Being Digital First

The world has been going more digital for the last 30 years. COVID has pressed the fast forward, and now we are at the point in the middle of 2020 where the world is becoming genuinely digital-first. 

To quote Milton, “Only a crisis – actual or perceived – produces real change. When that crisis occurs, the actions that are taken depend on the ideas that are lying around.” 

What does being digital-first mean? 

The last 30 years have seen a proliferation of software and hardware products and services that have underpinned the rise and rise of digital channels. All have had one underlying thing in common; TCP-IP, the internet protocol that enables data to be sent and received across a distributed network.

At the same time as software and hardware were being installed, service industries have materialised that make sense of the boxes, wiring and protocols. These have included tech businesses, business consultancies, research companies and marketing agencies.

All have bought processes and thinking to help enable their clients to “digitally transform”. Individuals and companies have seized the day and created new platforms and organisations.

A cursory glance at BrandZ’s top 100 brands in 2020 illustrates nicely that those that have found ways to capitalise on internet technologies have done extraordinarily well. 

Indeed whole countries have transformed, China has changed immeasurably in 30 years, and is the prime example of a nation-state that has managed to transform itself from an agrarian economy into a digital powerhouse.

And yet, at the same time, latency due to legacy thinking has created a form of corporate schizophrenia. Heritage businesses have tended to have one foot in the past and one in the future. That is probably being too generous, more often than not, it's been not much more than one toe in the future. And that has been a problem for them. What do these schizophrenic companies tend to have in common?

• Silo mentality - too many barriers within organisations
• Not customer first - everything before customers 
• Non-believers in high places - a non-digital board and leadership team 
• A lick of paint on an old house - optimisation not transformation 
• Beholden to the wrong stakeholders

Breaking down the barriers

One of the biggest problems for organisations is the way that they are structured. Traditionally different departments have been able to work towards a common goal, the vision and mission, without having to interfere too much with each other.

The net result has been fiefdoms within businesses, and what happens when you have fiefdoms… watch Game of Thrones. These fiefdoms have been able to work pretty much independently of each other, develop their own cultures and in many instances their own dialect and vernacular (just listen to internal company jargon and acronyms), resulting in a remarkable lack of collaboration. Then the internet came along and hinted at the need for cooperation.

The internet is obviously a technology thing. But it requires business and marketing know-how to make sense of how to capitalise on it. The Venn diagram that shows a successful outcome shows overlaps between pretty much the whole organisation. It needs everyone working together to achieve the right result. But many businesses have not broken down the barriers and in 2020 being siloed is still the modus operandi. 

Being digital-first does not mean setting up a digital function, which is merely adding another silo. It means smashing down the barriers and looking at ways to collaborate across the organisation.

Digital now permeates everything and everywhere, so it needs stakeholders and opinions from all departments. They have to work together towards the common good. What is needed is a universal language that all can understand and can get behind. And that is where the customer comes in. Companies have to re-organise and put the customer at the heart of all they do.

Being Customer First 

Many companies talk about being customer-centric. For most, this involves audience research and tracking and picking through customer data. In reality, the output has overridden the sentiment.

By which I mean, the research has ended up in mountains of presentation materials which is often difficult to absorb and turn into anything meaningful. Agencies that promise to connect with customers tend to focus on the creative rather than the insight available to them. Generally, customers are viewed as a pain, rather than a source of inspiration.

Being digital-first means being customer (people) first. Understanding an audience, who they are, and what they do, is essential to developing a strategy. The research industry is going through a renaissance as companies to understand their consumers and how to connect with them most effectively.

Research is moving beyond demographics and geography towards behaviour and psychology. AI is making Data more transparent and useful. Understanding what customers did, when they and inference around why they did it, is available at the touch of a button.

To be digital-first involves harnessing your customer to drive your strategy and to evolve it as time goes on. At NMD+, we have a research methodology we call the Kitchen Table methodology, that we use to tease out insights that fuel our process. We have found this to be an effective way of listening and getting insights to help point a project in the right customer first direction.

Get your leadership with the digital program

One of the biggest challenges that organisations have faced is a lack of senior leadership understanding of digital, and mainly digital from a business perspective. The higher you go in an organisation, the longer the career, the greyer the hairs and its fair to say the less digitally native and savvy.

These are people who understand intellectually, what they could be doing and why it would make sense but not emotively. They cannot get excited about web sites, social media and apps, and therein lies the problem. Leaders need to believe passionately about the digital, or they will find it difficult to take their employees with them.

Many do not even understand basics such as what comprises their own organisation’s digital ecosystem. One of the things that we offer as NMD+ is a digital immersion leadership session. We ask participants to look at and analyse their digital properties. An active session, rather than us droning on about Uber and Airbnb.

We ask them to review all channels and then consider some example omni-channel customer journeys. For most, it is the first time that many have looked at the totality of what they offer, and most have not thought about or understood the concept of customer journeys.

\We have found this simple process has a transformational outcome, with most users reporting that for the first time they know in both hearts and minds what the opportunity is.

A lick of paint on an old house

This is a biggie. Companies have spent billions on “digital transformation”. They have got the brightest minds to tell them what they need to do.

These strategies have resulted in lots of digital plumbing ripped out and plumbed back in again, and sometimes ripped out again. They have looked at software and hardware and now the cloud. They have invested in innovation and UX.

And all through this process, most have not managed to transform. They have taken what they have already and optimised it for digital channels. This new coat of paint strategy has resulted in a digital revolution of sorts. But the net result has tended to be functional, 2D and in many instances passive.

The barriers and lack of customer focus have resulted in passive experiences that do not fully achieve the true potential. At NMD+, we know that what matters is engagement. We believe in Active Customer Experience through which value-based relationships can be fostered and nurtured.

Often this means reprioritising, enhancing or changing what you offer and how you offer it. It means understanding what digital value means to you and harnessing the power of your data reservoirs. Overall the good news is that you probably don’t need more technology - you just need to make more of you already have!

Planning for the long-term?

Companies have tended to be beholden to their shareholders above everything else. The relentless focus on growth and profit has often squeezed new thinking to the periphery. The shareholder focus on short-term returns has led many to wonder about the need to change.

Why embrace the new, while the old way is doing okay? The cost of this short-sightedness has been a lack of focus on putting customers first, the employee experience, diversity and equality and more broadly society and the planet.

These stakeholders are critical to functioning as a digital-first business and their importance elevated. The internet has brought transparency with it. Shareholder value is not important to customers and in most cases employees, and so organisations are having to think more about broader horizons. 

The COVID crisis is forcing a re-evaluation. NMD+ sees the opportunity to rethink why organisations do what they do. When we think about working with clients, always start with what is available. We believe in partnership and collaboration and minimising waste; be that time, effort or money. How we work is as important as the output. We want working with us to be meaningful and endeavour to be eco friendly. 

What's next?

The COVID crisis is a harbinger of change. The fall-out will expose the digital in-adequacies of any organisation that cannot accept that they will need to adapt and refocus. At NMD+, we know that can seem daunting and many do not actually know where to begin. 

In his book, The 4th Industrial Revolution, Klaus Schwab says: 

“Businesses, industries and corporations will face continuous Darwinian pressures and as such, the philosophy of “always in beta” (always evolving) will become more prevalent… Occurring simultaneously are waves of further breakthroughs in areas ranging from gene sequencing to nanotechnology, from renewables to quantum computing. It is the fusion of these technologies and their interaction across the physical, digital and biological domains that make the fourth industrial revolution fundamentally different from previous revolutions.” 

We believe that this is actually a moment to truly embrace the digital future in the most positive way, and the only way to start is to jump in!