Turnpike Manor

Deming's quote refers to the importance of using data to understand and analyse business customers. Until recently, businesses undergoing digital transformation have not considered utilising design thinking as a way of analysing their customers to 'build the thing right' and improve Customer Experience (CX).

Bain, in 2007, studied how effective businesses have been in delivering the right product. Of the enterprises interviewed, 467 organisations responded. Looked out how companies are growing over four years. Data analysis showed that those organisations who are building the right thing first before building the thing right resulted in:

• High quality and high engineering practice
  
• Reduced IT cost by 6%
  
• IT enabled growth of 35%
  
• Well-oiled IT reduce cost by 15%
  
• Increase market share.
  

Organisations who want to build the 'right thing', have to build the 'thing right'. Building the right thing begins with the Business Analysts and Product Design Teams designing IT engineering practices for products and services.

So often, Agile Business Analysts, Product Owners, User Research and Product Design teams start mapping customer journeys and making assumptions about what customers want without understanding customers' mindsets and empathy. As a result of not having a new way of identifying customer behaviours and attitudes, customers don't return. Until now, many companies have ventured into product development without taking the Customer-first approach. Indeed, products and services were not user- or customer-centric enough to improve the end-user or customer's lives. As a result, there are disconnects in the usefulness and usability of the value created for the end user(s). This disconnect has its roots in the fact that products and services were not created with empathy - that is, "seeing the problem" from the customer's perspective.