Digital Transformation IT Investments @ Risk & May Collapse Your Brand Value 10 Times....

                 Why Most IT Outsourcing Vendors Cannot Help You &                                             How To Save Your Millions & Your 10X Brand.

Digital Transformation Gives  Your Brand 10X Edge Over Your Competitors,Are You Going To Risk Your Brand To Short-Sighted IT Outsourcing Service Providers.

Digital Transformation is not Technology Deployment.

Buying Off-The-Shelf Digital Technology Solutions, Is The Shortest Way To Risk Your Brand's 10X Prospects. 

 

16 Important  Foundational Steps To Initiate In Your Company, Before Appointing An External IT Services Provider/Consulting Firm & 9 Important Critical Questions To Ask Every IT Service Provider/Consulting Firm, Before You Partner.....

Friends, as many may know, I am busy preparing a manual for CMO's with regards to five phased Digital Transformation process. I have really stopped writing online due to my research work. Iam forced to write this update, to save your brand  reputation, value, which you have taken generations to build and millions  you may invest in Technology, thinking thats Digital Transformation.

Last Friday I have received a call from a global IT outscoring provider's head of EMEA sales, of its newly formed ,so called "Digital Transformation Wing". By the way this firms first value is INTEGRITY, but surely not to their clients. In our short discussion we shared few aspect about Digital Transformation and the discussion was more about   how we could sell  Digital Technology, in the label of  Digital Transformation.  This guy does not have any idea about digital transformation. The newly formed core team does not understand anything about digital transformation, neither the newly built site nor their newly formed team have any idea what it really means. I can understand the frustration to achieve sales targets and prove that they are ahead of this digital game and can deliver results, thus completely misleading their clients and complete disrespect to other focused "Digital transformation" consultants.  He clearly expressed that, they are not bothered about Digital Transformation end2end and  not interested in ensuring that the entire process of Digital Transformation and ofcourse they dont understand it too. They will make you buy expensive software and bill you to customize it and than its their headache to run it. In such a case, why are the selling technology under the label Digital Transformation. You know the obvious reasons. 

We are seeing, IT  vendors investing a lot of money sponsoring big B2B summits and trying to convince, their wonderful idea is the right idea for Digital Transformation and trying to convinces CIO's they have cracked the code. Well, they can convince a CIO, but not a CMO. Digital Transformation is more about CMO. However, this kind of methodology doesn't work for long now, in this instance as the end product is you and your 10X brand value at risk.  You need a partner who can help you support end2end digital transformation efforts and create 10X value for your brands, otherwise there is no transformation, evolution or progression - just ‘C’ suite massaging.

 Are You Buying Technology As A Solution For Digital Transformation?

They Are So Many Billion Dollar IT Service Providers, Selling You Technology, Dont Fall In Their Trap & Collapse Your Brand's 10X Prospects In The Next 36 Months.

 My Dear CXO's & especially CIOs of reputed brands, Dont be Intimidated By Their Might , Tricks & Fall In Their Trap. Technology Deployment is Just 35% of Digital Transformation. Unless Your Organization's Digital Transformation Committee, Gives You Complete End2End Blueprint, Dont Even Venture InTo Big IT Outsourcing Players. No IT Service Provider Wants To Commit Commit End2End Transformation, You See, Most Unfortunate. They will sell you the chocloate sauce only, not the icecream, nor the stick. 

 They Dont Have A Model For Your Company, Nor They Can Envision, Your Brand Completely & Protect It-self from Disruption In The Years To Come. They are not doing for their own brand, how can they do it for you. 

 At The Same Time, If Your Board Has Already Decided, Atleast Try Your Best To Go With A Vendor, Who Can Help You In Robust Digital Strategy, Design, Technology Deployment, Training, Mentoring & KPO Activities. You Need Someone Who Understands Everything End2End & They Should Give You Contractual Obligation For IT & Than Who Will Build Systems & Processes To Tackle Digital Disruption In Sales, Marketing & Customer Experience Journey, In The Years To Come. .......

