Author: Andrew McClelland, Mirador Digital: www.miradordigital.co.uk

Insight provided by Sitemorse: www.sitemorse.com

The benefits of the digital economy to business needs little introduction. Whether selling to other businesses, consumers or the public sector, digital channels open up massive opportunities for marketing, communications and commerce. Readers will also be aware of the calls from certain quarters for the openness, arguably its biggest benefit, to be protected. These calls vary from how data traffic is handled by network providers through to the more extreme “everything on the internet must be free.

Business however operates in an environment whereby intellectual property has a value. Investors need a return and probably more importantly, confidence in a stable future where their investment is secure and growing. Uncertainty dents confidence, which in its self, can be enough for a company to fail as investors seek to withdraw and customers flee to apparently more stable suppliers.

Herein lies one of the many challenges of having a digital presence. Digital has seen the pace of change increase massively over a very short period of time. The last 15 years has seen e-Commerce go from a dream or pursuit, for the techy types, through to a multi-billion $ global marketplace. The players of today were unheard of 10 years ago and they are buying-up or surpassing the big brands of the past. Long established brands are making their first tentative steps into the digital space, either as a defensive move or more positively seeing the opportunities for marketing and trade.

This digital frontier has seen champions within brands testing the waters, creating a digital presence and in many cases making a success of it. For some organisations it has been about marketing activity; promoting the latest product; generating online collateral for a field-based sales force to use or as a training resource for staff and trusted third parties. Other brands have seized on the commercial opportunities, selling direct to wholesale partners or consumers. Until recently, the wider organisation would have either been unaware or at best, seen this activity as something to put the graduate in-take to work on. Digital? yep, ticked that box!

Even for mainstream retailers, online has only really grabbed the boards’ attention in the last 3 or 4 years. Up until then it was seen as an annoying distraction; then customer demand increased and it started to make a sizeable contribution to the bottom line.

Digital enables and encourages entrepreneurial spirit, something that big brands aspire too and perhaps even encourage but their very nature makes this difficult or indeed, dangerous to achieve.

Back in the 1990’s it was not uncommon for a business unit head to buy a bunch of website addresses on a personal card and expense the cost. Indeed, in the early days where there was a lack of understanding, agencies would make the purchase on behalf of their clients. URL’s were bought for the brand, the brands products, a companies HR resource or indeed, for every element of the business that wanted/needed a website.

Even today, the proliferation of webpages on a website continues unabated. For retailers, product changes will generate new content, marketers create pages that are campaign specific, and product mangers create an online resource to educate sales teams or customers. Campaigns come to an end, products change, new leaders join the business with new ideas and people leave, taking the corporate memory with them.

More importantly now however is understanding what is meant by ‘digital’. It is no-longer about websites. Mobile websites, as opposed to the main website being accessed by a mobile device, a plethora of social media pages and communications channels such as email, all represent a digital presence out in the ‘wild’.

Whilst low barriers to entry are one of the web’s biggest benefits, for a business and indeed those charged with managing civil society, it also represents its biggest challenge. Society expects those charged with governing to protect their interests and in the digital context, this is expected to compliment the ‘free’ ethos of the web.

Following a very slow start, Governments are starting to wake-up to the challenges and dangers of the digital space. Out-of-date regulations are being updated to include the digital phenomenon and there are initiatives at national, European and International levels to harmonise these rules so as to make international trade both attractive to consumers and safe for business.

In many walks of life there are already reams of regulation designed to protect consumers and provide organisations with a framework in which to conduct their business. These include data protection, financial services, and consumer protection, regulations around pharmaceutical production and distribution and protecting a company’s intellectual property.

