The customer had local presence in five region-based segments that each managed their own digital development of customer-facing services. There were little or no cooperation or synergy between the segments. They also had a centralized IT function, Group IT, and an initiative to centralize digital development capability to that function had previously been made, but it has not been successful. The local segments were eager on increase digital presence and use digital channels more to increase profits, but lacked resources and competences and was therefore highly dependent on suppliers.
The challenge was based on local market knowledge to build the capacity of digital presence while gaining scale, governance and digital platform benefits from common solutions. The central digital capacity was built in AWS to encompass a centralized perspective, so it had to be re-architected to fit the needs of the segment structure. Some parts of the local organizations had begun to build solutions in Azure due to lack of strategic principles and guidelines. Previous common initiative had not met expectations from the local organizations, so there were trust issues to manage going forward.
Influence Tech, together with another Newground Alliance company, did a 4-stage project for 10 weeks. To simplify and provide clear understanding, an airport analogy was used where the local segmented organizations were depicted as the airlines, and central Group IT as the airport. This enabled Influence Tech to discuss the balance between central and local in a better way. During the discovery and assessment stage, a series of workshops and interviews with stakeholders from all over the organization were held to understand and verify the current situation.
The outcome of the project was 5 prioritized recommendations; the need to establish a shared digital direction for its digital presence, create a master data strategy, establish architecture governance that provides guidance and enables local decisions to be made more quickly, develop a cloud strategy, and start sharing experience through communities of practices. To execute on these initiatives, Influence Tech advised that the customer should create cross-functional teams to bring individuals with different areas of expertise together and work towards a common goal. These recommendation was well received by the customer and incorporated in their future digital strategy.
