Neil Collard discusses how the UK could better utilise its untapped potential with digital transformation as it looks to reposition itself on the world stage.
Digital transformation has become a ubiquitous phrase, a catch-all to cover the application of technology to improve business operations and efficiency, to improve customer service and sales and create new or better services and experiences for people.
The term may be nebulous, but how well British businesses embrace its various facets will determine their future performance at home and on the global stage.
By 2023, businesses worldwide are projected to be investing almost two trillion dollars in digital transformation projects. In comparison, they’ll be spending a relatively humble $600 billion on advertising. A big slice of the money spent on digital transformation will be focussed on digital services, and consumer engagement or interaction. In short, it will be spent on improving the consumer experience of a business or organisation across every conceivable touch point.
The deciding factor determining the success or failure of a company’s digital transformation planning will not be spending power. It will be the way in which procurement processes are tailored to a market of suppliers and experts so that the right challenges are identified and solved, and the way in which businesses adapt to work with specialist partners over the long term.
The UK has huge and growing expertise in digital innovation, design and transformation strategy, but this is mainly housed in specialists such as Great State or within groups of businesses (which also include anything from management consultancy through to advertising agencies), right through to one man band consultants.
These businesses carry out a wide range of critical and necessary services for clients including analysing the company’s tech infrastructure, processes, people and organization, and implementing tech like experience design, service design and digital engineering to create sustainable long-term improvement for brands, helping them to match the world we currently live in.
But many businesses do not yet know how to work well with the specialist suppliers that could help them, so Great State has five key areas that any organisation must address to engage with external advisors and technology suppliers more effectively.
Planning for Innovation
Every business should now have a long-term digital strategy integrated into or informing the business plan to keep up with the continual change in society and technology. Each sector of business is different and every company will have its own heritage, challenges and opportunities that should be mapped through the lens of technology planning and investment. Unification of data from multiple sources and systems across a business is a standard problem many larger companies or institutions face.
Layered on top of this should be a design innovation plan – creating or improving new products and services that will achieve planned business goals. Plan to engage specialists on a strategic basis as you begin to develop an innovation strategy. Consider the capability and track record of potential advisers and the depth of specific capabilities that you require. Consider the data upon which decisions may be based. Enhance the speed of supply of internal data and explore the potential of external open-source data that may be hugely powerful.
In short create good foundations for future linear business planning and flexible partnerships.
If the location of your workforce is atomised at least part of the time, old logistical barriers to the way your people and your specialist partners can work together are largely removed both practically and psychologically.
Neil Collard
Managing Director, Great State
Identifying the Problem: Briefing Strategically
Many digital transformation briefs address short-term issues and ask for the launch of a new app or service that on the face of it might look good and achieve results as a project, but do not really address the long-term strategic issues.
True digital transformation elevates business thinking to a point where an organisation can adapt fast and effectively without painful reorganisation of technology and talent. To avoid expensive investments that only deliver a short-term uplift or are little more than vanity, products in the process should go wide to consider future competition, customer change, industry dynamics, external influences such as regulation or supply and demand as well as growth issues your company can be facing.
AI is a good example. There are now many off-the shelf solutions that can be used across many different elements of a business. But how should it be used in your business in an integrated fashion that can grow over time? Thinking holistically will reduce the risk of a mishmash of technology that fails to connect.
Be open-minded – allow potential partners to revise or re-engineer your brief to help you identify the real challenges you face and spot opportunities.
Transform Your Project Management & Procurement
It is difficult to procure something before you know what you need. Likewise dusting off standard company project management approaches to deliver a programme that may fundamentally change an aspect of a business or indeed the entire enterprise, may not be appropriate.
Research by Deloitte found that poor implementation tactics, lack of performance management on a project, and limited resources or time for training, were some of the top challenges for digital transformation projects.
Understanding how your partners will assist in running projects or framing the approach to managing them is a critical area to explore.
Likewise, careful consideration of whether existing procurement systems and criteria will allow you to find the right kind of partners is important. If your system is structured around rigid project capability scores you may struggle to procure well.
Talented Partnerships
COVID-19 has accelerated experimentation in flexible working and opened minds to the potential of hybrid team structures as well as roles and responsibilities.
If the location of your workforce is atomised at least part of the time, old logistical barriers to the way your people and your specialist partners can work together are largely removed both practically and psychologically.
Creating hybrid teams from across your business, blended either full time or part time with external talent is often fundamental to delivering programmes with many different aspects.
A big part of the digital transformation challenge for many organisations is talent and recruitment. Earlier this year the BBC reported that the UK is ‘heading towards digital skills shortage disaster’: the number of young people taking IT subjects at GCSE had dropped 40% since 2015 and fewer than half of British employers believe young people are leaving full-time education with sufficient advanced digital skills, while 76% of firms think a lack of digital skills would hit their profitability.
Digital design and innovation agencies are often an entry point for people into the wider technology space and as such represent a pool of skills used for digital transformation, such as user experience design and data analysis.
So flexible thinking about the mix of talent from external partners and in-house teams is an essential part of the transformation process.
Changing the Culture of Business Authority
COVID-19 has accelerated experimentation in flexible working and opened minds to the potential of hybrid team structures as well as roles and responsibilities.
If the location of your workforce is atomised at least part of the time, old logistical barriers to the way your people and your specialist partners can work together are largely removed both practically and psychologically.
Creating hybrid teams from across your business, blended either full time or part time with external talent is often fundamental to delivering programmes with many different aspects.
A big part of the digital transformation challenge for many organisations is talent and recruitment. Earlier this year the BBC reported that the UK is ‘heading towards digital skills shortage disaster’: the number of young people taking IT subjects at GCSE had dropped 40% since 2015 and fewer than half of British employers believe young people are leaving full-time education with sufficient advanced digital skills, while 76% of firms think a lack of digital skills would hit their profitability.
Digital design and innovation agencies are often an entry point for people into the wider technology space and as such represent a pool of skills used for digital transformation, such as user experience design and data analysis.
So flexible thinking about the mix of talent from external partners and in-house teams is an essential part of the transformation process.
ABOUT OUR GUEST WRITER
Neil Collard
Managing Director, Great State
Neil Collard is a digital professional with considerable experience in the digital space stretching back to 1998. His client service background has a real focus on developing digital strategies for a broad range of clients, including Kia, Audi, Land Rover, Levis, British Airways, AXA and Premier Travel Inn.
