Behave, Deliver and Grow Like A Digital Company

Delivering digital interfaces to your organisation's customers, partners and employees is no longer optional. It is now essential for long-term effectiveness (and survival).

But this means unlocking the data, systems and functionality your business operates with and exposing this both internally and externally to meet increasingly shifting needs. But it is not easy... hardly any sizeable company has an entirely blank slate to work from. Legacy applications, processes and thinking tie any business down so that it can work well. But it is these very constraints that often limit speed and agility, which are needed to succeed now.

Digitally enabling your business means changing the way you behave, deliver and grow.

Behaviour:
Being customer focused means creating a better customer experience that can win and maintain custom in the competitive digital landscape. It also means understating and controlling your data, so you to make informed decisions quickly based on what you are observing or being told.

Delivery:
Start by using new platforms, tools and methods to build products quickly, plus then to evolve them rapidly over time. If you think your quarterly website functionality is fast now, consider that over 7 years ago Amazon stated it makes changes to production every 11.6 seconds (it may even be faster now) and Facebook releases to production twice a day.

Growth:
Don't be afraid to unleash the creativity and innovation within your boundaries to help you build. Employees must be part of the Digital journey (not observers) and everyone, not just your test manager, must work towards the continuous improvement of products and services.

Failing to Architect with Agile is Architecting to Fail

Agile approaches to development and online product delivery are almost de-facto these days. Every private and public sector organisation wants to be transformed, nimble, lean and able to deploy digital services quicker and quicker to their ever-demanding customers. And it is not just in the IT coding department that there’s been a change in vocabulary. An agile approach can even be adopted by a company’s commercial team, marketing department and even some of their operational functions (plus don’t even get me started on how much senior managers, procurement and HR have to change too – but that’s something for another post).

But I’m going to stick my next out (once again) on a subject I’m passionate about… Technical Architecture and how it clashes with agile delivery.
Or more succinctly put: Agile Architecture Doesn’t Work

There, I’ve said it now and I’ve been wanting to say it for a while. It has been on my mind as I’ve heard the opposite mentioned in podcasts, or read about it in blogs and books.
I guess I was trying to get this off my chest when I wrote my recent blog post “Digital Transformations starts and ends with Digital Architecture”. As in my mind, the science (or is it art?) of crafting a robust yet flexible technical architecture that supports digital business aims is the one thing you can’t build as you go.

Creating the technical architecture for your new venture takes planning. You also really only need one Technical Architect, the person who owns the architecture and has the responsibility for its solution design and ensures re-use of common components. Not a bunch of developers who all want to create a part of the architecture they are responsible for.

It’s like wandering around on a gap year between school and university (or school and work, or university and work).  You may be able to make up your journey as you go, with just you or a travelling companion making the decisions… but the roads and the map are pretty much fixed.

So...  although some agile practitioners talk about how agile approaches can help architecture deliver quicker or better.  I firmly believe that it is architecture that facilitates faster and more robust agile delivery.

Caring : the difference between good and great people

I've just completed a post on Linkedin that I've had brewing for some while.

It's titled "Why Caring Makes The Difference" and I spend a explain in 500 words why I think caring makes a difference in industries as varied as hospitality and the digital one I work in.

Also, whilst I was writing it, I thought about my care for what I do and how it makes a difference to me too. It's therefore not just about having the opportunity to surround yourself with those that give a monkeys about what they create.... it's being in the middle of it helping them to deliver improvements that make a difference.

You Are Not A Digital Transformation Consultant Until....

Take a look on Professional networking social platforms (such as Linkedin) or some job listing websites... and you will see people stating they are Digital Transformation Consultants or something similar. I know.... because I'm one.

But am quite dubious of some of these people, who just seem to be Digital Project Managers or Digitsl Business Analysts who have just given themselves a new title.

So here's my short list of things a person who claim to be Digital Transformation Consultants should have done:

1. Transformed something
   It is pretty obvious to state and nobody is criticising someone for consistently delivering decent projects to scope and budget... but if a person hasn't actually transformed a business, they shouldn't say they actually have.
2. Delivered something
   Yes, I know I said above that just being a Project Manager isn't enough to qualify as being a Digital Transformation Consultant, but neither is not having a hand in the delivery. If a person just comes up with a few lines in a PowerPoint presentation about "a move to digital" or "facilitating self-service" and then moves onto the next job... then that's not enough in my opinion.

I'm sure I'll add to this list in future.

So have I missed anything?

