4 Executive-Level Requirements For Successful Marketing Transformation

Change can be successful within a business-as-usual environment. But transformation is much bigger and more complex, according to a new report that reveals practical insights as to why projects fail.

4 Executive-Level Requirements For Successful Marketing Transformation

The job of a marketing executive has never been more exciting–or more complicated. Beyond their traditional responsibilities, many are also tasked with defining, driving, and delivering the next generation of marketing for their companies. It’s a true transformation of not only the role of marketing, but the mindset of the enterprise.

Let’s start with defining “transformation” and, in particular, how it is distinctly different from “change.” Change typically means driving incremental impact while working with the resources and within the frameworks that are already in place. Tactics are clearly defined, and the approach is one and done. Transformation is another animal entirely. Unlike change, the expected benefit is substantial, and it’s all about questioning and challenging what’s in place. Also, unlike change, what needs to be done is often fluid, iterative, and not always clearly defined.

Change can be successful within a business-as-usual environment. But transformation is much bigger and more complex: It requires a broader scope, a more rigorous approach, and specific competencies that may not be in place today.

Given the high failure rate of large scale-transformations (70%), it seemed obvious that companies need help stacking the deck in their favor. In June, Merkle and Adobe (CMO.com’s parent company) partnered to conduct a survey of 250 executives who have recently completed a transformation initiative to understand the characteristics of what makes one successful.

This research, “The Case for Change: Exposing the Myths of Customer-Centric Transformation,” revealed practical insights on why projects fail and, in turn, exposed four areas of competency required for transformation success:

  1. Vision: A clearly defined desired end state, based on a shared understanding of customer needs and business objectives.
  2. Sponsorship: Active engagement, commitment, and financial support of the initiative by a senior executive.
  3. Executional excellence: A detailed plan and formal project management operation to oversee work streams and track against milestones.
  4. Operations: Processes and teams in place and ready to support and sustain change.

Within each of these areas, a collection of must-have attributes set the successful initiatives apart from those that fail.

Vision

Let’s start with vision. A clear vision will establish an explicit outcome that balances business opportunities and customer needs. Factors that differentiated successful initiatives included:

It is important to begin by bringing together a cross-representation of internal teams to collaborate on identifying the pain points in the current customer experience and overall infrastructure. From there, they begin defining the desired future state. Not only does this approach put a broad, cross-functional, and cross-product lens on the challenge, but it also generates early engagement and a sense of ownership in this process.

Executive Sponsorship

Next is executive sponsorship, which is imperative to a broad-scale transformation. Senior executives of your organization need to serve as active and visible proponents of this project. They will be the ones who make sure the initiative remains a priority across the enterprise. Sponsorship manifests itself in a number of ways, including financial commitment, active management of competing priorities, and persistence throughout the entire lifecycle of the initiative, from project initiation to rollout. Successful initiatives outpaced their counterparts in every one of these factors by 1.5 to 2.3x, our study found.

Executional Excellence

It may seem to go without saying that executional excellence is requisite, but many companies may not realize the level of rigor and discipline that’s required. This is the area that showed the greatest differences between companies that ultimately had a successful transformation initiative and those that didn’t. Successful companies left nothing to chance–from being 2.2x more likely to start with a formal program management office, to 2.8x and 2.5x more likely to leverage planning tools, such as business case and a detailed road map, respectively, according to the study.

Keep in mind that your standard, business-as-usual project management and delivery skills won’t cut it. Time spent up-front in identifying and securing the right leader and delivery team will more than pay for itself in the long term. Unlike a team that is laser-focused on a rigidly defined plan, an agile approach is required in the case of a ground-breaking and transformational project. You’ll need a team that’s seasoned and focused, but they must also be creative thinkers and problem solvers, flexible enough to consider and pursue different options.

Organizational Readiness

Finally, we have organizational readiness. This is truly the “make-or-break” factor for long-term success. In fact, our research found that lack of organizational adoption is the top reason for the failure of a broad-scale initiative.

Essential to adoption is aligning incentives to the objective of the initiative; successful initiatives were 3.3x more likely to address this factor, our study revealed. This is the largest gap we found between success and collapse. As the saying goes, “That which is measured improves.” Other important considerations include adjusting and adapting the current workflow, as well as assigning teams to support the future-state vision. You will definitely need to revisit and update your current processes and will more than likely need to make changes to the team–whether that’s rebalancing the current skill set or ramping up your team size to deliver on the vision.

Conclusion

Before you embark on a transformational initiative, make a calculated effort to prime your organization for success with a clearly defined vision; highly committed and engaged executive sponsorship; the skills and agility required for executional excellence; and the operational teams, processes, measurements, and incentives needed to launch and sustain your transformation vision.