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The AI butterfly effect: How a single stream of bad data can bring artificial intelligence models to a screeching halt  
The butterfly effect is the idea that one small, seemingly trivial event may ultimately result in something with much larger consequences. 
Remember the movie Back to the Future? At the end of the film, Marty McFly was disappearing from the Polaroid picture because of the butterfly effect.  (When Marty decided to meet his mom and dad instead of biding time at Doc’s house, the future changed, causing a ripple effect that was the main plot of the movie.) 

In AI, the butterfly effect is a perfect analogy to explain how one single strand of bad data can cascade through an AI data model, leading to skewed analyses and misguided strategies. Before you know it, that erroneous steam of data has polluted the entire model, affecting its output over time. 

Mitigating this risk is one important centerpiece of an enterprise AI strategy. CEOs and CTOs, it’s time to go to AI school, starting with a core prerequisite. 

AI for Executive Leadership 

For business and organizational leaders, nothing is more important to make an informed business decision about AI than understanding what it is, its potential and its risks. The first thing you need to do is ask yourself a hard question: What exactly is it that you want AI to do for you, your organization, or your employees? 

In short, what core business problem are you going to ask AI to solve? 
Do you need to help customer service agents do their jobs faster and better with automated case replies and case summarization as part of the case insights?  

Do you need to help marketers to work smarter and more efficiently with AI content creation and in-platform ideation? 

Do you need to help your developers code better with automated code suggestions and repository audits? 

Because most AI use cases at the start will be unique, each should be focused on as its own “thing.” After all, any enterprise AI program is going to be multifaceted and multilayered. And AI will affect various industries and organizational teams differently. Therefore, any enterprise AI strategy must start with a fundamental understanding that one size won’t fit all with AI. Far from it. It needs to be discussed in the context of your unique business and the industry you are in. 

The AI conversation is complex, technical, and scary. It’s also fascinating, interesting, and teeming with potential. CEOs, it’s up to you to set the tone that your teams will follow. 

After all, if you don’t lead your employees in the AI era, who will? 

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Jennifer Johnson works in digital strategy at Horizontal Digital. She is based in Dallas.  
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The AI butterfly effect: How a single stream of bad data can bring artificial intelligence models to a screeching halt  

Level up guest experiences with a personalization game plan
In the gaming and hospitality industry, personalized guest experiences go a long way. We think it’s more crucial than ever.  

Not only is personalization fundamental to building brand affinity for guests, but it also simplifies a path for guests to complete tasks during their visit at a hotel, restaurant, or casino. Establishing this familiarity and consistency results in both brand retention and customer loyalty. 

But, the path to personalization for companies can be difficult to navigate. Gaining a deep understanding of your company's needs and capabilities is key to prioritizing the right approach. At Horizontal, we partner with our clients to guide them through this process with a phased crawl, walk, run approach to personalization.  


Crawl, walk, run – A phased personalization approach  

The idea of crawl, walk, run is not reflective of pace, but more as creating the foundational building blocks to create best-in-class, connected experiences.  

No matter where a company is in their personalization journey – from basic tactics like push notifications for room check-ins to advanced tactics that incorporate a CDP for game-based and concierge services – crawl will be the foundational starting point. 
Step 1: Crawl 

If you haven’t started to personalize, the crawl phase could include a readiness assessment and in-depth discovery to understand the details of your gaming or hospitality business. This phase defines parameters that your brand already has available to build within, such as tech stack, owned channels, data sources and more.  

We find brands are ready to begin personalizing within a single channel, such as a website, email or app depending on what holds the most value for the business. Deploying basic personalization within this channel is based on key available data inputs such as geolocation, visitor and/or click behavior giving brands a great starting point to begin gathering learnings and understanding the impact of personalization.  

After you have established your personalization goals, the next step is to create a multi-level, multi-phase roadmap.   

In order build out your gaming or hospitality business’s roadmap for success, it’s essential to have a clear understanding of where your business is heading. For example, is it a fully connected experience? Or is your final destination simply connecting your website and email architecture allowing for key messages to trigger cross platform?  

Once crawl phase personalization use cases are implemented, they are monitored, measured and potentially modified based on business impact before moving into the next phase of work. 
 

