Mary FirthContent Lead, Accenture Interactive, on the rise of content studios.

DELIVERING REMARKABLE EXPERIENCES IN THE MOMENT

AGENDAINTER

ACTIVE

THRIFT IN THE 'ALWAYS ON' WORLD

CONTENTS

CONTENTS03 INTRODUCTION

JOY BHATTACHARYA

EXPERIENCE DESIGN04 HUMANISING DESIGN PATTI ALDERMAN05 I ♥ CUSTOMERS ANDREW FINLAYSON06 DIVERSITY EQUALS SMART ABBIE WALSH

MARKETING TRANSFORMATION07 THE ART AND SCIENCE OF INTERRUPTION CHRISTINE CONNOR08 FROM MAD MEN TO MATH MEN SOHEL AZIZ09 THRIFT IN THE ‘ALWAYS-ON’ WORLD MARY FIRTH

TECHNOLOGY SHIFT10 FLUID EXPERIENCES, LIQUID BUSINESSES MARK SHERWIN11 THINK LIKE A START-UP BERNIE SEGAL12 ONE GIANT LEAP DAN FARRELL

LEADERSHIP IMPERATIVE13 THE CULTURAL COMMITMENT CLAUDIA RIBEIRO 14 SUMMARY

2

The commercial world is transformed. Today, businesses that focus on delivering remarkable experiences, rather than sales, are the winners.

Digital leaders such as Amazon, Apple, Uber and Airbnb innovate new services based on the needs and preferences of their customers. In the process, they build new business models that cross sectors and disrupt everything in their path.

Unfortunately, the gap between the best and the rest is vast: recent research suggests only 7% of brands exceed customer expectations. So businesses must close this gap if they’re to delight consumers and grow market share.

We’ve never known a time like this. Across industries, there’s a recognition that delivering remarkable customer experiences is no longer a matter of choice – it’s an imperative. There’s a deeper acceptance that we’ve reached a pivot-point – from internally centric to customer-centric business models. There’s a service in every product waiting to emerge and only truly customer-centric organisations will be able to orchestrate the right experiences to make a brand delightful.

Unpacking the revolutionAs clients grapple with this transformation, it’s often easy to analyse what has changed. But the real challenge is understanding how to change. People want answers and direction. Yet by its very nature, experience transformation is fluid and unpredictable.

At Accenture Interactive (AI), we speak to hundreds of C-suite and executive thinkers every year about how to become an experience first organisation – not just CMOs and CDOs, but the CEOs, CFOs and CIOs of many of the world’s most influential brands. Based on our research and discussions over the last year, we have collated the topics that our leadership team most frequently encounters in its conversations. And we’ve distilled them into four key themes:

EXPERIENCE DESIGN

How diversity, design and customer-centricity sit at the heart of remarkable experiences

MARKETING TRANSFORMATION

How marketing is about more than the Big Idea – it’s about bringing creative, content and data together at the perfect moment

TECHNOLOGY SHIFT

How the pace of change and innovation demands new ways of working that are more open and more nimble – with better tooling than ever before

LEADERSHIP IMPERATIVE

How this is about far more than new ideas and new technology – it also embraces new cultures, new collaborations and continued commitment to change.

You can read them end-to-end, or use individual articles as conversation starters. It goes without saying that this is no oracle or crystal ball. Instead it’s a set of thought-provoking, well-informed perspectives from the people shaping the experience agenda.

With each viewpoint there’s more to explore – and more to resolve both practically and intellectually. So if you’d like to dig deeper, there are videos on Digital Perspectives and longer form articles on CMO.com.

We hope you enjoy it. And we look forward to discussing your interactive agenda.

THE NEW MARKETING IS DELIVERING REMARKABLE EXPERIENCES IN THE MOMENT

Joy BhattacharyaManaging Director – Accenture Interactive, United Kingdom and Ireland

INTRODUCTION

3

THEMARKETING

SHIFT

EMBRACING

RE-ALIGNING YOUR BUSINESS AROUND PEOPLE

Patti AldermanLead Digital Producer, Fjord, Design & Innovation, part of Accenture Interactive

The companies winning in the modern digital world – from TESLA to NETFLIX – all have one thing in common: they understand people.

