Lessons from the forefront of digital transformation

FIVE THINGS I’VE LEARNED

In business, transformation has often been treated as a years-long linear plan that’s heavily invested in, then crafted and introduced. But by the time the plan is implemented, the market, technologies, and consumer behaviors have changed, and the plan becomes irrelevant. Modern brands, instead, need to build a culture that leverages data and technology, committing to continual iteration that transforms the organization over time. Over the past 20 years I have helped some of the world’s biggest brands transform their marketing organizations. Here are five things I’ve learned about what companies and their leaders need to do.

1. EMBRACE AGILITY

The majority of transformation projects seek to find ever-lasting answers to ever-changing questions. But these initiatives are fool’s errands. Working this way is frustrating, because no matter how much effort you put in, you will always be behind the speed of change and become increasingly less competitive. Rather than an all-inclusive program with exhaustive goals, transformation should be about building a culture of continual improvement. Marketers need an ongoing cycle of ideation, prioritization, execution, and optimization that delivers increasingly effective, more cost-efficient, and lasting results. Change happens through agile execution. I’m not saying strategy isn’t important. Every organization needs a north star – a clear strategic mission – as well as clear goals. I am saying that over-investing in the perfect strategy in a world in which market conditions and consumer expectations change overnight doesn’t make sense.

Rather than an all-inclusive program with exhaustive goals, transformation should be about building a culture of continual improvement.

2. PRIORITIZE VALUE

Rather than overburdening themselves upfront with weighty conceptions, marketers need to get started executing prioritized ideas, and then improve toward what is working and what can be scaled. Focusing resources in this way allows an organization to be more flexible and reprioritize quickly as market dynamics evolve. It’s much more valuable to be in a continual cycle of prioritizing high value activities than it is to be going back to the drawing board to devise a new grand strategic plan, when conditions change. Rather than over-strategize, marketers need to get their ideas into the world, and use the data they receive to experiment and guide them toward their north star. It’s an adaptive approach that has pivoting at its core, creating a culture empowered with the tools that promote constant learning.

Change happens in the execution

3. MEASURE AND ITERATE

This agile approach is fundamentally different from the type of transformation embraced in earlier eras. We at Acceleration prefer to call it modernization because timelines from conception to delivery of strategic and tactical plans have condensed from years to months, and sometimes weeks. Transformation must be an always-on process through which organizations are in a perpetual cycle of doing today what will keep them competitive tomorrow.

Some of the most successful brands we work with are masters of working in a constant cycle of ideation to identify high value projects. One of our clients found that their messaging inspired customers to start booking appointments but customers didn’t finalize the booking if they’d have to wait longer than two weeks. A rapidly deployed solution, enabled them to re-direct media investments, in real-time, away from locations with limited availability, towards locations for which the wait times were shorter, immediately improving return on ad spend (ROAS) by 15%.

Another of our global clients sells multiple brands through multiple ecommerce third party sellers. We implemented an AI solution, starting with one brand and one market, and our models were able to predict sales, with a high degree of accuracy, based on media investment made.

We saw an immediate rise in ROAS. We quickly scaled the solution across 20 brands in four markets, building more than 60 models capable of adjusting media investment based on e-commerce purchase prediction data for each seller. The effort got smarter the more data it gathered and now delivers a 34% increase in ROAS over previous campaigns. Perhaps even better, the process has been built into the client’s workflow with their agency. They have increased their flexibility and agility in budgeting and buying media, which is the kind of long-lasting benefit that happens frequently when data and technology are used to facilitate constant transformation.

34%

INCREASE IN ROAS OVER PREVIOUS CAMPAIGNS

Transformation must be an always-on process through which organizations are in a perpetual cycle of doing today what will keep them competitive tomorrow.

4. BUILD CONNECTIVITY

Every part of a modern marketing organization needs to be capable of rapid change with low intervention, and that happens only in connected organizations that break down traditional silos and have teams empowered to work across disciplines. Teams that can create, implement, and deliver on plans move faster, solve problems more quickly, and improve commercial returns compared with organizations in which decision-making flows only from the boardroom or runs within each function. Marketing organizations must connect modernization efforts to commercial value, not just introduce dazzling technical solutions. That’s because marketing is responsible for more and more of the value chain, from branding to sales funnel management, and increasingly right through to final purchase. Marketers are the ones creating connectivity across functions, with processes that empower autonomous teams to deliver improved financial results.

Marketing organizations must connect modernization efforts to commercial value, not just introduce dazzling technical solutions.

5. ALIGN THE ORGANIZATION

Probably the most common reason transformation plans fail is the lack of a shared understanding of what success looks like. And in a world in which we are all increasingly working in agile groups with autonomous decision-making, it’s never been more important to ensure success is well articulated, in a common language that everyone in the organization can align around without the need for continual managerial intervention and approval. Equally important is the need for success to encapsulate both short and long-term value. On the one hand, marketers need to capture value associated with short-term projects and find ways to connect marketing metrics to hard financial results. However, they also need to identify how efforts are adding to longer-term capability building that creates sustainable value. This value is typically measured with softer metrics that identify whether teams are making good decisions faster, more autonomously, adapting to external changes more quickly, and mobilizing more effectively. Crucially, companies need to communicate all successes and challenges throughout their organizations deliberately and with total transparency. In our experience the brands that succeed are those that are clear about what value creation means to them and have found ways to feed that back into the organization in a shared language everyone understands.

IN CONCLUSION

I don’t believe transformation is an exhaustive three-year action plan but rather a commitment to an ongoing cycle of ideation, prioritization, and execution across multiple projects that connect the organization, and deliver on a common understanding of value. Brands that make a simple start and embrace a culture of continuous modernization can make daily progress towards long-term competitive success.