Putting customers first

Since it was founded in 1929, Chow Tai Fook Jewellery Group has established a wide customer base in mainland China, Hong Kong SAR, and Macau SAR. And in an industry in which visiting a physical store is often the norm, focusing on customers' needs has been central to the business's digital transformation.

‘For us, being digital is about leveraging data and technologies, so that we may understand customer behaviours systematically and facilitate business actions which enable us to stay nimble in a dynamic market,’ says Hamilton Cheng, executive director. ‘By analysing data, we can know whether we are doing well or not. Most importantly, it is a way to find our success factors to provide exceptional customer experience.’

Digital march

The Hong Kong-based company became aware of the need for digital transformation around a decade ago, when online shopping began to change customers’ perceptions and behaviour.

‘Before, our customers were mostly from one segment; they were value-oriented and simply wanted to purchase some gold and diamonds,' Cheng says. 'But there was a point where preferences changed and the conversion rate was dropping.

Previously, the company would rely on a salesperson’s experience to observe customer behaviour, an approach that gradually became inefficient and unsystematic. So, as behaviour changed, the company investigated technology that would identify trends and adjust processes.

Know the customer

In 2015, Chow Tai Fook Jewellery Group started to use Internet of Things (IoT) technology and identification-enabled 'smart trays' in 2,200 stores in order to capture data on customers’ preferences. ‘The technology allowed us to track which products were frequently picked up by customers so we could understand the market better before launching products,’ Cheng explains.

‘Customer experience analytics helps us better connect to different market segments – such as younger customers – so that we know what to work on,’ says Cheng.

While the jewellery industry is a relatively traditional one, digital transformation has brought about many breakthroughs in the customer experience. For example, Chow Tai Fook Jewellery Group has introduced D-ONE, a digital jewellery customisation platform that enables personalised jewellery to be produced within one day, while the O2O ecommerce app - CloudSales 365 - offers 'a seamless experience' circulating customers between online and offline shopping platforms to maximise interaction.

Going digital is related to mindset, says Cheng. 'The real goal is to bring new opportunities and incremental benefits in margin and efficiency for the group as a whole.'

Understand the market

The adoption of new technologies has brought multiple benefits.

‘In a micro sense, we better understand customer preferences to improve the conversion rate. In a broader sense, we can understand the market, including capacity and market trends, and draw a picture of the competitive landscape,’ Cheng says.

Efficiency has also improved. For example, understanding of customers’ preferences helps the company maximise operational efficiency in production, inventory management as well as resources allocation, while the creation of an automated logistics and distribution centre has led to enhanced efficiency.

‘As a product-oriented jeweller, we should know our customers better than they do. We develop products to a ready market just in time instead of investing in ones that won’t get acceptance,’ Cheng says.

Business partner

Digital transformation has also played a major role in elevating the capabilities of the finance and IT team as a business partner.

‘The introduction of enterprise resource planning solutions, business intelligence dashboards and analytics tools has been instrumental to the group’s development and IT governance. These tools have significantly increased our visibility into operations to build business resilience and offer timely responses to customers,’ Cheng says, adding that the finance and IT team has also successfully implemented WeCom, the business version of the omnipresent WeChat.

Agility in change

To achieve digital transformation, one of the real challenges is to ensure that compliance requirements are met. It is essential that businesses find the right balance.

Another challenge is the cost and risk of adopting new technology. ‘Trying a new tool takes time,’ says Cheng, adding that even if a trial fails, colleagues can still learn from the lessons.

There is another challenge for the company in that the demands for digital transformation change fast and the requests from each department evolve. ‘We need to implement in an agile way and have the quick wins,’ he says.

Accountants' role

Key to the digital journey is, says Cheng, the involvement of accounting professionals 'who have a trained objective mindset and rely on data in making decisions. Our thinking is a good mix of existing culture and practice, which is beneficial to every decision in digital transformation.'

Cheng believes that ACCA has been an important partner in Chow Tai Fook Jewellery Group's digital journey, with a number of employees undertaking the ACCA Certificates in Digital Innovation for Finance and Data Analytics.  ACCA Learning, a curated portfolio of continuous learning solutions, is, he says, a vital learning resource. 'Its self-paced, dynamic contents enabled our busy professionals to learn individually while building common language using the foundation knowledge and case studies gained as a team.’

On a personal level, Cheng says that the ACCA Qualification and continuous learning opportunities have brought value to his role. ‘What ACCA offers is beyond the courses,' he says. 'ACCA brings professionals together and shares experiences about how to manage the business with people. At the end of the day, people are what matters to a business.'