Digital Transformation Strategies for Marketers in 2020

Digital transformation is the buzzword among marketers today. Research by IDC states that over two-thirds of the CEOs from 2000 companies across the globe have shifted their focus from offline strategies to modern digital strategies. 34% of companies believed that they would achieve total digital transformation within 12 months or less.

 

The Coronavirus pandemic has been a wake-up call for those companies that didn’t have a strong digital stronghold. It’s high time that they start investing in a digital business model that will help them sustain their business during uncertain times.

 

We recently had an insightful discussion regarding digital transformation strategies with Namrita Mahindro, Chief Digital Officer, Aditya Birla Group. Namrita possesses over 2 decades of industry experience driving growth and innovation strategies. As a digital transformation specialist, she led award-winning CX transformations for companies such as Taj Hotels and Club Mahindra.

 

She’s a tech evangelist, a digital expert, and leads with design thinking and advocacy of innovation of culture among organizations. Namrita has won several awards over the years and is a two-time recipient of the IDC Digital Transformer award.

 

 

 

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Here are some of the key takeaways from the discussion:

 

Digital Transformation Strategies for Marketers in 2020

 

How do you assess the digital maturity of an organization?

 

There are three levers of measuring digital maturity:

 

1. Digital Capability

It is the operational acceleration provided to a company by adopting digitization as well as digital. It focuses more on what kind of business efficiencies and effectiveness can be driven. How much of the process transformation and technology toolkit is already in the arsenal? What is the data maturity of the organization? What are the capabilities and competencies of the workforce?

 

2. Digital Leadership

It is about understanding the leadership vision of the organization towards digital.

• How do they look at business strategy and digital strategy?
• Is there a strategic alignment between the two or is the digital strategy seen as an enabler of the business strategy? Or they running them as two parallel strategies?
• What can digital strategy actually provide? Is it around strengthening the competitive advantage of the organization or is it a little bit more tactical in nature?

 

3. Digital Impact

What is the impact of digital on the organization? It can be further assessed from the following factors:

 

• The culture of the organization – does it have a digital DNA?
• Is the organization adopting digital on an experimental or pilot basis?
• Success metrics and KPIs

 

If the digital impact has to be classified into a framework, the baseline criteria would be:

 

• The company is doing it in an incidental or accidental manner
• The organization believes that there is a need to do it and starts experimenting
• It does it purposefully with an intent to do it
• The company is in a transformative zone and has become a digital enterprise

 

Over 70% of the digital transformation efforts in companies have been failures. If the purpose of a company isn’t clear, the digital transformation will not happen. The CEO’s commitment towards digital is extremely important and the company should have dedicated teams and budget for digital.

 

Do the digital transformation parameters vary by industry?

The levels of digital maturity vary between different industries. They vary from a Culture point of view, Systems point of view, or Processes or Capabilities point of view.

 

If you look at various industries:

• The consumer-facing industry is ahead of the manufacturing industry with respect to digital
• The auto industry has been on the digital transformation path for the past 5 to 7 years
• The chemical industry is quite new in adopting digital in the past 2 to 3 years. The opportunity to build new platform businesses here has been fairly limited.
• The Travel and Hospitality industry was disrupted by digital transformation in 2008

 

How do you decide on long-term disruptive transformation vs incremental quick revenue wins?

A balance should be created between long-term and incremental transformation strategies.

 

What are the learnings from COVID-19?

 

• The level of digital transformation in people’s mindsets has been phenomenal
• New digital opportunities are opening up for each industry due to COVID-19
• COVID-19 has been a very big boost for the digital transformation of organizations
• The more digitally-enabled we are, the higher the chances of our survival during COVID-like situations

 

What are some factors of data maturity in digital transformation that companies should look at?

 

• Customers are looking for connected experiences in real-time and in a personalized manner
• The quality & quantity of data owned by a company is very important
• Companies should ensure that they have the right platforms in place to get a Single Source of Truth
• Companies should look at how their data maturity is going to impact the customer’s lifetime value
• The combination of long-term and short-term views should be balanced with respect to data maturity

 

 

 

By Bijoy K.B | Senior Associate Marketing at Lemnisk