During an exclusive interview with CanadianSME Small Business Magazine, Kathryn Brohman, Associate Professor and Distinguished Faculty Fellow at Smith School of Business, explored how digital tools like Groupon, ClassPass, and Rocket Money are transforming the way consumers manage their spending. Drawing from her expertise in digital transformation and strategy execution, Brohman discussed the importance of aligning these tools with consumer habits and the role of Smith Business in preparing future leaders to develop innovative financial solutions. Her insights offer a fresh perspective on how businesses and consumers alike can harness digital platforms for smarter spending and better financial management.
Kathryn Brohman is associate professor and Distinguished Faculty Fellow of Digital Transformation and Strategy Execution at Smith School of Business. She has co-authored several books on how great strategy is worthless if you can’t execute it. Her most recent book SHIFT: A New Mindset for Sustainable Execution presents results from her work with over 750 organizations and offers a comprehensive approach to orchestrating results in dynamic business environments. Kathryn has pioneered programs in strategy execution and digital transformation across MBA and executive programs.
Smith Business is known for its innovative approach to business education. How do you see digital cost-saving tools like Groupon, ClassPass, and Rocket Money fitting into the broader landscape of smart spending and financial management for consumers?
By design, these tools have the potential to help consumers with smart spending and financial management. However, in terms of ‘fitting into the landscape’ the challenge will be getting customers to use them.
With digital tools becoming an integral part of daily life, what strategies can consumers adopt to effectively integrate these platforms into their routines to maximize savings and manage spending more efficiently?
It is important that consumers first understand how they manage their spending and make financial decisions. Each consumer likely has a different approach and faces different challenges regarding their spending. So, the first strategy would be to better understand what is getting in the way of their saving goals, or what specific challenges they face. Once consumers have a clear understanding of the problem, they can start to search for a tool to help them address that problem.
Despite the potential benefits of digital cost-saving tools, research shows that 70% of these initiatives fail. What are the key challenges these digital solutions face, and how can they adapt to better meet the evolving needs of consumers?
One key challenge is that most consumers do not have a clear understanding of their specific challenges. Everyone wants to save more, but the reality is that costs are increasing, and it is getting harder and harder for people to get ahead. So, they need help understanding their spending habits and identifying simple ways they can make improvements. Unfortunately, most of the tools available don’t solve this problem. They solve problems that are more downstream, like how to find discounts on specific purchases.
The other challenge is that often using these tools requires an extra step, in other words – the tools are not embedded into the workflow, so people often overlook the opportunity to use them. If a consumer is making a purchase and a pop-up occurred that stated they can save 10% with this coupon, they would be more likely to use the tool. However, this brings me to the last reason which is that often people turn off pop ups because they find them annoying or distracting, so this prevents tools like Groupon from integrating into people’s workflow.
How does Smith Business prepare students and future business leaders to develop and implement successful digital solutions that drive smart spending and savings for consumers?
Smith School of Business is the first university in Canada to offer a Master program in Digital Product Management. This program teaches professionals interested in technology and innovation how to design and develop digital tools and products that are more likely to succeed. As a joint offering with Queen’s School of Computing, this program covers digital product design and implementation from technical, user, and business points of view.
Given the rapid pace of technological change, what innovations or trends do you foresee in the development of digital tools that could further enhance their effectiveness and adoption among consumers?
The focus on agile product design will continue to address the rapid pace of technological change.
Interest in AI will also amplify the interest in digital product management as organizations recognize the inherent value in data and automation.
Transitioning from a project to a product mindset. As there are a plethora of tools now available and the cost of development has dramatically decreased, technology innovation needs to be influenced by marketing practices.
The last trend is systems thinking. This is truly the novel approach that explains why tools like Uber and Airbnb have transformed industries. Technology has the capability to influence systems-level change, but only if digital product managers explore the opportunity from a systems perspective.