Your Ageold Old IT Outsourcing Partners/Systems Integrator Cannot Help You In Digital Transformation. Please Do You Own Assessment. Yes, They Might Have Helped, You Earlier, But Digital Transformation is Not IT Transformation, Nor Its Just a Design Game. They Themselves Are Not Digitally Transformed. Look At Top 25 Providers, They have not transformed Digitally, How Can They Help You.  

 # 1 Reason To Avoid Them, NOW...

Too Narrow, Short-Sighted & Poorly Aligned View On Digitalization & Digital Transformation. Suddenly They Just Want To Dump Technology, As The Ultimate Solution For Digital Transformation.

As the digital transformation revolution reaches maturity, companies have a billion dollar opportunity to shift business models within your industry disruptively to create new sources of defensible competitive advantage. This can be through the creation of new digital services that radically change the customer experience, by building a multi-sided platform with ecosystem partners, addressing new segments of customers through new channels, or by a combination of these business model shifts

If digitalization is to create maximum business value, the company needs (primarily management and board) to understand that digitalization should not be seen solely as an IT or communications project. Instead it should be understood that it is affecting all parts of a business. Moreover, it is essential that there is a common view in the organization on what digitalization really means, this to be able to get everyone moving in the same direction. Without this, digitalization will only occur on a shallow tactical level at best and not something that creates fundamental change in the company. Here three core  important points to consider initially:

Creating a transformative vision, ever evolving of how your firm will be different in the digital world and be prepared to tackle every kind of external disruption, right from market model, digital technology etc.  Channeling an organization’s energy through digital governance. Breaking down silos at the leadership level to drive digital transformation together.

 The CMO Should Drive Digital Transformation Requirements

CXO's, Here Are The Golden STEPS To Initiate Immediately, If Your Organization Is Really Serious About Digital Transformation, You Have No Choice, But To Follow It Religiously, Miss It@Ur Risk.

 # STEPS No.1: Your CMO is the the champion of the Digital Transformation. 65% of digital transformation is the around sales, marketing & customer experience. CIO's does not understand the complete cycle of attracting customers, engaging customers and giving them a awesome customer experience and with an inbound/social media and mobile focus. A new role for the Chief Marketing Officer: This job title has moved from the more passive approach to that of ideas, growth, and the promotion of digital business models in the enterprise. The CMO is the one who motivates other departments to bolster digital transformation initiatives. As consulting brands are aggressively promoted, your team and the provider need to work on ideation, product development, and services together. Your CMO understands the real power of digital channels because their department was the lead for most of the online activities that were developed over the last two decades. They own the customer facing touch points of the company which are increasingly becoming digital. The challenge though is that marketers look at the company in a marketing-centric way, without the necessary holistic and transversal view on everything else that matters. The CIO faces similar problems. He understands technology better than anyone and owns the IT strategy and platforms, but digital transformation has more to do with business/marketing/customers than it has with IT. On top of that his responsibilities come with substantial budgets, strict policies and processes, which requires a traditional way of management that is difficult to mix with the attitude that is needed for digital transformation. * Iam shortly releasing a CMO specific "Digital Transformation Manifesto 2015" complete execution manual. 

 # STEPS No.2: Your CMO, has to devote 25% of his time in 2015/2016 in this particular activity, he needs to be super serious and committed about this initiative. Its no more a coffee shop discussion. Digital Transformation will make or break your brand and he needs to take the lead. He is the chairman of the Digital Transformation Committee. Apple for instance took only seven years to dominate the music industry only to find itself battling the shift from paid downloads to advertising-supported music streaming. Google Maps took just 18 months to destroy almost 85 per cent of the market capitalization of the world's top GPS vendors. Your technology vendors cannot help you.

 # STEPS No.3 : Your Chief Digital Officer, is not the chairman of this DT committee. Digital Transformation, has nothing to do with CDO. If you have a Chief Disruptive Officer, its different. Well, CDO is a fad and it has relevance. Ofcourse you can always call CIO as CDO. What is this title's role. Ideally he should be a techno marketing digital strategist. They are very few in number. You might say CIO takes care of operational IT and CDO takes care of strategic IT. Well, than he is CIO of your company. Simple. Most dangerous thing will be to make him responsible for Digital Transformation and also he should not take care of wetting these IT vendors. He has no knowledge. Only an extremely passionate CMO with in-depth past and future Digital Campaign experience can help you, no one else. Unfortunately most of the consulting companies to are lagging behind. Take out their logos, most look the same.