So they design their entire businesses around creating services that are simple and meaningful. Not just externally for customers, but internally as well. This can deliver far-reaching business benefits – not least because a great employee experience often turns into a great customer experience (just look at John Lewis – UK employee owned retailer).

In our experience, humanising design relies on two principles:

Design thinking and data crunching delivering hand-in-handWe believe you can’t achieve human-centric design through analysis alone: it thrives on human creativity and intuition. This is because the design mindset is about problem-solving – being responsive to people and their environments. So for any business challenge, it’s always a productive starting point.

Iterative design as the de-facto methodUser-centred design is being spearheaded by innovations such as rapid prototyping, big data, cloud computing, machine learning etc. It’s quicker and easier than you think to re-invent the way customers live and staff work. And success can almost be guaranteed because everything is informed by tests and research along the way.

LEARNING FROM LEADERS

Apple is one of the world’s most successful design-led companies. And it’s got there through a deep culture of customer-led design. It takes a top down approach with Jony Ive, Chief Design Officer (CDO), and his design team leading the company. They don’t report to finance, manufacturing or other departments – instead they set their own budgets and reinvent manufacturing practicalities. It’s a simple concept that creates the best products for customers (which also happen to be best for the business).

Tesla is another design-led business that recognises the value of humanising its products. The company doesn’t base any design decisions on what is current or trending – starting, instead, with the fundamentals and building from there.

AGENDA FOR HUMANISING DESIGN

The design ‘rule of three’ helps create services people love. Getting this right is actually quite simple. It’s about putting energy into the question of what people will really enjoy, focusing on needs from a project’s inception – then letting everything flow from there.

Design ThinkingStart with design techniques and intuition – put people’s needs and behaviour at the centre, and use iterative prototyping to fine-tune.

Design DoingCraft ideas into actual experiences – services that are not only useful but delightful for customers and staff to use.

Design CultureCreate an environment where the first two can happen – where design thrives, failure is supported and innovation is valued.

ACTION

Create small, multi-disciplinary, design-led (but business-based) teams tasked with imagining and creating future products and services for your business. Don’t be constrained by current organisational paradigms – let the experience define your business architecture, not the reverse.

4

EXPERIENCEDESIGN

HUMANDESIGN

ISING

ARE YOU BEING HONEST ABOUT YOUR CUSTOMER-CENTRICITY?

Andrew FinlaysonManaging Director – Life Sciences and Pharmaceuticals, Accenture Interactive

It’s a maxim as old as sales itself: ’The customer is always right’. But for most businesses, this utopian customer-centricity is still more of a motto than reality.

They are first and foremost structured around their own needs – budgets and practicality – rather than what works for their customers.

In the digital age, the customer really is king. Digital changes everything. For the first time, we can truly know our customers and design our businesses around their experiences. In fact we have to. If the digital customer doesn’t get exactly – and instantly – what they want, they simply go elsewhere.

For user-experience giants like Amazon and Spotify, this is old news. It drove them to become what they are. It revolutionised their internal cultures, behaviours and activities. Now, others like Snapchat and Lyft are using their know-how to become the new pioneers. And anyone can do it – with the right attitude and commitment.

LEARNING FROM LEADERS

Disney embeds customer-centricity by focusing business decisions on two key metrics: propensity to return and propensity to recommend.

DHL hosts workshops with customers to imagine future services. One result is the Parcelcopter – a test drone delivery service that could change DHL’s services forever.

Lego has gone a step further, by co-creating future products with customers. From designs to approval, it’s a democratic customer process where the ‘winner’ earns recognition and a share of the sales.

AGENDA FOR BEING GENUINELY CUSTOMER-CENTRIC

Lead from the frontThe Board needs to set the example and inspire everyone to put customers at the heart of everything.

Everything means everythingUpstream, downstream – and from how you prioritise projects through to employee recruitment – build around your customers.

Find your customer-centric championsNot all employees will ‘get’ customer-centricity. So leverage those who do, using them to communicate across the business.

Involve people in product and service developmentWhether it’s through crowd-sourcing and co-creating with customers, digital testing or prototyping – start with real insights and build from there.

Make sure you know who the customer is and what their needs areIn some industries such as healthcare, patient-centricity is crucial. But the principles remain the same.

ACTION

Start with a deep understanding of your end users. Whether developing a new product, or creating a new service for your colleagues, concentrate on their aspirations, needs and expectations. Codify this and use it to design and assess every output to ensure your customer really is at the heart of your business.

