Slalom Connect: User Stories

CONNECT WINTER 2021 THOUGHT LEADERSHIP FROM SLALOM BOSTON AND BEYOND

IN THIS ISSUE

Service Design Blueprints • Equity‑driven Design • Learning to Embrace Innovation • Reducing your AWS Costs

STORIES USER

Contents Slalom Connect Copyright © 2021 by Slalom, LLC All rights reserved.

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Images provided by: unsplash.com Printed in the United States of America Contact Slalom Consulting 399 Boylston Street Suite 1000 Boston, MA 02116 617-316-5400 technology.slalom.com Contributors Chris Turner Joshua Dreiling Karl Maier Lily Hicks Jake Bennett Jodi Ballard-Beach Jocelyn Baumann Chilsie Messenger Sophie Cummings Amy Marshall Bhrett Brockley Fred Antoine Cabul Mehta Pat Lally Meaghan Schmieding

Help! I just launched my platform and people aren’t using it (correctly)! — 4 Chris Turner

Clicks and Code — 8 Joshua Dreiling

Reduce your AWS Costs — 14 Karl Maier

How Cloud Technology Helps Retailers Reenvision their Customer Experience — 20 Lily Hicks

Moving beyond the Dashboard — 28 Jake Bennett

Data Strategies to Strengthen your Workday Investment — 35 Jodi Ballard-Beach & Jocelyn Baumann

How equity-driven design can build a brighter future — 40 Chelsie Messenger

Unlocking Masterful Service Design Blueprints — 46 Sophie Cummings

Need to innovate faster? Embrace learning as a business imperative — 56 Amy Marshall

Talent Strategy is Business Strategy — 62 Bhrett Brockley

Production, Design & Publication Josh Drumm Blake Foster Karl Schwirz Maren Mellen Special Thanks Melissa Drumm Cabul Mehta Jeff Yeakley

Why Strategy and Tactics Belong at the Core of Your Digital Transformation Initiative — 66 Fred Antoine

Building your Digital Healthcare Backbone in the Face of a Pandemic — 70 Cabul Mehta, Pat Lally, Meagan Schmieding

Our Partners — 74

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Foreword Last year I often heard the phrase, “Can’t wait until 2020 is over!” But what were we really waiting for?

The first part of 2020 will be known for how we all shut down or pivoted our daily operations at the onset of the pandemic. Workforces were split between essential staff who needed to be on the frontlines and those who could function remotely. Annual objectives were modified or scrapped altogether.

We kept things on standby while finding ways to deliver value in the face of a myriad of unforeseen challenges. And we kept doing this week after week, month after month, indefinitely.

Now this turn of the new year comes with a massive vaccine rollout, along with the hope of things getting back to “normal.”

But we should not be striving to get back to a world where we knew all the answers. We should instead be asking questions about how to create this next version of “normal”:

» » » »

Cabul Mehta Director, Healthcare & Life Sciences Boston

Our customer preferences and behaviors have changed – how do we use data to meet their new needs?

We made a large investment in technology while we were all quarantined – how do we get more people to use it?

We quickly became dependent on technology like never before – but where does this fit in our overall digital transformation journey?

How do we use equity-driven design to shape the future of our communities?

These are some of the questions we address in this edition of Slalom Connect. Our outlook this year and beyond is undefined but asking the right questions will help us create our future. And that is something to look forward to.

So, 2021 is here. Customers are coming back. Industries are coming back. Your teams are coming back.

What are you waiting for?

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Help!

I just launched my platform and people aren’t using it (correctly)!

Chris Turner New Jersey

5 Steps to Jump-Start Your Adoption Efforts

You may be here because you’ve spent a good chunk of the last year (or two) designing, building, and launching a great new platform, and...either people aren’t using your platform or, worse, they’re using it wrong.

First of all, you’re not alone.

There’s a reason that industry

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data suggest that a high percentage of transformation projects fail to meet their anticipated return on investment.

That’s probably not a lot of solace when your senior leadership is tapping their pencils looking for you to demonstrate business value against their investment.

So, whether you just rolled out

a new BI platform, a CRM, or an end-to-end ERP, you’re now faced with a new challenge. And, to show leadership the value of the platform, you will need better adoption and accurate usage.

Let’s look at five steps you can take now to jump-start an adoption campaign.

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Understand your users If you’re having adoption challenges, step one is to pivot away from your platform’s performance and develop a deeper understanding of your target users.

“Build it and they will come” rarely works.

“They’ll use it because I told them to” works only marginally better.

You have to win hearts and minds. To do that, develop a deeper understanding of your target users and the leaders of those groups. You’ll want to sit in on town halls, team meetings, and have a good number of 1:1 interviews to deepen your understanding of what’s

Focus on value from your customers’ perspectives Now that you’ve spent time understanding your target audience, build a plan to retell your story with a focus on what your users care about. Schedule roadshows, lunch and learns, direct meetings with influential midand senior-level leaders in those business units. Make creative communications like videos and demo walkthroughs that are fast, fun, and easy to consume.

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going to convince them to ‘eat what you’ve cooked.’ You should have a crystal-clear line of sight to things like: • What challenges is this group facing with their current (legacy) platform?

• What are their business needs and priorities? What do the groups need to get done to meet their goals this year?

• What drives their behavior day-to-day? What are they incentivized to do?

• How do they communicate to each other and how do they prefer to get information from their leaders?

Think 60 Seconds rather than 60 Minutes.

You have an engagement framework in place now — but with all of these stories, slides, videos, and emails — make sure you’re leveraging what you found out in step 1. Tell the story from their perspective. What is the new platform going to do for them?

It’s an easy trap to list bullets of all the great functionality: sort of a version of the release notes. Most users won’t read them, and they won’t drive adoption. Focus on how your platform is going to help each group achieve their objectives more effectively and target the story.

One recent project team had a sales group who felt that there

Once you’ve got a deeper understanding of your different stakeholder groups, you’ll want to build a persona for each of the core groups who should be using your platform to center your approach based on their needs and wants.

Don’t be tempted to oversimplify down to one perspective: what will engage one group likely will not engage another.

This understanding, or empathy, for your business users is your foundation. It will help you frame a revised story and capture potential future features for your platform roadmap and give you a better sense of how to gain their trust and business.

were far too many clicks to get to their performance dashboards — and it was going to be resolved in their new platform.

Featuring that single improvement in communications to that group, since it was identified by them, as their pain point, grabbed their attention more quickly than a long list of great features. Another regional sales group in the organization spent a lot of time in airports and on airplanes. To that group, new mobile functionality was critical. Yet another group really wanted an easier way to enter sales meeting notes. Having three different stories targeting each of the different groups would help to build excitement and enthusiasm across the different groups and all for the same platform.

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Reward and recognize target behaviors Using a new platform means changing behaviors. Perhaps users are shifting from tracking in email, spreadsheets, or even hard copy, to your new platform. Identify what those behavior changes are and reward the new target behaviors. Here are a couple ideas:

Choose your battles On a recent project, a platform owner built a platform that met all the technical requirements, but after launch had almost no adoption. The platform owner had hundreds of business units to win over. When we began working on the project, there was a sense of “We must win every battle!” which was resulted in few big wins overall, and frustration

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• Carve a small bit of your budget to do giveaways. For example, run a gift card lottery for users who log in, or use a new data field, during a period of time. “One lucky user this week will win a gift card to…”

• Make a post on your intranet celebrating a team who’s made a change, and tag their (and your) leadership teams.

Make adoption stories a big deal — and the little things will start to snowball and grow.

Where possible, work with group leaders to capture how your platform is helping achieve their goals and objectives. Nothing drives behavior like contributing to solving the big problems leaders are focused on.

• Identify your top users and highlight them. Ask them: “How do you use the new platform?” or “What is one way it helps you execute against your priorities?” Name those teams in a Top Users / Top Teams dashboard that rolls up to their, or your, leadership.

and disappointment. We worked with the core team to analyze the critical business units on two axes. First: How attached to the status quo is this team? Second: How influential are they in the big story? We plotted the results and drew a curve indicating the initial targets for adoption — business units who were both amenable to the change and who had some level of cache within the larger enterprise. Narrowing down from 200 targets to 5 became immediately less daunting. Combined with the user analysis from step one, we now had targeted story

lines, functionality focus points and an opportunity to leverage relationships to begin driving more adoption stories and wins.

This Small Wins approach helps drive your storyline. Groups who get on your bus become part of your advocacy team: your internal champions to help drive the adoption momentum.

Pick a few winnable battles and go after them hard.

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Capture and communicate your small wins You’ve got the story, you’ve got your targets, you’ve gone out to build and evangelize across the business, and you’re starting to get some adoption. Now — capture every incremental win, no matter how small it may appear. Logins have gone up by 5% month over month? Capture it. Throughput has increased a fraction? Capture it. One group has decided they actually love the platform? Capture it. You’ve

incrementally decreased cost or time for a process? Capture it. Document those stories, talk to the user teams, and get some quotes. Put them in a rollup report to your leadership team and the broader community. Celebrate with your team who’s probably been working really hard and needs to put a couple wins in their columns.

Aside from the pressure of a mandate, very little drives people’s behavior like watching the person in the next cube (or meeting window) gain accolades and shout outs for doing something you can easily do.

Gaining adoption is always easier when it’s begun early in the project process: building alignment and awareness from business leaders before you’ve formally launched is an intensive and ongoing effort, but pays big dividends when it comes time to capture your ROI. However, long term adoption efforts often fall victim to short term budget constraints.

You’re on a new journey to turn your program around — engage with your users and get them on the trip with you. Remember, this isn’t a one-time, one-sizefits-all effort, you’re on a mission to build adoption and make it a formal part of your culture.

Let me know how it goes. n

Did you know?

Slalom pairs competencies with an overarching focus on getting things done. We combine the intimacy of a local boutique partner, the industry and domain savvy of a strategic thinktank, the creativity of a digital agency, the technical acumen of a software developer, and the insights of data analytics.

GLASSDOOR

Best Places to Work 2020

Winter 2021

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Clicks and Code

CLICKS

and

CODE Joshua Dreiling Atlanta

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Clicks, not Code. If you have been involved in the Salesforce industry, you have probably heard this mantra. If you have not heard it before, what it means is to build applications using point and click development, rather than writing code. Salesforce, as a company, pushes it and you hear it from industry professionals as well for good reason. Salesforce provides a wealth of avenues to accomplish complex work without code.

As a 14X Certified Salesforce professional who has been in the industry for several years, I can speak from experience that

options exist for most scenarios to use point-and-click development. That said, there are situations in which custom code is useful and even preferred to point-and-click development.

In those times, it is important to understand the underlying meaning of “Clicks, not Code”.

If we do that, then we can take those lessons and apply them to our development, in order to bring the best of both worlds.

The result is it becomes not “Clicks, not Code”, but “Clicks and Code”, in order to bring the best possible solutions to our work.

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Before getting into “Clicks and Code”, it is worth understanding the benefits of a “Clicks, not Code” approach. Let’s look at a few of the key benefits of using Clicks instead of Code:

Key Benefits of using Clicks over Code Availability of Options without Code Part of the reason for the “Clicks, not Code” mantra is the availability of options without code for Salesforce development. Within Salesforce, there are options like Workflow Rules, Process Builders, and Flows to handle situations where you want to accomplish common business requirements for automation and interfaces.

Even without choosing between clicks or code, there are a ton of items that should be handled using point-and-click development. One common one is to customize the view of information using Record Types and Page Layouts. Record Types and Page Layouts can be a great way to customize those views for users when looking at different types of information on the same object, like Accounts.

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Simplicity of Salesforce Customization Some requirements are best handled without code. Creating different views of segmented Accounts using Record Types and Page Layouts is a clear example. While you could handle it via Code, it will take far less time to manage and implement those different views using Page Layouts and Record Types.

