Enterprise Digital Transformation - A Practical Approach!

More and more enterprises are investing into a full-blown digital strategy that caters to the evolving needs of their users. There is an enhanced eagerness to adopt all things digital, including; digital marketing, paperless customer interactions, content push, brand promotion, account management, product servicing, the list goes on! It is imperative that an enterprise digital transformation be looked at holistically, with a road-map to tactically implement the strategy. Here are the 5 parameters that I found useful for such design.

• Digital P&L Ownership – often a line item in marketing or operations, digital enterprises need dedicated resource(s) to ensure proper planning, evangelism and management of budgets for optimum allocation based on data-driven approach. Typically, after an initial fanfare, digital programs tend to get buried under the more direct customer measurement metrics – and organizations wonder, “Why are the customers not happy?” In the new paradigm –

“Digital evangelist is a must for delivering the best customer experience”

• Consistent Brand Voice and Tone – a holistic strategy is needed, when kicking off an enterprise initiative across all customer touch points (sales, marketing, social, content, community, customer service, shopping cart, etc.). Investments can be phased, but not customer experience. Define how customers are to interact with the brand and engage with customer management platforms, keeping in mind that –

“Customers expect seamless and consistent brand engagement”

• Operational Capabilities – here is also a need to assess in-house competencies and explore outside technologies to complement these. The digital owner needs to ensure there is persistent org support to facilitate project prioritization. Organizations need to understand that –

“A great customer experience delivers long-term value, while a bad one shows up on churn numbers.”

• Analytics and Data Management – makes sense to plan out a transition to consolidated data storage and processing, given the multiple online and offline data that will be flowing through. Test & learn & edit should be part of the ongoing strategy to deliver a consistent customer engagement and lead-gen program. And, if your organization utilizes eCommerce, then the funnel conversions adds a whole new dimension of complexity and urgency for digital excellence. The abundance of data needs to be harnessed and utilized to deliver excellence.  

“Most of the ROI is realized at this stage of digital transformation life-cycle.” 

• Personnel and Team Needs – hire or contract, but don’t underestimate the need for sustained management, analysis and improvements. This is not a “project delivered” category, but a “persistent nurturing” category of projects – digital enables consistent monitoring and course-correction, which cannot be achieved through one-off matrix resource. Have a team dedicated to digital management and knowledge-sharing, which has the potential for an organization-wide impact – don’t cut corners there. 

“Digital investments can help build smart and intelligent organizations” 

Remember that once the project has been undertaken, there is no turning back and/or haggling on key deliverables. The imperative to transform is now and a solid foundation is absolutely a must – this is the only way forward for catering to the next generation of digital savvy consumers, irrespective of the industry.

What did I (really) learn from matrix leadership!

True project management should not be just about task management, it should also include managing people and their expectations. In my experience, the latter seems to be somewhat nebulous, as project managers are not able or empowered to take people management in a matrix to the next level – probably because in a matrix team, individual reporting relationship preclude such dynamic. This gap is what I wanted to explore more and share some thoughts on; as I think the following do not get enough coverage -- 

First, senior management, across business entities, needs to constantly reinforce ONE project goal!

Second, team members need to be engaged towards the common goal!

Sort of obvious, but worth reminding – senior leaders and project managers will hardly admit that there is a lack of consensus and/or individual needs are adequately addressed!

I have seen discussions in project meetings turn to arguments, confusions, delays, and (even) threats to completely abandon the project. Surely, there is more to it (I thought)! Why are people in the room speaking to themselves? Why is Operations trying to influence marketing and promotions strategy? Why is customer service perennially in a complaint mode, that they “didn’t know” about the product launch? Why is IT feeling unappreciated? Is sales and reporting even on the radar – no wonder these guys are in scrambling mode during the final launch phase? 

Such conflicts cause unnecessary delays in a project delivery and project managers need to acknowledge that, 

“these are the possible underlying currents that take up a lot of meeting time, as and when they surface!”

Based on several exploratory informal chats, I discovered that leadership and people management, more than the stated metrics were to blame. Here's what I found helpful in addressing the aforementioned underlying currents and have a smoother project meetings.

(A)  Senior leadership must align to the common goal and keep it that way! As the priorities change and the business urgencies dictate the short-term focus, leaders need to keep the team focused on the long-term vision. This will ensure that product, consumer experience, partnership integration, systems development, etc., are not short-changed, which will lead to a bigger problem with “fixes” and “customer complaints” in the future – not the scenario that should be overlooked. 

A former colleague once lamented that the leaders were not looking at strategic product road-map in trying to move up the launch date. The long-term costs are too immense for such short-sighted moves. Project managers need to sense that and address it before the matrix teams are forced to change course. 

(B)  Team members need to attach to the goal and be on-board! By this I mean, when customer service complains about adequate lead time to train their agents, they have not been brought-in on the launch early enough – can be easy to solve, I would say. Or, when IT is concerned about the timing of launch, there may be genuine hurdles to delivery, due to ongoing updates, releases, etc. – not that easy to solve, but a realistic launch estimate could help solve for the bottleneck. Marketing, before setting aggressive targets, should obtain a dose of reality in consultation with operations, sales, field, etc., teams. 

