strategy

Just what is a digital operating model?

This was originally published as the lead article in my weekly email newsletter. If you’d like to get more of this sort of thing on a regular basis, sign up!

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I’m sure folk get bored of people like me banging on about digital transformation being more than web forms, or fancy integrations with back office systems. “It’s about fundamentally redesigning your operating mode for the internet age!” I bellow. “What on earth does that actually mean?” thinks everyone to themselves.

Coming up with a digital age operating model for a service means redesigning it in the knowledge that the majority of your service users, and colleagues that deliver the service, have access to internet enabled devices. It means mapping your value chain, identifying all the components that make up a service, and removing any elements that could feasibly be replaced by networked computing capabilities.

That probably makes no sense. Think of it this way: a lot of the value add for services as they are currently delivered involves some kind of intermediary performing a role – linking people up, checking things, making decisions about things. In many (not all, of course!) cases, these days activities such as these can be done by software, connected to the internet, that users and service providers can both access, whether through the phone in their pocket or the corporate laptop on their desk (or lap).

Here’s an example. It’s a somewhat trite one, and over simplified, but has the benefit of being comprehensible. To book a cab, traditionally, one phoned the cab company (where you got the number from is another story, but not an irrelevant one), where someone took details of you and your journey, and they then got in touch with the cab drivers to find who was free and nearby, and then they made their way towards you while you hang around waiting, and hoping. Oh, and you needed to go to the cashpoint so you could pay – and might not know how much til you reach your destination.

Now, in recent times, cab companies have done stuff to reduce some of the friction in this process by enabling online bookings, booking via an app, SMS notifications of likely arrival times, and so on. All these are examples of digital efficiency, not transformation. The service remains essentially the same, and the intermediaries retain their role.

Uber, however, disrupted this by starting from scratch, assuming that everyone (passengers and drivers) have phones with internet connections, apps and GPS. Users can now log the journey they want to make on their phone, and see themselves the drivers available to them, and choose the one they want based on a number of criteria (feedback ratings for the driver, the type of car they drive, how nearby they are etc). Users also know the prices, their payments are handled online with no cash changing hands, and they can track their driver’s progress as they make their way to them. Afterwards they can rate their driver and also receive feedback on how they conduct themselves.

In this way, Uber has removed a whole section of the value chain (the cab dispatcher role) in such a way that makes the whole process both more efficient and delivers a far better user experience, because it takes as a core assumption the fact that the internet and smartphones exist.

So to apply this to a public service, first map your value chain. Identify those areas where you are just providing an intermediary role, which could be replaced by an internet enabled service, that adds little value and just slows things down. Design those roles out of the process, then assemble the tech needed to deliver the new services.

Too often transformation processes skip the value chain mapping element. This leads to fundamental misunderstandings about what benefits services actually deliver to users, and thus miss huge opportunities to improve user experiences and reducing the cost of service delivery. As I have said before, there’s no shortcut around truly understanding the service you are meant to be delivering.

Remember – you can get things like this every Monday by email if you sign up to Digital Digest.

Photo by JESHOOTS.COM on Unsplash

LINK: “IT Matters Again: The Enterprise of The Future Present”

But the real answer to the question depends on how IT is defined. If narrow definition is used and IT is taken to mean nothing more than base infrastructure, then Carr’s viewpoint remains correct. If, however, the definition of IT encompasses the entirety of an organization’s technology portfolio and strategy, however, the assertion that IT doesn’t matter could not be less accurate today.

Original: https://redmonk.com/sogrady/2018/06/29/it-matters-again/

LINK: “Bezos: A CEO Who Can Write”

Bezos’ letters make splendid material for a Business School course on Strategy and Communication. A caveat applies, however. Most of the strategies and practices advocated by Amazon’s founder have broad applicability, but a central mystery remains: Bezos himself, his combination of early life experience, intellect, emotional abilities and communication skills. Being Bezos isn’t teachable.

Original: https://mondaynote.com/bezos-a-ceo-who-can-write-2f368ee36599

Six themes for a good local government digital strategy

I recently went through the rather painful process of applying for a senior digital transformation role in local government and not getting it. I might write in more detail at some point about it all, but right now I am far too bitter about the whole experience.

As part of the process I needed to talk about what I think the key themes are for councils when thinking about the impact of digital on what they do and how they do it, and I thought I would share them here – just in case some people find it more interesting than the original intended audience did.

1. Digital service design

Meeting the heightened expectations of residents, communities and businesses means radically rethinking how services are delivered. This requires new approaches to change that meet the specific requirements of each service’s users, and in the long term working to prevent those needs from emerging in the first place.

2. Digital workplace

In order to deliver the change that is needed, people need to have the best tools possible available to them, whether hardware or software. This means looking at the whole suite of technology, from productivity tools to line of business applications and the devices they run on.  People also need to feel confident in using them, along with developing a customer-focused, commercial, flexible culture.

3. Digital inclusion

It’s vital that the services that many people rely on remain accessible to all of them. For some, using the internet will never meet their needs and so other forms of access will be needed. For others, there is much that councils can do to help them get the most from it.

4. Digital intelligence 

Local councils should have the best understanding of the people, communities and businesses in their area. Often, however, this understanding is limited by the inability to make the best use of the data held in siloed systems that do not share information easily or in usable formats. This needs to change, along with keeping up with obligations around data protection and information security.

5. Digital economy

To protect and grow the local economy in the future, councils must do all they can to ensure local businesses can thrive in the digital age, and attract new enterprises to base themselves locally. This means ensuring businesses have access to high speed broadband; the equipment, systems and skills to make use of it; and easy, simple access to the council services they need.

6. Digital civic infrastructure

True digital transformation in local public services involves not just putting existing services online, but radically rewiring the local system to take advantage of shared, common digital components. The Council should take a lead in stewarding this work, collaborating with all organisations that meet local people’s needs, whether central government, the health sector or community and voluntary groups on a digital platform for genuinely joined up service delivery.

Photo by Johannes Plenio on Unsplash

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