Hi, I'm Evan, a data and machine learning trainer at Google Cloud. By now, you've selected your ideal business challenge, combining the superpowers of Cloud and the garage mindset, using your data ecosystem and a quadrant framework. You also learned about privacy and security with a shared responsibility model. The goal now is to use all of these pieces to build a business case for a large-scale transformation project, to share with your leadership or wider team. In this module, I'll begin the process by selecting a sample business challenge, the question that'll guide the rest of the module. I'll explain how to apply 10x thinking once again and a three-step criteria, to help you identify your most transformative solution. Then, I'll walk you through the steps to break down your solution into smaller projects, and to plot them on a transformation roadmap. This will be similar to the framework you've seen before. Next, I'll help you identify a data strategy to support your projects along the way. Then, I'll guide you through the steps to build a business case for your overall transformation project. And finally, I'll share some tips with you to socialize your projects, to build momentum for your case. Let's begin. It takes several steps to identify the best solution for your challenge and turn it into a business transformation case. Let's use an example from a retail company to guide the process. You can adapt these same steps for your specific use case. Imagine you work in apparel retailing, your why is to make customers feel like their best selves by wearing your company's merchandise. Your initial question might be, how can we make recommendations in our stores that would lead to more sales? But trying to solve this would only be a slight improvement to your business. By aiming straight and shooting for the moon, you refine your question to be, how could we redefine our customer experience to significantly improve their self-image, every time they interact with us? Now that's a challenge. It's aspirational, with no obvious solution, and it would bring a great change to the world. Let's hold onto this question. It's not going to change anymore. Your next step is to come up with possible solutions. Now you don't want just any solution, apply 10x thinking by taking the superpowers of Cloud technology into account. Now, grab a piece of paper or gather around a whiteboard with your colleagues, and write down your challenge at the center of that page or that whiteboard. Then, brainstorm three to five possible solutions. Now a caveat, there's no right or wrong answers, just ideas, get them down there. Don't worry about implementation at this point, just let the ideas flow. It's also important that you come up with at least three solutions before moving on to the next step. For our apparel retailing example, here are three possible solutions to our business challenge. One idea might be to create a flagship store in a high traffic street or a top city location, and higher trained psychologists and image consultants who then welcome customers into private spaces. There they could spend like two hours to learn about the customer, and finally make personalized apparel recommendations based on the individual's interests and self-image goals. The second idea might be to have an AI-powered bot with a friendly personality, connect with our customers while they're browsing a style website or application. It would pop up and engage in a conversation just as you would with your best friend sitting next to you. Best of all, it would provide direct links to purchase any item it recommends, in your size. A third idea might be able to turn a customer's apartment or home into their very own fitting room. We do this with a specially designed box, containing pre-selected items equipped with sensors. Each item is also connected to an interactive chat experience. As the customer interacts with the item, an assistant guides their choices and make simple recommendations for items that are not in the box, and it puts you in touch with a human adviser for further discussion. You now have three distinct ideas and each of them is groundbreaking in their own way, well done. But, which of them is going to be the best fit for your business transformation case? Here are your criteria. Feasibility, differentiation, business impact. Feasibility refers to both the technical and non-technical methods to achieve the solution. For example, does the technology for the solution even exist? Non-technical feasibility might include the readiness of the organization or the customer base. If the organization or customer base is not yet ready for this solution, then you may want to take your time and socialize it first. Differentiation is about competitive advantage. Does this solution create a significant gap with everything else that currently exists in your market? Even better, does it creates this gap in a way that only your organization can easily achieve and competition would have a hard time replicating? If yes, then it would score very high on your evaluation. Business impact refers to how beneficial the solution would be for your organization and at what cost. For each of the solutions you brainstormed, use these criteria to make your final selection. The ideal solution would score high across all three variables. Let's go back to our solutions and see how they scored. The first idea was about flagship stores and a high traffic streets, staff with psychologists, and image consultants. The feasibility score for a personalized customer experience delivered in this way will be medium. The differentiation score will be high, but the business impact score would be low as the solution will be costly, resource intensive, and time-consuming. The second idea was an AI-powered friendly social media bot. The differentiation score here would be high, the business impact score would also be high, but the feasibility score will be low as it would be near impossible to implement. The third idea involves a personalized box containing pre-selected merchandise that essentially helped turn a customer's home into a fitting room. Across the board, the scores look good. Feasibility isn't too bad. It is possible to do this. The business impact would be high, and the solutions a great differentiator. So the winner is idea number 3, the personalized apparel box. It falls on the right intersection between technical feasibility, business impact, and differentiation from a pool of other 10x ideas. Your end goal is now to create this personalized subscription service. You'll use the superpowers of cloud to perceive preference, predict the most likely items to improve self-esteem, and recommend a short range of products enabling you to send a personalized box with these products to each of your customers. Customers can now try them on at home and use their smart assistant to visualize more options or interact with an image consultant in real time. For example, they could ask if the same item is available in a different size, or different color, or get an opinion on how it fits or what accessories would look perfect with them. Then, they could choose to buy or return the samples, and maybe a special offer along the way. But wait, creating this personalized subscription service is a huge project and it's never been done before. You know you're headed for the top of the mountain, and that might feel scary. Let's build the steps to get us there. To do this, you'll need to breakdown your solution into smaller projects and plot them along a transformation roadmap.