Step 2: Walk 

This phase is defined differently for all brands, but generally a brand can move beyond their crawl phase when they’ve found success with their current personalization tactics and/ or have expanded to additional data sources or tech platforms.  

This could mean moving from activating on a single channel to multiple channels or expanding from site-based data sources only to utilizing many nuanced data sources across the organization. To facilitate this can require sophisticated technical platforms such as a CDP (Customer Data Platform) to centralize data streams and/or a CRM (Customer Relationship Management) to connect with customers. 

Either way, the walk phase continues the work essential to building out a successful personalization strategy. 


Step 3: Run  

The move from "walk" to "run” continues to lean into data and insights to advance personalized rules into an omnichannel experience, adding additional channels and technical capabilities. In this phase, machine learning, patterns and profiles, and artificial intelligence can be introduced to determine the next best action for guests.  

The run phase continues until your guest’s experience is completely connected and operating in a personalized manner that drives efficient results across the board. 

Below is an example of what this might look like for a single personalization tactic across crawl, walk, and run phases within gaming and hospitality: 

 
Personalization Tactic: Encouraging gaming/ hospitality guests to visit more of their locations 
Crawl: Start with geolocation data only 

Identifies other properties within a defined mile radius and provide personalized offers or content to promote the next-closest property 

Walk: CRM Customer Booking data added  

Confirming if a customer has / has not booked and where across hotel, dining or show reservations, further opening up an opportunity to serve this audience with more specific messaging about those experiences  

Run: CDP connected real time post visit survey data added 

Evolving the tactic a bit further to ensure the most relevant content and offers are presented to increase multiple location visits 


As you can see, the available data directly impacts the feasibility of each phased approach.  

This example helps demonstrate the complexities that can accompany standing up a personalization tactic and reinforces the importance of having a reliable partner to support you along the way. 

As your company moves through the crawl, walk, run phases of personalization the results will get more defined and more meaningful to your company’s ROI due to the maturing data available. 

At Horizontal, we can help guide you through each phase of work successfully. Are you ready to start building your crawl, walk, run roadmap and achieving your personalization goals? Give us a call! 
 
 
 
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How to start and win the AI race
Auto racing is great global pastime, and so I would like to start this article about Generative AI with an analogy: 

Imagine you are the crew chief of an auto racing team that is preparing for the Daytona 500, a grueling contest that demands peak performance from all team members – the drivers, engineers, technologists, owners, and pit crew. 

(FYI. For our AI analogy, the crew chief is a company’s technology officer who is charged with leading his organization through the complicated topic of Generative AI and AI in general. Roll with me, here.) 

As crew chief, you know in your gut that a new engine (artificial intelligence) will help your car run faster and better but your team is still stuck in the garage. Your pit crew (your developers) is crankily wondering whether Pit Row will ever be the same. Your team’s sponsors (your marketing team) are only interested in the car’s branding and promotion (the promise of AI) and not the details of the race (the downsides of AI). The driver (your CEO) is untrained on how engines (the AI models) really work or if the car is safe to drive. And then there are your team owners (your shareholders). They just want to see your team cross the finish line first, regardless of how you get it there. 

You need a plan to move forward if your team is going to win.  
1. The formula of Engine + Fuel = Success  

Data is the fuel for the engine that is artificial intelligence. The quality and quantity of data used to train an AI model will have a direct impact on the model’s performance. That is because AI models learn from data. The more data that an AI model is trained on, the better it will be able to learn and perform its tasks. 

The quality of the data is also important. The data should be accurate, complete, and representative of the real world. Otherwise, the model will suffer. In addition to the quantity and quality of data, the type of data that is used to train an AI model is also key. Different types of data are suited for different tasks.  

For example, image data is well-suited for tasks such as image classification and object detection, while text data is well-suited for tasks such as natural language processing and machine translation. 

There are about a dozen subtopics around data that you will have to consider as part of a comprehensive AI strategy, making it critically important for you to establish an internal process to guide the conversation as soon as is reasonably possible. You need to decide what you are going to do, and then do it – not the other way around.  


2. Safety is largely determined by the quality of the track 

When a major accident happens at the Daytona 500, it can take a long time to clean up the track. When you are racing at speeds more than 190mph, any single screw left on the track can cause catastrophic damage. 