Development Time At any point, there are tons of different needs for ways in which Salesforce could better serve a business, from several different stakeholders. The time allotted to accomplish something via code will almost always take more time than a similar task via pointand-click development. The time saved could be used to complete a separate, high priority item.

Long-Lasting Maintenance This lesson is huge, especially for those working with clients in a consulting role. For any project, there will always be an end date.

At that point, someone at the client will have to take over the maintenance of the system, debugging issues that come up and introducing enhancements as the needs of the business change. When those times arise, it is vital whoever is working on the system can understand the system and accomplish those tasks. If they cannot, even if the solution may have solved the original problem, it can become an even bigger issue than what previously existed.

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After seeing the key benefits of using Clicks over Code, you might be wondering why would anyone use custom code? Let’s look at the below reasons for using Code:

Key Benefits of using Code over Clicks Bulk Situations From a bulk perspective, if data may be consistently loaded in at mass quantities and complex processing on that data is needed to occur, especially in concert with other data in the system, it may be best to introduce custom code to help handle some of the processing.

Complex Logic Scenarios There are some complex logic scenarios that are not able to be handled, or should be handled, without custom code at this time.

Depending on the way users gain access to a Salesforce, there may need to be some custom code in place to ensure that the

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user has a seamless experience when accessing the system. A good example of this is Just-inTime provisioning. This is how some clients manage provisioning access to Salesforce, and it involves provisioning a user’s access at the moment they attempt to access the system. At that moment, there is some code that will set up the user to access the system in that instance, but not prior to this. In this way, the resources for the different users accessing the system are not allocated until they are needed, thus saving resources that could be allocated somewhere else.

Additionally, this saves time of the administrators who would normally be setting up users, to accomplish other key tasks.

Specific needs or requests for Custom Interface Custom interfaces can be crucial for the successful adoption of any new technology. When a user is using any system, it is important to ensure they are not frustrated when attempting to accomplish what they need to do. We all have interacted with those systems where you cannot find what is needed or where it feels impossible to access that key piece of information you need. Especially for a time sensitive task that could involve some complex needs, it is important to provide an experience that is easy to use and makes the end user’s life simpler.

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The answer to building the best solution for your Salesforce environment, is to combine Clicks AND Code based on your business needs. By using “Clicks and Code”, you can ensure that the custom code satisfies the requirement presented, but also that clicks can be used to maintain and enhance the functionality the code is providing. In this way, the final solution can be more time efficient in the long run, is more maintainable and best meets the existing and future needs of the business.

When you find gaps between clicks or code, there are a couple of solutions to consider: Custom Labels Custom Labels are static labels that can be maintained by Administrators in Salesforce that can be referenced throughout the system as needed.

Custom Metadata Types and Custom Settings Custom Metadata Types and Custom Settings are similar but allow for information to be document in more specific, related ways, to model the way that certain pieces information may relate to one another for processing purposes.

Design Attributes Design Attributes allow certain aspects of a component to be set via an Administrator when adding a component to a page, in order allow for customization in that for that specific scenarios. All four can be updated via point-and-click development and can be leveraged by custom code in order to best handle scenarios where there are different business needs of how the custom code should work.

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Custom Objects Custom Objects are normally used for housing groups of data together not already handled by Salesforce in order to meet the business’ needs. If there are situations where there are so many of a type of business rule that other options would not suffice, a Custom Object may best manage the housing the logic involved. In this way, access to the Custom Object that houses these business rules can be managed via point-and-click development, in order to ensure that the system is set up by those who know it best. The custom code can use the business rules in the Custom Object to power the custom interface or back-end automation needed.

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Now, let’s examine some real-life examples of how to use Clicks and Code: Translation of Customer Communication

Business Rule Accommodation

The request was to send system generated communications to different customers in their preferred language, in order to properly communicate the status of a support request and other key notifications. To solve this need, the decision of the language used in the email and the translation for the email is handled via custom code. However, the wording involved in the communication, the translations themselves and the logic of knowing when to send an email are all handled via point-andclick development. In this way, if there is a need to update any of the messages in any of the languages involved in these communications or to introduce another type of notification, this would all be able to happen without needing the skills of a developer.

The second situation involves the health insurance industry and the assortment of business rules associated. For those not involved in the insurance industry, the amount of different ways in which the processing of charges and how to determine who is responsible for how much payment to collect can seem astronomical. There is a need for a system that can take all the information coming in, whether it is about the patient, where the care was administered, how the care was administered, what insurance company is involved and any other important factors to determine the costs and payers involved for an interaction. Additionally, as the contracts between insurance companies and providers change regularly, there is a need to constantly update the rules in the system to ensure that each party is paying what has been previously agreed upon. In this way, we leveraged Custom Objects and Custom Metadata Types to allow the updating and maintaining of these business rules in a way that enhanced the experience for those who worked in the system and saved valuable time and money in the long run for the client.

In any situation, there is a need to properly assess the options available and determine the best possible choice. Developing technological solutions, especially Salesforce development, is no different.

With each release, Salesforce provides additional options to develop our solutions. Additionally, there are constantly different options being developed by groups available on the App-Exchange, Salesforce marketplace for free and paid packaged applications and components, and outside of the App-Exchange to be leveraged for developments. That is why it is important to, when each new situation arises,

to understand the benefits of the options available. “Clicks, not Code” is a great motto. It highlights the key point of how, when possible, clicks are a great option to be used for meeting a need in Salesforce. However, point-and-click development cannot always, or sometimes should not be, used to solve the business requirement. When those situations arise, it is important to truly understand why “Clicks, not Code” exists and with it, to develop the best possible solution using not just one of the options but using both “Clicks and Code”. n

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Reduce your Do you think your cloud costs are too high? I think most businesses can find savings if they look in the right places. In this article I will provide a complete guide to reducing your AWS costs covering five different, but equally important perspectives.

Perspective 1: Architecture Select the right architecture There’s a lot of architectural styles to choose from. Carefully select the most appropriate style and don’t let emotion influence your choice. You may love the idea of microservices on Kubernetes, but there may be another architecture that’s more suitable.

Select the right services As with architecture styles, there are many AWS services to choose from, and selecting the wrong one can really increase your costs. Maybe you can use Lambda instead of an EC2 instance or swap an RDS database for a DynamoDB table.

Carefully compare and choose the right service for the job.

Scale applications based on demand Use Auto Scaling to scale your application based on demand.

Consider how you can optimise your scaling types and policies. Auto Scaling is one of the most powerful capabilities for cost control on AWS so use it whenever possible.

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Use the well-architected framework

Make cost-efficiency an architecture principle

The AWS Well-Architected Framework (WAF) provides best practice guidance on how to properly architect AWS cloud solutions. It’s comprised of five pillars, one of which is Cost Optimisation. The guidance provided in the framework is easy to understand and very sensible. Try to implement as much of the framework as possible and consider getting a Well-Architected Review (WAR) from an AWS partner to identify any gaps.

Is cost treated with the same priority as performance, resilience, or security? You should address cost efficiency in every architecture. At a minimum, consider including a cost forecast, elements that will influence cost and a description of how cost will be monitored and managed for every solution.

Avoid excessive security or resilience I know what you’re going to say, security and resilience are important. Absolutely, but it’s important to take a balanced view of security and resilience requirements against the cost of a solution. Do you really need 5 layers of firewall appliances in front of that meme-generating web app?

Implement an effective tag strategy To be blunt, you have zero chance of effectively managing your cloud costs without a good resource tagging strategy.

Resource tags enable you to accurately analyse and allocate costs across business, units, environments, apps, components, etc. Spend the time to define an effective tagging strategy that makes sense then implement and enforce it.

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AWS Costs

THE COMPLETE GUIDE

Karl Maier Melbourne

Perspective 2: Operations Cost optimisation roles and responsibilities Like any other operational process, cost optimisation needs ownership and clearly defined roles and responsibilities. Without this, it’s less likely that cost optimisation activities will be prioritised or even performed at all.

Chargeback and showback Nothing makes people care about costs more than making them pay for them. Chargeback is a well-understood but rarely implemented IT financial process that allocates costs directly to a consuming business unit’s cost centre. It’s a very effective way of changing business unit’s behaviour towards cloud costs but can be tough to implement for a variety of reasons.

At the very least you should have a showback system in place to report on each business unit’s cloud costs.

Cost analysis and reporting You can’t optimise your cloud costs if you don’t understand them. You should analyse and

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report on your cloud costs on a regular basis. You can use native or 3rd party services (described in Perspective 4 — Cost Management) for this purpose.

Reports should be made easily accessible and shared widely.

common to find resources running for a retired app. If a full-blown ALM framework seems like overkill for you, make sure you at least have a process in place to remove resources that are no longer needed.

Cost and utilisation monitoring

Hunt for zombies and orphans

You should be monitoring cost the same way that you monitor performance and capacity.

Consider adding cost metrics to your dashboards and monitoring solution. Your operations team should watch any unexpected cost increase or decreases. Ideally, they should also be monitoring utilisation and asking questions when they see resources with low utilisation.

You should regularly hunt for zombies, idle and orphaned resources and terminate them.

Several native and 3rd party services (described in Perspective 4 — Cost Management) can help identity these resources.

Operations teams executing this process should be empowered to act upon their findings.

Application lifecycle management

Taking an iterative, continuous improvement approach to cost optimisation can be extremely effective. Teams should be encouraged to identify and implement changes that improve cost efficiency.

Improvements should be shared across teams, implemented more broadly and fed back into architecture patterns and standards.

An Application Lifecycle Management (ALM) framework puts structure around the activities that occur over the life of an app. For cost optimisation, we’re interested in what happens at the end of this lifecycle — decommissioning. It’s

Continuous improvement

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Perspective 3: Pricing Models Savings Plans The new kid on the AWS “get a discount for committed spend” block, Savings Plans provide a solid discount across a range of services when you commit to a minimum period of use. Savings Plans come in two flavours: Compute Savings Plans offer lower discounts (up to 66%) but are more flexible and EC2 Instance Savings Plans offer higher discounts (up to 77%) but are less flexible. Savings Plans are simpler than their predecessor, Reserved Instances, but still require some careful thought when purchasing.

Savings Plans will apply discounts in a way that maximises savings, first within the account that owns the plan and then within other accounts in the same AWS Organisation.

For this reason, you should purchase plans in your master account or an account that doesn’t contain any resources to maximise your savings.

You should purchase Savings Plans to match your minimum consistent monthly spend, giving some consideration to any forecasted increase or decrease.

Buy your plans in small increments and try not to overdo it.

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If you’re not sure whether you will use a plan you don’t buy it.

You can see savings plan utilisation, coverage and purchasing recommendations in the Cost Explorer Savings Plans console.

Reserved Instances Reserved Instances are more complex to manage but are still required for some services like RDS, ElastiCache and RedShift that aren’t covered

by Savings Plans yet. There are a few different types of reserved instances, each with varying discount-levels, restrictions and characteristics.

and Batch plus a slew of flexible configuration options.

Spot Instances provide a discount up to 90% off On-Demand pricing, though usually, pricing falls somewhere between On-Demand and Savings Plans pricing. You should give Spot Instances some consideration for any variable capacity or transient workloads.

Enterprise Discount Program

You should only purchase new Reserved Instances for resources that aren’t supported

by Savings Plans yet. As with Savings Plans, purchase in increments based on your minimum consistent spend, forecast carefully and don’t overdo it.

AWS Enterprise Discount Program (EDP) is a private, negotiated pricing agreement between AWS and a customer. It provides a discount based on an organisation’s committed spend over a set term, for example, an 18% discount for spending $10M over 3 years. Just make sure you understand that you’re committing to that spend, because use it or not, you’ll pay that amount.

