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• How have similar organisations in your industry and your main competitors responded?


• Who is ‘leading digital’ in your industry? Who are the exemplars of ‘best practice’?


AUDIT EXISTING PROGRESS Audit the digital progress you have already made.


What gap exists between where you are and where you should be? What gap exists between where you are and ‘best practice’ exemplars in your industry?


Your digital audit should cover three broad areas:


1. ‘External Digital’ – what progress has your business made in using digital to support sales, marketing, PR, customer engagement and customer service? What improvements can be made in these areas?


2. ‘Internal Digital’ – what progress has been made in using digital technology to deliver operational costs savings through becoming more efficient, building an agile, fast moving, flexible organisation ‘fit for purpose’ in a digital era? Where are the areas for improvement?


3. ‘Business Model’ – to what extent do you need to adapt your underlying business model to take account of emerging digital opportunities and threats?


Answering these questions will provide a solid foundation for future digital strategy development.


DEVELOP A DIGITAL VISION


AND STRATEGY Building on the digital landscape analysis and audit of existing progress, a clear digital vision and strategy should then be agreed by your senior executive team. This will ensure that a ‘business first’ rather than technology- driven approach is adopted. The digital vision and strategy will guide the direction you need to take, ensuring that all future digital actions and initiatives are fully aligned with and supportive of agreed business goals and objectives; that KPIs are agreed for monitoring and evaluating digital


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performance, business impact and return on investment.


Having a clear vision and strategy will also help to prioritise competing digital initiatives based on the potential business impact of each initiative, leading to a more efficient and effective allocation of resources.


The following questions should be addressed at this stage:


• What is the overall digital business vision for your organisation?


• Is this fully aligned with and supportive of agreed business goals and objectives?


• What are the key business objectives to be achieved?


• What KPIs will be used to monitor and evaluate digital performance and business impact?


• What targets do we have for each KPI?


• Who are the key stakeholders for your digital business strategy – customers, staff, business partners, etc?


AGREE DIGITAL


ACTIONS AND INITIATIVES What are the key digital actions and initiatives you need to implement to achieve the business objectives agreed above?


Externally, this could include redevelopment of your web site; leveraging the full potential of social media; implementing an inbound/ content marketing strategy; use of digital channels for customer engagement and customer service; deriving actionable customer insight from social media listening; implementing a Social CRM system and so on.


Internally, key actions and initiatives could include digitising/streamlining key business processes; better use of data analytics to improve business performance; reducing the email overload problem by using enterprise social and collaborative tools; automation; possible use of 3D printing (additive manufacturing); Internet of Things; reducing IT costs through moving to the Cloud and so on.


From a resource allocation point of view, it is important to prioritise these


competing initiatives based on their relative contribution to achieving agreed business goals and objectives.


PLAN FOR IMPLEMENTATION Digital transformation is not a ‘technology thing’. For most organisations, it will represent a massive change in the ‘way things are done around here’. Many barriers and obstacles stand in the way – resistance to change, getting people on board, fear, lack of awareness and understanding, organisational inertia, people and resource barriers.


A well planned approach to implementation is required to overcome these barriers. This needs to be both ‘top down’ and ‘bottom up’. Winning the support and commitment of all staff is critical to successful digital transformation. The role of the digital leader is critical in this respect.


For many commercial cleaning and other businesses, a new breed of senior executive will be required to drive transformative change – ‘Digital Leaders’. Senior executives who can combine high level business knowledge, experience and understanding with the ability to develop digital transformation strategies fully aligned with and supportive of agreed business goals and objectives. Businesses will require leaders with the confidence and personal skills to drive disruptive organisational and operational change.


Digital transformation requires a strong vision agreed at the very top of an organisation. It is a legitimate question to ask whether we have a sufficient supply of digital leaders in commercial cleaning. What level of technology and digital experience does your existing senior management team have? How many digital leaders currently sit in your boardroom? Does your workforce have the digital skills to support and accept radical digital change?


Finally, it is important to put in place an agreed framework for measuring digital performance, business impact and ROI. In the final article in this series, we take a brief look into the future of commercial cleaning in a digital age.


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Tomorrow’s Cleaning | 25


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