In light of the current world events, a lasting recovery seems to be slowed for now. However, there is some movement: After two years of frantic digital shifting, we are emerging as a digital culture. How does that translate for companies?
We’re hearing about the rise of “digital as a culture,” wherein companies and clients begin to view all activities through the lens of how digital technology improves process and experience. Think of it as the third phase of the digital shift as the pandemic enters its third year.
As J.P. Morgan’s Head of Strategy and Transformation for Digital Eileen Holcomb told PYMNTS’ Karen Webster, “When we talk about digital as a culture, it’s really about digitizing the entire end-to-end experience. It’s going beyond the interface that [people] see on their phone or on a website. It’s looking at every step, from the onboarding process to the help process to how we interact.”
Before even trying to “do” digital as a culture, it’s important to understand where your company is on its own digital journey so as to take a compass reading and stay on track.
Along these lines, Holcomb said companies typically fall into one of three categories. Those in “discovery” are figuring out first steps in their journeys.
Holcomb continued that some companies are at the “transformation” stage, where “maybe they already have really good digital interfaces or ways that they interact with clients, but they’re starting to enhance those with more flexibility, more agility and superior functionality.”
The last stage in the digital as a culture quest is “visionary,” which she characterized as firms with “highly embedded, highly integrated digital ecosystem.”
“Clients that are looking at how they use blockchain, or how they use digital currencies — their businesses and services are very closely linked, so they’re deploying these emerging technologies,” Holcomb added.
Even though discovery should be finished before jumping to visionary, she told Webster, “For the most part, we think that many companies are just trying to grapple with this post-pandemic world and how they can digitize more things to make it easier on their clients and their customers. One stat I’ve heard is that the past year and a half has amplified digitization by about seven years. So, necessity is the mother of invention.”
See also: JPMorgan Sees 2022 As Year of Connectivity, Predicts Rise of ‘Anything as a Service’
Don’t Just ‘Be Digital’ — Solve Something
It’s easy to see “digital as a culture” as a corporate abstraction meant to convey a dialed-in market positioning at a transitional time, but it’s far more than PR: It’s about connectedness.
“Ultimately, digital as a culture is a cultural change at its core,” Holcomb said. “It’s about making sure people understand why you’re doing it — what’s the vision, why this is important, what they need to make sure this is successful, and collaborating across many different teams.
“It’s all cohesive across all the different parts of the organization, because if you develop these things in pockets, they’ll never be able to scale.”
Regarding payments, we’re starting to understand how corporate attitudes weigh on outcomes.
“It’s how can we meet clients where they are on their journey,” Holcomb said. “Accept the payment type that they want to use … We’ve seen a lot of this in the eCommerce space. They support any which way you want to pay, whatever wallet, whatever card. You have to go where your clients are and do what they’re asking you to do.”
Put another way, if you’re not solving a pain point, you won’t get the hoped-for response. Naturally, data plays a starring role in figuring out where the problems are.
“I also think in the payments ecosystem, it is critical to marry the data to the payment,” Holcomb added. “If we think about real-time payments, if we think about data and analytics, if we think about things being real time, that all comes together. [Clients] want transparency into what transaction they’re doing and how they can use data to make better decisions.”
Read more: JPMorgan: Super Apps Set the Stage for ‘Commerce That Follows Consumers’
Getting Radically Honest
Digital as a culture can sound a bit fuzzy, leaving executives who like the idea of it unsure what their next steps should be to embrace this fundamentally new way of viewing business.
“It’s being radically honest around what does that process look like today and where the gaps are,” Holcomb explained. “It’s really about starting small.”
Digital as a culture doesn’t magically “solve the entire end-to-end experience if you’re not real-time, you don’t have access to data and you’re not global,” she said. “It’s hard to implement all those things at the same time. We like to identify with [clients] what is the core issue that they want to solve and break it down into steps.”
J.P. Morgan does it by offering what Holcomb called out-of-the-box solutions to save time, money and effort by aligning with where companies are and working from there.
Holcomb said J. P. Morgan itself is in the “transformation” stage of adopting digital as a culture.
“We’re agile now, and we’re really doubling down on it,” she continued. “From my experience, you start with the culture, but sometimes people want to know details. The way we’ve tried to combat that is to say ‘buy into the vision of what we’re trying to achieve.’”
What we’re learning is that digital as a culture is a shift that never ends, like innovation — nor is digital as a culture a series of team building and trust exercises, corporate retreat-style.
“When we think about OKRs or ‘objectives and key results,’ we want to make sure that we’re making progress, that we’re not just experimenting for experiment’s sake,” she said, “but what is this doing? Is this driving down call volumes? Is this increasing client satisfaction scores? Is this decreasing cycle time to get things done?
“Knowing what those measures are and making sure they’re externally driven” will ensure digital as a culture delivers on its promises, Holcomb said.
Related: JPMorgan Active Mobile Customers Hit 59M, Tech Investments Top $12B
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