Digital Strategy - Where Should You Begin?
Bulge-bracket strategy firms have a habit of pushing blue-sky strategy that you can’t execute. Here’s how you can do things better.
What's the problem?
The pace of digital innovation is now faster than ever before. Leading firms keep pushing the bleeding edge, and you want to ensure you’re not left behind. Major incumbents have to ensure their as-is business doesn’t suffer whilst fighting to protect hard-fought strategic advantage.
If you try to chase unachievable goals, you’ll end up nowhere. What usually causes pain in a digital strategy?
Low Data Maturity
On average, firms we survey are at the top of the "Initial" level of data maturity. Unless your existing data and digital skills are sharp we can't target value at the "pointy end" where leaders play.
Complex, legacy IT
You may have grown organically, or via acquisition, but any large firm spends up to 90% of it's IT budget just "keeping the lights on". We need to pay off some digital debt before we can succeed.
Falling for Hype
Billions of dollars are spent marketing the latest and greatest technologies. If you're suckered in by hype, you'll end up chasing someone else's unachievable dream. Your digital strategy needs to dodge the B.S.
Ground your ambition
As kids, we can’t run before we can walk. Neither can your business. Let’s set short-term goals that take you from where you are today to where you need to be tomorrow.
- Baseline your current maturity
- Identify the 20% of things to unlock an 80% improvement
- Think Big, but start Small
Aspirational Data Maturity
Data Maturity Reality
Don't forget the literacy factor
We all begin our journey with different experiences and different assumptions. Unless we understand the digital literacy present inside our organisation today, we can’t know how easy it will be to drive through the changes we need tomorrow.
- Do staff follow standard processes when using systems?
- Is everyone aware what data quality means and why it matters?
- How much trust is there in the reports today?
- How easy is it to produce or find these reports?
- How much time do we spend on manual processes?
- What do our customers say about our digital skills?
Is anyone aware there's a problem?
Your own staff might not know how much time and effort they waste on paperwork. After a while it’s “just the day job” and people get used to it. However, McKinsey research shows the time wasted can add up:
How much time is wasted looking for data?
When you think about this, it’s staggering. We don’t need to tackle advanced AI digital projects, or chase big-ticket dreams when there’s such vast opportunity to improve our current business operations.
The same research states:
About 530,000 days of managers’ time are squandered each year for a typical Fortune 500 company, equivalent to some $250 million in wages annually
How does this help with Digital Strategy?
Know what your problem is
Your first pass at problem definition might focus on an opportunity, but if you lack the maturity to unlock it, perhaps you should focus on more achievable goals.
Fix what's broken
Most large organisations have huge amounts of digital debt, and removing this frees up the time, capital and brainpower for more advanced strategic needs.
Spot new opportunities
What do your customers say about you online? Most firms we work with have no idea. Focusing on unmet customer needs enables you to delight customers, reducing churn and increasing profits.
What do you do next?
Run a data maturity and data literacy assessment. We can help provide a baseline data maturity assessment for free, but the data literacy analysis needs a deeper engagement. If you’re going to try and do it in-house, ask:
- Have we got governance processes in place over enterprise data?
- Do our staff follow these processes, or even know they exist?
- How accurate do we really think our reports are?
- Are we like 37% of other firms that know they’ve made decisions based on bad data?
- Do our customers complain about our digital habits on sites like Trustpilot?
Most firms have a huge opportunity that can easily be unlocked if you only know where to look. Your data maturity is probably weak, but that’s an opportunity not a problem. Start your digital strategy in the right place and you’ll succeed beyond your wildest dreams.
If you need our help to make this a reality, set up time to chat using the link below.
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