F U T U R E T E C H

Getting things ready

Building a business of the future with working together in real time with a focus on value to the customer

  1. Digital Business Vision Owner defines the key business measures and objectives for the digital property, including target market segments and their objectives. This visioner makes final decisions on product direction.
  2. Product Management owns the product on a day-to-day basis, and liaises with other areas to make sure the digital value proposition is realized. They're responsible for commissioning and reviewing customer research to develop and maintain the product roadmap in terms of the business vision, and can prioritize the backlog of changes and improvements.
  3. Program Management — distinct from the Product Management — is responsible for owning the long-term plan to achieve the product roadmap, including budgets and resource allocations, and for maintaining the release schedule.
  4. User Interface/User Experience (UI/UX) is responsible for the overall look and feel of the digital product. They develop and maintain UI standards to be used as the product is developed, are involved in user testing, and QA new releases.
  5. Content Development creates non-campaign and non-marketing or editorial content for the site, including articles, instructions and FAQ or help content. Their job is to create content that’s easy to understand and consistent with the brand or voice of the product or site.

  1. Front End Development selects frameworks and defines front end coding standards for any technologies that will be used. They're also responsible for writing code that will execute in the browser, such as HTML, HTML5, JavaScript, and mobile code (e.g. Objective-C.) Front End Development drives requirements for back end development teams, to ensure the full user experience can be implemented.
  2. Back End Development manages core enterprise systems, including inventory, financial, and CRMs. They're responsible for exposing, as web services, the capabilities that are needed for front-end development. They're responsible for developing and enforcing standards to protect the integrity of those enterprise systems, as well as reviewing requests for and implementing new capabilities.
  3. Data develops and maintains enterprise and digital specific data models, managing data, and creating and maintaining plans for data management and warehousing. They monitor the health of databases, expose services for data access, and manage data architecture.
  4. Infrastructure maintains the physical hardware used for applications and data. They maintain disaster and business continuity programs, and monitor the scalability and reliability of the physical infrastructure. They also monitor and proactively manage the security of the infrastructure environment.
  5. Quality Assurance creates and maintains QA standards for code in production, develops automated and manual test scripts, and executes any integration, browser, or performance testing scenarios. They also monitor site metrics to proactively identify problems. (It should be noted that though you want dedicated QA professionals on your team, QA is everyone’s responsibility!)

  1. Marketing is responsible for some key digital operations. They develop offers and campaigns to drive traffic. They manage email lists and execution, and manage and maintain the CRM system.
  2. Product and Pricing is responsibility can vary, depending on industry and type of digital property. When appropriate, they develop, license or merchandise anything sold on the site. They set pricing and drive requirements for aligning digital features with any new products based on those product’s parameters.
  3. Operations is responsible for fulfillment of the value proposition. For commerce sites, for example, this includes picking, packing and shipping orders. For something like a digital video aggregation site, responsibilities include finding, vetting and uploading new video content.
  4. Business Development is focused on creating partnerships that increase traffic and sales or find new streams of revenue.
  5. Customer Support is responsible for maintaining knowledge of digital platforms, policies, and known issues and solutions. They assist customers with problems and questions and track customer interactions to report on trends and satisfaction levels.
  6. Enterprise CX look at the holistic perspective of customer experience across digital and non-digital touchpoints (call centers, in-store, etc). These teams are critical to digital teams in two ways. First, they can supply key insights about the key customer segments to help digital teams create even more effective digital products. Second, they can work with both product management and UI/UX teams to ensure that the product being created works well within the larger omnichannel ecosystem of the brand’s overall customer experience.

Partner Companies