It Takes an Ecosystem:
How Technology Companies
Deliver Exceptional Experiences
Experience is evolving into a strategy that reaches across technology companies.
We offer guidance on the rise of experience and its role in business modernization,with details on how organizations can build the ecosystem to support it.

August 2021

Contents

Click a link below to jump to that section.

3

Introduction

10

Why organizational buy-in matters4	How we got here: The winding path of experience11

The challenge of strategic disconnect

6	Connected selling: The fuel for experience

12	What keeps employees from delivering on techcompanies’ CX vision?

8

The experience ecosystem in action

9	CX and the bottom line: What research reveals
about tech companies

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It Takes an Ecosystem: How Technology Companies Deliver Exceptional Experiences

13	Getting started: Building an experience ecosystem
18

Looking forward

19

About the author

Introduction
Experience is breaking out. Having replaced price and product as the criticalmechanisms for competition, experience is finding its way into every function at
technology companies.
product differentiation. Instead of long pipelines andmultimillion-dollar deals, the new models emphasizebuilding relationships that are nurtured throughout thecustomer lifecycle. Partnerships become central to theecosystems through which products and services are
sold — and to experience. The result is a community
Experience has ascended to a company-wide goal andof connected sellers that’s akin to the iPhone and its
even a metric, as research commissioned by Cognizant
platform of developers. That is, an ecosystem that
Digital Experience highlights. Equally important, thevalues all parties’ creativity and allows them to do more
evolving role of external partners in the ecosystem
together than they can separately.
that supports experience signals a strategic shift inThis ebook offers guidance on the experience
technology companies’ approach to sales.
ecosystem’s potential to engineer modern technology
The shift is a direct result of the rise of cloud-based
businesses, with details on how organizations can build
subscription and as-a-service consumption models,the platform to support it.
where the focus is on how customers and employees
feel when they interact with a brand rather than
While it typically remains centralized within a single
function — usually customer experience — experience’s
contributions ripple throughout tech companies, fromthe front office and human resources to R&D, sales andmarketing, and the supply chain.

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It Takes an Ecosystem: How Technology Companies Deliver Exceptional Experiences< Back to Contents

How we got here: The winding
path of experience
Experience is the focus of technology companies everywhere. But its growth has been
anything but a straight trajectory.
For the last few years, omnichannel has taken a star turn in the world of experience.
It’s a significant advance that lets customers interact with companies throughmultiple avenues — e-commerce, mobile apps, email, call centers, etc. — andenables companies to reach back with hyper-personalized offers.
But omnichannel efforts often remain siloed, with little integration among themand a channel-centric view of experience that runs counter to customers’
perspective: Customers think of products and services as experiences; they
don’t distinguish by channel.
The experience ecosystem requires the dismantling of silos. It supercedes the verticalviews of customer experience (CX), employee experience (EX) and user experience(UX) to unite the disciplines into a single strategy. Optimized experience becomesthe responsibility of everyone across the enterprise. For example, as on-time delivery
becomes a core competency, supply chain officers scrutinize experience as closely as
their peers in sales and marketing. Gartner refers to the trend as “total experience,”
and named it a top strategic technology trend for 2021.

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It Takes an Ecosystem: How Technology Companies Deliver Exceptional Experiences< Back to Contents

Experience as a KPI: Sample score curve

Yet as business guru Peter Drucker wisely
observed, “if you can’t measure it, you can’t
manage it,” so we see experience evolving into a
key performance indicator (KPI) that, like ROI andcustomer satisfaction, will be used by businesses
to measure and report in quarterly and annual
financial statements.

