Driving strategy through customer-centricity

Transcription

1 BSG CAPABILITIES FEATURES: IT STRATEGY & ADVISORY CAPABILITY Driving strategy through customer-centricity Introduction: BSG is a consulting and technology company with offices in Johannesburg, Cape Town and London. With a focus on research into cutting-edge methodologies and principles, BSG employees are encouraged to utilise a variety of innovative approaches to create value and achieve project objectives. The ability to deliver using new and innovative approaches is a strong competitive differentiator in the current economic environment. As budgets tighten, margins are trimmed and organisations seek better returns on investment, so increased delivery efficiency, greater insight and more innovative solutions are becoming standard requirements of the modern business analyst. A team of BSG Business Consultants spent 18 months investigating and implementing innovative tools and techniques to better align the Southern African IT department of a multinational organisation with the wider organisation, while being intimately involved in the development of the overall IT strategy and ensuring its long-term focus on customer-centricity. Delivery Context The programme comprised a set of requirements, divided into strategic, tactical and operational delivery requirements, and ran over the course of 18 months. From the strategic perspective, the team were tasked with developing an understanding of the context in which IT operates, the current state of IT s relationships with its business partners and the key future focus areas for IT from the perspective of its business partners. As an outcome of this process, the team then developed a 5-year IT strategy and associated strategic plans, with the intention to position IT as a partner and enabler in the organisation. From the tactical perspective, the team worked on the delivery of a set of key projects, with multiple user groups and a complex requirements set. The intention of which was to address a series of critical business issues and achieve key business outcomes. Finally, from an operational perspective, the team were asked to deliver a foundering project, beset by poorly managed expectations and conflict between and amongst stakeholders and suppliers. Throughout these tasks, the team worked to introduce the concept of customer centricity, using a variety of methods. During the initial phases, the team used outputs from the business context analysis exercise to map out the key customers of the IT function and the mandate that IT fulfilled for these customers. Using this information, a customer survey was defined to understand the current and optimal position of IT in supporting the business operation. The survey results, business context analysis and a process of continued customer engagement assisted the team to define a customer-centric IT strategy. At tactical and operational levels, the team made use of customer-centric design principles such as Customer and User Experience Design, personas and journey maps to deliver change. Throughout the process, delivery was underpinned by customercentric methodologies such as Agile delivery and Running Lean. What is customer centricity? Within the context of the relationship between IT and its business partners, customer centricity involves designing the delivery of IT services and investment around the needs of the business, focusing on the achievement of a set of defined strategic goals and the delivery of business outcomes. During the initial stages of the analysis, the team discovered that customer-centric delivery had not been a strength of the IT function over the preceding 1

2 three to four years. Numerous interactions with senior business stakeholders resulted in feedback that IT was invisible and operated in a siloed manner. During this exercise, the team was able to identify the following key behaviours that proved to stifle customer centricity in the past: Completing strategy and investment planning in isolation from the business Using intuition and judgement to define key IT investment and delivery activities without involving business stakeholders Delivering change with little or no business stakeholder engagement Embracing a demand / supply relationship between IT and its business partners Contrary to this, creating customer centricity requires the following: Treating your business partners as customers, and investing in the relationship by taking the time to consistently understand their needs, goals, desires and pains Building meaningful and trusting relationships with business stakeholders Continuously engaging the business to maintain relationships and ensure that IT value delivery is aligned to their needs and goals Understanding that, while you may view your business partners as customers, all organisational efforts must, ultimately, serve the organisation s customers Organisational behaviours that support customer centricity A customer-centric organisational culture focuses on understanding what their customers value most, and the following behaviours were noted as key in achieving this: Be Accessible: Some of the feedback received from the IT function s business partners was that IT seemed unavailable and difficult to engage or collaborate with. Making IT easily accessible for customers to connect and communicate with as required was a key behaviour driven within the IT team. Be Timely: A central theme in the feedback received from the customers was that the IT function s feedback on concerns and requests was significantly delayed. Increased effort in providing timely feedback, as well as closing the loop on all requests, resulted in a notable increase in customer satisfaction. Be Empathetic: Being empathetic involves taking the time to listen to the customer, acknowledging their requests and feedback, and proactively engaging the customer to resolve known issues or concerns. Be Agile: Being agile involves developing responses and possible solutions to customer requests quickly, and without an extended period of completing governance and ticking the boxes before any thought is dedicated to assisting the customer. Being agile also involves acknowledging the customer feedback, ideas and criticism and allowing these to guide the internal thought and development processes. Be Cohesive: Consistent, honest and ubiquitous communication across the customer-base created confidence in the transparency of the IT function. Why invest in customer centricity? Figure 1: The journey towards understanding your customer The first checkpoint on the journey to customer centricity begins with the key question: Do we know who our customers are? This is often a testing question for an IT function, with the floor divided between business stakeholders and the organisation s customers, but it is important to note that both groups are to be considered customers of IT. The second question to be asked is Do we understand our customers expectations? During the beginning of the programme, the team actively engaged senior business stakeholders to understand not only their current perception of the IT offering, but also what they expected of IT going forward. 2

