JAY RAMSANJHAL | CHAIRMAN DYNAMICSHUB | 09.11.2016 | BUSSUM | NETHERLANDS

Welcome to the Digital Engagement Journey. Today I am going to talk

about the way that aligning business and technology can help in creating

better customer experiences.

All the new technological and business developments are sometimes hard to

grasp. We can’t even control or master the one thing, or the other(s) are

already knocking on the door. Not always easy to admit that it’s difficult to

really be in the driver’s seat coping with all the challenges on our path.

Sometimes it feels like living in the age of confusion, but some have shed

light on the shades of fuzziness…

In whatever age we ought to live in, this cacophony of words, made me

wonder more… In which it brought me back to remembering the words of

one of the most illustrious management thinkers of our time. His views are

crystal clear.

We are living in an age where technology is an important driver. Whether it

is the Microsoft Hololens, the upswing of Internet of Things, Machine

learning, 3D printing (predictive) analytics or simply creating incredible

machines… We are living in exciting times where there is a profound impact

on the way we live, work and learn.

We should most definitely embrace technology in creating better

experiences, a higher quality of live and building a sustainable digital

economy. Yet, where do we start? Which way should we take?

Having these questions on my mind for a long time now, I decided to

consult my BFF; Google. In the next slide we will find what’s on our business

mind most of the time.

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Disruption and Customer Engagement are hot! It’s all for that single

purpose, although some of us might deny it…

Like every love story there is some drama to it, actually a whole lot. The

journey is…

Change is the only constant and sometimes its adventurous nature brings

us new experiences, but also challenges. It demands us to leave old habits

and adapt. However, sometimes it feels like an insurmountable gap to

bridge. Aligning old school mindsets and adopting new technology…

To bridge this gap it requires a new mindset to synergize (i.e. two heads are

better than one) old and new, vision and leadership, business and

technology, people and culture. Let me show you the new school approach…

The new route is… Digital Engagement, creating a seamless bond between

Digital Transformation and Customer Engagement in order to create

amazing customer experiences by effectively utilizing technology and make

your customers fall and stay in love with your brand. If Digital Engagement

were human it would consist of…

While this may sound great and all, but we still have to overcome challenges

of today and our reality looks very different from our ambitions.

It all starts with a compelling dream. A dream that defines our reason for being and existence. It is our North star.

Organizations that are not successful in aligning business and technology or not being successful at their transformations, have their transformational

compass disaligned. This means that without moving towards the right direction, progress will slow down.

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Digital Engagement helps organizations to align their transformational

compass towards true North. It also helps creating a universal shared

purpose for everyone in the organization.

STARTS ATTRUE

TRANSFORMATION

The reality is that most transformation projects are prone to failure because there is a disalignment between business and IT, vision and leadership, people and culture, and most

important of all, a lack of shared purpose and knowing why we do what we do. The organizational transformation compass is not set out to true North, resulting in projects that

never reach the goal that intrinsically needed to be realized.

This dream or vision, is our beacon, our lighthouse, that reminds us why we do what we do, even as we may astray on our destined path or journey.

Setting out a compelling dream and vision doesn’t however mean to recklessly tell fairytales and stories to the outer world and your customers,

and most important of all, stop believing your own tales.

Your organization should define the core driver that separates you from the rest. This is the ultimate truth that your reason of existence is based on.

Ask yourself: How many people on your IT-projects really know what the ultimate purpose for this project is?

Your dream is enforced by a B.H.A.G. (Big Hairy Audacious Goal). A B.H.A.G. is a long-term goal that changes the very nature of a business' existence

(Collins and Porras 2009)

Creating a B.H.A.G. helps in setting out the main message, the reason that people get out of bed and go to the office. This is the ultimate truth.

Everything that comes next is a derivative of the B.H.A.G.

Creating, driving and sustaining your B.H.A.G however requires…

When you have defined your ultimate truth, that single characteristic that differentiates your organization from the rest, it should be so compelling that it makes you go to the roof, get in your underwear and yell it out loud for everyone to hear. You should be proud of it, no excuses, no shame. This

is the ultimate truth.

