Chapter 6: Enabling
technologies for online
marketing and digital
transformation
Digital Marketing Strategy 2e by Simon Kingsnorth
What is digital transformation?
• Digital transformation goes beyond technology.
• Digitization means creating a digital version of something (e.g. a PDF)
but digitalization is more than this – it is the transformation of a
culture.
• Many companies believe it is important but don’t fully understand
what it is or how to do it – evidenced by ’digital transformation’
ranking high in Google searches.
• Digital transformation means business change, behavioural change,
consumer change and legal change, amongst others.
Hallmark traits of digital
transformation
• A relentless, all-consuming focus on the end consumer and their needs.
• An organization that does its best to go out of its way to pursue that customer focus.
• A can do, collaborative attitude to the customer and the work of serving customers.
• Agile and adaptable ways of working.
• A focus on value creation and breakthroughs, rather than the incrementalism of
efficiencies (though this is not to say that efficiency is not important).
• A greater focus on getting to outcomes, rather than process, quickly.
• People and their ingenuity are prized.
• Technology is a smart enabler of the above.
The business case and bottom
line
• It is important to understand the drivers for digital transformation as
these can be costly.
• A business case is essential for senior management buy-in and
investment.
• Cases for digital transformation must consider the business, employees
and customers.
• Millennials make up the dominant workforce. They will be more digitally
native than older generations, who may hold board positions. This isn’t
always true, but may be a cultural factor in digital transformation
decisions.
Defining goals and barriers
• It is important to define the goals of digital transformation – e.g.:
o Simplification – making a customer journey easier, or
o Sophistication – offering more personalized services.
• If a company fits its existing processes into a digital strategy, this is
evolution, not transformation.
• The business model of a company must therefore be reviewed as part
of the process of digital transformation.
• Budget and legacy systems can be barriers to digital transformation.
The state of digital
transformation
• Many retail companies are quite far down the path of digital
transformation, whilst the financial and manufacturing companies
tend to be further behind.
• A 2017 study by McKinsey & Company showed that industries are less
than 40% digitized across the board.
Technology development
techniques
• Although digital transformation is a business transformation rather
than a technology project, it relies on technology to deliver many
elements.
• It is important to understand the difference between Waterfall and
Agile methodologies, and creating a proof of concept or minimum
viable product.
Waterfall
• Waterfall development has a linear structure where one stage flows on to the next –
like a waterfall. It has been criticized for being too rigid.
• There are six main stages:
o Requirements: Captured in a requirements document.
o Analysis: Building the requirements into a model.
o Design: Making decisions about the architecture, e.g. coding.
o Coding: Building the product.
o Test: Testing to remove any bugs, etc.
o Operation: Implementing the product, including any future maintenance.
• These stages can also be referred to as: Plan, Design, Develop, Test, Release, feedback.
Agile
• The Agile approach is more fluid than Waterfall; and allows for
changes in requirements.
• Work is broken into small incremental phases called Sprints which last
a few weeks and are worked on by a cross-functional team working on
all elements, from build to test.
• Many methodologies come under the Agile umbrella; including Scrum,
Kanban, Adaptive software development and Lean software
development.
Proof of concept and Minimum
viable product
• A PoC delivers a version of a product by which to define success or
failure.
• The deliverable should be simple (e.g. testing a landing page)
• An MVP is a development that does enough to test the concept. Other
features can be added later but an MVP should not require too much
investment in case it is not successful.
• It is important that digital marketing is a part of digital transformation.