3 This assisted the process of answering the third question: Are our customers satisfied with IT s current offering? Through research and conducting a collaborative co-creation exercise, a framework was defined to help assess the maturity (either Basic, Enhanced or Enabling) of an IT function. This model was used to measure the functional maturity according to feedback received during the customer survey exercise, while also being used to represent the optimal maturity going forward, according to customer expectations. The model below represents the four perspectives of IT s functional maturity: Strategic Customer Centricity When the team began its involvement in the process of developing the IT strategy, no consistent or accurate measure, or assessment, of IT s current positioning existed in the eyes of IT s business partners and staff. For this reason, the team created a model that would provide guidance on how to enhance the IT offering, and better support business strategies. The model would form an integral part of the future IT strategy, and included specific objectives and measures around implementation. To underpin this work, the IT function undertook significant efforts to understand its relative positioning and service offering with respect to its customers and their requirements. IT has an opportunity to leverage its capacity as both partner and challenger to its business partners, and to use this role to understand and develop the role of the function beyond its current offering. In doing this, it can play a key enabler and trusted partner role in the execution of business strategy; avoid stagnation in a shifting environment, and support organisational operations in a more meaningful way through the provision of innovative technology and alternative ways of working. 3 Figure 2: Customer-Centric IT Maturity Value Proposition is the type of engagement offered to the business partners in terms of engagement, interaction and value delivery, and this offering could range from Executing to Managing or Leading. Scope of Work is the range of activities that the function will take ownership of on behalf of the Business, ranging from Business as Usual (BAU) to Unlocking Potential to Accelerating Performance. Organisation is the type of organisation and capability that needs to be formed and implemented to support the maturity level of the IT function, and this may range from Executors to Enablers or High Performing. Teams. Customer Experience is the customer perception and expectation of the IT function. This perspective allows the function to reflect on delivering an engagement or services, and may range from Service Provider to Partner or Innovator. Figure 3: The Customer- Centric Strategy Development and Reporting Process Key to achieving this was to understand IT s level of functional maturity from a number of perspectives, specifically in terms of as-is ( where are we now? ) and desired ( where do we want to be? ) functional maturity. This assessment, as detailed in the previous section, can be performed as a self-assessment, or as part of a collaborative assessment with the business partners. Once the as-is assessment has been performed, the desired assessment should be performed with the customer, in a collaborative

