The Right Strategy, Culture and Partners Will Spark Digital Transformation

1. The right strategy, culture and partner relationships.
2. The adoption of sophisticated cloud marketing technologies.
3. A direct-to-consumer brand digital commerce channel.

Here in part two, we’re focusing on the first pillar: strategy, culture and partner relationships.

As co-leaders of a digital customer experience company, we’ve found that with both leading and aspiring brands that are undergoing a digital transformation, management teams commonly focus on the technology required (e.g. customer experience management software, such as Adobe or Salesforce) to enable the types of customer experiences they envision.

However, CEOs and CMOs need to be careful that their strategy drives the digital transformation—not the other way around. This means thinking through the cultural and talent shifts needed to bring these strategies to life and working effectively with these new technologies. Additionally, brands must consider how to work with partners to support these initiatives and augment the brand’s existing capabilities.

Work backward from strategic goals

Digital transformation starts with clearly articulated strategic goals. When brands are clear about their goals, they can determine how digital can accelerate those outcomes. For example, do you want to hold onto existing customers or attract new ones? Are you seeking to open new market segments? Is it preferable to boost average revenue per order or maximize customer lifetime value?

The strategy will come from a deep understanding of your brand’s customer base. Brands that put their customers’ digital journeys at the heart of their business model—and possess the data and analytic tools to pinpoint proprietary insights from customers’ digital behaviors—can turn those insights into initiatives that drive higher conversion rates or customer loyalty, for example.

Case-in-point: MGM Resorts was able to cross-sell their entire Las Vegas portfolio by stitching customer data across all properties and finding ways to personalize offers during a guest’s stay. For instance, if you bought tickets to the UFC fight at the MGM Grand, you might get an instantly personalized email offer for tickets to a Guns N’ Roses concert at Mandalay Bay the following evening. They also can test offers to see which ones deliver higher conversions and then automatically shift to the most effective tactics.

While digital strategies offer exciting new ways to scale marketing outcomes, the key is being able to adapt the organization to the underlying opportunity, which comes down to company culture.

Transformation culture must embrace change

Culture in the context of digital transformation refers to changes in organizational talent to achieve digital objectives, business processes that are more agile and decision-making that fosters experimentation and embraces some element of risk.

We often tell our clients that success is 5% about technology and 95% about culture. That is because buying technology is relatively easy, but changing company culture is not.

It may be necessary to slow down digital transformation at first to invest in the right talent and training and to evaluate platforms, processes and partners. Executives have to take risks on the people side. They cannot acquire sophisticated technology suites and expect a legacy team to deliver the ROI from them without the right level of support, know-how and empowerment.

Consider Domino’s Pizza. Almost a decade ago, then-new CEO J. Patrick Doyle reinvented the company around its digital customer experience. Today, you can order a pizza through your device and track its progress from oven to doorstep. To execute this strategy, the company made massive changes in its organization. Half of the 800 employees at its Ann Arbor headquarters work in software and analytics, and they’re instructed to experiment with new ideas, even if short-term failure results. The outcome was their stock price appreciated 10 times during Doyle’s near 10-year tenure.

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