risual’s Director of Retail, Lee Bingham, has suggested that Public Sector services can learn a great deal from the rapid digital transformation within retail.

Former Paul Smith CIO, Lee, said: “It doesn’t matter if you’re engaged in the retail experience or healthcare, what you’re trying to archive is the best customer or patient experience possible. So, as a provider, it’s necessary that your customers have the best possible engagement with you. It’s about making sure you get the best possible customer experience no matter what the service is.”

Lee was speaking to risual’s Public Sector Sales Manager, Tim Gee, in the latest episode in a series of Public Sector Broadcasts.

Companies such as Uber, Airbnb and eBay are thriving due to the vast amounts of data that they have available to them to exploit. This has helped contribute to the huge degree of change throughout the industry driven by e-commerce, digitization and a shift in channels.

Lee said: “Retail was one of those early disruptive industries and it was technology that did it an early stage. Retail has been a market that has been at the edge of digital transformation and change.”

Reflecting on the big differences between the retail industry and Public Sector services, Lee noted how the technology used by retailers has now earned people’s trust with its stability.

Lee said: “It’s got to a point of stability where people know and trust the technology and are happy to provide card details and share their preferences and personal details as they choose the brands they want to interact with.”

Discussing the importance in trusting Public Sector services, Lee said: “The challenge with Public Sector services such as healthcare, is maintaining your profile as a single entity, so that your records are managed and you can have that knowledge and understanding across all services. That interaction and the digital experience can benefit those services, acting as an aggregate that knows you with some degree of history.”

It’s important to note however, that there must be a key focus on the management of critical and personal data, which must be managed accordingly with the necessary diligence required to control those records.

Consumers are more inclined to trust retailers with their details than they would be with an organisation looking after their financial or health information, according to Lee.

He said: “You must trust the technology. Once it’s stable and people are investing into it and using it, it’s about the consolidation of it so it’s optimised to deliver the simplicity necessary to reduce the overhead, in terms of support. With healthcare, the patient must be at the centre of the universe, not the establishment.”

The digital transformation is still at early stages within both industries, something which is certain to continue developing further every year – especially retail which is moving along at an unstoppable pace.

Lee said: “My perspective is that I think retail will continue to evolve as tech continues to become more efficient and disrupt. It will present huge changes, if you asked people ‘do they think their retail experience has improved over the past 10 years?’ I think the majority would say yes and I can only see it evolving even further.”

 


 

 


 

 

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