The same can be true of AI. If the models aren’t monitored properly, your organization will be “against the wall” with no way to recover. Any organization plan around AI should include the creation of an AI Advisory Board to help steer the conversation and create an AI priorities roadmap.  

Consulting firms who deal with multiple accounts should consider AI Client Advisory Boards to provide an organized forum for AI discussions and concerns and the technology and the use of the technology moves forward. 

As important will be the creation of a Risk Mitigation strategy to help teams navigate what will be murky waters around data quality, privacy, and ethics. Teams will require guidance and training if they are going to move forward with AI initiatives. Considering what is at stake in the race should be a worthy investment, not a worthless expense.


3. Warm up the engine 

In NASCAR, it’s critical to get the engines and tires up to temperature before the race.  If you don’t do that, the mechanics of the motor and fuel consumption are thrown off. 

With AI, you also need to warm up before you start in earnest. Starting with low-effort, high-reward proof of concept projects from the ground up can build the kind of foundation that organizational growth can be built on. 

Start slow, keep it simple and steer with intention. That’s the way to win the AI race.  

 
4. Team safety on pit row 

Pit Row at the Daytona 500 is a dangerous place. It can be especially scary for newcomers to racing. 

Similarly, AI is frightening because the concepts and terms around AI are so new. It seems like a lifetime ago, but ChatGPT is only six months old. And although the industry is abuzz with words like transformers, encoders, and decoders, hardly anyone outside a small technology circle has heard of those terms before.  

As you chart your company’s path with AI, it is important to remember that team upskilling and training will have to come first. Sure, you will have to hire new roles to compete in the AI economy. But you won’t know what those roles are, or their job responsibilities, until you dig into the new technologies and terminology yourself. 

AI is going to affect different teams differently. Creative teams are going to be impacted differently than finance teams and development teams. Therefore, it is important that you adopt a training and upskilling program that recognizes that not everyone needs to know the same things. 


5. “Tires win races” 

In the movie, “Days of Thunder,” pit chief Harry Hogge (Robert Duvall) tells driver Cole Trickle (Tom Cruise) that “tires win races.” He meant that control is part of what a driver needs to succeed. If tires get greasy because of a driver’s oversteering, the car will end up slipping all over the track, potentially causing a wreck. 

Likewise, with AI, problems with data quality, infrastructure and ethics can quickly put you in the wall. These elements are essential for the system to function optimally. In short, they are your tires. You will need to keep an eye on them and be prepared to change them if they show wear and tear. It's the only kind of forethinking AI strategy that can land you in the Winner’s Circle race-after-race. 


Want to learn about how to create a winning AI strategy? Contact us.  

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Jennifer Johnson works in digital strategy at Horizontal Digital.   
A rulebook for organizational change
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The power of personalized guest experiences in the gaming and hospitality industry 
Consider a guest, and the number of touchpoints they encounter during one visit with a gaming and hospitality brand. There’s research, planning, booking, travel (potentially), pre-check in, check-in, on-premises experiences (including active play, dining, entertainment, hotel, other amenities), check-out and survey follow ups – just to name a few.  
With each guest’s journey being made up of different pathways, this can get complicated quickly. But with the right balance of data and technology working together your brand is able to share relevant messaging and pathways to align with their needs.   
Personalization’s core definition is delivering the right message at the right time and in the right place (or channel). So, utilizing it to determine the next best action in a Hospitality or Gaming customer’s journey delivers on that memorable experience.  
Better customer experience outcomes result in increases across key business conversions driving overall growth for the brand, in fact, companies that grow faster drive 40 percent more of their revenue from personalization than their slower-growing counterparts. (McKinsey) Service activities connected to personalization can drive convenience, ease of use and loyalty for the customer. Being able to surprise and delight customers with new experience recommendations, discounts and offers is just as beneficial to your customers as it is to your business. Below are just a few ways personalization can impact the gaming and hospitality industry:

    Increased guest satisfaction due to ease of use across digital and physical engagement touchpoints  


    Increased revenue from bolstered conversion rates on owned channels such as hotel bookings, entertainment options, gaming, etc.  
    Increased customer loyalty driven by relevant messaging for amenities, games, discounts, etc.  


