While many organizations have been incrementally doing business virtually, optimized relationship-building requires strategy and structure. Here’s our snapshot of a virtual hub design.
Who Leads It
An important first question – who should lead it? I’ve worked and consulted with organizations that put this role either under the IT/analytics or the strategic communications/marketing functions. My bias is for the latter – since communications professionals tend to be both generalists and think strategically, whereas IT staff are often more focused more on tactical delivery. Both require problem-solving skills, although from different lenses, and that’s why blending talent in virtual hubs is essential.
Recently I saw two job descriptions from a major regional health care provider that has been ramping up its virtual communications team since the onset of the pandemic. The leader is positioned as a “Senior Content Management Strategist” who “plans and strategically designs communications plan, initiatives and programs system-wide that build awareness of the organization’s brand among teammates and community…”
The approach seems right although having 20 bullet points in the “responsibilities” column seems onerous!
A related position is “Senior Strategist, Digital Front Door,” who will be “accountable for improving the customer digital experience, making it simple and convenient to find and schedule care.” Again, the “responsibilities” column is overly long, but with these two professionals working along IT/analytics leadership, the virtual hub has a strong foundation.
The role of CDO (Chief Digital Officer) emerged a few years ago in business as organizations understood that digital is no longer something distinct. Rather it extends across the enterprise’s value chain incorporating marketing, customer experience, production, supply chain and service operations. Certain practices help organizations better execute on their digital strategies, including “digital hubs” and small teams of employees across functions and strategic roadmaps for digital results led by executive leadership that sets the priorities.
How a Virtual Hub Operates
In two recent client experiences with nonprofit foundations, the objective was the same – for relationship building with donors and prospects, how best to reimagine the traditional silos of communications and analytics into a unified function. In the process, we’ve validated several hurdles that often occur as organizations redesign these teams:
- Strategies must be set at the top, not by individual units. Otherwise, the endpoint – the customer – will have a chaotic experience and your desired outcomes will be diluted.
- Requests for communications services from the rest of the organization are best handled by one person who manages “traffic” (incoming) and assigns projects (outgoing). This helps staff stick to priorities, not simply everything that comes in the door.
- Project teams – from 2 people on up – should incorporate both communications and analytics specialists so the job can maximize possible solutions and efficiency. Their focus is content (editorial and design) and delivery (e-letter, social media, websites, print, events, etc.). Analytics staff will help bring the best platforms and tools available to the table.
- Think of analytics staff as the “insights” team. They bring donor research that allows marketing to speak strategically to individual prospects and donors through segmentation and personalization.
These functions are core to an “integrated project workflow” model that we’ve used successfully for years. While such a model may seem overbuilt for a small nonprofit in which the communications staff is 1-3 people, these components occur consistently – so we created a design that fits organizations of all sizes.
Who’s on the Team
The staff titles, roles and size will vary. If you have the ability to start fresh and redesign your program, that’s ideal. Many organizations don’t and have “legacy” issues to deal with. That said, this will fall apart if people are given new jobs without having the right skills – you can’t turn a junior executive assistant into a multi-tasking project manager at the same time he is steadily answering the phone or putting out fires for the executive team. And a writer who’s spent most of her career developing long-form articles doesn’t become a social web content creator overnight.
Today’s organizations are being asked to change at lightning speed. Boards, C-suites and customers are impatient. There’s a feeling that because of COVID-19, time has been loss and “we’re falling behind.” While you may be able to reassign people, and even provide them professional development through “upskilling,” absolute clarity about the roles, the expectations and the skills is vital at the front end – so that the transition time is short and focused on the outcomes you need.