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So long, Digital Transformation
It's time for Digital Sensemaking
March 16, 2022
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Cyrille Rentier
What a ride! Less than a month ago, we announced that we were starting fresk.digital with a collective of experienced digital professionals. A new type of agency, designed for the new normal. Working with well-known corporates and promising scale-ups. Beyond Digital Transformation and ready for the logical next step: Digital Sensemaking.
Practice what we preach
We invited the market to think along with us: about the agency of the future, current issues and (company) goals, and market opportunities. And what a response we’ve had over the last few weeks! It was very valuable, speaking to so many experts in such a short time and to see such enthusiasm about our plans! We are happy to learn that our philosophy of Digital Sensemaking is widely acknowledged; we were even able to fine-tune it, with the help of peers, customers and colleagues all around. Now that’s what we call ‘practice what you preach’: a truly human-centred approach.
Digital Sensemaking is about finding synergy between business goals and customer needs, based on building a sustainable relationship between companies and customers. Together with Ravlling we apply this in their quest to unravel the travel paradox.
So long, Digital Transformation
Over the past decade, digital evolution has touched the core of virtually all businesses. Through Digital Transformation, organisations have optimised their IT systems and digitised their business-critical processes. New revenue streams were enabled, processes became more efficient and the cloud catered for scalability and speed. Just to name a few effects.
But moving forward, Digital Transformation unfortunately continues to be about rather conditional basic matters. Large consultancies help organisations translate business goals into digital strategies and IT outsourcers ensure that all processes run efficiently. But instead of being able to really respond to the needs of humans using all that technology, many transformations fall into a never-ending cycle of replatforming processes and costly management projects. Often incomprehensible big data initiatives are launched and digital strategy advice ends up in a drawer, because it is unclear how it should be realised.
Revolutionary? Thankfully not.
Time for Digital Sensemaking
But what is the logical next step in the digital evolution? A step in which it’s about optimally deploying, using, perhaps also adapting and sharpening of the transformed processes and resources. A step that revolves around the smart application of insights to the developed products, services and platforms. This step is what we call Digital Sensemaking. Digital Sensemaking is based on three important points of view: start from the human perspective, make qualitative and quantitative data a permanent part of your development process, and ensure that the specialisms Data, Design and Technology are truly intertwined with each other. Digital Sensemaking aims to build a lasting relationship with people, whether it is a customer, employee, patient or any other person who interacts with your organisation.
With these three points of view, a strong foundation is laid for a stable development of the right product or service with the right value. And it offers space to quickly and flexibly achieve a strong result:
- No more extensive reports that are hard to put into practice, but an Actionable Digital Strategy that helps to actually reach the dot on the horizon. With an action-oriented roadmap based on service design and validated insights from a human centred perspective. Where technology is not just the implementation of a software suite, but above all the smart use of existing solutions through forward thinking and smartly using proven building blocks in the right order. And in which data is not only about poorly interpretable usage statistics or futuristic artificial intelligence, but where it has a human feel to it, and can be used immediately for a better digital product.
- No complex replatforming process or Agile scrum method that is more about process than actual results, and where the individuals are forgotten, but The Shortest Path to Value (SPV), which focuses on maximum results with minimum impact for your organisation. Where the short-term goal connects seamlessly with the long-term strategy.
- And especially with a focus on Meaningful Data where data is not only collected and modelled, but can be concretely connected in relation to people by just asking the right questions. After which the roadmap of the development or product-evolution can be fed by the customers themselves and not fed based on assumptions.
(Not) a Revolution
A revolution? Thankfully not. There are many existing elements and processes in the Digital Sensemaking philosophy. Brought together in a refreshing, applicable and proven valuable way. And based on the response from the market and the projects we are already carrying out with fresk.digital, there is momentum right now. It’s not time for a digital revolution, but rather it’s time for Digital Sensemaking.