    Gaining deeper insights from customer experience performance metrics   
    Unifying siloed backend teams into one enterprise customer experience  

These benefits showcase how mutually beneficial a personalization strategy can be. Knowledge of the customer through key data points can truly balloon your business growth if configured to do so within your current tech stack. 

Within gaming specifically, relying on a gamer’s inputs, game play habits and preferences can greatly improve their experience and lead to greater loyalty when utilized for rewards, populating key art as well as knowing what type of gamer they are. How do they play? What do they play? How long do they play? When do they play? 
These could all be inputs to specific personalization use cases, for example if a gamer plays an average of 30 minutes but is incentivized by additional rewards, 1UPS, etc. Utilize this data input to create a use case that delivers a reward approximately 30 minutes into game play to extend their engagement duration driving more conversions, revenue and increased retention.  
The opportunities are as endless as the data points your brand captures.  
This is similar in hospitality, where there is a great opportunity to utilize real time triggers populating real time messaging while they are “on premise" with the brand.  

As an example, we could use the check in touchpoint. A guest checks into their hotel (either in person or digitally) and they immediately get a notification (email, SMS or mobile push) showcasing their daily menus, entertainment, etc. If the hotel has additional historical customer data on this individual, the message could be focused on a particular amenity they’ve experience during past visits.   
Ultimately, what sets businesses in the hospitality and gaming industry apart from the rest are their guest experiences which are driven by personalized, connected experiences throughout their journey. As technology evolves and these experiences become standard across all industries, it’s important to think about how your personalization will evolve and set you apart from your competitors. How do your customers interact with you now? What devices are they using to connect? Personalization is a moving target and what surprises and delights customers today could soon become their baseline expectation. To avoid diminishing returns, it’s important to map out your personalization roadmap and put the foundational pieces in place to build next-level experiences.     
At Horizontal, we are experts in helping our customers create connected experiences. To learn more about the importance of personalization in the gaming and hospitality industry, contact us
 






What makes an experience memorable? The convenience? The value? The thrill? In the gaming and hospitality industry, it’s all of the above.  
To deliver on that memorable experience, the puzzle pieces need to fall into place and the pieces look different for everyone. How can a brand impact someone’s individual journey to ensure their experience is the best it can be? 
The answer: Personalization.  
By now, we all know that personalization in any industry is imperative. Seventy-one percent of consumers expect companies to deliver personalized interactions, and 76 percent get frustrated when this doesn’t happen. (McKinsey) 
For the fast-growing hospitality and gaming industry, personalization is more crucial than ever. With the growth, guests now have an abundance of options to choose from, which means the industry has to be centered around service and ensuring the customer has all of their needs anticipated and met throughout their experience.
Build seamless digital and in-person experiences for your guests
Connected guest experiences, a sure bet
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How trusted data + generative AI will turbocharge productivity across clouds 
Salesforce revs its engines in the AI race 
If artificial intelligence is (as some have predicted) the engine that will supercharge human and business productivity for the next century, then good, trusted data will be its fuel. With it, you can go anywhere. Anytime. Without it, you are nowhere. Fast. 
 
That’s why the recent announcement from Salesforce related to its new AI Cloud offerings is so important. Salesforce already controls “the fuel” by hosting reams of proprietary customer data from its Sales, Service and Marketing Cloud products.  Now it plans to layer on top a generative AI engine that appears second to none. 
What is generative AI?
Generative AI is the ability to create or classify content by asking a computer model to do it for you through written text. It’s a boom for writers like me, which is why I am obsessed with the topic of generative AI and the technologies that enable it. 

Trained on huge amounts of data, Large Language Models (LLMs) interpret the text so they can create the right kind of output. Some LLMs can answer questions and classify data, write essays, email responses, create poetry, and even generate code. The models do the work, but their outputs are based on the data sets they are trained on. 
 
How trusted data + generative AI will turbocharge productivity across clouds 
That’s why AI Cloud’s new “Trust Layer” is so critical and sets Salesforce apart in the AI conversation. Salesforce plans to use the models in a secure protected SaaS platform that is already trusted by millions of users, businesses, and organizations worldwide.  It will keep its data from being indexed, allowing a company’s responses to be as informed and as accurate as possible.
Improving the lives of sellers
The goal of SalesGPT is to magnify the impact of sales teams by using generative AI to accelerate sellers’ productivity and allow them to work faster and more efficiently.  

