GBS World News | Week 1 | August 2021

In European news, it is estimated that the global centre software market will achieve a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 20.9% between 2020 and 2026, where the market will grow from USD$24,1 billion to USD75,5 billion during this period. The increasing adoption of contact centre technologies, social media channels, virtual and cloud-based contact centre solutions and omnichannel solutions are some of the factors driving the growth in the global centre software market.

In the U.S., Netflix has announced that it has launched an online shop offering clothing and accessories relating to streaming media content on its platform. The shop is being touted as an online boutique. Netflix has made deals with top retailers, including Amazon, Walmart, Target and Seophora, to sell everything from clothes to beauty kits to home items branded to its original series content as well as films.

Amazon is set to be bigger than Walmart by 2025, which will make the e-commerce platform the largest retailer in the US. This is according to research conducted by Edge, which states that Amazon’s gross merchandise value will reach US$631 billion in 2025, achieving a CAGR of 14% between 2020 and 2025. Walmart, on the other hand, will have a gross merchandise value of US$523 billion, with a CAGR of 3.9% during the same period.

In Canada, the quality of customer experience in Canada during the COVID-19 pandemic remained the same, according to Forrester’s Canada 2021 Customer Experience (CX) Index. The significance of the stability in CX quality is based on the unprecedented changes in customer needs and expectations during the pandemic, a time of great disruption and unpredictability. It was found that investment firms were among the 5% best brands in the CX index, where RBC Dominion Securities, ScotiaMcLeod, and TD Wealth reached this category for the first time.

In Asia Pacific news, Edelweiss General Insurance (EGI), an Indian-based InsurTech start up, achieved a growth in premiums of 49% in their 2021 financial year, against the general insurance industry average growth of 5.1% during the same period. The primary drivers of EGI’s growth are its private car and retail health insurance segments, as well as the company’s digital operating model, which ensured smooth business continuity and operational efficiency over the past year.

Genesys Cloud CX, a cloud platform developed by Genesys, will be launching new capabilities that will allow businesses in India to keep their interactions and data within the country. This new feature is something that is vital for highly regulated industries, such as healthcare, and financial services, that have to follow strict compliance and regulatory standards that often have to follow data sovereignty requirements.

In Africa and the Middle East, Virgin Mobile Middle East and Africa (VMMEA), the region’s leading Mobile Virtual Network Operator, announced its plans to expand its deployment of the NetNumber TITAN platform. NetNumber is a Centralised Signalling and Routing Control (CSRC) platform on 2G, 3G, 4G and 5G networks. As part of its digital transformation, VMMEA has contracted NetNumber to assist in the deployment of signalling infrastructure based on the TITAN platform, offering applications that support signalling and routing, security and subscriber data management.

In other general news, customer centricity and the customer journey are increasingly becoming the primary focus of retailers and brands. Business operations of brands are being moulded by their focus on the full customer journey experience, not only on individual touchpoints and sales. This is the core reason for the growth in retention and engagement journeys in customer journey use cases, according to the 2021 State of the Customer Journey report.

The Spring 2021 Customer Relationship Management (CRM) Software Customer Success Report has been published, which provides insights into what CRM software is the best based on 8,000 pieces of verified customer reference content. Among the market leaders in CRM software, include Creatio, Act!, Hubspot and Microsoft Dynamics. Agile CRM, Affinity, Cosential and Thryv are some of the Top Performers.