4 manner, in order to ensure that all parties are in agreement with respect to the desired levels of value being delivered by the IT function. The journey from the as-is to the to-be is defined in the IT strategy formulation and definition process. As the strategy was defined as a longer-term view (probably over three to five years), the function now has the ability to continuously assess whether the desired end state will be achieved through the use of strategic priorities, underlying roadmaps, activities and strategic indicators. 4 Tactical Customer Centricity With the desired (to-be) state defined as part of the IT strategy, the project team worked to investigate and assist the implementation of a series of tactical activities to enable the achievement of customer centricity goals outlined in the IT strategy, and address the hotspot areas identified during the customer survey activity. Customer and User Experience Design (C / UXD) principles and tools such as personas, journey maps and customer profiling were applied to the IT customer-base to provide better context of their needs, desires and objectives. Throughout the engagements with business stakeholders, feedback was consistently received about the IT function being non-transparent and difficult to understand. An activity set to demystify IT was implemented to address this concern, and involved creating transparency of processes and IT team responsibilities, holding IT road shows and driving behaviours of constant and comprehensive communication with IT customers. A drive to make IT more accessible was pursued with the purpose of bringing customers closer to IT and removing the frustration associated with previous processes by making the engagements quicker and easier. One such initiative involved the development of a mobile application to log IT issues, instead of logging a ticket with the outsourced call-centre. The IT team defined a detailed engagement plan for ongoing and purposeful engagement with business unit leads to ensure that IT remained abreast of the environment in which customers were operating, and the pains and concerns they experienced. This involved participation in business unit leadership meetings, business forums and strategic / executivelevel risk and planning forums. Involving the customer in the IT process entailed bringing customers close to the delivery of IT services and projects through the use of techniques such as User Experience Design (UXD), Lean project delivery and integration into previously IT-exclusive processes, such as global CIO visits. One example involved including business stakeholders in the SMS recipient list, which proactively alerted IT stakeholders of possible IT service interruptions. Agile demand management and problem solving transformed the manner in which IT and the business worked together to so solve problems. The organisation moved from a typical IT demand and supply model, to a co-collaborative solution development model. The team introduced Lean project delivery to provide a means of understanding problems, exploring solutions and making decisions quickly, as opposed to the IT function working in isolation to solve a demand request submitted by the business. Operational Customer Centricity Some of the techniques and principles embraced at an operational level included planning delivery based on outcomes and change, thereby embracing Agile delivery methodologies, and the delivery of solutions based on the evolving user requirements, rather than a static set of requirements. Taking further leanings from Lean and Agile methodologies, solutions were delivered to customers in iterations, with constant user involvement and feedback. Prototypes and simulations were used to deliver value early and test solutions against the problem statements in a more practical manner. Not only did the above approaches result in more intimate customer relationships and better aligned solution, but both delivery turnaround cycles and the associated costs were reduced, which assisted to dismiss the notion that IT were slow to respond and that delivery was clouded by governance that delayed the delivery of value to the customer. Customer Centricity Heuristics The team identified four heuristics which were critical to the success of the programme. Start with Why? : Another key component to move out of the backoffice order taker role is to focus on Why? IT tends to have strong business and prioritisation case skills, and it s important to use those skills in engagements with the business. Focusing on unpacking reasoning and playing an advisory role, instead of an order taking role it s about aligning IT s Why to the Business Why.

5 Restating ITs Role: By placing the customer at the centre of IT s efforts, and making them aware of this, IT was positioned very differently within the organisation. IT became more than a backoffice shop, it became a partner in the realisation of organisational strategies. This is increasingly important as technology becomes a tool for engaging people The One Page Strategy: It is both useful and important to have a one pager, as it becomes a metaphor for what IT is attempting to achieve and a tool for everyone in the IT team to use to communicate intent, and understand what they are working towards. Secondly, from the team s experience, if you cannot distil the essence of what you re trying to achieve from a strategic perspective onto a single page, then you don t actually have a strategy. IT Leadership Buy-in and Involvement: Finally, none of this is possible if IT leadership haven t bought in and engaged with the process, as representatives of the strategy both within IT and in the wider organisation. It is important that IT leaders are viewed as owners of the initiatives within the organisation, and that the strategy is well enough articulated to survive leadership changes and transitions. Figure 4: Four key learnings The Benefits: Reflecting on Why? As a result of the journey to customer centricity, the following benefits have been realised: Improved user satisfaction and engagement, measured by following iterations of the business partner survey A move to collaborative problem definition and solution development, which has resulted in improved project delivery, both in terms of timelines and quality (without increased costs) Improved, partner-focused (as opposed to demand-supply) relationships between IT and its users A better understanding of user priorities by IT, also measured through the business partner survey A reduction in shadow IT services procured by the business Finally, business feedback is that IT has developed a reputation as a customer-intimate and involved business partner, who is willing to work collaboratively to develop innovative and high-quality solutions. This has led to increased levels of trust between IT and its customers. About BSG BSG is a consulting and technology company with almost two decades experience and a proven performance history across numerous industries. We are passionate about being a proactive force for positive change, making a difference in everything we do; committed to delivering visible business benefit as a result of the work we deliver to our clients through our people. BSG strives to deliver business value by collaboratively guiding its clients to better understand which initiatives will deliver the most value, and then, working together to make them a reality. By defining and understanding the purpose for change BSG designs practical solutions to build the bridge between the business expectation and the technology implementation. BSG 22nd Floor, Triangle House 22 Riebeek Road, Cape Town 8000 Tel Fax info@bsg.co.za Oxford Terrace, No. 3 Ninth Street, Houghton Estate, 2198 Tel Fax Web