGYBEST PRACTICES FOR USING REGISTRATION TO UNDERSTAND CUSTOMER JOURNEYS

By Charlene LiPrincipal Analyst

Altimeter, a Prophet Company

Custom research by Altimeter, a Prophet Company on behalf of Janrain

EXECUTIVE SUMMARY

Registration is a crucial but often overlooked part of the customer journey. That’s because it’s seen as a necessary evil rather than an opportunity to deepen the relationship and trust with a customer. Having a robust registration strategy is a key part of digital transformation, as it enables much of the untapped value that comes from deeply understanding customers. This report examines the role of registration in the digital customer journey, and how it can drive and support digital transformation in your organization.

TABLE OF CONTENTS

The Digital Transformation Priority

The Role of Registration in the Digital Customer Journey

Creating A Coherent Registration Strategy

Customer Value Proposition: Balancing Privacy and Ethical Data Use

Tools and Technology: Focus on Integration Drives Insight and Action

Registration Maturity in the Context of Digital Transformation

Summary

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THE DIGITAL TRANSFORMATION PRIORITYWhat we know and sense about technology transforming business is borne out of the numbers – Altimeter found 88% of organizations confirm that they are undergoing a digital transformation.1 At the core of this transformation is the adoption of digital, social, and mobile technologies by customers. And yet, Altimeter found that only 25% of organizations truly understand their customers’ journeys and have a clear understanding of key digital touch points.2

This is an astounding disconnect given the possibilities. There is a proliferation of data being created from and across digital touch points, structured enterprise data about customers and unstructured social data as well. Marketers have an unprecedented opportunity to understand, and for the first time, know customers at a depth and breadth previously unavailable. The fact is this is no longer just an untapped opportunity – the expectations set by companies like Amazon and Uber mean that organizations have an obligation to understand and meet customer needs, or risk their defection to nimbler competitors.

This is why understanding customers is at the core of digital transformation. Altimeter defines digital transformation as follows:

The realignment, or new investment in, technology and business models to more effectively engage digital customers at every touchpoint in the customer experience lifecycle.

Don’t make the mistake of thinking that digital transformation is a technology issue – it is a very human, people-centered problem and one that extends to the very human nature of company organizations and culture. Having empathy for your customers throughout their journey keeps the organization centered on understanding and meeting customer needs, ideally better and faster than anyone else.

The realignment, or new investment in, technology and business models to more effectively engage

digital customers at every touchpoint in the customer experience

lifecycle.

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Anonymous AddressableRegistration

on behavior data you’ve gathered on your own site. You may be able to serve them customized ads and promotions based on that data, but your ability to truly understand their customer journey is limited only to what you can observe as an outsider. And forget about understanding their behavior between browsers and mobile apps, let alone their motivations or expectations.

But then comes the moment of truth – when the value of registering outweighs the perceived risk of providing identifiable data. This could come at any number of points in the customer journey, such as when a customer wants to continue reading or shopping between devices, download a white paper, or comment in a community forum. Or it can come later, when registering a purchased product for warranty and service purposes. Thanks to registration, organizations can better understand and support the customer throughout their journey. For example, when Philips Sonicare toothbrush buyers register their products, they receive time-based reminders to replace their brush heads, along with a coupon to a retailer like Amazon.

THE ROLE OF REGISTRATION IN THE DIGITAL CUSTOMER JOURNEY One of the most important – and least developed – digital touchpoints is registration. This is the crucial moment when a customer makes the decision to move from an anonymous person to being addressable because of a compelling value proposition. In that process, there is a fundamental shift in the relationship between the customer and the organization. There is a deepening of trust, and permission for the organization to customize the experience for the customer based on that registration data. It also opens the door to gather and use data to further deepen the understanding about customers.

