I just surfed again few trend watching sites such as http://www.trendhunter.com/, http://www.springwise.com/. Companies are doing so much cool stuff round the world. Due to my background especially I read digital and online related projects and business implementations. World where we are living is really changing - how we can shop, get ideas, interact and ease our lives.
If one bigger corporation would implement all the best ideas in integration with its core business and future core business... it would become very cool state of the art company. However it seems that best ideas are implemented in isolation from one another. Very few companies if any is implementing trend setting ideas in a row one after another.
Why bigger companies cannot create coherent and consistent approaches to digital opportunities which would really shape their business model and consumers' (or business customers) customer experience? For smaller companies reason is obvious - you need to have a well targeted offering which has scalability thus not a wide spread ecosystem of great implementations.
I have seen a large number of digital strategies, read a number of related articles and interacted with many experts. In most of the cases bigger companies have very lame digital strategies. With lame I mean strategies which have no great insights and a story to tell - no imagination of how things could be. Yes, imagination is the key. Imagination of how customers could and should live their lives, do their shopping, get served and manage their daily & weekly activities supported by your company. Instead of companies have road maps when next technology version is implemented.
Great digital strategies combine thinking from service business ideas, development of customer relationships and digital space opportunities enabled by technology - no matter in which industry you are in. Starting point should always be a customer - how we live our lives and manage home occasions (similarly in B2B: how we manage our companies and try to improve our businesses). Underlying problem is that you cannot outsource strategy creation - you need to have the vision and story to tell. Different service providers should just act as an enabler and adviser in different areas to strengthen specified area knowledge.
If we ask a digital agency with advertising background to define the strategy - focus will be too much in communications not how we execute business and create customer value. If we ask an IT company to define the strategy - focus will be too much in technology development not how we execute business. If we ask a strategy management consultant - focus will be too much in numbers and outcomes in processes. When the company does not have its own strong vision and story - outcomes are too much dependent on the service provider and they will shape it according to their home turf. If the home turf is colored with some specialty then the strategy will get same colors for example over emphasizing mobility, social media or online store development.
So who should be your digital imagination officer? Functional organizations have a silo effect. Imagination and implementation of future multi-channel experience belongs to no one. But opportunities are unlimited. My insight is that companies should combine responsibilities of business development, marketing and digital development to design the future - to make the future a reality today.
No comments:
Post a Comment