Organizational transformation is a collaboration

J. Graeme Noseworthy is IBM’s Strategic Messaging Director of Big Data for Marketing, Media & Entertainment and he spoke at JUMP about transforming from the CMO downward and how they can make better decisions about the mix that will serve customers more completely.

But what we’re seeing in terms of being able to apply big data and analytics to marketing within an organization is that it’s not really up to one person. The CMO needs to talk with the CIO, the CIO needs to work with the CTO and they all have to work together.

Saying that, it’s less of a decision and more about a collaboration. Certain people own the technology, certain people own the data and certain people own the campaigns so we can see where those all fit but what we’re finding is these collaborations are creating something new. These new things are leading to very exciting projects, very exciting prospects and it’s allowing corporate leadership to do more with less and it’s allowing them to do things they’ve never been able to do before.

We can see this trend when looking at how companies are allocating their budgets for 2013. According to our Marketing Budgets Report 2013, 71% of companies plan to boost spending on digital marketing technology during 2013, as marketers aim for cross-channel integration and optimisation. Companies are most likely to be increasing investment during 2013 in the following types of marketing technology: analytics (46%), CRM (45%) and content management systems (41%).

Change doesn’t happen overnight

Jason Heller is the CEO of Agiliti, a digital marketing operations and strategy consultancy. In his role, he has seen the struggles companies are having with change.

Day to day it’s more of a mindset, and you can’t change what’s happening overnight. You have to be able to identify where the bad habits are within your organization and Heller has definitely seen some common bad habits. Complacency is one of them.

There is a phrase I’d like to say is the most dangerous phrase in marketing and that is “This is not how things are done around here.” It’s a damaging phrase and something I hear way too often.

Day to day you need to identify the weak links in the chain, the people, processes and systems that are not enabling you to operate proficiently and to engage consumers in the way that you want to. You need to have metrics in place that enable and empower you to report into the organization to show that your tactics and executions are actually having an impact rather than being just cool and sexy, which are very poor KPIs.

With only 22% of companies stating that they have a company-wide strategy that ties data collection and analysis to company objectives, we’re still far from making this a reality.

Econsultancy regularly works with global brands to tackle their own digital transformation head on. Contact us to learn about how this is affecting businesses, including yours, and how our approach and experience can assist you.