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Introduction to the 4 Pillars of Digital Transformation

Written by Frank Quintana on November 15, 2023. Posted in Articles.

In the wake of World War I, French Premier Georges Clemenceau advised the French people that “War is too important to be left to the generals”. Paraphrasing his words I would say that “Digital Transformation is too important to be left to the marketing and sales departments”- Why? Because they are infatuated with the client and it is right because it is their main objective and priorities.

While the customer is very important, I will say paramount, I believe the causes of so many pitfalls and failures in the implementation of DT (Digital Transformation) are the obsession of marketing and salespeople on the customer the hyper concentration in the customers disregarding what I believe are the foundation of DT: The Four Pillars of Digital Transformation.

Even before any consideration of the digital part (Software and Hardware) of the DT equation we need to take care of what I call the 4 pillars of Digital Transformation.

Culture
Process and Policies
Data
Security

They exist in a hierarchical cycle so while some overlapping is possible, the same that when you wear your shoes, you first need to put your socks on. In the four pillars, Culture comes first, then Processes, Data and Security.

Following the diagram of The Four Pillars of Digital Transformation:

For marketing and sales, a customer is an external agent, a person that buys the company’s goods (products and services) for the DT practitioner. The concepts should be broader, instead of customer we should think about USERS.

Please, do not read me wrong. The Sales and Marketing people are paramount for the success of your DT but are not the only ones, in my humble opinion. DT is a matter of life and death for your company and if the CEO and all the C-Level are not deeply involved in the DT projects the probability of success is null, zero, nada.

I am using data as a general term because what we call data is often confused with Information and Knowledge, other two important blocks of the ILC, as I explained in my article “Do we know what are Data, Information and Knowledge?” on this website.

In my other model, “The Intelligence Life Cycle” which I used to discover the AI limitations, I explained what Data, Information and Knowledge really are and created a model of the intelligence Life Cycle based on 4 axioms or postulates in the style of the ancient Greek mathematician Euclid’s. I am going to present the ILC and the Limitations of AI at the PMBA Conference in Orlando next year.

Data is not the New Oil as the hyper propaganda instigated by the media and some data scientists in search of fame, support and money claim, and as you can see from the above diagram, occupied a 3rd position in importance.

You can get more details by watching my 4 Pillars of the Digital Transformation at the Virtual BA and PM conference in Dec this year.

Do we understand what Data, Information, and Knowledge are?

Written by Frank Quintana on November 8, 2023. Posted in Articles.

“Data is everywhere, but it requires CONTEXT and accessibility to be useful…”

This compelling statement by Symphony Logic immediately caught my attention. It resonates with my model of “The Intelligence Life Cycle,” whose first axiom, or postulate, is “Data is measured in context”—a notion that I expanded upon with my second axiom, “Information is organized data with a purpose.”

At first glance, it might seem trivial, but currently, there’s significant confusion in the semantics, ontology, and taxonomy of the three terms that form the building blocks of Intelligence.

Data, Information, and Knowledge are often used interchangeably as though they are synonymous, but they’re not. This confusion compromises the quality and analysis of our data.

The Delphi study titled “Knowledge Map of Information Science,” conducted between 2003 and 2005 sought to explore the foundational elements of Information Science. 130 definitions of data, information, and knowledge are documented in this study. The international panel consisted of 57 leading scholars from 16 countries, representing (almost) all the major subfields and essential aspects of the field.

Working with 130 different definitions for terms as vital as DATA, INFORMATION, and KNOWLEDGE seems excessive, and rather than providing clarity, it obscures and leads to confusion.

Therefore, I took it upon myself to find or create simple yet accurate definitions for these pivotal terms using an axiomatic approach, similar to the one used by Euclid in his fundamentals of Geometry.

Axiom 1: Data are measured in context.

Axiom 2: Information is organized data with a purpose.

Axiom 3: Knowledge is the discovery of patterns and their relationships.

Axiom 4: Wisdom is the effective use of knowledge. As Professor Drucker put it, effectiveness is doing the right thing, as opposed to efficiency, which is doing things right.

Fortunately, I did not need to introduce a fifth axiom.