Spot Instances

Funding and Credits

Spot Instances offer a discount if you volunteer to keep AWS’s spare compute warm and can deal with having your instance terminated. Spot Instances offer tight integration with EC2 Auto Scaling, ECS, EMR

AWS offers a range of funding programs and credits either directly to customers or through an AWS partner. You should work closely with your AWS partner and/or AWS account team to find out if you might be eligible for any funding programs or credits.

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Perspective 4: Cost Management AWS Cost Explorer Cost Explorer is an easy to use, free service that can help analyse and manage your AWS costs.

It lets you dig into your cloud costs by account, service, tags, etc. You should use it to understand your cost analysis activities and to investigate any unusual or unexpected costs.

AWS Cost and Usage Reports You can get extremely detailed cost data using Cost and Usage Reports (CUR). Reports can be output to S3 or obtained using the CUR API. Reports are broken down by products, resources, usage types, operations and tags.

This data can be used to perform cost analysis and reporting.

AWS Budgets Budgets allows you to setup cost or usage budgets that, when breached or forecasted to breach, will notify you. Budgets can be configured for cost, usage, Reserved Instances and Savings

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Plans. They can be centralised in your AWS Organizations master account and created as code. You should be creating budgets based on your expected cost and usage profile.

AWS Trusted Advisor Trusted Advisor includes cost optimisation checks. It can identify underutilised, unassociated and idle resources and provides Savings Plans and Reserved Instance recommendations. You should regularly review its findings to identify waste. Multiaccount environments can use Systems Manager Explorer to get a consolidated view of findings across accounts.

AWS Pricing Calculator Use the Pricing Calculator when (re-)architecting your apps. Many services have complicated pricing that you may not fully appreciate until you’re stepping through the pricing calculator fields. Consider making pricing calculator estimates a key part of your architecture and design processes.

AWS Compute Optimizer Compute Optimizer is a standalone service that can help identify underutilised instances and offer a right-sizing recommendation. It works by analysing instance specifications and performance metrics over time.

It’s a free service, so you should opt-in and start reviewing your recommendations.

3rd Party Cost Management Services Several 3rd party services may make your cost management activities a lot easier. These services can consolidate the capabilities of AWS-native tools into a single interface. They also provide a range of additional capabilities like multi-cloud support, cost-allocation and chargeback mechanisms, unique recommendation engines, better reporting and tag governance. You should investigate whether the benefits of a cost management service might significantly outweigh the cost.

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Perspective 5: Service Optimisation Right sizing As most services can be easily scaled up or out, there’s no reason to oversize your workloads. Base your sizing on estimates and testing and then monitor and resize if you need to. Continually review resource utilisation and right size anything that’s underutilised.

Auto scaling Use auto scaling whenever possible. Configuring your resources to scale to meet demand will result in significantly lower costs. This is a fundamental cloud capability that you really should be using as often as possible to balance performance and cost.

Automatic stop/start Consider automatically stopping instances and databases when they’re not needed. Running an on-demand instance 8 hours a day costs roughly 50% less than the same instance covered by a Savings Plan running 24 hours a day. Carefully consider whether you have applications, environments or resources that could be run on a scheduled basis.

Software licensing Investigate whether you have unused Windows (or other) OS licenses that may be eligible for cloud use. You can then Bring Your Own License to AWS to avoid paying for AWS-provided licensing. Also, be aware of AWS Dedicated Hosts if you happen

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to have any legacy, cloud-unfriendly licensing that might be causing you licensing headaches.

Lambda tuning Lambda is a great service, truly a game changer for many applications. However, it’s not the easiest service to tune for cost efficiency. Start by making sure your app logic is sound, minimise invocations where you can and avoid having functions waiting around for things. Monitor your run durations and memory usage and tune accordingly. Lastly, if your use case doesn’t make sense for Lambda, don’t force it, EC2 isn’t that uncool and you can always impress your friends by using containers.

DynamoDB tuning

S3 storage lifecycle If you have data with a predictable lifecycle then you should configure S3 storage lifecycle rules to automatically manage object storage classes and potentially delete objects when they’re no longer required.

EBS volume types Plan your EBS volume type and size carefully. You may be able to reduce your EBS storage costs by using larger General Purpose (GP2) volumes instead of smaller Provisioned IOPS (IO1) volumes.

If you are feeling adventurous, you can also create RAID volumes across several GP2 volumes to get greater performance at a lower price than IO1 volumes.

EBS snapshot lifecycle

DynamoDB is another great service that can also be a bit more challenging to tune for cost. Start by making sure you carefully plan your primary keys and any secondary indexes to avoid excessive and difficult queries. Use provisioned capacity mode unless your use case really needs on-demand.

Tune your RCU / RWU values carefully and use auto scaling to adjust these based on demand.

You should actively manage the lifecycle of EBS snapshots to ensure you’re not paying for snapshots that are no longer required. You can use Data Lifecycle Manger (DLM) to simplify and automate the management of snapshots. You can also use AWS Backup for more complex retention requirements that are difficult to achieve using snapshots directly.

S3 object classes (tiers)

RDS database engine

Use S3 object classes (tiers) to reduce your storage cost for infrequently accessed or archive data. If you haven’t got a good handle on your data lifecycle then consider using intelligent tiering to figure it out for you.

Consider using Aurora, MySQL and Postgres in place of Oracle or Microsoft SQL RDS instances.

There is a dramatic price difference between these different engines which may justify the cost of a DB re-platform project.

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Aurora serverless If you have a database that only handles infrequent queries or has unpredictable load you should look at Aurora Serverless.

It may provide better performance and cost for these types of database workload.

Parameter Store vs.

Secrets Manager Secrets Manager is awesome, but if you don’t need secret generation, automatic-rotation or cross-account access then you should consider storing your secrets in Parameter Store which is free up to 10,000 parameters.

Direct Connect and VPN Keep your Direct Connect and VPN connections to a minimum. Look for and terminate connections that are no longer required. Make sure that you size your Direct Connect connections appropriately.

Transit Gateway and VPC Peering If you have many VPCs and/or Direct Connect or VPN connections, you should consider using Transit Gateway to consolidate your network connectivity and NAT gateways. This will not only reduce your costs but will also simplify your network architecture. If you only have a handful of VPCs, consider using VPC Peering instead of Transit Gateway as it will cost you less.

Winter 2021

NAT Gateways and NAT Instances

Internet egress, cross-region and cross-AZ traffic

NAT Gateways are nice and simple but can start costing a lot if you have many of them.

Depending on your architecture, you might be able to reduce the number of NAT Gateways you’re running or switch to cheaper NAT Instances or even use public subnets.

Network traffic costs on AWS are infamously complex. At a highlevel, keep in mind that you will pay for traffic that leaves AWS (Internet egress) or goes between regions or availability zones.

Plan the placement of workloads to avoid racking up large inter-region / AZ charges and do whatever you can to optimise your egress charges. You should consider using CloudFront to serve content, use Direct Connect or the Snow family for bulk data transfer, use HTTP compression and architect apps to limit unnecessary network traffic.

CloudWatch Optimisation For CloudWatch Logs, only ingest logs that you need and configure retention settings so that you’re not indefinitely storing large volumes of logs.

Disable detailed monitoring on resources when it’s not required.

Clean up any unnecessary custom metrics, alarms and events.

VPC Endpoints Gateway Endpoints provide access to S3 and DynamoDB and are free. Interface Endpoints provide access to a range of other services but are most certainly not free. A few interface endpoints aren’t a big deal, but the cost of many interface endpoints adds up quickly. You should consider centralising your Interface Endpoints using Transit Gateway or skip them altogether and use NAT Gateways or public subnets instead.

I hope that you’ve seen there’s a lot you can do to reduce your AWS cloud costs. Organisations are generally quite good at optimising AWS services that they’re familiar with and using flexible pricing models. However, they sometimes forget about some of the bigger picture things like architecture, operations, and cost management services. Try not to neglect any of these perspectives as you’ll be leaving money on the table.

Cost optimisation isn’t easy, and it’s a job that’s never done. You’ll become more successful at cost optimisation the more you do it. You don’t need to go it alone, reach out for help if you need to, as AWS and AWS partners both want you to get maximum value out of the AWS cloud. n

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How Cloud Technology Helps Retailers Reenvision their Customer Experience How can retailers retain loyal customers and attract new ones? The answer lies in cloud technology Lily Hicks San Francisco

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Winter 2021

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A matter of months ago, this happened: 1. A customer bought shoes, in a store.

2. The customer received rewards for their purchase in near-real-time.

3. The customer turned around to shop some more with their newly earned rewards.

Today, this is happening: 1. A consumer has fewer people to visit, places to go, and occasions to wear shoes.

2. One of the consumer’s favorite shoe retailers invites them to call its service agents just to chat.

3. The consumer has a 45-minute conversation with a service agent. It ends in finding the consumer a local grocer with flour in stock so that they can try the agent’s homemade bread recipe.

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The first scenario is a real-life outcome of our work with one retail client. It shows the in-store impact that cloud technology can have on customer loyalty. The second scenario is also a true story, but refers to the free service that Zappos is offering consumers during — and possibly after — the COVID-19 pandemic. Loyalty, Zappos seems to be saying, is just as much about customer experience and relationships as it is about rewards.

And Zappos might be onto something. Don’t get us wrong: Reenvisioning your customer experience doesn’t have to mean turning your service agents into on-demand homework helpers. But that level of innovative thinking around customer experience could be exactly what’s required for retailers to retain their loyal customers.

Technology has a place in this customer-experience reenvisioning. Modern, cloud technology can make the difference right now between walking ahead of your customers, clearing their paths to purchase of any obstacles, or watching from behind, hoping your customers will find their way and trust you enough to persevere. When it’s hard enough finding flour.

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It’s time for retailers to revisit their technology Reenvisioning your customer experience can also mean rapidly rebuilding your predictive analytics to ensure fewer customers order items that end up being out of stock. That’s what Instacart did in March, when it faced a 30 percent drop in ordered items being found. Because Instacart already had a solid data foundation and IT infrastructure, it was able to quickly adapt its analytical model to the times, running it every hour (instead

What if those abandoned brands had been able to: • Forecast demand with greater accuracy?

• Provide their customers an assortment of personalized recommendations, with viable alternatives to their first pick?

Winter 2021

of every two) and limiting the historical data it considers to one week (previously 30 days).

What about retailers without the infrastructure for advanced analytics? Their customer experience — and therefore customer loyalty — is under threat.

Two-thirds of consumers have tried new brands after sheltering in place, with 79 percent saying they did so because a product was unavailable or out-of-stock.

They might have kept their customers.

And that’s the power of technology.

Forecasting services and recommendation engines are at our virtual fingertips, thanks to cloud technology. With pay-as-you-go pricing and built-in security features (and without a deep bench of IT professionals), cloud technology gives retailers the building blocks to execute their customer experience strategies quickly, securely, and cost-effectively.

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3 cloud-enabled capabilities to improve customer experience In May, Forrester released a list of the top retail tech investments of 2020, starting with the “hot” and ending in the “hype.”

Each of the first three investments has the potential to improve customer experience: 4. Advanced analytics/ data analysis tools

The 60 interviews that informed the list took place in January and February 2020, before COVID-19 officially became a pandemic, but the authors explain that they, “expect that retailers and brands will ultimately make most of the investments they prioritized during their interviews; however, they will more likely occur in 2021 (barring a wide-scale COVID-19 resurgence at that time).”

5. Omnichannel capabilities 6. Personalization technologies Each is also enabled, accelerated, and optimized by cloud technology.

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Here at Slalom, we also expect that retailers will make most of the investments they prioritized.

And we expect that retailers who don’t wait until 2021 for their digital transformations will emerge from this crisis readier than ever for retail’s new normal.

So, what could investments in 1, 2, and 3 start to look like? These real-world stories might give you an idea. They all feature retailers or the companies that serve them, and they all include cloud technology. Slalom works with all of the major cloud providers (and some smaller ones, too), but to make this picture more complete, our examples will focus on AWS: the cloud chosen by at least one company that has made loyalty its business.