Overall
40%
30%

One potential example is to aggregate monthly
recurring revenue (MRR), net promoter score(NPS) and churn rate (CR) into a metric thatpredicts the risks on recurring revenue of acustomer/partner segment or service.
The graph at right shows what a score curvefor experience might look like. The segmenton the lowest end requires attention as it
impacts the overall score and indicates potential
detractors from a positive experience — whether
for customers, partners or employees. The
Responsive segment is engaged and has thepotential to pivot to High Performers.
Based on the output, organizations would createa robust plan for each segment. A failure modeand effect analysis (FMEA) would be a structured
action plan to address each sub-metricindividually and assist in reducing risk priority
numbers (RPNs).
5

/

65%
Responsive

Indifferent

Detractors
High Performers

0%

100%
Benchmark Averages
Potential (36%)
Average Global Benchmark (53%)
Your Organization's Experience Score (57%)
High Performing Companies/Products (78%)

It Takes an Ecosystem: How Technology Companies Deliver Exceptional Experiences< Back to Contents

Connected selling: The fuel for experience
If experience is poised to become the engine for technology companies,
connected selling will be its fuel. It’s gaining steam as increasing numbersof companies shift their portfolios to consumption-based models. But
co-selling is much more than transactional. It reflects the elevated roles ofinfluence and collaboration that experience brings to enterprises.
Co-selling takes a broad view of experience and depends on an open
ecosystem. It focuses on openness not just with APIs but also in culture andstructure. With its ability to remove friction from the distribution of products
and services and to create value for customers, co-selling has the potential
to help technology companies drive customer loyalty and reduce churn byoffering B2B customers the platforms they need to assemble technology
stacks. It creates stickiness.

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It Takes an Ecosystem: How Technology Companies Deliver Exceptional Experiences

Microsoft and Amazon Web Services have rolled out extensive co-selling
programs in recent years. Start-ups are further advancing collaborative
sales by proactively introducing prospective partners to each other. For
example, CoSell connects B2B companies’ CRM systems to find customer
overlaps and facilitate introductions. Affinity puts a fresh spin on CRM by
using AI to analyze relationship strengths and then highlighting the best
path to introductions.
Behind the emphasis on experience and connected selling is an important
trend: Partnerships are going virtual, with knowledge-sharing portals taking
the lead in highlighting potential synergies and showing who’s connected towhom.

< Back to Contents

Anatomy of the experience ecosystem
The following components are essential to creating and delivering a complete and consistent experience to customers, employees and partners.

Communities andExperience Portals

Data
Scalable &Headless
Architecture

Connected Selling + Cross-selling& Upselling Enabled by Ecosystem

rpr

PeopleE n teNew Customer
Onboarding

Front
OfficeEn

ga

Assets

ge

me

API

/

Data

n ts

Connected
Processes

7

Experience

It Takes an Ecosystem: How Technology Companies Deliver Exceptional Experiences

New
Operating
Model

IoT
Ecos
yste
mE
ng
ag

AR/VR

ts
en
em

is e

Insights

Bot

MobileBack
OfficeActions

Digital Backbone< Back to Contents

The experience ecosystem in action
The reinvention of its partner experience by a multinational technology
conglomerate is a strong example of how tech companies are putting
connected selling into action. By creating an open ecosystem, the company
is positioning its partners to pursue lifecycle and everything-as-a-service
opportunities.
In the span of five Sprints, we rolled out the pilot for the company’s first digitalplatform for centralized delivery of all partner resources. With its UX-driven
approach, the platform is intuitive and simple to use for the company’s
thousands of partners to achieve greater growth and improved margin
profiles. The unified platform provides a connected experience and datadriven decision-making for 60,000 partners and 240,000 partner users.
We partnered with the company to consolidate 130 applications into theplatform. To avoid time-consuming customization, we used standard
capabilities, and we also maintained data security at the solution’s core. The
cloud-based solution includes API-enabled integration and automation ofreporting partner onboarding.

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It Takes an Ecosystem: How Technology Companies Deliver Exceptional Experiences

The result for partners is a much-needed single source of information.
The platform houses profile details and contact management as well as
certifications and specializations. Its key innovations include personalized
content based on partners’ sales roles as well as guidance on how toconvert information into sales. Embedded analytics enables data-driven
decision-making.
For the company, the platform provides a more effective way to onboard
and manage partners and to share product insights. It also provides realtime monitoring and reporting of partners’ sales and performance.
Most important, however, the platform enables the company’s vast networkof partners to generate more revenue by bundling and packaging products
in ways they couldn’t in the past.

