Assessing your digital readiness
Issue 05 ･ Digital + Data
In my consulting days I established a framework that allowed a business to quickly assess their readiness for digital change.
Over many years of having early stage conversations with brands looking o improve how their digital customer experience I have found that benchmarking against the five key metrics of awareness, appetite, attitude, agility and ability is a good indicator of the readiness for change.
Have a think about your own organisation as you read through these areas and where you might need some more consideration.
1. Awareness
Are you making change or being changed?
Self awareness is a positive indicator of many things, but here we are interested in awareness of the market — specifically competitors and customers. How well understood is the competitor environment when it comes to established rivals and more importantly new entrants with the potential to disrupt through nimbleness and innovation?
Equally as important and intrinsically linked to competitors is the understanding of their customers. Again, not just the established personas that they reach today, but the total addressable market. A mature business will have segmented the whole market and understands how to clearly target each segment with relevant positioning. Or is it the case that they are ‘asset sweating’ — going after the same traditional personas time and again.
If you can judge the need for market research to inform future planning you have a good handle on a businesses awareness.
2. Appetite
Is the executive convinced of the need for change?
It is one thing to meet with a digital champion inside an organisation, it is another to discuss a future partnership with a senior digital leader who has the full backing of the board. What you want to understand here is if digital has been recognised as key to future business success.
Read the published business plan. How is digital described in relation to organisational goals (if at all)? Has the power of digital to improve the customer experience and in turn affect the bottom line been understood and communicated to the wider business?
If you can gauge how engaged the senior tiers of the business are with the potential of digital then you can take a measure of their appetite for change.
3. Attitude
Is digital at the heart of the business?
There is one audience common to all that is often forgotten when discussing transformational change — the internal customer. How many heads have been turned in the direction of digital and and at what level of the business?
Are there teams on the ground trying to meet the expectation for an ever-improving experience, or is there a top down c-suite initiative informed by prior experience? It is important to understand the digital literacy of a business and recognise that it won’t be homogenous throughout.
This is all enveloped in the cultural mindset for change. How have transformational challenges been tackled at scale in the past (if at all) and where did the required innovation come from? Is there regular investment in innovation or is the business or industry traditionally risk averse?
Digging into the experiences and attitude to risk for risk will enable you to judge the level of education and support required to drive a digital first culture.
4. Agility
How quickly and easily can they make change?
With the less tangible aspects of the business understood and ticked off, you can move to more practical questions that dig into the readiness for action. What is the state of their technology stack and how much data is being used to drive decisions?
You will want to send out your own digital Columbus (Columbo?) to properly map the digital estate and wider landscape post engagement, but it is still important to get a basic understanding of how healthy is the relationship with technology.
How is data stored and is it decoupled from services, what customer insights are collected and is any analysis taking place?
By gaining an understanding of the organisations relationship with data and technology you will know the speed at which digital change can be implemented.
5. Ability
Do they have the skills required for change?
The last area to examine is where digital sits within the organisation as this is a good marker for maturity. What is the title of the person you are speaking to? Does anyone at exec level have digital in their job title and if not under which banner does digital sit?
It is common for the responsibility for digital teams to move between execs and you can find digital sitting under a CMO, CIO or even sometimes the CFO. How often does the team get restructured or move departments and if there is a Head of Digital do they report directly to the CEO?
Knowing how digital sits within the organisational hierarchy will tell you whether there is any need for operational change.
How might you become more ready?
By integrating these five criteria into your qualification process— either as a mental checklist in early engagements or as an overt exercise to build trust—you will find it far easier to spot potential partners and you can begin to deliver value with confidence.