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Advanced Analytics Instacart’s analytical reset is a good example of leveraging advanced analytics to improve customer experience. Recently, we worked with a children’s clothing retailer to help build its ability to pivot that quickly.

For this retailer, that meant

migrating two years of pointof-sale, marketing, and inventory data from its on-premises environment to the AWS cloud.

After setting up, configuring, and securing the retailer’s AWS environment: • For the first time ever, the inventory team has a truly historical view of key product in-stock rates. It also cut processing times by 99 percent—from three weeks to two hours.

• The pricing team provides dynamic pricing on its e-commerce platform using 400,000 new machine learning models, one for each product line. Built in Amazon SageMaker, the models also help the team optimize prices for in-store promotions at daily and weekly frequencies.

How it improves CX Customers find more of the products they want at the right times, at the right prices.

Omnichannel Capabilities “Omni” literally means “all,” as in “all channels.” How can anyone’s omnichannel strategy possibly be good enough with a definition like that? Like it or not, this is the word that’s used to describe the ability to track and deliver experiences across channels. All channels. Or maybe just the ones you’re using? We really don’t know, but 40 should count — that’s how many marketing technologies LiveRamp united inside one data lake on AWS. LiveRamp is the creator of a leading data connectivity platform used by companies such as Macy’s, Lowe’s, and REI. LiveRamp wanted a 360-degree view of its own customers, and to get it, it needed to connect its own data. So, we formed a data lake on AWS and then reached

Winter 2021

across the customer journey — from Salesforce to Marketo to Pendo — to pull data into it.

To work with the data, we built a data warehouse in Amazon Redshift.

To piece together what’s working and with who, we created universal customer and prospect IDs. To visualize the data, we built Tableau dashboards that can draw from the warehouse in real-time.

Now, LiveRamp has a true omnichannel view of marketing performance across channels, accounts, and industries.

How it improves CX Customers and prospects receive more cohesive, less duplicative marketing from one channel to the next.

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Personalization Technologies Today, personalization technology transcends basic text replacement. Customers can now receive the right messaging and the right product recommendations for them at that moment.

When an electronics client sought to implement machine learning and start with a highvalue use case, it made sense build a recommendation engine.

Using Amazon Personalize, we co-developed a ‘customer also bought’ recommendation engine to drive sales on the company’s website. Personalize, a real-time personalization and

recommendation service from AWS, allowed us to quickly register the company’s ecommerce interaction datasets, establish data feeds, and then build and optimize a machine learning model.

Today, the client’s customers get personalized recommendations in real time, based on products that are currently in their carts. The company is also leveraging the engine to introduce new packaged offerings to customers at lower prices.

How it improves CX Customers can effortlessly discover the products — and deals — that interest them most.

Get poised for rebound We have no crystal ball (although Amazon Forecast comes close to one), but we’re optimistic about what’s ahead for retailers. May 2020 saw betterthan-expected results for the retail industry. At their reopened stores, American Eagle Outfitters and Abercrombie & Fitch reported respective sales of 95 percent and 80 percent of normal levels.

Consumers are coming back. So, brush off the welcome mat. At your brick-and-mortar stores, don your masks and make other precautions. Most importantly, give your customers a reason to stay or return by providing them personalized, cohesive, cloud-enabled experiences. And maybe a favorite recipe. n

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Moving beyond the Dashboard

Moving beyond the

Hacking your data to fuel hockey stick growth Jake Bennett Seattle

The success of Growth Hacking has forced a radical re-thinking of our relationship with data

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Over the last several years, a new breed of data-savvy marketer has emerged from the Silicon Valley start-up scene. Forced to make rapid revenue gains on a small budget to survive, these so-called “Growth Hackers” became experts in interpreting consumer behavior from the digital breadcrumbs left behind by their customers. By learning how to capture and read this data in real-time, these marketer/ product manager hybrids

Hacking your data to fuel hockey-stick growth

were able to make frequent, incremental changes to both marketing and product, driving super-sized growth as a result.

Established companies trying to increase agility, accelerate growth, and expand their digital footprint should take heed. The term Growth Hacking may seem like just another buzzword, but it represents an important shift in the evolution of marketing and product management.

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This methodology has helped fuel the growth of hundreds of successful start-ups like Airbnb, Uber, Instagram, and LinkedIn, forcing traditional companies to take notice. In this article, we’ll illustrate how re-thinking your relationship with data can serve to unlock growth. We’ll also highlight some of the tools and technologies that can help facilitate this transformation.

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Data as a conduit of human interaction Historically, data technology has focused on tracking large collections of things: people, products, transactions, page views, etc. But in a digital world where every mouse click, keystroke, and finger swipe is a trackable and valuable piece of data, we need to start thinking about data as a stream of human interactions.

Tracking a purchase or page

view isn’t granular enough to understand consumer behavior.

When it comes to achieving growth, nuance matters, and for that we need a detailed digital signal that can help us gain empathy at-scale.

Fortunately, modern digital and product analytics tools like Amplitude and Segment were built from the ground up to track human interactions.

They were designed to capture

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a high-volume stream of digital events and make them available in real-time to marketers, product managers, and other downstream systems. In contrast, older analytics tools like Google Analytics (GA) and Adobe

Analytics were built to track web activity in a dashboard. This worked fine when web technology was simple, websites had limited interactivity and the desktop was dominant — but we’re way beyond that today in

our mobile-first, post-Web 2.0 world. And while GA and Adobe have technically extended their platforms to incorporate events, they are still webpage-centric at heart, and using them to track to events remains clunky.

Not all data is created equal: customer data fuels growth If we start to think about data as a stream of human interactions, then we need a better way to capture data about humans.

The challenging thing about humans is that we interact with companies over an extended period of time, and through a variety of different channels.

Unfortunately, traditional web analytics tools were not designed originally for this type of customer-centered analytics. They excel at measuring anonymous webpage views at a point-intime, but this tells us very little about the humans we’re curious about. After all, page views don’t buy products or services.

To leverage digital signal to yield growth, we need three things from our data: 1) a way to track interactions from multiple channels, 2) the ability identify the same customer across data sources, and 3) an option for blending anonymous data with known customer data after customers identify themselves.

Customer Data Platforms (CDPs) like Segment are purpose-built to do this. Segment ingests customer-oriented event data from dozens of sources (including custom ones) and it creates a

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unified customer profile that persists over time. (The process of identifying the same user across data sources is known as “identity resolution.”) Modern product analytics tools like Amplitude work well when deployed downstream from a CDP. They ingest events that have been unified through a CDP and provide data analysis tools that allow normal Joes to interrogate customer-oriented metrics like retention, conversion, and cohort behavior. Amplitude also has pre-built integrations for dozens of data sources and it can perform identity resolution on its own, so it can be deployed as a stand-alone platform.

The advantage that purposebuilt, customer-oriented data platforms have over general-purpose big data technologies (like data warehouses, data lakes, and data streaming technologies), is that customer-oriented platforms have inherent domain knowledge about humans. This allows them to provide rich, customer-oriented features out-of-the-box, like identity resolution, privacy safeguards, and customer lifecycle reporting. And increasingly, these tools offer

out-of-the-box predictive attributes, such as likelihood to churn, propensity-to-buy, and automated segmentation (called clustering). Developing this type of functionality from scratch using general-purpose data tools would take months if not years.

Amplitude, for example, has a feature called Personas that utilizes machine learning (ML) to automatically cluster customers based on their behavior. This allows product managers and marketers to quickly group users based on how they actually interact with the company, rather than manually creating rules based on how they think users should be segmented.

Amplitude has also introduced a robust machine learning architecture under-the-hood called AutoML. AutoML is a full-blown machine learning pipeline that marries Amplitude’s customer-oriented event data with large-scale ML technologies like Apache Spark, Airflow, and TensorFlow. This powerful combination enables auto-generated predictive attributes, thereby transforming growth teams into citizen data scientists.

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Reusing analytical data for direct activation However, to truly harness data for growth, we need to re-evaluate the very reason we use data in the first place. Historically, the goal of analytical data was to populate dashboards for executive decision making. The purpose of this data was to provide management sufficient information to guide changes to the day-to-day operations of the business. Under this paradigm, the dashboard is considered the end of the line for data.

But, the ultimate purpose of data is not to provide management

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with informative charts (that’s merely an intermediate objective). Rather, the purpose of data is to drive ROI. In the case of the dashboard, ROI is achieved through the completion of initiatives enacted by management, based on their interpretation of the data. The problem is that the time between when data is generated, and the time initiatives are enacted (let’s call this the mean-time-to-activation) can be quite long. First, the data needs to be collected. Then it needs to be transformed and displayed in a dashboard. Next, management

needs to interpret the data.

Then, an action plan needs to be formulated and agreed upon.

Finally, the action plan must be executed. The mean-time-to-activation (MTTA) in this case is typically months or quarters.

Unfortunately, time is a luxury that few start-ups have, so growth hackers developed shortcuts for using data to improve ROI. The first is using analytical data directly for activation.

Rather than treating the dashboard as a dead-end, analytical data is repurposed and sent to downstream systems for targeted, high-performing customer communications.

Put another way, instead of throwing away all the effort that goes into unifying, cleaning, and augmenting data for dashboards, this data is leveraged to personalize the customer experience across channels. For example, cohorts can be created in Amplitude for analyzing customer behavior like conversion, engagement, and retention.

If an analysis identifies a group of customers who are likely churn, the obvious next step is to send them an email or mobile push notification to help keep them in the fold. Whereas Amplitude has pre-built connectors that can trigger this communication in real-time, traditional dashboards can only point you in the general direction-it’s up to you to interpret the data and take action. In the case of Amplitude, MTTA is dramatically reduced because-in addition to providing dashboards-it can directly alter the customer experience through automated integration.

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Data as a team sport The second shortcut growth hackers use to decrease MTTA is liberating analytical data from the grasp of management and putting it in the hands of the front-line workers who directly impact revenue-generating products and campaigns.

Rather than waiting for executives to interpret summary data and send down orders from on high, growth-hacking product managers, marketers, designers, and engineers dig into detailed data weekly to validate growth hypotheses, identify friction points, and observe customer behavior. By truly democratizing data in this manner, organizations that embrace growth hacking can radically shorten feedback loops, allowing them to execute significantly more growth improvements than their traditionally-minded competitors.

To do this effectively, though, you need the right tools. If data is locked away in systems that are inaccessible to growth professionals (who are data consumers but not necessarily

Although there have been substantial improvements in how we store and retrieve data over the last few decades, the way we consume data has changed very little. The success of Growth Hacking is forcing us to radically reconsider how we use and think about data. Taking a page from the Growth Hacking playbook, product managers, marketers, and data analysts charged with driving growth should focus on implementing four key changes:

data experts), then the ability to gain insight and understand customer behavior becomes severely limited. If data experts are the gatekeepers of customer insight, then a company’s ability to learn and adapt quickly is limited by the bandwidth and expertise of a limited few.

Dashboards are a good first step toward exfiltrating data for frontline data consumers (provided that a wide group of users is given access). But dashboards alone don’t allow non-experts to interrogate the data and perform ad hoc analysis, a critical requirement for growth teams rapidly testing hypotheses. SQL is the lingua franca in the traditional data world, but it’s difficult for busy, non-programmer data consumers to learn. Google Analytics and Adobe Analytics have their own data analysis tools, but only specialized digital analysts have the expertise to use them for ad hoc analysis.

Fortunately, there is a better way.