 # STEPS No.4 :  Leadership Commitment. Digital Disruption is here to stay. CXOs should need in-depth understanding and more likely customer facing leaders like CMOs. Digital Transformation is more than just a technology upgrade. Digital Transformation can help you scale immediately, its giving unbelievable benefits and leverage your brand huge untapped potential. Your Marketing, sales, customer experience are immediate effected. Are your processes set for Digital Borns & Millennials. You don't need millions to start tasting the benefits. Its important you schedule weekly meeting and ensure that phased one is rolled out in the first 90 days and build on it. Never call a consultant/ IT vendor, without having your own blueprint ready. Iam sure already your teams are using lot of Digital Marketing/Engagement tools. Give them agenda internally to present their ideas and document them.90% may be wrong, but atleast it will help you to ask right question with your external consultant and vendors. First movers need visionary leaders who can create transformational business models for digital borns, and who can lead effectively through challenging situations.  You need a combination of Digital Marketers, design experts, seniors sales people, junior customer services executives to people experts part of the steering committee. Let these vendors know you know whats happening and you have clarity as to where to go and what to achieve. This is your business/brand interest, or they will present a fake definition of Digital Transformation, which is for their business benefits, not yours.

 # STEPS No.5 : At this point you need to clearly articulate the real purpose of "Digital Transformation". Clearly defined and communicated across the company and its external partners to. Everyone should to you will be initiating aggressive Digital Transformation projects and you will need their complete support. You should ensure they have completely upgraded their knowledge, skills to support digital customer. This  will include HRs & Finance too, no exception. Everyone should be well versed in using apps, digital sales, social selling, social media career promotion, social media lead generation and digital/social customer experience. All appraisal should be linked to this one. Your staff should know that your Brand is going make a history and you will be the first company in your Industry. If you do this after technology deployment, all you money and times is wasted and technology disruption will collapse your brand. When your team is ready across department, you can tackle disruption easily.  They should clearly understand and articulate your 3/5 years Digital Vision and link it to their careers. Digital disruption doesn’t happen around the campfire. It happens across time and space. The teams that make it happen need to be able to work that way. Make sure every group in your company is a stakeholder

 # STEPS No.6:  Commit yourself to design a process to serve every kind of customer, right from 7yrs - 90 Yrs. Build initial prototypes, much before consultants to IT vendors enter your office. No one knows better than your sales and customer service teams. If you approach to an IT vendor, they will sell a technology to just support a common customers, like snake oil promise, and will not solve your Digital issues. It will be the old CRM story. None of them are subject matter experts of Digital, with respect to your Industry, as of May,2015.  Today's customer wants to be special. You need to do your best to design your process around ONE2ONE customization, as much as possible, beyond just recognizing his name. You need to sever every commit yourself to support every generation of customer. Right from Digital Borns to 70's.. 80s.. All are different and you need to design system and processes differently for everyone. How well a team interacts with a given technology is related to the way a person seeks to serve team needs.

 # STEPS No.7:  Clearly defining your defining your present "Digital Customer Experience Journey Mapping, Present & Future Model".  You may have to completely re-envision the digital customer experience process. Well by now if you have religiously followed the first 6 STEPSs, Iam sure you have taken control of your brands and you are not intimidated and coerced by big IT outsourcing players. If you have not defined this, than no technology solution will help and as of now no IT outsoucing vendor can help you.  Now its time to define your customer experience journey. Will your transformation delight future digital customers? The goal of digital transformation is to establish an infrastructure that gives you the ability to develop and sustain relationships of increasing value between you and your digitally transformed customers in the future. That happens through a process, a process that builds value and trust between you. That process is called the ""Digital Customer Experience Journey Mapping " provides a powerful framework for defining and prioritizing your digital transformation strategy and initiatives. Creating 10X Customers  happy experiences.