Think about the use case of a seller who needs to write a client email. SalesGPT will suggest a first draft, crafting a response that is personalized and informed by the Customer 360 data model. Maybe the data shows something important that the seller needs to know, like a birthday or holiday. Maybe there is a recent customer support issue that has been escalated repeatedly and merits acknowledgement. 

In short, SalesGPT will help sellers build better relationships quicker and close more deals faster.  And it does so at scale. Talk about a good ROI. 
Improving customer service
ServiceGPT will use Data Cloud’s real-time data, coupled with AI capabilities, to help service teams deliver exceptional customer interactions and service – whether it be from corporate headquarters, call centers or the field. 

The purpose is to get people spending less time on time-consuming and repetitive tasks and more time cultivating customer loyalty. 
  
Features will include: 


    Automated case summaries 
    Automated knowledge base article creation 
    Automated case sentiment analysis 
    Field service work order summaries to summarize deliverables “automagically” 

The nature of the generative AI conversation means these features are just the beginning. The ability to improve customer service through AI is one of the largest drivers of investment in the space right now. So what Salesforce is doing here will only get better and better. 
Improving customer experience
Marketing GTP promises to supercharge the productivity of marketing teams who must deliver personalized digital experiences. It will do it using Data Cloud’s first party data. Marketers will be allowed to generate audience segments quickly, using text prompts and AI recommendations, to target the right customers with the right messages and the right time, based on near real time data in Data Cloud. As W. Edwards Demings said, “Without data you’re just another person with an opinion.” 
Trust is the ballgame with AI
All of this is to say that Salesforce has its act together in the AI space. A plurality of people fear AI because of data privacy and trust issues. But fear cannot be an organizations’ driver in this (or in any) arena. Generative AI can only provide productivity gains to businesses and organizations if people use it. And Salesforce’s second-to-none user support ecosystem almost guarantees its users will have access to the answers they need before and during their AI journey. 

Salesforce’s combination of data, privacy, and AI features (and support!) will be irresistible to users once they start embracing the new capabilities. And then everyone – Salesforce and its customers – will be really off to the races. If you would like to learn more about how Salesforce generative AI can transform your business, contact us.---Jennifer Johnson works in Digital Strategy at Horizontal Digital. She lives in Dallas, Texas.
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How trusted data + generative AI will turbocharge productivity across clouds 

Salesforce revs its engines in the AI race 

How the gaming and hospitality industry is evolving the way they connect with customers 






While the industry will be constantly evolving and innovating, placing guests at the center of the business strategy and building a foundation of truly knowing your customers is key. This includes knowing their preferences and interests, as well as where they’ve been with your brand experience, including past stays, their favorite amenity or game.  
Which is why collecting, mining and analyzing data to make intelligent decisions to inform guest journeys will give your brand the best chances of positioning itself as the preferred destination and/or property.  
 To learn more about the power of data, personalization, and creating connected experiences in the Gaming and Hospitality industry, check out our latest eBook, Connected guest experiences
The continual rise and introduction of newer, bigger and more enticing property options, and the competition flooding the market has left guests with an abundance of options. Casinos and resorts are continually finding new, innovative ways to attract and retain guests – from exciting entertainment and dining options to incentivizing loyal gamers with special perks and rewards. 
 
Below are the current trends affecting the gaming and hospitality industry today, and the impact that they will have on guests: 
 
	1. Sports betting remains strong 
Due to a high sportsbook win percentage and solid growth in existing markets, sports betting set a new quarterly revenue record of $1.68 billion, up 80.6 percent year-over-year.  This surge in demand has spurred technological advancements, such as mobile betting apps and live-streaming services, enhancing the overall gaming experience. 
 
	2. iGaming popularity shows no signs of slowing down 
There was a significant drop in patrons visiting brick-and-mortar casinos in the U.S. in 2022 following COVID-19 and growing economic instability. This decline of on-property visits has led to a 15% increase in opening online casinos. (Slotegrater).  iGaming offers convenience, accessibility, and a variety of games attracting new players. On the other hand, traditional casinos face increased competition, necessitating diversification and technological investment.  
 
