Resetting Your Digital Strategy
COVID-19 has caused disruption for all businesses across Australia, whether it be positive or negative. One of the impacts that has been positive is that it has sparked digital acceleration for many companies and industries.
Companies have been forced to scramble, improvise, and embrace new ways of operating within weeks instead of what would normally take years. It is now clearer than ever that our future is digital. The key enabler for this acceleration in digital adoption is the increased connection to technology for businesses and consumers.
It is now time to reset your digital strategy for post COVID and explore new opportunities that a time of immense change inevitably elicits. You should review things that have worked well for you during the pandemic and avoid regressing to former ways of operating.
Below are 5 areas you should focus on when revisiting your digital strategy:
Priorities
Customer
Innovative Ideas
Digital Roadmap
Increasing Focus and Agility
Priorities
Have you begun to pivot your priorities to meet the demands of this digital world? Are the core objectives and assumptions that informed your strategy still relevant? Consumers have changed their media habits and purchasing behaviours with an increase in mobile usage, a surge in the percentage of consumers shopping online for groceries, and the amount of consumers now tackling home improvement projects. You need to explore the market opportunity as there are high chances there will be new markets to enter and new customers to engage; or possibly what used to be a small component of your business pre-covid, is now one of the biggest contributors. It is time to pivot and reset your goals and priorities in a way that responds to the new reality with digital channels at the core.
Customers
Your customer journeys that were relevant pre-covid are now most likely incorrect or redundant so you need to explore what matters to your customer in this new reality. You need to revisit your customers’ attitudes, needs, motivations and behaviour as it relates to your business. The more you understand your customer the better you will able to market to them, create products and services that meet their needs, gain a competitive advantage, proactively identify shifts in purchasing intent and behaviour, and increase your chances for success. Ultimately you will be more equipped to identify, understand, analyse and retain your customers as you focus on enhancing your customer experience. Companies that develop a comprehensive voice of customer research and strategy have seen significant reductions in customer service costs and have had much higher customer retention rates. Despite the financial downturn, now is the time to boost your digital customer experience since digital is now the primary channel for many.
Innovative Ideas
Mass digitisation and disruption has meant consumers and businesses are more open and willing to adopt new approaches to doing things. This is the time for businesses to pilot innovative ideas and delivery models. At a time when traditional strategies have been upended, COVID has encouraged leaders and businesses to pivot quickly and explore new things and assess new approaches, value streams and delivery models.
Digital Roadmap
When resetting your digital strategy, you need to ask yourself the question, is my digital roadmap solving the right challenges? You need to review digitisation across your entire organisation – How are you interacting with your customers? How are different departments doing their jobs now? How are you launching new products? Nurturing relationships with prospects? It is time to evaluate the approaches that are working, those that can/need to be scaled, where optimisation is required, and what requires a complete overhaul. Re-prioritise your technology investments or develop a newly inspired digital roadmap with clear priorities and fresh insights. As part of your review audit and rate your digital capabilities, infrastructure, and experience to measure how you stack up against your competitors and where urgency is greatest.
Increasing Focus and Agility
COVID has been a catalyst for change and we have seen how quickly companies can pivot during these unprecedent times. Are you able to lift your focus and agility? Your organisation could benefit from having greater clarity of focus and alignment of strategic objectives to reduce silos, empower collaboration and agility, and inspire your top talent.
As you begin to reset your digital strategy, make sure you revisit your priorities, customer journey and experience, innovative ideas, digital roadmap and increasing focus and agility.
Looking to reset your own digital strategy?
Let us help. To learn more about how to reset your digital strategy contact us on whiteark@whiteark.com.au
