6 Stages of Digital Transformation: “Formalised”

Wel­come to the sec­ond instal­ment of our series on dig­i­tal transformation.

While many com­pa­nies now accept the neces­si­ty, and in some cas­es inevitabil­i­ty, of becom­ing dig­i­tal-first organ­i­sa­tions, their progress has been a decid­ed­ly mixed bag so far. Some busi­ness­es have only launched a few iso­lat­ed ini­tia­tives aimed at increas­ing social engage­ment, while oth­ers have begun to for­malise their dig­i­tal efforts, and have tak­en steps toward devel­op­ing com­pa­ny-wide dig­i­tal-first strate­gies. How­ev­er, very few com­pa­nies, if any, have under­gone com­plete trans­for­ma­tions into dig­i­tal­ly inno­v­a­tive organisations.

The 2016 Altime­ter Study “The Six Stages of Dig­i­tal Trans­for­ma­tion” breaks down the process into six dis­tinct steps, from “Busi­ness as Usu­al” all the way to dig­i­tal­ly “Inno­v­a­tive and Adap­tive.” In the first arti­cle of this series, we looked at the tran­si­tion from “Busi­ness as Usu­al,” in which a com­pa­ny oper­ates pri­mar­i­ly on lega­cy prin­ci­ples and par­a­digms, to “Present and Active,” in which iso­lat­ed teams of dig­i­tal exper­i­menters begin to mea­sur­ably increase return on invest­ment (ROI) in spaces like social and mobile.

Ear­ly suc­cess­es in these areas awak­en some com­pa­nies to the pow­er of dig­i­tal-first inno­va­tion, push­ing them toward the “For­malised” stage, in which dig­i­tal exper­i­men­ta­tion becomes more direct­ed, inten­tion­al, and bold. Com­pa­nies that reach this stage begin to gain a fuller under­stand­ing of their cus­tomers, and expand from gen­er­at­ing indi­vid­ual con­ver­sions to build­ing ongo­ing rela­tion­ships at scale.

The whole customer

As mar­ket­ing teams recog­nise the pow­er of per­son­alised cus­tomer inter­ac­tions, they may also begin to notice that they have lit­tle idea how indi­vid­ual cus­tomers engage with their brand across chan­nels, let alone with depart­ments out­side mar­ket­ing, such as sales and sup­port. If they could gain holis­tic views of their cus­tomers’ attrib­ut­es and behav­iours, these mar­keters realise, they could make data-dri­ven deci­sions about mar­ket­ing invest­ment and user expe­ri­ence personalisation.

The most log­i­cal way to go about this is to unsi­lo cus­tomer data; in oth­er words, to inte­grate data points from mul­ti­ple depart­ments into robust pro­files that can dri­ve use­ful insights—or, bet­ter still, action­able predictions—about cus­tomer behav­iour and pref­er­ences. How­ev­er, this unsilo­ing process can be chal­leng­ing, because dif­fer­ent depart­ments often store and organ­ise cus­tomer data in entire­ly dif­fer­ent ways. Even if mul­ti­chan­nel data can be suc­cess­ful­ly inte­grat­ed into robust cus­tomer pro­files, few organ­i­sa­tions have in-house experts capa­ble of deriv­ing action­able insights from those assets.

French automak­er Renault faced exact­ly this chal­lenge, as it recog­nised the lim­i­ta­tions of its lega­cy cam­paign plat­form, and saw sig­nif­i­cant oppor­tu­ni­ty to strength­en rela­tion­ships with cus­tomers and deal­er­ships with con­sis­tent, cen­tralised cam­paign con­tent. To this end, the com­pa­ny adopt­ed a cen­tralised dig­i­tal mar­ket­ing plat­form, enabling it to bring pre­vi­ous­ly out­sourced cam­paign activ­i­ties in house, improv­ing con­trol over data, increas­ing respon­sive­ness to cus­tomer needs, and cut­ting agency costs.

This cen­tralised plat­form not only enables Renault to sup­port inter­na­tion­al, region­al, and local cam­paigns with con­sis­tent mes­sages and brand­ing, it also pro­vides action­able insights into cross-chan­nel cus­tomer behav­iours and pref­er­ences, help­ing for­mu­late more per­son­al, tar­get­ed mes­sages. The result has been a 20 per­cent increase in con­ver­sions. What’s more, Renault’s scal­able mar­ket­ing tech­nol­o­gy stack will con­tin­ue to sup­port sophis­ti­cat­ed dig­i­tal mar­ket­ing campaigns.

