Digital transformation became a bigger priority because of the pandemic, with many organizations speeding up their pace in this area in the past year. A recent report [download page] from Altimeter (a Prophet company) indicates that some of the top reasons for investing in digital transformation include reducing operating costs and increasing core business growth.
Some of the initiatives the more than 580 professionals from around the world – representing brands, consulting firms and other organizations with at least 1,000 employees – accelerated most because of COVID-19 include:
- Modernizing: IT infrastructure to increase agility, flexibility, manageability and security;
- Improving operation agility and updating policies and processes to more rapidly adapt to change; and
- Improving the employee experience, including remote work options and better collaboration tools.
The good news is that the majority of respondents rate the success of their digital transformation program as excellent (34%) or good (43%). In order to gauge the success of their digital transformation, respondents are using metrics such as business performance, operational efficiencies and growth.
When it comes to measuring success across marketing sales and service teams, the most common ways among respondents overall are split between:
- Sales, marketing and service equally share revenue, customer satisfaction and upsell/cross-sell targets as part of compensation (26%); and
- Sales, marketing and service share customer satisfaction and revenue targets (28%)
However, high digital transformation performers — the 34% of respondents who met or exceeded almost all digital transformation goals within the expected timeframe — are less divided, with 4 in 10 saying that the three departments share revenue, customer satisfaction and upsell/cross-sell targets as part of compensation.
These high digital transformation performers are also using more innovative technology to create value from digital customer data. A plurality (35%) say that digital data is analyzed by AI to generate predictive analytics that can be used to design real-time customer experiences. By comparison, the largest share of total respondents (28%) and average performers (34%) are only using digital data to track engagement and reach metrics across their digital channels.
Finally, research from Merkle shows that most marketers believe that CMOs own CX transformation. High digital transformation performers indicate the same, with the majority (37%) saying that digital marketing owns most of the customer experience and runs mostly “always-on”, highly personalized multi-channel experiences across standard and newer digital channels.
The full report can be found here.
About the Data: Findings are based on a survey of 587 professionals from brands, consulting firms, and other organizations with at least 1,000 employees, across the US, Europe (UK, France and Germany) and China. The sample includes a fixed quota of Banking/Finance, Consumer Products, Healthcare, Retail and Technology.