At the end of the day, it has to be understood that each participant has a deliverable that has to fit into their own goals/targets for the month/year. Timely participation and addressing individual concerns alleviates some of these surprise elements and in turn helps team members.

These did find some agreement among the leaders, peers and team members. In essence, the key to successful matrix management lies in proactive leadership and people management – 

“matrix leadership success is more about people management and less about numbers” 

Hoping these issues behind (a seemingly) dysfunctional team get highlighted and managers and leaders emphasize people aspects as they steer the program through to completion – in time and within budgets!

Channel Sales Should Be More Than The Best Offer ...

Channel sales provide a direct customer touch point that, in my opinion, is not adequately utilized by the organizations. Dealers get more attention because of the obvious reasons, but the channel partners are the ones that need more nurturing. 

Channel partners provide valuable reach into hard-to-reach areas and, arguably, have deeper relationships with their markets and customers. They also help save costs and the organizations often are good at optimizing that. However, same cannot be said about maximizing the profits from these relationships. With a little rethinking, channel partners can be integrated to be more of “profit partners” than mere sales drivers. In my past interactions, I found the following insights that should be at the top of any sales leader's mind:

Solicit active feedback ...

 
.... on their unique customer interactions. There are trends and patterns that are not likely addressed by the holistic top-down sales model. Key insights can be gathered about brand image, pricing, product quality, support calls, etc. 
 

Enable flexible product, service and pricing strategy ...

.... for channel cohorts that appear to cater to certain categories. There may be target customer segments that may need fewer service features with lower costs and more valuable add-on products. Channel partners can be the source for such minutiae, which marketing teams can use to create custom products and services. Tailored solutions and marketing collateral should be prepared for the specific channels, which will go a long way in driving more sales and profits for either parties.  

Broader agreements to allow customer access and call-back ...

 
.... such that channel partners are enabled to up-sell and cross-sell products. Again, the channel partners need to be challenged to optimize their deeper relationships with their customers and drive greater customer share-of-wallet for the organization.
 

Creating better and frequent interactions, with active inputs into the product/service strategy will empower channel partners, which ought to be a key ingredient to making sales more customer-centric and hence more profitable – an investment worth considering!

Taking notes in a conference can be so boring - I did it anyway!

Some interesting quotes from a conference I attended ... excerpts from my LinkedIn post ...

“Customer Experience (CX) leaders outperform industry”

“Problems will be there … how customer-centric organizations can predict the ones with the most impact … will determine business success”

“Change management is about people.”  

“People are hesitant to change anything that they think they have built.” 

“Re-targeting with same or similar products tends to create an unpleasant experience”  

“Try and match campaign intent with customer intent”  

“You are not always your cookie”  

“Matching demographic data to cookie data can be much more useful, timely and relevant.”

 

More in the article here ...

Marketing and Sales - 4 Steps to Collaborate & Grow

Marketing and sales, while aligned at the corporate level, need to also be aligned at operational level to optimize delivery of products and services. 

As a marketer, I wanted sales to succeed because that had a direct impact on my portfolio’s growth projections. However, that could only be achieved when sales teams were enabled with the right level of operational support, and we would collaborate towards delivering those growth targets. If you are a GM, marketer, etc., who is measured on “Year-over-Year growth,” here are some insights on how we (marketing) supported sales team to achieve 5x portfolio growth. 

1. Create processes for sharing customer and market data – communicate with your sales teams on what does the target market look like, to educate them about how to sell the “right” product(s) to the “right” prospect(s). Sales team needs to know how our customers use our products, so they can better understand customer need and prepare to answer specific questions. The process also helps sales teams prepare for upcoming product changes, considering lead times needed to update training manuals, refine sales pitch, train the agents, etc. 
2. Create easy product bundles and sales hierarchy – as a service provider, you probably have more than 1 product in your portfolio. Bundling some of these products is a great strategy to get greater adoption from the customers and communicate the “value for money.” However, it is even more enticing to sales teams, since they can now meet wider customer needs, easily explain the value proposition (think sales call talk times), and possibly make more money (greater sales incentive). Don’t forget to guide the sales teams in how to pitch and what order to explain various product features in, based on your customer surveys and market research.
3. Create fair incentive and charge-back policies – sales incentive are a great way to motivate sales teams, but ensure that “quality” of sale is never compromised. If left unchecked, “slamming” will get you volume, but after-sale churn will eat into the overall growth and acquisition costs. Having a solid charge-back program will greatly help with better quality sale and subsequent lower churn – make sure that the program is transparent and well understood by sales teams.
4. Create reporting and feedback mechanism – one of the biggest pain-points that I had to address was that of inadequate reporting on sales orders, customer activations, charge-back policies, etc. Institute reporting that clearly shows the funnel and is transparent enough for the sales team to understand how they are making money. Most importantly, make sure marketing and sales teams are looking at the same set of numbers! Create adequate feedback mechanisms (weekly, monthly meetings) to gather field data and share any product updates.

Bear in mind that most of this information resides within marketing organizations, as part of their LTV, ROI, etc., analyses. However, actively communicating with sales will empower them and make them see the results with more context.

When engaged, sales teams have great potential in shaping, positioning and marketing our products and services. Integrate this channel into your market intelligence network to boost your market intelligence and growth strategies.