Binning the bells and whistles: is 2023 the year of people-first digital transformation?

There are some insights that can­not be dis­cov­ered by study­ing sales spread­sheets and con­sumer data. Sit­ting on the sofa of an elder­ly car­er, TPXimpact’s dig­i­tal trans­for­ma­tion team were get­ting famil­iar with how and when users logged on to the web­site of one of the UK’s lead­ing health sup­port char­i­ties.

The car­er revealed that, because of a depen­dent part­ner with con­stant care needs, they could only access the site to seek help late at night, sit­ting in the dark, so they didn’t wake their loved ones. This point was reaf­firmed by oth­er users, who often found ele­ments of the site dif­fi­cult to nav­i­gate quick­ly in the finite free time they had to gain advice.

While design­ers on the project were capa­ble of apply­ing video, ani­ma­tion and inter­ac­tive maps, this par­tic­u­lar project required a min­i­mal­ist, stream­lined approach. The cri­te­ria were sim­ple but crit­i­cal: the site must be easy to read and nav­i­gate, it mustn’t incor­po­rate large files that take time to load, and exten­sive ques­tion­naires were off the table.

In these sce­nar­ios, CMOs and CTOs must col­lab­o­rate with each oth­er and end users. Oth­er­wise, they risk cre­at­ing shiny dig­i­tal expo­si­tions that deliv­er on style but leave sub­stance want­i­ng — some­thing that is waste­ful and anti-val­ue dur­ing a cost-of-liv­ing cri­sis, says Rebec­ca Hull, man­ag­ing direc­tor of dig­i­tal expe­ri­ence at TPX­im­pact.

A sim­i­lar peo­ple-first approach bore fruit dur­ing a dig­i­tal trans­for­ma­tion project for a glob­al devel­op­ment char­i­ty, which was strug­gling to bring in dona­tions dur­ing the eco­nom­ic cri­sis, Hull explains. “We need­ed to under­stand why users didn’t donate more often. They said: you don’t ask us.” The site did ask, but the ‘donate’ but­ton was obscured by an image on the home page.

Dur­ing a Christ­mas peri­od where the choice between eat­ing and heat­ing became a stark real­i­ty for mil­lions of Britons, char­i­ties felt the squeeze at what is usu­al­ly a peak time for fundrais­ing. TPX­im­pact helped the char­i­ty increase their reg­u­lar givers and exceed their fundrais­ing tar­gets with a clear, cost-effec­tive strat­e­gy. The solu­tion was to make their dig­i­tal assets work as hard as pos­si­ble through incre­men­tal, rapid changes to com­bat the harsh eco­nom­ic down­turn.

“Not all clients have big bud­gets, yet a lot of our suc­cess hap­pens by mov­ing organ­i­sa­tions with lit­tle dig­i­tal matu­ri­ty onto the next stage through care­ful steps,” she says. “Very often, you can­not do that with a ‘big bang’ approach.”

Why reverse engineering works

For organ­i­sa­tions that serve var­ied user groups and attract mil­lions of online vis­i­tors each year, cre­at­ing clear web­site design is espe­cial­ly impor­tant.

Work­ing togeth­er on a dig­i­tal trans­for­ma­tion project, TPX­im­pact helped a major British film and tele­vi­sion organ­i­sa­tion dis­til its huge offer­ing into three dis­tinct user jour­neys: cin­e­ma fans eager to catch a show at the IMAX, film geeks keen to study the back cat­a­logue of their favourite film icons, and direc­tors fill­ing out fund­ing appli­ca­tions in the hopes of cre­at­ing the next Oscar win­ner.

They then worked to entire­ly re-con­fig­ure their web­site, declut­ter­ing con­tent to leave a sim­pler and clear­er inter­ac­tion.

But that’s not just good web­site design, says Jen Byrne, TPXimpact’s man­ag­ing direc­tor of con­sult­ing: “In order to cre­ate and enable new dig­i­tal user jour­neys, you don’t just reor­gan­ise a web­site; you start rewiring the whole organ­i­sa­tion. You re-nav­i­gate that whole process to align those key cus­tomer jour­neys and how ser­vices are offered.”

