The 2016 New Zealand Digital Transformation Summit was held on 7th March in Auckland where we both attended and exhibited at the event. Key themes of the Digital Transformation event were:
- Vision, Strategy and Governance – Striking the right balance between innovation and transformation
- Customer Understanding – Unlocking the digital customer value proposition
- Operational Efficiency – Embracing disruption – using digitisation to reinvent back-office functions and customer service
- Technology and Platforms – Unlocking digital value by leveraging technology and new business platforms
- People & capability – Recruiting and retaining the right talent and unlocking your real competitive advantage.
From my perspective, the 7 key takeaways could be summarised as follows:
- Disruption: Your business will be disrupted. New business models and experiences are being created. Both manual and creative process are being replaced by software and technology. However, it is not about the technology per se, disruption is about leveraging new technology in new ways to provide an improved customer experience.
- Speed is power: The time to innovate, respond to competitors and provide great experience needs to happen in weeks or months, not years. Organisations must focus on continuous value creation. Technology and automation enables this. A number of speakers talked about using the ‘lean startup’ methodology and ‘minimum viable product’ approach to innovation.
- Balanced approach is best. Strategy AND Ad-hoc. Need to digitise marketing AND digitise operations. Need a balance between innovation (exploratory) AND optimisation (exploit).
- Voice of the customer is critical. Find ways to capture the voice of your customers. Meet your customers in person and build empathy for them and their needs – not just once, but on an ongoing basis. Quality customer insights drive innovation. Create trust, and they’ll tell you everything.
- Data underpins everything you do. Develop a deep understanding of your customer’s journeys.
- Culture drives transformation. Create a culture of belief. All things are possible. Find the biggest rock you can find and overturn it. Collaboration brings innovation.
- Organisations must find ways to engage with their customers on their terms and for ‘real causes’.
Here are a couple of clips that speak to this change in ‘content’ and ‘customer value’ from brands e.g. Rip Curl SearchGPS
e.g. Always ‘Like a girl’
As is always the question following events such as these… “Now that you have been inspired, what will you change?”
