From communications to product to organizational efficiency, operating online involves significant depth of expertise. Digital channels and customer touchpoints extend beyond online to in-person and at home, widening the scope of understanding required to engage with customers.

To succeed, methodology matters. Human-centred design and lean and agile processes are essential because, with digital, we have the ability to learn from data and adapt quickly to current and evolving customer needs, and increasingly savvy customers are expecting more of the organizations they engage with, regardless of device or channel.

The breadth and depth of expertise extend across a wide variety of requirements phases and deep into areas of expertise, as we explored in part 1 of this series on achieving digital excellence. These areas include:

1. Research
2. Product strategy
3. Interaction design
4. System architecture
5. Build
6. Launch and promotion
7. Continuous improvement

Considering the scope of complexity from digital channels to customer engagement and from methodologies to the variety of areas of expertise, let’s take a look at the 8 most common organizational challenges which typically undermine digital efforts.

8 common organizational challenges

1. Having limited competency in any one of these 7 key areas, where it is difficult to execute well and project team expertise is not deep enough to achieve best practices. This can increase cost significantly up front or over time and diminish value of products and services.
2. Trusting a single vendor to have the capability of executive across all 7 of these multi-disciplined steps, each of which requires a high level of expertise.
3. Taking a technical or engineering driven approach led by features-first and, at best, internal definitions of need, instead of taking a human-centred design approach which identifies user jobs-to-be-done and outcomes in order to align organizational goals and user needs.
4. Effectively transitioning from research and strategy to product, bridging the gap between identifying an opportunity to improve customer experience or service delivery and how this is translated to service models and products that need to be delivered to capture this opportunity.
5. Information architecture and interface design aligned to user mental models rather than feature lists and organizational requirements.
6. Translating from design to code, with optimized and accessible front-end code that puts the user first, where typical engineering-team capabilities are strongest at the architecture and back-end, rather at layers where users interact.
7. Continuous improvement, using the knowledge that can be gathered from every click and communicating with users on an ongoing basis to improve service and product.
8. The ability to track performance, effectively run user tests and experiments, and then make the most effective decisions on where to spend ongoing resources to drive adoption and engagement.

Determinants of organizational success

Ultimately, success is determined by your organization’s ability to:

1. Define an effective roadmap, meeting organizational and market needs.
2. Execute at a high level across all stages of product and service delivery.
3. Plan, scope, and evaluate systems that can make a measurable impact.
4. Continuously improve across customer experience and service delivery efforts.

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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:

1. Define an effective roadmap, meeting organizational and market needs.
2. Execute at a high level across all stages of product and service delivery.
3. Plan, scope, and evaluate systems that can make a measurable impact.
4. Continuously improve across customer experience and service delivery efforts.

Continue to part 2 Get in touch

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