The benefits & pitfalls of Scottish companies selling online

As a specialist digital consultant, I speak with a lot of Scottish businesses of all sizes about the opportunities that eCommerce can bring. Most agree that using the Internet to open up new markets and sell a greater amount of products is of commercial interest to them – who wouldn't want more customers and more revenue?

However a lot of businesses have still to venture into eCommerce and time after time the same key reasons for not doing so keep cropping up:

• Concerns about the cost of setting up and running an online business
• Concerns that “you need to be technical” 
• Concerns about online payments and security
• Concerns about distance selling and the appropriate regulations
• Concerns about delivery, returns, etc.
• Concerns about getting & keeping customers

However, help is on-hand from Scottish Enterprise for those organisations who want to learn more about how to go about setting up an online store and grow their business via electronic means. Courses, workshops and dedicated digital and eCommerce expertise via specialist consultants are all available.

Plus it is important to remember is not just about selling to the home Scottish market, eCommerce opportunities also lie abroad. In fact, back in 2013 a report on Scotland’s Digital Future stated that more than 90% of eCommerce in Scotland was already being conducted with other UK or overseas customers. It is therefore unsurprising that in the last few years a Scottish Enterprise workshop on the topic of International eCommerce has been run in many locations across the country. I sometimes help take this popular workshop and it covers topics such as: researching new markets, translating content, global payment methods and international digital marketing techniques.

So what are you waiting for?

Forget Agile Development - You Need Agile Marketing

The term agile development is now pretty much established as the way to get web functionality built and launch. Focused on delivery of a minimum viable product it aims to build 'something but not everything' in a given time frame. It is so successful now, that marketing and commercial types have come to expect that their technical team or web agency can create nearly all of what they want in record time.

So now its time for a new term. So forget Agile Development for now, your business needs to adopt the practice of Agile Marketing!

Will better distribution help eCommerce in Scotland?

If you live in Scotland, and in particular the West Coast of Scotland from the Clyde Estuary up to the Hebrides, you will no-doubt have seen the Oban Express van as it whizzed past.*


However last week logistics group John Menzies acquired Oban Express with the wonderful claim that it could “transform e-commerce in remote parts of Scotland”.
http://www.scotsman.com/news/transport/menzies-expands-parcel-delivery-with-oban-takeover-1-3960262


The aim is that this take-over should give this large facilities and distribution company a greater geographical reach, by including the 45-strong vehicle fleet that typically runs between Glasgow and the West. This acquisition, driven by online retailing, also follows the purchase in June of this year of AJG Parcels of Inverness.The integration of both companies into the group should apparently "help keep down the cost of deliveries on behalf of national carriers to more isolated areas".


However, in my opinion, there can only be a truly better ecommerce delivery approach in Scotland if:

1. Companies such as Menzies invest in these recent purchases and grow the capacity of their operations in remote areas.
2. Travel networks (e.g. roads) are improved
   E.g. it doesn't matter how far or fast the van goes, if it is stuck behind a slow driver on the single-carriage all the way up to Fort William or waiting for a land-slide to be cleared on the Inveraray road.
3. Big and small ecommerce companies alike stop charging unfair amounts for deliveries to the Scottish Highlands and Islands.
   E.g. I live 12 miles from Glasgow and was recently charged a premium by one company for shipping a small parcel (a mobile phone)!
4. This is accompanied by the roll-out of decent broadband internet, which is still incredibly patchy across a lot of the land north of the English border.

* Dear Top Gear, here's an idea. Stop featuring bloody Italian supercars or unobtainable Aston Martins on your programme and do a piece on the amazing handling & performance characteristics of the Ford Transit and Iveco vans driven by the courier services to the North of Glasgow!

Scottish eCommerce Charges Are Unfair

If you are a Scottish resident in one of the Highlands and Islands regions, then you'll be only too aware that a lot of eCommerce sites charge you more for your delivery.

Well this fact hasn't gone unnoticed by Citizens Advice Scotland, who a published a report this week on this subject. They found that although fewer online retailers now charge additional fees for delivery to the Highlands and Islands... those that still do are unfortunately charging more than they did in 2012. On average Islanders are now paying 15.8% more and Highlanders have to pay an additional 17.5% for their goods to be shipped to them.

Citizens Advice Scotland identified that only 3.8% of the surveyed retailers now exclude some part of the Highlands and 10.9% exclude some of the Scottish Islands from their delivery offering.

Whilst it is understandable that there's more effort involved in getting a parcel to the remote regions of the UK, has it really become harder in the last 3 years? Or are these retailers (or their fulfillment parrners) using unfair ecommerce delivery pricing to increase their profits?

