digital main street – Say Yeah!

Digital Main Street Forum 2018 Highlights

Caroline Dinnall — Mon, 18 Jun 2018 18:34:46 +0000

Transcript

Jesse Hirsh:

Technology has created an accelerated society, things are always changing. I like to say the Internet doesn’t have a finish line. There’s no one who could say “Alright, I figured it out, I’m done”. There’s always new services, there’s always new apps and that means new opportunities. Digital transformation is essential for small businesses cos it gives them the tools to be competitive in a digital economy.

Dani Gagnon:

Small businesses that are not fully transformed to digital are gonna have a really hard time in the next five years keeping afloat especially if you do want your business to survive in the next, you know, decade; so many things are turning digital. I even look at, you know, I teach at Seneca and I work with photographers and I’m like you know, even photography is gonna be changing. You gotta think about- if you wanna be a wedding photographer, people are probably gonna be wanting to watch a wedding in VR in like 360, so don’t just learn photography, learn how to do VR.

Cheri Chevalier:

Millennials will be about 50% of the population very very soon. And so, understanding how to engage with that talent, how to get the most out of that talent it’s gonna be really important for businesses both to engage their employees from an employee-engagement perspective, but also as you sell to those customers as well. They’re also becoming the predominant buyers in the ecosystem, and so knowing them again on those two sides of the coin, knowing them as a buyer and knowing them as an employee is really important.

Corinne Sandler:

Most small businesses are quite intimidated by the amount of data out there, and they don’t know what to do with it. So, I think that by understanding and bringing out new technology tools, or analytical tools for small businesses to be able to capture what they’ve got, utilize it and kinda pull out those insights is gonna be key.

Cheri Chevalier:

This idea that IT is democratized, that small businesses have access to the same technology that large businesses do is empowering. And right now, the benefits from that technology are tenfold, the changes are happening so fast, the ability for technology to improve your productivity, to increase your creativity, to drive innovation and create new products is all there for everybody.

Dani Gagnon:

It’s so important that the small businesses have access to the same kind of tools that the bigger companies do. And it’s not very often that they get to watch speakers talk about AI, or you know, patent, anything we were talking about today so, I think the drill really encourages them to kinda think outside of the box think that they’re bigger than they are and that’s definitely gonna help them wrangle all the future when it comes to tech.

Cheri Chevalier:

-We’re a small business nation. 99% of businesses in Canada are small businesses, so in order to strengthen that innovative ecosystem that we have, the innovation economy if you will, we need to strengthen small businesses.

Jesse Hirsh:

We chase big companies like Amazon trying to get them to locate their second headquarters here. When the strength of Toronto’s digital community is in small businesses, it’s in startups, it’s in the grass root of Toronto’s tech community not in the big business world.

Dani Gagnon:

-Small stores are actually what make a community, it’s not the big box stores. When you go to Queen St. West it’s not Queen St. West because of Walmart, like there’s no Walmart there, so if you look at all the little neighborhoods in Toronto especially, like, those neighborhoods literally exist because of the small businesses, and I think if people wanted to PI websites and check that all the businesses that were in the area they’d be really surprised at how many businesses they could get all their stuff from. So it’s just so important to realize that you could shop local and actually support everything we need.

On April 20th, local Toronto business owners filled the Council Chambers at City Hall for a day of transformational insight and the digital best practices at the Digital Main Street Forum hosted by Digital Main Street (DMS).

The Digital Main Street Forum was organized to encourage growing main street businesses to apply technology in ways that can take their business to the next level. From online marketing to customer research to data practices and emerging technologies, the forum challenged business owners to reach outside their comfort zones to consider new opportunities for their businesses.

Jesse Hirsh started the day off by highlighting technology’s impact on the workplace, focusing on automation, robots, co-working, blockchain, and more.

“Technology has created an accelerated society,” said Hirsh, “There are always new services and apps, and that means new opportunities.”

Social media is the new marketing

Dani Gagnon of Dani G Inc. is a mastermind behind some of the most clever social media tactics that businesses can use to drive customer engagement. She highlighted how deftly adapting your content to pop culture trends has the power to drive meaningful interactions.

