DigiTech Magazine - US CIO2020 - Fall 2015 | Page 27

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1. ASSESS THE MARKET
Before you can begin your digital
transformation, you must start
by honestly assessing where your
organization falls on the digital
maturity curve. Do you have smaller,
more nimble competitors eating away
at your market share? Unfortunately,
most companies don’t see the need for
digital transformation until there’s a
steady dip in net income or increasing
pressure from competitors.
To spur change within your
organization, do some scenario
planning. Consider how you could
interact with your customers in a
world without digital boundaries. Then,
consider what your business could
look like if you did nothing and your
competitors took action to engage
customers through digital.
4. BUILD AN AGILE
ENVIRONMENT
Once you’ve appointed a team to
implement your company’s digital
initiatives, you need to examine the
culture and environment of your
business. If you aren’t working toward
becoming an agile organization, your
company isn’t going to be able to keep
up with the rapid pace of digital.
Working to become more agile
isn’t all something that can be
achieved overnight; it’s a cultural and
philosophical change that involves
focusing on your customer, having
the correct frameworks to implement
new initiatives quickly, and building a
culture that enables innovation.
2. MAP THE CUSTOMER
JOURNEY 3. ALIGN YOUR
ORGANIZATION
Digital transformation doesn’t start
with IT or marketing; it starts with the
customer. The first (and perhaps most
important) action you should take is
to define who your customers are and
where they’re engaging with you. To mould your company into an agile,
fully digital organization, you need to
take a top-down approach to change.
This means you must have a leader
with the right mindset, motivation
and authority to take ownership of
the entire customer experience and a
team to implement digital initiatives.
Once you’re confident you’re pursuing
the correct customer base, you need
to map the entire customer journey.
Whether you’re in retail, food services
or the nonprofit sector, it’s easy to
get caught up in understanding the
transactional points of engagement.
Many times this calls for a chief
customer officer outside the marketing
and IT organizations to promote a
unified approach to digital and own the
customer journey.
But don’t forget about other customer
touchpoints that occur before and after
the sale. These can have an equal or
even greater impact on the customer
experience.
5. REMOVE BARRIERS
TO DIGITAL
TRANSFORMATION
People and technology are the
two primary components of digital
transformation, but sometimes
there are other factors that prevent
businesses from progressing in their
quest for digital dominance.
The word ‘digital’ has become so
ubiquitous today that it’s almost
unnecessary. ‘Digital marketing’ is just
marketing, and a company’s ‘digital
strategy’ is inseparable from the rest
of its business strategy.
Embracing new technology isn’t just
a tick box exercise anymore – it’s an
essential commitment that companies
must make to survive and prosper in
the coming years.
Digital transformation isn’t about the
individual channels that customers can
use to interact with a brand, and it isn’t
about big data, social media or the
mobile revolution.
At its core, a digital organization is
just an organization that’s