Key Things About Digital Strategy Your Employees Must Know

“There’s never been a worse time to be a worker with only ‘ordinary’ skills and abilities to offer, because computers, robots, and other digital technologies are acquiring these skills and abilities at an extraordinary rate.” Erik Brynjolfsson and Andrew McAfee, The Second Machine Age1

In the new digital world, the interpretation of success is no longer linked primarily to efficiency, but to business agility. Enterprises need to seize the available digital opportunities in a rapidly changing business environment while acknowledging the needs of your technology-powered customers and acting quickly to successfully implement the digital strategy. At present, very few organizations are still operating through the hierarchical models, in which decisions are taken in a traditional top-down manner. Instead, organizations operating in the digital business orb have chosen loose hierarchies in which responsibility sits closer to the point of impact where each decision is felt. Also, enterprises are shifting the focus toward outcomes and away from the processes performed to achieve those outcomes.

Industry Trends

In order to succeed in this world of digital transformation, it is imperative that organizations must design a digitally connected and collaborative work atmosphere – or endure the risk of being left behind. Therefore, for the new digital workplace to thrive, it needs the employees to be equally aware. Employees have to start thinking on a new level in the non-physical world and see the enterprise as it should and could be, not only what it is currently. They should be cognizant of what has worked and has not worked in the digital world. Digital leaders also play a critical role in this as they need to be able to bestow confidence, build an environment of inclusiveness so that enterprises don’t fear to embark on new projects.

Accountability Is Key

While you are on your marks and ready to create your strategy, it is necessary that you clearly define the roles of everyone who are set to be a part of the project. Leadership and management roles are particularly significant to discuss. In order to be successful, the aim is to keep every employee on the same page when it comes to strategic decision making. This will help to check the project from stalling in case of organizational or leadership changes. By precisely defining roles and responsibilities, a detailed digital strategy will reduce the impact of these changes in the days to come. By making sure that everyone is on the same page and placing strong support for the cause, this can prove to be priceless and ensures that an approved strategy moves forward without any further delay.

Set Appropriate Calls to Action & Measure Your KPI’s

As always, original content plays a big role in any well-thought-out digital strategy. But great content will never be enough on its own. It is important that you always remember the actual reason for building your site – and it isn’t to just fill it with a copy. You must decide what the purpose of your site is and what the content you’re creating is meant to do. Where are you trying to drive your visitors? What do you want them to do? You should be able to answer these questions and then create effective calls-to-action (CTAs) to drive them home. You need to put them in a position where they can easily make a purchase, register or call once they visit your website.

Along with generating powerful CTAs, it is critical that you are prepared to consider which key performance indicators (KPIs) you wish to measure moving forward. Choosing these carefully will allow you to effectively demonstrate the value that your digital strategy is providing to your organization. Both time and energy should be committed to this step. Failure to do so will make attributing successes of future projects much harder than they need to be. The strategy developed, will need to be tailored to the goals of your business and these components should be considered while planning. By including them into your game plan, your digital strategy will be up and running in no time.

New Organization Goals in the Context of Digital / Long Term Vision

New organizational/enterprise models also need a new attitude toward leadership. Leaders of connected teams in agile organizations require skills such as negotiation, resilience, and systems thinking. At times, the most seasoned leaders and business unit heads may not be the best fits to take charge of digital, agile, connected teams. Effective leaders in a connected environment must have a high degree of network intelligence to catch the drift of their enterprise, the industry and throughout the customer marketplace.

As connected enterprises continue to emerge, new tools are starting to make collaboration simpler.  Google Team Drives, Atlassian Confluence, Facebook’s Workplace, Slack, Microsoft Skype, and hundreds of others are helping to expedite the transition to networks of teams. Nearly 75% of enterprises are now experimenting with these tools—and benefiting in novel ways. For example, the Museum of Applied Arts and Sciences (MAAS) in Sydney runs three venues: Sydney Observatory, the Powerhouse Museum, and the Museum’s Discovery Centre in Castle Hill. Jira, an agile management tool,  is used for all aspects of the project (MAAS) — facilities, staffing, security, PR, and marketing, as well as digital education. By using HipChat, an auto distributor in Maine monitors tire pressures and repair items in its warehouses.

Short Term or Immediate Execution Plan

Take a moment to consider your target market. Odds are you are trying to reach a variety of consumers with diverse backgrounds, traits, and habits. Because of this, a one-size-fits-all strategic approach will do little to address the motivations driving each unique personality type.

Creating individual personas that describe your audience can help you make important decisions while building your strategy. Personas are an excellent way to identify the key target audiences you wish to attract while revealing specific goals for each one. The more research and effort you invest in defining your audiences, the more refined and effective your strategy will end up being. You should also consider performing a SWOT (strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, threats) analysis during this step.

How Digital Strategy Changes Internal Processes, Goals, and Priorities

To build the enterprise of the future, digital employees need “the capacity to find and delegate information to the right people without risking security. Unassuming communication with intelligent tools to support work processes will help to form teams quickly and work with networks outside their enterprise. A comprehensive, personalized and context-sensitive learning environment will build a fully functioning digital workplace and encourage employee engagement.  This is especially true if workers can access the digital workplace from different devices, which helps people work more efficiently on their own time. While the dimensions of space, capability, and intelligence are immersive and pervasive, this dimension helps to realize that the digital enterprise will embody more and more of what we need to do each day.

What Employees Can Do in Their Individual Capacity to Help in This Journey

The proliferation of information technology is revolutionizing the ways in which employees connect, communicate and collaborate.

This change accelerated over the last couple of years due to the development of three major trends:

• Evolving workforce: With the baby boomers about to retire, experience is leaving the company, reinforcing the need to capture it. On the other hand, the new generation of workers are very IT savvy and expect to have pliant, easy to use tools just as they have in their individual lives
• Data overload: while data is available and ever- growing at exponential rates, still  employees can’t find what they need, even with technological advancement
• Need for speed: With the lively pace of today’s work environment, employees need to work faster and collaborate more productively to get their jobs done

Due to rapid workplace demographic changes, employers strive to meet the changing needs of a multi-generational workforce.  As the availability and use of the Internet and mobile devices grows, the pace of change continues to accelerate. These changes are further intensified by open-ended demands to increase productivity and cut costs, making it tougher for employees to meet market expectations. Together, these bearings are reshaping the work environment.

The goal of digital strategy is to create relevant foundations for digital business. This means creating an enterprise that can pursue to reinvent itself as necessary to keep up with changes in technology and customer expectations. Digital strategy should be visionary enough to carry enterprises through shifts in the digital economy, in a way that continues to bring a digital edge to the business.