Breakfast for digital champions
This morning, we hosted our second ‘Strategy over Breakfast’-session: an intimate gathering for discussing all things strategy. On the agenda today: digital channel strategy. Catherine Rouge of Colruyt Group Xtra and Ruth Degraeve of VRT MAX shared their journeys. Their learnings were surprisingly similar. Or maybe not entirely unsurprising, given both organisations had embarked on a transition to fewer, but stronger digital platforms.
Here are a few things that really resonated:
When it’s time to change, you need a strong vision
Sometimes, you just feel it's time to evolve. In the case of Colruyt Group, each brand had created their own different mix of apps and websites. ‘This didn’t match with our DNA of keeping it simple and efficient for consumers.’ For VRT, the media business itself had changed, with the lines between radio or video, or live and on-demand, blurring. Given that evolving from a ‘house of brands’ to a ‘branded house’ will ruffle some feathers, it’s important there is a clear vision at the top of the organisation, to steer the course.
Users change, so should you
Because change is inevitable. People’s reality changes, whether while shopping or consuming media. ‘And we can’t expect people to find their way in our internal structure. We need to adapt our structure to what people want.’ In both cases, bringing clear customer insights proved invaluable.
Show why it matters
By now, a pattern started to emerge: changing your digital course requires a lot of very clear internal communication. Explain why the new vision is a win. For customers. But also for the different departments. Show them why the changes will also benefit them. And celebrate success when the new strategy starts to pay off.
Create ambassadors
Eventually, the digital strategy needs to be truly internalised. Everyone should know what it entails, and why those choices were made. To help secure that buy-in, start with empowering allies across the organisation. And give a stage to your teams. Literally: at town hall meetings, let them demonstrate their contributions to the new strategy. Their success will be contagious.
Adapt but play the long game
Although it won’t always be a success from the get-go. Everyone present acknowledged that change is felt by users as well. ‘And most people don’t like change.’ Be prepared for this initial blowback. Crucially, identify whether you did indeed drop the ball, ‘and if so, make sure you are ready to iterate fast, and show your users that you listen.’ However, keep the end-goal in mind, so don't let this distract you. And, acknowledge transformation takes time. It’s OK not to change everything, everywhere, all at once. But every step you take, should get you closer to your grand vision.
As you can read, a lot of the discussions dealt with the internal perspective of change. And that’s OK: sometimes it’s clear what users want, but that doesn’t make it easy to deliver. We were happy to create a setting where experiences and learnings could be shared.
