Technology shouldn’t be the focus of your digital strategy
Digital is a tool, a means to an end, it is engineering. It isn’t an end in itself. To deliver the greatest value all digital projects need to know what they are for, this is the strategic element, the vision.
This can be surprisingly hard to do, technology is about providing solutions, engineering, tolerances, acceptance criteria. Once projects have started these elements become the priority and quite rapidly come to guide decision making. On the one hand this is essential, time scales, budgets, feasibility and delivery all depend on close attention to the nuts and bolts of what is actually being built. But the flip side is once a project drifts from it’s purpose the value and the likelihood of success diminishes rapidly.
A big part of the problem is that with digital the tendency is to focus on the solution. The pace with which projects move from an identified opportunity ‘improve X to drive growth’ to a solution focus ‘we need Y’ is extraordinary. Comparisons with other companies and their success is done on the basis of the technology they employed, not the need or the environment it was deployed in.
Maybe your organisation is building an intranet solution, the ‘why’ is the essential factor in judging success. Is it to support collaboration? To provide easy access to a large resource library? To provide a broadcast channel for corporate comms? To enable people to do ad hoc project management? Whatever strategic consideration drives the need, the goal isn’t to have an intranet, it’s to make your organisation more effective by supporting and encouraging… something.
Too often the objective and the technology become confused, the technology becomes the objective. The procurement team talk to suppliers of intranet platforms, they look at case studies and they select the best intranet technology based on the list of features, because they are now assessing technologies. They are looking to understand whether the vendor will deliver a great intranet not whether that intranet will deliver what the organisation needs.
In short, digital has a shortcuts problem, technical solutions are identified from existing technologies and then the project becomes about delivering that technical solution. But that solution isn’t why the project was initiated. You can find a project like this in almost any large organisation, you can’t move for them if you’re the government.
Strategy has become a bit of a dirty word, or maybe we’re all just a bit bored of seeing it appended to every document and initiative with a budget bigger than the tea kitty. But strategy is an essential part of getting the most from digital. Because digital projects aren’t really about building something, they are about achieving something.
Your strategic goal should guide decision making the whole way through. If you are going to get something valuable out of a digital project you need to know the ‘why’ and it needs to be kept close to the heart of the project.
The why is what you are aiming for, not the technology that will deliver it.
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Jay is Strategy Director at design agency Make it Clear, we make technology easier to use, engage with and understand. We help organisations improve customer interaction with products and services through clarity in design and communication, delivering better experiences at every touchpoint.
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