I applied these axioms to develop a model that I call The Intelligence Life Cycle, which has helped me identify the limitations of AI and numerous pitfalls in Big Data models and architectures. I presented my theory about the ILC in July 2023 at Nova Southeastern University in South Florida during a presentation titled “The Intelligence Life Cycle and the Limitations of AI” at the SQL Saturday event.

More recently, I also spoke at USF during DevFest to a select audience about the ILC and the Limitations of AI, and I introduced my other model, “The 4 Pillars of Digital Transformation.” Here, I argued that Data is not the new oil nor the first block of importance; instead, it is a third-level block in a hierarchy of importance, preceded by the Cultural and Procedures and Policies Pillars.

You can learn more about The Intelligence Life Cycle and Limitations of AI in my LinkedIn article.

Efficiency and Excellence: The Strategic Advantages of Outsourcing in Web Design and Recruitment

Written by Aleksandr Shulgin on November 1, 2023. Posted in Articles.

These days the convergence of web design prowess and strategic recruitment methodologies assumes paramount significance. Nowadays, it is of utmost importance that strategic recruitment tactics and design expertise are combined. Understanding outsourcing’s varied applications in the fields of design and recruitment is essential in the current outsourcing structure. In order to highlight its strategic importance, this article provides an in-depth review of outsource web design services.

The Significance of Design

A strong digital presence has undeniable relevance in the present company environment. The mindful art of web design has an unbreakable connection to this significance. Such design arranges user engagement, smooth interaction, and the aligning of brand identity without relying solely on surface aesthetics. The design emerges as a crucial tool for capturing and turning transitory digital fingerprints into permanent support in a time when attention spans are known to be short.

Pursuing the Pathway to Design Proficiency

It takes a combination of technical skills, artistic expertise, and programming knowledge to become an expert designer. Prospective designers would be well advised to set out on a planned route that includes the following checkpoints:

Foundational mastery. Achieving expertise in HTML, CSS, and JavaScript — the key web development languages.

Artistic insight. Immersion in color theory, typographical principles, and layout design strategies.

UI/UX proficiency. Gaining knowledge of user interface and user experience concepts to create interfaces with an intuitive design.

Tool competence. Familiarization with industry-standard design tools, including Adobe XD, Figma, and Sketch.

Curation of portfolio. Assembling a strong portfolio with a variety of projects to demonstrate one’s creative ability and technical skill.

The Multifaceted Role of a Designer: Confluence of Creativity and Code

A designer’s job goes beyond simple aesthetics in the complex world of digital architecture. It’s a harmonious combination of technical proficiency and creative ingenuity that creates engaging online experiences. The various responsibilities that make up this diverse position are similar to the expertly intertwined tapestry-like threads that produce a work of art that is both useful and beautiful.

A skill set serves as both a palette of creative inspiration and a toolbox of expertise within this mosaic of duties. In this case, the combination of creativity and coding produces an interactive ecosystem that appeals to end consumers and captures the spirit of a brand.

Each aspect of this position works together to provide a smooth user experience. Every pixel and interaction on a website, from the first glance at the layout to the finer points of color psychology, bear the imprint of a designer’s choices.

Indispensable Competencies for Web Designers: Synthesis of Skills

Source: Eftakher Alam. Unsplash

The focus is on the dynamic blending of creative originality and technical accuracy. The precise coordination of talents that effortlessly combine into an exclusive and broad skill set is necessary for the profession of creating compelling digital landscapes. These skills act as the foundation upon which the digital world is built, shaping it into an interesting, understandable, and visually appealing space.

The capability to transcend conventional design paradigms.
A commitment to intricacy akin to micro-architecture.
Proficiency in navigating the ever-evolving currents of design trends.
Effective communication. The ability to interpret client aspirations and articulate design concepts.
Problem-solving proficiency. Agility in addressing intricate coding conundrums.

Deciphering Distinctions between Designs

The basis on which digital experiences are built is the interaction of UI/UX design, web design, and graphic design. Exploring these fields’ intricacies reveals a rich mosaic of originality, usability, and visual communication.

