Marketing is constantly evolving, and rather than relying solely on traditional marketing strategies like ads and emails, many companies are moving towards a more holistic form of marketing. To do this, there is a shift towards brand experience as a large part of a company’s strategy. But what exactly is “brand experience” and why is it important?
Brand experience is how a customer interacts with and is influenced by a brand before and after they actually become a customer. Rather than focusing mainly on customer experience after the purchase, which fits more along the lines of customer service, the goal of brand experience is to develop a relationship and inspire positive emotions from potential and current consumers regarding their interactions with the brand. A “boring” brand or one that doesn’t focus on a positive, strong brand experience isn’t as likely to leave a lasting impression on its audience. Essentially, it’s forgettable or in some cases, can leave a negative impression. Alternatively, a brand that puts time and effort into a powerful brand experience can acquire an audience that is invested, loyal, and ready to buy.
However, something that isn’t always connected is the importance of DevSecOps in developing a positive brand experience. The main goal of DevSecOps is to allow collaboration and close the gaps between development, security, and operations to strengthen and streamline the entire pipeline. DevSecOps revolutionizes the way organizations work by getting engineers, developers, product owners, and designers talking and collaborating with each other. We know that better products are delivered by diverse talent – skillset, experiences, identities, abilities, perspectives, and so on. Bringing diverse roles together helps deliver higher quality, more secure, and better-designed products to customers through cross-role and potentially cross-organization collaboration.
But exactly how can DevSecOps improve brand experience?
Design and deliver better, more targeted products
Because of the collaborative nature of DevSecOps, the ability to launch products that more closely serve customer needs is greatly improved. Development and operations resources have the ability to work together to evaluate the needs of the customer to create an ideal product that is explicitly geared towards the target audience of a brand. A strengthened connection and brand experience is created when customers feel seen and heard in the sense that a brand is able to provide products that are exactly what they want and need.
Bring products to customers faster
Instant gratification is alive and well in the modern world where technology allows us to live much more fast-paced than we ever have in history. The collaboration involved in DevSecOps streamlines processes and increases productivity, allowing products to be more quickly developed, tested for security risks or bugs, and eventually brought to the market faster than in organizations that don’t utilize DevSecOps.
Efficient pipelines by design
As consumers, we’ve all experienced the inconveniences of inefficiencies when interacting with a brand or company. This never leaves a good impression and can often turn customers away. Alternatively, when DevSecOps is used within a company or brand, more efficient pipelines can be designed and optimized that result in improved customer relationships and satisfaction.
DevSecOps is often overlooked when it comes to things like brand experience because at the surface it doesn’t seem related. However, it’s important to be aware of how it can strengthen a company’s back-end processes while also improving its forward-facing reputation and brand experience.