Seafish

Supporting the UK seafood industry

The Challenge

Seafish is a non-departmental public body whose remit is to support the UK seafood industry, from fishermen and processors through to retailers and end consumers. As detailed in its corporate plan, Seafish is 'committed to enabling transformative change which will foster a thriving seafood sector'.

Storm ID was appointed to develop a coherent strategic roadmap that would shape Seafish's digital transformation over a five-year period.

The roadmap needed to identify and prioritise improvements to existing processes and interactions – as well as introducing new ideas – that would drive digital transformation.

In particular, it needed to challenge siloed and fragmented activities, support co-ordinated digital delivery across the organisation, and improve efficiency across internal, operational and externally facing business areas. It also had to outline quick wins, and demonstrate value, viability and effectiveness to stakeholders.

The Objectives

  • User centred

    The digital roadmap had to put users – staff, stakeholders and customers – at its heart, as successful digital transformation is about people first, and technology second.

    A core of the engagement was capturing the goals, objectives, challenges and frustrations of all these people, and defining new and improved processes and services to meet their needs.

    Whilst fully understanding and leveraging the latest technology, the roadmap had to focus first on user needs and business outcomes.   

  • Innovation

    One of the challenges of any transformation programme is to be strong enough to allow new ideas to emerge and flourish.

    Too often, ideas can remain unvoiced or are quickly dismissed, resulting in strategies and roadmaps limited to the slow evolution of what already exists irrespective of whether this truly addresses user requirements.

    A key objective was to address two main barriers to innovation: that people can struggle to imagine what they do not know, and that they limit the ambition of their ideas because of perceived barriers. 

  • Practicality

    Whilst being ambitious and innovative, the roadmap needed to articulate a series of realistic steps that were within Seafish's capacity to deliver.

    As well as thinking about digital innovation, it was important to address factors such as budget, timeframes, governance frameworks and organisational capacity.

    To this end, the roadmap was to focus its detailed attention on the near-term (12–18 months), whilst outlining broader possible courses of action over longer time periods. 

The Insight

The core of the project was a series of seven workshops across multiple sites with different departments in Seafish and with external stakeholders.

The workshops looked at three areas:

- hopes and fears around digital transformation

- existing interactions, activities and processes, and any challenges, frustrations and lost opportunities

- forward focus on new idea generation and prioritisation

The workshops produced over 1500 pieces of feedback, and generated 271 ideas for digital transformation, which were consolidated into 72 potential projects

The projects were shaped into a roadmap based around five themes that emerged from the workshops, and ordered across three phases of 18-months each, reflecting both the project dependencies and business value. 

The Outcome

Seafish has used the roadmap to structure its digital transformation programme, allowing it to make significant progress in meeting the needs of staff, external stakeholders and the business.

As well as introducing a digital board to provide governance and direction, Seafish has accelerated the upgrading of its core IT systems and infrastructure, migrated to an open-source content management system and launched a redesigned website.

Storm ID has continued to partner Seafish in the implementation of these changes. 

Get in Touch

If you're ready to transform your digital services, get in touch and we can discuss your requirements.