Ciklum Editorial Team
Ciklum's 9th Annual Client Conference kicked off on September 9-10, 2024, at the historic Art Nouveau Obecní dům (Municipal House) in Prague. The event brought together industry leaders, clients, and experts for two days of lively discussions, hands-on workshops, and fresh insights into the technologies shaping the future.
From Customer Experience (CX) and Edge Technologies to Responsible AI and Experience Engineering, the conference explored how these innovations are driving growth and transforming the way businesses engage with their customers. Let’s take a look at some of the key themes.
How Modern Customer Experience Practices Shine a Light on your Customer
Customer Experience (CX) was a central theme of the conference, where speakers highlighted the need for businesses to adapt to the changing consumer landscape, particularly with the rise of Gen Z as a dominant consumer group.
Overview
The session focused on how Gen Z is reshaping customer expectations. As a generation of digital natives, their influence on the market is increasing, with spending power expected to surge in the next few years. Businesses need to focus on peer-driven content, authenticity, and purpose-driven experiences to engage this audience.
Key takeaways:
- Gen Z’s impact on CX: Gen Z will account for 30% of global spending in 5-10 years. As digital natives, they prefer peer-generated content, making traditional marketing less effective.
- Customer-centric strategies: Only 3% of companies are truly customer-centric. Data-driven insights, not assumptions, are key to understanding customer needs and avoiding product failures.
- Prioritization and Agile Development: Prioritization frameworks like RICE and agile development drive efficiency and success, as seen with Duolingo’s gradual AI integration.
Daniel Jennings, Global Head of Customer Experience at Ciklum, added, “The only thing that companies can do to arm themselves against new disruption is to develop an Experience Engineering mindset and build a framework to ensure they can test and release innovative ideas quickly.”
The Experience Engineering Mindset: Defining the New Normal
Overview
The session explored how Experience Engineering goes beyond traditional product development. It prioritizes building the right product by understanding customer needs and ensuring that engineering, design, and testing are aligned throughout the entire development lifecycle. Mubine Din, Global Head of Solutioning Ciklum explained it in his own words, "Experience engineering is about uniting diverse skill sets and mindsets to bring strategy to life, ensuring that every product decision is made with the customer experience in mind."
Key takeaways:
- Holistic Product Development: Experience Engineering integrates CX, software engineering, and digital assurance to deliver high-quality, reliable products throughout the SDLC.
- Customer-centric focus: The goal is to build the right product by adapting to evolving customer needs. Tools like "Zone of Tolerance Mapping" help exceed expectations.
- Team collaboration: Cross-functional teamwork fosters innovation, preventing missed opportunities.
- Digital Assurance: AI-powered testing ensures quality, reducing defects and speeding up releases by up to 50%.
- Continuous improvement: Hackathons and incubators encourage innovation, keeping teams ahead of trends and maintaining product excellence.
Is Your Business “Responsible AI” Ready?
As businesses increasingly rely on artificial intelligence (AI) to automate processes and enhance customer interactions, the need for Responsible AI has become critical. This session addressed the ethical and regulatory aspects that companies must consider when deploying AI systems. Daniel Minnick, Head of Data & AI Ciklum cautioned, “In the age of AI, reputational risk can be more damaging than regulatory fines. Building trust through responsible AI practices is not just a legal obligation but a business imperative."
Overview
With regulations such as the EU AI Act becoming stricter, businesses must ensure their AI systems are not only effective but also ethical, transparent, and compliant with legal standards. The penalties for non-compliance are severe, making Responsible AI a business imperative.
Key takeaways:
- Responsible AI and regulatory risks: Responsible AI ensures systems are ethical, transparent, and compliant with regulations like the EU AI Act, which imposes fines up to 7% of global turnover for violations. Missteps can lead to both regulatory and reputational damage.
- Pillars of responsible AI: Includes transparency, fairness, explainability, AI literacy, and data control, helping avoid biases and unethical practices.
