It’s trending, according to McKinsey & Company; businesses are rushing to become more digital. Yet what does digital really mean? Digital might be about technology or a new way of engaging with customers or quite simply a new way of doing business.
The only cohesion is that there is a distinct lack of alignment and common vision about where the business needs to go.
McKinsey, digital insights
What McKinney thinks about digital – top 15 insights
1. Common purpose – businesses must have a clear and common understanding of exactly what digital means to them and what it means to their business.
2. The McKinney approach – they believe that digital should be seen less as a thing and more a way of doing things; create value at new ways of doing business, special customer experiences, and building support structures.
3. Be open to a new way of doing business – understand where there is new value, identify new profit streams in existing sectors.
4. Unlock value from emerging growth sectors – understand new developments in the marketplace and evaluate how they may present opportunities or threats to your business, what’s new in your business sector?
5. Customer decision journeys – how are they evolving? What are their behaviours and expectations, it’s critical to get ahead of trends that can deliver or destroy profitable value.
6. Understand each step of a customer’s purchasing journey — the supply chain is critical to developing the flexibility, efficiency, and speed to deliver the right product in a way the customer wants.
7. Monitor your market – use data and metrics to focus on delivering insights about customers that can drive marketing and sales decisions, this information can build environments to encourage the generation of new ideas.
8. Remember customer loyalty – proactive decision making based on market intelligence, that delivers content and experiences that are personalised and relevant to the customer.
9. Analyse how a consumer is interacting with your brand – the customer may shift from a mobile phone to a laptop when making a purchasing decision, review the relevant touchpoints that will enable companies to blend digital and physical experiences even more.
10. Real-time automation – helps customers complete a task, it can increase the number of self-service options that help resolve problems quickly, personalise communications to be more relevant, and deliver consistent customer journeys no matter the channel, time, or device.
11. Journey-focused innovation – companies need to be innovative in how they interact with and sell to customers by expanding existing customer journeys into new businesses and services to create more information, and increase the value of the customer-brand relationship.
12. Build foundational capabilities – technological and organisational processes allow an enterprise to be agile and fast.
13. Digital mind-sets – being digital is about using data to make better and faster decisions, devolve decision making to smaller teams, and develop more iterative and rapid ways of doing things.
14. System and data architecture – in the context of IT, digital is focused on creating a two-part environment that supports critical functions to run at a slower pace and support fast-moving, customer-facing interactions.
15. Digitised IT – is about the commitment to building networks that connect devices, objects, and people where cross-functional IT teams automate systems to iterate on software quickly.
In summary, digital is about unlocking growth now. How companies might interpret or act on that definition will vary, but having a clear understanding of what digital means allows business leaders to develop a shared vision of how it can be used to capture value.
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