Renault’s inno­va­tion points back to a sig­nif­i­cant aspect of the “For­malised” stage: it’s not sim­ply about expand­ing and inte­grat­ing dig­i­tal mar­ket­ing efforts; it’s equal­ly about build­ing a sol­id, scal­able infra­struc­ture for ongo­ing dig­i­tal innovation.

Dig­i­tal foundation

Rep­e­ti­tion leads to recog­ni­tion. As dig­i­tal mar­ket­ing teams man­age cam­paign after cam­paign, they begin to recog­nise that it takes days—or per­haps even weeks or months—to put togeth­er a suit­able envi­ron­ment for cre­at­ing dig­i­tal expe­ri­ences. They begin to grow frus­trat­ed with the cost­ly, time-con­sum­ing process­es of stitch­ing togeth­er dif­fer­ent dig­i­tal mar­ket­ing tools, and ratio­nal­is­ing dif­fer­ing data sets and method­olo­gies; and it becomes clear that a stream­lined, sys­tem­at­ic dig­i­tal go-to-mar­ket foun­da­tion would result in less over­head, stronger secu­ri­ty, and greater agility.

Thus, as com­pa­nies enter the “For­malised” stage of dig­i­tal trans­for­ma­tion, they often seek out inte­grat­ed dig­i­tal mar­ket­ing solu­tions, which com­bine fea­tures like expe­ri­ence host­ing, pro­file ana­lyt­ics, per­son­al­i­sa­tion, and cam­paign met­rics into a sin­gle plat­form. A uni­fied dig­i­tal mar­ket­ing foun­da­tion can enable teams to self-serve and dis­cov­er insights; and to lever­age those insights in stream­lined work­flows that min­imise the time from con­cept to exe­cu­tion, all with­in the same secure environment.

The inter­na­tion­al­ly recog­nised Chelsea Foot­ball Club, play­ing in the British Pre­mier League, recent­ly recog­nised the need for just such a solu­tion, as it sought to pro­vide inti­mate mul­ti­chan­nel expe­ri­ences for a world­wide com­mu­ni­ty of more than 500 mil­lion fans. Although Chelsea already had a cut­ting-edge media team cre­at­ing com­pelling video con­tent, as well as mar­ket­ing teams craft­ing tweets and social posts, the com­pa­ny recog­nised the need to bring all this con­tent into a sin­gle data-dri­ven mar­ket­ing work­flow, which would enable con­tent to adapt dynam­i­cal­ly to chang­ing com­mu­ni­ty needs.

While con­tin­u­ing to oper­ate its exist­ing dig­i­tal solu­tions, Chelsea researched cus­tomer seg­ments across Europe and around the globe, and dis­cov­ered that most cus­tomers’ pri­ma­ry desire was to feel con­nect­ed to their favourite foot­ball play­ers, and to Chelsea’s social con­tent. To exe­cute on these insights, Chelsea designed a fresh cus­tomer expe­ri­ence strat­e­gy, then onboard­ed a new cloud-based mar­ket­ing archi­tec­ture, includ­ing a data­base envi­ron­ment, an ana­lyt­ics suite, and sup­port and host­ing abilities.

Lever­ag­ing the cus­tomer data it gath­ered, Chelsea used its new dig­i­tal mar­ket­ing foun­da­tion to roll out a cross-chan­nel cam­paign, deliv­er­ing high­ly per­son­alised expe­ri­ences across all avail­able touch­points. World­wide engage­ment with Chelsea’s social con­tent sky­rock­et­ed almost imme­di­ate­ly. The club’s mar­ket­ing plat­form gath­ered behav­iour­al data from this shar­ing activ­i­ty, empow­er­ing mar­keters to inter­act with fans in the most impact­ful ways possible—and cre­at­ing a foun­da­tion for even more engag­ing, data-dri­ven mul­ti­chan­nel cam­paigns in the future.

Com­pa­nies that step firm­ly into the “For­malised” stage equip them­selves to exper­i­ment with new mar­ket­ing ini­tia­tives across all chan­nels, with min­i­mal time invest­ment and over­head; and to lever­age data gath­ered from those exper­i­ments in con­sis­tent, direct­ed ways. Soon, they’re no longer just seek­ing to improve engage­ment, they’re active­ly build­ing new dig­i­tal strate­gies on a foun­da­tion of unique, pro­pri­etary insights about their own cus­tomer segments.

It’s with those steps for­ward that some com­pa­nies enter the “Strate­gic” stage, in which indi­vid­ual groups begin to share their research and tech­niques, con­tribut­ing to new strate­gic roadmaps for dig­i­tal trans­for­ma­tion. We’ll exam­ine that stage more close­ly in the next arti­cle of this series. See you there!