Ctrl-Shift is a business innovation consultancy, specialising in the strategic value of trusted personal data.
We help organisations realise the unprecedented growth opportunity in personal data by creating strategic, sustainable and practical solutions that deliver new value in people’s lives.
Data mobility: The personal data portability growth opportunity for the UK economy
In 2018 Ctrl-Shift completed a major study for the DCMS which uncovered the huge untapped economic potential that is liberated by Personal Data Mobility.
Data Mobility Infrastructure Sandbox Report, June 2019
Ctrl-Shift completes the first phase of its Data Mobility Sandbox Programme - an examination of safe data sharing, identified as a major challenge to Personal Data Mobility in the 2018 report.
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The Board of this retailer wanted to explore opportunities to monetise existing and new sources of customer data in new ways, specifically looking at Personal Information Management Services (PIMS) as an emerging market.
Using the Ctrl-Shift consumer-led proposition development approach we identified the largest PIMS opportunities that aligned to the business strategy; identified how the retailer can make money by addressing these opportunities; and identified how to realise these opportunities.
From a broad set of potential propositions, a priority set was further developed, with consumers, into proof of concepts with a business case that indicated a significant revenue uplift excluding any commercial opportunity of increased sales and marketing efficiencies.
This project is ongoing and Operating Board appraisal is being sought, future planned activities include proving out the opportunity value and developing core capabilities within the business to realise the benefits.
The BBC is evolving from an era of mass ‘one-to-many’ broadcasting to an era of personalised media driven by the consumptions patterns of its audiences. This is crystalising in new, personalised versions of BBC.
The BBC engaged us to help design personal data policies and practices that differentiate it around trust and customer control of data.
We audited the BBC’s draft privacy principles, governance processes, communication strategies and technical architecture, identifying priority focus and providing recommendations which were accepted in full by the BBC.
Aimia is a global operator of loyalty schemes, including the largest UK loyalty scheme Nectar, with extensive customer data skills and assets and a strategic imperative to sustain customer trust around data.
We worked with Aimia to identify what opportunities it can seize by entering new ‘Me2B’ markets, identifying where the biggest adjacencies lie in terms of skills and capabilities and what potential revenue streams it could create. Our work is helping Aimia define its strategy in a potentially transformational market.
We worked with the Strategic Innovation team at Suncorp, Australia’s largest general insurer, in a learning partnership to explore the strategic risks and opportunities in an area of significant societal change: the shift in power for individuals who take control of their personal data.
We leveraged our expertise in the personal data landscape to act as sensemaking partner with Suncorp to help their team explore and interpret this change for strategic learning and decision-making.
We worked with BT’s R&D team to investigate and understand the requirements, business model and international opportunity for an Information Logistics platform that enables the orchestration of multiple streams of real time and static data from a multitude of information providers.
We delivered a market assessment and business case for the platform, identifying a clear set of business development opportunities. BT has now launched the platform as part of their BT Trace supply chain capabilities and as the data hub in Smart Cities.
SWIFT’s Digital Asset Grid (DAG) was a prototype for banks to provide a platform for secure peer-to-peer data sharing between trusted people, businesses and devices.
Working with 15 major global banks, we translated the platform’s capabilities into a range of business propositions.
Said project leader Peter Vander Auwera “Ctrl-Shift has been an amazing partner in the Innotribe R&D phase of the DAG project. They have delivered outstanding quality, been able to envisage the future and pioneer ideas for innovation. Their dynamic yet structured approach coupled with great project and stakeholder management skills has achieved astounding results.”
Ctrl-Shift has been acting as business advisor to the Department for Business, Innovation and Skills for their midata programme, part of the Consumer Empowerment Strategy Better Choices: Better Deals, since its inception in 2011 to mid 2013. The programme encourages companies holding customer data to release this data back to their customers in a portable, re-usable way – so that customers can use this information for their own purposes. As members of the midata Project Board we have been instrumental in helping the government to develop the midata strategy, vision, metrics for success, priorities and a timetable for implementing the programme.