The customer journey can be a powerful strategic and tactical tool to focus and prioritize your digital transformation strategy on creating customer value and delight. It defines the stages of value and trust you must deliver before a customer becomes a strategically valuable partner and a cheerleader for you in the market. Here are some ideas, you can start with  External Pre-Customer/Prospect Engagement - Social Selling Triggers/Touch Points - Framed Engagement - Exploring Options - Solution Trial/Evaluation - Decsion/Shopping Cart Like Engagement - Buy-In's - Customer Service Experience & Support - Happy Customer Refferal & Further  Mobile Engagement.

# STEPS No.8: Digital Centric Data, The Backbone of Digital Transformation. Friends, no good sales campaign or customer offer can be does without robust insights of Data. Every touch point, every click, every digital engagement is relevant insight. Make data customer and market data relevance as data as the backbone of digital transformation, plus the analytics derived from data systems, should be in a position to extract reports that will support digital marketing team to provide greater leads and engagement to the brand and also better serve the customer. Analytics at every step should have its goal. Information drives insight, but the use of insight depends on team awareness (the team being the organization, which includes the elements of teaming it needs to serve its mission, meet customer needs, create brand ambassadors, etc.) . As per The CXOs  in organizations focus on applying information that is big picture and long term, while others on applying tactical information.  So at this point entire sales, marketing and customer support digital teams should submit what kind of data and insights they may need and how will it be generated. No IT vendor can help you answer this. You cannot move forward without this aspect.

# STEPS No.9:    Time to locate your digital ambassadors across  all department. Sometimes a delivery executive may give many customer insights, that may you build future happier customer experiences .Once the strategic plan is completed, and funded, the digital ambassadors, passionate for Digital Transformation of all the three divisions, should take over. They not only manage the external/internal social media conversations, provide the content, but it’s also their job is to sell everyone on using the value created digitally externally and internally. These are mostly Digital Borns, super excited to serve the customers, disruptive technology lovers and value creators. This team should question every assumption communicated by the  consultants and vendors in every way possible.  Your company should be a magnet to attract such passionate digital ambassadors for your products, brands and influences and often you can find them deeply interacting with your brands in social media. The best example to follow here is Starbucks.  Get them as soon as possible. They will question, ridicule and be critical of everything. They dont have loyalty, they just have, voice and passion and your brand is at test now and the Digitally Transformed Platform should live you to that. Their value has not yet  been fully recognized by brands, but as more organizations vie for them, the market will respond. There will be scarcity, and especially there will be scarcity of the best in their digital crafts. These digital ambassadors are most lovable people, who will transform your brands, communicate with communities, pick-up early disruptive trends. They are your future, your Golden resources. They are social communicators, those lovable people who feel that their mission is to build communities, online and off, may be easier to retain for your brand.. However, you will need to identify the right ones – not just for where your organization is now, but also for where you’re expecting it to go.

 # STEPS No. 10:  Benchmarking your current capabilities against industry's new disrupters, Industry disrupters and often even fictional prototypes.  Assess your digital maturity as of today and see where you stand. It has to be a set of collaborative activities to kick start your digital transformation initiative. The organization needs to be agile and flexible enough to take on a change of this sort – it’s a bold step to the future! In my opinion, since the core objectives include better engagement with digital customers (which in turn translates to higher revenue and increased profits,) it is the chief marketing officer (CMO) who should define the requirements. In fact, as indicated by many research firms, the top four digital transformation initiatives are related to increasing the efficiency/effectiveness of businesses digital platforms, website mobile site/applications, social media, and customer-facing technology systems. All of these are tied to marketing in some way.

Even though the CMO may not know the technical complexities involved, he or she can identify shortcomings in existing processes and request IT solutions to fix them. In this way, IT comes up with a solution that works for the business, and indicates how much it will cost. Since the task involved is a marketing function, the chargeback should fall on the marketing budget.