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CX and the bottom line: What research reveals
about tech companies
Our research revealed enterprises that invest
in employee and partner enablement andexperiences recognize tangible business benefits.

Aspirations for experience

Among technology companies, expectations arehigh when it comes to the top expected businessbenefits of improved CX, with talent retention
topping the list.

Improve employee retention by removing unnecessary
processes that lower productivity and engagement

Asked “In what ways will CX improvements benefit your company’s overall success?” the following percentages of respondents selected “This is a benefit we hope to realize”:
48%

Reduce costs to serve by automating manual processes

46%

Upsell existing customers

42%

Lower financial/credit risk by reducing
the churn that jeopardizes cash flow

41%

Improve perception by capital markets by better
connecting improvements to corporate goals

41%

Generate additional revenue through new customers

40%
0%

10%

20%

30%

40%

50%

Base: 105 CX strategy leaders at technology companies
Source: Forrester Research study commissioned by Cognizant Digital Experience
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It Takes an Ecosystem: How Technology Companies Deliver Exceptional Experiences< Back to Contents

Why organizational buy-in matters
Even after technology companies
build out the experience ecosystem,
capitalizing on its promise requiresorganizational buy-in. Our researchfound shockingly few technology
companies fully committed to theenterprise-wide education andcommunication that’s needed tomake the experience ecosystem areality. For example, more than one
quarter said improving employee
and partner enablement only
partially or slightly describes theircompanies’ approach to CX. Less
than one third completely agree
that CX improvements are ashared responsibility across theirorganization.

The commitment & vision challenge“How well do the following describe your organization’s approach to CX?”
50%

50%

47%
43% 44%

40%
33%

30%

37%

35%

39%

31%

29%

27% 28%
24%

26%

24%

25%

21% 21%

20%
10%

6%
3%

0%

Completely

Mostly1%

Partially

2%

4%
1%

0% 0% 0%Slightly

1%

0%

1%

Not at all

My company’s vision for improving CX includes improving employee enablement
My company’s vision for improving CX includes improving partner enablement
My company educates partners about our customers, our CX vision and the partner’s role in fulfilling our CX vision
My company educates employees about our customers, our CX vision and the employee’s role in fulfilling our CX vision
My company communicates CX metrics with actionable insights to employees and partners
CX improvements are a shared responsibility across the organization

Base: 105 CX strategy leaders at technology companies
Source: Forrester Research study commissioned by Cognizant Digital Experience
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It Takes an Ecosystem: How Technology Companies Deliver Exceptional Experiences< Back to Contents

The challenge of strategic disconnect
Aligning around experience is a challenge for manytechnology companies, and the disconnect has widespread
implications for organizations’ ability to provide cohesive CX
and EX.
Technology companies’ top three challenges to aligning
strategies for CX and employee/partner enablement revealthat companies are still working to get the basics right.

Why disjointed experiences occur“What challenges does your company face with creating better alignment between your employee
and/or partner enablement strategies and CX strategies?”

Key stakeholders are not aligned on the customer
impact of better enabling employees.

45%

We prioritize our largest partners and fail to work withmany of our smaller partners on CX improvements.