Modern analytics platforms like

1. Harness digital signal from customer interactions to gain empathy at-scale.

2. Leverage purpose-built tools that specialize in customer data.

3. Re-purpose analytical data for direct activation.

4. Democratize data and ensure that it’s easy to visualize and interrogate.

Amplitude are designed from the ground up to be used by non-data-experts. For example, the Amplitude user interface employs a natural language-like, pointand-click interface for building queries, making it intuitive to use from day one. Amplitude avoids the use of obtuse, platform-specific terminology. You won’t see strange terms like eVars, sProps, WHERE clauses, custom dimensions, or goal slot IDs. Amplitude also gives teams the ability to add custom descriptions to things like events (e.g. clicking a button) and properties (e.g. the color and text of the button). This gives teams the ability to create a cheat sheet that’s baked right into the tool itself. Amplitude also provides a wide range of pre-made, highvalue, easy-to-configure charts, making it easy to start exploring customer behavior out of the gate. Finally, Amplitude provides a host of team collaboration features, allowing growth teams to add comments to charts, publish their analysis, and discuss data within the tool itself.

Does this mean we should discard our existing data analytics tools like Google Analytics, Adobe Analytics, data warehouses, data lakes, and traditional dashboards?

Absolutely not. Each tool serves a specific purpose. However, when it comes to driving growth through rapid experimentation and optimization, a more modern toolset and agile methodology are required for achieving results. n

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Data Strategies to Strengthen your Workday Investment Jodi Ballard-Beach & Jocelyn Baumann Portland

As the world faces an unprecedented

questions. Big data has been a big conver-

pandemic, the ability to collect, analyze, and

sation for a couple of decades. For orga-

use data to inform our next steps has never

nizations who were forward-thinking

been more striking. The very key to safely

in their data investments, both in tech-

reopening the economy is data — namely in

nology and knowledge proficiency, the

the form of contact tracing and testing.

return on their investment is shown in

Internally, organizations are turning to data to answer some of their most urgent

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their ability to measure, respond, and adapt to this rapidly changing world.

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Workday has established itself as a leading HCM and Finance software based on a system architecture built around the principle of the Power of One (not familiar? click here). This architecture enables agility and is positioned to be the intelligent core of an organization’s digital strategy.

Customers know that Workday will collect and deliver the data they need to make relevant and timely decisions — most likely a

primary driver in selection — but it’s not unusual to find organizations struggling to realize the full power of Workday’s data capability. During a Workday implementation there is a data conversion workstream, but typically no prescribed workstream for determining how the organization wants to view data, how it will be governed, and most importantly, how the business will use the data to make decisions.

Often the investment in data stops at the purchase and implementation of technology, but the technology only provides one part of the overall solution: the architecture needed to collect, store, and report. A corresponding investment in strategy, planning, and continuous improvement for both business practice and data management are needed to complete the solution.

A Modern Culture of Data Slalom’s Modern Culture of Data framework was designed to help clients identify and prioritize this investment so that they can realize the full benefits of their technology implementations.

Let’s take a look at this framework and see how it applies to Workday implementations.

Bold Vision

Access & Transparency

A Bold Vision is at the heart of a modern culture of data. With this vision, leaders set a direction for technology, the workforce, and for the future of the business.

Access & Transparency is the translation of Bold Vision into technical requirements for systems of record.

• What questions do HR leaders and business stakeholders have that cannot be currently answered?

• What kind of initiatives could be funded and approved with the right data?

• Is user security managed in a way that supports the bold vision?

• What does data transparency look like by employee type, job role, and management level?

• Who should have access to what data and how would you describe their ideal user experience?

• Are you ready to embed an analytics mindset within the organization and its operations?

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Guardianship

Data Literacy

Ways of Working

Guardianship ensures that data security, quality, and governance support the vision and user experience.

Data Literacy encompasses the mindset and skills end-users need to effectively use system data

Ways of Working is the operational use of data throughout all levels of an organization

• Do consumers of the data understand where it comes from, what it can be used for, and how to analyze it to draw out insights and recommendations?

• Are system reports and dashboards regularly used in team meetings to monitor progress against key performance indicators?

• What effort has been made to establish an effective partnership between the business and IT? • What approach is used to collect and implement business defined rules for data quality and governance?

• Will decisions start to be made based on analysis rather than “gut feelings”?

• Are new initiatives and projects required to have analytical inputs as a basis for their recommendations?

• What mechanisms ensure technical support (ie security, audit automation) enable the bold vision?

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Now that we understand what a modern culture of data looks like, we can see how it applies to Workday configuration: By using the Modern Culture of Data framework to inform Workday configuration decisions, you can achieve these kinds of benefits: Clear outlines of expected business results • Easier identification of what functionality needs to be configured

• Defined criteria for evaluating alignment of configuration to strategy • Easier identification of gaps in knowledge and skills to improve training and change management efforts • Greater utilization and return on investment post-implementation • How has your organization reacted to data requests during COVID-19?

For many organizations, the pandemic has highlighted gaps in both technology and the understanding and data culture.

Whether you are considering replacing a legacy ERP system, implementing Workday, or are an established Workday customer — the time invested in bringing this framework to life in your organization is well worth it. n

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How equity-driven design can build a brighter future Chelsie Messenger Minneapolis

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Inequity by design Design is never neutral. The choices we make — as designers, strategists, researchers — have concrete impacts on the lives of people. While the aim of our work should be to understand and meet the needs of humans, too often the experiences we create benefit only a privileged subset of people. In some cases, our work actively perpetuates marginalization and exploitation.

We see the impact of design when technologies designed to combat human bias end up reflecting the same racist and sexist stereotypes that occur in the analog world. The system can only act according to the rules we create. Whether intentionally or not, inequity is there because we designed it to be there.

Inequity, though, is not just an algorithm problem. Consider an organization like Airbnb, founded by designers with human-centered design at its core. Much of the company’s design philosophy is built on a human-centric foundation of trust, transparency, and authenticity. In the early years of Airbnb, that meant featuring guest photos and names prominently on booking requests. CEO Brian Chesky stated, “Access is built on trust,

and trust is built on transparency.

When you remove anonymity, it brings out the best in people.”

This approach worked well for a subset of Airbnb users, contributing to the company’s reputation as an organization committed to customer-centricity. Yet, there was growing evidence that design choices on Airbnb’s platform were enabling discrimination. The hashtag #AirbnbWhileBlack began trending. Quirtina Crittenden, the creator of the hashtag, shared a personal story of having multiple hosts reject her booking requests until she changed her

profile photo and shortened her name to Tina. Other people began chiming in with similar stories — enough to prompt a 2015 research study that found guests with names assumed to be Black were roughly 16% more likely to be rejected than guests with names assumed to be white.

Brian Chesky and the other founders of Airbnb later stated that they hadn’t considered the potential for racial discrimination on Airbnb. They certainly didn’t intent to build discrimination into the platform. Nonetheless, discrimination took place.

“Design is the process by which the politics of one world become the constraints on another. How are those constraints built? What are its effects on political life? To study the politics of infrastructure is to study the political ideas that get built into the design process, and the infrastructure’s impact on the political possibilities of the communities that engage it.”

— Fred Turner, “Don’t Be Evil”

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Apathy vs. equity-driven action The unpleasant truth is this: we have created the status quo.

Much like algorithms mirror the bias already present within our society, our design practices continue to perpetuate systemic inequity. And if we truly want change, we cannot grow comfortable in our own apathy. We cannot simply sit back and say we’re not [racist/homophobic/ ableist/etc.], expecting change to materialize out of thin air.

We cannot simply sit back, expecting change to materialize out of thin air.

Building a more equitable and inclusive future requires action.

It requires us to re-evaluate our ways of working, consciously moving from equity-oblivious (or equity-averse) to equity-driven.

It requires a commitment to education and practice and advocacy. But most of all, it requires

humility — a willingness to hold no things sacred, to reframe our understanding of design and our own responsibility as designers.

How then do we embark on equity-driven design? While there’s no template for instantly eliminating inequity, here are five ways to get started:

1. Acknowledge the existing power dynamics that have created inequity As designers, we must confront our own privilege — what qualifies us to be a designers, what “good” design looks like. Our work exists within the existing power structure, a product of white supremacy, patriarchy, and other oppressive systems. This means that certain communities have been both historically excluded from participating in design and actively exploited by design.

Consider the creators of the frameworks we study, the faculty of the schools we attend, the thought leaders within our space.

The sameness of these institutions has built a cycle of valuing

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and distributing the design values of those with privilege, even when alternatives could offer potential benefits to already underserved communities.

We are participants in the design system, which means that we are complicit in the structural inequality of that system.

Before attempting any kind of equity-driven work, we must reflect on how we have benefited from privilege and potentially contributed to inequity.

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2. Build diverse teams that represent a broad spectrum of lived experiences Equity-driven work is meaningless without a concrete commitment to inclusivity within our own teams. For too long, we’ve fallen back on “diversity of thought” as an excuse for inaction. Meanwhile, our teams remain 3% Black and 8% Latinx. Given a reported 19.3% rate of employment in the US, designers with disabilities are even less representative of the over 1 billion people living with a disability worldwide.

Design suffers from the same problematic hiring practices that plague other professions — sourcing candidates from within our internal networks, relying on hiring practices suspect to implicit bias, and evaluating

candidates based on euphemistic criteria such as culture fit.

Yet, we know that the homogenous nature of our teams imposes real limitations on the quality of our work by reinforcing shared biases.

Furthermore, our failure to build teams with a diverse spectrum of identities and lived experiences hinders the very thought diversity we claim to value, stunting our potential for innovation and creative problem-solving.

3. Empower under-represented communities to drive the conversation.

Traditional design methodologies often reinforce paternalism, the belief that we are the benevolent experts and those in less powerful positions owe us gratitude for our work. This results in misguided efforts to swoop in as creative saviors, diverting attention and resources back to ourselves while maintaining our position of privilege.

Design problems do not live in a vacuum.

They exist within a complex ecosystem of social, cultural, and economic factors — factors well understood by

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the communities that live them.

Centering our own voices in the conversation leads not only to unusable solutions, but also negative impacts to the very people we purport to serve.

But while systemic inequity has long magnified the perspective of those with privilege, under-represented communities have never been silent.

Throughout history, these groups have continued to advocate for community-led change. Our task then is to amplify these voices, seeking to learn from individuals whose lived experiences have qualified them to articulate where and why inequity exists.

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4. Partner with diverse co-creators to design with instead of for We must recognize that empathy is a poor substitute for a person’s firsthand experiences. All too often, we use our limited interactions with a community to build tidy generalizations, substituting research artifacts for the active participation of real people. This is tokenism, nominally including members of an under-represented community, but giving them no real power over the scope or outcome of the work.

Leaning into the historical dichotomy of researcher and subject allows us to remain comfortably in a position of power.

At its most extreme, this power imbalance leads to the exploitation of under-served communities as objects of experimentation and exploitation. At its most subtle,

it leads to the belief that our way is the only right way.

Instead of inviting people to a seat at “our table,” we must facilitate equitable partnerships, recognizing that the best solutions are built by the people who live them. While we bring valuable skills to the table, these should be considered equal in weight to the lived experiences and unique perspectives of our co-creators. Acknowledging the expertise of our community partners means reassessing who leads the conversation, who participates in the conversation, and who benefits from the conversation.

5. Use inclusion as a starting point for meaningful innovation We must break free from the misconception that the most valuable use case is the broadest one, the idea that somehow generalization equals universality.

Reducing people into the lowest common denominator has resulted in both exclusion and endangerment, yet we continue to prioritize quick wins over systemic issues of access and equity.

Equity-driven design focuses first on the needs of an under-served community. By leveraging the unique constraints of an “edge case”, we force ourselves to think outside our usual ways of working, collective biases, and perceived defaults.

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Collaboration with diverse co-creators becomes essential to the creative process, as we listen and learn alongside experts with lived experiences.

While inclusion is a starting point for innovation, the natural next step involves exploring how the resulting inventions and accommodations can benefit people far beyond their initial application. Like physical “curb cuts” (ramps designed for people with wheelchairs that benefit anyone pulling a suitcase or pushing a stroller), these solutions invert our traditional ideas of value and prioritization. Instead of starting broad and addressing the specific later (or never), we “solve for one, extend to many.”