 If you Have Done All This Right, Now Is The Time To Define Your Organization's Disruptive Super Strategy For The Next 24 Months,36 Months.

*Note : You Are Doing It, Before Assessing Your Consulting/IT/KPO Vendors. They Will Get Jittery, Seeing Your Preparation  & in Most Cases May Not Return Or If You Are Luck Come With A Better Disruptive Model.

 # STEPS No. 12 : Now Defining Your Brand's  Operational/Executable Digital Strategy. This is for the second time you will be doing it, after your initial definition, after you did during initial week. This is have more clarity, with assessment and with a lot of feedback. This will clearly give you a 24 month, 36 month and beyond clarity and at this point of time your team has clear confidence how to move forward and are in a position to wet vendors and consultant.

# STEPS No. 13 : Define the best structure and workflow for Digital Transformation – Whether to set up a Digital Center of Excellence or not? And decide on what type of "hub and spoke" model to put the right structure in place. Weigh the skill and talent requirements before taking on the journey.

# STEPS No. 14 : Define resourcing requirements and key investments – Digital transformation is not quick & dirty, neither it is cheap. It requires significant investments in the target areas. So target areas need to be identified and address sourcing and training needs for the right skill & talent development, for these target areas.

# STEPS No. 15: Review the barriers to Digital integration – Any change for that matter will face resistance and there are many risk & barriers to this transformation as well. These risks and barriers need to be reviewed and managed through change catalysts. While knowledge & awareness, tunnel vision, data paralysis can be some of the inhibitors to this change, Customer retention, Digital Darwinism, Behavioral Economics and Top-down empowerment can act as catalysts.

# STEPS No. 16 (A): Manage change for Digital Transformation – Digital transformation is not “business as usual”, rather it has to be aligned with existing business strategies. As a part of this transformation, we need to track and manage how the brand value of the enterprise changes, how engaging and shareable the brand gets as opposed to our competitors.

# STEPS No. 16 (B) :  Digital Agility and Optimizing Performance – Finally, there has to be constant review of the relevance of new digital opportunities and threats. Put necessary checks and balances and do course corrections from time to time, thus optimizing your digital performance. Agile development techniques, continuous improvement of customer experience, generating in-house innovation and social listening are some of the key parameters in optimizing digital transformation.

 

Wow, if you have done all this, you are now fully prepared to ask right question to IT Vendors/ Consulting Firms.

Digital Transformation Consultant/Vendor Selection. Critical Questions To Be Asked. * Note: You May Have To Ask Same Question To At least 10 Vendors.Iam Will Surprised If More Than One Can Give You All Answers.

 Dear CXO's, you know the story of Kodak and Blockbusters, there are thousands of brands, which are being disrupted in a flux as we speak. It just took apple 7 years to take over music industry. It just 18 months to take over google maps and many businesses. Your IT Vendor should help you prepare you sales, marketing, customer experience and product development manage disruption.

When a Fortune 500 business hits the rocks it’s news but for the vast majority of business it’s often barely noticed. Hopefully, you aren’t in one of those businesses yet, but as a marketer you may recognize that if action isn’t taken soon you could be. More often than not that’s when you start thinking about getting some outside help.

 #1 Question To Ask Your IT Services Vendor....

Do They Really Recognize  The Problem& The Potential Threat Your Brand May From Potential Disrupters. Simply, Do They Have A Better Vision For Your Brand, Than Your Definition. Can They Envision  Your Brand Promise & Success in the Next 24/36/60 Months. Impossible.  No one is preparing to give you an answer.

For those businesses which are feeling a bit shaky without path, can these IT services providers show you  the path.  Most brands its becoming difficult to know where to go, what to ask and who to trust when faced with digital disruption. Now that your blueprint is ready (it may not be perfect), now you are looking for an external partner to help you in consulting/technology/strategy/training/KPO activities. Atleast 3/5 activities. Right now except on or two exception, you dont have many options here.

 ‘Disrupted’ is one of the keywords which triggers these IT Vendors in the first place but it’s often overlooked that you are choosing to disrupt - voluntarily and possibly fundamentally - your own business. Hence it’s extremely important to get the right fit, who really really understands your business and your brand promise.