Decoding the Dynamics of Outsourcing

When used in the field of web design, outsourcing—a paradigm inherently linked to maximizing operational efficacy—evolves into a strategic concept. Scalability, increased effectiveness, and the enlargement of creative views all highlight this shift. Outsourcing becomes a virtual hub of specialized knowledge, enabling the acquisition of unrivaled design quality that is not restricted by physical boundaries.

Strategic Vistas for Design Outsourcing

Outsourcing web design offers a range of strategic benefits that go beyond the typical cost-efficiency boundaries and drive firms toward increased efficiency, amplified creativity, and the freedom from geographical limitations. The review of outsourcing reveals an expansive field of possibilities where the lines of strategy meet the blank slate of design.

Incubation of startups. Fueling nascent ventures with superlative designs devoid of exorbitant expenditures.
Surge management. Mitigating design inundations, ensuring project continuity and client contentment.
Cultural infusion. Infusing designs with cross-cultural nuances to enhance global resonance.
Project-based endeavors. Streamlining one-off projects with specialized design interventions.
Strategic focus enhancement. Delegating design responsibilities to concentrate on core business competencies.

Navigating the Landscape of an Outsourced Web Designer

Outsourced designers now serve as virtual partners and channels for digital manifestations, transcending the limitations of geography. The following is the course of the collaborative work: project briefing as the starting point, then prototypes and wireframes created by the designer. The realization of a design corpus, symbolic of a harmonious combination of vision and competence, results from the iterative feedback loop that follows.

Gazing Ahead

In the midst of technology’s unrelenting advance, web design’s direction is ready to change. The position of the designer changes into that of an experienced architect with the integration of AI-driven design tools and immersive technologies like AR and VR. Websites will evolve from being simple digital pages into immersive spaces that blur the line between the physical and digital worlds.

Conclusion

Outsourcing has a lasting reputation as a source of innovation and efficiency in modern digital business. The profession of web design propels businesses toward virtual prominence through the fusion of technical skill and artistic talent. The client and outsourced designer’s cooperation takes the form of a dynamic tapestry of ideation, execution, and realization. The possibilities of design and recruiting outsourcing beckon. Here is a field where strategy and creativity come together to create a work of digital triumph.

Have You Considered “Customer Information Needs” In Your Process?

Written by Adrian Reed on October 26, 2023. Posted in Articles.

A while ago, I was sitting in an airport where all flights were delayed due to weather. As is quite often the case in situations like this, staff at the gate initially don’t have a great deal of information available to them. In my experience, airport staff will do everything they can to keep customers updated, but sometimes they seem to know little more than the passengers (and are probably every bit as eager to know what is going on!).

What has changed in the last ten or so years is that getting information from outside sources is a lot easier. While some people were lining up to speak to the gate staff, others were accessing apps to try to piece together what was going on. For example:

Using a flight tracking app, I could see planes that were previously in a ‘holding pattern’ above had now changed direction (very likely they were diverting to other airports)
Looking at other airports’ websites, I could see flights destined for this location due to leave hours ago had not left (presumably as the weather had been forecast). I concluded this might cause a problem, as even if the weather clears, the aircraft and staff won’t be here to conduct the onward/return flights (and even if they are, perhaps the flight crew might have exceeded the number of hours they are allowed to work without a break)
Looking out of the window, I could see that the weather appeared to be getting worse, not better…
When I accessed a hotel booking app, I could see hotels in the area starting to sell out of rooms. I started to worry that if the flight was canceled, there wouldn’t be anywhere to stay

The airport and gate staff were incredibly helpful, to the extent that they could be, but the only information they could really give is “flight delayed: next update in an hour”. The irony was that a consumer had access to more information via free smartphone apps than the airport representative was able to share.

I made a decision to stick with it, but assumed that I probably wasn’t going anywhere that day. My prediction came true, and after a mad scramble I thankfully did get a hotel room for the night and flew late the next afternoon.

