Mr Nyasha Mutsekwa, a Senior Human Capital Management Pre-sales Consultant with Oracle Kenya. PHOTO | COURTESY
What you need to know:
leaders cannot look at their competitors and automatically take the same approach as they are taking.
Any strategy will focus on changing how your company works and how consumers relates to it via technology.
I recently sat with one of our customers in the Financial Services industry and the CEO asked me: “Is the way we have been doing business dead?”
The correct answer, looking at the nature of change in the financial industry, could be a resounding “Yes.”
Indeed, this answer may not be unique to the financial industry. Digital is changing how we conduct business across all industries. It is here to stay, it’s not a trend but a reality that business leaders in East Africa will need to embrace.
The real question is how do leaders of some of the top companies in East Africa embrace digital, and what does that mean for their organisation? Beyond just acronyms and buzzwords like BYOD; SaaS; PaaS and Social, leaders need to understand how these and other new technologies can serve them strategically in their business.
This is not a conversation about return on investment from your IT spend, but rather what goals have been set by the company and how technology underpins those goals.
Going digital is not a one-size-fits-all conversation: leaders cannot look at their competitors and automatically take the same approach as they are taking.
Any strategy will focus on two journey maps: one, changing how the organisation works and two, focusing on how the consumer relates to your company via technology.
An important part of the journey map is talking to both employees and customers about the digital devices and platforms they use in their daily lives. The old way of deploying IT was to impose the technology because it would improve on the manual system.
Today, technology IS the new system and, therefore, companies need to imprint their processes onto the technology that is already in use among their customers and employees.
It’s an important element of the digital mix and how the third platform differs so dramatically from its predecessors. (Creating an employee journey map will move us away from the belief that email use is technology enabling the business!)
Leaders look at how their core business processes are being enabled by technology and how their employees become more effective through these technologies. It is critical to note that the ultimate goal is to understand how changes to employees’ use of technology can lead to greater efficiency, productivity and even profitability.
The second map that should be created is the customer journey map. This looks at your service processes to understand the technology in use both internally and customer-facing.
Consumers today are looking for sincerity in their interactions with their service providers. Companies need to walk the digital talk. Personnel need to be as digitally enabled to do their job as customers are enabled to conduct business with an organization.
Thus, the two journey maps need to be aligned. Having a Twitter handle when no one in the organization has a company-sponsored device to tweet or Key Performance Indicators to measure effectiveness, is counterproductive.
Therefore digital is not just a marketing strategy, but rather something that needs to be adopted in the operations of an organization. From talent management through to the customers’ experience, defined and aligned journey maps will ensure that the rapid dash to digital can be profitable for the organization.
The writer is a Senior Human Capital Management Pre-sales Consultant with Oracle Kenya.
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