Key Trends For Your Strategic Planning

If you are planning your strategy offsite for FY’19, the digest below covers some notable insights to consider from the just-released Internet Trends report by Mary Meeker. A partner with one of the world’s leading venture capital companies, each year Mary Meeker delivers a visionary report on trends not only in technology, but more importantly on the impact of technology, on all of our lives, both commercially and privately. To save you time reading through the full report, I’ve read through and summarised my key insights from the data below.

As you form your FY’19 strategy, these insights drawn from Mary Meeker’s full Internet Trends presentation are important considerations for your short and long-term planning.

1. Your organisation must be digitally equipped to survive the next decade. Global access to the internet continues to grow, from 24% global penetration in 2009 to 49% in 2017.
2. Your organisation must be accessible on mobile devices to survive the next decade. People are spending on average 5.9 hours on digital media a day (US figures). Time spent on mobile has grown from 0.3 hours per day in 2008 to 3.3 hours per day in 2017.
3. The ability to easily manage digital payments is crucial. The majority of payments being made now are digital.
4. You need to be leveraging video on mobile devices to attract and deal with customers. Video on mobile is climbing rapidly, now six times the volume from 2012.
5. There are big opportunities to leverage the huge growth in voice services from the likes of Google and Amazon. Voice technology has now launched. The word accuracy of Google has risen from 77% in 2013 to 95% in 2017. Further, Amazon now has over 30 million Echo devices installed (in the USA alone)
6. Develop a strategy to deliver personalised experiences to your customers and clients. Customers today want personalised experiences. It’s not about the product or service, it’s about the experience. And a personalised one.
7. If you depend on physical sales, you need a strategy to leverage e-commerce to your advantage. E-commerce share gains continue @13 of retail (US figures). Retail has suffered tremendously in the USA as a result of Amazon’s dominance.
8. It must be easy for your customers/clients to do business with you in a smooth and seamless manner. The customer purchasing process increasingly involves a mobile search, exploring savings or coupons, viewing and sharing recommendations / ratings, paying seamlessly, then receiving an update.
9. You must have a strong social media strategy for 2019 to survive the competition. Social media continues to drive discovery of products and services, with Facebook (78%) and Instagram (59%) leading the charge.
10. Measure the Customer Lifetime Value of your organisation. One of the most important metrics in an organisation is Customer Lifetime Value.
11. Consider a subscription service in your business model. There is a huge drive for subscription services, fuelled by access, selection, price, experience and personalisation.
12. Consider adding a free-to-paid model to your business plan. The ‘free to paid conversions’ model is increasing in value. For example, Spotify subscriptions have grown from 30 million users in 2014 to over 70 million in 2017.
13. Leverage the growth of Alibaba if relevant to your business. Alibaba is fast becoming the leading retail infrastructure in China.
14. A strong online presence is imperative – including online advertising, especially on mobile. Online advertising is up 21%.
15. Digital should pervade your organisation and how you do business. Your existing technology platforms will become obsolete every 3-4 years. The two key drivers of technology are the increase in computing power and the rapid drop in the cost of memory.
16. You need plans to make some jobs obsolete through the use of technology while also planning for new types of jobs and services in your organisation. History has shown us that new jobs and services, as well as efficiencies and growth, are typically created around new technology. Technology makes freelance work easier to find.
17. Leverage the opportunity of on-demand services, and also consider how to provide them. The model of “On-demand” jobs is increasing.
18. You need to have a plan to leverage the data you collect to the advantage of your customer and your organisation. Data is an important driver of customer satisfaction.
19. Build a good understanding of what AI is, and how you can leverage it with your customers. Google, Amazon, China and others are investing very heavily in Artificial Intelligence.
20. Provide your employees with the opportunity for lifelong learning as well as understanding how to leverage this opportunity with your customers and clients. Lifelong learning is a rapidly growing trend. Platforms such as Coursera have had growth of over 30%.

The data in the report supports our ongoing assertion that organisations can no longer do what they have always done. Digitisation and customer experience continues to be an essential key strategic focus. The way people consume is changing rapidly, along with their expectations of the ease, speed and quality of the experience they receive. I hope the insights above help to guide the key elements of your strategy for FY’19.