How to approach your migration to digital age!

Recently, I had published a post about an organization’s digital competency, which prompted to ask questions about digital infrastructure, besides other market drivers. One of the problems that organizations often face is the fact that digital investment decisions are evaluated and measured under the same parameters as the other more traditional initiatives. Digital experience, measurement and analytics require much faster turn-around, which is almost impossible in current monolithic IT and Support functions. 

To further emphasize the “rethink,” I wanted to share a great McKinsey article on how organizations can address a dichotomous decision making process, one for traditional business imperatives and the other for digital projects. Here are the key takeaways:

• Digital products need to be developed at a faster tempo and the projects supporting digital thrusts need to be evaluated at a faster speed separate from the rest of the IT budget approval process
• Digital investments are to be treated as strategic imperatives and short-term fix mentality needs to be abandoned
• Organization needs to establish “digital product management” to be accountable for agile development and release cycle

Managing Business by Revenue OR Customer Experience

In executive reviews across many organizations, discussions are often centered on online traffic, subscribers, revenue, cost, EBITDA, systems availability, key initiatives, etc. What I have found lacking is a detailed analysis of the drivers of these numbers – our customers and their interaction with the brand. Customer experience with our product or service determines performance and trending on the above metrics, yet it rarely is the starting point of a conversation.

Recently, I started one of my weekly reviews with sharing the data on what customers were saying about one of our key products. Included with this insight were comments and feedback gathered from our sales and customer service organizations. Obviously, we were discussing the problems that some of our customers were facing and just as quickly identifying fixes to alleviate those problems. I then proceeded to show our metrics trend, which merely corroborated the customer experience and, the forecast if we continued the trend. Just by switching the order in which we discuss the product or service, we accomplished more in terms of actionable outcomes, quite an achievement in itself. However, a more strategic benefit of this approach could be that we now start to build a more customer-centric organization, the benefits of which surely translate into favorable metrics trends that all executives prefer.

Give it a shot – turn things around to show metrics/reports from a customers’ perspective. I am hoping you’d notice a similar excitement about customer-centricity as I did in my trial.

Is your organization truly in a digital age?

Data is in abundance on consumers and their online engagement, be it content and/or eCommerce. What this means is that the marketers need to be more savvy about customer needs than applying “one size fits all” approach to talking to their customers. Digital competency is hence about harnessing this data and utilizing it to segment, target and serve the customers – need I say “real time!” 

To become a digital-savvy organization, we require an understanding of our marketing touch points and internal infrastructure that can support a multi-pronged approach to customer reach. Marketers need to ask the following questions in their organization:

1. What digital experience drives engagement and conversion in our company/industry?
2. What marketing channels are effective for what customer segments and why (data to support the claim)?
3. What data is captured in our systems and is it compatible across customer touch points?
4. Who owns the digital experience and are the right people empowered to make “consumer-centric” decisions?

If the answer is not a definitive yes to all of the above, I’d suggest there is some work that needs to be done in achieving true digital competence. The road map should hence, clearly identify deficiencies and investment needs to start utilizing the amazing power of our digital interaction with customers. Some of our more familiar metrics such as; customer acquisition rate, retention, marketing ROI, CLV, ARPU, etc., will then truly represent a view into our marketing success and provide deeper insights into how to optimize customer experience.

Communication - Key to Business Strategy

Right around the planning cycle for next year, one question starts to bother me - how often do we discuss the strategic direction that we are setting for our business, once the planning cycle is over? Why is that?

1. Is senior management not crafting/revisiting the strategic road-map that is well understood? 
   
2. Is middle management not in-tune with the strategic impact their roles are making on the company’s bottom-line? 
   
3. Or, is it a matter of not communicating the vision, that can be permeated through the organization?

I believe there is an element of all of the above. Here, I want to call out a certain lack of communication that is rampant in most organizations. Let's look at the business reviews, for instance, that are conducted weekly, monthly, etc. Are these backward looking or forward looking? Is there enough element of the latter for all to see? The answer in most cases is "no" or "not enough." 

