Businesses need to get strategic with digital

Oh for heavens sake, can every company that talks about creating a digital strategy actually mean it?

 

In the last few months I've had a bunch of meetings and calls with business prospects who claim "we want a digital strategy" when all they really want is either:

1. A document that bolts online stuff into existing processes or technologies
2. A presentation that just scares the exec board and therefore gives certain people permission to ask for more budget or grab power

However, these aren't strategic digital aims, they are either tactical online plans to try and push digital into the current way of working or political manoeuvring to better specific careers.

 

A digital strategy is neither of these. Instead it is a plan of how your organisation is going to enable and optimise its digital ecosystem

 

Are you optimising your Digital ecosystem?

Digital technologies are not just for online marketing purposes or for providing your customers with the ability to conduct online transactions. They are there to enable the entire organisation to benefit from: better communications, faster supply chains, improved staff training, assessment & retention and help improve a number of other line-of-business tasks that either make money or save time.

In short, your entire business ecosystem should be complimented by online technologies and processes. This then creates a new type of organisation, one that fully utilises a digital ecosystem.

So what does this digital ecosystem look like? Well this depends on your business and the way it operates. However, there are a few common themes that are pretty generic to any organisation, usually based around typical business lines and support functions. 

Here I've recreated an old diagram I used to have, that gives a representation of a business and the different key departments within it. I've then indicated the main functions (of the left side) where online can then help and enhance the ecosystem.

The aim is therefore for any digital strategy to integrate into these key areas and optimise the business processes, data flows or customer engagement in whatever way possible.


Hopefully I will have time to improve on this diagram in future postings...

How can companies stay ahead in the 21st Century?

Business life is hard right now and even the large corporates are having to examine everything they do to stat ahead. Here’s some of my high-level thoughts on the trends andapproaches that are shaping the modern digital workplace and therefore how competitive edge can still be maintained:

1. Digital DNA

Online is not a 'bolt on' to the customer's life, it is howthey live their life now; digital has become part of the customer DNA. Theyadopt, use and integrate technology all the time, to either save time or wastetime. Businesses therefore need to put themselves in the mind of thedigitally-savvy customer or just think like the customer they actually are.This is especially true of the newer generation (Generation Y / Millenials /etc.) who are ‘Digital Natives’, for whom most cannot remember a time beforethe Internet and the use of multiple screens is an everyday occurrence.

The aim is therefore to create understanding, encourageinnovative & agile ‘web 2.0’ thinking within a company and learn how to apply this within the modern working environment.

2. Customer-centric 

The concept of ‘User Centred Design’ has been successfullyutilised for over a decade now to create online experiences that put the userat the heart of the process, rather than just being a passive node that has todeal with whatever interface the system creates at the end.

This turns some business processes on their heads, as theway some corporate departments and product catalogues are structured are notnecessarily the way that users want to browse, search, consume, etc.

Be prepared to turn things upside down if it means thedifference between doing what you’ve always done and what needs to be done tomove forwards.

3. The connected corporate ecosystem

As more systems become interconnected and as we all learnthat data does not have to be re-entered if it already exist online in someform…. This will provide the opportunity for some data (e.g. inferred from auser’s browsing history) to be integrated with other data (e.g. explicitknowledge about a user’s age, purchase habits, etc.) and to significantlyreduce human errors such as those from simple data re-keying. The semantic webis almost upon us, is your business ready?

4. Use of Data for insight

Thanks to the Internet, every 2 days the human race nowcreates as much information as it did in its entire history up to 2003. Thisgrowth in ‘big data’ creates its own challenges (e.g. the storage and abilityto quickly access the right data, re-posted mis-information, etc.) as well asits own opportunities, such as an unprecedented amount of useful data on userbehaviour.  This therefore facilitates afar greater level of personalisation and supports various real-time activities& incentives such as individual offers and rewards (perhaps the very reasonwhy mega supermarket Tesco used & subsequently purchased DunnHumby forcustomer insight and data driven marketing purposes) plus then the future predictivecapabilities that may come from this.