Wondermedia

Veganuary inspired and supported more than half a million people to try vegan during our 2021 campaign – with participants from over 200 countries and territories. We have worked with businesses to drive up vegan food provision in shops and restaurants, and have made veganism more visible and accessible through our work with national and international media.

https://veganuary.com/

Veganuary - the international movement inspiring people to try vegan! Since 2014, Veganuary has inspired and supported more than one million people in 192 countries to try vegan for January - and beyond!

Not all readers are leaders, but all leaders are readers - HT

😎 For consumers and brands alike, the unprecedented events that took place in 2020 have brought about changes that will last for the long haul.

The pandemic has accelerated innovation across the board; today, the eCommerce industry is two years ahead of where it was predicted to be a year ago.

So, what will 2021 — and beyond — look like for eCommerce brands and consumers alike? We reached out to experts from across the industry to learn their predictions for what’s to come and how your brand can be prepared to stand out from the start. 😎

10 eCommerce Predictions for 2021, From the Experts We can see the future. You’re going to like it. Check out the top 10 eCommerce predictions for 2021, straight from the industry experts.

♟️ Is your transformation strategy really a strategy?♟️

As you move from defining a strategy into planning and ex*****on, if 95% of employees don’t know where you’re going, there’s a 100% chance you’ll end up someplace else.

Business strategy traditionally has been created by senior executives and handed down like tablets of the law. The ubiquitous five-year plan worked fine, mostly, when the pace of change was slower, when it was easier for companies to spot competition coming, and when disruption wasn’t really a thing.

That doesn’t cut it today.

Not only is change a constant, but the buzz in business is continuous transformation. If strategy used to be a map where ‘X’ marked the spot, now it needs to be like Waze, recalculating along the way to route around problems. Markets change, competitors pop up, new technologies emerge almost daily, and strategy needs to account for it all. Quickly.

Lack of a well-defined and well-communicated strategy is among the most common reasons for failed digital or other business transformations. The upshot is inconsistent leadership, conflicting goals and initiatives, resistance to change, and lack of resources available to deliver on change and make it stick.

In an MIT Sloan School of Management survey of 11,000 senior managers, only about a third could correctly name the top three CEO-identified corporate priorities. And a Harvard Business School study found that 95% of a company’s employees don’t know or don’t understand its strategy.

It’s no wonder, then, that surveys consistently peg the rate of success for business transformations at less than 30%. A new Boston Consulting Group survey is just the latest to say that some 70% of digital transformations failed to deliver fully, and that clear goals and business outcomes are key drivers of success.

There are many frameworks for strategic planning, but they’re typically variations on a theme: a cycle of discovery, definition, action planning, and ex*****on. It should be an iterative exercise, akin to agile software development, and revisited regularly to assess and course-correct as needed.

So why is strategy MIA? The short-termism of quarter-to-quarter business reaction makes it hard to focus on long-term – even annual – goals. Some companies see strategy as a roadblock. Others think it’s only for big companies. Smaller companies think they know enough about their business and marketplace without planning.

It’s also common for companies to think they’ve got a strategy when what they really have is a goal (increase revenue by 50%) or a set of actions (implement a new CRM, or cut staff to improve the bottom line).

Simply put, strategy is a company’s formula for winning. It captures why we choose the customers we’ll serve, the products and services we offer, the value those provide, and why we’re a better choice than competitors. It also recognizes what we choose NOT to do, the things that could distract attention and resources.

As I mentioned, strategy starts with discovery – a deep dive into your business and environment. Since you can’t effectively change what you don’t understand, discovery is crucial.

Check-in with your mission, vision, and values. The strategy must be grounded in why the organization exists and in what it believes, the stories it tells about itself. A mobile infrastructure company I worked with wanted to leverage industry experience to launch a mobile marketing service – but didn’t have the entrepreneurial culture or necessary skills to pull it off. Some people find mission and vision too “squishy,” but if the strategy is the road map, they help make sure you’ve got it right-side-up.

Dig into data: sales, production, financial, etc. One of my clients with separate local and national sales teams discovered how much effort was going toward thousands of low-value customers; a unified sales organization for better resource allocation company-wide, coupled with a self-service model for the low-value accounts, could free sales reps to focus on expanding high-potential customers.

Don’t limit it to “hard” data. It’s amazing what you can learn through conversations. In addition to senior executives, interview line managers, front-line employees, customers, and companies with which you do business. What about our company are you proudest of? What works well? What could be better? What do you see competitors doing? If the goal is to serve customers better (which of course it should be), learning more about their needs and how they work with you is invaluable.

Make it more than a top-down effort. Agility requires a free flow of information and empowerment of employees closest to the customers, products, and the marketplace. Along with senior execs, involve line managers and front-end employees. In some “whole system” approaches, customers and business partners were also involved, yielding an amazing amount of valuable insight. Including employees across the company also improves ex*****on because they will be more invested in the success of plans they helped develop.

SWOT analysis can be a minefield. It’s easy to get hung up on weaknesses and threats. Weaknesses aren’t necessarily flaws; they can point out opportunities NOT to pursue. (I can’t slam dunk a basketball, so trying to play professionally would be a bad strategy for me.) Threats don’t mean you’re doomed; they’re obstacles to navigate. Strengths should be the positive foundation of a strategy.

Armed with all that information, start asking questions that will lead to strategy, including (but not limited to):

Who are our ideal customers? What problem are we solving for them?

Why are we uniquely qualified to earn their business vs. our competitors?

What specific capabilities will we need to develop in order for the plan to succeed?

What in the organization needs to change to support the strategy?

What are the top two or three things that have to go right for this strategy to work?

What could go wrong and how might we overcome it?

If we pursue this strategy, what are we deciding not to do?

What does success look like, and how will we know if we’re going in the right direction?

How can we test our assumptions and pilot the concept?

Be as specific as possible and avoid jargon, corporate-speak, or another fuzzy language.

“Leveraging our world-class operating capabilities” isn’t actionable; what specifically is it about those capabilities that make a difference and how do they translate into success?

Finally, communicate the strategy broadly to your organization. It will affect everyone, so it’s vital that they understand your new focus and direction, and how it will inform their own work. As you move from defining a strategy into planning and ex*****on, if 95% of employees don’t know where you’re going, there’s a 100% chance you’ll end up someplace else.

Article: Mark Burns - Marketing land

Artificial intelligence (AI) has reached a crescendo in business conversation. The technology is on the tip of the tongue for so many—from early stage start-ups to established global enterprises—because the technology is a powerful addition to any company.

According to one report, 61 percent of companies implemented AI in their business in 2017. For most of these businesses, the technology works in the background to make sense of the massive stores of data the companies collect: The AI assists (by managing the data) and augments (by augmenting human analytical competencies). To become an AI-fueled organization—one that has a clear edge over competition—the AI should also become autonomous (by taking action without human intervention).

AI: The Fuel Propelling Businesses Into the Future As AI technologies standardize across industries, becoming an AI-fueled organization will likely be table stakes for survival.

Wondermedia updated their business hours.