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A more equitable future Design is never neutral. The choices we make — as designers, strategists, researchers — have concrete impacts on the lives of people.

Websites that remain inaccessible to people who require assistive technology are not anomalies.

Dating apps that leave members of the queer community vulnerable to hate crimes are not anomalies. The discrimination that took place on Airbnb is not an anomaly. Design choices, despite our good intentions, have gotten us to this place.

Design choices, despite our good intentions, have gotten us to this place.

What then is our responsibility?

We might start by increasing the diversity of our teams and starting conversations about how equity affects the way we approach our work. We may need to rethink the way we prioritize design problems or build personas. But we can’t stop there. While small, everyday decisions grow equity-awareness, we must continue to hold ourselves accountable for

building relationships with underserved communities, engaging and compensating diverse co-creators, and supporting community-led change.

All of us, as designers of human experiences, as participants in an unequal system, and as members of diverse communities — we all have that responsibility.

The responsibility to reflect on ourselves and our design practices. The responsibility to actively build a more equitable future. n

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Unlocking Masterful Service Design Blueprints

frontstage

How a service design blueprint can provide the foundation for your business to meet and exceed your customer’s evolving needs Sophie Cummings Denver

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backstage

A service design blueprint is a tool that places the customer at the forefront of the experience. It can help you identify what internal and external forces most impact your customers’ experience with the brand.

The blueprint is comprised of two different components — front stage and back stage actions.

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The front stage actions are directly seen and experienced by your customer, whether that customer is internal or external.

The back stage actions detail the interactions that indirectly influence your customer’s experiences with your brand.

To illustrate front and back stage actions, you can think of watching

a performance in a theatre. The audience is the customer who experiences everything that happens on the stage. The back stage actions are all the experiences indirectly impacting the performance. For example, the ushers quickly help the attendees find their seats. The lighting, stage props, costume, make up, orchestra, and many others may

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not be directly noticed by the audience, yet they play an invaluable role in crafting the best experience for your customers.

Companies most often leverage service design blueprints in order to identify friction points between the customer and internal people, process, and technology — the point where front and back stage actions meet.

Let’s break down people, process, and technology into a tangible example.

During the recent pandemic, several flights I had booked were cancelled. I called the airlines and had a variety of positive and frustrating experiences related to inefficient people, process, and technologies.

For instance, one airline hung up on me and denied me the ability to speak with a person. (I called about 5 times in an attempt to talk to a real person. I pressed 0 and Google searched for other

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ways to talk to a person to no avail.) A blueprint would be able to determine what back stage actions need to be resolved to provide a better front stage interaction. Is it based on lack of resources? Outdated technology? Process impediments? A combination of people and technology? Or something else we may discover through research?

(We will get to research soon!)

Conversely, the blueprint also uses qualitative data to highlight exemplary customer interactions. For example, for another cancelled flight, I was able to have the airline call me back.

This gave me the sense that they were on my side and wanted to provide me with the best service, leading to my brand loyalty.

The micro-interactions I experienced with the airline due to my cancelled flights affected my perception of the brand, and ultimately increased my brand loyalty to the airline who offered the most seamless experience.

Broadly speaking, brands that place their customer-first who prioritize and focus on business initiatives related to micro brand interaction tend to have higher customer retention, increased loyalty, and customers who advocate for their brand. These actions lead to increased sales, new customers, and wider followings on social media. In stark contrast, when brands stop placing customers at the core of the experience, they tend to lose formerly loyal customers and experience the sunk cost of losing customers they worked so hard to win due to poor service.

Service design blueprints enable us to see the trickling effects of the micro interactions, and guide businesses to prioritize decisions related to their customer’s needs. Blueprints allow us to uncover why a business is unable to service its patrons effectively and find patterns across various consumer to brand touch-points.

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Why should my company use a service design blueprint when there are already so many other tools out there?

Business tools, such as valuestream mapping and process mapping, enable teams to identify how to improve a process, technology, or internal customer experience. In comparison, customer experience tools, such as journey mapping, identify critical moments in a customer’s brand interaction that either result in increased brand loyalty or a desire to use a competitor. Service design blueprints combine the outputs of these tools — business objectives and KPIs, process flows, and customer experience in one succinct view.

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Thanks to these additional tools, a service design blueprint may be closer than you think. Here’s how you can save time and money by leveraging existing resources to create a service design blueprint for your company:

Value stream mapping “Value stream mapping is a flowchart method to illustrate, analyze and improve the steps required to deliver a product or service.”One of its primary uses is to quantify inefficiencies within your organization that are

most impacting the bottom line.

This tool is great to use as you craft your service design blueprint when you want to optimize internal process to increase revenue. The value stream map can be a key tool in helping your organization complete the back-stage actions of the blueprint. As a bonus, this tool will help your business formulate KPIs to measure the success of your prioritized initiative design blueprint. In one central view, you will have quantitative data, qualitative data, KPIs, and the foundation for how you will improve your business. (Score!)

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Process mapping According to Gartner, process mapping “combines process/ workflow, organizational and data/resource views with underlying metrics to provide a foundation for analyzing value chains, activity-based costs, bottlenecks, critical paths and inefficiencies.”

Process maps are effective tools because they show end-to-end processes, can be built rapidly using minimal resources, and can facilitate alignment on a

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given process within a team.

If your business has this tool, your service design blueprint has a great foundation for the backstage actions, especially in regards to the people, process, and technology portion.

When leveraging this tool as an input to your service design blueprint, I recommend thinking about the customer as your business moves through the outlined process. For example,

at a restaurant, a customer has to order the pasta to initiate this flow. Who from your organization is there to support their experience as they wait? What are the business ramifications and processes in place if the pasta is underdone or doesn’t meet the customer’s needs?

These questions are answered in journey maps — the front stage portion of your blueprint.

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Journey mapping Journey maps detail a customer’s emotional state as they interact with a brand (call customer support to get a refund) or complete a digital task (e-commerce browsing-purchase experience) over a certain period of time.

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Traditionally, journey maps rely on qualitative data and are used by product teams to improve the customer experience, so extending them to service design blueprints feels seamless. Both tools are moving toward the same goal — better customer experiences.

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Service design blueprint Value-stream mapping, process mapping, and journey mapping are tools that focus on specific areas on the process or experience to identify improvements.

Value-stream mapping and process mapping take a business-first lens and are great tools when creating the backstage actions of the service design blueprint. They tell you what is happening on the business operational side and can help your business pinpoint inefficiencies in the backstage processes. On the flip side of the coin, the journey map takes a customer-first lens and will tell you the impact on your customer your operational inefficiencies are having. Recall the earlier example of the airline

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who forced me to wait on the call for two hours before being serviced. The backstage inefficiencies could be an antiquated phone operating system and lack of interconnected technology, resulting customer service representatives dealing with angry customers who have waited for two hours. This can negatively impact your attrition rates and cause loyal customers to leave.

Separately these tools showcase incredible insights to the backstage or front stage business inefficiencies, yet the connective tissue between the two stages is imperative to achieve maximum success. Akin to the theatre, if you poured money

to solve a lighting issue but you never solved the sound issue, the performance wouldn’t be as successful as it could be.

When you combine the front stage and back stage into one succinct view, you have the power to make more informed and prioritized business decisions to help your employees, your customers, and ultimately, your bottom line. The service design blueprint allows you to see the lighting AND the sound issues on one view so that you can prioritize each of them based on level of effort, business value, and impact to customer.

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Why does it matter to have both business and customer viewpoints in one document?

In a connected world full of choice, brands and products are commodity services. Consumers will gravitate and purchase products from companies who are agile, continue to innovate, and make business decisions based around their customer’s voice.

began it seemed strange that they were going to take on the Goliath of Uber. Nevertheless, Lyft offered a unique valuable proposition that came at a lesser price than Uber. Lyft was able to establish its position as another David able to take on Goliath.

It is instrumental for your business to meet and exceed your customer’s evolving needs. A brand’s failure to hear the needs of the consumers has resulted in a fast-track to demise. For example, I remember my father always complaining about how expensive cabs were. You would sit in the backseat and watch the bill go up and up and up.

Then, Uber came to town and disrupted the cab industry. No one paying based on the number of customers, and there was an option for a black car with amenities, which made me feel like a celebrity. Cab companies failed to innovate and meet their customer’s needs. Likewise, when Lyft

In another example, we see movie theatres changing their business model to offer alcohol to patrons over 21, Facebook replicating its competitor’s feature to stay relevant — such as copying Snapchat’s story feature, and Southwest offering free baggage to all customers.

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When innovation is paramount to your company’s ability to survive, it is ever-increasingly important to include your customer in your business decision. During the pandemic, this message resounds more than ever. There has been a pivotal shift in how the customer consumes and engages during COVID-19. Their needs change daily, and they seek brands who can keep up — from providing Zoom games to giving them Zoom breaks because Zoom fatigue is real. However, we must be careful when listening to our customers because what they say they want may not be what they actually need.

“Empathy is at the heart of design.

Without the understanding of what others see, feel, and experience, design is a pointless task.”

- Tim Brown, Executive Chair of IDEO

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How should I use a service design blueprint?

A service design blueprint gives your company all the pieces to prioritize and inform business decisions. Once your blueprint is complete, it’s up to you and your team to implement and realize these business initiatives.

Let’s look at an example at why service design blueprints can be critical components to rapid agility, customer retention, and your business’s bottom line.

In 1999, the Swiffer was unveiled.

Continuum was hired by Proctor & Gamble to create a new mopping experience. Gianfranco Zaccai, President and Chief Design Officer at Continuum, spearheaded research to understand

what people were doing, how much time it took, and why they were doing it. They used surveys and observational research methods. In the surveys, people said they wanted large quantities of cleaning supplies. In observational, the research team discovered that people spent as much time cleaning their mop as they did their floors AND that people were only using small quantities of a cleaning supply in practice.

“Development really depends on empathy for what’s going on,” Gianfranco Zaccai said. “It’s definitely work understanding what people say, what they do, and what they care about.”

Enter the big idea.

The Swiffer used qualitative and quantitive data points to solve the customer’s large pain point — cleaning the mop as much

as they did their floors — while enabling the business team to meet and succeed their KPIs. The key to success was combining both data pieces to formulate one clear business initiative.

Who should be involved in the creation of a service design blueprint?

The nature of how a blueprint is created is foundational to success. They combine multiple disciplines, stakeholders’ perspectives, business needs, and consumer experiences into one view. Inherently, gathering these perspectives and acquiring a unified vision on one sheet of paper requires multi-disciplinary collaboration and communication across your organization.

This is why this tool is so effective — it de-silos organizations and provides forums for cross-functional teams to communicate and align on one direction, whereas formerly these teams each had their own directions, KPIs, and may have been duplicating efforts or re-inventing the wheel.

As a consultant, I understand it can be very hard to eliminate silos in large-matrix organizations. That’s why I tell my clients we need a leadership champion who has some clout in the organization to get behind the service design blueprint. The leadership champion can rally fractured teams to get behind the blueprint and can evangelize with other leaders why you are doing this. They are the ones who will carry the blueprint forward and

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show to their executives why it is instrumental in the process.

Sometimes, you may need to work a bit harder to find a leadership champion. When this happens, I like to show, not tell.

Show leaders and teams what the end deliverable will look like and explain using anecdotal evidence how it will benefit them.

I like to start this process by listening first to the team’s pain points. They may sound like this:

“We spend a significant amount of money to create tools that our teams don’t adopt.”

“Our team’s important projects get de-prioritized often, making it hard for us to make an impact within our organization.”

“Our call centers receive X amount of volume related to problems customers could solve on their own”

“Skilled workers spend more time doing task-based work than problem-solving work.”

Then, you craft your service design blueprint to include and recommend a solution for each of these pain points that is based on business metrics, customer metrics, quantitative and qualitative data points, and former business / customer-centric deliverables.