	3. A wave of younger demographic players is on the rise and older audiences are on the decline 
As noted above with online gaming and sports betting, mobile gambling has enabled younger digital-native players to enter the market. Casinos with online gaming and sports betting are seeing a move by younger demographics to brick-and-mortar properties due to cross-pollination from digital and traditional database sources. (Tribal Gaming and Hospitality). The increasing presence of younger players is likely to drive the demand for more technologically advanced and innovative gaming experiences.  
 
	4. Self-service and mobile technology are now baseline 
The integration of mobile reservations and check-in/out features has become an indispensable part of the guest experience in the hospitality industry. With the advent of smartphones and the growing reliance on digital solutions, guests now expect the convenience and flexibility that these mobile services offer. Hotels, resorts, and other accommodation providers have recognized this shift in consumer behavior and have responded by adopting these technologies to stay competitive. Mobile reservations and check-in/out features are table stakes for guests as part of the experience.  
 
	5. Lodging rates have gone up, but amenities have not 
Between January 2022 and January 2023, hotel rates have increased by 54%. This is largely attributed to high-demand and inflation. With increased competition in the hospitality industry, guests have more choices when it comes to accommodation options. If they feel that they are paying more for the same amenities, they may be more inclined to explore other hotels or lodging options, leading to reduced customer retention and loyalty. 
 
	6. Leisure travelers want to experience more out of their destination 
According to American Express Travel, travelers are seeking vacations with personalized experiences 88% of respondents say they like to seek out local experiences and learn about culture when they travel. Providing personalized experiences presents opportunities for hotels to not only gain customer loyalty, but also to upsell additional services and amenities.  
Worldwide, the casino and hospitality industries are expected to grow at a rate of 5.14%
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Connected guest experiences, a sure bet
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Why data is key to creating connected banking customer experiences
A survey of banking executives found that 95% identified legacy systems and core banking modules as culprits of inhibiting efforts to optimize data. (Capgemini: World Retail Banking Report 2022)
In order to thrive, it will be essential for banks to demonstrate their value proposition in the new digital environment, keeping in mind the power of simplifying, upgrading and creating elevated moments of interaction through data.
By treating data as a product, the foundations of banking can be transformed. Banks possess vast and varied amounts of customer data — geospatial, financial, social media, lifestyle, behavioral — but 73% of the executives surveyed struggle to turn it into useful insights.
To unlock and use this rich data, it may take a data product manager and a data-driven mindset for banks to realize actionable insights that inform results-driven tactics trapped in their data.
Assigning a key role that champions this data driven sensibility can own critical functions such as:

    Identifying and defining the use cases
    Cleansing the data
    Setting up application programming interfaces (APIs) and structures that enable different teams and systems throughout the bank access to the data.

Omni-channel marketing takes orchestration of a brand’s entire channel mix and ensures all elements are working in unison. So, it’s a seamless and completely cohesive journey for customers as they flow through the funnel — from touchpoint to touchpoint jumping in and out of channels they’re engaged with.
For example, a customer starting at the brand website and then contacting a sales rep, a truly omnichannel connected experience captures the customer’s interactions from the website and passes them on, or ensures the sales rep has access to them, so they can more effectively carry through the continuity of the experience between those two touchpoints.
Creating a seamless, end-to-end, personalized, connected customer experience, with friction-free interactions that leverage contextual engagement and provide anticipatory solutions, requires unifying customer data from each of your channels into a holistic record of customer data and intel.
At Horizontal, we help customers create connected experiences with connected data. If you want to learn more about how we can help in your digital transformation, reach out!  
Mckinsey
To compete for data on an equal footing with technology companies, banks will need a comprehensive data infrastructure to support data collection, storage, and advanced analytics, as well as a digital marketing engine to translate analytical insights into personalized messages that anticipate individual customer needs and intentions.
  
Banking executives and organizational leaders are prioritizing customer experience (CX) technology and martech initiatives. According to Forrester Research, 35% of global banking executives are satisfied with their digital banking initiatives. However, 65% of respondents are unsatisfied with the progress made with implementing these plans.  Getting valuable insights can be challenging, especially in banking. The use of customer data must be secure, transparent and ethical, which is not an easy task for financial institution professionals seeking actionable insights.
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4 keys to digital ROI in the financial services industry
When it comes to engaging audiences via digital screens, the financial services sector has historically lagged behind other broad industry verticals.   