EXPERIENCEDESIGN

5

I CUSTOMERS♥

WHY DIVERSITY IN DIGITAL DESIGN IS MUCH MORE THAN ETHICALLY RIGHT

Abbie WalshManaging Director – Fjord, Design and Innovation, part of Accenture Interactive

Diversity is of course the right thing to do. And in the modern digital world, it’s also the smart thing to do. In fact, we would argue that, without diversity in your design teams, your services risk becoming irrelevant and obsolete. Why? Well, just look at your customers.

Customers are calling the shots. There are two forces disrupting the business world today: first, the digitisation of almost everything. Second, customer expectations that are more fluid and demanding than ever before.

As consumers, we all understand this – craving the seamless experiences we enjoy with Spotify, Instagram, WhatsApp & co. We want this everywhere. As marketers, we can see it – research and data confirming a shift in customer loyalty towards those services getting it right.

If you don’t understand what your customers want, it’s just a hop, click and a jump to someone who does.

Customers are not clones. They’re diverse. We need to think of diversity in much broader terms than the standard dictionary definition. Of course it encompasses different ethnicities, genders, sexual orientations, disabilities etc. But more than that, it includes different mindsets, contexts and educational backgrounds.

LEARNING FROM LEADERS

L’Oréal firmly believes that designing products loved by a diversity of consumers requires a diversity of designers. They crystallised it in a formula: Diversity + Inclusion = Innovation + Success.

Mattel recently designed a line of dolls for African-American girls by enlisting its own African-American Employee Resource Group to guide its strategy. Unsurprisingly, the doll is a huge commercial success.

AGENDA FOR BUILDING A DIVERSE DIGITAL DESIGN TEAM

Be honestTake a look at your team today. Does it really represent a wide range of backgrounds, interests and education?

Get your culture rightYour culture needs to be able to absorb a wide mix of backgrounds and abilities.

Get the Board on-boardEnsuring senior leader buy-in can often be one of the biggest challenges – especially at large corporations where CEOs still have a traditional view of recruitment and favour education and industry experience.

For juniors: look beyond the obviousSeek out designers from a wide range of design schools – not just those with the best reputation. Run internships and interviews to find out what they’ve experienced and how they want to change design.

For seniors: look beyond your comfort zoneDon’t fall into the trap of recruiting clones of yourself. Opt for people with different views on design and ways of working. It may create conflict at times – but as long as the customer is at the centre, this is good.

ACTION

Ask the question: does your workforce reflect your customer base? If not, you must rethink your hiring strategy. At the end of the day, that’s what diversity in design is all about: creating a better business and growing the bottom line.

6

EXPERIENCEDESIGN

EQUALS DIVERSITY

SMART

WHY TRADITIONAL MARKETING IS PAST ITS SELL-BY DATE

Christine ConnorManaging Director – Marketing Practice Lead, Accenture Interactive

First there was the traditional marketer. Then the database marketer. Next the digital marketer. Now, we must evolve into customer experience marketers.

In practice, this means perfecting the way we interrupt their digital and physical journeys – in context, with relevance, with manners. Yet our customers are more dispersed than ever – and their journeys more fragmented over devices, channels and contexts.

Particularly amongst millennials, we see multiple experiences being consumed on three devices, with multiple videos and two pairs of headphones all on at the same time. Effective interruption is challenging. The need for signature experiences that engage, provide meaning or value is even more important. It can only be achieved by combining data, systems and design to create compelling brand experiences.

LEARNING FROM LEADERS

Samsung has taken the art of embedding their marketing into the experience by partnering with theme parks around the world to enable the world’s first virtual reality (VR) rollercoasters. These showcase the brand’s products and the power of VR in an ideal customer context.

BT Sport is leveraging its relationship with EE to provide highly relevant content to customers and prospects through their mobile phones. They’re delivering sport content for viewing in micro-moments typical of mobile users – creating relevant, contextual experiences that promote the breadth and depth of their sports offering.

ASOS has redefined its overall ecommerce strategy to become a digital experience business. This meant completely reorganising the structure of how teams work internally. Rather than in silos, functions such as product management, user experience, analytics and data science are aligned together horizontally across the entire business.