I’ve found using this method has enabled me to find a leadership champion to advocate and leverage this deliverable to make and prioritize business decisions.

When this happens, the document becomes a living, breathing evolution that more and more stakeholders want to use and include their project team’s KPIs and metics. Project teams start to interact with each other more, and problems are now being

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“Janna solved all of our problems; then she left and we don’t how what to do.”

holistically tackled rather than market by market. Ultimately, your organization shifts and rallies towards unified, common goals that benefit the entire company rather than fractured goals that help only a specific project team within a market.

In the past, the customer experience was not often at the core of innovation, which enables teams to solve problems in siloes.

Now, in a connected world full of choice, brands and products are commodity services. Customers are impatient because now at their fingertips, they can browse and compare competitor’s sites, read reviews, get a package delivered in two hours, and are inundated with your competitor’s

products. Consumers naturally gravitate towards innovation, agility, and brands who solve their problems from paying too much for cabs to cleaning floors to selling alcohol during a movie.

Customers want to be heard and to feel their time is valuable through more than lip service.

The next time you’re wondering how to pivot your business to meet and exceed your customer’s evolving needs, start with a service design blueprint. I have seen it work time and time again, and come with positive side-effects such as de-siloing your organization and creating one clear vision for your company’s future. n

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Need to Innovate Faster? Embrace Learning as a Business Imperative Amy Marshall New York City

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We were already at a time of rapid change in organizations — and then COVID-19 massively forced even more literally overnight. It has been awe-inspiring to see what speed in innovation and problem-solving is possible with a clear-unifying north star and a burning platform — even if it is survival. We learned a lot and workers have been forced to flex and stretch their skills in new and uncomfortable ways to meet demands.

We can come out of this crisis stronger than ever — more creative, more resilient, more

human. But crisis is not without its costs, as workers have been forced to manage unprecedented levels of personal and professional stress. It has taken a human toll (see COVID-19 workplace stress from the CDC), and the only thing we know for sure is that constant change will continue to be rapid and persistent. We will need to continue to learn and innovate our way out of this crisis. How can we do this in an accelerated way, without burning our people out, and sustain it as we emerge from crisis mode into a more “steady state” of still constant change?

To drive innovation and embrace rapid change, learning, now more than ever, needs to be viewed and prioritized as a strategic business imperative. Organizations need to invest in continuous employee learning and building it into the organization’s DNA. Teams need to identify and advocate for their unique needs to achieve critical business priorities. And individuals need to embrace and proactively drive their own personalized learning needs to suit their current and future role requirements and professional goals.

What and why of innovation?

Innovation (as compared to invention, according to Webster’s), means a new idea, method, or device, a novelty or the introduction of something new. It can feel like an overused buzz word or too big to define or reserved only for a R&D group. But in high-performing organizations, it is an outcome attainable for any level employee, on any day. It can be as

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big as a new business model or a large-scale product development, or as seemingly small as a novel feature to add to a system or a new process to more effectively run key meetings.

With this ever-increasing rapid pace of change and disruption, new skills and novel ways of staying ahead of competition and meeting customer needs will only become more important. Only 60 of the companies from the 1955 Fortune 500 company list were still in business

in 2017 (fewer than 12 %), indicating the rapid pace of change and need for re-invention. We’re at the 4th industrial revolution and increasing automation of repetitive, low-cognitive tasks will require people to rapidly develop higher level cognitive skills and digital skills to be employable.

The ability to embed continuous learning, at the organizational, team, and individual level (not just the skills and knowledge themselves, but the ability to continuously learn, and to do so rapidly), is needed.

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1. Learning at the organizational level Learning for innovation requires investment, but has tangible ROI. IBM’s Smarter Workforce Study in 2013 revealed that 84% of employees in the best performing organizations are receiving the training they need, a full 68% better than worst performing companies. Microsoft just announced a major investment highlighting the burning platform for digital skills (especially data analytics, cloud, and software development) countering the decline of employer-funded training in the early 2000’s and stagnation since 2008. There may be an economic downturn now, but as organizations emerge and talent mobility picks back up, employees whose organizations invested in their development will not just perform better, but will also be more loyal (LinkedIn 2018 Workplace Learning: 94% would stay longer if their company invested in their career).

Learning for innovation needs to be built into an organization’s

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operating model, with specific designs for learning outcomes. To be successful, any people-related strategies (including learning) should always be rooted in the business strategy to drive which capabilities are needed for the workforce. This should be translated into a learning strategy that guides design of the operating model — (the processes, technology, tools, people, skills, practices, accountabilities, rewards, and culture needed to execute on the learning strategy. Since business strategies must be agile to meet ever-changing business needs, the learning operating model will also require agility and feedback built in to enable fast response.

extra expense or something for HR or individual leaders to worry about rather than a top priority investment of the organization (e.g. technology). For example, in helping a major global pharmaceutical establish a new learning organization, we discovered that the company level learning strategy was articulated at a level too high to address unique needs for the targeted business unit. In response, a strategy, processes, org structure, and agile plan was created based on their unique needs. Senior leadership set the business strategy, HR established the workforce capabilities, and we built the learning strategy and operating model within the business to be closer to the need.

This may sound daunting to an organization early on in taking a more strategic approach to learning, but it is recommended that you apply agile, iterative concepts by starting small and experiment, keeping future scalability in mind. It is critical to unite HR with business functions in a strategic partnership. Too often learning is viewed as an

As with any major initiative, learning and development can’t take a “set it and forget it” approach. To be a real asset and achieve full ROI, learning needs to be woven into the fabric of daily work life, with a structured change approach and accountability to make the processes and learning stick.

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2. Learning at the team level The 70/20/10 learning model is nearly universally accepted at organizations acknowledging that only 10% of learning happens through formal instructional learning, another 20% comes through learning from others, and the bulk, 70%, comes from learning on the job. But too few organizations invest their time and money in a balanced way across these components — often focusing on the 10% instruction and letting the other 90% happen organically, informally, and thus more slowly. Learning focused at a more mid-level such as a team (or critical roles) offers a unique opportunity to help accelerate on the job and learning through others. Teams are where individuals spend most of their working time, and where they have the safe space to learn, make mistakes, and admit where they need help. Innovation requires creativity and risk-taking and thus the space to make mistakes.

It is critical to create the psychological safety for this to feel normalized and accepted within working teams, where employees see that leaders and experts at all levels are continuously learning.

Creating targeted programs at a team or role level can be a low investment and rapid spin up, as they can tap into existing knowledge within the organization. Examples include: establishing or revitalizing communities of practice, accelerating higher numbers of technology certification for business workers, creating targeted learning paths for teams shifting to adopt new skills and ways of working, day to

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day coaching of agile teams and leadership teams, or encouraging formalized mentorship and sponsorship programs for underrepresented groups. Sometimes these efforts are spun up as passion projects by ambitious and/or desperate managers who realize the need. Unfortunately, organic, individually driven initiatives may lack staying power if leaders get busy or change roles or companies. Putting in structure and accountability enables programs to get off the ground faster, be sustained longer, and more efficiently utilize the busy time of in-house experts. It also enables an opportunity to explicitly factor in diversity (of thought and experience), another focus most organizations are finally waking up to also, to ensure employees are learning from diverse perspectives and backgrounds.

For example, we supported an organization to prepare for major organizational changes including high levels of departures, role changes and new hires. There was a huge risk of losing tacit institutional knowledge retained in the heads of long-tenured employees.

A program was designed to manage knowledge transfer and incorporated approaches to build and sustain a learning and knowledge-sharing culture in day to day ways of working. This risk is present today for organizations who are dependent on heavy furloughs and maneuvering uncertainty. Simple practices like building in after-action reviews or retrospectives, sharing of learning goals and programs to train and encourage on feedback-giving, and regularly sharing experiences helps foster daily learning.

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3. Learning at the individual level Ultimately it is the individual learner that must be in the driver’s seat of their own learning and drive for innovation in daily life. Research has shown the ability to continuously learn new skills (learning agility) is critical to business success and a key indicator of leadership potential. Learning agility is demonstrated in 9 different ways: • Flexibility (open to new ideas) • Speed (acting on ideas quickly) • Experimenting (trying new behaviors) • Performance Risk Taking (seeking new activities/roles) • Interpersonal Risk Taking (discussing differences with others) • Collaborating • Information Gathering • Feedback Seeking, and • Reflecting These behaviors should be encouraged by organizations but require proactivity and motivation by individuals, especially in leadership roles.

However, there is significant room for improvement to promote and foster learning agility in action, especially related to risktaking: Korn Ferry’s research found that companies with highly

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agile executives have 25% higher profit margins than their peer group; and that learning agility is a top predictor of high potential, but only 15% of the global workforce are highly agile.

In this ever changing COVID and competitive world, the reality is, we need to get comfortable being uncomfortable. Quoted in a 2011 talk, just before becoming CEO of IBM (the first woman), Ginni Rometty highlighted this importance of taking risks in order to grow. This is particularly true for women who are often socialized to be more risk-averse.

The shift in learning is increasingly to embrace personalized needs versus blanket learning solutions. Organizations can encourage fostering learning agility behaviors, and develop learning opportunities to tap into, but they will also need to drive individuals to find personal motivation to take action. Not just to take in new learning, but to apply that learning in action for deeper understanding and impact. Structured learning support in organizations can come in the form of self-directed learning, executive coaching, mentoring and sponsorship, and apprenticeship programs.

To put this into action, employees should set an explicit learning goal for themselves for this quarter, link it to broader goals that you find motivating, and find ways to make it stick (block time on your calendar for regular learning, identify specific next step action, and reach out to mentors and sponsors to discuss).

Notably there are complexities and costs to broader scale strategic learning support, but to remain competitive and drive more rapid innovation, organizations must think of learning more and more as a strategic business imperative. There are plenty of ways to start small. If your organization, team leaders, and yourself can embrace this, your organization will not only survive the crisis, they may innovate enough to help you thrive. If the pains of COVID have taught us anything, it is to seek out what really matters and what gives us fulfillment and meaning.

An emphasis on continuous learning also has the ability to help us all seek out and perform work that we find meaningful and valuable to help us all reach for and realize our personal and organizational visions. n

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Talent Strategy is Business Strategy Make sure your employee value proposition connects by considering the 3 key pillars of talent strategy, talent attraction, and employee engagement.

Bhrett Brockley Melbourne

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It isn’t always easy to know if an employee value proposition (EVP) is well received, but by starting with three key pillars — talent strategy, talent attraction and employee engagement — companies can be confident that their EVP will be reputable, both internally and in the external market.

Talent Strategy Many businesses misalign talent strategy and business strategy, not realising the two work hand in hand.

Some businesses may overlook it altogether, only addressing change when workloads become dire or when go-to employees burn out. A strong talent strategy consists of a plan, leadership buy-in, and an innovative approach.

Strategy and plan A plan should reflect the company’s vision and be made up of small, short term goals that focus 3,6,12 months and beyond. It consists of employee growth forecasts and internal learning frameworks that support the development of staff. When leaders plan and forecast, it allows the business to be informed and influenced by talent insights in advance of the market alleviating the need for reactive recruitment.

Governance and leadership Leaders need to devote significant time to talent strategy — not just touch on it sporadically. Talent management should be included in round table discussions and seen as a major stakeholder, making up an important business stream in the governance framework.

The market, no matter the industry, is fluid, and leadership should be prepared to pivot strategically to keep up.

Innovation The world is moving at a rapid pace and people are adapting and changing quickly.

Something that was innovative three years ago, may be redundant today. Therefore, best practices for talent attraction and engagement need to be regularly evaluated and evolved, based on market trends.

When talent management is at the centre of a company, the business has an opportunity to pioneer new approaches that could become the benchmark for an industry.

