We're all trying to do more with less, whether that's making our monthly shop go further and reducing our utilities consumption at home or doing more with our organisations' available budgets and resources in our professional lives. But while getting the most out of the resources we have available is certainly admirable and sensible, our most precious resource – one that we cannot replenish once it's been used – is all-too-frequently neglected: our time.

The CX technology market continues to evolve, innovate, and expand in all directions. The CRM and CCaaS vendors are locked in battle for customer wallet share and have started to step on each other's toes, particularly in areas like AI (Artificial Intelligence), automation, and analytics. The CRM vendors have established base camp in territory which has traditionally been the stable of the CCaaS vendors and, at the same time, we are seeing CCaaS vendors introduce new capability that encroaches on the CRM space. However, it is still the case, at least for now, that no single solution can meet all the needs of a mature customer service or CX operation. Add to that the fact that customer expectations are more demanding than ever and that creates a challenge for contact centre leaders.

When you think of a truly world-class shopping experience, what are the key elements that immediately spring to mind? For most of us, it's the personal touches… We're greeted by name by a familiar shopping assistant, who's already familiar with our preferences and purchasing habit. They'll guide us through the entire experience, offering advice and special offers throughout. Regardless of the actual quality of the product or service, it's these touches that will establish it as high-end in the minds of shoppers and encourage them to cultivate relationships with specific brands. It's a model that the world's most renowned retailers have cultivated for years.

After several years of serious global upheaval, it is clear that resilience, agility, and the ability to adapt to the unexpected are critical priorities for all organisations – regardless of size or sector. However, this accelerated pace of change has, in many cases, revealed the limitations of existing IT services. With an increasing emphasis on on-demand services and a highly fluid workforce, legacy services and their systems often struggle to support new propositions and customers' evolving needs, which will – in turn – make maintaining a competitive advantage difficult, if not near impossible.

As a long-standing technology partner for multiple financial organisations across the UK, the team at Exponential-e have been observing the sector's evolving relationship with technology for some time - both the growing demand for a higher standard of operational resilience, and an increasing awareness of the challenges and opportunities that Cloud transformation presents.

The turbulence of the current geopolitical situation has affected numerous sectors, who must not only consider how to protect their infrastructure from anticipated cyber-attacks, but also ensure that they are able to maintain business-as-usual as possible against a backdrop of global disruption to supply chains. As a sector that depends on the ready availability of materials, the UK's AEC sector has been particularly affected.

The Hospitality & Leisure sector is inherently people-focused, with the personal touch making all the difference to guests' experiences. But, as we have already discussed on this blog, the multiple lockdowns in response to COVID-19 have forced to the entire sector to adopt new ways of engaging with guests, utilising next-gen smart technology to deliver truly bespoke experiences and streamlined access to a wide range of services.

For many years, retailers' CCTV systems and IT infrastructure have operated in relative isolation, competing for space and resources whilst never utilising the full potential of their combined power. The good news is that next-generation IT infrastructure is increasingly bridging this gap, in order to reduce costs, simplify infrastructure, and allow retailers to access a range of actionable data streams through AI and analytics.

In light of numerous dramatic shifts in the geopolitical landscape in recent months, this blog has reiterated the need for organisations across all sectors to strengthen and - if necessary - reconsider their cyber security postures, in order to prepare for the anticipated attacks by global bad actors. The legal sector is no exception, particularly as these attacks are anticipated to specifically target the most high-value data.

The digital landscape is evolving at a rate that's never been seen before and is set to continue accelerating in the years ahead. In such a fast-paced environment, the ability to work flexibly, responding to unexpected challenges and optimising the time-to-market for new innovations, is critically important for all organisations - whether they're ambitious start-ups or established global leaders. While IT infrastructure must certainly support this - hence the widespread phasing out of legacy infrastructure in favour of increasingly sophisticated Cloud transformation strategies - any new technology will be of limited effectiveness if processes and methodologies do not evolve in parallel.

For some years now, Cloud adoption has been steadily on the rise across the UK's Finance sector, with organisations including banks, insurers, and investment firms phasing out increasingly cumbersome legacy systems in favour of more scalable, agile, and cost-effective infrastructure. Indeed, more than 48% of UK banking services are now built on Cloud infrastructure.

In a heightened cyber threat landscape - where ransomware attacks are increasing in frequency and sophistication - and having weathered the challenges of COVID-19 and the resulting move to hybrid working, the Finance sector is still continually challenged to demonstrate to its customers that critical services will remain available no matter what, and that sensitive financial data will remain fully secure at all times.