For example, someone who comes to your website probably has been tagged with tracking cookies, so you can at least understand what they are doing based

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Source: Altimeter, a Prophet company

FIGURE 1 REGISTRATION OPENS THE DOOR FOR MORE CUSTOMIZED EXPERIENCES

Evaluation

CUSTOMERIDENTITY

Awareness

Purchase

Consideration

Advocate

Loyality

Experience

FIGURE 2 REGISTRATION AND CUSTOMER IDENTITY ENABLES A RICHER DIGITAL CUSTOMER EXPERIENCE

Registration thus provides an additional layer of information that can grow over time, as the person moves through their journey (see Figure 2.). Becoming addressable creates the opportunity to personalize the content based on a growing understanding of who this

person is, and thus create a more custom experience. In addition, customer identity can help bridge the gap between Advocacy and Awareness via refer-a-friend programs, where both parties have incentives to share and respond.

Source: Altimeter, a Prophet company

Having a centralized customer identity allows the organization to create seamless, omnichannel experiences that extend across devices and channels. Forget about complex customizations, let’s just start with something basic. For example, a frequent flyer is on an airline’s website researching tickets to Spain. She has a question and decides to call the airline. The airline’s system recognizes her phone number, and is able to connect the customer profile to the recent website activity. The representative then asks if the customer is calling about the trip to Spain she was just researching online.

Does this story surprise you? It probably does because it so rarely happens today. The reality of siloed organizations is that customer information lives in different databases of departments, geographies, business units, product lines, and channels. The problem isn’t just where the data is stored, but how it is gathered in the first place. Taking a strategic, coherent approach to registration is thus the starting point for customer identity and a seamless customer journey.

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Age/Gender/JobLikesFriends

Topics of interestForwarding/influence

ViewedPreferencesShared and saved

Follows/FansLikes, FavoritesRetweets, Shares

SOCIALLOGINAND

REGISTRATION

EMAILNEWSLETTERS

CONTENT

SOCIALSIGNALS

CREATING A COHERENT REGISTRATION STRATEGYLet’s take a deeper dive into key components of the coherent registration strategy.

CUSTOMER IDENTITY MANAGEMENT: TOWARD A SINGLE VIEW OF THE CUSTOMERGetting someone to register is not the end goal – it is in fact just the beginning. That registration profile becomes the foundation for a rich customer identity, one that includes not just who this person is, but also

what they want, what they like, what they do, and who they know. This shift from using general target audiences to specific customer identity as the basis for customer engagement is a key part of digital transformation, and one that requires considerable strategy, planning, and investment.

At Johnson & Johnson, the company decided to simplify the registration process – instead of asking for name, email, phone, etc, they decided to ask just for an email address. Future interactions gave it the opportunity to phase the registration over time. Johnson & Johnson also made the decision to move to social login to remove friction in the registration and login process for customers, and also reduce administrative support for lost accounts and passwords.

But a larger strategic goal drove the adoption of social login across the organization. The company had a long-term goal of having a single record for each customer that extended across all product lines. David Insley, the Web Platform Manager at Johnson & Johnson explained, “Once we had a single way to look at consumers, we could compare interactions, and understand variances or similarities.” One use case: linking offline interactions such as coupon redemption with a specific consumer to understand what similar consumers might be interested in. Let’s take a quick look at how an organization could build layers of customer identity, starting with social login. (see Figure 4.)

FIGURE 4 TAP DIGITAL TOUCHPOINTS TO CREATE CUSTOMER IDENTITY INCREMENTALLY AND OVER TIME

Customer Identity

Management

CustomerValue

Proposition

GovernanceToolsand

Technology

FIGURE 3 COMPONENTS OF A REGISTRATION STRATEGY

Source: Altimeter, a Prophet company

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Once someone becomes addressable, organizations have the ability to gather additional data that can further deepen the relationship with better content and engagement. For example, using social sign-on to ease registration has the added benefit of potentially also including basic demographic information (age, gender, location, occupation), but also interests and influence network (friends, fans, or followers).

