Let's Stop Calling Digital Transformation, Digital.

As a digital and marketing professional, I come up with new buzzwords or adopt industry buzzwords day in and day out. Is the way we have to refresh terminology, add a differentiation, but foremost, make it exciting and catchy for the listeners.

Over the last decade or so, the term Digital Transformation has been one of the most talked-about areas of business. Many companies were digitizing their business, their processes, the tech they use, the way they communicate and reach their audiences, or how they do commerce activities. Either from B2B, B2C, B2B2C or DTC.

With the irruption of COVID19, businesses and consumers moved fully to digital channels. Today, whatever it is that a business is doing to transform the way they do business, is mostly or entirely digital. With 0% in-store footfall, all has been moved to digital. Hence, a digital transformation is not digital anymore, but simply business transformation. Let me explain it.

Nike's CEO, John Donahoe, said in an interview with Twilio that before COVID19 they were doing around 70% of their revenue from in-store activities, and 30% from digital channels. From one day to another all their revenue was 100% digital. So they had to do something to utilize their staff the best way possible, transforming the processes, structure and tools they use so they could achieve the new fully digital direction their commerce went into. Through Twilio, they converted 35,000 in-store staff into digital customer engagement managers.

This made me think a lot of the way we, agencies and consultants, talk about the digital narrative. As I said above, buzzwords are the talk of the town, but a buzzword without a purpose is just a word. This is why, when clients, brands or colleagues ask me if I can help with their digital or CX transformation, there are few questions I usually ask (to name a few).

• What do you mean by digital transformation? And what do you want to achieve (goal/objective)?

This question has an intent to define what is their vision or understanding of what digital transformation means to them. Could be just open an e-commerce, or do some digital media ads. But if that is the answer, then there has to be a deeper conversation on the principals. Won't be the same for a manufacturing brand than a telco. We could be talking about implementing AI and machine learning to automate supply chain and manufacturing processes, moving into the blockchain and cryptocurrency models for loyalty programs, just be talking about opening an e-commerce / website, orchestrating the decision modeling to drive better personal experience to your customers, or a wide range of other potential solutions you can think of. The list goes on and on.

This will be a very different approach to digital transformation strategies and roadmaps. As well as the skillsets required, either from an outsource or in-house team requirements, completely different ball game. This initial question is the key differentiation on how to approach a digital transformation, successfully.

• Is the top management ready to go fully digital?

My second question allows me to identify how much is the c-level involved, their understanding, expectations, how much prepared are they to get out of their comfort zone, shake and disrupt things, as well as the resilience they have. Transformations from mid/bottom to top don't work, or don't end up having the right results. Every transformation needs to start from top to bottom, being adopted first by the c-level team, and then channeled down through the company's purpose, vision and mission. Many of the big consultancy firms have failed to deliver digital transformations in the last years, although it always comes from c-level down. The "WHY" they fail will come in future articles.

• Is your business model ready for a digitization?

Many of the companies today have a business model that does not support digital, or allows the company to embrace digital overall. The processes they have, the tech they use, the products they sell, or the team they have is not ready for a digital first approach. This can only be done if the customer is placed at the heart of all they do, and then start building all around their needs, behaviors and necessities. This way the business model will be tackling solutions rather than pushing for what the company wants or thinks their customers need from them.

• Are your products accessible through digital channels?

As consumers, our world revolves around digital channels. In MENA, the smartphone penetration is at the highest in the world ranks. Tablets have decreased, and desktop visits to sites too. Customers have turn from online to in-store journey, to a in-store to online. A "not so old" study by PVMNTS.com, in 2019, showed that nearly 48% of customers used their smartphones while in-store. For many different reasons. But with no footfall in-store all has turned into digital. Do you know which channel is suitable for your business, mobile web, desktop web-app, mobile app, social commerce? And what tech is the most suitable to unify the data, implement orchestration or decisioning models, and next-best-action frameworks.

• Are you aware of how much 1st party data you own from your customers?

Your customer's PII or first party data is essential to carry out any digital or business transformation. Identifying your customers, personally, not just a number within a segment, will define how much you can personalize their experience. And in a digital experience era, how you make personal, frictionless, seamless service experience is the key to drive conversion, retention-recurrent sales, loyalty and foremost, advocacy and brand amplification.

• Could you score the experience you deliver to your customers (from 1 to 10)?

Usually the answer to this will define the next steps on a business strategy, after running the same question through their customers. This could be a simple Customer Satisfaction survey, through email or pop-up on site after purchase, or in-store with a fixed touchpoint. The results of the CSAT survey will allow us to identify the main problems and potential solutions. The metric itself is a vanity metric for management, and overall score, but the data to get to that metric is the one that will allow us to inform the strategy, the pain points and to establish a road map to solve this problems.

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Speaking with a colleague recently, the equation will be different than the one I put in past articles (Merkle's equation for CX transformation), the new one will be inverted:

Data Transformation + Digital Transformation = Customer Experience Transformation

Only if you have done a proper analysis of your data lake, unification of the data across the tech stack, utilizing the right architecture through DevOps for your business, orchestrating the channels for applying next-best-action marketing, then, you would have had reached a maturity on your customer-centric approach that will be the envy of all other businesses.

Mostly all of the above Q&As will drive us to a digital strategy. However, there are other ways on how to approach a business transformation, like WFH instead of maintaining the overheads or office / retail space. However, as our lives revolve nowadays fully, or almost entirely, on digital. Why don't we drop, or stop calling digital transformation, digital. We could simply call it, business transformation in the digital age.

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If you need more guidance or seek support on your digital transformation, find me on Linkedin.