AGENDA FOR BALANCING ‘ART’ AND ‘SCIENCE’

Understand your customers’ contextIf you’re to avoid being the unwanted interruption – the annoying advert the customer can’t wait to skip – then make sure you fully understand your customers’ context, when they will be receptive and when they will reject your advances.

Create value in the momentConcentrate on value over volume. Make your brand and content relevant to the context of your consumer, enhancing their experience rather than interrupting it.

Make it personalRecognise how much you know about the consumer and use this to tailor your message and experience to that customer’s individual needs. But never ask the customer for information and then fail to use this to personalise your messages. Create services and experiences with manners.

ExperimentYou’re unlikely to get it right first time, or indeed the second time. Build a framework that allows for constant experimentation across a wide range of variables. Ensure you have a suitable baseline and can effectively measure the impact of your experiments to find the right ‘secret sauce’.

Constantly measure and adaptConsumers’ contexts and frames of reference are constantly changing. Content that worked in one context, country or moment in time, may not work so well elsewhere. Having the right tools to continuously monitor effectiveness, understanding cause and effect are critical for the modern precision marketer.

ACTION

Switch from mass-market broadcast to precision, personalised marketing across all channels. Use data and real understanding of your customers to ensure that they experience your brand consistently across all their interactions and transactions. Think about the customers’ context and how to embed your brand into their experiences – rather than the other way around.

7

MARKETINGTRANSFORMATION

ARTINTERRUPTIONOF

AND

THE

SCIENCE

HOW CREATIVITY IS CHANGING IN THE DIGITAL MARKETPLACE

Sohel AzizManaging Director – Retail and FMCG, Accenture Interactive

Create on insights not instinct. Thanks to TV’s Mad Men, most people have an idea of marketing as a world of Don Draper-type creative genius, fuelled by intuition and inspiration.

But digital tech has eclipsed that. Marketing is now less Mad Men – and more about Math Men and Women. They’re driven by understanding and realising the expectations of the ‘liquid’ customer – non-stop consumers who demand superlative experiences over a wide range of seamlessly integrated channels.

The interactive world has created a stream of real-time, individualised data about what our customers are thinking and doing. To harness this rich seam of intelligence with instinct alone seems rather out of touch in the face of constant and real insight. Use this insight to inform and mould your marketing messages and content around the user and you can see why the new ‘Math Men and Women’ have earned a seat at marketing’s top table.

LEARNING FROM LEADERS

Unilever brand Axe has released a series of short films in Brazil entitled Romeo Reboot. The content is being advertised using programmatic-powered trailers, targeting four different audience segments based on parameters from musical tastes to brand purchase. Trailer scenes are then personalised based upon the viewer’s profile – creating 100,000+ precision-targeted ad variants.

The dating site eHarmony has built a sophisticated attribution model that has allowed it to spend and target its advertising more effectively. It optimises content shown to would-be matches based on a wide range of behavioural information and traces conversion back to the very first engagement, to constantly optimise its models.

AGENDA FOR EVOLVING FROM INSTINCT TO INSIGHT-DRIVEN MARKETING

The traditional ‘path to purchase’ funnel is obsolete. If you want to really engage the liquid consumer, big data analytics and automation are non-negotiable.

Rethink the rules of engagementIt’s about consumers who dip in and out of

multiple channels. Your data and analytics must model this view if you are to understand your consumers’ engagement patterns.

Employ ‘maths’ marketersNew marketing teams need people who can mine data for priceless insights. This doesn’t just mean data scientists hidden in a back room (though some of these may well help). It means having specialists who can help you interpret real customer behaviours and identify insights around which you can build your marketing actions.

Transform the design processThe ‘maths’ part of the design process is not a pre-cursor to creative – or indeed simply a way to measure the effect of the creative. To be successful – data and analytics must be integrated into every part of concepting, executing and optimising your marketing.

Drop the traditional ‘campaign’It’s a linear concept, limited in time and scope. Instead see your marketing engagement with the customer as on-going, fluid and adaptive to the consumers’ context and your evolving message.

Become ‘always-on’Gear your marketing function to generating exciting new experiences and content, across all relevant channels, all of the time. This needs greater flexibility and responsiveness to real events and real data 24/7.

ACTION

Switch from digital marketing to marketing in a digital world. Rethink your strategies and organisation to fuse creative, technology and data to deliver remarkable experiences at scale, all of the time.

