BrazilHow BearingPoint delivers digital transformation programs
In today’s digital era, digital customer transformation is a must for any company. Realising their digital transformation ambitions is however a challenge for most companies. Based on an extensive track record in the field globally at companies of all sizes, BearingPoint has developed a nine-step approach for turning digital ambitions into tangible results.
Step 1. Digital ambition
The first step, digital ambition, establishes the organisation needs and/or what the organisation wants to achieve. To achieve an integrated view, stakeholders of all different entities within the organisation such as the business, IT and (Enterprise) architecture need to share and discuss their ambitions and points of view.
Taking an outside-in approach (design-led by the needs of customers) serves as the starting point. Then, nurture mutual understanding through a process of open dialogue and common understanding, which ensures that there is clear ownership in place from the start.
Step 2. Differentiators
This step involves exploring how the (digital) needs of customers can be fulfilled in a differentiated manner. A number of strategies can be followed here, such as differentiation in price, service, access, product or experience.
With this in mind, organisations should determine what positioning they want to achieve per product/service. Do they want to be top of mind for customers and achieve a dominant status, or rather opt for a differentiated more tailored approach, or even one of parity, where their products/services are at parity with industry peers.
Step 3. Value drivers
Based on the digital ambition (set in the first step), and the differentiator (set in the second step), organisations now need to determine the related value drivers to measure the ‘value’ for the client. This then paves the way for refining the value proposition.
The value proposition is what the customer values and can be a product, a service or even an experience. Understanding the value drivers requires insight in the so-called benefit logic – shedding light on the key customer experience moments and the design science behind them.
Step 4. Personas
This step focuses on getting a detailed understanding of the different type of customers and what their needs and pain-points are. Step into the shoes of a customer and imitate his/her brain to develop a persona: an archetype of a person, which describes their goals, interests, and aptitudes.
Down the line, several persona’s will be identified, enabling organisations to identify different needs and pain points, and hence develop different customer journeys. However, beware of creating too many personas, and start with the most important ones that are essential to the digital ambition.
Step 5. Customer journey
In this step, the customer journey is defined per persona. As a starter, address the pains and gains during the customer journey. Then, map the other needs of customers, including the contact points and critical nodes of the process.
Strongly recommended is to actually talk with customers in this phase to get the best outside-in perspective possible. Validate these findings, and test their feasibility.
Step 6. Idea selection
The customer journeys are input to define ideas that will cover the customer’s pains and gains. In order to bring these ideas to life, it's crucial to map these ideas on a matrix addressing customer value versus ease of implementation.
This exercise helps organisations filter out the ‘quick wins’ – ideas that add much value and can be executed rather easily. Further, for green-lit concepts, a MVP (Minimum Viable Product) is developed and a process as well as measurement metrics (related to the defined value drivers) is defined.
Step 7. Capability mapping
The key question in this step: What capabilities (people, process, technology, content and data) are needed to execute? The defined MVP solutions, based on a number of ideas, are mapped against a capability and broken down into smaller pieces of work. Important deliverables of this step are a prioritised backlog, filled with ideas (in Agile Scrum terminology called Epics) and the smaller pieces of work (called User Stories).
At BearingPoint, we strongly believe in capability thinking. A capability is the ability to perform or achieve certain actions or outcomes, related to people, process & organisation, technology and information. Map out which capabilities are needed to bring a User Story to life. This also gives insights into potential dependencies and or impediments.
A key element of this step is that it is performed with all needed stakeholders, to create a share offering and broad support.
Step 8. Sprints
With a filled and prioritised backlog, this step starts building the solution based on the agile way of working (Scrum). In a number of sprints the defined MVP is delivered, while the Product Owner maintains ownership to deliver continuous value. After every sprint the deliverables are measured and validated, which leads to tweaks and changes.
In parallel, the transformation team continuously works on feeding the backlog with new ideas, user stories and MVPs, which will be an extension of the previously delivered MVP. In this way, the overall solution, which is based on a number of MVPs, will grow in a controlled and centralised way. At the end of each iteration, the goal is to deliver (and make available) the MVP solution to the final customer.
Step 9. Value acceleration
In the previous step, the MVP solution is in sprint-fashion delivered to the customer. During the Test & Learn phase, feedback is gathered and small adjustments can be applied. If after this phase the MVP solution is accepted, it is key to bring the solution to a larger group of customers (based on a specific persona), or even to different countries.
As the functionality is accepted, scaling is easier. If for instance the solution is rolled out to a different country, the only change needed is localisation and tailoring to local audiences. Based on this, the amount of work required, the capabilities and the level of support (like training) can be determined.
