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A case for 'strategy' in Digital Strategy...

I recently finished a book named 'Digital Strategy' by Alexander Rauser. Alexander has given current day problems during any Digital transformation and pragmatic solutions for that. Having worked in the IT industry for 17 years and last 10 years mostly into Digital Transformations for most of the fortune 500 companies, it was quite relevant to me. If you are also part of any digital transformation of any organization in any capacity, you will find it helpful too.

Over the last decade, companies have thought of digital strategy as a means to market new technology or recognize upcoming trends. However, today few of those companies do realize that Digital Strategy is all about continuously improving your business to stay ahead in the curve, but some are still stuck in the old mindset. It's surprising to see  'Strategy' is missing from the Digital Strategy for many of the transformations happening, rather the focus is just on 'Marketing' (Digital Marketing) and Implementation. The situation is even worse for non-IT and small size organization, who wants to go Digital.

According to the author, "Digital strategy refers to the strategy a company would apply to all of its digital initiatives. This includes the entire process: collecting all required information, planning, identifying risks and opportunities, maintaining your digital strategy, and creating sub-strategies such as your digital-marketing strategy".

A few of my friends wanted me to start putting my perspective on best practices and tools since I have been part of multiple successful Digital Transformations for some of the larger, medium and smaller companies. I know it’s a big topic, hence wanted to limit myself to just one but most critical aspect of the Digital Strategy in this article - UX
Let me first clarify that I am a Solution Expert in Adobe's Cloud Marketing and not a UX or even UI expert, hence you can expect a 'laymanish' & unbiased view from me. But then while leading digital transformations for multiple Fortune 500 customers in Telecom, Aviation and other domains, I do understand the importance of the right UI and UX. What I found in my experience is that UX strategy is the differentiator between successful and not successful Digital transformations across the globe.

Have seen it multiple times that content management tools like AEM, Tridion, Drupal and others, are sometimes mistaken by customers as a UX & UI tool as well. I know it sounds silly, but have seen happening this multiple times during audits of broken systems. WCM is not a UX or UI tool, it just helps you implement the UX and allows your authors to change the content dynamically, thus reducing 'go to market', that's it :)

On the other hand, stakeholder expectations were largely met when there was a comprehensive UX strategy (and then, of course, the right UI). One of the major benefits with that is that it does not allow you, your team, or third parties to improve systems based on sheer assumptions. The whole idea of UX and usability studies is to remove assumptions from our actions. Instead of trying to think hard and analyze what users potentially want, a good UX process focuses on collecting feedback and data from real-world users.

The takeaway that I see is that you should not enter into the implementation phase unless your UX and then even UI strategy is finalized and approved by all stakeholders. You should be able to play things around on UI prototypes and get feedback from your cross-section audience across channels and devices as if it's already implemented. And once it's completely aligned, it should be provided as an input to the implementation team with clear guidelines (diagram above shows the workflow between Ux to UI to Development)  Trust me, this approach reduces cost and effort considerably and most importantly you don't get to see many surprises.

There are so many things to talk about on it, but don't want to make this article unreadable hence will stop here. Do let me know if you want me to write on any particular aspect of Digital Strategy, UI, UX, WCM or anything else in Digital Marketing.

Hope that's helpful.

Thank you!

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