Customers Need Information

It will come as no surprise that for customers to have a good experience of a service, they need accurate information at key times. If you’ve ever flown on an airplane, you’ve probably found most airports are pretty efficient at managing routine information flow. There might be hundreds of other flights leaving on the same day, but it’s usually pretty easy to know what terminal and gate you’re leaving from. Airports are usually also pretty good at getting people to the gate on time (even if they occasionally pretend they are ‘boarding’ long before the plane is actually boarding in order to get people moving…). Issues sometimes occur when things aren’t going as planned. This is where you have to rely on someone announcing something over a loudspeaker system, often in a noisy airport, where everyone is desperately trying to work out what is going on…

What is perhaps less obvious is that someone has designed how and when information flows to the customer. The “happy path” (where things go well) is a well-trodden and well-designed path. Perhaps some other exceptional paths are less well-designed, meaning customers are less likely to get the prompt information that they need.

Consider Information Needs

This is an area where BAs can add significant value. Quite often, the focus will be on designing a customer journey or set of business processes. That is a perfectly good approach, but at each step in a journey or process it is worth asking “what information might the customer need here” and “how can we deliver it to them?” This applies as much to the exception flows as the main “happy path”. Often exceptions are where those “moments of truth” happen where a customer really relies on good service.

Not only this, but if a customer’s information needs are preempted, this will likely prevent queries. Imagine an announcement at an airport:

“This is an announcement for people on flight BMXXXX to Southampton. All flights are currently grounded due to weather conditions, and all incoming flights are being diverted. We currently hope to run the flights, but right now we can’t be sure. We will be updating you every hour, and a final decision will be made at 9pm. If we don’t fly today, you’ll get a free place on a flight tomorrow, which will be automatically allocated (you won’t need to take any action, you’ll get it via email). If you’d prefer to voluntarily change your flight, come and see us and we’ll explain how to do this, but please do be aware a fee may apply if you opt to change before the flight is canceled”.

This isn’t perfect but it would help a passenger make a decision. It has preempted the decision they might want to make and has provided them some context.

Of course, you probably don’t work in an airport, but you almost certainly work to define and design processes that are used by people. By considering what information those people want and need during the process, in both the “happy path” and in exceptional circumstances, we can enhance the experience. And surely that is worth doing!

The Unique Competing Space: A Framework for Evaluating the Competitive Landscape and Strategic Options

Written by Oluwakorede Asuni on October 25, 2023. Posted in Articles.

The Unique Competing Space (UCS) is a macro-level strategy visualisation framework, which enables teams to understand the broader scope of customer needs, evaluate how well their offerings are meeting customer needs, and evaluate how well their competition is also meeting the needs.

The UCS can easily be one of the tools in a firm or team’s arsenal for probing and situating “…the firm’s strategic position in its greater competitive context”^[1].

First introduced by George Tovstiga in their book Strategy in Practice: A Practitioner’s Guide to Strategic Thinking. The framework is often presented as a venn diagram consisting of three overlapping individual circles that overlap to provide a view of the firm or team’s competitive space unique to them, the opportunities open to them and the challenges on offer by the competition(s).

First each circle.

Figure: Components of the UCS framework

Customer needs:

Customers are the reasons any business is in business. They are the stakeholders whom businesses seek to serve and create value for. It is in meeting their stated, or, observed, or perceived needs that businesses indeed create value for these stakeholders, who in turn pay for the goods and or services the business has provided them. When or if satisfied, these stakeholders return to make repeat purchases as their needs may dictate and the business’ bouquet of unique offerings, prices, and customer experience may afford.

The firm’s offerings:

These are individual or collective products or services or both, that a business offers to its customers as a way of meeting the customers’ needs.

These offerings are often dictated by the alignment of the firm’s capabilities, enabling regulatory, social and cultural environments, and noted customer needs.

The competition’s offering:

Rarely is it the case that there isn’t an alternative or substitute product or service that can meet a customer’s needs other than the one offered by any one firm. This collection of offerings from one or more competing entities servicing the same market or market vertical or segment combines to make up the competitors’ offerings.

And now to the Unique Competing Space:

Figure2: The UCS framework

The UCS emerges when the customer needs overlap with the firm’s offering and, the competition’s offerings where those exist, are accounted for.

The portion of the Venn diagram where the customers’ needs uniquely overlap with the firm’s offerings is the firm’s UCS.

