How to Bridge the Digital Execution Gap: Insights from Netcel and Mace
At Opticon London, Netcel had the privilege of hosting a panel discussion, How to Bridge the Digital Execution Gap: Insights from Netcel and Mace. In the session Jamie Vickers, Operations Director at Mace, joined Netcel’s senior team members, Dom Graveson, Strategy Director, Justin Masters, CTO and Tom Denbigh Commercial Director - to explore the key foundations for successful digital transformation.
Drawing insights from the 2024 report Bridging the Digital Execution Gap, the session focused on four main themes:
- The Digitisation Trap
- Perception vs. Reality
- Benchmarking Digital Maturity
- Key Roadblocks
The discussion delved in to how businesses struggle to move from digital transformation to true digital maturity and the panel shared practical steps to close the gap between ambitions and outcomes.
For those who missed the session, here are the key takeaways:
The Digitisation Trap
Digital transformation is not just about adopting new technology - it requires a fundamental shift in organisational culture, accountability, and cross-functional collaboration. Many organisations fall into the "digitisation trap," treating digital transformation as a one-time upgrade rather than a continuous journey. Justin Masters highlighted this challenge, saying:
"The CTO is often seen as the main driver of digital initiatives, reinforcing the misconception that digital is purely a technology issue, rather than a broader organisational challenge. We see a lot of siloed conversations, with no strategic thread linking digital efforts to overall business objectives."
Jamie Vickers echoed this sentiment, explaining how Mace is addressing the challenge by aligning every project to a broader digital vision: “At Mace, we aim to achieve effective programme management of transformation and digital products. This includes investing in tools like Optimizely, improving governance, and ensuring projects have the budget and capacity to evolve. It requires readiness across people, processes, and technology, alongside closing the digital skills gap. From a marketing perspective, it’s about having the right people who can embrace and lead change, unlocking future talent while supporting others to adapt.”
Dom Graveson also pointed out that true digital success requires more than just technology, "True digital isn't about technology; it’s about the whole organisation. You need adaptive tech, but also adaptive skillsets, open eyes and ears, and mature leadership." To avoid the digitisation trap, leaders must adopt a holistic approach that integrates people, processes, and platforms, ensuring that digital initiatives are closely aligned with strategic business outcomes.
Perception vs Reality
The panel also addressed the gap between how organisations perceive their digital progress and the reality of their digital maturity. Many believe they are further along their digital journey than they actually are. While some claim to have moved beyond “transformation,” few have achieved full digital maturity. This gap highlights the difference between tactical success, implementing technology, and establishing the strategic foundations needed for sustained digital success. Jamie reinforced this point, noting: “At the C-suite level, there’s excitement, but often a disconnect between flashy front-end investments and underappreciated back-end needs. True success comes when digital is embedded into operations, and the focus shifts from digital metrics to real business outcomes like productivity and growth. Regular maturity assessments and learning from failures are essential.”
Dom went on to explain the importance of aligning technology and data with user-centric solutions, "Technology and data are about users as much as anything else is - build customer-centric solutions or risk not delivering ROI."
Organisations must measure progress based on business outcomes, not just technical achievements, continually assessing whether digital initiatives are driving customer value and growth.
Benchmarking Digital Maturity
Measurement was another key theme, with the report finding that only half of the respondents had clear metrics in place to assess the impact of their digital efforts. Without strong measurement frameworks, it’s hard for organisations to track progress or determine whether their digital efforts are aligned with their business goals.
Dom summarised the importance of measurement, "Just measuring traffic and conversions don’t tell you much. What is digital's role in your overall customer experience? Do you know how digital plays a role in the acquisition and retention of happy customers or users? That’s the way to understand what measures mean the most in terms of impact on organisation objectives.”
Mace uses a similar approach, as Jamie explained: “Regularly asking 'what does good look like?' and testing it is key. At Mace, we rely on partners like Netcel to help shape our digital strategy, using benchmarking for internal improvements, industry comparisons, and best-in-class standards. Tools like Gartner’s Magic Quadrant guide us, and customer satisfaction surveys increasingly explore data use. While some organisations start without clear measurements, true maturity involves embedding tools and processes to track productivity and improvements.”
It’s essential for organisations to develop metrics that connect digital performance to broader business outcomes, particularly in terms of customer experience and growth.
Key Roadblocks
Several obstacles prevent businesses from closing the digital execution gap, including a lack of clear strategy, insufficient skills, organisational silos, and inadequate measurement frameworks. Jamie stressed the importance of the POPIT model:
“My main learning is that digital transformation must account for the POPIT model—people, organisational readiness, processes, and IT systems. Changing just one element without considering the others will lead to failure. For example, launching an AI tool like Phenom without addressing team skills and role changes will limit impact. Insufficient resources and standing down project teams too early jeopardises success, as tacit knowledge is key.”
Justin reflected on the challenges organisations face in maximising their marketing technology investments. He notes that while companies often set ambitious visions for digital maturity and invest heavily in platforms, many only use a fraction of their capabilities. He said, “After the initial big transformation, people often become ‘battle weary,’ stuck in a business-as-usual mindset, making minor tactical improvements but losing sight of the bigger picture. Many get caught on a hamster wheel, endlessly focused on the next immediate task. My advice is to take a ‘meerkat approach’ – stick your head up, look around at what’s on the horizon, and incorporate that perspective into everything you’re doing.”
The panel concluded that organisations need to develop the right strategies, ensuring they have a clear vision for where they want to go, the resources and capabilities to get there, and a plan for how to measure progress along the way. This also involves breaking down organisational silos and fostering collaboration across departments.
Actionable Strategies - The Importance of Evolutionary Thinking
Organisations need to shift from a static view of digital transformation to an ongoing journey of digital evolution. The panel agreed that viewing websites or digital platforms with a short lifespan hinders long-term success. Justin pointed out, “If your strategy revolves around a 2-3 year website lifespan, you're missing the mark. Technology is evolving so rapidly that constant modernisation is essential, but it must be part of a broader, evolutionary journey.”
Jamie shared an insight into Mace’s digital strategy: “Actionable strategies mean aiming for digital agility - where technological change is about more than just technology, and metrics align with business objectives. There’s no one-size-fits-all approach. At Mace, we focus on three steps: optimising existing digital capabilities, enhancing with new tools and automation, and redefining our service offerings. Portfolio thinking gives us a broad view, but it’s crucial to engage people at all levels. Even the best strategy is useless without the right team to deliver it.”
Rather than seeing digital initiatives as one-time projects, organisations adopt a mindset of continuous improvement, ensuring their digital strategies evolve alongside changing customer needs and technological advances.
Recommendations
The panel concluded with key recommendations for organisations looking to bridge the digital execution gap:
- Align digital targets with business objectives: Ensure that digital initiatives directly support overall business strategy and customer outcomes.
- Invest in people and processes: Equip teams with the necessary skills and promote a culture of collaboration across functions.
- Establish a measurement framework: Develop robust metrics that track the impact of digital activities on ROI and business growth.
- Adopt an evolutionary mindset: Plan for continuous improvement and agility, allowing the organisation to adapt as customer needs and technology evolve.
In summary, bridging the digital execution gap requires more than just investment in technology. It calls for a strategic, long-term approach that integrates people, processes, and platforms. By focusing on culture, measurement, and an evolutionary mindset, organisations can ensure their digital efforts drive meaningful business outcomes.
To download the full report, visit: https://www.netcel.com/report2024/
If you have any questions around the points discussed, please reach out to our team of experts who are happy to help: https://www.netcel.com/contact/