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- Email: innovation@clustre.net
Digital@Scale is one of the most challenging and technically demanding transitions companies will ever undertake. Wolfgang Emmerich, CEO of Zuhlke UK, certainly understands this reality. He has guided and inspired many of the largest organisations through the most complex digital transformations…
Earlier this year, we caught up with Wolfgang and spent a fascinating morning discussing the many challenges of delivering successful Digital@Scale solutions. These are just some of the key messages from that masterclass.
Clustre: Why do so many digital transformations fail to deliver satisfaction?
Wolfgang: Speed and agility are two of the biggest issues. Many larger enterprises are falling behind in the digital race because they cannot move quickly enough for today’s fast-paced, broad-based demands. They struggle to respond to rapidly changing requirements and the need to roll-out digital products and features – at speed – across many digital channels.
Clustre: Where are people going wrong?
Wolfgang: Well, many organisations are over-ambitious – they attempt to digitise every customer journey and product, all at once. All too often this ends in congestion, frustration, delays and spiralling costs. Companies frequently struggle to manage multiple teams working simultaneously to deliver a constant stream of new services. They simply cannot continually evolve the necessary digital products to meet customer demands.
Clustre: What should they be doing differently?
Wolfgang: I would suggest there are 8 priorities that companies must get right before embarking on their Digital@Scale journey. I’ll share them with you:
1. Build a digital platform – the right platform
It’s critically important to invest in developing the right platform. One that delivers Digital@Scale solutions quickly, reliably and continuously across multiple products and channels…
Start by creating a robust platform to host your digital assets and be sure to build-in elastic compute and network resources, security, quality etc. Also, since you are unlikely to beat cloud providers at their own game, be pragmatic – use a cloud provider and build on their offering.
2. Use a common architecture for Digital@Scale that builds on your digital platform
For example, at HSBC we built an abstraction layer to separate digital channels from the underlying systems. It’s critical to resolve these problems once and use the solutions consistently across all your Digital@Scale apps. The alternative is chaos.
3. Recognise that Digital@Scale is 24×7
Digital@Scale apps have to be instantly available, all of the time. Customers expect unfailing availability. If your banking or tax-filing app goes down, it’s headline news. And social media will savage your service. So, you must build resilience, security and forward recovery into your apps from the outset. Being able to update and deploy without shutting down is fundamental.
4. Build feedback loops at all levels (and act on the feedback you obtain)
Acting on rapid, real-time feedback from customers and internal stakeholders is vital. Whether you are responding to a negative customer review or fixing a production problem, you have to act and react fast. This is one of the reasons why HSBC’s new UK banking app has a 4.8 rating.
5. Optimise UX
The user experience is everything. You will not be successful unless you put the UX at the heart of your development. This call for continuous, systematic user testing throughout development and production. And never allow the product owner to impose their requirements over those of the user experience.
6. Build high-performing, cross-functional feature teams
It’s important to have end-to-end responsibility for a feature within one integrated team. This means having business analysis, design, development, testing and production skills in each feature team. Also recognise that Digital@Scale features will change way too quickly to establish separate projects for each feature. Focus instead on drawing together the right mix of skills and capabilities to build products and features.
7. Release frequently and be sure to build-in forward recovery
Customers expect digital services to be continuously and seamlessly upgraded. For example, the HSBC app is updated while running 24×7. To do this, you mustn’t be afraid to break things and you have to build-in forward recovery (such as circuit breakers to isolate features when necessary).
8. Ensure that the engineers who build your digital products also support them
The engineers who build your Digital@Scale apps are your best support experts. They have the intimate software knowledge to fix any problems. This truth also has an interesting and rather beneficial side-effect… if you know that you’re going to be on call 24×7 to support something, you take a lot more care in building it!
Where is your organisation on the Digital@Scale journey? Are you ahead of the curve, behind the curve or still looking for the curve?
To measure your Digital@Scale maturity, Zuhlke has developed a revealing and very comprehensive assessment tool. Drawing on many hundreds of hours of project experience, this tool will give you:
Wolfgang sees this as a crucial tool for improving performance and delivering Digital@Scale. To tell you more and to discuss your Digital@Scale issues and ambitions, Wolfgang has agreed to meet Clustre’s clients. He will share deeper insights on how to deliverfaster progress, make fewer mistakes, ensure positive outcomes and save money. This meeting will be confidential, free and without any obligation.
To arrange your confidential meeting simply contact us at: innovation@clustre.net
