How to approach your migration to digital age!

Recently, I had published a post about an organization’s digital competency, which prompted to ask questions about digital infrastructure, besides other market drivers. One of the problems that organizations often face is the fact that digital investment decisions are evaluated and measured under the same parameters as the other more traditional initiatives. Digital experience, measurement and analytics require much faster turn-around, which is almost impossible in current monolithic IT and Support functions. 

To further emphasize the “rethink,” I wanted to share a great McKinsey article on how organizations can address a dichotomous decision making process, one for traditional business imperatives and the other for digital projects. Here are the key takeaways:

• Digital products need to be developed at a faster tempo and the projects supporting digital thrusts need to be evaluated at a faster speed separate from the rest of the IT budget approval process
• Digital investments are to be treated as strategic imperatives and short-term fix mentality needs to be abandoned
• Organization needs to establish “digital product management” to be accountable for agile development and release cycle

Is your organization truly in a digital age?

Data is in abundance on consumers and their online engagement, be it content and/or eCommerce. What this means is that the marketers need to be more savvy about customer needs than applying “one size fits all” approach to talking to their customers. Digital competency is hence about harnessing this data and utilizing it to segment, target and serve the customers – need I say “real time!” 

To become a digital-savvy organization, we require an understanding of our marketing touch points and internal infrastructure that can support a multi-pronged approach to customer reach. Marketers need to ask the following questions in their organization:

1. What digital experience drives engagement and conversion in our company/industry?
2. What marketing channels are effective for what customer segments and why (data to support the claim)?
3. What data is captured in our systems and is it compatible across customer touch points?
4. Who owns the digital experience and are the right people empowered to make “consumer-centric” decisions?

If the answer is not a definitive yes to all of the above, I’d suggest there is some work that needs to be done in achieving true digital competence. The road map should hence, clearly identify deficiencies and investment needs to start utilizing the amazing power of our digital interaction with customers. Some of our more familiar metrics such as; customer acquisition rate, retention, marketing ROI, CLV, ARPU, etc., will then truly represent a view into our marketing success and provide deeper insights into how to optimize customer experience.