Three stories of digital transformation
There’s no one-size-fits all route to renewal, but here’s some pointers from organizations who have been there.
What does a genre-defining restaurant chain, municipal district, and health insurance provider have in common? All share a story of digital transformation. But each did it their own unique way.
When we talk about digital transformation, the mental picture is usually of a powerful disrupting digital leader on the cutting edge of their industry. Or a shiny new startup designed entirely around optimized digital experiences. The pace of digital change can be breathtaking and the calibre the digital experiences customers expect is improving daily. If your organization feels behind, it can be hard to know where to start.
Perhaps you look nothing like the tech startup down the street. Perhaps your industry is not exactly known for being digitally savvy. That’s ok.
The road to a more robust digital future starts in your questions — the places where your organization is unique, and uniquely challenged. A digital renewal, undertaken with smart questions and an openness to meaningful change, can move you forward into a sustainable future, regardless of your industry or history. Let these organizations’ stories of how they tackled their first steps inspire you to take yours.
Earls: the transformative power of connecting your data
“I think we got complacent,” Earls President Mo Jessa said in an interview with the Georgia Straight. “People knew us as leaders and innovators in casual dining and there got to be a point where we probably started to take it for granted.” An entrepreneurial success story that created the “premium casual” dining category and spawned a plethora of copycats, Earls had gone from being a front-line innovator to existing in a lackluster status quo limbo. They weren’t sure what was possible digitally, but they had something invaluable going for them — a willingness to explore.
We embarked on a discovery phase to get a clear-eyed understanding of what was happening across the company. The digital team toured kitchens, break rooms and lounges in Earls restaurants to understand company culture and day-to-day operations. We conducted interviews, focus groups, guest surveys, prototype workshops, and analyzed their existing technology stack. All that research created a comprehensive overview of how the company was running and what mattered most to the business: food.
If “food” seems an obvious answer for a restaurant chain, it’s a deceptively obvious one. Earls’ most valuable asset was its food data. And what was the company doing with that data? Struggling. With 65 locations — each with dozens of menu items — the data was an ever-changing mess of information. The customer experience was cringe-worthy: the website displayed a generic example menu. The workforce inefficiencies were similarly painful: a full-time staff member spent all their time typing and retyping menu changes.
The company hadn’t caught up to the cloud economy, where content is centralized, linked, and fluid.
Changing the way Earls managed their menu content had far-reaching efficiency implications.
“Where does menu item content go?” asks Tim Booker, lead strategist on the project. “It goes on printed menus in the stores, in the point of sale system, on the website and on the training intranet. And none of that content was stored consistently or connected.”
The team mapped out a new data architecture, and created a central repository for all of Earls’ menu information. An API connected the content in the repository to core operational systems, reliably providing up-to-the-minute food prices, descriptions, names, nutritional information, and photography. A full visual redesign completed the project, bringing accurate menu information to the customer in on-brand, appealing formats.
The end result was a technical feat: a behind-the-scenes data transformation that also revitalized the customer experience. But it started with a very manageable, humble first step: admitting “we’re behind. Let’s take a good look at what’s going on.”
Pacific Blue Cross: Revitalizing the customer experience
Sometimes you see the need for a big shift to a more customer-centric approach, but there are competing business requirements in your way. This was the case with Pacific Blue Cross, a leading health insurance provider.
“It’s a fascinating push-pull relationship to be part of,” says PBC’s Marketing Innovation Manager Aaron Brady. “On one hand, you have this company-wide requirement to play it safe. On the other hand, you have an intense organization-wide desire to truly treat our plan members like people, not policy numbers.”
This is the type of transformation challenge we find energizing. The insurance sector isn’t known for innovation or creativity, but the services PBC provides are very personal and vitally necessary.
Risk mitigation and human-centric design: could the two mix?
User-experience research would provide some of the answers. “Getting into the world of the user builds empathy towards their situations, which inevitably translates to smarter design choices,” designer Stanley Lai explains. We dug into exploring what PBC’s customers needed, felt, understood and were confused by, as well as exploring when they purchase specific PBC products (such as travel insurance).
Taking a step back to watch customers interact with the process, the team realized that the industry-wide legal speak that insurance companies are known for is not especially user-friendly. “We really saw that striking a more conversational tone was going to be key,” explains Aaron. “Using plain language, in an almost colloquial tone, was going to be as much a part of any ‘design or UX improvements’ — because people’s experience often comes down to how they’re spoken to. Digital app design often neglects tone of voice, and that’s where we saw a chance to shine.”
The empathetic approach transformed PBC’s results: the new app saw a 3x daily growth rate in active users, 950% increase in travel insurance sales revenue, 29% increase in users, and 23% improvement in engagement. PBC’s willingness to reimagine their industry’s traditional approach gave them more than a new digital experience and improved revenue; they also gained a deep understanding of the needs and experience of their plan members that now informs everything they do.
District of North Vancouver: incremental changes to engage citizens
There’s not many sectors better-positioned to transform the customer service experience in a meaningful way than government, leading to a good deal of hype around “government digital service.” The District of North Vancouver wanted to avoid the mis-steps that hype can create: avoiding showy-but-isolated web efforts and committing to build a holistic digital ecosystem instead.
“A government’s approach to digital can’t be coming from a single department,” insists Mairi Welman, the District Communications director.
“Citizens expect centralized service, not a disparate experience. Digital needs to be in our blood. A new generation is emerging, with new expectations: we must design our digital services to serve the public, with the District’s whole ecosystem connected.”
The District partnered with our team in an intentionally incremental approach. Through citizen-centric research, and with steady, smart iterations, DNV gradually transformed its digital design, content, technology and even governance. Over several years, their team invested in gaining a deep understanding of their citizen’s needs and chipping away at creating a digital system that served exactly those needs.
The gradual transformation grew DNV into a ground-breaking digital civic leader with a sharply citizen-relevant approach. One of the most attuned projects the team undertook together was a custom public consultation tool. Instead of trying to coax people out to open houses or conducting limited online surveys, the consultation tool welcomes individuals to directly comment on city proposals and projects. An engagement on park improvements generated 1543 citizen responses with 3463 comments over three weeks.
“What we’ve seen in DNV is a leader who time and time again, chooses to put their citizens first, and to treat digital as central tool of government, not a sideshow,” says Kevan Gilbert, Domain7’s Director of Engagement Strategy. “It’s the future for democracies: direct digital engagement.”
“Digital transformation” can sound like the type of mountain you have no idea how to climb. But when you stop looking at the mountain and start looking at the step in front of you, the unique path your organization can take starts to appear. So release that breath you’ve been holding, and start simply with where you are. What are your unknowns? Your pain points? Exploring them will likely lead to your most promising opportunities.
