Digital Transformation

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10 excruciating signs your organisation is digitally deficient

At Econsultancy we’ve discussed several times what the elements of digital culture are and why it’s good for business.

But we’ve never really covered what is really horrendous, quite possibly because we do like to focus on the positive whenever we can.

Today, I’m going to focus on the signs that show your organisation is desperately behind the times, because unfortunately such issues are rife in many corporate environments today.

If your organisation has any of the below, chances are they are irritating people beyond all comprehension, getting in the way of work and have no genuine utility behind them. 

Banish these things immediately, or make a quick buck by shorting the share price of the offending institution.

Read below. I accept no responsibility for any migraines you suffer…

In conversation: the CEO of the Financial Times

I’ve been writing about presentations I watched at Digital Media Strategies 2014, including talks by Verdens Gang, Axel Springer and the New York Times. So apologies if publishing isn’t your thing. 

But that’s sort of the joy of discussing media companies, how do they become more than mere old fashioned publishers. How do they find new streams of revenue and restructure so that subscriptions work and digital actually makes some money? 

One of the spots at the aforementioned conference was CEO of the Financial Times, John Ridding having a fireside chat with Ken Doctor, President of Newsonomics. 

Many interesting facts, figures and opinions were teased out, so I thought I’d round them up here.

The home of the future, today. How smart is that?

Qualcomm has been busy diversifying beyond chips and they now have an impressive range of software and even a smart watch.

Its smart home demo was one of my Mobile World Congress highlights and shows how technology will make our lives even easier in the coming years.

Axel Springer: how a big media company fostered a startup mentality

The Axel Springer group is pretty big, it’s active in 44 countries and generated revenue of €3.3bn in 2012.

13,650 people are employed across the group, which includes more than 230 publications such as Bild, but also companies such as Zanox (which includes Affiliate Window).

But despite its size, Axel Springer is using startups and a new culture to drive digital change and growth across the group.

This has been a big step and is a trend we’re seeing in many industries – see John Lewis’ recent announcement of JLabs, a call for entrepreneurs with a £100,000 investment to the best new startup.

At Digital Media Strategies 2014, Springer Electronic Media CTO Ulrich Schmitz talked to us about developing a digital portfolio.

How does one develop new business models in the light of digital? What is the best way to foster innovation and entrepreneurship? And when does one integrate digital investments or indeed keep them separate.

Regus CRM shows a company in need of digital transformation

The first thing to do is set my stall out. This isn’t a post attacking Regus, providers of business and meeting space, rather one intending to point out something that lots of its customers are surely struggling with.

Being constructively critical, I have found Regus’ finance department and its CRM systems to sometimes work in opposition with Regus’ commitment to good service.

At times I have torn my hair out wondering how Regus can provide me with an inconsistent customer experience, something that feels so different depending on who I’m talking to. I’ve often felt like account representatives haven’t any idea of who I am or of my value, both past and present.

I’ve had brilliant account managers and the service on the day is always top notch, but where the service sometimes comes up short is in the aftercare. In the current climate of customer revolution, with companies better informed and less willing to spend, customer experience is key.

The latest trends in digital are all about trying to improve the customer experience, and accurate and timely comms over the customer lifecycle is as important as it gets in B2B.

So, in this post I’ll detail some of my problems and discuss them in the context of organisational change and joining up data. Maybe we’ll find a way out of these Kafkaesque corridors where I repeatedly plead with some strange new arbiter, asking them to just look a little bit harder for my records.

Why centralisation is a power game

Centralisation is a power game. Treat it as a strategy for learning, and it might be more useful.

How does your web team work?

We’ve all experimented with various forms. When content management systems were new, devolved teams were all the rage. Give this wonderful tool to everyone in the company, and they’ll each edit their own little bit of the site.

What a wonderful site that was…

Why effective user centric design always leads to business transformation

Many companies pay lip service to user centric design, but the harsh truth is that without business transformation, most will fail to satisfy their users.

The web has made life hard for a lot of businesses. There was a time (before the web) when consumers had limited options. If a company gave their customers poor service it was hard to find an alternative.

Even bad mouthing the company to friends and colleagues only had a limited impact.

Four key takeouts from our Digital Transformation Roundtable in New York

20 senior execs from a wide range of industries as diverse as broadcast television, pharmaceutical, publishing and financial services gathered in New York last November as Econsultancy hosted another Digital Transformation roundtable.

Ever since IBM’s seminal 2011 study ‘From Stretched to Strengthened – Insights from the Global Chief Marketing Officer Study’, CMOs have been reporting a concern that they are underprepared for digital – shorthand for changes in consumer behavior, an explosion in the volume of data, the proliferation of channels and device choices and the effects of social media. 

According to a recent Econsultancy study, only 23% of the Fortune 500 could consider themselves to be in any way whatsoever shielded from the effects of digital.

It was suggested that those who might fall into that category are generally companies that dig things out of the ground and process them, but perhaps even they will see soon their industry disrupted by digital technologies. 

Everyone who attended on the day agreed that true Digital Transformation is a heavy lift and there is often a greatly delayed gratification from the process.

Nearly all of the organizations represented at the roundtable had experienced significant disruption to their business models from digital.

The attendees told us afterwards that the most valuable part of the day was hearing from their peers in other businesses, learning what had worked for them, what hadn’t and how they had overcome the challenges they faced.

Four keys rose to the top of the discussion…

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