The word ‘digital’ has been a buzz word for the last decade or two, and whilst it is generally agreed that businesses need to embrace digital technology in some form, whether that’s using e-commerce and digital marketing, or utilising new technology for product development or manufacturing. However, many businesses don’t know how to go about this, which is where developing a digital strategy becomes important.

What is a digital strategy?
A digital strategy is a high level plan for how digital technology can be used to achieve the goals of an organisation or business, and the role of it is to establish which digital technologies or platforms can do this and how. Where the digital strategy fits in the planning process is shown in the map below.

Why is a digital strategy important?
Research has shown that companies using digital technology as a part of their business processes have 20-25% higher revenue than those with little use of digital technology. These companies will also likely experience an estimated 10% increase in productivity. Companies now face a digital imperative to adopt new technologies effectively or face competitive obsolescence.

For government or local government organisations the most important imperative is to improve service to the customer. Customers have expectations that they will be able to access information, pay bills, make bookings online 24/7. What’s more they will want to do this on any of their connected devices.

How should you create a digital strategy?
The steps below show the key steps to creating a digital strategy implementing it and measuring the results.

Digital review
The review phase should take into account the internal stakeholder review and also most importantly the customer insights. It is also important to consider the marketplace and competition and the technology available at the present time.

Digital strategy
The digital strategy needs a vision of what the organisation is to look like from a digital perspective. It should identify the key outcomes and objectives.

Digital plan
The digital plan is the roadmap of how to achieve the digital strategy. It should clearly identify the steps needed, the projects required, the resources and the costs.

Measure results
This step is the review of the results from the implementation of the plan. Measurement of the outcomes against the objectives is best done using a scorecard approach.

Summary
The digital strategy is a necessary component to every organisation in today’s on-line world. It should be an integral component of the organisation strategy. It should be clear, specific and easy to understand for all the stakeholders (internal and external). It should also be a concise document of 10-20 pages at most.