Suc­cess­ful dig­i­tal trans­for­ma­tion isn’t about dic­tat­ing to front-line staff or drag­ging users along with change. Win­ning strate­gies mean prop­er time spent talk­ing to and test­ing with users and under­stand­ing their pref­er­ences. It’s also vital to allow dig­i­tal staff to work along­side key work­ers. TPX­im­pact did just that when cre­at­ing new dig­i­tal visions for Essex Coun­ty Coun­cil and the UK government’s Depart­ment for Lev­el­ling Up, Hous­ing and Com­mu­ni­ties.

Crit­i­cal­ly, staff don’t want to know they are on a dig­i­tal matu­ri­ty jour­ney, and like­wise, busi­ness­es don’t want dig­i­tal trans­for­ma­tion teams to dis­ap­pear for six weeks and come back with a shiny new prod­uct and web­site, says Byrne.

“We believe in blend­ed teams. You’d walk into a gov­ern­ment build­ing and not know who was from TPX­im­pact and who were civ­il ser­vants.” She con­tin­ues: “Suc­cess­ful trans­for­ma­tion is about cul­ture shift such as revers­ing water­fall man­age­ment, where every­thing comes from the top and trick­les down. You have to observe, lis­ten and swap skills.”

Embracing AI-enabled transformations

TPXimpact’s man­ag­ing direc­tor of data and insights, Andy Ball, pre­vi­ous­ly worked along­side Rother­ham Unit­ed foot­ball club. He saw how shar­ing data seam­less­ly when trans­fer­ring tar­gets could help them punch above their finan­cial weight in a fierce­ly com­pet­i­tive Cham­pi­onship divi­sion.

“Often, peo­ple are very pro­tec­tive of the data and think if they share it, they might lose pow­er. But actu­al­ly, shar­ing data is the pow­er. You’re cre­at­ing a tru­ly trans­par­ent big­ger pic­ture. You only find suc­cess when you share that same vision, one that all depart­ments and users can buy into,” says Ball. Applied cor­rect­ly, trans­par­ent, all-access data can trans­form a pub­lic enti­ty, giv­ing it a refreshed social pur­pose in a chang­ing world.

When Durham Coun­ty Coun­cil want­ed to pro­vide access to resources from across the organ­i­sa­tion, includ­ing records from their library, his­toric pho­tographs and reg­istry data, Ball’s team placed algo­rithms over the top of the mate­ri­als to help organ­ise the large bank of con­tent, cap­tur­ing the rich­ness of the North­east past and present.

His­toric doc­u­ments could then be linked back to local records and notices, which could then be tied to future doc­u­ments. Using an advanced cat­a­logu­ing algo­rithm enabled the coun­cil to sur­face con­tent that was pre­vi­ous­ly hard to find and col­lect it in one place to cre­ate a more acces­si­ble and inter­ac­tive jour­ney of dis­cov­ery.

In this instance, AI and tech­nol­o­gy became a core com­po­nent of a service’s entire pur­pose. But there is no use apply­ing AI if you don’t have the report­ing sys­tems to man­age it, accord­ing to Ball. “Do you know where you are as a com­pa­ny at this place in time? How are staff per­form­ing, and who is able to use the new AI and who isn’t? With­out under­stand­ing the wider sys­tems in your com­pa­ny, tech­nol­o­gy will nev­er work suc­cess­ful­ly. When you can trust the data and the sys­tem, then you can start accel­er­at­ing,” he says.

Dur­ing eco­nom­ic change, both pub­lic and pri­vate sec­tors say users are at the heart of their dig­i­tal trans­for­ma­tions. Still, any changes must be reverse-engi­neered so the pub­lic stays with you. Hull con­cludes: “The whole world is speed­ing up, and the inter­net has ampli­fied this mas­sive­ly. Organ­i­sa­tions have realised that if they push as much online as pos­si­ble, it speeds things up — but can those who are not so dig­i­tal­ly lit­er­ate stay with you?”

For more infor­ma­tion, vis­it tpximpact.com