8

MARKETINGTRANSFORMATION

MEN

MENTO

MADMATH

FROM

RISE OF CONTENT STUDIOS

Mary FirthContent Lead – Accenture Interactive

For many CMOs, their biggest challenge is sheer volume. To succeed, marketers need to be able to craft content quicker than ever before, tailor messages to an audience of one, present their brand through an ultra-local lens and do this effectively over an increasingly diverse channel mix.

In the era of ‘always-on’ consumers, jumping across multiple channels, the amount of content required has gone off the scale. Yet the probability is that your budget is not increasing anywhere near that fast.

The traditional agency model struggles with the pace, scale and complexity of the new marketing mandate. Often, the model simply has too long a lead time from concept to content, and, even if it is possible to short-circuit, costs quickly stack up.

CMOs are demanding new models that de-couple above the line creative concepting from on-going, always-on, ultra-personalised production and optimisation capabilities. They are finding new ways to generate real-time content from the crowd, allowing their brand advocates to take ideas and build upon them. You can’t be everywhere, all the time. But by focusing on new, content-driven approaches, you’ll be more lean and agile – growing your brand with the most relevant content in the most fertile spaces.

LEARNING FROM LEADERS

PepsiCo has recently announced the opening of a state-of-the-art content studio in New York. The unit will produce everything from TV series, films and reality shows through to music recordings and digital content.

Brands such as BMW are de-coupling their initial creative output from the task of rolling this out across over 100 markets. This includes management of their individual market websites, and also the creation and curation of content for social channels such as Facebook. This is increasing responsiveness and the ability to localise, while reducing costs.

Coca-Cola demonstrated the power of content-led marketing with its #ThatsGold Olympics campaign. The brand harnessed global influencers from actresses to fashion models to create a series of content – and this activated the wider public to start celebrating and sharing their own ‘golden moments’.

AGENDA FOR A WINNING CONTENT CAPABILITY

De-couple concept and contentIdentify when you need to develop new concepts, creative ideas and campaign themes – and when you simply need to execute on these concepts at scale. Ensure you have the right partners delivering at the right points in this value chain.

Create a factory for fine tuningModern marketing is about constantly evolving your content based on what you’re learning from your data and consumer reaction. Establish capabilities that allow you to continually refine and test new content as you learn more.

Respond in real timeIn a 24/7 world, the ability to respond in real time can be the difference between a viral winner and dead silence. Create the ability to listen and react to events in real time and empower your teams to seize the opportunity whenever and however it emerges.

Co-opt the crowdWith consumers’ constant thirst for new content and perspectives, understand how you can build content and campaign themes that draw the crowd into your activities. Encourage them to create content that amplifies your brand and makes it relevant to their peers.

PartnerIncreasingly, success will be achieved through innovative partnerships with channel owners, content producers and influencers. Explore bold partnership opportunities and use the power of real-time content to make your message relevant through your partners.

ACTION

Build content capability that’s fit for a global, 24/7, multi-channel, highly segmented world of marketing. Look at how you create a content production line that can operate at the pace of the consumer. Understand what is high-value creative output, and what are operational tasks that can be de-coupled for pace and productivity.

9

WORLD‘ALWAYS-

ON’

THRIFTIN THE

MARKETINGTRANSFORMATION

Mark SherwinManaging Director – Natural Resources and Utilities, Accenture Interactive

BUILDING SERVICES FOR AN ATOMISED WORLD

When creating fluid customer experiences is the aim, creating a liquid business to support this is vital. This means rethinking your business model and services, where they fit in a wider customer journey and how to enable this through technology.

Consumers want to interact with brands on their terms and on their platforms of choice, often as part of a more holistic customer journey or mission.

Take travelling through an airport. A consumer doesn’t want to open up three different apps to navigate the train, plane and automobile stages of their journey – let alone to reclaim their loyalty points in a shop or sign into free Wi-Fi. They’ll be searching for an integrated experience and it’s up to winning brands to embed their services wherever necessary to make this possible.

Yes, your customer experience starts with the customer. But it goes much deeper – into how your business and technology are set up. By thinking 360° about digital, you can rapidly evolve the services you need to thrive.

LEARNING FROM LEADERS

Social channels are quickly becoming platforms for brand interaction. WeChat (WhatsApp’s Chinese competitor) is evolving into a space for gaming, shopping and banking – allowing users to send digital cash and make purchases. Facebook’s Messenger is heading the same way. So banks, retailers and services are all rapidly reconfiguring to be part of it.

