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So many thought leaders expound and pontificate on the topic of digital transformation; a few years ago actual domain experts were known as “agents of change” and often unpopular within their organization, because who after all enjoys change which is often disruptive and messy.  The hype cycle has added another layer of expertise for the Chief Marketing Officer and providing an executive, organization and market expectation has become incumbent for the CMO.

I think of marketing as an iceberg in the water. The twenty-percent visible above the waterline is the fun part, marcom, PR, martech, adtech, social, everything everyone sees. The real work is that eighty-percent out of sight. Most of the world’s commerce is actually B2B and many of these organizations pull the horse to water by providing B2B2C marketing. These CMO’s are mindful the end to end process and lifecycle and engage in conversations around return on working capital as being more meaningful than return on investment.

If you agree, then a starting point would be to define just what digital transformation is for the CMO; my first attempt is as follows:

The interactions of business have changed in a digital world; enterprises desiring to leverage these changes and evolve pursue a “Digital Transformation” which represents a fundamental shift of the organization’s approach to automate the culture and operational efficiencies of the organization’s supply chain, business processes, IT, model, distribution and end-to-end user interactions.  Transformation requires as a continuous change methodology quantifying how things are achieved with interactions, competition and emerging technologies. The transformation seeks to addresses the evolving needs of internal colleagues, external partners and customers to deliver an enhanced service in the way and format they desire.

In short, “what does the organization want to look like when they grow up?” or “what does ‘success’ look like?”  

Looking at the process from concept to execution and finally to the customer is an expansion of the usual customer journey mapping exercise.  I have found this an ideal opportunity to deploy Enterprise Social solutions where the customer can feed back to the product owner and when we can quantify each interaction we are able to employ gamification and score the value of an idea and its contribution; more on that another day.

How would you improve on the CMO’s definition of digital transformation?