We have already outlined the extent to which a business might be exposed to the digital world and as the channel and an organisations understanding of the channel becomes more mature, executive thoughts should be turning towards a risk and compliance assessment of the digital estate. For example, in the pharmaceutical world when a product recall is issued alerts will be sent through wholesale and retail channels to withdraw the product from public consumption. The withdrawal may be due to new information about side-effects, new dosage levels or indeed, a production issue. Fines for non-compliance can be extensive, brand damage difficult to measure but certainly an issue and of course there is the cost implication of carrying out the withdrawal. In the digital world though, can the manufacturer be sure that everyone has got the message and that all relevant details have been updated or removed? Digital certainly offers the opportunity for rapid mass communication but has the product been removed from every webpage of every wholesaler/retailer? Has every affiliate been notified and removed references to the product? Have official online health forums been updated? This might offer an extreme example but if we then add in the global context, the degrees of complexity increase massively.

Figure 1: What’s REALLY out there? Across social, web and mobile – what digital assets do you have? Source: Sitemorse Venobia

There are some fairly straightforward steps for a board to undertake, although achieving the results required can be far from easy.

Firstly, identify what digital assets a business may have. This is not a job for IT alone. Every department and many partners will have created a digital presence for one reason or another. Part of this process should be about identifying the ownership of these assets. Were they created by a long-departed employee or an agency, who still own the IP of the asset? Expect to find hitherto unknown digital assets. Tools such as Sitemorse can automate much of this ‘stock take’ whilst also helping with the ongoing management of the digital estate.

Secondly, valuing these assets. Are they still relevant, does the cost of managing outweigh their usefulness, is their presence a defensive position against a competitor? Are these assets still owned by the business or were they sold as part of Merger & Acquisition activity? This step isn’t about ‘cleaning house’ but rather an opportunity to assess and understand the value of these assets to the business

Benchmarking the status quo is the next step. This is about understanding what the current situation looks like and carrying out a risk assessment where necessary; does the website refer to a discontinued product or worse, one that was withdrawn for safety reasons? This is also the opportunity to determine current procurement, commissioning and legal/compliance oversight procedures so as to understand their suitability for the future.

Figure 2: Managing Digital assets on an ongoing basis. Source: Sitemorse

Finally, developing an action plan that determines the fate of the digital assets discovered and clarifying procedures for future digital development.

This is not the time to lock everything down tight whereby the benefits of digital are lost. Rather, it is the time to establish clear procurement processes, clear out redundant web estates, introduce control and management processes and ensure that there are clear lines of accountability and ownership for all digital copy being produced.

Ongoing digital development should be about ensuring compliance with applicable regulations, creating a digital estate that is usable by the end user and includes the functionality that enable it to provide value to the end-user. Perhaps by selling more ‘stuff’ to more people, communicating better to a bigger market or even facilitating compliance through education.

Part of the process is to draw a line in the sand and establish a picture of what the assets look like now. The other part is to ensure that new content is created in such a way that compliance is part of the commissioning process so that future developments are recorded and managed properly.

Do not over-control digital development but rather seek to introduce systems that enable you to make the most of it. Be nimble, be entrepreneurial but all the while balancing risk with benefit.

About the Author: Andrew has been involved in the digital industry for over 11 years, providing businesses with insight, strategic guidance and senior level management expertise. Authoring a number of reports and articles every year, Andrew comments on key developments and areas of interest for the digital professional.

About Sitemorse: Sitemorse's scalable automation replaces the time consuming and impractical manual task of page by page reviewing for the digital landscape (yours or others, web, social and mobile) continually reading and looking for brand infringement, areas to further optimise search and customer experience, or compliance risk.

13 years ago we launched the 1st integrated web testing service (now our entry level) our recent launch of the 3rd Generation delivers Global Digital Landscape Mapping and Proactive Governance leading the field in our support for agile publishing. With its ability to continually review and match consumed content with intelligent prioritisation, mapped against asset value and direct alerting to content owner provides a unique PaaS (Platform as a Service).

Sitemorse INDEX offers the industry benchmarking for measuring digital capability, all our services deliver independent KPI’s this brings accountability across the Digital Landscape and new levels of controls and confidence - maximising online investment, protecting brand and minimising compliance risk.