Eye on TechEye TECH & CULTURE CHANGE –A WINNING COMBINATION

But if cultural and technical change are given equal weight and both align with organisational strategy, business change initiatives can boost company revenues by up to 44% in a year. These are the key findings of a survey conducted among 301 UK IT and security professionals by telecommunications provider Telstra.

Diana Kearns-Manolatos, global head of digital transformation research for management consultancy Deloitte’s Centre for Integrated Research, agrees. She defines digital transformation as being “the ability to use technology to continuously evolve and reinvent the enterprise”.

But to “maximise value creation” here, she says, it is vital to strike the “right balance across business strategy, technology enablement and cultural change”.

Kearns-Manolatos describes them as being the “three important pillars” underpinning success.

Rob Robinson, head of tech services provider Telstra Purple, puts it more bluntly. In his view, any failure to achieve “full alignment from a cultural and technology perspective” will inevitably result in “diminished returns on investment and to existing processes”. This means “it’s critical they’re aligned”, he says.

On the other hand, more than threequarters (77%) of survey respondents also believe that tech has a vital role to play in reinforcing or transforming (82%) company culture. Other key transformation drivers in this context include training (29%), staff resourcing (27%) and fostering collaboration (26%).

Case study: Marks & Spencer

Employee upskilling and the creation of a wider digital culture have been key elements of Marks & Spencer’s bid to become the industry’s most data-driven retailer.

The shift started in 2019, when Jeremy Pee, newly hired chief digital and data (now digital and technology) officer, launched his ‘Beam’ strategy to help the company “become data-driven and digitally led”, as head of enterprise data, Suzanne Howse puts it.

This strategy consisted of three parts, all of which were given equal weighting. The first consisted of putting the right technology in place to enable users to access the information they needed.

This involved implementing the Databricks data warehouse and business intelligence tools running on Microsoft’s Azure cloud platform.

The second component involved ensuring employees at all levels of the organisation had the skills to work effectively with data in an increasingly digital world. The third, says Howse, was to: “Deliver value through data to get our leaders excited about how they could use it to solve problems and help the business.”

As part of the move, a centralised data science team was also set up to concentrate on two key areas: customer and enterprise data. The former, which is currently the most mature, focuses on the firm’s Sparks loyalty programme, personalised marketing activities and the digital customer journey.

“The more people shop, the more data we get, so it’s a huge benefit to the business as we can use it to add value and solve particular problems,” says Howse.

The importance of culture and mindset

In 2020, meanwhile, the team also launched its BEAM Academy to upskill the wider workforce in all things data and digital. As a result, tailored training was provided for three key groups of learners:

•Practitioners, which include data scientists, analysts and engineers. The focus here is on the skills and technology required to drive a data culture;

•Leaders, to provide them with the support they need to lead teams in a data-driven way;

•Support centre and in-store staff. A three-hour Digital Essential Skills Training course based on future.now content was rolled out for support centre workers in early January. A two-hour version for in-store staff will follow in April. One of the aims is to help them understand the company’s digital strategy, the business benefits of its Sparks programme and what their role in it is.

“A big part of this is about mindset and culture,” says Howse. “Although we do technical skills development, a lot of it is about people learning to think and behave differently – it’s been a big focus.”