5 reasons your Digital Change initiative will fail

Nearly every business I now speak to is going through some form of digital change. From smaller organisations assessing the capabilities and skills of their online marketing teams & agencies, through to major multi-nationals looking to transform their IT systems, business processes and customer engagement models around electronic services... the mantra is clear “change or be changed in this new digital world” and I bet yours is very similar.

But transforming your company into a digital leader isn't easy and “becoming the next Amazon” is neither realistic nor practical for most organisations.

To give some ideas of the challenges faced, from my experience here are some areas where organisations fail to get a grip on their digital change:

1. Your delivery model is wrong:
Are you still creating lengthy waterfall project plans more suited to industrial age delivery expectations? The age of agile development and iterative delivery has not only been around for decades now, it has evolved into different flavours and techniques. However, just diving into a fully-blown scrum delivery method without fully understanding the implications this will have on the wider business (and setting these up correctly) is also a recipe for failure.

2. You don’t have the right skills in place

Just giving people new digital job titles doesn't cut it. There’s a talent war out in the wider marketplace right now, where businesses are struggling to hire and keep the right people with the necessary online skills to take big steps forward in technology, marketing and other commercial areas.  Assess what makes your company different and how you could attract and retain the right talent to realise your digital ambitions.

3. You don’t have digital business leadership

Ask yourself who in your company is actually responsible for the ownership and stewardship of your digital strategy? Where are the priorities, road-map and alignment of this digital strategy to the rest of the business set? If this role is not represented at your boardroom table, then you’re probably not taking it seriously enough.

4. You haven’t defined your technical vision and solution

It’s one thing to make bold claims about where your company will be in the future, it’s another entirely to assume it will get there without a technical vision of what the end solution looks like. I don’t think I have ever been on a successful change programme that failed to have the solution architecture for the main features or components defined in advance.

5. Your culture doesn't accept failure

Sure, every company likes to say it gets everything “right first time” but in reality this never happens… there is always room for improvement and things always go wrong. Or in other words “fail forward” by: accepting it, getting on with it, learning from it and move forwards quickly. One client I worked for in the past had a company policy of actually rewarding when a member of staff accepted they had made a failure (and quickly wrote up what went wrong and what they would do better next time). 

Has anyone got any others?

The first 90 days of the Chief Digital Officer

The first ninety days in any job are important. But in such a new and exciting industry as online & digital, the first 3 months in the role of Chief Digital Officer are key.

Here are my thoughts on what should be the main areas to focus of the CDO during this period:

1. Understand the overall business strategy
   Any digital strategy created must be completely aligned to what the business is planning (Commercial aims,  new products, marketing, etc.)
2. Learn the culture
   Every organisation has a "way of doing things" and seeing itself. This doesn't have to perpetuate, but it is good to know what sort of people your peers and team around you do and think. Most important is the appetite for change... which can either be a critical success factor or a big nail in the coffin of a lot of the most forward-thinking digital plans.
3. Set a benchmark
   Recognize which of your competitors (if any) are doing innovative things, or just doing the same stuff but better! 
4. Identify your stakeholders and make friends
   From marketing and customer insight through to IT and Operations... if you are going to be an agent for inevitable change, you will need to build allies first.
5. Research your customers
   It's no good setting yourself up to digitize everything if that's not the correct way forward. And it's no good rolling out smartphone apps if all your potential business is using tablets. You don't have to know everything about every one of them, but being able to classify and segment them into target audiences will help you create the most relevant products and experience for them.
6. Build your vision
   Create an idea of what success looks like. What is the end game of all this change and how does it help the user and company? (Tip: Then give this vision to your strongest critic and ask them for feedback - this will iron out a lot of the wrinkles)
7. Create the roadmap
   Draw up and digital roadmap of short and longer-term projects & tactical changes that move the organisation forward towards your vision. 
8. Justify investment
   Where necessary develop businesses cases that explore the investment required to realise the roadmap.
9. Deliver something quickly
   Nobody is realistically going to wait for you to see out your initial 3 months without some business improvement. This shouldn't be too difficult for any CDO new to the role, as there are always quick wins to be had
10. Have fun

Have I missed anything?

Why your eCommerce Project needs an eCommerce Project Manager

Let’s imagine a situation that is becoming a pretty regular occurrence these days…
You have been given the go-ahead for developing (or re-developing) your company’s online store or multi-channel retail proposition. As the ‘business stakeholder’ you are far too busy running day-to-day operations (or fighting fires) and do not have the bandwidth to deliver this work yourself. You have a ‘sizeable’ budget to implement the right solution without cutting any major corners, but you have to have it live within pretty tight deadlines and it must be ‘right first time’
(Question: Does anyone get told “oh, its ok if you screw it up this time around, you’ll have plenty more chances to get it right in the future except politicians?”).
There are a number of things you can initially do to get things on their way, but here’s why I suggest you look at getting an eCommerce Project Manager in first.