• There are goals and plans in place for the current and the upcoming year, but how often are they reinforced? 
• How frequently, do we meet to take a stock of business progress and how it aligns with the plan we had set for ourselves? 
• What are the new projects, competitive landscape, consumer needs, operational efficiency improvements, etc., that need more attention than was envisaged at the planning stages?

If these are not addressed and collectively communicated to the teams, there will always be a certain degree of dissatisfaction and lack of coherence  among the troops. What we do during the year ought to be calibrated against the plan we built, but more importantly, the plan we revise as we go. Management cadre should take note!

3 C’s of Consumer Centricity

Consumer-centric organizations are known to do all they can to engage with their customers and proactively cater to their needs. Often these will include product/service updates, social communications, systems to support consumer-centric strategies, etc. However, it is easy to feel burdened with multi-directional pulls on your consumer-centric strategy as tactical urgencies evolve in any business cycle. Keeping a framework of key consumer touch points is imperative in such situations to stay focused and continue to deliver on the promise of better than excellent engagement. I categorize these core consumer touch points into 3 areas – the 3 C’s of Consumer Centricity.

1. Content – what does a consumer see about your brand, products, services? Are you developing content that clearly communicates and reinforces the value of your products and services? Does this content remind the consumer how valuable their relationship is to the brand and vice-versa? Whether a consumer is using your products or not, we need to evolve our content strategy such that it caters to consumer need for information, before and after they make a purchase decision, and at the time of purchase, you will typically get the nod.
2. Choice – Do we offer choice in our products and services? Is our product strategy in-tune with the evolving market dynamics, namely, technological changes, consumer usage behaviors, market expectations, etc.? After we have successfully attracted consumer attention, we need to ensure we are ready to live up to the promise – great product and service. As and when consumers mature and place their trust in your brand, you need to be able to offer a portfolio that goes beyond the core product(s) and allows the customer to strengthen the bond.
3. Community – Speaking of bonding with brand, what better way than to draw customers into your community. Do you have a community that not only caters to customer queries, but also, provides valuable information to enhance your products/services? Social revolution has brought about a radical shift in organizations’ communications tactics, as to how frequently and what do consumers need to know. We need to proactively build this into our marketing strategy and invest in right resources to maintain it and keep it current. 

As we all know, consumer life-cycle starts well before they become our customers, and continues well beyond their first purchase. The 3 C’s provide a marketer’s view into this life-cycle and by creating the planning tools within this framework may just help simplify analysis, refine your marketing/communications strategies, maximize ROIs and contribute to your maturing as a consumer-centric organization.

Sustaining Growth ... with Strategic Planning Leadership

The information age we live in has one very significant impact on the business environment – consumer tastes and needs are continually evolving. 

The sophistication of products and services we consume is a result of not only the innovation, but also availability of technology at consumer level. Think of all the advances in online content, Internet access, consumer devices, home gadgets, transportation - the list goes on.

The common theme is that at each stage of innovation, new value is being created by meeting new customer needs as the perceived value of the previous feature was reduced. 

How do organizations stay competitive in such evolving landscape?

Firstly, organizations will need to manage fatigue of their product/service and stay relevant in customers' minds. Here I am talking about maintaining certain freshness about your product. Be it via, new features, pricing, branding, value-added services, customer support or even operations.

Secondly, organizations need to create a culture where adapting to market/industry changes becomes a measures of success. Appropriate data management, reporting, operational flexibility and outward focus will be needed to ensure such changes are being taken into account at every decision-making stage.

Strategic planners should hence be guiding their organizations by; factoring in the evolving consumer need, quantifying the “loss” in current products/services and managing the transition to the next feature set that will drive the portfolio growth. Organizations most aligned with evolving consumer needs will have the luxury of staying viable, charging a premium for their innovation, moving into new customer segments and retaining the current ones.