NOTE: the gentleman in the picture is real. Erwin and his team have helped dozens of organizations to create and envision their ultimate truth.

Unless you are a Porsche automobile…

Your dream, ultimate truth and vision should fully resonate with your soul.

With the people in your organization and the culture that is set out to

empower employees, in order for customers to fall in love with your

organization, your employees should fall in love first.

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An example of an organization that understands the profound impact of

people and culture is HubSpot. They see their manifest (The HubSpot

Culture Code) as the operating system for their organization.

Transformation or setting out a new culture requires change. One of the

major challenges is getting people out of their comfort zone and aligning

them with the shared purpose and vision of the company, the ultimate truth

and reason of existence.

People like change, but they don’t like to be changed.

Adapt to communicate in the right way with people that resonates with their

primary communication preference of choice. The goal here is establishing a

deep connecting and aligning with people that comply with the

organization’s vision.

However some people will resist change, no matter what you do.

Ask yourself: how will this person help realize our vision and ultimately help

our customer fall in love with our organization?

Lack of user adoption is one of the compelling reasons why IT-projects fail.

Empower people by utilizing not only traditional change methods, but also

gamification as a key driver for empowering users.

Marriot sets out an example to empower employees to truly experience

what the customer is experiencing by creating customer experience labs.

They have created the right culture to let customers fall in love with their

organization and brand, 55 million customers are in love with Marriot and

participate in their customer loyality program.

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Innovation is a key driver to empower both employees and create a culture

to embrace change. Also creating an environment where making mistakes is

allowed (provided that with people who embrace the shared vision). Don’t

innovate everywhere, only where you truly differentiate. Focus your energy

where there is the greatest potential impact for creating a better customer

experience.

Be aware of choosing your employees and team members carefully. They

should have the right competences for the right job. Duning-Krieger effect

states that the more likely someone is lacking certain competences, the

more confident they are about that particular competence. The opposite is

also true, the more competent someone is, the more likely that person is

insecure about that competence.

Culture paves the way to ensure (digital) transformation success. Building or

changing a culture takes time and needs to happen in the early stages of

change.

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By embracing innovation as a key driver and utilizing strategic instruments

like the Business Model Canvas can help in creating new (disruptive)

business models that help realize the core vision.

If you do what you did, you get what you got. Push your organization to

find and learn about new ways of establishing new business models.

Establishing new business models and aligning business processes with the

organization’s vision, also sets out new ways and possibilities to create

amazing customer experiences.

Within the Digital Engagement framework, muscles refer to ICT-maturity.

Digital technology helps in pushing the envelope. A dream, with a soul and

heart, but without muscle is merely a vivid painting. We need muscles to

create momentum and set things into the right action.

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Having ICT-maturity and digital capabilities alone is not a recipe for undisputed success. Having a closer look at the Kodak case we learn that they had amazing technological

insights and capabilities, such as developing the first digital camera in 1975 or getting early into the game of social photo sharing by purchasing Ofoto in 2001.

In the end Kodak could not let go of their heritage in the film and printing industry and as it turned out they had an overall reluctance to embrace innovation and taking risks that

come with it.

Refraining the utilization of technological capabilities to create better customer experiences are not the only reason organizations fail to stay in the game. Another reason is described

as the sunk cost fallacy.

It states that an organization is more likely to continue with a (IT-)project, if they have invested a lot of time, effort and money in it, even when discontinuing is the best thing to

do. This is mostly based on irrational decision making.

Becoming truly digital engaged also means of letting go where it ultimately matters most.

By letting go, organizations also should create a culture that invokes ownership, control, leadership and getting back in the driver’s seat. Choose wisely between

make and buy decisions and always qualify that suppliers are aligned with the organization’s vision and understand your industry and what needs to be done in

order to improve customer experiences.

Digital Engagement helps in creating a universal language for both your organization as well as partners and suppliers.