In this way, social login becomes a common denominator to merge identity across customer datasets. Johnson & Johnson rolled out a standardized information architecture for its consumer brand websites, which included a foundational identity management system. By standardizing registration across countries and brand sites, the company extracted responsibility for registration from brand managers and IT, and moved it to third parties like Janrain. Note that this was not a fast process – it took over two years to figure out the unique needs of each market as well as back office operations.

CUSTOMER VALUE PROPOSITION: BALANCING PRIVACY AND ETHICAL DATA USEConsumers are willing to part with their data – if they perceive there is value being created in the process and trust that the organization will use the data ethically. Not surprisingly, a top reason to share data is to get promotions and discounts (see Figure 4.) But information – often in the form of content – can also be of value to customers. For example, Philips created a mobile app to help men with grooming, including augmented reality features that allows men to “try on” different types of beards and moustaches before trimming.3 While the app is free, it’s linked to social login to enable the customer to save and share potential beard options. With the combination of relevant content and easy registration via social login, Philips can encourage product registration. The advent of connected products will make registration even easier – and relevant.

Altimeter found that while monetary incentives top the list of compelling reasons for people to share data with companies, saving time and energy is at the top of the list as well (see Figure 5).

FIGURE 5 CONSUMERS WILL SHARE DATA TO SAVE MONEY, TIME, AND EFFORT

Source: Consumer Perceptions of Privacy in the Internet of Things, Altimeter, a Prophet Company, 2015 Base: n=2062 respondents

Q: Which of the following reasons do you find most compelling or valuable to share your data with companies? (Select your top 3)

Other7%

Visibility into PERFORMANCE/AWARENESS information12%

Information to HELP ME MAKE DECISIONS32%

Helps me ACCOMPLISH something15%

LOCATION information30%

Information to help me TROUBLESHOOT a problem/access SUPPORT31%

57% PROMOTIONS, coupons, discounts, product suggestions

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The ability to gather information and data from the customer thus hinges entirely on the continued exchange of value for data. Altimeter research found that 66% of consumers have only partial, or no understanding of how their data is being used.4 Blake Cahill, the Global Head of Digital and Social at Philips, is keenly aware of the balance the company must maintain between value and privacy. He explained, “We are seeing the consumerization of privacy, where people will continue to become more savvy about their data and its use. People want to work with companies they trust. It’s up to companies to come up with a good value exchange, and be clear about what I get when I give you my data.”

Governance: Evolving The Organization Through Digital TransformationAs digital transformation unfolds, one of the trickiest issues is determining who should “own” the registration process. In the beginning, the objective behind registration may be just to reduce registration friction and support, making it natural for the website team to be in charge of registration. But problems arise when registration is managed by disparate

website teams, leading to unconnected customer identities. This is what happened at both Johnson & Johnson and Philips, as the two companies were early adopters of these types of technologies.

One of the things Philips did was to create one organization responsible for all enterprise information management and all customer data. This would be the one comprehensive place to store not only customer data from the product side, but also patient data from Philips‘ Healthcare division. The right protections and permissions needed to be in place to make sure this happened at the enterprise, not business unit, level.

Philips recognized that the value of consistent, harmonized data and analytics eclipsed any one department. It was decided to move the customer data team out of IT and into its own organization, reporting to the head of Business Transformation and into the COO. By not reporting to any one business unit or department, Philips is signaling that registration and customer identity is a strategic enterprise asset, and should be managed and led accordingly.

Because customer identity can become such an important and strategic part of the organization, it’s never too early to get key leadership in place to deal with the inevitable internal battles that hamper advancement. Having leadership involved from the beginning in this strategic issue can help the organization move through these types of inevitable transitions.

TOOLS AND TECHNOLOGY: FOCUS ON INTEGRATION DRIVES INSIGHT AND ACTIONIt’s tempting to look for the all-in-one solution that you can simply operate with the flip of a switch and make work. But especially when it comes to having a robust technology platform, most organizations are piecing it together to work with legacy customer databases

By not reporting to any one business unit or

department, Philips is signaling that registration and customer identity is a strategic enterprise asset, and should be managed

and led accordingly.