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Talent Attraction In today’s market, it’s less about acquiring the job and more about acquiring the candidate — hence the term, a candidate-driven market. Talent attraction requires on-going effort in the areas of talent acquisition, employer brand, and nurturing a sought-after company culture.

Talent acquisition

Employer brand

Culture

Successful talent acquisition aligns with business strategy.

When there are clear and measurable targets for people growth, talent teams can source future employees more effectively. Acquiring talent through job ads can make up as little as 5% of a company’s workforce, so it’s imperative to be interacting with active jobseekers and passive candidates (those not currently looking for a change).

It’s important for talent teams to cultivate relationships with industry professionals continuously, creating pipelines that align company values and candidate value-add. Most importantly, the business must consider the skill set of a person, not just a job description.

Employer brand plays a large role in talent attraction. Candidates will explore company websites and Glassdoor employee reviews, and they will reach out to mutual connections. Therefore, it’s important to evaluate and develop how the business brand is perceived, internally and in the market.

Talent teams are brand ambassadors and should be able to promote a culture they are proud of and believe in. If a company wants to “sell the dream,” then employees need to be empowered to “live the dream.”

Company values don’t always equate to company culture.

Unfortunately, over time, employees have borne witness to slogans and values that crumble or lose their illusion. As a result, it takes people longer to trust in a company’s EVP. However, culture breeds culture. When a business is determined to live and breathe its values, employees will have the confidence and willingness to follow suit. This positive ripple effect will also attract talent in line with the brand’s vision, and they will be eager to join the great working environment.

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Employee Engagement Strong employee engagement encompasses people empowerment and involvement, consistently. Team members must feel connected to the business vision, be updated regularly, and have an authentic voice.

Employee engagement consists of diversity and inclusion and overall employee experience.

Leadership advocacy will build awareness and help create a feeling of inclusion among employees. Similarly, diversity and inclusion initiatives, including active affinity groups, are a great way to build understanding and recognition, as well as supporting individuals who may identify as or with an underrepresented group.

Diversity and inclusion: A diverse and inclusive workforce should be top priority for all organisations, and equal opportunity must exist for each individual. Recruitment should reflect the diversity found within the community and have a strong focus on underrepresented groups. Recruitment practices should also ensure equal opportunity to candidates, regardless of background.

Employee experience: Employee experience comprises the thoughts, feelings, and insights of all people within a business.

Initiatives should accommodate the diversity of each individual, as well as connecting team members to the business vision.

Every interaction counts, and it’s important to consider and address all feedback. People must feel safe and heard. After all, employee feedback is the strongest influence on company culture

and should be an important part of the business approach.

Experience spans across all areas within an organisation, including working groups, peer engagement, learning and development, company events, and every day happenings. We advise developing your employee experience strategy separately from your talent strategy to make sure all areas of experience are met and exceeded.

When implemented successfully, a well-anchored talent approach can, and most certainly will, help deliver on business outcomes more efficiently. It will encourage people to be passionate about their work and eager to contribute to the success of the business. n

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Why Strategy and Tactics Belong at the Core of Your Digital Transformation Initiative Fred Antoine New York City

As we continue to navigate the global health crisis, companies must adjust their model.

Restaurants that didn’t offer online ordering options have been forced to adapt. Businesses that valued in-person meetings have gone

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virtual. Industries that once relied on large in-person gatherings — sports and music — are reevaluating their strategy.

How does your company approach digital transformation?

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Where Leadership and Digital Transformation Come Together When it comes to digital transformation, stakeholders must act intentionally. To ensure their organization’s success, they need

Strategies to Drive Digital Transformation The secret is out: Digital transformation is an essential disruption.

In 2020, companies must take a comprehensive approach to ensure their organizations’ survival.

This means that leaders need to offer a blend of useful, efficient, and appealing features to the people they serve. There’s an overarching need to evaluate what consumers want and what they are willing to accept to access the products and services they desire.

Strategies for doing so include the following:

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to leverage the right blend of strategy (an overarching plan) and tactics (action steps).

transformation. About two-thirds of knowledge management experts claimed the same thing.

But what should this process entail?

Today — six months into the pandemic here in the United States — it’s become paramount for leaders to identify weak links in their respective organizations and pivot. There’s an overarching sense of urgency where digital transformation is concerned.

Before COVID-19, roughly three-quarters of process and performance management professionals were already reporting their organizations were undertaking digital

Prepare for a cultural shift Making changes to your business model may well lead to cultural shifts.

Say you’re employed at a financial services firm that previously maintained a formal dress code. Perhaps your team is now working remotely. The company culture may well become more casual in response to the digitalization of your daily tasks.

As a result, this may shift the overarching culture. It’s essential to be prepared for — and open to — these types of changes. They’ll affect how you communicate, the talent you attract, and the way you go about your business.

Embrace trial and error So your marketing company has implemented a new customer relationship management (CRM) tool or a contactless payment platform like Square.

Maybe your investment is higher you’d like it to be, or the features aren’t serving you the way you expected. Perhaps, after a few weeks, you find a solution that can better accommodate your needs.

Again, these growing pains are par for the course. Digital transformation and experimentation go hand in hand, and leaders should embrace trial and error during this process. Change should lead to growth, which isn’t inherently a straight line.

And that’s okay. So long as you’re prepared for change, you might even embrace this cultural evolution.

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Tactics to Fuel Digital Transformation Strategy can help leaders pinpoint the methods they need to drive digital transformation. In this way, tactics are no less important. When it comes to digital transformation, stakeholders must consider:

Implement a backup plan

Collect audience and employee feedback

Alternative payment methods.

Phone ordering in the event of online failure. Data backup.

Leaders take note: Do your due diligence and make sure your people are happy.

These are just some examples of situations that demand a backup plan. To ensure smooth-sailing digital transformation, leaders have to cover all their bases.

This means integrating tactics to gather consumer and team member feedback.

Accordingly, to retain loyal customers and engaged staff, companies need to institute a backup plan for everything they take online.

From online surveys to social media outreach, communicating with the people you serve is crucial. Many people are resistant to change, and it’s best to be aware of their reservations.

In this way, gathering feedback can help make sure your digital transformation is genuinely effective during these uncertain times. n

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Building your Digital Healthcare Backbone in the Face of a Pandemic Cabul Mehta, Pat Lally, Meaghan Schmieding Boston

Many healthcare organizations have launched their Digital Transformation journeys ahead of schedule to respond to COVID19. Now is the time not to slow down, but rather continue building digital health infrastructure to enable providers to continue developing innovative healthcare solutions for our affected communities.

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2020 has massively disrupted healthcare delivery.In a matter of weeks, institutions found themselves on the front lines of containing a global pandemic, forcing a shift in how care is delivered.

Simultaneously, the importance of providing equitable care to underserved populations took on an increased and more deserved level of attention.

To understand how the industry is dealing with these challenges, Slalom had conversations with several physicians, administrators, and healthcare innovators.

Throughout our conversations we found that organizations have been forced to innovate and launch their digital transformation ahead of schedule: Telemedicine went from a “niche service” to absolutely critical and corresponding reimbursement policies were transformed almost overnight. Online portals for patients and caregivers took on new importance as waiting rooms were converted to socially-distant doctor’s lounges.

In general, digital healthcare roadmaps accelerated from years to weeks:

As healthcare organizations adjust to these changes, they now face three challenges: 1. How to bring patients back into their facilities, ensuring the safety of all involved and work through a backlog of elective and chronic care

2. How to transition from quickly stood up digital responses to more robust long-term digital care solutions that support equitable care without further disrupting the patient experience

3. How to prepare for a potential broader second wave of COVID-19 building on the digital assets created for the initial wave at the beginning of 2020

The answer to these challenges lies in continuing to push forward with greater digital health adoption. A hybrid model of care that provides both virtual and in-person support will be key to providing safe, reliable care in an

era of greater patient worry, and limited physical space.

prevented many organizations from pushing the technology envelope. As the world faces successive waves of this pandemic, organizations will need a strong digital backbone to support adapting to the fluid, changing environment brought on by the lingering COVID crisis.

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Regardless of the rate of adoption for digital transformation to meet the most acute needs, it is imperative that healthcare organizations do not lose momentum or revert back to the hesitancy that once

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Where to start Investments to support continued digital transformation should focus on four key areas: establishing single patient views to support multi-platform patient experiences, providing patients with equitable options to engage with healthcare institutions; building a secure and scalable architecture in the cloud, and investing in analytics and data visualization.

Build a single patient view to power consistent, quality experiences.

In order to connect with your customers across digital and in-person channels, you will need to partner with your patients to bring together all of their information into a single point of view. Katie Barrett, a health policy leader and consumer

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advocate, noted the importance of defining quality in interactions: “Some patients may want to be seen in-person by a clinician, even if their preference has telehealth listed as the default.

The opposite is true for other patients. It’s now more important than ever to engage with the patient on their true preferences during this pandemic. This will help you co-define quality with your patient: There needs to be a shift from doing virtual care because that’s only what is available to shifting to virtual because that’s what is needed at this point in your care.”

Patients will inherently form an expectation that they will receive a consistent experience across multiple platforms. Meet these expectations with patient relationship management platforms that provide you with single view of the patient and allows your

team to speak in one voice to patients across their care journey.

Give people equitable options for how they can engage with you.

Delivering a hybrid virtual and in-person experience should be a cornerstone of your organization’s approach. In particular, this will allow you to provide care even for those populations who may have limited digital access. Marcy Simoni, Director of Telehealth Strategy and Regulatory Affairs at Massachusetts General Hospital, observed that her work was not limited to setting up video visits, “Our team found that there was significant use of the phone among patients. When telemedicine became THE WAY to see a doctor, we learned that so many patients are disproportionately disadvantaged.

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If your digital health literacy was either non-existent or you shared one device amongst the whole household, or you were a non-English speaker you all of a sudden faced insurmountable barriers and had no choice but to resort to the phone for care.”

As you open up more methods of interaction, through digital or legacy analog means, patients will feel empowered to pick and choose how they will seek care. Now is the time

the cloud ensures that you are able to handle the increased demands that come with remote work, virtual care, and digital engagement. A cloud transformation also provides the ability to develop new capability for patients and providers at a speed that matches the ever-changing layout of our times. Designing and building innovative care solutions used to take months — now can take days, hours, or even minutes in the cloud.

Boston, notes the priority for understanding if there’s a pending demand, and how to respond to it, “Predicting volume is my biggest concern because I don’t have a good handle on the lifestyle impacts of this pandemic.

When people stop playing sports, our orthopedic volume will decline. When people lose their jobs, they also lose insurance and can’t pay for the previously scheduled surgery. Maybe people do get a new job, but they don’t want to take more time off for surgery recovery. It would be helpful to create some predictive modeling to help determine what’s coming so that we can make some informed decisions.”

A centralized repository of data is essential to unlocking this value through visualization, building a modern culture of data, and creating a path towards self-service enablement.

to connect these new options through a single patient record and build the infrastructure to support all populations.

Invest in a transition to the cloud.

More digital interaction with patients means a greater institutional need for security, scalability, and reliability in uptime and performance. Accelerating your organization’s move to

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Centralize operational and environmental data for visual analytics.

Data visualization is a powerful tool to understand your organization’s resources, capacity, and efficiency. It can also be enlightening in analyzing forward looking trends for strategic planning.

David Boyce, MD, medical director for Mass General Waltham, an outpatient care facility in Greater

These initiatives need investment at a time when institutions are already dealing with financial hardships from responding to the pandemic, but they are essential to providing a consistent, trustworthy patient experience gaining efficiencies, and operating with the flexibility to respond to a rapidly changing environment.

Taking advantage of the digital investments already made in 2020 and building on them will allow healthcare organizations to rapidly climb up the innovation curve. Moreover, these organizations will be able to have infrastructure that can respond not only to the next pandemic but also to efficiently support day-to-day operations of this next version in healthcare delivery. n

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