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Over the last few years, we’ve seen incredible digital progress – across industries, employees and society. In some cases completely transforming what is possible almost overnight. 

And everything we’ve learned from the past few years of challenge and progress is now directly impacting the way business leaders make decisions to prepare for the future. Resilience, innovation, and adaptability have become the central pillars of any digital transformation project.

But this progress has also raised expectations. Business, as we knew it, is over, and companies are having to challenge themselves to find new ways to meet customer demand. 

It’s a new era of business, where consumers expect more. 50% of people said the pandemic made them totally revise what’s important to them in life, according to Accenture. And a further 66% now expect brands to take more responsibility in motivating them to live by their values. 

It’s no longer enough to just ‘do business’. And consumers aren’t the only ones with higher expectations. The rapid digital transformation we’ve seen has raised the bar for employees, across industry and society.

Many companies are facing an exodus of employees who are exhausted, overwhelmed and fed up of not being supported in new ways of working. 69% of workers surveyed by Randstad UK said they were ‘feeling confident’ about moving to a new role in the next few months. 

Workers now demand more trust from their employers, better flexibility and work-life balance at work, and the ability to work easily and securely from wherever they work best. Businesses are having to reimagine the status quo, to move beyond old ways of doing things and adjust to new and changing work practices to meet rising employee expectations. 

This isn’t just the right thing to do for employees, it’s the right thing to do for customers – after all, in this new era of expectations, motivated, supported and empowered employees are much more likely to drive a better customer experience.

Businesses expect more than just providers 

Business expectations have also risen. And it’s up to providers to meet them.

Digital providers need to be helping businesses to deliver against new customer expectations that have become more pronounced thanks to easy access to online services and better-quality data.

Half of insurance customers are willing to provide additional personal data in exchange for benefits such as favourable premiums, lower interest rates or other financial benefits, according to Accenture. But consumers also demand security around their data. Businesses expect support in making these data exchanges as secure as possible.

Digital transformation is key for businesses to meet new expectations and remain competitive. 64% of decision makers surveyed by McKinsey in 2021 recognised that their companies need to build new digital businesses to stay economically viable by 2023.

But digital transformation can also be a huge undertaking. Organisations need the right partner to support them through this process. This is about more than selling technology – this is about achieving success. 

It’s time for ‘partner’ to mean something again 

The term ‘partner’ is used a lot by service providers. But few are truly living up to the name. Partnership is about being invested in the end goal success, sharing risk as well as reward, and going beyond what is expected. When goals aren’t being met, a true partner should roll up its sleeves and work alongside a business to get it back on track. 

It’s the bare minimum that businesses should expect.

However, traditional Service Level Agreements (SLAs) don’t go far enough in a fast-moving, ever-changing landscape. Suppliers will put together an SLA that’s all about what you can expect from them based on generic product/service performance measures. But businesses should expect more. Partners should be looking at the bigger picture. 

If an organisation’s customers aren’t satisfied and the organisation isn’t hitting its goals, then it’s missing out on the promise of digital transformation. Which isn’t good enough.

Because digital transformation is only a success when it’s helping companies to achieve their overall aims and ambitions.

It’s about success beyond SLAs

Where there’s progress, there’s also the opportunity to challenge the existing status quo. The opportunity for companies to expect more from their digital partner and the goals set in a partnership. 

Virgin Media Business and O2 Business joined forces to reimagine connectivity and do things differently, and we’re starting by introducing our new Success Agreement.

We know that large-scale transformation is a big undertaking, so we’ve created a completely new way of thinking about collaboration that puts our customers’ objectives front and centre. We’re going above and beyond traditional digital transformation SLAs by putting our customers’ goals at the heart of our relationship.

It could be a commitment to improve employee productivity, experience, and security in the new era of hybrid working. Or agreeing clear targets on enhancing customer experience, contact centre performance and the digital delivery of services.

Under our Success Agreement, we don’t judge our success just by what we do for customers. We’ll help customers to define their objectives and use their goals to ensure our solution is really working for them.

If things aren’t working, we’ll share the financial risk and work closely with our customers, from our C-Suite down through our organisation, to get things on track. It’s time to expect more from your partner.

The Success Agreement is service, reimagined by Virgin Media O2 Business. 

Find out more about the benefits of the Success Agreement for your organisation on our website.