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We chatted with our Principal Consultant, Andrew Johnson, to discuss how to digitally transform operating models. Besides being enjoyable, it was a conversation full of insight. We discussed how organisations can build digital-ready operating models and the key shifts leaders need to make to reach the operating model of the future.

How can organisations build a digital-ready operating model?

Historically, operating model design is just about how you organise yourself and what processes, governance and capabilities you need to deliver on your strategy. In the digital context, I think people mistakenly think that it's just about technology. It’s also about how you harvest, manipulate and use data in the best way you can. So, in the digital context, it's about understanding how you're going to receive, manage, and organise data, how through your processes you’re going to make the best use of it, and how you're going to use the governance and the decision making to make the best use of it, and then essentially make sure that you manage your data sets well. So I think it's a different context. In the old school, before we became digitally aware, you would just look at your processes, people and technology. Now it's much more about how you harness and exploit data to make better decisions and deliver the best value you can.

OK, so should we rephrase our question to ask how to build a data-driven operating model?

I would. Humans typically don't make very good decisions. Historically, we know that, because plenty of analysis has been done on the subject in the past. So the more you can move to using the data to drive your thinking or drive your decision making, the more likely it is you're going to make a better decision.

In terms of the Operating Model Design process, what have you found to be different with recent engagements where the focus has been on creating a data-driven business?

I think it is an increased focus on culture. There's a lot of behavioural change that needs to happen. So, for an executive perspective, the paradox for me is that we are brought in to help them deliver a data-driven operating model, but leaders need to be careful what they wish for. Because what you're effectively doing is moving the decision making down the tree, away from the executive team and more into operations.

From a behavioural perspective, people need to get used to the idea that leaders are no longer prime decision makers. They are coaches and enablers. They're the people who will be facilitating their teams to do the right thing. So it's as much about teaching people that this change in the way that you work isn't just a technical change, it's also a change in the culture.

You need to be brave as a leader. You need to be brave because half of what you're doing is actually recognising that you're fallible. So leaders are fallible, and they're equipping their teams to be better at doing what they're historically not very good at.

What type of personal shift do you think leaders need to make to operate in this future state?

They need bravery. They need to recognise that the role of a leader is changing in a good way. They need bravery to be able to say that some of the things that were successful in the past may not work in the future. For example, the ability to see things at an enterprise level and make cogent decisions. That's changed because your role now is to enable your teams to understand what it is they're facing and allow them that freedom.

The biggest problem I see in all operating models is about trust. There is a huge problem because the team isn't being allowed or given the freedom to do what they need to do to enable agility. The leadership team aren't prepared to give away those levers. So part of the change they need to do is to appreciate that their role has changed from directive leadership to leadership through coaching and support. It's a real mindset shift.

The paradox is in organisations who put people through a big hiring process. They employ people because they're competent, because they're great. But then they don't allow them to actually spread their wings and make decisions based on the data, So it's about being brave enough to not constrain people.

There is an ongoing debate, and an important one, over the necessity of standardising business processes before automating them with technologies like RPA and Intelligent Automation. Logically, it makes sense that you would. Why automate an inconsistent process? Yet, of course, nothing is ever that simple, and we need to consider the bigger picture.

Firstly, are standardisation and automation mutually exclusive?

Secondly, in some organisations, by the time you’ve mapped and standardised everything, years have passed, and your competitors have automated already and are operating at a fraction of the cost that you are.

A better approach

A different way of thinking about this:

Take a holistic approach to service and process design that combines standardisation, simplification, intelligent automation and technology enhancements to reimagine your services and processes.

Bring together a cross-disciplined team for the design activity. Mobilise a team that brings operational excellence, customer experience, intelligent automation and a technology perspective. Practice the art of the possible together in designing your future state.

Build a transformation plan that unlocks value early and often by sequencing improvements in the correct order. You may, for example, need to implement a workflow orchestration layer to enable a consistent process and data capture before you truly unlock the power of RPA and complementary Intelligent Automation capabilities.

Getting the basics right and considering your current level of maturity is important. However, it should not stop you from designing a future state that combines simple process optimisation with the technology and automation capabilities available to you today. Aside from the value you unlock, it will be hugely motivational for your people to visualise a transformational future state and a logical route to it.

Thinking outside in: Developing compelling customer journeys

Customer journeys, which frame customer experiences and touchpoints, aim to ensure that customers will be happy with the interaction when they connect with a product or service. Often, the risk is a siloed focus on individual touchpoints, missing the bigger, and more important, picture: the customer’s end-to-end experience through their own eyes. Only by looking at the entire journey a customer takes, can you really begin to understand how to meaningfully improve it.

