Digital Transformation Includes Investing In Your People

Your employees and their digital skills are the keys to your digital transformation. Do you have the right talent and capabilities to deliver the future?

Customer-led digital experiences are fast becoming the expectation—leaving many marketers feeling underequipped to master the evolving digital landscape and struggling to keep up with the pace of change. Digital transformation—and, even more so, digital innovation—requires powerful capabilities on the technical side. But what’s often overlooked is that a primary driver and accelerator of these changes actually comes from the people side.

Your employees and their digital skills are the keys to your digital transformation. Do you have the right talent and capabilities to deliver the future?

Why Now?

There are two primary reasons why investing in your employees’ skills should be a major focus:

First, digital transformation is complex, especially when it’s driven by rising customer expectations and desires for innovative customer experiences. If we’re talking about the macro-market perspective, it’s happening constantly in waves and gradients—and at this rate, it’s also increasing in pace. To achieve your desired results faster, your company will need to train and develop your digital marketers regularly.

Second, high-performing employees naturally want to increase their values as well as skills in their fields. The shortage of skilled digital talent in the industry means it’s increasingly expensive to hire and retain top talent—in other words, if your company cannot provide opportunities for employees to gain further skills and knowledge in their fields, you have to ask, “What’s stopping them from going elsewhere?” Top-notch employees want to improve in the same way that top-notch companies do.

So here’s a three-step solution for managing the human side of your digital transformation, because, ultimately, it will be your customers who win.

Step 1: Assess Your Team

You’ll likely find that your marketing team has a wide range of skills and capabilities. A one-size-fits-all approach rarely works, and you’ll want to maximize any training investment to target the most critical skills. Look for comprehensive digital skills assessment tools to help gauge your strengths and potential weak spots. Further, seek flexible resources that offer a range of learning options aligned to current industry standards and best practices.

Step 2: Find A Trusted Partner

In a recent study by MIT and CapGemini, 90% of surveyed companies reported a lack of essential digital skills. Further, 77% considered those missing skills a key hurdle in their digital transformations. This and other industry reports all confirm that you need a well-developed and informed approach for both handling the fast-paced evolution of digital technologies and retaining your best digital talent.

Step 3: Make Digital Learning Part Of How You Operate

The most effective marketers will supplement their technical capabilities with robust skills development programs that help them learn to attain maximum value from their digital tools, using digital best practices that drive business performance. Upskilling your employees should never really stop because companies should always be evolving and innovating. Digital transformation is, unfortunately, not achieved on a weekend retreat—it should be embedded in your company’s learning practices. The most successful programs will emphasize structured learning opportunities, access to new content and resources, and on-the-job experience development.

Accelerate Your Digital Transformation

Whether your company has rolled out a cutting-edge mobile experience, is trying to bridge the physical and online experiences, or is in the early days of trying to figure out just where to start, successful CMOs all have something very important in common: highly competent people who can deploy, maintain, and capitalize on their digital capabilities.

Marketers need not just technical skills, but also firm understandings of the business practices that drive successful digital experience-led businesses. Look for learning resources that are fresh, credible, and current, reflecting the continuously changing digital landscape. When your employees are able to access learning, build their capabilities when needed, and apply them in real time—both you and your customers win.