What are the most important considerations for organisations that are planning to accelerate?
We are finding that many senior leaders are overwhelmed by demand for digital transformation. The response to the pandemic has shown the business what’s possible, resulting in huge enthusiasm for more. So you have business appetite going through the roof, you’ve got enthusiasm from what has already been achieved and of course, you’ve got an increasingly crowded and noisy marketplace trying to get your attention.
Some of the guidance we’re giving at the moment is to take a step back to apply some of the governance that wasn’t in place during the pandemic. That may seem like you’re going to slow things slightly but to enable better outcomes and capitalise on the momentum to continue acceleration, it’s important to ensure existing and new digital projects are aligned to business drivers and strategy. There are many benefits in doing this including managing the demand through prioritisation: those projects with strong strategic alignment should accelerate, those without should pause.
Another important consideration is to not overlook the value of engaging with trusted partners to explore and refine how good digital outcomes can be achieved at scale and pace. Harness their wisdom, understand and assess capability and alignment of the way they work with your organisation. Work together on ensuring the business opportunity and proposed solution is fully understood, and then having gone through that process you are likely to have good confidence in converting initial dialogue into a commercial engagement, should you want to proceed.
Some of the guidance we’re giving at the moment is to take a step back to apply some of the governance that wasn’t in place during the pandemic.
What would you say are the most effective strategies that you use to help clients enhance customer engagement, generate new revenue, and also better serve their customers?
Those are narrow outcomes and they’ll be achieved in a multitude of ways dependant on the appetite for risk, innovation, the technology portfolio already in situ, the digital maturity & capability of the organisation etc etc. That said, with ambitions such as these its crucial to define the “why” of what is being developed or transformed and the benefit realisation expected.
Once explored and defined, it's then a case of confirming the start position, the intended future state to enable the outcomes, and then address the gap. I’m simplifying massively here of course, but fundamentally that’s a very typical approach used, but the point is the focus on defining the outcome and working back from it. We see many examples of “bottom up” digital service development where the technology is the tail wagging the dog. This can be valuable particularly in short PoC type experimentation, but clearly not appropriate for more formal programmes that require robust alignment to organisational objectives regardless of whether that’s new revenue streams, better service etc.
Once explored and defined, it's then a case of confirming the start position, the intended future state to enable the outcomes, and then address the gap.
How are you helping client organisations become more agile and resilient?
Again this is hugely relevant right now and we are having a lot of conversations with our clients about how to sustain change. After such a high intensity period of quite reactive transformation during the pandemic, organisational tolerance for change is low at a time when an acceleration of change is sought. Unchecked, this will often lead to change fatigue, resistance, and worse case attrition.
Our guidance to improve resilience and maintain pace of change centres around communications and support. Communicating clearly and frequently the “why” of change is very powerful for individuals and teams to understand what they are working towards. Defining how specific project outcomes enable the organisation ambitions and objectives improves line of sight between effort and impact. Related, clearly communicating expectations on individuals and teams to support change ensures there is no ambiguity, and the measures of success are understood and can be strived for. Finally on comms, acknowledging and rewarding change acceptance and acceleration will build momentum for others to follow.
Supporting individuals and teams is equally important. We should expect to enable change with coaching, training, resources and regular Q&A support. We also see a lot of benefit in cycling of resources. Recognising that some project resources are experiencing change fatigue, some of our clients are adopting delivery models whereby they are cycling individuals out of intense programmes and onto less demanding activity, so they can avoid burn out of key individuals. The high intensity programmes can maintain cadence by cycling other people in. This is helping to create stronger organisational resilience.
Our guidance to improve resilience and maintain pace of change centres around communications and support. Communicating clearly and frequently the “why” of change is very powerful for individuals and teams to understand what they are working towards.
What role do you see content playing or is content currently playing in your organisation's outreach activities, and what stories are the most interesting for your buyers?
We put a lot of focus on the narrative of customer stories. We want to be talking to our existing and prospective customers around things like capability, leadership, innovation – with insight and wisdom that will genuinely resonate with them.
Content has to be accessible and pragmatic. It’s great to talk about AI and machine learning but our aim is to bring those to life through real world examples from a hospital trust or a police force that has demonstrably benefited in a meaningful way.
We also try to make case studies as pithy as possible, with sharp focus on outcomes to drive home the end result. ROI and TCO alongside softer benefit realisation is a balance that seems to resonate well with our audience.
NICK LOBA
Director of Professional Services
UKCloud
UKCloud is a public sector, sovereign cloud provider that delivers cloud consulting and advisory services to the UK public sector, predominantly around digital transformation. The company prides itself on giving clients pragmatic, evidence-based strategy development that brings them clarity and the confidence to proceed at pace.
Its mission is simple. To help public sector organisations deliver more value to the UK taxpayer through safer, cheaper and more flexible IT.