Prioritise your wish list
From your brainstorm write-up and other exercises that you might have completed in your diagnostic such as user-state journeys, you will have a number of digital transformation aspirations relating to your customer experience, operational processes and business models. You might have prototyped or storyboarded some of the ideas through touchpoint or action blueprint maps. It might be useful to plot all your work together in a “vertical campfire” – an office wall covered in your maps and canvases and stickies. This blog describes how the Government’s Digital Service has used vertical campfires to focus their priorities.
Highlight developments that are interrelated, such as redesigning the customer experience on social channels, CRM and ERP, or that cross-cut department silos, such as the mobile shopping app. These developments should be prioritised as strategic. What others stand out as being essential for getting your organisation’s digital transformation? Also prioritise these. Note whether the development is:
- Short, medium, or long term?
- High priority or low priority?
(e.g. a poor internet connection is short term but high priority; whereas a new online ticketing system may be high priority but long term. Software upgrades might be low priority mid term – “it’d be nice/easier to have”). - Affordable?
- Will it make money?
- How would any planned digital development change your organisation? Describe how the development may impact on your organisation’s artistic, operational, audience and business functions.
You might want to use a fresh Business Model Canvas (the same tool that we used in the audit your business model section of The AmbITion Approach), and complete with the new ideas to show the new products, services, offers, customers and business models. Remember, if you need to work on a canvas with a virtual team, then you could all buy the iPad app, or use the Canvanizer website
Strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats
What would the strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats (SWOT) be of your organisation or practice if this digital development was implemented?
More of a radical innovation?
Finally, think about whether the developments that seem least achievable – you will have had some ideas that are “blue skies”. Whilst it’s tempting to think about these first as they seem the most exciting, in fact they are probably the most risky. Raising your technology base generally over each area of the organisation and focussing your digital transformation around your core capabilities that deliver your value proposition will provide you with a resilient digitally transformed company base on top of which cutting-edge digital developments can then be experimented with. In relation to blue skies ideas, consider:
- Is anyone else doing something similar?
– In your sector?
– In different sectors but with similar processes/audiences/product?
– If yes, investigate the existing good practice (see resource list, below)
– If no, research and find evidence for what is the general consensus about the technology you might be planning to use? (Is it considered stable? Cutting edge?)
- What current and future business opportunities does your planned digital transformation address?
- What relationship is there between the digital developments you have undertaken to date and what you propose?
- Might you able to progress the idea at a tech meetup or hack day or hackathon? What about in partnership with a university as a knowledge exchange project? This would enable you to develop a prototype that you can test, reducing the risk (you’re not developing a brief and commissioning a developer), and developing relationships with potential collaborators.
If you’re particularly confident about the relevance of your innovative ideas to enhance your core capabilities, then create your own innovation lab to test it out! Creating Your Own Innovation Lab