Laurence Buchanan
Laurence Buchanan
Laurence is CEO of EY Seren and leads EY’s global Customer & Growth practice. He works with clients to help them re-imagine growth through human-centered design, innovation and the transformation of Marketing, Sales & Customer Service functions.
He is a recognized authority on digital transformation, customer experience and CRM, he has worked across a wide range of sectors, including telco, media, life sciences, retail and sports.
He received an MA in Modern History from the University of Oxford.
When customers leverage AI
Source: Getty Images For the last 12 months, most that has been written or discussed about GenAI for marketing, sales, service and CX has focused...
Key questions for boards in the fourth industrial revolution
A few months ago I read “The Fourth Industrial Revolution” by Klauss Schwabb, which seemed to frame the debate at the World Economic Forum...
We’ve barely begun
Despite 30 years of digitizing analogue information and connecting devices to networks; despite the obvious explosion of eCommerce, mobile, social media; despite the massive disruption to...
Trust will make or break the equation for smart connected products
Over the last few years, previously dumb physical products have rushed to add connectivity and online services to their offerings. Product designers of everything...
The Chief Digital Officer is dead (or at least should be)
Felix sat back and congratulated himself on a job well done. He had been under pressure from activist investors telling him that he wasn’t...
10 bumps in the road of a digital transformation
So your CEO is now enthused by digital transformation? You have a new head of digital, a clear vision and strategy for how to...
Caught between a digital David and Goliath
On one hand digital has democratised. It has created a level playing field for small, disruptive start-ups to launch a new business fast, leveraging computing…
Watson, Connected Everything and what it could mean for Customer Service
I read three thought-provoking articles this week. Firstly, an interview with Cisco's Padmasree Warrior, published by McKinsey Insights . In the interview, Padmasree Warrior...
Digital channel shift vs. digital paradigm shift
I had the pleasure of speaking with Bill Hutchison a couple of weeks ago. Bill is a pioneer in smart cities, working in Canada,...
CRM for a digital age
Most companies invested in CRM software for the first time between 1996 and 2006. That decade saw the CRM boom and bust. Siebel went...
The 360 degree customer view is dead
I've never been entirely comfortable with the phrase "360 degree customer view". I remember hearing it for the first time in a Siebel sales...
The three big challenges facing organisations investing in CRM today
There was a time when the main challenge facing an organisation investing in CRM was the amount of discount they could negotiate on their...
CRM Strategy interview transcript
Below is a rough transcript of an interview I gave to Chuck Schaeffer, CEO of Vantive Media, for CRMsearch.com You can download the interview...
Fixing Sales Force Automation
For the past 15 years one of the most common causes of Sales Force Automation project failures has been that they have added approximately...
Moving from tactical social media experiments to social business transformation
The elephant in the social media room at the moment is that most corporate social media initiatives to date have been tactical experiments. Of...
Re-intermediation on steroids?
There was a popular myth in the late 1990's that the e-commerce revolution would lead to the death of the intermediary. Why buy a...
Don’t let a millennial determine your strategy
Mark Tamis wrote a hype-busting piece this week entitled "go with the customer flow". He pointed out that currently only 1% of company /...
BB+HW+CC+A&SN=D&O
Last night I had the pleasure of presenting at a Keble College alumni event for entrepreneurs. The main focus of the event was for...
What comes next after Facebook and Twitter? The challenge of keeping up with a constantly changing digital world
Note - I originally posted a short version of this post in July. The last 5-10 years have been characterised by a communications revolution. During...
Quick fixes and shortcuts in the Social Enterprise
I despair when I hear people trying to "schedule a viral marketing campaign" into their marketing calendar, "build a community site in order to...