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and transaction platforms (see Figure 5). The core of Philips customer data is its master database. Philips then uses a cloud connector to tie in Janrain for online and mobile social login management.Philips uses a marketing automation tool to further engage and nurture customer relationships.

This dizzying array of technologies can be overwhelming – unless you keep the customer journey at the center of your efforts. All the data in the world won’t make a difference if you can’t take action with it. From the start, the strategy needs to have a clear idea of how to make good use of the data that is available, rather than waiting for the “360 view” of a customer that will never be complete. Instead, organizations should train for teams and business managers on how to turn insight into action. For example, Philips uses a simple data point – a person’s birthday – to drive engagement via social channels and marketing automation tool. While it has plans to do much more, Philips realizes that the organization needs time to learn how to use the data while also collecting it. Working with “small” data that is available today, will prepare your marketing team for the day when “big” data is readily available.

REGISTRATION MATURITY IN THE CONTEXT OF DIGITAL TRANSFORMATIONGiven the dynamic complexity of digital transformation, a registration strategy needs to take into account how it will have to flex and change over

time. We broke down registration maturity into three major stages, each driving a unique set of value for the organization (see Figure 6). A strategy needs to take into account how you will transition from each stage to the next – and include steps to address the major barriers at these transition points.

Implementation The focus at this stage is primarily to create a better customer experience on the website and/or enable a straight forward value proposition like accessing content or enabling engagement. For example, Philips uses Janrain’s social login in countries like China and Russia linked to local social networks, as consumers in those markets are more familiar and comfortable with using existing consumer profiles.

But an emerging need at this stage is also ensuring that there is one back-end for registration across all websites, tapping into the ability to scale customer identity and profiles across the company. The reality of replacing homegrown, disparate registration forms and systems across multiple websites requires a clear strategy of how the enterprise will create value from a common customer identity system. Both Johnson & Johnson and Philips stressed that strategy with clear goals, tight execution, and executive support was crucial from the start to overcome objections.

With a universal customer identity platform in place, the transition to the next stage begins when business leaders find ways to tap the registration data for more than just social login.

FIGURE 6 THE THREE STAGES OF REGISTRATION MATURITY

IMPLEMENTATION OPERATIONAL STRATEGIC

Source: Altimeter, a Prophet company

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OperationalThe focus at this stage is to lay the foundations to create deeper customer profiles and integration with systems that can use those profiles for marketing purposes. This includes having a robust customer identity management platform, data storage that can pull together customer data from internal and external sources, and then marketing automation and analytics to drive action and insight.

While technical integration remains a top priority at this stage, organizations should also plan how they will collect, manage, and use consumer information by putting in place an ethical data use strategy.5 Establishing and maintaining customer trust as you deepen your knowledge and relationship with them will be crucial at this stage. This includes expanding and deepening the expertise within your organization – robust training on what business leaders can (and just as importantly, can’t) do with customer data will be crucial.

At this stage, most of the value is derived from within departments, geographies, or product lines. The next stage comes from leveraging customer identity across the enterprise.

Strategic The focus at this stage is to drive strategic value for both the organization and for the customer across the organization. For example, an organization could tap the records of thousands or even millions of customers to glean insights that can be used to develop new products or services. Or even share and sell anonymized data and insights to third parties. The groundwork around ethical data use established in the previous stage is crucial to enable this type of analysis and value creation.

Even more importantly, there’s the opportunity to develop a strategic relationship with customers that transcends the boundaries of departments and even the organization. By knowing your interests and preferences – and respecting your privacy wishes – organizations with deep knowledge of their customers can create robust customer experiences across product categories. This type of customer understanding would give permission to brands like Johnson & Johnson and Philips to move from being product companies to being lifestyle brands. Even in the B2B space, the ability to suggest and support adjacent offerings creates a more robust customer experience.