Why? Perhaps more so than any other industry, successful customer relationships in the FinServ space require a rock-solid foundation of implicit trust and a hypersensitivity to security and privacy. (We’re talking about people’s money here, after all.) Historically, these relationships have been largely built on interpersonal interactions — whether it’s the teller you talk to every Friday when depositing your check, the adviser a retired couple trusts with their investments, or the team developing an asset management strategy for a large enterprise.   

But times are changing, and the industry is catching on to macro trends that are shifting these paradigm and mindsets:   

“Check” and “teller” are words that millennials and gen Z-ers don’t even know.   

The once-clear lines differentiating a best-practice B2B digital experience from a B2C experience continue to blur.   

Highly individualized digital experiences are both table stakes and a solid proxy for the interpersonal interactions that used to dominate.   
 
Businesses that get digital personalization right are rewarded with measurable ROI: higher customer satisfaction scores, less churn, increased upselling and cross-selling rates, and reduced reliance on high-cost operations like brick-and-mortar branches. However, the path to personalization in this industry is no walk in the park. From legacy software to organizational silos to regulatory realities, the world of Financial Services is full of hurdles that challenge the industry’s digital dreams.  

Financial services firms looking to reap the benefits of personalized digital experiences need to consider the following:   
Take an ROI-driven approach to personalization 

Digital transformation isn’t cheap. And in financial services, we’ve seen a tendency to view digital as a cost center. That’s why we help our clients focus on their digital content strategy through an ROI lens. A properly architected strategy absolutely can — and should — turn your digital experiences into sources of attributable revenue.  

To accomplish this goal for our clients, Horizontal takes an experience-forward approach. This means we put the end user at the center of everything we do. Content strategy and personalization tactics purposefully match prospective clients with relevant products and value propositions, and we establish measurable goals for the outcomes we intend to achieve. Next, we test and measure. We consistently prove that the operational costs, strategies, and resources needed to create and manage personalized content can deliver net profits for our clients.  

If your firm is new to the world of personalization, it may make sense to start with a low-risk, low-cost approach that focuses on one audience segment and doesn’t require heavy lifting from a technology standpoint. If this foray is a success, it can convince leadership to take on larger personalization efforts down the line.  
Get your teams and technologies on the same page 

Many leading Financial Services brands have established their positions over the course of many decades, building on longstanding reputations of consistent, reliable performance. With those legacies come some common drawbacks: reliance on outdated operational silos, dated technology, and disconnected data.   

Customers engage with these firms through an ever-growing number of channels — making it difficult to pull together a 360-view of their content consumption. Plus, since the teams and technologies that oversee financial offerings are often isolated, business lines operate in a vacuum and banks miss out on opportunities to cross-sell and bundle products.  

These roadblocks are underscored by a growing sense of urgency. Since FinTech startups don’t have to deal with tangled legacy systems and organizational complications, they are able to achieve personalization on an accelerated timeline and cut into the customer base of traditional giants.  

To get a holistic view of their customers, banks must prioritize the construction of a central data repository, i.e., a CDP. Salesforce Data Cloud seamlessly aggregates and unifies data from multiple sources, enabling banks to build individual 360-degree customer profiles safely and securely. 

We help our clients connect their technology platforms and implement the organizational change management strategies that financial institutions need to unify their teams, integrate their data, and drive connected experiences.  
Content: It’s not just for marketers anymore!  

When digital was new, it mostly meant things like websites and email, and often by default fell under the purview of a marketing department. Today, we know that digital technology, data, content, and experience permeate all aspects of the enterprise. Successful transformation requires a holistic approach.   

Case in point: we work with a firm that offers financial instruments like insurance products in multiple states. Let’s say one of their product managers identifies an opportunity to gain a competitive advantage by adjusting a rate on a product from 5% to 6%. Today, making a single change to a single product requires dozens of steps and hundreds of people to adjust, review, approve and implement that change across the avalanche of internal- and external-facing systems, data stores, and associated documentation.   

By the time the rate change is implemented, the window of opportunity may be gone — and the firm could lose its competitive advantage to industry disruptors (FinTech firms) that can more readily turn on a dime.   

