Nikon, in case you haven’t heard of them, is an imaging product company. They specialise in the manufacture and development of consumer photography products like cameras and lenses, and sport optics like binoculars and microscopy products.
They’re one of the three biggest Imaging specialists in the world, that being Nikon, Sony and Canon. Nikon has been one of the biggest for the best part of the last 100 years since their founding in 1917.
Over the last 2 years (2020 to 2022) I have been engaged with the European division of Nikon (Nikon B.V.) on an extensive Digital Transformation project. As an avid photography enthusiast, this was such a great opportunity to work on a product from an industry and brand I love.
Like most Digital Transformation projects, the scope with Nikon B.V. is huge, from E-Commerce to Automated Marketing and everything in-between. There is no aspect of the B.V. ecosystem I didn’t touch.
My first interaction with Nikon B.V. started with running a strategy phase rather than a typical Discovery Phase. The idea is that Nikon knew they needed change but needed our help in first understanding what’s gone wrong and what needs to be done before we can look at any form of solution.
To set the scene even more, Nikon’s market position over the previous 20 years had been slipping. During the early 2000s, Nikon was flying high dominating the marketplace with enthusiast and pro ranges and also with the compact camera ranges perfect for the general consumer. So profit was high and with it was the autonomy of each market within Europe, markets could effectively do what they wanted, creating marketing sites and campaigns at will.
Then, along came the iPhone and later other smartphones, and with every iteration, the built-in cameras on smartphones, companion software and the rise and easily integrated social media platform, the compact camera slowly died out.
To add to this, Nikon were undoubtedly slow to the market with the release of new camera tech, Mirrorless. Sony broke the new market first, followed by Canon but Nikon didn’t make it to market with Mirrorless for a few years after, by which point they were playing catch-up and have arguably been doing so since.
An obvious problem, therefore, began to grow, with the loss of a key segment in compact cameras and their lateness to the Mirrorless market, Nikon’s revenue and market share started to diminish yet their tech stack was unable to change with it. The result of markets being able to create and spend what they want over the last 20 years had left Nikon B.V.’s tech stack fragmented, decentralised and ultimately haemorrhaging money.
This is where I come in…
My role during the strategy phase was to work with Nikon to understand exactly what their current state of play is, and to get to grips with their landscape.
To start the phase, I decided to run a series of workshops for the client to take us through some of their main digital propositions where we could discuss pain points and frustrations and delve a bit deeper into the history of why those pain points exist. The objective is to essential reverse the requirements gathering process so we understand the current state rather than the future state.
As we progressed through the workshops I was able to begin to understand certain themes which we could begin to build a strategy around. So the next workshop was to map what we had discovered back to what I would now call Strategical Pillars.
These Strategical Pillars became:
This session allowed us to do a few things, firstly, we were able to validate with the client the Strategical Pillars to make sure we’re all aligned on the particular areas of focus.
Secondly, we’re able to map individual pain points and requirements to pillars to give context to certain requirements.
Finally, it allows us to get to grips with the objectives for the following projects and to be able to begin to understand the scope of work ahead.
Delivery is where our Agile delivery truly began! From Discovery, we took our requirements and UX design through to delivery. I created a unified design and development sprint process with design 2 sprints ahead allowing an efficient and consistent flow of designs through to the development team with enough time to fully refine and spec the required stories. During this phase of work, I very much assume the role of Product Owner to manage sprint ceremonies (refinement, 3 Amigos, sprint planning, retros and stand-ups), manage the backlog and priorities and to work with the client-side Product Manager to understand and deliver the vision of the product.