SUMMARYRegistration serves as a crucial starting point on the customer journey and needs to part of the overall digital transformation of an organization. Fully realizing the potential of registration with a robust strategy from the start can prepare your organization to tap into the value created when you deeply understand and can meet the needs of your customers.

ENDNOTES 1Brian Solis, “The 2014 State of Digital Transformation” Altimeter, July 2014, http://www.altimetergroup.com/2014/07/the-2014-state-of-digital-transformation/.2ibid.

3Male Grooming Experience Center, Philips, http://www.usa.philips.com/c-w/malegrooming/home.html.

4Jessica Groopman, “Consumer Perceptions of Privacy in The Internet of Things” Altimeter, June 2015, http://www.altimetergroup.com/2015/06/new-report-consumer-perceptions-of-privacy-in-the-internet-of-things/.

5Susan Etlinger, “The Trust imperative, A Framework for Ethical Data Use” Altimeter, June 2015, http://www.altimetergroup.com/2015/06/new-report-the-trust-imperative-a-framework-for-ethical-data-use/.

DISCLAIMERALTHOUGH THE INFORMATION AND DATA USED IN THIS REPORT HAVE BEEN PRODUCED AND PROCESSED FROM SOURCES BELIEVED TO BE RELIABLE, NO WARRANTY EXPRESSED OR IMPLIED IS MADE REGARDING THE COMPLETENESS, ACCURACY, ADEQUACY, OR USE OF THE INFORMATION. THE AUTHORS AND CONTRIBUTORS OF THE INFORMATION AND DATA SHALL HAVE NO LIABILITY FOR ERRORS OR OMISSIONS CONTAINED HEREIN OR FOR INTERPRETATIONS THEREOF. REFERENCE HEREIN TO ANY SPECIFIC PRODUCT OR VENDOR BY TRADE NAME, TRADEMARK, OR OTHERWISE DOES NOT CONSTITUTE OR IMPLY ITS ENDORSEMENT, RECOMMENDATION, OR FAVORING BY THE AUTHORS OR CONTRIBUTORS AND SHALL NOT BE USED FOR ADVERTISING OR PRODUCT ENDORSEMENT PURPOSES. THE OPINIONS EXPRESSED HEREIN ARE SUBJECT TO CHANGE WITHOUT NOTICE.

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About Altimeter

by Prophet Brand Strategy that helps companies Altimeter is a research and consulting firm owned

understand and act on technology disruption. We give business leaders the insight and confidence to help theircompanies thrive in the face of disruption. In addition to publishing research, Altimeter analysts speak and provide strategy consulting on trends in leadership, digital transformation, social business, data disruption, and content marketing strategy.

Contact info:Altimeter Group, A Prophet Company,One Bush Street, 7th Floor San Francisco, CA 94104info@altimetergroup.comwww.altimetergroup.com@altimetergroup415 363 0004

Charlene Li, Principal AnalystCharlene Li is a Principal Analyst at Altimeter, a Prophet company, and the author of five books, including the New York Times best seller, Open Leadership and theco-author of the critically acclaimed book, Groundswell. She recently published her latest book, The Engaged Leader. She is a sought after speaker and advisor to many Fortune 500 companies. She is a graduate of Harvard College and Harvard Business School and lives in San Francisco with her husband and two teenagers.

AUTHORS

About Janrain Founded in 2002, Janrain pioneered Customer Identity and Access Management (CIAM). Janrain’s CIAM platform provides management, security and activation solutions that enable seamless and safe customer experiences across their digitally connected world, while providing enterprise organizations with deep customer insights. Janrain’s identity capabilities include social and traditional login and registration, single sign-on, customer profile data storage and management, customer segments, customer insights and engagementsolutions. The company powers brands like Pfizer, Samsung, Whole Foods, Fox News, Philips, Marvel Entertainment and Dr. Pepper/Snapple Group. Janrain is based in Portland, Oregon, with offices in London, Paris, and the Silicon Valley in California.

For more information, please visit www.janrain.com and follow @janrain.

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