During a recent roundtable dinner hosted by The Barton Partnership, Digital leaders from across the Financial Services industry were invited to discuss the challenges and success factors for reaching digital transformation maturity.
Based on key themes proposed by the participants, we set out to explore the importance of digital leadership, talent strategies, organisational design and the importance of unlocking the value in data. This is a short summary of some of the insights drawn from the conversation. Download to access the full insight.
Digital: “it’s just what we do now”
Organisations aspiring to digital transformation maturity may need to recognise there is no defined end point to this ‘state’. However, whether a traditional or challenger brand, ‘digital’ must be embraced as a fully integrated capability and vice versa, to avoid functional silos and disparate and disconnected processes.
We are all “the Business”
Organisational design and culture are fundamental to driving digital maturity through more collaborative ways of working and focusing on empowering cross-functional teams with a clear and product purpose where data driven insights are key.
Where and when to invest: legacy replacement v digital advancement
Legacy and scaling agile are conflicting forces creating challenges for traditional and challenger brands alike, but clarity of purpose and avoiding undertaking anything too big over too long a period is probably good advice once the current run of ‘big’ platform replacement initiatives has run its course.
Unlocking the power of data
To unlock the power of data, it seems, ‘the grass is greener on the other side’ where traditional incumbents envy the agility of new entrants and new entrants envy the wealth of data owned by the incumbents. So advice suggests to ‘just get started’, if you haven’t done so before now, looking first to what you already have in place and then growing your own capability to suit your particular needs over time, supplemented in the short term through external data service providers to provide insight and strategic advice in which direction to aim
Talent as a winning strategy
Disrupting recruitment practices and taking a multi-channel talent development approach, as well as working further up the talent-building value chain are necessary steps to building capability over time. Partnering with specialist talent providers to access a wider pool of digital leadership talent will plug the capability gap in the meantime and keep things refreshed in the meantime.
