“The only way to make sense out of change is to plunge into it, move with it, and join the dance,” Alan Watts once said.
Hopefully, digital marketers are good dancers.
According to an April 2014 study by Altimeter Group, digital transformation is now a dominant theme. The firm’s research discovered that while definitions of “digital transformation” varied greatly among industry professionals, there’s definitely a revamping going on to accommodate the changing marketplace.
In a story on the research posted at eMarketer, it was noted that “fully 88 percent of U.S. digital strategists said their firms were undergoing a formal digital marketing transformation effort.”
What else did the research pinpoint? Here are three things:
- Four in five respondents said improving processes to speed up changes to digital properties such as social or mobile platforms was a very important digital transformation initiative.
- About seven in 10 said updating website and ecommerce programs for mobile is critical, as is integrating channels to improve user experience.
- Sixty six percent of digital strategists in the U.S. consider “updating customer-facing technology” as a top priority.
Are all the players working together on this?
According to the eMarketer post, “CMOs were the most likely to support such efforts. Though CIOs/CTOs ranked third, Altimeter’s report noted that they still played a critical role in the transformation process and that “balance between the CMO and CIO to address the needs and expectations of digital customers is required for true digital transformation.”
There’s hope on the dance floor. Thirty percent of CIOs and one-quarter of CMOs said digital transformation had brought about a need for cross-functional cooperation.
It’ll take two — or even more — to tango. Let’s hope nobody steps on anybody’s feet.