Lately, I have noticed that the executive teams I work with are being asked more questions about their digital strategy by their board. But many of the documents they prepare are very high-level, focus on general competitive landscape discussions, and fail to get sharp on core, foundational issues that any company today must cogently address. I have also been spending more time with technology suppliers in the digital space, and the capabilities they are now offering are more transformational than their clients seem to realize.
This leads me to raise five areas where boards need to be asking explicit questions. These questions are just a few of them, but the main point is that they need to be detailed so that the answers eliminate ambiguity:
Customer information lifecycle: how are we gathering information when we interact with customers, how do we analyze it and what value do we get as a result? How do we use it to provide value back to customers, and overall, how does the information flow through the enterprise? As one of our most important assets, how are we using it to drive innovation, our value proposition, efficiency?
Data about products and services: What do we track about what we do, who touches a process, how a product flows through our supply chain? Can we use this to add value to a customer? How much access to this data should we provide to our customers? Should customers have an audit trail of everyone who handled a request or transaction of theirs?
Content supply chain: How are we feeding the interactions we have with customers? How is this coordinated across geographies and business units? How do we make sure the content is compliant with corporate brand standards? How are we monitoring reactions to that content and acting quickly when appropriate?
Active management of the digital ecosystem: Do we have the right balance of being open and being in