Delivering Digital@Scale with HMRC and HSBC

A private briefing focusing on two world-class case studies

Everybody’s doing it: rushing headlong to digitise their business. But many companies are struggling – and seriously failing – to deliver digital at scale. In this Executive Breakfast Briefing, we concentrated on this hot but fraught topic. We focused on two large, very high-profile case studies: HSBC and HMRC. Both organisations have successfully transitioned from digital ‘virgins’ to digital exemplars – even digital leaders. We were lucky to have as our guest speaker the man whose teams helped them to embrace digital@scale …

Wolfgang Emmerich is the CEO of Zuhlke UK and a founding director of the Zuhlke Group. This 1000+ strong group of agile digital experts was contracted to develop HSBC’s next generation of mobile banking apps. Zuhlke was also hired to redevelop HMRC’s digital tax platform. The brief was simple: build a crash-proof system that can cope with up to 5 million submissions all arriving on the deadline day January 31^st… so true scale!

Wolfgang shared these experiences at our breakfast table. He started by explaining why many digital projects quickly become mired and fail to deliver customer satisfaction. In a chaotic jumble of good intentions, many companies attempt to digitise every customer journey and product – all at once. It’s a rudderless recipe for congestion, frustration, delays and spiralling costs.

Wolfgang then contrasted this well-meaning ‘anarchy’ with Zuhlke’s disciplined outcome-driven approach. He explained why digital projects can be more demanding and complex than traditional enterprise projects. And he detailed the imperatives that companies must have in place before embarking on any digital journey.

To read the full report of these insights and the animated discussion they inspired please click the button below.