By
David Atkins
Your business is rapidly and radically evolving, effective digital
strategy is critical to thriving in difficult economic conditions.
Digital is at the heart much
of this shift, yet some do not embrace this shift, there are still
executives
who use the terms, that’s Internet land or Web sites are e-commerce.
The
reality is that all of our channels, media, messages, teams and systems
need to
be aligned around a new digital reality, one that puts the customers in
control
of everything (even your brand). Organizations that limit access to
various
digital, Web or mobile platforms from work, limit their team’s ability
to
monitor, learn and act like a customer. Set up rules and enforce them
but do
not limit access. Digital is part of everyone’s job and is fundamental
to
sales, marketing, operations, customer service, revenue management and
distribution.
E-commerce used to mean your
Web site’s purchase path and managing the related parts. Today it can
mean
activities on Facebook, Twitter, Nabbr, Google, the OTAs, GDS, iPhones,
your
Web site, your brands’ sites, and the list goes on. How do you build
and manage
strategy that crosses many parts of your business and organization in a
way
that makes sense and generates metrics you want? E-commerce is a part
of sales,
distribution, IT, revenue management and marketing and thus a subset of
digital. Solid analytics are critical to e-commerce.
What
is e-commerce and digital?
Where
do they intersect with your
business and organizational plans?
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How is your leadership with
the OTAs, GDS, RevPAR, customer service, online marketing, onsite
delivery,
social media, Web site metrics, widgets and mobile platforms. The more
comfortable your leadership is, the easier the alignment.
Alignment is getting all
your stakeholders to believe or align behind a set of common goals,
drivers,
metrics or business realities. Gaining alignment is easier said then
done. The
more adept your culture is to jettison unnecessary legacy ideas,
systems,
thoughts, etc., the easier alignment is.
The digital world has many
moving parts and concepts but it is business; it requires focus,
attention and
an understanding and alignment around metrics and analytics. Your
leadership
needs to be in tune with how to use metrics and when and where soft
measurements apply.
You need cross discipline
experts leading your business who share common objectives and who all
understand digital, understand who your partners are and what they
offer and
where they are going.
How do we align e-commerce,
customer service, distribution, revenue management, sales, operations
and
marketing? There is no single answer, there is a process that will help
determine paths to success. Here we have
focused on how to develop the process; in the subsequent articles we
will look
at each phase in greater detail as well as the various drivers and
impacts.
While discipline expertise
has huge value, enterprise value is now in cross discipline knowledge
and
training.
Objective Eyes- Find someone
who understands the digital environment to lead your digital planning.
An
outsider might be appropriate. It is often an iterative process.
Understanding digital at a
strategic level is getting more complicated. It is no longer about a
definable
platform, Web site or delivery vehicle or system, the latest iteration
of
digital is distributed content/commerce on other platforms and
businesses
(think Apple’s iPhone apps or Facebook widgets) and the customer is in
virtual
control–you need to influence a desired action, brand, message,
customer.
This area is evolving and
will require executive attention for the foreseeable future. It also
requires
flexibility and a culture of calculated risk taking. Do not punish
decisions
that don’t work. In several of the next
articles we will discuss how to encourage calculated risk-taking in the
digital
arena.
Step 1: Know your customers and
business.
Are you a
brand who franchises properties and services? An owner operator? A
management
company? An ownership group? Depending upon your businesses drivers the
strategy, tactics and execution will look different. Businesses should
routinely do this exercise, have dozens of questions, and then probe.
Step 2: Assessment of current
state.
Conduct a strategic
assessment of your current state from a customer’s perspective. Empower
your
leader here to meet with your key executives and customers to ask
questions.
Look for customers’ points of friction, not business points of friction.
Step 3: Leadership
alignment.
Do you have a concise customer-facing set of
metrics that are by which you evaluate all of these various drivers?
For
example, do you know the cost of customer acquisition in your
organization?
Does your entire organization use the same metric measured the same
way? In
this series of articles we will discuss in greater detail picking the
right
metrics and aligning on them.
Step 4: Benchmarking.
Find similar
non-competitive businesses and see what they are doing. If you are a
large
multi flag brand CPG could be a benchmark and look at smaller retailers
for
single properties.
Step 5: Stakeholder Input and
Transparency.
Find out what the expectations and offerings are of each of your
stakeholders
and see what they will be in the next 12 months. Be sure to consider
how
decisions are made beyond, as in the evolution of digital anything
after 12
months may be conjecture. Be transparent in your process to the entire
organization. How do e-commerce, sales, revenue management, marketing,
operations, IT, all work together today? An example of a common
misalignment is
a hotelier with different metrics for success for various stakeholders.
Step 6: Establish a set of
common
metrics. T
his is not
an easy thing to do, but all groups need to focus on the same
metric(s): top
line revenue, RevPAR, occupancy, customer acquisition cost,
reservations
channel, onsite spend, loyalty (the list is quite long). The only way
you can
hope to align this diverse set of owners is to have metrics in place
that speak
to your business, your customer and your strategic plan. Test and
measure
everything you can down to the right metrics for your business.
Step 7: Establish long term
cross training at all levels.
Your leaders should be
exposed to the various other disciplines within your business. The next
level
of your team should be required to spend significant time in other
areas of
your business. Your leader in marketing probably should also have spent
some
time in operations, revenue management and sales, and been exposed to
e-commerce. Find and offer formalized training for staff in areas that
may not
directly be in their area of responsibility. Train your sales
leadership in e-commerce
usability or train your IT leadership in marketing. Hire, train and
retain the
best digital talent.
Step 8: Establish clear
ownerships
within your leadership.
For example, who owns online marketing? Does it tie to brand
efforts, distribution, social media, e-commerce behavioral, CRM,
revenue management, operations or customer
service? Is it direct response or more? This is the area where most
companies
in our industry break down and where we will focus during another
segment in
our series. Revenue management is in finance, e-commerce is in
distribution,
and online marketing is in marketing, then how do you align each of
these
without tectonic shifts to your business.
Step 9: Product and systems
development.
This must be transparent as
to how priorities are set. Get a cross-functional leadership team to
meet on a
regular schedule (once a month is suggested) to approve rank/re-rank
priorities, but have an open process where all members of your
organization can
submit ideas and projects. Make sure you have a flexible road map for
your
needs and that the various stakeholder/sponsors are bought in before
work
commences with objectives and metrics are agreed to. This is an area of
opportunity for most businesses and where the digital rubber meets the
road.
Step 10:
Partner/Vendors/Agencies.
Pick partners who can enhance your strategy,
support your business and participate in your success. A concept core
that Ray
Croc established decades ago for McDonald’s is partnering, and it has
served
the company for many decades and is as flexible as necessary. Partners
are a
point of differentiation in digital successes.
Step 11: Set up check points.
Set up formal check points
at specific time intervals. Use a post mortem process on every project,
and
evaluate the decision tree and the success/failure on the originally
identified
metrics. This is all about monitoring, testing and measuring everything
you
can.
Step 12: Empower, train and
enable
your team, then hold
them accountable to uniform metrics cross disciplines.
Digital is becoming
consensus driven from a consumer’s perspective. This will require more
transparency from our industry.
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David Atkins is a
principal @ Digital DNA
Infusion. He was a founding shareholder at Expedia and is the incoming
chair of
HSMAI, a frequent speaker and consultant on digital and e-commerce
strategies.
He can be reached at [email protected].
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