This is part 1 of a 2-part series exploring 2018’s greatest organizational challenge: achieving digital excellence.
Most organizations we meet encounter challenges across the wide breadth of skillsets and expertise that are required to successfully execute digital projects. Sometimes this can have a compounding effect that radically undermines team efforts, as teams move across a series of project phases that each require uniques skillsets to execute. In other cases, achieving digital excellence may just be a path to becoming more efficient and effective in meeting organizational goals and ensuring even greater success in your role.
Let’s take a look at where this complexity comes from and why we’ve designed our services around closing gaps between phases and enhancing your team’s processes and skills during each phase.
Knowledge and capability needs to run wide and deep
Digital is complicated. Many steps and many different levels of expertise are needed in order to execute effectively. Each failure or issue in process, methodology, or outcome across your efforts increasingly undermines every effort that follows.
Core areas of expertise required to successfully meet digital objectives include:
1. Research
2. Product strategy
3. Interaction design
4. System architecture
5. Build
6. Launch and promotion
7. Continuous improvement
Exploring these areas in more detail
A typical digital project will include this depth of requirements and the skillsets required to execute effectively across these standards of practice.
1. Research
- Internal (organizational)
- External (customers)
2. Product strategy
- Jobs-to-be-done and outcomes for personas
- Cohorts and behavioural groups
- Device and platform support (hardware vs software; mobile, desktop, other)
- Internal systems and staff interactions
- Content requirements
- Promotion and communications (including marketing, advertising, social, and SEO)
- Passive vs interactive
- KPI definition
- Resourcing
- Risks
3. Interaction design
- Information architecture
- Interface design
- Usability and accessibility
- Automation and interactions
- Context of use (adaptive and contextual IA and content)
- Onboarding, progress and frequency
- States
4. System architecture
- Privacy
- Security
- Data management
- Technology platform
- KPIs and Behavioural tracking
5. Build
- Backend
- APIs
- Front-end
- QA
6. Launch and promotion
- Awareness
- Growth
- Validation
7. Continuous improvement
- Behavioural tracking
- KPI tracking
- Review (KPI review, behavioural tracking review, user testing, etc)
- Iterate/Experiment
- Repeat (review, iterate, experiment)
It’s difficult for any one team to bring this level of expertise to the table. That’s why we’ve built our consulting practice on helping you learn and execute in these areas.
Determinants of organizational success
Ultimately, success is determined by your organization’s ability to:
- Define an effective roadmap, meeting organizational and market needs.
- Execute at a high level across all stages of product and service delivery.
- Plan, scope, and evaluate systems that can make a measurable impact.
- Continuously improve across customer experience and service delivery efforts.