Thirteen Tenets of a Successful Digital Business January 24, 2014

Bob Barr

SVP, Acquity Group | Managing Director, Accenture Interactive

©2013 Acquity Group, LLC. All rights reserved. Thirteen Tenets of a Successful Digital Business 2

The Thirteen Tenets

1. Digital Business = Marketing + Sales + Support

2. Know Your Customer

3. Metric the Business & Metric the Experience

4. Lower Margin Business / Lower Cost Channel

5. Experience is Everything

6. Put Your Best (not necessarily a better) Price Online

7. Keep Your Site Safe & Secure / Private & Protected

8. Mind Your Content; Keep it Fresh AND ACCURATE

9. Shoe Strings Break. Hamster Wheels are not Scalable.

10. Nobody Commutes Daily by an Online Business

11. It’s Evolution Before Revolution, but Ultimately Both

12. You Don’t Have a Monopoly on Smarts

13. Organize and Govern for Success

©2013 Acquity Group, LLC. All rights reserved. Thirteen Tenets of Successful eBusiness 2

©2013 Acquity Group, LLC. All rights reserved. Thirteen Tenets of a Successful Digital Business 3

It’s about:

• Your Brand

• Selling Stuff

• Servicing

Digital Business = Marketing + Sales +

Support + Service

1.

KIOSK DIRECT WORD OF MOUTH PHONE TABLET DESKTOP SOCIAL POS

And it’s about:

Omni-channel: Start in one channel, continue in another, finish even in yet another.

Right-channeling: Offering the right functionality in the right channels.

Every Business

is a Digital

Business

©2013 Acquity Group, LLC. All rights reserved. Thirteen Tenets of a Successful Digital Business 4

• Conduct internal and external primary and

secondary research.

• Benchmark against customer expectations

not against your competitors.

• Yes, do mind what your competitors are

doing.

Know Your Customer 2.

Your Business

Competitor A

Competitor B

What are they doing that you aren’t?

©2013 Acquity Group, LLC. All rights reserved. Thirteen Tenets of a Successful Digital Business 5

Metric the Business & Metric the Experience 3.

• The Financials

• Channel (+Website) Analytics

• A/B + Multivariate Testing

• Performance + Availability

©2013 Acquity Group, LLC. All rights reserved. Thirteen Tenets of a Successful Digital Business 6

Lower Margin Products Belong in

Lower Cost Channels

4.

• Commodity Products

• Small Orders

• Self Service

• New Customers

• High Margin Products

• Large Accounts

• Relationship

Management

©2013 Acquity Group, LLC. All rights reserved. Thirteen Tenets of a Successful Digital Business 7

Experience in Everything 5.

• Easy to Navigate

• Easy to Find Products / Content

• Easy to Buy

• Easy to Transact

• Think B2C

• Anything your employees can do, your

customers should be able to do (well

almost anything).

©2013 Acquity Group, LLC. All rights reserved. Thirteen Tenets of a Successful Digital Business 8

Put Your Best not necessarily better

Price Online

6.

©2013 Acquity Group, LLC. All rights reserved. Thirteen Tenets of a Successful Digital Business 9

Keep Your Site Safe & Secure,

Private & Protected

7.

• Table Stakes

• Reassure, Reassure, Reassure

©2013 Acquity Group, LLC. All rights reserved. Thirteen Tenets of a Successful Digital Business 10

Mind Your Content. 8.

• Fresh, accurate content matters.

© 2013 =

©2013 Acquity Group, LLC. All rights reserved. Thirteen Tenets of a Successful Digital Business 11

• Invest in infrastructure. Uptime and performance

are critical.

• Build it once. One experience, one architecture,

one platform.

• Packages are always faster.

• B2B is architecturally more complex than B2C.

• B2C is transactionally more demanding than B2B;

or is it?

• Nobody ever wakes up saying I want to buy a

CMS; but they should.

Shoe Strings Break.

Hamster Wheels are Not Scalable.

9.

©2013 Acquity Group, LLC. All rights reserved. Thirteen Tenets of a Successful Digital Business 12

• Your brand is king.

• Bricks & mortar = location, location, location.

• Online = search, search, search, portal, partner, search, search, email.

• It takes push (employee evangelism) and it takes pull (customer value).

Customers Don’t Commute by an Online

Business Everyday

10.

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• Short term quick hits (evolution) & long-term high value (revolution).

• Renovate and Innovate.

• Front of House & Back of House.

• Speed. Make a mistake? Fail fast, recover, then move on.

It’s Evolution before Revolution, but both. 11.

©2013 Acquity Group, LLC. All rights reserved. Thirteen Tenets of a Successful Digital Business 14

• Be prepared for disruptive products AND

technologies AND processes.

• Beware: Fast following is faster in the digital

sphere.

• Engineer (experience and process) expecting

change.

You Don’t Have a Monopoly on Smarts 12.

©2013 Acquity Group, LLC. All rights reserved. Thirteen Tenets of a Successful Digital Business 15

• Frame a clear vision.

• Hire the best people.

• Give them the keys to own product, process and experience.

• Reward them for first and fast failures, and yes, for success.

• Make your strategic vendors partners.

Organize and Govern for Success 13.

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www. acquitygroup.com

THANK YOU

Bob Barr SVP, Acquity Group | Managing Director, Accenture Interactive

+1-972-464-4350

bob.barr@acquitygroup.com

bob.e.barr@accenture.com