44%

Employee goals are in tension
across business functions.
0%

42%

10%

20%

30%

40%

50%

Base: 105 CX strategy leaders at technology companies
Source: Forrester Research study commissioned by Cognizant Digital Experience
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It Takes an Ecosystem: How Technology Companies Deliver Exceptional Experiences< Back to Contents

What keeps employees from deliveringon tech companies’ CX vision?
Key experience impediments“What is preventing employees from delivering customer experiences that align to the company’s CX vision?”
Employee challenges around empathizing withcustomers because they lack enough insight
into the customer’s situation to truly understandwhere the customer is coming from37%

Constantly changing customer expectations
to which we can’t adapt quickly enough

33%

Slow, inefficient processes for implementing
new processes/changes

30%

Difficulty executing simple tasks

30%
0%

10%

20%

30%

40%

Base: 105 CX strategy leaders at technology companies
Source: Forrester Research study commissioned by Cognizant Digital Experience
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It Takes an Ecosystem: How Technology Companies Deliver Exceptional Experiences< Back to Contents

Getting started: Building anexperience ecosystem
We suggest an end-to-end approachto building an experience ecosystem.
It combines CX strategy, technology
innovation and data integration amongsystems of record that together feedsystems of engagement to create
experience.

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By building out the ecosystem,companies position their organizations
to quickly develop customer-centric
initiatives supported by standardized
platforms, processes, technologies
and data.

It Takes an Ecosystem: How Technology Companies Deliver Exceptional Experiences

What follows are the steps to build anexperience ecosystem that benefits yourorganization, partners and customers.

< Back to Contents

1

14

/

Adopt a horizontal model for experience
The first step to building the experience ecosystem is aboutprocess, not tools. Efforts to share responsibility for experiencethroughout organizations are already well underway, with
90% of companies having established the positions of chief
experience officer or chief customer officer or the equivalent.
It’s a good start, but it remains a vertical, siloed view.
Adopting the horizontal model requires going further byassigning CX leads within each function, from R&D anddevelopment to human resources and finance. This model
credits each function with playing a critical role in customer
retention, increased adoption and enhanced consumption.

It Takes an Ecosystem: How Technology Companies Deliver Exceptional Experiences

The advantage of the cross-functional view is that it enables
everyone to see how the dots of experience connect
throughout the enterprise.
It’s important to note that distributing responsibility forexperience requires implementing experience-related metrics
at the departmental level. For example, in addition to velocity,
an experience KPI for development teams might feature
adoption rates. That is, how widely a new feature is used bycustomers, how often key users access it and the average
length of time to adopt it.

< Back to Contents

2

Make experience insight-driven
Most tech companies share the same straightforward mission
for customer data: Collect it, analyze it and use it to support
customers. Many are proficient at the first, most stumble on thesecond, and almost none consistently use data to support thecustomer — a gap that must be closed to establish a successful
experience ecosystem.
It’s no secret that tech companies typically struggle toapply and monetize the wealth of historical data they haveamassed. Data in outdated formats remains a challenge, as
does integrating data from external sources such as social
networks to generate a 360-degree view of the customer. The
upshot? Tech companies are rich in data but often poor in
making sense of it. Yet experience requires deriving meaningfrom data and converting it into insight-driven experience.
Forecasting with data isn’t enough.
For example, we partnered with one of the world’s largest
technology distributors to create a new business model andplatform for the company that includes a 360-degree viewof consumption of its products and services across the value
chain. Our team architected a solution to connect all cloudservices for easier provisioning, billing, management andmonetization. The resulting ecosystem spans 78 countries,
16 currencies and nine languages.

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It Takes an Ecosystem: How Technology Companies Deliver Exceptional Experiences

Like experience, we see data use also becoming a metric, withanalysts evaluating an organization’s credibility and stability
based on its use of data, reviewing it along with other assets
and liabilities on the balance sheet.
In the meantime, for tech companies building experience
ecosystems, it’s critical that they lead with data to accomplish
three objectives:❙ Improve UX with frictionless and accessible data on
demand at the point of need
❙ Enable self-service through intuitive, interactive
dashboards that provide relevant insights and enable easyto-download reports❙ Reduce customer churn by capturing in-house andexternal data for customers and using a customer master to
identify areas of synergy and individual needs of customers/
brands to deliver unified, enriched experience acrosschannels with contextual, personalized content< Back to Contents

3❙ Core modernizationand cloudtechnology toaccelerate delivery ofmanaged experience
services and SaaS
to lines of business,and to generate
full customer value
across the lifecycle.

