A Q&A With Paul Postance on Change & Transformation

This is a Q&A with Paul Postance from late 2020, written by Ed Scholfield, a Digital Headhunter. This is the original post.

I recently caught up with Paul Postance, Interim Director of E-commerce Transformation at Virgin Media, to find out how the global pandemic is changing consumer behaviour, and learn what small businesses should be doing right now in order to capitalise on the opportunities that online presents.

With over 20 years experience working in e-Commerce and digital roles, what would you say has changed most in the past six months?

The Covid effect has completely turned everything upside down which has meant that many businesses have had to adapt to the new world. They’ve had to learn and understand so much more about their customers’ needs and desires, and how to communicate with them.

Small businesses have been on the back foot trying to pivot to get the technical knowledge and expertise they need, all the while the job market has been turned upside down and there are lots of highly skilled people without work. There’s high demand for specialists with digital expertise, which has created a very competitive and very confused landscape.

Being at a telco during this period was great as communication and entertainment became critical for people’s lives, whereas it wasn’t necessarily quite so important previously. We went from a fairly standard market which was saturated, to one where suddenly demand was huge and it became increasingly important to satisfying customer queries and support an increased volume.

Where can small business owners start when it comes to digital transformation?

What’s going to happen to the high street is a really hot topic at the moment. Some businesses like Virgin have shut their stores completely, so there are no physical spaces anymore and this channel no longer exists.

The main focus for small businesses should be to rapidly create a direct-to-consumer channel and build out their websites. It will come down to scale and infrastructure, and building something on their own platforms. They should look to maximise the fulfilment and distribution channels they have, using platforms like Amazon, eBay and Etsy where necessary, to rapidly scale up.

Improving communication and building relationships with customers is crucial, but it’s not only about the point of contact, but the end-to-end supply chain as well. The back-end needs to be structured to work just as well as the front-end, and there can’t be massive gaps. For small businesses to adapt post-COVID the answer is always going to be digital.

What’s the likelihood of small businesses implementing a good strategy without the help of a seasoned digital professional acting as their interim?

It’s going to be difficult because there’s a plethora of service providers, from lead-gen agencies to SEO agencies who are actively pushing their products and services all over social media. These services are needed, but it’s going to be increasingly difficult for businesses to discern between the overwhelming amount of choice. How do they know what’s a good SEO agency and what’s a bad one?! They’ll need to have some level of expert support, but a lot of trial and error will need to be involved, which could become expensive. If they go in the wrong direction it could be catastrophic.

We’ve seen some strong brands get into trouble recently like Cath Kidston and J. Crew and it shows that no matter how big a business is it can still just disappear if it goes down the wrong path. There can be a lot of complacency in big organisations – whether it’s that the structure isn’t digital first, there are conflicting agendas or other internal reasons – these are the types of things that can subsequently lead to collapses. Business owners know their businesses and are the experts, but collaborative working with others who can provide support for that is really key, particularly when it comes to digital transformation.

Is there much small businesses can do themselves? What are some of the quick wins to focus on?

Something small businesses might want to investigate is a competitive intelligence platform for paid search advertising. This can help you increase online visibility and optimise your Google campaigns and generally do some of the things that, without expert knowledge, can be a big strain. It can help you see how much your competitors are spending on certain keywords, for example. Where you can’t compete you should pull back, and perhaps invest more when opportunities open up, such as when competitors stop bidding on keywords that were previously out of your reach.

What should they invest in, is there any technology that might be useful?

There’s a lot going on in the automation space through AI and there are some really good opportunities for businesses to increase efficiencies and reduce costs. On the engagement metrics side, there are lots of things you can do with web chat. Chatbots are the new kid on the block, they offer services which are cost-effective and provide automated interactions for consumers. They’re increasingly sophisticated and offer economies of scale, meaning you need less customer service agents, and therefore the cost to serve goes down.

An overall strategic approach would be the scaling of cost and benefit that surrounds everything you need to operate online like analytics, CMS, design, UI, UX, SEO - all of these things can be done for virtually nothing or free, scaling up to enterprise level where you’re paying millions of pounds for things like dedicated hosting and dedicated products and services.

Take Google Analytics for example. It’s free and you can use it to do split traffic testing, which is really important but only useful if you have enough traffic to begin with. You need to ensure you’re generating a strong flow of traffic before you can work out how to manipulate it. Technology should be used to help businesses move away from opinion-based decisions, it should enable them to experiment and ultimately result in innovation-led outcomes.

