Discerning Digital MD Richard Lucas wraps up 2014 in our regular column for Manchester Digital, by taking a look at the year's most interesting examples of digital transformation.
"It’s difficult to condense the year’s developments in digital transformation, owing to its rapidly evolving nature. That said, there have been a number of interesting examples of how, or indeed how not to do digital transformation this year that I’d like to share with you.
Argos
"The most recent example comes in the form of Argos’s £10million marketing campaign relaunching itself as a digital retail leader. The investment stems from the company’s announcement back in 2012 that it was to embark a five-year digital transformation plan.
"The campaign marks what I think is an intelligent response to the increasing pressure of digital on a traditional retail business. Aside from the obvious benefits of the rebrand, the decision to introduce ‘digital concept’ stores, where orders are available for collection within 60 seconds and can be made in-store on tablets, is sound. It’s a great example of a business understanding and keeping its core offering but delivering and executing it in a way its customers now expect.
The New York Times
"For an example of a business struggling to do this we go back in May, when a leaked report from The New York Times gave us an insight into the challenges faced by traditional large media businesses to adapt to an increasingly-digitised industry.
"The 96 page document detailed how the prestigious publisher was struggling to embrace and harness publishing in the digital age, with key flashpoints including data, social media, executive buy-in and attracting and keeping digital talent - any of these sound familiar?
"It’s somewhat reassuring to know that big businesses with the budgets to match face the same challenges with digital as smaller businesses - in fact, they’re more likely to. Large companies have more work to do to embed digital and everything to lose if it doesn’t work out.
BBC: DMI Initiative
"For a lesson in the potential pitfalls, we look to the beginning of the year and the BBC’s now-shelved Digital Media Initiative (DMI). Costing over £94m, the DMI was an attempt by the BBC to improve digital production efficiency which suffered from a number of setbacks that ultimately saw the project abandoned.
"A number of contributing factors were highlighted, including inadequate reporting, weak project management and a lack of focus on business change. A valuable learning experience for anyone investing in digital transformation - accountability, transparency and clear communication should be at the heart of your investment.
"The above exemplify all that is impressive, urgent and potentially problematic about digital transformation for me and there are takeaways from each one.
"If you could take only three things away from the year in digital transformation, I’d advise you that it’s never been more important to deliver your offering the way your customers now want it, to be acutely aware of how digital is disrupting your industry and to build robust and accountable processes around any digital transformation investment".
(This article appeared originally on Manchester Digital).