Then there’s Amazon Echo’s Alexa – a voice-controlled home device. Success completely depends on businesses reconfiguring their services. But it’s happening fast: BMW has enabled Alexa to check a driver’s car battery, fuel and lock the doors. EDF Energy has Alexa checking customers’ energy usage, paying bills or giving meter readings.

AGENDA FOR MORE LIQUID INTERACTIONS

Atomise your services With customers using more channels than ever, services need to be byte-size and tailored to each environment – which raises key questions. How is my service relevant here? How can it be atomised? And how do I charge for it?

Expand from the delivery of products to the delivery of servicesDigital allows you to transform your product into a platform for customer engagement – through new digital services. Think how sportswear brands are integrating wearable tech, complemented by multiple data services like health and fitness apps.

Rethink your partnership models How can partners actually enhance your customer experience (whether it’s superior logistics, brand recognition etc)? This is something the restaurant industry does really well – outsourcing things like food delivery to digital partners to reach a larger customer base (think Deliveroo or UberEATS).

Build for an open worldTraditional monolithic approaches to software and development simply won’t cut it. Instead, focus on micro-services, open architectures, open data and accessible APIs that enable you to fit your services into any customer context.

Design for changeDesign for a world of constant change. Adopt new development approaches that can keep up. Collaborative tools, agile working and continuous release capabilities are all crucial for enabling faster release cycles without compromising security and resilience.

ACTION

Design your services to succeed in an ecosystem of partnerships and platforms. This means an open architecture and micro-services, coupled with a thorough understanding of how your services fit into customers’ end-to-end experiences.

TECHNOLOGYSHIFT

10

EXPERIENCES,

BUSINESSES

FLUID

LIQUID

HOW AGILE BUSINESSES ARE STEALING A MARCH ON THE REST

Bernie SegalManaging Director – Communication, Media and Technology, Accenture Interactive

Traditional product development teams spend months – or even years – planning, fine-tuning and working towards a perfect, bug-free solution. Now, if you wait that long, the competition will leave you in their slipstream.

Here’s to the agile ones – no fear of failureWith agile development, the product is never complete. It’s in a permanent state of revision and improvement. Launch day is ASAP, not some unspecified future date when every last imperfection has been ironed out.

Your most agile competitors – the ‘disruptors’ – are using digital applications to bring unprecedented efficiencies to both external experiences and internal processes.

They can match supply to demand more flexibly. They attract the top talent. They optimise their operations, end-to-end. And they don’t hang around.

Truly agile movers launch a ‘minimal viable’ or indeed ‘minimum lovable’ product fastThey accept that first delivery will be imperfect – but know they can plug the lessons of imperfection into continuous improvement. It allows them to start harvesting data quicker. So each new version aligns with the equally fast-evolving needs of its users.

The 10th Annual State of Agile found that 24% of large enterprises are using agile development. That means first-mover advantage is still there for 76% of you.

Don’t worry – we haven’t drunk the agile dictionary at the expense of all other approaches. The key to success here is to build a common operating model that can manage different technology delivery methods and practices. Where your focus is on managing risk and the outcome is predictable – waterfall methods may well fit the bill. Where you are pursuing opportunity and responding to rapidly changing business and customer demands – agile approaches tick all the boxes.

LEARNING FROM LEADERS

Google X exists to invent ‘moonshot’ technologies that could someday, broadly speaking, make the world a better place. It recognises failure as a crucial part of the process – but also, more importantly, the progress. All ideas are welcome and risks are taken early.

Spotify squads are told to release products ‘early and often’ rather than distribute ‘perfect’ upgrades or new services. By testing, tweaking and releasing constant upgrades, Spotify continuously improves the customer experience.

AGENDA TO BUILD AGILE ATTITUDES

If you want to compete with these agile mavericks, you simply have to adapt to the fearless new mindset.

EmpowerStart with the business benefit you want to deliver and give your team the freedom to explore the best way of achieving it. Think in terms of broad roadmaps and a continuum of work.

EnableGive them the agile tools they need. Modern DevOps tools are key to continuous delivery and iterative development.

ExtendAgile needs to be supported from the CEO down and applied across the business – not just to small corner offices.

