Digital competences for managers: advisory coaching to anticipate what your target needs

Digital competences, for a decision maker, are the capacity to read and govern the needs of an end consumer who changes progressively and lives a large part of the relationship with the brand in digital channels. The new normal requires these competences in the roles that decide, and this article explains why, how the most prepared companies organised themselves, and how advisory coaching builds them.

What this article gives you:

• The target has new needs and new expectations
• How the most prepared companies organise their response
• Which digital competences decision-making roles need

The target has new needs and new expectations

The progressive change in the end consumer has an impact on two areas.

• Use and adoption of digital channels. The consumer now sees digital as the mechanism that removes traditional limits:
  • of space: through the smartphone I do not search for products, the product finds me
  • of time: through e-commerce I find a store open 24 hours a day, every day of the year
• Legitimacy of the digital world. Digital is accepted as a reality parallel to the physical one, where specific needs are born:
  • aesthetic: the consumer wants to appear elegant
  • social: the consumer finds relationships that are impossible in the physical world
  • customer and brand relationship: the consumer needs forms of interaction with the brand

From 9 March 2020, the day Italy entered a national lockdown, the end consumer has lived a strong acceleration of habits towards digital channels, a digital transformation of daily life.

How the most prepared companies organise their response

In my consulting work over the last three years I have followed companies on one need they cannot avoid:

Organise to give a strategic response aligned with the emerging needs of the consumer.

The companies I followed took one of two approaches:

• companies that reorganised in advance on digital in the previous decade and now start to obtain the benefits of the changed context
• companies that had to reorganise rapidly because of Covid-19

In both cases the model follows the same three steps:

1. The agency as the voice of the brand: in the first phase the company delegates to external stakeholders (the agencies) the task of managing digital communication.
2. An internal team that protects the brand: the company takes back its identity, organises an internal digital team and brings tools and professional profiles in house.
3. An updated internal team: the company strengthens the internal decision-making roles through coaching, so that they give a strategic direction to the response to present and future consumer needs.

The third step is where most companies stop, and it is the one that decides whether the internal team only executes or also anticipates. For a definition of the field, the European Commission’s DigComp 2.2 framework (Joint Research Centre, 2022) groups digital competences in five areas: information and data literacy, communication and collaboration, digital content creation, safety, and problem solving. A decision maker needs all five, read through the lens of the customer.

Digital competences for decision makers through advisory coaching

I answer this request for new digital competences with advisory coaching: individual sessions, in person or remote, with an independent advisor alongside the person who decides.

What you will find in advisory coaching:

• work on your topics: we start from the doubts and decisions you bring, for example how to read digital marketing data, how the mindset of the end consumer changes, or how to design a product experience aligned with the needs of the target
• a protected environment: scenarios are tested before they are communicated inside the company
• an independent opinion: the only interest of the person alongside you is the quality of the decision
• a result from every session: a prepared decision, with the practical levers to activate it

Who is it for? Managers in marketing and sales, and in their internal areas (brand, product, eCommerce, retail), to bring clarity to high-impact operational questions. The CEO, the C-suite and the Directors, for the decision processes that determine the economic performance of the company.

Here lies the difference from a training course: digital competence grows on the real decision in front of you, and the internal team receives a direction from it.