Fortunately, technology platforms like Sitecore’s Content Hub can drastically streamline this drawn-out process while maintaining and even improving compliance workflows and governance. With the click of a button, you can make a rate change once in Content Hub, and the change will instantly show up across every channel and piece of documentation for immediate review. This empowers FinServ firms to be much more nimble when it comes to launching, managing, and adapting products based on market conditions at any given moment.  
Unlock the power of AI 

Historically, enterprises have struggled to bring truly individualized experiences to life because doing so can be a lot of work: even the best technologies on the market require significant manual effort to set up personalization rules, crunch the numbers, re-optimize content, and so on.   

Today, artificial intelligence can accelerate your path to personalization by serving the best content to customers and helping you gain valuable insights on their behavior. AI might sound intimidating or overwhelming, but when applied properly through tools like Sitecore’s auto-personalization, it can be an easy way to crunch data and convert it into predictions and suggestions.    

Say goodbye to guesswork — machine learning can auto-segment user clusters so you don’t need to spend hours on data analysis to manually create customer segments. Via tracked behavior data, Sitecore AI can predict which content is best for new visitors vs. returning customers — providing 1:1 personalization in real-time. AI can also automate tedious operational tasks, eliminate maintenance bottlenecks, shorten the time to campaign launch, and let marketers quickly adjust to campaign changes.  
The future of the Financial Services industry 
 
In many ways, the COVID-19 pandemic accelerated the digital transformation that was already happening in the financial services industry. With a growing focus on Millennial and Gen Z customers, emerging technologies, and new FinTech disruptors to take into account, traditional banks and credit unions have been slowly but surely evolving for years. As the industry increasingly prioritizes digitization, getting personalization right can give you a massive strategic advantage.  
Want to learn more about personalization in Financial Services? Let's chat. 
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4 keys to digital ROI in the financial services industry

Accelerating business agility: How cloud development drives speed and success
“You can’t teach speed.” Al Davis, former owner of the Oakland Raiders. 
 
Yet speed is a critical factor to how businesses thrive, let alone survive. As customer demands increase in scale and market conditions existing in a near-constant state of evolution, speed is often the single-most important ingredient to your business’ operations. 
 
Cloud development can help businesses realize these essential speed gains by providing a faster and more agile development process. 

Recently, Horizontal formed a tiger team to build an immersive commerce experience using Sitecore’s composable stack that would be showcased at several Symposium DX events.  The challenge, however, was that we had only six weeks to complete — from inception to deployment. 

My first thought was “Whew! This is going to be a tight timeline!” But I was also somewhat at ease because we would be leveraging all cloud-based components. Here’s why: 


    Cloud providers offer a wide range of pre-built services that can be used to quickly and easily build applications. This eliminates the need for businesses to invest in and maintain their own infrastructure — saving both time and money. 
    Cloud providers offer a pay-as-you-go pricing model, helping businesses to control their costs and avoid overspending. 
    Cloud providers offer a high level of scalability, which means that businesses can easily scale their applications up or down as needed. This can help businesses to meet changing demand without having to make major investments in infrastructure. 

As a result of these factors, cloud development can help businesses to substantially speed up their development process — ultimately providing a competitive advantage by allowing them to bring new products and services to market faster. 

In addition to speed, cloud development also offers a number of other benefits for businesses, including: 

    Increased agility: Cloud development allows businesses to quickly and easily adapt to changing market conditions and customer demands. 
    Reduced costs: Cloud providers offer a pay-as-you-go pricing model, which can help businesses to control their costs and avoid overspending. 
    Improved security: Cloud providers offer a high level of security, which can help businesses to protect their data from unauthorized access. 
    Increased scalability: Cloud providers offer a high level of scalability, which means that businesses can easily scale their applications up or down as needed. 

Overall, cloud development is a valuable tool that can help businesses to speed up their development process and improve their bottom line. If you're looking for a way to improve the speed and agility of your business, cloud development is a great option to consider. 

Here are some additional tips for speeding up your cloud development process: 


    Use pre-built services and tools whenever possible. 
    
    Automate as much of your development process as possible. 
    
    Break down your projects into smaller, more manageable tasks. 
    
    Use a cloud-based development environment. 
    
    Collaborate with your team members effectively. 
    
    Test your code regularly. 
    
    Monitor your applications for performance and security issues. 

Want to learn more about cloud development? Our team of experts are here to talk. 
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