Digital Transformation Needs Marketing & IT to Align

Rec­om­men­da­tions for suc­cess­ful mar­ket­ing transformation

The per­cep­tion of inter­na­tion­al tech­nol­o­gy cor­po­ra­tions shows again and again that Ger­many is often more hes­i­tant than the rest of the world in imple­ment­ing dig­i­tal inno­va­tions. This is also reflect­ed in the field of mar­ket­ing. We want­ed to know more and took a clos­er look at the rea­sons for this reluc­tance in a study by Pierre Audoin Con­sul­tants (PAC) and oth­er com­pa­nies: what bar­ri­ers must be over­come on the way to the dig­i­tal mar­ket­ing organ­i­sa­tion of Ger­man com­pa­nies? And where can we begin to effec­tive­ly accom­pa­ny the change process? In heav­i­ly con­densed form, the find­ings of our recent study can be sum­marised in four main points:

Mar­ket­ing and IT deci­sion-mak­er dream teams instead of turf wars

It’s clear: mar­ket­ing can no longer sur­vive with­out tech­nol­o­gy. But of course, the reverse is also true. Tech­nol­o­gy with­out con­tent is mean­ing­less. The log­i­cal con­clu­sion: both areas of exper­tise must form a uni­ty. CMO and CIO must pur­sue a com­mon goal, and find a com­mon lev­el of com­mu­ni­ca­tion. The real­i­ty, how­ev­er, looks dif­fer­ent: 91% of all IT man­agers per­ceive them­selves to be in such a supe­ri­or posi­tion that they would like to lay down dig­i­tal strat­e­gy togeth­er with the CEO. 61% even think that CMOs do not even need to be involved in this plan­ning process. There is huge poten­tial for con­flict in this area of ten­sion, leav­ing us with a real entre­pre­neur­ial chal­lenge that must be resolved as quick­ly as pos­si­ble, if mar­ket­ing trans­for­ma­tion is to be suc­cess­ful­ly implemented.

Thor­ough stock­tak­ing instead of patch­work projects

At present, the major­i­ty of com­pa­nies in Ger­many approach dig­i­tal­i­sa­tion with lit­tle strate­gic plan­ning. Although 58% imple­ment indi­vid­ual dig­i­tal projects in select areas, no over­ar­ch­ing strat­e­gy is pur­sued. Mar­ket­ing trans­for­ma­tion affects all seg­ments of the val­ue chain, not just indi­vid­ual ele­ments. It is there­fore all the more impor­tant for many com­pa­nies to lay _all _of their process stan­dards on the table, to ques­tion them rad­i­cal­ly, and to restruc­ture them where nec­es­sary. The cur­rent patch­work prin­ci­ple, where­in spe­cial­ly devel­oped solu­tions for indi­vid­ual, spe­cif­ic seg­ments are sim­ply plugged into the big pic­ture, has final­ly had its day. Far too often, the applied iso­lat­ed solu­tions do not har­monise with one anoth­er, either tech­ni­cal­ly or in terms of con­tent. Com­mu­ni­ca­tion prob­lems and inef­fi­cien­cies are the inevitable con­se­quence, and can ulti­mate­ly only be coun­tered through com­pre­hen­sive, inte­grat­ed planning.

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Col­lab­o­ra­tion with experts instead of a go-It-alone approach

For 80% of IT and mar­ket­ing deci­sion mak­ers, IT ser­vice providers and soft­ware sup­pli­ers play an impor­tant to very impor­tant role in sup­port­ing dig­i­tal trans­for­ma­tion. In order to spe­cial­ly ben­e­fit from this sup­port, a dig­i­tal mar­ket­ing enter­prise must ask itself what skills it already pos­sess­es, what kind of knowl­edge base it can forge inter­nal­ly and which gaps it can fill by hir­ing exter­nal staff. In a dynam­ic mar­ket like dig­i­tal busi­ness, today’s com­pa­nies are first and fore­most suc­cess­ful when they active­ly net­work and sur­round them­selves with the right experts. It is clear­ly the task of mar­ket­ing deci­sion mak­ers to plan this ahead and imple­ment it.

Start-up Mind­set instead of cor­po­rate crawl

Near­ly half of all com­pa­nies believe they must become much more inno­v­a­tive in order to sur­vive in the mar­ket. Speed is a crit­i­cal fac­tor for suc­cess. Flex­i­bil­i­ty, trans­paren­cy and the courage to arrive at quick deci­sions deter­mine suc­cess or fail­ure. At present, the pace of inno­va­tion is often faster than inter­nal restruc­tur­ing process­es, despite the fact that new tools and instru­ments have long since ceased to be rock­et sci­ence. The moti­va­tion and readi­ness of a company’s own staff to learn some­thing new and devel­op them­selves fur­ther is often much greater than is realised. Instead of repeat­ed­ly address­ing the skills short­age, com­pa­nies should put more trust in the poten­tial of their own employ­ees, by offer­ing them fund­ed train­ing and on-going devel­op­ment pro­grammes, for example.

Over­all, the first results of our cur­rent study have made one thing clear: mar­ket­ing trans­for­ma­tion is a strate­gic chal­lenge that requires sys­tem­at­ic plan­ning and struc­tured process­es. Doing things sim­ply for the sake of doing them leads to unsat­is­fac­to­ry results. How­ev­er, if IT and mar­ket­ing deci­sion mak­ers can work as a team, the nec­es­sary reform process­es will quick­ly gain momen­tum. The rec­om­men­da­tion can there­fore only be, that for suc­cess­ful dig­i­tal trans­for­ma­tion Mar­ket­ing & IT need to Align.

Down­load the Exec­u­tive Sum­ma­ry here