Do we understand what digital transformation is yet?

I wrote the article below in September 2015 - over two and a half years ago. What's changed? Are we any closer to understanding what a digital transformation is? Are they less of a 'all the rage' and more of something that's actually being executed?

Let me know your thoughts?

Sept 10th, 2015 Digital Transformations are all the rage nowadays – at least talk about them is. Eighteen months ago whilst working for a big ad agency here in Singapore we pitched a global digital engagement to a big FMCG prospect. “Let’s call it a ‘transformation’”, I said. No objections there and so we went in all guns blazing with details of just how we’d accomplish that. It was a great pitch but we didn’t win.

Since then I’ve heard the term used time and time again with clients who want it and agencies promising it. It’s fast becoming the new coveted space agencies and consultancies want to get in to.

I want to touch on four things and hopefully draw attention to what I think might constitute real transformational change.

Digital Transformation is not about:

1. More digital stuff: Transformation is NOT simply a case of doing more digital. Or even just about doing it better or more seriously. It’s not just about shifting more budget into the digital marketing pot and building better and brighter websites, starting a YouTube channel or doing some eCommerce. It’s not even getting with the new(ish) and adding Pinterest or Instagram to your already (probably) not so effective existing Social Media channels such as Facebook and Twitter. No. A digital transformation is about something far more organic – about something that needs to be embraced from the heart of the organization and by all of it. It’s about a shift in the way the company does all of its business.
2. Just the communication and engagement strategy: Digital Transformation is way more than better ‘digital’ marketing communications and ‘digital’ consumer engagement. It’s about embracing an ethos which should realize itself through consumer empowerment and (amongst other things) the provision of utility and the further democratization of data and systems. It’s about moving from the brand making sure we know about it to the brand making sure they know about us – about each consumer as an individual. And then, whenever possible, speaking to us as such.
3. Just about the (Digital) Marketing Department: No company digital transformation should be confined to the marketing department. Being a digitally transformed company means embracing the consumer-centric opportunities that digital affords and adopting a new mindset and way of doing things in all parts of the organization with consumers as well as with internal stakeholders. It’s not a marketing vehicle – it’s a way of thinking about things and doing stuff in HR and within the R&D department. It’s about everywhere.
4. Being part of a job title or work responsibility: Working for a digitally transformed company will impact every employee. Everyone will be embracing digital in their work, not simply in the trivial sense of using a digital device or looking at a computer, but in the essential elements of the ways they do things armed as they will be with new knowledge and insights they have when relating to consumers and to their colleagues.

In fact, today’s digital marketers may end up being just a small (perhaps insignificant) part of a company – a company entirely composed of digitally transformed employees doing the sorts of things they do now but in ways that you might not recognize.

Unless you have already been successfully digitally transformed. In which case you’re probably well ahead of most of us.