Doing the right things right, with the right people, for the right

customer, in the right context at the right time and place is what matters

when you are digital engaged. Systems of insight are at the heart of creating

lasting customer experiences. With the right people, culture, business

process and digital capabilities, insights should enable meaningful

interactions with people.

Insights are only useful if placed into the right context. That is why business

and IT need to be aligned. At the heart of combining Digital Transformation

and Customer Engagement is where Digital Engagement exists.

Becoming digital engaged requires a transformation at the core (levels) of

an organization.

In order to solve the age-old problem where the left brain differentiates

itself from the right brain based on different rationales and interface is

required. Business does not understand IT and vice versa.

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We should embrace the differences and develop a synergetic way to work

both collaboratively and simultaneously. Furthermore we should create an

understanding that the ultimate goal is creating compelling experiences

for our customers.

There is no such thing as an IT project, every project is ultimately serving the

customer.

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Inspired by the whole brain thinking model of Ned Hermann, the domain

of Digital Transformation is positioned on the left brain side and Customer

Engagement is positioned on the right brain side.

With Digital Engagement organizations are aligned holistically and operating

on full brain power with whole brain thinking.

User Adoption

Social Selling

CRM

Engagement Marketing

Business Transformation

Customer Vision Statement

Digital Roadmap

Analytics

Cloud First

ICT-Governance

Common Data Model

ICT-security

WHOLE BRAIN THINKING

Customer Communities

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Process Automation Customer Success Strategy

Internet of Things

DevOps

Machine Learning

Service Architecture

Omnichannel

Social Engagement

Digital Engagement is the sum of Digital Transformation and Customer

Engagement.

The Digital Engagement Quadrant combines left and right brain thinking and creates a holistic view of the key elements in bridging the gap between Digital Transformation and Customer

Engagement. It helps with creating a solid foundation based on vision & leadership, it is where the dream of the organization is created. The second segment is where people meet culture and

where the soul of the organization is secured.

The heart of the organization lies in the third segment where business processes and models determine how the dream is going to be realized. Finally in the fourth segment it is about the muscles, the ICT-maturity of an organization which determines what is required in terms of

digital technology in order to set out the path how this is going to be implemented in order to realize the vision and the dream.

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Without vision there is no leadership and without leadership, there is no trust and without trust there is no right culture for change. In other words there is a lack of Digital Engagement at all the levels of the organization.

And opposed to how most organizations operate, this doesn’t start with the implementation of technology. It starts with the right insights to improve

interactions with people, to engage employees with technology and ultimately creating better customer experiences.

Based on 168 metrics in total of all segments of the quadrant, which can be

applied to every company in any industry, organizations are able to create a

future state and a current state based on their ultimate dream and vision.

The model helps in getting a universal overview of the gaps between the

future and current state and facilitates in getting clear insights on required

capabilities.

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Digital Engagement also facilitates in creating a roadmap for the future

based on both business and IT requirements in order to realize the

organization’s dream and create better customer experiences.

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ES VISION & LEADERSHIP

Transformation strategies

Business case behind the cloud

Impact of different sourcing

strategies

Innovation

Business intelligence & predictive

analytics

Customer maturity model for Big

Data

PEOPLE & CULTURE

HR & finance

User adoption

Implementing service organisations

Employee journey

Digital customer journey

Social selling & lead nurturing

BUSINESS PROCESSES

Project management methods

Migration & upgrades

Proces automation and tools

Support organisation

Marketing automation

Intelligent dashboards

ICT MATURITY

Cloud, mobile & IoT

Dynamics ERP & CRM

Systems of Insight

Data Security & privacy

Governance & compliancy

Integration & API’s

Digital Engagement is an continuous improvement cycle and an iterative

process in the end.

Digital Engagement helps in getting a clear focal point and start from the

right angle and direction. Digital technology is means to realize business

objectives and not the other way around.

Ask yourself: how is this going to help realize our organization’s vision and

create better customer experiences?

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