16/

Re-architect for the future
Getting experience onto the strategic agendas of CIOs and CTOs takes
commitment to building the platform that forms the center of the ecosystem.
It’s critical for removing friction from the distribution of products and services
and creating value for customers. We suggest the following:❙ Agile tools
and a scalable
architecture thatenable experience
to break out oftechnology silos,
connect front andback offices, andaccommodate thecontinuous additionof new features.

❙ Rationalizing
applications andportals to a single
platform plays a keyrole in a streamlined
experience
ecosystem. The
single platform
is essential fordelivering partner
efficiencies such as
faster enrollment andincreased co-selling
opportunities.

It Takes an Ecosystem: How Technology Companies Deliver Exceptional Experiences❙ A headlessarchitecture forpublishing content
over multiple
channels. By
decoupling the UIfrom back-end logic,
headless architecture
shines as a pathfor producing andmanaging content
and ensuring aseamless experience.

❙ AI/ML-based
automation
enables speed-tomarket, a key driverfor subscription
services, andenables applications
to gather dataand integratewith existing datasystems.

❙ Balance security
with CX. Experience
ecosystems require
secure digitalchannels that don’t
negatively impact
CX through slow
authentication andlogin.

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4

17

/

Deepen engagement through positive onboarding
A well-planned onboarding process for partners andcustomers is critical for the experience ecosystem because
it sets the tone for an ongoing relationship. Successful
onboarding lets companies capitalize on that and take thefirst steps toward creating customer lifetime value.
Positive onboarding starts with knowing what success looks
like for partners, and especially for customers. Why do they
use your products and services? What are their business goals,
and what role do your products and services play in enablingthem to reach those goals? Understanding the answers is key
to an onboarding process that contributes to the experience
ecosystem.

It Takes an Ecosystem: How Technology Companies Deliver Exceptional Experiences

To ensure both partners and customers understand how yourproducts and services contribute to their success, be sure youronboarding incorporates the following elements:❙ Demonstrate value quickly❙ Empower the customer and encourage self-help❙ Evaluate onboarding effectiveness through customer
surveys and support metrics
Remember that the onboarding process needs constantrevision and iteration to ensure it stays relevant for customers’
needs.

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Looking forward
With experience in a still-fluid state, creating a healthy, thriving ecosystem
positions technology companies to quickly develop customer-centric
initiatives.
Forming the ecosystems takes organizational change as well as cloudbased technology, tools and data. Yet the process is a win-win-win, enablingorganizations, partners and customers to come together in ways that makeit easier for B2B customers to assemble the complex stacks that run theirbusinesses and maximize the recurring revenues of consumption-based
products and services.
The next generation of ecosystems will take a verticalized approach, wherecompanies will look at industrializing their products and reach in order togain a competitive advantage by meeting customer demands. Ecosystem
2.0 will be an industrialized micro-ecosystem play.

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It Takes an Ecosystem: How Technology Companies Deliver Exceptional Experiences< Back to Contents

About the author
Anish Nair
Technology Practice, Cognizant
Anish Nair is a Global Client Partner in Cognizant’s Technology Industry
Practice. Anish has 25-plus years of experience managing high-tech
relationships with Fortune 500 and Global 2000 clients. A Six Sigma black
belt and green belt certified professional, he has delivered multiple enterprisetransformation initiatives for CXOs at companies across industries.
Anish brings a fresh perspective on CX strategy, core modernization and the businesspivots needed to capitalize on market trends. With a deep understanding of the experience
ecosystem, Anish helps high-tech companies combine data, insights and trends tosuccessfully compete in the digital era. Anish.Nair3@cognizant.com |www.linkedin.com/in/anish-nair-2667698/

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It Takes an Ecosystem: How Technology Companies Deliver Exceptional Experiences< Back to Contents

Learn More
For more information and to find out more about Cognizant,visit www.cognizant.com/us/en/industries/cmt-solutions

About Cognizant Digital Business

About Cognizant

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