A firm’s strategic objective could be:

to defend that space from shrinking – if it is large enough or
to grow that space if isn’t large enough and there are potential benefits to the firm for growing the UCS or
To exit the UCS completely if it is shrinking and there isn’t any value to the business for defending or growing the space.

Using the UCS:

Figure 3: The UCS framework with conceptual labels

To use the UCS, it may be best for teams to gather around a large whiteboard with sticky notes (or an electronic equivalent – think Miro, Mural etc.) and then create the Venn diagram representation of the customers’ needs, the firm’s offerings or capabilities and the competition’s offerings.

On the sticky notes write down:

All known customer needs that both the firm and their competitors are not currently meeting: place these on the part of the Customer needs component of the UCS that isn’t overlapping with the firm’s offering or the competitor’s offerings. This portion of Figure 3 is labelled C1.
All known customer needs that the firm is currently meeting: place these on the overlapping section of Customer needs and Firm offering components of the UCS labelled C3 in Figure 3.
All known customer needs that the firm is currently addressing and that also have alternative or substitute offerings from competitors: place these on the overlapping section of Customer needs, the Firm’s offerings and Competitor offerings components of the UCS labelled C5 in Figure 3.
All known customer needs that are not being met by the firm, but are being met by the competition: place these on the overlapping section of Customer needs and Competitor offerings components of the UCS – labelled C2 in Figure 3.
All firm’s offerings (and available capabilities) that may or may not overlap with those of the competitor but which are not currently being utilised to meet customer needs: and place these on the non-overlapping section of the Firm’s offerings component of the UCS – labelled A2 in figure 3.
All of the known offerings from competitors which isn’t currently offered by the firm or meeting any known customer needs: place this in the non-overlapping portion of the Competitor’s offering component of the UCS, labelled A2 in Figure 3.
All known competitor offerings which are also offered by the firm, but meet no known need of the customers: place this in the portion of the UCS framework labelled A1, where the Competitor’s offering overlaps the firm’s offering but both are not known to be meeting any known customer needs.

What to do with the information:

In general, the UCS helps the firm see the size of their UCS relative to that of the competition(s), and can provide clear inputs into the strategic choices the firm makes.

In some cases, these options include but are not limited to:

Defend the UCS
Customers often end up churning for one reason or the other, and the goal of every business should be to retain customers for as long as they can manage and also attract new customers. When customers churn, it could only mean that the UCS shrinks one churned customer after the other, with the implication, if unarrested, of a negative impact on a business’ bottom line.So how does a firm keep customers? Listen to customers.
Observe what they love most about your products and your competition’s offerings. Ask what can come along and replace your firm’s offerings in your customer’s mind (clue – look at those things already replacing your firm’s offerings).Lock customers in (though customers protest malicious lock-ins, however, you are better off locking customers in by ensuring your offering is the most delightful to the customer). Apple had no business making watches, right? But it risks losing some iPhone users to Android OEMs who have leapfrogged the smartwatch economy and were building ecosystems between their watches and mobile devices. By introducing the Apple Watch, Apple figured out a way to lock customers into their ecosystem, whilst selling more to the same customers (people buy a phone once every two years on the average, and Apple figured out to sell to the same customers a second device which relies on the first one within the same or adjacent sales circle – both defending and growing their UCS in one fell swoop.
Grow the firm’s UCS
Growing the UCS could require selling more to the same customers, selling to more customers or both. Additionally, it could also imply meeting customers needs that were not previously a focus for the firm but that has a great potential for cementing the existing relationship between your firm and customers. You may recall that during COVID, UberEats which was a predominantly food delivery business expanded to also deliver medicines and small packages – both of which have now become additional sources of income for UBER and in a way, has expanded the UCS for Uber.

Closing notes

Whilst most strategy teams and firms understand that having a current bird’s eye view of the competitive landscape in which they compete, the UCS may be one easy-to-use framework for doing so and carrying all stakeholders within the business along for the ride.

^[1] Chapter 5 Strategic Analysis II: High-Level Sense Making: https://www.oreilly.com/library/view/strategy-in-practice/9781118519271/chapter05.html (accessed: 18/09/2023)