By intertwining relevant pop culture with organizational objectives, you can ride the wave of a current trend. She shared an example from the time she headed social media for an insurance company. On the same night, the popular television series Game of Thrones had aired, she shared a poll, “What Game of Thrones character most needs life insurance?” This effort of practically tying the business’s offering into this trending content brought relevancy, which was quickly followed with awareness and engagement.

Tip: practice connecting your business back to a trend regularly. Pick five trends and see how you can shape your offering to be relevant to the trend.

Data is the new oil

Data Scientist Corrine Sandler had desired to fill a gap she noticed while working in the research market. With Fresh Intelligence Research, she and her team are able to produce fast, cost-efficient research with actionable truths.

Sandler says understanding data and how to put it to its best use is the secret to creating experiences that customers are willing to pay for.

“Your greatest asset is your customer. Your second greatest asset is your data.”

Sandler emphasized that data is a great asset that can be used to find conversion opportunities. She shared an example of a pool company that found customers converted better when two consecutive days of temperatures were above the historical average. In this case, data helped the company discover the best time to advertise and the most effective ways to do so.

All in all, data is a big deal and it’s extremely important to know how to use it to your advantage.

Millennials and the new-age workplace

Cheri Chevalier, General Manager of Cloud Services & Software at Microsoft, probed businesses to seek millennials for talent in the workplace, and how this will economically benefit them.

“Millennials will be about 50 per cent of the population very soon, and it’s understanding how to engage and get the most out of that talent that’s going to be really important for businesses, both to engage their employees but also as you sell to those customers as well.”

Chevalier also quoted that millennials are becoming the prominent buyers in the ecosystem.

Digital Main Street Forum was a great opportunity for business owners to learn about technological advances that are shaping the way Torontonians are doing business.

We encourage businesses of all sizes to explore how digital can help improve product and service delivery and customer experience!

The search for digital best practises starts here

If you’re looking to discover how digital can effectively transform your business, we’re here to help.

Get in touch

The post Digital Main Street Forum 2018 Highlights appeared first on Say Yeah!.

Friday, April 20, the Digital Main Street Forum is here to encourage businesses to adopt digital technologies and practices

Caroline Dinnall — Tue, 17 Apr 2018 21:21:54 +0000

Digital is changing the way Canadians do business. On April 20, Digital Main Street (DMS)—encouraging retail and other city-focused businesses to adopt digital tools and technologies—is hosting the Digital Main Street Forum to spotlight processes and technologies that will help local business connect with consumers.

Held at Toronto City Hall, the forum is expected to address key practices businesses should implement to strengthen and broaden their reach. Attendees will learn about online marketing strategies, how to leverage data and better engage clients, and e-commerce approaches that will help their businesses grow their customer base.

Keynotes include:

The Future of Commerce: Automation, Consumer Loyalty, and Data Driven Businesses by Jesse Hirsh
There’s No Such Thing As “Social Media Marketing” by Dani Gagnon
Demystifying Data by Corrine Sandler, founder and CEO of Fresh Intelligence Research

Break-out sessions

The afternoon is packed with insightful and intimate breakout sessions with a mixture of top digital, financial, and e-commerce organizations in Canada. These sessions are expected to equip attendees with insider knowledge on how leading companies have used digital to transform how they operate, while highlighting how trends in digital continue to evolve and impact this millennial-dominated, consumer world.

You can look forward to discussing topics like machine learning, mobile technology, customer interactions and relationships, and forging millennial-friendly environments in the workplace.

Sessions are as follows:

Is your business millennial-friendly? by Microsoft Canada
The Future of Loyalty in Canada by Mastercard Canada
Digital Marketing in the Age of Assistance by Google Canada
Empowering the modern mobile workforce by Rogers
Run your business with Shopify! Learn about how Shopify can literally transform your business by Shopify

Who’s attending & why you should attend too

Whether you’re a business owner, strategist, analyst, or content creator, the DMS Forum is for you. Leave this forum with new knowledge on how to leverage digital across your business, and truly achieve digital excellence.

