Plan Your Transformation From a Position of Strength
According to research by the Boston Consulting Group (BCG), more than half of their clients who have undertaken a digital transformation project launched it preemptively.
They were market leaders who undertook transformation to consolidate and extend their lead. Successful companies with excellent financial performance often need to reshape strategy as they see market conditions changing.
Proactive transformation allows an organization to transform gradually, building the capabilities and positioning they will need for long-term success.
Find Out why the Blue Cross Needed to Undertake a Transformation Project
🐕 Let’s look at a charity that helps sick, injured, abandoned, and homeless pets. The Blue Cross is not struggling, but they are aware of changes in the world in which they operate, and want to be prepared, to transform preemptively. This charity:
Raises money with collection buckets in railways stations or going door to door.
Canvasses people in the street to sign up for monthly donations.
Advertises on posters, in newspapers, and online to encourage one-time or regular contributions.
Runs several activities using volunteers for fundraising activities, and to provide services for the beneficiaries of the charity.
They see a couple of immediate challenges:
People are less and less likely to carry around cash with them these days, making collection buckets much harder to make successful.
The upcoming generations of potential donors – and volunteers – have grown up with a very different set of expectations about communication, having been connected to the internet – especially social media – for most of their lives. They are more demanding.
The Decline of Cash
As we increasingly live cash-free, many people pay with contactless credit cards or smartphones – we’re becoming a tap and go society. What does this mean for casual charitable contributions, and how do we deal with that?
The Rise of Social Media
The ability to share photos, videos, and to comment on them underpins many of the most widespread social media networks. Pet-related video, in particular, has proven to be among the most shared, shareable content.
This immediacy and reach make the changing media habits of the next generation of donors more of an opportunity than a challenge, if the charity can get their digital transformation project right.
The Solution: Tap Dogs
Faced with these two challenges, Tap Dogs made their debut a couple of years ago. Specially chosen dogs were fitted with lightweight jackets, that included contactless card technology with carefully worded messages, to encourage easy donations. All donors had to do was tap their card or phone on the dog, and presto! They donated $2. If they’d like to make a higher donation, they can do that too.
Of course, the Tap Dogs quickly became social media stars too, as enchanted donors also snapped and shared photos on social media, building awareness through digital channels.
Exact figures aren’t available for how much this initiative raised, but the charity commented that this was “more about raising awareness,” but twelve months after the limited trial, Tap Dogs were rolled out across the country.
Check out this video for more about the success of the campaign.
For a smaller charity that sometimes struggles to get the attention it needs to thrive, this has been a big success.
Let's Recap!
Start planning your digital transformation while you are still in a position of strength to protect against future disruption.
Identify gaps in your customers' experience of your organization's services and products.
Use the same new technologies that are challenging you to solve the problems you are likely to face.
Now that you have a clearer picture of what a successful digital transformation project looks like, let's look at a concrete approach to help you come up with the right idea for a certain company.
