Organizational background

Previous chapters have discussed lead management customer experience related chal-lenges mainly from process, responsibility, technology and tool perspectives. However, as it was stated in chapter 3.4, the most important requirements for a successful organi-zational change are not technological but rather the employees and organiorgani-zational culture.

Relevant business and technology competences among employees were identified as the most essential for achieving desired digital customer experience and lead management targets. Figure 13 demonstrates the relation between these competences when moving towards digital customer experience capabilities.

Figure 13. Required competences for implementing digital customer experience princi-ples.

Business skills were seen as the most important and they are a must-have in order to benefit from digital initiatives and internal development projects.

Participant 12: “Business skills are the most important skills to know what to de-velop from information technology perspective”.

Participant 10: “Business competences are needed to develop tool portfolio and understand customers”

Business skills include general skills such as finance, communication and decision mak-ing as well as more specific knowledge such as understanding of customer’s business processes and needs as well as understanding internal business processes and ways of operating. Change management and leadership were also highlighted as crucial business skills when shifting towards digital ways of operating that are new to many and may therefore result in resistance to change. Leadership is required to orchestrate the necessary changes. Also, certain important characteristics that relate to business skills were identi-fied throughout multiple interviews, that were an analytical mindset as well as a data-driven mindset.

Participant 11: “Change management is important in that sense that new digital services ways of working can be intimidating for employees and customers and therefore they need support when transitioning to this world.”

The most crucial technology skills that were mentioned were related to either different technologies, such as internet of things, artificial intelligence, mobile and analytics or

different digital tools, such as marketing automation software, analytics software and con-tent creation and management. Advanced analytics was identified as the most needed technological skill throughout the organization. Other relevant technology skills that were mentioned were information security, user experience design, data management and data visualization skills.

However, before any of these skills can be utilized for developing digital customer expe-rience capabilities, there needs to be sufficient strategic guidelines and high-level vision to follow (see figure 13). It was recognized that currently the “big picture” is missing from strategic perspective. In order to succeed in filling the gaps that were identified dur-ing this research, the importance of omnichannel management needs to be acknowledged on the enterprise level to be able to allocate sufficient resources for it.

Group 2: “Big picture is missing.”

Participant 10: “No big picture around this field is seen in high enough [in the organization].”

Participant 2: “People that see the big picture around this are needed.”

Technology skills were not seen as a bottle-neck or a significant problem although there were some gaps in current skill sets. Majority of interviewees stated that in general there are sufficient technology competences but they are currently allocated elsewhere and not in omnichannel management context. The most notable skill gaps were related to data analytics as well as software related skills. Especially marketing employees stated that advanced analytics is a highly desired skill combined with sufficient marketing automa-tion capabilities to succeed in providing an omnichannel customer experience.

The importance of change management and leadership cannot be exaggerated, because the shift towards digital way of operating is imminent and it involves many changes in current ways of working. According to interview results, the shift towards data-driven has already begun to emerge and there are already different digital initiatives (such as the customer portal) ongoing within the company. The interviewees were confident that the organization has the sufficient digital change management abilities and it is just a matter of allocating resources towards that change.

On the other hand, the organization was seen as quite stagnant and not that flexible for renewal and interviewees considered it a challenge to change accustomed ways of work-ing. Especially people that work in customer interface have a crucial role in adopting digital capabilities and promoting new digital solutions to customers and changing their accustomed ways of working can be challenging.

To fully utilize digital capabilities across the whole organization, multiple interviewees identified a need for cross-functional teams in business development initiatives. Practi-cally, it would mean that IT should be involved when developing new solutions together with business people. All interviewees stated that IT should have a role in value creation.

Participant 4: “Cross-functional teams of IT and business people are necessary.

Marketing needs IT-oriented people.”

External participant 1: “IT, marketing and sales should be put together because usually they are diverged and work in their own silos. IT should bring architect roles to business development projects.”

Group 1: “Role of IT is to create value for customer through IT services and bring-ing external insight to business people.”

The main responsibilities of IT should be identifying new business possibilities, provid-ing opportunities for business and collaborate with them to implement new solutions and develop business processes. It is important that development initiatives are business-driven but IT should always be present and ensure compatibility and consistency from technology perspective. Therefore, it is crucial that apart from information technology skills, IT employees must have sufficient business skills, such as understanding of both customer’s processes and business models as well as collaboration and communication skills to be able to co-create value-adding solutions internally and externally.