This blog considers the tools and methods to creating a compelling customer journey - with lessons learned from the use of other process improvement toolsets like Process Maps, Organisational Diagrams, Operating Models, Roadmaps, Value Chains. These are all visual tools that can take a lot of creativity, skill and insight to create, and should draw the reader in and engage them with the subject. However, done wrong and they can be one dimensional, difficult to read and even worse - inaccurate.

The trick is not only to use the tool to make a compelling artefact, but also to drive towards a compelling outcome, in this case building a compelling customer journey.

Where is this blog coming from?

Last week, I chaperoned my daughter to Brighton for her to undertake some A-Level Geography field work, (she was polling random strangers and I thought she might need some back-up!) I soon realised that what she was doing was effectively researching the customer journey for a particular street in Brighton, but what she was struggling with was actually engaging with those very customers. They just really did not want to stop and answer her questions, and when she entered into some of the shops to observe the products on offer, the mix of clientele and the length of the interactions, she mainly got challenged and shooed away. Her answer was to fill in the gaps, cut out some of the locations under review and make up the answers on the questionnaires!

This got me thinking about how you can really get the customer journey mapped accurately, from end to end from the customer's true viewpoint, and, more crucially, what you do with it once you have it?

The difficulty with defining touchpoints

How do you put outside observations into perspective and how do you know you can trust it? No one likes feedback and not everyone really tells it like it is. Breaking down the customer interactions into individual touchpoints is a useful way for gathering Net Promoter Scores (NPS), particularly when you have a standard process which can be followed in a consistent manner, again thanks to the process maps.

However, the difficulty is understanding the holistic view. For example, the feedback from a customer focus group, may be totally divorced from the sum of the individual NPS’ received at each touchpoint in the process. The cumulative experience over time, across multiple channels can be totally different from the sum of the touchpoints.

Multi touchpoints, multi channel complexity

How do you ensure you have all dimensions covered? Customer journeys are affected by experiences before, during and after the defined touchpoints for a product or service. Complexity is a difficult subject. Creating distinct customer, or buyer, personas will help to define who your customers are, their goals, pain points, and buying patterns, but there are various contexts in which these personas can cut across the different functions on their end to end journeys.

So how do you manage all this messy stuff in a way that creates a clear narrative from which you can define the touchpoints and key hooks into winning that compelling customer experience?

The outside in approach

This is where the ‘outside in’ approach can help. At the core of every organisation is the siloed nature of service delivery and the different cultures, processes, and systems that evolve inside companies to design and deliver those services. It is these groups that define and own the touchpoints that determine how the company’s activities serve the customer. The functional groups that manage these touchpoints are constantly at risk, despite optimising their own contributions to the customer experience, of losing sight of what the customer actually experiences (or expects).

The challenge is to expand on the discreet touchpoints into the broader end to end external view in order to determine the cumulative effect. Much like a Value Chain is greater than the sum of the underlying process maps, this requires the use of a 3rd party, functional agnostic, perspective to complement the insights gained from individual touchpoint controls. After all, internal functions are incentivised for efficiencies, and managed for internal scale and productivity in order to deliver transactions, not to craft compelling customer journeys.

So how do you craft the customer journey?

Firstly, you have to step outside the organisational hierarchy and think from the customer’s point of view. Walk through each of the customer’s touchpoints with your product or service, mapping their needs and expectations during each part of the journey. This will help you understand what can improve the customer experience and in which priority does the customer view the gaps, and therefore offering you opportunities to improve the journey.

Getting the above points presented in an artefact (for tools to create these take a look at Mural, MIRO or Lucidchart) which is both relevant and realistic, and which presents actionable deliverables that will actually improve the end users experience, is imperative. It needs to be an ongoing endeavour, as the journey is improved and expanded. Things to watch out for in your high level customer journey map, which should define all the touchpoints between the customer and the company, are likely “pain points” in the journey and key “moments of truth”.

Then there should be a second layer of detail defining the functions and teams responsible for delivering each touchpoint, how these are linked (maybe multiple routes). You also need to identify the intended outcomes for the customer at each point, and their relative priority, both as viewed internally or by the customer. The relevant measures and levers that track and affect performance should also then be defined.

Take caution however, these impressive artefacts can be very effective in the moment, but, like process maps, can quickly become an historical record or, worse, an inaccurate view that hides the evolving reality. They must be reviewed and renewed on an almost constant basis to maximise the performance enhancements they provide.

In summary

To develop a compelling customer journey takes a lot of insight, research and design up front, but also requires perseverance and agility to implement changes in time to capture the customers as you have defined them. Personas, like the weather, will change with the season, and the pandemic has taught us all that current assumptions can be turned upside down in a very short period of time.

So a compelling journey for your customer starts with an active and persistent review of your market, environment and your product (existing and prototype MVP). It also depends on how you deploy these insights to your organisation, delivery teams, product design and operations. And, of course, there is no end… constant change requires you to keep a constant watch on your customers, and their journeys through your product/experience, both yesterday, today and tomorrow.

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