1. Market knowledge
Unless you have recent prior experience of the eCommerce landscape (e.g. the vendors, products, prices and all their associated short-comings) then you are stepping into a virtual swamp, where three letter acronyms (TLA’s) abound and the initially-offered price of some web services could be overpriced from anything between 20% and 300% … or beyond.
Someone who has managed a project similar to the solution you are looking for should have some idea of the available services and be able to hold your hand through the early stages of the project.

2. You don’t always have the right person internally
It is an obvious statement to make, but to stand the best chance of having a well-managed project you need a project manager with the relevant experience. If you do not already have someone within your organisation that can correctly fill the eCommerce PM’s role then you really need to look outside. I’ve seen all sorts of people in the past drafted into the role who were clearly not able to run the online project. Examples include: a graphic designer who was friends with the chief executive’s wife, an IT manager who clearly had other important things on her mind (like running the IT department) and a member of the ecommerce team who “didn’t have anything else to do”. In each case project either failed to deliver completely or had to be rescued by stakeholders and/or external assistance.

3. If you don’t…. it will be you that gets asked to deliver it…

In essence….. If you really want an eCommerce project run well and do not want to be given the run-around by the project, then you need the right person to manage it.

eCommerce 101

There's the idea in  most business owners that setting up an eCommerce website is a difficult thing.

It really isn't.

Sure, if you're a large company that needs to integrate a site with back-end fulfillment systems and has a complex and ever-changing product offering, then you're going to need a scalable, flexible online trading service.
But if you're a small to medium sized business and you want to turn your website into a platform for sales.... then you don't need a kingsize budget to get started.  Most of the time it is possible to use one of two methods to get your ecommerce idea off the ground:

1. Hosted
These days, most hosting companies offer a transactional 'online shop' creation service. They range from the very basic templated service for simple products, through to flexible set ups that allow you to build & configure: your own design, complex product catalogues,  multiple currency & delivery options, downloadable products, eBay integration, discounts/coupons, rating systems and much more.

2. Software
By installing an application into your own hosting environment, you can have all the features of the above hosted service plus the possibility of  integration with other business systems (e.g. Finance / Accounts, customer / order management and mail / telephone ordering).

However if you want the very simple ability to transact online, without moving to another platform or installing software, then you want to consider adding PayPal to your existing site. You simply sign up for a basic business account, drop a button onto your website and either have an instant payment (even taking credit cards) or have a shopping cart  if you have more than one product or service.

eCommerce doesn't have to be difficult

Amazon ups the eCommerce stakes

In yet another aggressive move on its competition in the "sell everything we possibly can online" market (BTW: who actually is in this market right now?) Amazon has announced it now has no minimum spend to qualify for its Super Saver Delivery option.
This basic delivery choice on www.amazon.co.uk (usually advertised on the site as '3 - 5 working days') is incredibly popular and in my experience nearly-always gets to me in only a couple of days.
Obviously someone at Amazon has done their maths and worked out that they will gain additional revenue without adding too much to their costs. This benefit should come either from incremental basket value or up-selling shoppers to premium rate delivery options.
Note:
This could be a blatant move to steal market share at a loss, but this activity could harm Amazon in the longer term if it subsequently raised the minimum spend back to £5 or higher.

Here's hoping the people with the spreadsheets have their assumptions correct and visitors won't make more frequent but lower value purchases...

in reference to: Amazon.co.uk offers free delivery on all items — Internet Retailing (view on Google Sidewiki)

Christmas Delivery for loyal customers

A short posting today (and nothing to do with last night's Christmas Party, honest!). I just thought, as we've only 2 Amazon Super Saver shopping days to Christmas...








... that I'd share this article from yesterday's Internet Retailing site. A news article stated that "Customer loyalty does still exist — but free delivery and special offers are now the key retailer deciders".

The report from GSI Commerce, ( and I still find their website a little confusing) says that:

"pushing free delivery and special last-minute offers needs to be a priority in the final few days of online Christmas shopping,"

It seems that given the same product at the same price from 2 different eTailers, 68% of customers would opt for the one that offered free delivery. Although that's hardly a shocking fact, you do have to worry what the other 32% based their decision on.

However, more shocking was the news that Amazon is apparently mis-treating its warehouse staff to reach its incredible near-perfect delivery rate. It seems that free delivery may come at a cost in the end!