ACTION

Ensure that what you’re trying to achieve determines its delivery approach through an organisation – not the other way around. Understand how small, multi-skilled agile teams can accelerate product development, and empower these teams to explore quickly and learn to succeed faster.

11

START-LIKE

ATHINK

UP

TECHNOLOGYSHIFT

EMBRACING DEVOPS TO MAXIMISE YOUR APPLICATION INNOVATION

Dan FarrellManaging Director, Accenture Interactive Delivery

For traditional application developers, these might feel like challenging times. They don’t need to be – but it is time to change.

Cloud computing, micro-services and the emergence of DevOps (integrated Development and Operations) as a new organisational structure have changed the game. Building, testing and operating applications is faster and more innovative – yet also more cost-efficient.

Embracing this opportunity is vital – especially if you’d like to avoid finding yourself at a competitive disadvantage and struggling to attract the best talent. It’s not straightforward. But like everything in the new DevOps world, it can be quick.

Evolving to a DevOps framework takes commitment. But if your applications aren’t as innovative or as agile as your competitors’, you need to make the leap – sooner, not later.

LEARN FROM THE LEADERS

Yelp’s once-monolithic web application is now a collection of micro-services. Even calling up its home page invokes dozens of micro-services, managed as discrete sets of code allowing quick specific changes. This is despite over 300 people and several million lines of code.

Even traditional industries are changing. ING Bank initially introduced Agile but soon switched to DevOps, dedicating over 150 teams to it. Time-to-market on new ideas is dropping from 20 weeks to five days. And customer satisfaction for its apps and services has also improved.

AGENDA FOR MORE INNOVATIVE APPLICATIONS

Embrace the DevOps opportunity DevOps merges Development and Operations into a single unit. This collaboration increases the pace of application delivery, while reducing costs through fewer mistakes and better communication. Incremental improvements throughout the application’s lifetime also keep it relevant and competitive.

Migrate to micro-services If you want to launch frequently, micro-service architectures are a key enabler for DevOps. With the right API contract, developers are free to deploy and operate them as they wish – independently of other enterprise applications.

Automate as much as possibleApplications with static workflows – or strictly defined APIs – are perfect candidates for fully automated, end-to-end simulation testing. And this offers great cost savings. But remember, where the user interface is more complex and feature-rich, you’ll always need some manual testing.

Master the metricsEvery digital project should have clear metrics giving real insights into the success or failure of different options. Spreadsheets and Gantt charts just don’t give you enough to create truly innovative, insightful applications. A new generation of collaboration, tracking and planning tools can bring your teams closer together – connecting the business with the developers – using real data to support decision-making.

Optimise for the cloudMany developers are from the pre-cloud era and don’t know how to maximise cloud technology. To get the full benefit of cloud application development, apps need to be designed and fully optimised for the cloud environment. This doesn’t mean locking into a specific cloud vendor, but designing for a nomadic era where you can easily move different services as appropriate between cloud providers and services to achieve the best outcomes.

ACTION

Focus on having the right tools and processes to enable your interactive studios. Establish a true digital development capability – with continuous integration and release capabilities at its heart. This will build the confidence and resilience to experiment and innovate without risking the house.

12

LEAPGIANT

ONE

TECHNOLOGYSHIFT

Claudia RibeiroHealth & Public Services Lead, Accenture Interactive

ADOPTING A DIGITAL CULTURE IS HARDER THAN ADOPTING DIGITAL TECHNOLOGY

‘I bought all these great new digital tools, but my staff don’t use them.’ ‘My people don’t collaborate.’ ‘I can’t attract and retain the right talent for my digital business.’ ‘My people look inwards, never outwards.’

If this sounds familiar and you’re struggling with digital transformation, you’re not alone. Your people and culture are critical to overcoming these struggles. Getting your people focus right is imperative, as your ability to transform at blistering pace is the defining challenge of the digital age.

So look at your business and ask – honestly – is it really ready for digital? Forget the technology and tools. Are the people ready? Do they really ‘get’ digital innovation and how it will optimise everything they do?

LEARN FROM THE LEADERS

Spotify has enabled autonomous engineering squads – small, cross-functional self-organising teams with a real sense of ownership and empowerment to fulfil individual missions. They have free choice of toolkits and frameworks and are encouraged to break the rules.

