The explosion of digital has caused a shift in customer buying expectations. Customers can easily educate themselves about products, suppliers, and competitive pricing with access to more information than ever before. Many businesses struggle to grow revenue and increase wallet share because of ineffective strategies to penetrate their existing accounts. With the acquisition cost for a new customer at 5x more than an existing customer, and existing customers spending 31% more on average, it's essential that businesses empower sales with the ability to make personalized, relevant product recommendations to their current customers. If you've invested in sales tools (like PROS Smart CPQ) – then you've already taken proactive steps in the right direction.

When I talk about marketing with my customers and at events, I discuss how analytics, including using artificial intelligence ( AI) and machine learning, can drive improved customer experience. I often say that without analytics, marketing departments might as well just go home. In today's world, we are surrounded by data. Companies are trying to collect the right data and transform it into meaningful insights using powerful algorithms. But despite increasing use of technology and increasingly demanding consumers, the basic rules of customer engagement have not changed.

Imagine a Sunday morning sometime in the future. As you pour milk on to your cornflakes, it's a reminder that you intended to check out whether the Chinese company Big Dairy Inc is worth a punt. You press a button on your wrist monitor, ResearchBit, and it sends a request to your peer-to-peer investment network for any information on the company. Within minutes investor friends from around the globe are commenting via a private social media network, InvestBook. As you munch through breakfast, you decide to do a bit more digging.

Artificial Intelligence is the newest trend to hit the world of money. We are seeing the launch of a number of services based on'chatbots', which are designed to respond to your needs, and prompt you to take sensible financial steps. The question is whether they will make any difference. See also: Virtual reality'to replace high street shopping by 2050' See also: Industries poised to be taken over by robots See also: New robot will park your car for you Patrick Connolly, a certified Financial Planner for Chase De Vere, says: "We are seeing artificial intelligence progressing incredibly rapidly across different financial services, and over the next five to ten years we can expect to see dramatic changes. Chatbots are one early sign of the progress made so far."

Banks of the future will stop selling customers products they don't need and will focus on doing one product well, according to Starling Banks' Anne Boden. Speaking at WIRED Money 2016, Boden said: "Nowadays, we have the big banks with lots of products with lots of customer groups and lots of different channels trying to own the whole experience. "I don't believe a startup bank can beat big banks. You need to focus and do one thing really well; 20 times better than everyone else to give people a reason to bank with you." Starling is a challenger bank building data-driven current accounts controlled from smartphones. It was created in January 2014 and is due to launch within the next three months. In January this year, it received 70 million ( 48 million) in investment. Prior to founding Starling, Boden was CEO of Allied Irish Banks and head of Emea, global transaction banking across 34 countries for RBS and ABN AMRO. She has more than 30 years' experience in banking, having begun her career at Lloyds Bank, before moving on to Standard Chartered Bank and then UBS in Zurich. "I took a year out recently to discuss what is happening in the banking industry," added Boden. "I spent time talking to people involved in Fintech and a lot of the things I took for granted, and that I thought were a given, weren't true at all.