The Rise and Fall of the Digital Office

If ‘digital’ is everywhere, what does it mean in today’s organisations? Where very recently businesses were creating Chief Digital Officer roles and the like, often placing them in hubs within Central and East London, the trend is beginning to slow and in some cases reverse.

That’s right: the Digital-only position is disappearing.

“Digital has to be plugged in to every stage of the decision-making process” according to Finn Walsh

“Digital has to be plugged in to every stage of the decision-making process” says Finn Walsh, Digital and Marketing Director for Hastings Insurance. “It doesn’t make sense to develop a customer proposition, say, and then hand it over to digital to make happen. Most propositions are in part defined digitally and this way of thinking must be present from the outset”.

“Commercial owners must feel fully accountable for their customers’ experience, rather than outsourcing the digital to a separate business area” says Liz Cass

"To succeed as a digital organisation the commercial owners in a business must feel fully accountable for their customers’ experience, rather than outsourcing the digital ownership to a separate business area” says Liz Cass (Vodafone’s former Commercial Management Director, and previous Head of Digital Transformation).

“This can be achieved by integrating the digital and commercial teams into agile tribes focused on the end-to-end customer experience."

Joel Robinson, (Digital & Technology Director at Azzurri Group) spent a number of years with Sainsbury’s in commercial, store management and online development roles. He ultimately built an operating model and way of working that facilitated continuous collaboration between technical and functional teams.

This meant that decision making could be made with the entire customer proposition in mind, not in silos. Joel joined Zizzi- and Coco di Mama- owner Azzurri Group this year, in a role that spans all technology – from customer CRM to restaurant POS, and networks to people systems.

To be an agile organisation requires digital expertise, but for digital to work takes commonality across all parts of an organisation.

This spells trouble for digital specialists.