Get complimentary access to the DMS Forum

We’d love to see you at the Digital Main Street Forum! Feel free to use our promo code dms-sayyeah for complimentary access and share this post with your colleagues so they, too, can attend.

Get tickets

We hope to see you there!

Caroline and Lee

The post Friday, April 20, the Digital Main Street Forum is here to encourage businesses to adopt digital technologies and practices appeared first on Say Yeah!.

Efficiency, customer journey at heart of digital transformation – Digital Journal

Lee Dale — Wed, 03 May 2017 13:26:15 +0000

Published in Digital Journal by Jack Derricourt, May 3, 2017.

Businesses of varying sizes are facing increasing pressure to go digital, as lean, data-driven competition pushes ahead. Management consultants at Say Yeah look to the challenge of helping companies make the transformation to digital.

Say Yeah founder and CEO Lee Dale is no stranger to the growing pains of getting a company to move forward with digital projects.

When Virgin Gaming hired Say Yeah, they were struggling to get customers to put money in their gaming accounts. The largely manual process had customer service reps jumping between multiple applications, carefully checking each step along the way in order not to lose any money. With each customer service rep having to use five separate documents for each case, with up to 45 steps included each time, there were multiple chances for human error. Meanwhile, the customer was waiting for a long period of time before being able to access their funds.

Despite having a digital offering, it was not optimized for the customer experience.

Say Yeah used a combination of research and data analysis to optimize the service and learn how the customer’s overall experience could be improved in what was undeniably an overly complicated process.

Recommendations made by Say Yeah included automation to reduce time and human error, information-design to improve the workflow and improved communication and speed to meet client requests. Virgin Gaming was able to reduce a 45-step process that was stressful for both customers and employees into a simple three-step list of tasks for each customer service rep.

Virgin Gaming is one example of how Say Yeah looks at customer journeys, going to the heart of the changes that are being driven by social environments. Dale addresses this priority in the form of a simple question: “How do you provide meaningful service across those spaces that people are using?” The geography of digital is vast, and it’s important to focus the particular mix of devices, contexts or locations that will impact a business or a product.

The key is to approach a business from the customer’s perspective and an appreciation that it typically involves more than just one interaction leading to a sale — it’s about addressing the entirety of a customer’s interactions, including the post-purchase experience, to get a better idea of where a business could create more value.

By identifying the customer journeys that are going on around your business, and continually evaluating this process from the customer’s point of view, value can be created out of better understanding of how they’re interacting with a company in a digital space.

For Dale, who founded Say Yeah in 2008 when mobile began to take shape with the iPhone’s release, digital transformation is all about helping businesses find efficiencies and make smarter decisions.

“Regardless of the level of digital literacy within an organization, there are missing pieces,” Dale said. Say Yeah will begin its process of working with businesses by auditing workflow and setup in order to determine if there are missing pieces in a business process. In addition, Say Yeah will advise a business on where they think the value is for the customer, a focal point that is key to growing a digital footprint and funnel that attracts customers.

Dale says it’s all about being practical and setting sights on the more immediate goals for any business looking to innovate. The majority of customers that approach the Toronto-based management consulting company come to Say Yeah with a problem that needs fixing. More often than not, technology provides a solution.

A recent study by the Canadian Federation of Independent Businesses (CFIB) shows that businesses understand the need to go digital. But a majority of businesses and companies surveyed by CFIB are still dragging their feet on things like data and multiple channels of social media — there’s more to digital life than just Facebook, after all.

While the company began by focusing on small- and medium- sized businesses, Say Yeah now works with larger companies from a variety of backgrounds — financial services, insurance, sports work and various B2B organizations. They’ve also partnered with Digital Main Street in Toronto to be a part of helping small businesses go digital in the city.

There are multiple things to consider when making the jump to digital. When it comes to looking at customer journeys and finding value and efficiencies, regardless of the project or scale, digital tools and processes can give businesses the leg up they need.

View article in digitaljournal.com

The post Efficiency, customer journey at heart of digital transformation – Digital Journal appeared first on Say Yeah!.