In November 2011 twenty six major organisations announced their support for the midata vision and began the journey of enabling transparency, access and control of people’s personal data. In November 2012 the Government announced its decision to introduce a statutory right for consumers to request an electronic copy of data companies hold about them. New legislation may be introduced in the UK in early 2014.
Working with BT and the University of Southampton Ctrl-Shift developed a preparatory study for the Technology Strategy Board of the potential market barriers, enablers, business models and value chain for the future market of Internet of Things (IoT). By engaging directly with stakeholders we scrutinised what could make the transport and logistics sector increasingly ‘smart’ where new transport applications and business process improvement can be generated by exploiting a critical mass of diverse, real-time and historical data. We highlighted the importance of understanding personal data issues if the potential value of IoT is to be realised.
Our work helped inform the next stage of Technology Strategy Board investment in eight UK IoT demonstrator projects. Bringing our expertise in how to catalyse data-led value creation we worked with a consortium led by BT and also including Dartt, Aimes Grid Services and Cambridge University on one of the demonstrator projects.
Consumer Futures (now part of Citizens Advice) commissioned us to undertake market analysis on 3 fronts:
This work is being progressed with the UK regulators.
The midata Innovation Lab (mIL), an extension of the UK Government’s midata programme, was run by Ctrl-Shift on behalf of BIS as an innovation platform to enable safe use of personal information. The Lab brought together a wide variety of datasets (integrated around individuals) for 18 brands, developers and consumer bodies to explore opportunities.
We led the design and delivery of the mIL , working with cross-cutting groups to develop three apps which demonstrated the opportunities. The miL’s work is now being progressed by the UK Digital Catapult to support digital growth.
“There’s an app for that!” But is it grounded in customer value and business strategy in a way that builds trust? And does it build business skills, capabilities and relationships that position the company for sustainable growth?
Ctrl-Shift’s product design and development process blends our years of experience in the information services market with seasoned development and delivery teams who have worked with the biggest brands on cutting-edge digital programmes.
With a number of specialist partners, from human centred design and agile delivery to customer research and leading Personal Information Management Services (PIMS), we work closely with our clients to deliver beautiful, valuable and trusted information services – helping individuals to make better decisions and get things done.
Successful digital engagement is not just about great service concept and brilliant service design. It’s about accessing and using data, including customer data. It’s about control and compliance. It’s about market entry strategies, roadmaps, skills and capabilities. And it’s about the business cases and the business model.
Our PIMS Innovation Labs start and end with real people: their needs, challenges; the jobs they want to get done in their lives. Working collaboratively with teams from all parts of the business, we help organisations identify, build and prove-out rich new customer information services to drive new revenues, reduce costs and build sustainable brand positions.
With years of practical experience in the PIMS market, we use insights from our labs to build detailed business cases, inform build/ buy/ partner decisions support Next Generation Customer Engagement programmes, and develop go-to-market strategies.
Whether it’s the internet of things, smart cities and connected cars, or programmatic advertising, blockchain and algorithms, the more intense the digital buzzword blizzard becomes, the harder it is for business leaders to distinguish between ‘fad’ and ‘fundamental’.
Starting with the unchanging fundamentals of consumer/customer value, Ctrl-Shift’s analysis and research services help companies separate the signal from the noise to gain a clear sense of digital direction, brand purpose and product and service priorities.
And it’s not just what we know, it’s also who we know. Our unique contacts across the digital economy and with the leaders – those actually making change happen – in the market for Personal Information Management Services (PIMS) gives clients an inside track on where the biggest opportunities lie, and how to access them.
Building trust is not about ‘data protection and compliance’. It’s about customer relationships: how to turn positive and trusted data sharing with customers into a platform for innovation and competitive advantage.
Ctrl-Shift helps companies develop future-proofed data policies, principles and practices that deepen customer trust, encouraging richer and volunteered data sharing.
Whether that’s transforming a brand’s data promise, the way the promise is communicated and governed, or reinventing the customer experience through personal permissions and preferences, we work with clients to understand and anticipate forthcoming regulation and legislation.
