The Knowing And Doing Digital Gap – Digital Skill Trends
Digital Mark: New research has highlighted that as businesses strive to meet the needs of today’s digitally empowered consumer there is a gap between businesses knowing what drives digital effectiveness and current digital practices.
The findings were part of a larger study exploring the opinions and digital practices of UK businesses. It also compared the views of the top-performing businesses with those of their mainstream counterparts.
Huge differences were unveiled between knowing how to be digitally effective versus how UK businesses are approaching digital development.
In the report,
97% of the digital decision makers in UK businesses questioned believe that focusing on user needs leads to better outcomes
97% agree that cross-disciplinary teams drive the best results
94% said that senior leadership support and buy-in are vital when creating digital products/experiences
96% agree team learning and reflection are a necessity for digital transformation
92% said long-term versus short-term goals are more likely to be more successful
88% agree Agile approaches are more likely to be successful than traditional ones (e.g. waterfall)
It was quite a different story when the survey asked the same respondents about their actual digital practices.
While 97% believe that user-centricity leads to better outcomes, overall, only 65% said that they put user needs at the heart of their development. Comparing top-performing businesses and the mainstream, three-quarters of top-performing businesses say they put the user needs at the heart of their development but only half of the mainstream group say the same. Digital Mark.
It was a similar result looking at ‘belief’ and ‘practices’ regarding cross-disciplinary teams with just over 70% of all respondents implementing this approach (despite nearly all saying this is necessary for success). Again top-performing companies are slightly more advanced toward multi-disciplinary teams in comparison to their mainstream counterparts (81% versus 66%).
Related Posts
While 96% of the company respondents agree team learning and reflection is a necessity for digital transformation, half (52%) of organizations don’t take time out to learn and reflect. A mere 40% of mainstream businesses said that their teams take time out to learn and reflect on what they are doing.
And looking at practices around long-term versus short-term goals; while a massive 92% say businesses that concentrate on the long term are likely to be more successful, in practice 53% actually admit to focusing on short-term targets. Only 35% of the mainstream group said that they focus more on long-term goals than short-term targets.
Agility is also cited as a best practice (88% of all companies think agile approaches are more likely to be more successful than traditional ones) but overall only 58% adopt agile methods; this figure dropped to less than half (46%) of mainstream companies and only 58% focus on outcomes in development and are happy to change requirements if needed. 70% of top-performing businesses adopt agile processes and three-quarters of the top-performing businesses say that they focus on outcomes in development and are happy to change requirements if needed. Digital Mark.
Other key findings in the survey include:
56% of businesses questioned still leave testing to the end of a project
Only 51% can attribute ROI to specific digital projects
And less than half actively look for waste in processes to maximize value
CEO, Tony Foggett, says, “While our survey was primarily designed to show levels awareness around Product Thinking, a mindset and approach to digital product development, it was striking to see the difference between what companies think will help them drive digital effectiveness and what is happening within their businesses.” Digital Mark.
“There is a clear consensus that digital approaches need to be customer-centric, agile, and data-driven, all principals that fall into the Product Thinking mindset that we implement. But all businesses – whether they are outperforming their competition or not – seem a way off actually truly embracing these techniques.”
“The survey also highlighted that while most companies agree on what the basic principles of a digitally transformed business are, it is the EXECUTION that makes the difference between the best performers and the rest. The gap between thinking and doing is much smaller for top-performing companies than it is for their mainstream counterparts.”
“So what’s stopping businesses from applying a Product Thinking approach as a means to get ahead? One theory is the degree to which they can, and have, changed their business culture. As businesses move from the traditional ways of working to the more agile/adaptable approaches required for the 21st century they come up against deeply ingrained structural and cultural barriers.”
“While the agreement with the principals of a digital-first organization is all but unanimous, the majority of businesses still have cultures that can best be described as retrograde.”
“Ultimately ‘Product Thinking’ is a cultural model that pertains not only to a mindset (a collective drive for effectiveness by continually growing value for the customer and company) but also the methodologies, roles, and organizational design required to see the approach through.” Digital Mark.
“While it’s impossible to prove that it’s the implementation of these Product Thinking ideas that are responsible for ‘success’ in the top performing businesses the correlation is extremely strong. In organizational culture, management approach, development philosophy, every area of business practice we looked at showed the firms who acted on the product philosophy were more likely to be successful.”
This article was first published here.
Comments are closed.