Netflix’s ‘Highly Aligned, Loosely Coupled’ approach also stresses freedom and autonomy – trusting people to make their own decisions. Executives make sure everybody knows the overall strategic goals and timetables, but there’s no micro-managing.

AGENDA FOR BUILDING A DIGITAL CULTURE

Start at the topCulture always trickles down. But digital transformation cannot be forced or delegated. It has to be enabled and reinforced. Leaders who really understand digital will free staff to build their own cultures – in an organic way that makes sense in their specific jobs.

And think about your governance carefully – would horizontal leadership be more all-encompassing than vertical, hierarchical control?

Finally, are you being smart about ‘grow, borrow and buy’ to accelerate changes to your culture? How quickly can you bring in new people, new viewpoints, new ways of working – as ‘shocks of the new’ – to unsettle legacy practices and behaviours?

Build from the bottomIf you really want to be a digital business, forget about tinkering at the edges. You need to embed digital throughout the entire employee journey. Support them to live and breathe digital ways of working and create transparent values across the business.

Realise that changing people is much harder than changing technology Across every successful digital transformation, the starting point has to be people and values. Many digital transformations end in failure and at a high cost. This is because – in the grand scheme – technology transformations are largely linear and you can manage for predictability. But most businesses forget their people – who are anything but linear and predictable.

Without the right culture, you cannot realise the full value of your investment – all the new technology, business models and operations will be a waste of money. In fact, your business could even go backwards.

Ultimately, creating a digital culture will be essential to your ability to compete and grow.

ACTION

Living services require a living business where the culture supports your digital agenda. Focus on creating the right culture for collaboration amongst your colleagues. Create new collaborative environments, collapse organisational structures to create nimble teams. Ensure leadership gives confidence to your teams to think and act differently.

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Customer experience is today’s marketing battleground. At Accenture Interactive, we’re driving experience- led digital transformation.

Our method supports the full circle of customer experience delivery – from building insights and strategy, crafting the story, designing the service, building the platforms, activating and amplifying messages to driving long-term customer engagement. We support this through deep capability in experience, marketing, content and commerce.

Practising what we preach, our clients drive our agenda. Today’s CMOs need more than award-winning campaigns and solid sales. They need to be change agents – driving the evolution of their organisation in a more customer-centric direction.

As the first consultancy to develop digital capabilities, today Accenture Interactive is:

• A $3bn business with 12,000 employees and clients in 20+ industries, including 70 of the top 100 Fortune 500 companies

• The largest and fastest-growing digital agency network, according to Ad Age 2016

• Recognised as a ‘Leader’ and ranked highest among competitors in Forrester Wave: Digital Experience Service Providers, Q4 2015

• A digital innovator with 300+ patents issued or pending.

WE ARE EXPERIENCE ARCHITECTSWe help leading brands imagine and deliver remarkable experiences and transformative results through:

EXPERIENCE DESIGN

Creating differentiated and compelling experiences that build engagement and lower transaction costs with customers, employees and partners by putting design and user-focused strategy at the heart.

MARKETING TRANSFORMATION

Designing and delivering personalized, continuously optimized customer interactions and marketing activities seamlessly across touchpoints to maximize conversions, acquisition, engagement and loyalty.

CONTENT PLATFORMS AND SERVICES

Delivering scaled global content management and de-coupled content production to optimize speed, cost, quality and reuse across brands, channels, and geographies, to get the right message to the right customer at the right time.

TOTAL COMMERCE

Boost revenue and customer satisfaction through end-to-end ecommerce, sales and service solutions that unify digital and physical experiences, personalised to empower customers and employees at scale.

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ACCENTURE INTERACTIVE

CREATIVE AGENCY, MEETS BUSINESS CONSULTANCY,

MEETS TECHNOLOGY POWERHOUSE.

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The views and opinions in this article should not be viewed as professional advice with respect to your business.

About Accenture Accenture is a leading global professional services company, providing a broad range of services and solutions in strategy, consulting, digital, technology and operations. Combining unmatched experience and specialised skills across more than 40 industries and all business functions – underpinned by the world’s largest delivery network – Accenture works at the intersection of business and technology to help clients improve their performance and create sustainable value for their stakeholders. With approximately 384,000 people serving clients in more than 120 countries, Accenture drives innovation to improve the way the world works and lives. Visit us at www.accenture.com.