For any business there are basic building blocks that you need to put in place to ensure your channel is fit for purpose. Site search is imperative, but it still amazes me how many businesses don’t have it.

For Virgin Media, the “help me choose” section of the site led to a high level of conversions...

What role do you think organisational culture plays in digital transformation

It’s critical. There has to be a digital-first approach, embedded and understood throughout the business. This involves having a long-term focussed and phased strategy to ensure consistency. Buy-in has to come from the board and the most senior leaders in order for the shared vision to be executed in a coordinated and agile way.

What are the areas of digital transformation businesses get bogged down in and typically waste time on?

Implementation is a big one as well as the costs of IT providers and waterfall style project delivery. COVID-19 has forced changes to happen that people previously thought were impossible, whether that’s because they were deemed too long, too hard or too difficult. The necessity of working from home has caused a big shift. In evolutionary terms, businesses have had to adapt or die, especially in the retail sector.

There are no barriers to entry for anyone to have an online presence - it’s easier than ever to build a direct-to-consumer channel, and platforms like Amazon and eBay are the biggest winners of the crisis, and also Google. Businesses should be failing faster: embracing the speed of trialling something and discovering it doesn’t work quickly, as that will inform the next decision which will more likely lead to an outcome that does work.

Primark is an interesting case. The retailer earned £0 in sales during lockdown. Not having a transactional website cost Primark around £650 million for every month that all stores were closed, totalling around £1.9 billion, yet it still refuses to adapt. Primark is missing an opportunity: it’s not just that because its products are cheap that returns won’t work. Not everything they sell is cheap, so they could introduce a tiered process with rules around what products are returnable, be clear in their communications to customers and make bold decisions. This is a really good time for digital disruption!

Retailers need to be smart about how they present their products. We’re seeing lots of clothing brands moving online and only displaying flat lay images of their products, which means consumers have no idea what they look like on a real person which decreases the conversion rate and increases the likelihood of returns. The generic approach to get stuff up online fast is damaging in the long-term because they’re not really understanding the needs of consumers.

I worked with Shop Direct when it was the UK’s largest online retailer around 2010-2012, and a key focus of the business was on reducing the level of returns. We did a lot of work to guide people, using reviews and user-generated content to help consumers purchase with confidence.

What would you say to any small business owners still resistant to change?

I would suggest that they do some introspection and evaluate what they want the future to look like. If they’re choosing a purposeful denial of reality and what’s going on, which is undoubtedly uncomfortable, they can prepare to fail.

Instead I would recommend they pivot what they’re offering, or how they’re engaging customers. Meeting customers online, sharing knowledge and offering things for free, are great ways to increase engagement and build social equity. Ultimately business owners need to change their mindset in order to reap the benefits later on.

Do you have any view on who small businesses should be recruiting next?

Who a small business should recruit will vary depending on whether they’re looking for tactical support or a strategic approach on an ongoing basis. As much as possible you should build in-house capabilities and leverage external agencies, suppliers and resources.

Getting consultancy support could be a good stepping block towards building a strategy. It’s a consultant's job to go in and understand the inner workings of a business, including its blind spots and pain points, before producing a step-by-step plan, and outlining pros and cons to help guide key recruitment decisions.

Another approach would be to engage an external party and put a junior team member with them so they can really get inside the role and understand the mechanics of what’s required. Once they’ve learned the ropes it will then be possible to bring the functionality in-house and reduce reliance on third-party suppliers. Forming a team internally is one of the best ways to deliver a long-term strategic approach.

What made you undertake your recent interim post, what drew you to such a role?

I was running my own consultancy up and it was serendipity. Someone in my personal network approached me with an intriguing proposition that was very open-ended, which really appealed to me. Virgin Media was looking for someone to lead a transformation project in an agile and dynamic manner. The approach was interesting and different from other transformations I’ve seen, it was more akin to that of a challenger brand rather than that of a huge provider with multi-million pound budgets and five-step waterfall methodologies. In essence it was doing something very simple like split testing: putting out version A and version B, at the same time, measuring the results and using them to make the next decision. I built up a team, put a proposition in place, laid the foundations and then Covid hit. 

As we’ve learned from Paul, digital interim hires are worth their weight in gold. It’s more important than ever that small business owners spend their time and budgets wisely, and when it comes to digital transformation, it really does pay to bring in a specialist who can help embrace new technologies and focus their energy on delivering specific goals, allowing business owners to do what they do best - run their companies.