All the research also agrees that most organisations feel they are very far from achieving these transformations. PA Consulting’s Digital Barometer says 62% of organisations have ambitions to be digital leaders but only 8% feel they are well on their way to achieving this.

All the analysis agrees on the barriers and challenges: leadership, culture and people, skills and capabilities, legacy technology. Business models are being disrupted and we all preach the need for innovation and more agile ways of working.

The real problem is one of execution. We know the challenges and we believe we know which direction we need to head but actually doing it is hard. Finding and retaining the right people alone is a massive challenge.

But let us consider organisational structures. Econsultancy publishes a very popular report called “Digital Marketing: Organizational Structures and Resourcing Best Practice Guide” and also offers advice and guidance to companies around the globe on organisational restructuring and digital transformation.

The report first came out in 2011 but has been revised since. Among other things it proposes a digital maturity model which has five stages of evolution:

  1. Dispersed.
  2. Centre of excellence.
  3. Hub and spoke.
  4. Multiple hub and spoke.
  5. Fully integrated.

The end vision for ‘digital’ is essentially that it becomes so much part of the organisation that it ceases to exist as a separate function. Most organisations, however, are currently somewhere between the centre of excellence and hub and spoke stages.

So much for digital. But what about customer-centricity? If you had a blank sheet of paper and were designing an organisational structure that was “fit for customer-centricity” and also embraced digital as fully integrated what would it look like? And where would marketing be in this structure?

I thought I would have a go. Below you can see my first draft which also has some notes on it.

Obviously it is simplified and I have not given it too much thought as I am interested to get feedback to iterate it. In true agile style.

Some of the key points in the thinking behind it follow below:

(Click on the image for a larger version) 

Organisational Design for CX concept

1. It was created with businesses in mind that produce and sell some kind of product or experience.

‘Customer’ can be interpreted quite broadly to include stakeholders who might even be internal.

2. There is a Customer Director who reports to a Chief Customer Officer on the board.

To date I have fought against the creation of new job titles and would still rather just call this Marketing Director but at least it helps mitigate the risk of accusations of functional empire building by marketing to subjugate sales and service. The CD (Customer Director) could come from any of those functions.

3. The CD takes control of all front office functions including sales, service and marketing.

The CD envisions, architects and optimises the customer proposition and experience across all channels. You can see that there are capabilities around customer experience, including product management, and content that sit within the CD’s remit.

You will note that there is nothing specifically digital as it is part of everything.

4. There are data and insight capabilities within the CD’s overall team but there is also a client-side technology team embedded in the CX (Customer Experience) function too.

Infrastructural technology capabilities would be part of the back office but I think for agility and CX reasons it is important to have technologists that really understand design and interfaces as close as possible to marketing, sales and service.

Is this a realistic embryonic model to deliver true customer-centricity with digital embedded throughout? Or should we stick to the functions, roles and terminology we are used to?