Digital Future

Creatively Logical – Accelerating Digital Transformation with Data and Design

For more than 15 years, Infosys worked with a major global bank headquartered in the US to create much of the IT infrastructure that underpins the organization’s enterprise systems. This work is vital because it provides the platform on which the bank’s complex global operations run, but it is largely invisible to end users.

As time went by, Infosys built a close working relationship with the bank and became a trusted partner, however, the bank seldom engaged with Infosys in any discussion around improving user journeys or experience for its customers. The bank trusted Infosys’ core strength in technology services but rarely did they reach out for any of the end-user experience related initiatives.

That changed in April 2018 when Infosys announced its agreement to acquire Wongdoody, a full-service creative and consumer insights agency that has won more than 250 national and international awards and repeatedly been named “Small Agency of the Year” by Advertising Age. The acquisition gave Infosys stronger capabilities than ever before in creative development, branding and digital customer engagement.

So, when this global bank decided to digitize and improve key elements of the user experience for its business customers, Infosys could now step up and offer to help in new ways. “Thanks to the skills that Wongdoody brought to the table, we won the engagement to reimagine the mobile banking experience for our client’s B2B customers,” says SP Singh, Vice President, Delivery Head at Infosys.

Specifically, the bank asked Infosys to redesign its treasury function. “Consumer banking customers have a great digital experience these days, but corporate treasurers are still stuck digging through piles of paper documents to find all the necessary regulations governing the countries where their companies do business,” explains Ben Wiener, CEO at Wongdoody. “Working together, Infosys and Wongdoody created a better experience for our client’s B2B customers by integrating multiple data sets and presenting the information in an intuitive and visually engaging way.”

This all happened quickly too. It took Infosys and Wongdoody only a few weeks to develop a prototype. To generate excitement and awareness about this new solution, they leaned on Wongdoody’s marketing experience to create a promotional video that could be shared internally and with prospective end users. Accustomed to working on tight deadlines, Wongdoody produced, edited and had the video ready for distribution in just three days.

The smooth Wongdoody-Infosys collaboration made a strong impression with the client. “Your work elevates our message and brand,” said one of the bank’s executives. “It’s slick, innovative and powerful. It stands out.”

Creative Solutions on Solid Platforms

Infosys regularly works on massive digital engagements with timescales that measured in years. It has established proven, trusted client relationships that stretch back for decades.

Wongdoody is accustomed to working on quicker cycles of days or weeks. The agency is comfortable with delivering results under the pressure of looming deadlines and pants-on-fire urgency levels.

By combining their strengths to deliver the best of both worlds, Wongdoody can help Infosys realize its vision of offering clients agile digital at scale. “Wongdoody gives us tip-of-the-spear capabilities to transform our clients’ digital footprints,” says Singh. On the flip side, the merger enables Wongdoody to implement its creativity in new and powerful ways. “Joining Infosys gives us instant scale and expertise to leverage data and user experience insights to build brand platforms for the future,” says Wiener.

To apply this vision across its client base, Infosys is building a global network of Digital Studios that are designed to foster creativity, innovation, and collaboration among employees, partners, and clients. In these Digital Studios, Infosys has gathered an international team of experienced innovators who combine human insights with next-generation technology to help companies transform their customer experiences anytime, anywhere, and on any channel.

“We have a scalable process to get the most creativity out of people,” says Wiener. “We will use the Digital Studios to bring those lessons to a broad set of leaders who can drive results at scale while maintaining excellence in both design and execution.”

Creative Democracy: The Common Thread

On the surface, a boutique agency like Wongdoody and a global consulting and IT services company like Infosys might seem to have little in common. In the popular imagination, IT experts are sober, logical and careful, while creatives are carefree, intuitive and impulsive.

That’s not the way that Wongdoody’s award-winning Chief Creative Officer, Tracy Wong sees it. He says that the best creative decisions are made through logical, democratic processes. Wong believes that Infosys and Wongdoody work well together because both organizations value data-driven problem solving.

“Logic too often goes out the window when evaluating creative ideas,” warns Wong. “Clients typically get the best results if they use logic to analyze data that gives them a better understanding of target audiences and what drives their behavior. Focus-group findings and data-driven insights often point you in the right direction for a creative campaign.”

In solving the complex, challenging problems facing organizations grappling with digital disruptions, Wong says it’s crucial to have all sorts of people at the table—strategists, technology experts, and creatives—all working together in a democratic, egalitarian way to solve problems. “True, ego-less collaboration always produces the best creative solutions,” says Wong. “If people don’t check their egos at the door, the process will go sideways.”

Bringing B2C Techniques to B2B

Wongdoody recognized a long time ago that the business decision-makers are people who can be engaged with the same compelling imagery, messaging and storytelling skills that creative agencies use to reach consumer audiences.

Wongdoody brought this creative ethos to a multi-platform, integrated campaign it ran to raise awareness of a cloud computing service among C-suite decision makers. Combining a variety of media including broadcast, digital, social video, billboards, the campaign featured more than 200 unique whiteboard depictions of real cloud solutions. A smart, targeted media buying strategy made sure that the messages reached the target audience in major metro areas. Following the launch of the campaign, the client saw its business surge by 35%.

Wong sees B2B campaigns from a brand-building perspective. “When you think of any digital product, app or experience, it goes through a design phase and then a deployment phase, but you also need to generate demand,” he points out. “Our job as marketing practitioners is to attract, engage and acquire those customers. If Infosys helps a logistics company develop a digital product, we can use our brand marketing skills to engage employee and customer audiences to convince them to download and use the product.”

Infosys excels at building enterprise-level, durable technology platforms that deliver cost reductions, improve efficiency, and manage vast data flows. Wongdoody has mastered the art of continuously refreshing the experiences that live on top of those platforms to match changing consumer or employee preferences and needs.

“Infosys has established a strong track record of delivering on the promises we make,” says Singh. “This trustworthy reputation helps us attract new clients and also explains why the vast majority of our business comes from satisfied repeat customers with whom we have built deep relationships over many years.”

Having joined forces with Wongdoody, Infosys can now extend these relationships beyond the technology sphere to encompass design, branding and all the other creative services that clients need to accomplish their data-driven digital business transformation.