Executive Summary

In recent articles we explored how a perceived lack of data is not the barrier to commercially impactful decision making in online channels, and that software is not the promised solution. This begs the question – what is the real challenge organisations must address to see greater impact if their investments?

The problem? It’s the organisation!

It is inefficiencies in the operating model that most significantly hold back effective decision making and commercial impact of digital teams, many organisations struggle to effectively align the three components essential for success in digital effectiveness; People, Proficiency and Process.

By mapping organisational effectiveness against these criteria, decision makers and digital leads can obtain an unbiased, holistic, view of their operating model to identify where, and why, they need to improve. This, often, reveals that organisations do not struggle for lack of people or proficiency but rather lack effective processes for data, insight and experimentation. Holding back otherwise ambitious, capable teams from delivering impact.

An ineffective process experimentation and innovation in online channels results in an operating model that prioritises opinion and volume (looking busy) over informed and effectively prioritised innovation programmes. As a result, despite significant energy from teams, organisations fails to see impact.

At its heart, innovation in online channels is scientific and it is through adoption of the scientific method that organisations are most likely to see value impact of their activity. By first understanding their shortfalls in effectiveness, organisations can undertake targeted programmes of change and development that address these opportunities to embed a model for innovation in digital that is consistent with scientific best principles, allows for alignment of investment with customer insight, unblocks product roadmaps, delivers commercial value and provides room for innovation and creativity.

To unleash your team for impact, you must unblock the operating model.

The Challenge

Organisations are not struggling for a lack of data or software, but because of the way they operate. The core issue is straightforward: It’s the organisation.

Inefficiencies, unclear decision-making structures, and outdated ways of working prevent digital teams from turning insight into commercial impact. Although most organisations recognise that something feels “off”, few can diagnose the precise challenges and limitation behind slowing performance. This lack of clarity leads to well‑meaning but ineffective initiatives, such as expensive transformation programmes that often fail to solve the underlying issues.

Digital teams in such organisations commonly face one or more barriers to success:

• Insufficient capacity

• Limited room for innovation

• Missing critical analytical and scientific skills

• Opinion-led decision making

These challenges accumulate over time. Commercial expectations increase, but the operating model fails to evolve at the same pace. This creates a widening gap between ambition and ability, which no amount of software investment can bridge.

Effective operating models for digital effectiveness requires aligning three ingredients: People, Proficiency, and Process. When any one of these falls behind, commercial impact

People

Organisations need sufficient capacity to match ambition. Recruitment can address this, but often creates its own complications: onboarding delays, increased management overhead and process strain. Many organisations also face budget constraints that make significant headcount expansion unrealistic.

This is why efficiency becomes the lever with the greatest return. By reducing time spent on low‑value activities, improving prioritisation and smart use of automation and AI for repetitive tasks, teams can reclaim meaningful capacity without additional cost.

Purpose and clarity matter just as much as capacity. Digital teams thrive when they understand:

• Why they exist (purpose)

• What they must achieve (objectives)

• How their work drives value (commercial context)

Empowerment is the final requirement. Even highly capable teams stall when every decision requires senior approval. Speed, accountability and confidence all depend on trust.

Proficiency

Digital effectiveness requires a specific blend of skills; analytical, scientific and operational. Many organisations have strong UX, CRO or marketing expertise but lack deeper capabilities in statistics, experimental design or advanced data analysis.

Without these proficiencies, teams may run experiments but misinterpret results; produce dashboards but not insight; or identify problems without knowing how to validate root causes.

Organisations can address gaps through recruitment, targeted training, or professional services. Often, a combination of these solutions delivers the strongest and fastest uplift. The key is recognising that proficiency is not optional: data‑driven teams must be fluent in evidence, not just familiar with it.

Process

Even with strong people with robust proficiencies, process is often where organisations fall furthest behind. Poor processes create bottlenecks, slow decision-making and limits the scale and ambition of experimentation.

Common issues that arise when organisations lack effective process include:

• Dashboard‑watching instead of true analysis

• Over-focus on data perfection

• Rigid roadmaps with no iteration

• Commercial storytelling overriding transparency

• Velocity‑based KPIs that misalign teams

These behaviours result in the challenges covered in recent articles; organisations bemoan a constant need for ‘more data’ and ‘better software’ without identifying the real barriers to impactful decision making and growth in digital channels.

The scientific method

Outsee Analytics is, at its heart, scientific and the scientific method provides an ideal framework for innovation in digital channels. It forces clarity: observe, question, investigate, hypothesise, test and learn. This creates a rhythm of discovery and improvement that aligns teams and accelerates progress.

Effective application of the scientific method to digital effectiveness drives positive feedback loops; insight informs experimentation; experimentation generates further insight which over time, this becomes a powerful engine for innovation that moves teams away from opinion and towards measurable, reliable progress. The ultimate outcome being sustainable, measurable commercial impact, not only in optimisation efforts but marketing, CRM and product strategy.

Enabling effectiveness

Embedding an effective operating model for digital effectiveness begins identifying the greatest opportunities and areas for improvement, this is achieved through organisational effectiveness mapping.

Outsee Analytics maps organisational effectiveness across People, Proficiency and Process to identify strengths, weaknesses and capability gaps. This provides a practical roadmap for improvement rather than vague ambition.

These mapping processes provide an effectiveness score (1–5) within each dimension, highlighting where investment will have the greatest impact.

People effectiveness is measured against capacity, purpose, objectives and empowerment with typical behaviours associated with these components at varying levels of organisational effectiveness shown below:

Proficiency effectiveness is measured against core capabilities, data analytics, statistical methods and experimentation principles with typical behaviours associated with these components at varying levels of organisational effectiveness shown below:

Process effectiveness is measured against data and customer centricity, hypothesis creation and alignment with the scientific method, typical behaviours associated with these components at varying levels of organisational effectiveness shown below:

Not every organisation needs to achieve perfection; moving from level 2 to level 3 can unlock significant value if targeted correctly.

Conclusion

In summary, the commercial impact of data analytics, customer insight and experimentation programmes is limited not due to a lack of data or software but rather due to barriers put upon digital teams by the organisation itself.

To be effective, and to see positive commercial impacts of their investments, organisations require the effective alignment of People, Proficiency and Process within an overarching commercial ambition.

In many cases, organisations do not struggle for a lack of People or Proficiency with many teams being populated by eager, capable individuals, but rather due to a lack of effective Process – it is the absence of a clearly defined and adhered to process for change and experimentation that most significantly holds back commercial impact.

Fundamentally, improvement of online channels is scientific and therefore Outsee Analytics advocates strict alignment of digital change programmes to the scientific method, this is reflected in the Outsee Analytics Growth Engine which provides organisations a framework and approach that allows for alignment of experimentation to measurable customer insights, delivers commercial value through iterative testing and provides room for innovation and creative thinking through alleviation of commercial pressures on digital teams.

Improvement of the operating model begins with an effectiveness assessment, mapping effectiveness of the organisation against People, Proficiency and Process to identify where, and why, organisations need to improve. Through this activity, organisations can focus their time and investment on addressing the barriers to their own effectiveness that will, in turn, allow for greater commercial impacts of their investments in online channels, leading to sustained commercial growth, surpassing that of your competitors.