- Key principles: Focuses on preventing over-reliance on AI, ensuring ethical AI, protecting data privacy, and managing third-party risks.
- Starting the journey: Identify your AI role and assess compliance, particularly for high-risk areas.
- Maturity assessment: Helps organizations assess AI readiness and highlight areas for improvement, ensuring both compliance and competitiveness.
Edge Technology: The Next Generation in 3D Customer Engagement
Led by Sanket Prabhu and Amit Kavatkar, this session took a deep dive into the future of customer engagement, where Edge Technology is creating groundbreaking experiences through Augmented Reality (AR), Virtual Reality (VR), and Mixed Reality (MR).
Overview
The track explored how AR, VR, and MR are creating new ways for businesses to engage with customers, offering immersive experiences that go beyond traditional digital interactions. Sanket Prabhu, Head of Edge Tech at Ciklum explained, "Edge technology is not just about showcasing new devices – it’s about understanding how these innovations can be leveraged to transform industries, enhance customer engagement, and drive business growth."
He further added how industries like retail, healthcare, and automotive are already seeing the benefits of these technologies, with applications ranging from virtual try-ons to VR-based training.
Key takeaways:
- Enhancing engagement and loyalty: By integrating these technologies into the development process, businesses can ensure that they are delivering innovative, high-quality products that resonate with their customers and drive loyalty.
- Use cases: Amit Kavatkar showcased applications across industries like retail and healthcare, such as virtual try-on tools and VR training simulations.
- Immersive devices: Demonstrations of devices like the Apple Vision Pro and HTC Vive illustrated their capability to create immersive experiences.
- SDLC integration: Integrating edge technologies across the SDLC ensures high-quality, innovative, and customer-focused solutions.
- Elevating experiences through EE: Combining Experience Engineering with edge technologies drives superior customer experiences and innovation.
Experience Engineering in 2025 and Beyond
The final session looked ahead to the future of Experience Engineering, providing predictions and insights into how businesses must evolve to remain competitive in a rapidly changing technological landscape.
Overview
The session focused on how AI, parallel programming, and community-driven development will shape the future of Experience Engineering. James Lennon, speaker of this talk track and VP Experience Engineering at Cikum highlighted how businesses must prepare for these changes, rather than merely react to them. He added further by saying, "Experience engineering doesn't happen by accident. It's a concerted effort to bring together all disciplines and perspectives, focusing on delivering the right features with quality throughout every stage of the development lifecycle."
Key takeaways:
- Predictions for 2025 and beyond: James Lennon focused on preparing for the future, emphasizing how forward-looking strategies, rather than just addressing present-day challenges, will be crucial for success.
- Importance of Rust and Community-Driven development: Rust is growing in popularity due to its strong developer community, which accelerates technology maturation through collaboration and innovation.
- Roblox and Lua developers: Roblox is creating a new wave of Lua developers, which will significantly impact the tech talent pool in the coming years.
- Parallel Programming and Performance: Advances in parallel programming, like the Mandelbrot algorithm achieving a 68,000x performance boost with Mojo, signal massive future improvements in data processing.
- Siri and AI in CX: Voice assistants like Siri will reshape customer experience by handling more transactions, making high-quality, seamless underlying experiences essential.
- End-to-end experience: James emphasized providing exceptional experiences across all platforms to stay relevant in an AI-driven, voice-activated future.
The Ciklum Client Conference 2024 was a powerful demonstration of how emerging technologies are not only reshaping industries but also transforming the way businesses engage with their customers. Each session underscored the importance of staying agile, customer-focused, and ethical in a rapidly evolving digital landscape. From leveraging immersive technologies to create richer customer experiences, to embedding responsible AI practices to build trust, businesses are being called to embrace innovation with purpose and foresight.
As we look toward the future, the conference made one thing clear, those who prioritize customer-centric innovation, continuous experimentation, and responsible tech adoption will be best positioned to thrive in this next era of business transformation.
