Digital Strategy & Adoption

What is a Digital Adoption Plan?

By our definition, a digital adoption plan provided by a CDAP digital advisor is a long-form, strategic document that identifies and provides crystal clear direction on every point of friction between your business and your end-customer, from the point of view of digital technologies such as:

• eCommerce (products), online bookings (services), and custom orders (B2B)

• customer/client relationship management (for one-to-one sales and marketing communications)

• content management systems (for website design, development and search engine optimization)

• information technology (domains, email, and other server-side development)

• data and analytics

• and security.

How does A & O approach digital strategy and adoption?

In the context of the CDAP, our team at A & O does the following to provide you with the best path forward for adopting digital technology and strategies:

1. Discovery

We conduct one to three interviews with you and various members of your organization across a one-week period of time so we can learn exactly how you currently use digital technology. During these discovery interviews, we seek out qualitative information and assess familiarity and proficiency with digital technologies. Depending on the size of your organization and scope of work desired, we may need more than three discovery interviews!

2. Data Audit

We will request that you authorize us into all currently available digital technologies that are generating data such as website analytics (ex. user acquisition, behaviour, and conversions), social media attention (ex. impressions, click-throughs, reach), email communications (ex. opens, clicks, conversions), and so on. We will also ask for access into a variety of your digital technologies. Examples include your CRM, document/file sharing system, inventory, and so on. From here, we develop a one-time data audit report using a visualization tool.

3. Comprehensive Report

Our team will synthesize the quantitative information available (data from #2) and the qualitative information you’ve provided (interviews from #1) and proceed to write a comprehensive report spanning at least 15 pages, based on scope. We use plenty of visualizations such as charts and graphs to demonstrate insights, and we design our reports to be easily read by anyone on your team, as well as outside sources you may wish to share the report with. Accessibility is our number one goal at A & O.

What can I expect from my digital strategy and adoption report?

By commissioning a digital adoption report from A & O after doing a CDAP application, you will receive a laundry list of problems and solutions that you can resolve in a short, actionable manner, by way of adopting new and legacy technologies. Among all the analysis we have conducted for companies prior to the CDAP, the most frequent word we use to describe what our reports identify is friction. With that in mind, every component of your report will be framed in terms of how much friction is in between your end customer and the desired outcome you wish from them (ex. a first-time purchase, an order greater than X dollars, a renewable subscription to X).

As a result of framing each problem/solution through the understanding of friction, you will find in your report a clear line of path to either reducing or completely removing the sources of friction that are in-between you and a better version of your company. Below are a list of examples of recommendations we have supplied in the past:

• Friction: Company requires all prospective customers to fill out a form related to sizing in order to be able to purchase.
  Recommendation: Create an interactive sizing guide and replace the form with an “add to cart” system so prospective customers can size themselves and make a purchase all-in-one.

• Friction: Company has invented a new food & beverage product that most prospective customers would find unfamiliar.
  Recommendation: Use recipe schema architecture to compose recipes based around the product and allow prospective customers to add to cart from recipe.

• Friction: Company seeks to streamline the process for people to book a tour/activity online, through its website.
  Recommendation: Implement an online booking system that automatically allows for inventory available (ex. tour guides) to match availability on Online Travel Agencies (OTAs).

Please note: the rules as a CDAP digital advisor insist that all recommendations in the report be technology-agnostic, meaning that we can’t and will not recommend a specific brand or company to resolve the identified friction.

Who have you created the digital adoption report for in the past?

We are proud to have served many Canadian companies and organizations with digital adoption plans similar to the one defined by the CDAP. For example:

• we provided Simon Fraser University’s Department of Publishing with a strategic document outlining digital adoption options involved in reaching more prospective students for its Masters of Publishing program.

• we provided UBC Press with an analysis and digital plan to optimize a new online, multimedia project called As I Remember It.

• we have provided several SMEs such as the kindestCup, Zaui and Truli Wetsuits with digital adoption reports to help them independently increase their online presence and sales by way of eCommerce strategies and software implementations.

If you have a specific question about A & O’s digital adoption report offering, please email data@applesoranges.ca