Digitally-focused firms that pivot to address their talent deficiencies will be better positioned to meet customer needs, drive employee engagement and advocacy, and maintain customer loyalty.

Activity is not Progress or a Program – Make it Measurable

Many firms need to take an honest look in the mirror and recognize that activity in a particular direction does not equate to a process or results. Incorporating a focus on digital talent development in the corporate strategy and having a digital leader at the executive table are imperative to success.

For areas like social and data/analytics, one only has to look at the lethargy in firm’s ability to address the quickening pace of customer experience change that has occurred from the web to mobile to see how important action is. Formalizing programs and measurement systems that are owned internally and led by a member of the leadership team is the right direction to follow.

Social Business and Digital Strategy

• Digital strategy is the process of specifying an organization's vision, goals, opportunities and related activities in order to maximize the business benefits of digital initiatives to the organization. (Wikipedia)

• Social business strategy is the development and deployment of modern strategic plans for social media by an enterprise.

In simplest terms, the social media strategy is a sub-component of the digital strategy. The ability of social media to impact the management of customer-facing information technology initiatives – digital initiatives – is vast and inextricably linked.

There are numerous approaches to conducting digital strategy, but at their core, all go through four steps:

1. Identifying the opportunities and/or challenges in a business where online assets can provide a solution;

2. Identifying the unmet needs and goals of the external stakeholders that most closely align with those key business opportunities and/or challenges;

3. Developing a vision around how the online assets will fulfill those business and external stakeholder needs, goals, opportunities and challenges, and

4. Prioritizing a set of online initiatives that can deliver on this vision.

Firms should incorporate social media in this process to ensure that the blueprint for managing customer-facing initiatives achieves maximum effectiveness and impact. Social media and business practices by their nature, enable great audience reach and brand awareness.

Take Aways

• Invest in talent and training to improve the social media, mobile and data/analytics skill sets of your employees.

• Leverage experts to accelerate the organizational progress, but own social business and the digital direction internally.

• Incorporate social business in the digital strategy and planning process.