The Right Steps to Digital Transformation

Digital Transformations – Why do so many not deliver?

‘Transformation’ – A popular term and in its most simple definition suggests words like ‘innovation, inspirational, ingenious, fresh, inventive etc. When prefixed with the word Digital and applied in a commercial context the expectation can be an awe-inspiring shift in the way customers and businesses interact. However, many times digital transformation programmes fail to deliver the expected results[i] disappointing customers, operational teams and shareholders.

Some of the most common causes are:

• Heading in the wrong direction – The value of spending time at the start of the programme to truly understand your customers and their motivations, alongside your processes and infrastructure is often underestimated. This is also an opportunity to find areas of issue and friction that could deliver the biggest benefits, prioritise your approach and shape the outcomes.

• Defining a programme as transformational too early – It sets an expectation, if your analysis then suggests more of a tweak of the existing it may be difficult to retract, but the expectation will have been set and lead to disappointment.

• Swayed by the technology - There are some really impressive new digital solutions and when demonstrated can excite interest and ideas but these may not be so impressive if applied to the wrong use cases. Channelling this excitement and enthusiasm into a deliberate transformational step is far more productive if the purpose of the solution is recognised and how it fits with your business.

Defining the right approach for Your Digital Transformation

Progressing your programme effectively requires an approach that balances the desire to transform with the need to align with your business. Progressing at pace and building momentum can impress stakeholders but may look less impressive if solutions don’t work, delivery is delayed and benefits lost. Time spent agreeing a complementary transformational approach increases the chances of success by first recognising the digital readiness of your business and customers.

Examples of reaching a complementary approach:

Digital – It’s all about the Data

When we hold up examples of superior digital experiences, we look at social media and online shopping giants and how they predict our needs before we know them ourselves. Their use of AI and algorithms is impressive but is only achievable when we allow them to collect our data and monitor our experiences. Providing similar customer experiences for your business is likely to require huge data mining and legally tight agreements. There can also be large investment and complexity to access and make available customer data on existing systems.

Data is at the centre of achieving digitalisation and having a targeted approach to its capture and the right tools to help refine, label and make sense of it is an important part of the transformation journey. It may be that initial available data is aggregated or anonymous and you have to manually refine it but this will be a valuable step in shaping your data needs and recognising where value exists before moving to personalised content.

Making Data Useful

If you have been on distribution lists for reports you will recognise the value of well-presented content with clear visibility that makes it helpful for decision making. Unfortunately, there are far too many examples of information overload: stats, graphs and diagrams difficult to interpret and identify what action to take. The process to make data useful depends on the volume, quality and the steps below to understand it.

Digital improvement works when data is clear and actionable, finding tools that help at each stage of this process and provide insight that can be acted upon quickly by operational staff is a key requirement. Finding the right solution for your business will accelerate and improve data cleansing with positive impacts.

Customers are the centre of Digital Transformation

Understanding your customer base and how they will interact digitally is an important early step, if you are not sure you need to test and learn, making the wrong assumptions can greatly affect adoption and benefit realisation.

In most cases you will already know your customer’s profile but their intents and motivations can change based on seasons, promotions and external events. Introducing capabilities that capture and monitor these behaviours and can be analysed by staff who know your customers best and can react quickly will achieve the best and fastest outcomes.

Finding and Realising the Benefits

[1]Research suggests 85% of customer interactions could be achieved without agents for simple tasks to check or make updates to existing information. These can all take place 24/7 at a time determined by the customer, not just when a contact centre is available.

Tasks such as: Where is my order? How much do I have invested? Can I change my address or a direct debit?

Introducing intuitive interfaces that capture clean digitised data to be checked by AI and presented for processing by robotics and low code solutions creates significant opportunities. The time saved frees up operational teams to work on more value adding tasks, reduces the environmental impact of post and email and the inherent risk of errors.

Careful analysis of opportunities and solutions will build a business case for investment and once integrated into your systems and processes their scope and benefits can be greatly expanded.

Summary

Pre Covid-19 research by Accenture found that nearly half (47%) of customers once frustrated with customer experience would avoid doing business with that brand. The same amount said they would be willing to pay more for an experience that exceeds their expectations every time, with frustrated customers almost twice as likely as satisfied consumers to say they’d be willing to pay more for such an experience. [2]

Circumstances have pushed customers towards digital points of interaction and the signs are they will embrace businesses that provide the best services, when customers want to use them at competitive value. Digital transformation that creates competitive advantage and doesn’t just copy what others are doing will provide the biggest benefits. Taking time to analyse your business and customers and applying the best digital solutions based on your unique attributes will have the greatest chances of achieving your objectives. The agility of the approach and the ability to test and learn as you work through delivery will progressively clarify your vision as realisation of benefits emerges.

How I can help

As an established consultant but with a fresh approach to digital transformation, many clients use my experience to shape their programmes and guide them through to benefit realisation.

I help clients by:

Developing strategy, agreeing the expected outcomes and conceptually how they will be achieved

Analyse the situation, the customer journey, the processes and the existing infrastructure

Work with stakeholders to identify problem areas and points of possible customer frustration that have the largest benefit opportunities

Identify the best Digital and AI capabilities and analyse where they can be applied to your business to provide positive outcomes

Provide an impact assessment of how the new solutions will work with existing operational and technical infrastructure

Develop an agile plan of delivery that allows progressive deployment of solutions and realisation of benefits whilst remaining focused on the full picture

Using the digital tools deployed to continually capture data on customer’s behaviours and motives, refine digital capabilities and deployments as knowledge increases

Monitor performance and progress to ensure the outcome delivers digital capabilities for customers that excite and engage and for the business increases operational efficiency whilst retaining and attracting profitable customers.

[1] https://www.smallbizgenius.net/by-the-numbers/chatbot-statistics/#gref [2] https://www.mediapost.com/publications/article/345285/accenture-reports-brands-falling-short-on-consumer.html

[i] https://www.forbes.com/sites/phillewis1/2019/07/31/where-businesses-go-wrong-with-digital-transformation/?sh=10a27d7e70bb