So who can help? None, Infact many cannot give you end2end solution. You need to take control of Digital Transformation and Lead These Guys, Without Getting Intimidated By Technology Jargon.

*Note: No One Knows Better About Your Brand Digital Future, More That Your Digital Transformation Committee & Digital Ambassadors.

The Digital Transformation universe has become extremely crowded of late. Many of the traditional flavors of IT vendors and consultancies have invested heavily in expanding their skillset in the area and it’s well recognized that there is a war on between the big consultancies and the big IT Vendors , to remain relevant to businesses in the digital future.

There is a broad mix of vendors out there who can potentially help, but none  can give to an end2end solution for Digital Transformation.  Therefore the ‘who’ very much depends on what the problem is. I know that doesn’t help much but it’s worth speaking to peers in other businesses, reading as much as you can and seeing what your existing agencies are up to get a sense of who and what is out there.  Atleast you need to start off with someone who has indepth Industry IT/Consulting experience atleast.

 "Gartner believes those businesses that opted for service providers to support such initiatives may run into difficulties. According to Gartner, service providers are not ready because their existing delivery models will not effectively address new demands for exploratory digital pursuits".

 Assess the IT provider’s delivery  skills according to your needs and your  assessment matrix, using your own scenarios, explore how well evolved digitally they are (as most IT  vendors are not digitally evolved)   and skills while asking for a critique on your findings before signing a contract. The provider’s methodology and thought processes can then be thoroughly analyzed before committing to the service and their service level commitment should be testing regoursly. 

Get prepared for surprises: The digital transformation process takes time and money. Conducting a thorough in-depth vendor assessment will give you the information you need, but also prepare for the risk. Dont go by their size. Your teams should address current revenue constraints and the disruptions the ensuing initiatives are likely to cause.

So, You have Identified a prospective IT Vendors, with Consulting & KPO background. Initially  identified a  atleast  three/four prospective  IT  Vendors, who can support your Digital Transformation Vision , now what are you going ask?

What's Next................

2) The Best Model For Engagement : Pay Per Outcome, Not For Technology Deployment. I know most IT vendors will hate me for this. Partner with vendors who look for  business outcomes that will show their real commitment for your brand success in the years to come. This is not an easy thing. The vendor has to really rethink, re-envision your digital business model, engagement and everything. Now he starts working differently. At the same time, you will also have to wet, how well they are embracing Digital Transformation internally too. So partner with IT service provies who are ready to deliver a set of underlying services in exchange for a share of profits pegged to a specific business outcome.

Iam very sure Digital Transformation Will Force Big IT Service Providers/Consulting Companies, To Re-Write, Old Business Models and come-up with profits/brand value enhancement linked engagement models.

 3) Partner Comes Up With A New Operating Model: This is not Software Lifecycle Management.  Iam strangely surprised how companies are trying to use old operating models to deploy technology. Digital Transformation, is ever evolving field and its important to rewrite old rules of transformation, as Digital Transformation becomes main stream opportunity for big brands, old  IT Transformation rules becomes obstacles for digital transformations. Such is the case today with Cloud, Analytics, and Mobility. The core concepts matter but greater value is obtained by taking a broad and open approach to the enabling technologies and what they can bring. If future every conversation with start and end with digital, do you have an operational model to leverage it.

4) Digital Transformation Infrastructure : Wow, this is such an awesome concept. Again technology is just part of it. Can they give you  a model for such infrastructure. Do they actually know what it can do for your brand. This needs lot of deep thinking. More on this in my CMO Digital Transformation Manifesto manual.  As providers push their messaging around the positive outcomes that digital transformation can bring, they are being asked to rationalize disparate legacy apps to enable this change, are they giving you solutions with your existing set-up or are they pushing for a completely new solution. This is most important. They should be in a position to show you High-Impact Digital Transformation, first with existing infra. This raises the focus on solving the challenge of infrastructure readiness and who can best weave it all together. Are they clearly addressing this issue. . As new markets emerge, they often revolve around shiny new features that ultimately cloud our ability to extrapolate where they are truly headed overall. True progress comes when we move beyond this feature focus to embrace the whole. Take for instance the mobile market where early on we saw smartphone Apps become the end rather than the means. Today leading services providers are thinking well beyond this and presenting Digital Transformation offerings that leverage the full capabilities of these phones and integrate them  into how a business is run not just how some information is accessed or displayed.

