Strategy and Digital Transformation

Digital Marketing - Study Notes:

What is digital transformation?

Digital transformation involves taking a digital-first approach to all aspects of a business by integrating digital technologies into its day-to-day activities. A digital transformation project can create new and better business strategies that can meet ever-evolving market requirements and customer expectations in the fast-moving digital age.

Digital transformation in organizations

In many organizations, the responsibility for digital transformation falls to digital leaders such as digital strategists and digital marketing managers. This makes sense, as digital transformation initiatives usually support the delivery of the company’s overall digital marketing strategy.

Digital transformation is key to driving digital change within an organization. That change could involve overhauling the organization’s digital processes, or helping it adopt an omnichannel strategy or make the switch to a new, more fluid customer journey.

Pillars of a digital transformation strategy

An organization’s digital transformation strategy tends to be grounded in a number of key elements or pillars. Before you undertake any digital transformation project, it’s important to give in-depth consideration to the following elements of your strategy:

• The current state of digital transformation adoption within the organization
• Your vision of where the digital transformation initiative should take the organization over the next three years
• The strategic approach you propose to take, including your goals and objectives, key priorities, and needs
• The reasons why you’re undertaking the transformation, and the benefits you’re likely to gain from it
• A phased plan for executing and scaling the initiative
• The resources you require, such as budget, people, and executive support
• The supporting infrastructure you need
• Your projected outcomes and KPIs
• The reporting structure you propose
• The timelines you’re going to follow
• Examples of similar programs that are currently run in your industry or beyond
• Any decisions that need to be made before you start implementing your strategy
• The first steps you need to take

When planning your digital transformation strategy, don’t overlook any of these pillar elements and be sure to include all the necessary details in your plan. Proper planning at this stage can help you implement your strategy effectively and achieve your long-and short-term digital goals.

Digital transformation misconceptions

Some people in your organization might have misconceptions about what building and implementing a successful digital transformation strategy entails.

For example, you might hear people saying things like:

• It’ll be easy to get the program off the ground.
• It’s a once-off project with a defined start and end date.
• Making radical changes will produce faster results.
• The digital maturity of the organization won’t affect the success of the program.
• One size fits all.
• The initiative will create immediate impact.
• It’ll help you solve all your current marketing challenges.

These statements are false! They can derail your plans, hinder your progress, and cause your transformation strategy to fail.

If you hear statements like these, it’s important that you recognize them as common misconceptions and challenge the speaker about them as soon as possible. If the people around you start to buy into these sentiments or accept them as statements of fact, it makes it more difficult to get a digital transformation project off the ground and achieve a successful outcome.

Key considerations

When implementing a digital transformation strategy, maintain a laser-like focus on four essential aspects of your plan. These are its governance, training, processes, and measurement.

Keep in mind that:

• Governance mitigates risks.
• Training develops social capabilities.
• Processes make behaviors repeatable.
• Measurement tracks results and best practices.

Paying attention to these key considerations and planning for them in advance can help you manage the most complex and multi-layered digital transformation projects.