87% of executives believe digital technologies will disrupt their industry.
Only 44% feel adequately prepared for this disruption.
ARTiCA helps you build a plan for digital success
and supports you in confidently executing it.
You have or build a website or an app and customers will come, right? If only it were so easy. Sure, technology plays a central role in digital business (after all, digital is in the name), but there are many other factors at play. More likely, your digital business is costing you more than is it bringing in and meanwhile the big players like Amazon are capturing more and more of the market.
You’ve heard all the buzzwords that are supposed to get you ahead: Artificial Intelligence (AI), blockchain, big data, disruption, customer centricity, war on talent, sustainability... It can be overwhelming to keep track and to discern what will really impact your business and how it will do so. That also makes it difficult to know what you need and what you should do first.
The best approach is tailored to your specific challenge. ARTiCA can take the best practices from the field and fit them to your organization and situation.
Through 20 years of experience, we’ve refined our 5-step approach, that gives you a structured foundation to create and execute your digital plan, while incorporating and building on your own strengths and heritage as an organization.
No matter where you are in your journey, ARTiCA can help you take the next step.
The territory you are in, determines the paths you can take. Can you go fast? Are there a lot of obstacles? Are you one of the first to set foot into the territory?
With so many factors impacting your potential journey, we prefer to start by drawing a map of the market. We do this in 3 steps:
By combining this information with our know-how on other sectors and countries, we can translate the situation today into a forecast for your market tomorrow. This gives you a clearer view on the threats and opportunities that lie ahead, allowing you to visualize what your customer, product or service and distribution of tomorrow could look like.
Before you can determine how to get anywhere, you have to be clear on where exactly you want to go. That’s why the second step is setting a measurable ambition, by combining your purpose as a company with the market landscape we mapped in step one. The result is a list of boxes to check at the end of your ambition horizon. If you can check all the boxes, you can say you were successful.
A search on the website of the Financial Times in January 2020 returned:
Keyword “Shareholder”: 78’784 results – status quo versus last year
Keyword ”Stakeholder” 5’833 results – up almost 50% versus last year
Even though shareholder value remains solid on top, the focus is shifting away from revenue as the only ‘value’ a company can create. Asking questions about sustainability will no longer get you escorted out of the building and dropped in a hippie commune.
The company of tomorrow should and could be built on a solid purpose, which unites all of their stakeholders. All with the goal to not just create value for shareholders, but also for employees, partners, the community and the planet.
In this stage you also set the overall strategy, i.e. the way you will get to achieve your ambition. A great strategy should fit on a single page and answers 5 questions:
The strategy is just the beginning. It gives you an eagle-eye view of how to get to your destination, but you’ll need to zoom in to see how this new strategy impacts all aspects of your business.
In the third step of the approach, the single page strategy is translated into concrete actions, features and processes for all the elements that are already in your organization’s toolkit like:
The goal is not to simply add a ‘digital appendix’ to these tools, but to really integrate digital ways of thinking and working in all aspects of your business, all to make sure you reach your goals. Depending on your specific situation, some tools will play a bigger role than others.
In addition to focussing on your strengths, it is also important to identify the weakest link. These are the points where customers may get a negative experience. If their disappointment is too high, the customer may never come back or even spread negativity around your brand. It’s imperative to get all the tools in the toolkit up to an acceptable level.
To draw your digital roadmap, in addition to a goal, you’ll also need to know where you are starting from. By looking at how your company handles technology, data, digital innovation… and how much digital is ingrained in your organization, we determine your digital maturity.
Since you now have a starting point and an end goal, you have a view on the gap between the two. The toolkit with actions, features and processes you defined in the previous step will help you bridge that gap. Now all you need is to determine what you do when.
A crucial choice to make is whether you see technology as a facilitator, i.e. a means to accomplish other goals, or a differentiator, i.e. a key element in your value proposition, that defines who you are. This will impact how far you want to advance in your digital maturity and how you approach all other levels.
A good roadmap takes into account multiple levels of granularity:
A great plan is the key to success, but in the end, executing it is what really matters. Too often, the strategic plan ends up in a drawer somewhere, only to be forgotten. The final step in the ARTiCA-approach is designed to make sure this won’t happen to your project and that, within the planned timeline, you will be checking off all the targets you set as your ambition.
We’ve identified two moments of truth in any digital project and the underlying factors that impact success:
1. Rallying of all your stakeholders behind the plan you just built
2. Putting your plan into action
Digital blueprint
Together with you and your team, we build the blueprint to integrate digital into your organization. We can build the whole plan or take a deep-dive into one of the parts.
Implement and coach
We bring your team on board, developing the necessary agile and data-driven mindset in all participants. We support you in implementing and organizing the project.
Weakest link
As an objective outsider, we check how your business is currently running, and identify the weakest link. We suggest quick win solutions to bring your performance in this area up to an acceptable level.
Inspiration
We spark the imagination and get your creative juices flowing with keynotes. Or join us around the world at key events like the World Retail Congres, Wired Retail, Advertising week New York, ...
Every project is different, so we’d love to see how we could best assist you. Want to grab a coffee with us?
Drop us a message
Hit the ground running by using our extensive resources
Get a made to measure plan
Peter van den Steen explains the ARTiCA approach to digital success at an Darwin event.
These elements convinced LVMH, Welkin & Meraki, Aldi, Veritas, Givenchy, Xella, Leen Bakker and Osudio among many others to work with ARTiCA on their digital transformation.
Because we always guarantee full confidentiality, we don’t present cases on our website. But we’d love to give you a glimpse of our most relevant stories in person.