5) Who Are The IT Vendor's /Consulting Team's core team you are working : This is crucial. Your vendor too teams too need to have the same amount of commitment and support. Who is the core team? How often do you swap out members? What happens if there is someone we don’t like? It happens in any third-party relationship but knowing where you stand and getting commitment from the key players to stay involved for the duration is crucial. 

6)  Has  Their  Teams Worked Together Before in Such Project and That Too In Your Industry? This may sound like too obvious and crazy question but the big guys have thousands of people who may never even have met and suddenly they will pull in a team in your expense.  On the flipside there is an emerging collective digital transformation model, that will be the best for you .  This entails having a fantastic bespoke mix of big brains on the project, each with their own expertise.  The downside is however if it’s a ‘random’ group it can lead to a clash of methodologies and collapse of the entirely.

 7)  How Well Do You Know The Sector? 99% percent chances, except one or two many have no clue of your sectors. Digital Transformation Consultant are not CRM functional experts. They are much more that. Unfortunately today's big IT vendors, cannot share handful of experts, who can understand your brands 10X future. Have you got practical experience? What other sectors have similar issues to ours? What breadth can you bring to the table? Sometimes you actually want to run as far away from your own sector as possible, especially if it’s in the middle of being disrupted, so an objective view is great. At other times, and especially where there is a strong level of specialism, then a good understanding can be a plus. 

 8) Have You Done  Any End2End Digital Transformation Assignment Before (Successfully) & At least Did They Failed Fast & Learnt Fast:  99% will give you standard answer. You look at their websites. They term small enchancement of design as digital transformation, analytics as digital transformation. This is misleading. Do they understand your Industry and brand's key points to success?  How was that experience analogous with our situation? Don’t expect too many facts back as these things are usually confidential, however you might as well tap them for some free advice and in most cases they have no ideas, atleast as on May,2015.

 9) Why will many Digital Transformation Projects in 2015/2016: The answer is simple. If You have bought technology in the label of Digital Transformation, they are bound to fail for sure.  Its important to assess how prepared your vendors are for future. Do they have a failure proof methodology , to ensure the process will be as effective as possible, and will be the best in the industry? They will most likely and correctly state that if you don’t have buy-in and engagement from the very top then it’s very easy to get derailed. These IT Vendors/consulting companies are very smart, they bill  bill on time and materials so it’s up to you how much internal time you waste, but unlike in other areas it will objectively be ‘your fault’ and therefore you will pay for the time.  SO THEY DEPLOY TECHNOLOGY AND BLAME THE RESULTS ON YOU. BEAWARE OF SUCH IT SERVICE PROVIDERS. Ofcourse they are few, who are doing their best and trying to come up with a good model, it will take it.

 Final Important Caution: Whom ever you choose. Please make it as much Agile as possible, so that you can exit any time. There is disruption happening in IT/Consulting engagement model and there will come new Digital Transformation end2end IT/Consulting firms. They may be your  best choice.

This was an emergency write-up. I am in the process writing complete digital transformation, CMO specific execution manual. Iam sure these steps if followed properly, you are definietly going to create the next multi-billion dollar digital brand for your company. 

Let me know your feedback and if you may need brand specific digital transformation strategy, always let me know.

Let Me Know Your Feedback.

P.S.Mahesh,

 

Digital Transformation Consultant I Digital Strategy I

Digital Marketing I Social Selling I Linkedin Marketing I Linked Lead Generation I B2B Marketing

Let Me Know Your Feedback.

P.S.Mahesh, Digital Transformation Consultant I Digital Strategy I Digital Marketing I Social Selling I Linkedin Marketing I Linked Lead Generation I B2B Marketing