‘Innovation is key to establishing the future of your company’. This is how forcefully Telefónica Empresas expresses itself on the importance of innovation in the business world (in Spanish).
A relevance that is useful not only for the success but sometimes for the very survival of companies, and that lies in numerous issues of different kinds. Let’s look at some of the most prominent.
Competitiveness and efficiency
Thanks to innovation, companies can achieve higher levels of competitiveness and efficiency, obtaining better results or anticipating the needs that arise in the market.
By developing new services or products, organisations differentiate themselves from the competition by giving greater value to what they offer their customers.
Operational advantages and economic benefits
As a result of the increase in efficiency that we mentioned in the previous section, we can find another characteristic associated with the contribution of innovation to the business world.
Specifically, we are talking about operational and economic benefits. This is because increased efficiency can lead to a reduction in costs, which can lead to an increase in profits.
Another of the operational advantages linked to business innovation is the possibility of diversifying production by offering a greater variety of products or services.
These operational benefits also affect the internal functioning of organisations, which can achieve more efficient and productive management through the optimisation of resources that innovation brings.
Growth and/or adaptation
There are advantages not only in terms of competitiveness or from an operational or economic perspective.
If we refer to the growth of companies, innovation also plays an important role since the business environment, like society as a whole, is something that is in constant change.
Both to adapt and to grow, companies need to innovate in order to maintain and strengthen themselves in the short, medium or even long term.
Likewise, innovation allows companies to offer proposals that are more attractive or relevant to consumers, helping them to grow or adapt.
Talent
From the perspective of the internal operations of companies, innovation also serves as an incentive to retain talent, as it can increase the values of pride of belonging or commitment.
We talk about retaining talent, but innovation can also serve to attract it, since having positive perspectives that help or contribute to the growth of the company can be attractive when it comes to incorporating new professional profiles of high value.
Customer loyalty and satisfaction
Given the fact that customer needs are constantly evolving, innovation also stands out as a fundamental issue in the relationship that companies have with users.
As with talent, when dealing with customers innovation can help both to attract new ones and to retain existing ones.
Therefore, improving the user experience is a business priority, so innovation can be useful both to satisfy existing customers and to be able to approach those who could potentially become customers.
By offering solutions to their demands, it is also possible to increase their level of satisfaction, something that is also linked to the possibilities of loyalty both to the brand and to the products or services offered.
Telefónica Empresas advocates innovation in collaboration with customers ‘to promote the processes of learning and adoption of Telefónica’s new technological proposals, and the joint development of new business models’ in order to experience transformative processes ‘first hand’.
Similarly, it is committed to innovation based on a methodology in which the needs of the client are oriented towards relevant results thanks to ‘prototypes or pilots that allow a first approach’ to future technological scenarios.
With the analysis of all these characteristics, we can conclude that innovation is fundamental to improve their processes (whether external or internal), increase competitiveness, transform business models or retain or attract the best talent.
