What is "Digital Transformation"?

Since about two years I am noticing that the term Digital Transformation is all over the place, used by software vendors, consulting firms, well, almost everybody in the software business.

Just the other day I read about a survey, in which 800 tech experts admit to not implement Digital Transformation successfully. Some talk about technology eco-system failures, some about false budgeting. Nevertheless, 800 is a big number of failures.

Of course I started scratching my head about why all these failures. After all, I have been doing "Digital Transformations" for the past 30 years and never really considered it rocket science.

So I did some research at conferences and exhibitions, asking vendors what Digital Transformation is all about. And the result was surprising. I would say: about 60% did not really know what the paradigm Digital Transformation actually meant! Typical answer: "Our software does Digital Transformation", but they could not explain how that worked.

Therefore let us elaborate on what Digital Transformation means. Ideally we want to launch a discussion. I am highly curious how you and other sdefine Digital Transformation. I will list my POV on Digital Transformation, but I hope (and expect) many of you to comment and chime in.

I would like to start with my definition of what Digital Transformation is, explain why I see it this way and then open the discussion.

Digital Transformation is the process of converting a marketing strategy into user stories/journeys and transform them into a compelling and engaging Web experience.

7 Steps to a successful Digital Transformation Journey

Some Background

The first time I ever used the term Digital Transformation was in the early 80's. With some friends we worked on a project we called USA (yes, at that time IT was also philosophy!). USA stands for "Universal System Analyzer". We believed that if you can "convert" an analog process into a digital one, you can analyze it. We called that process Analog to Digital Transformation.

1) Digital Transformation is a PROCESS, not a Tool

Digital Transformation is not a solution or even a tool. Digital Transformation is a process. It is a journey, starting with an idea or strategy ending in a user experience for the Web. And it's a process owned by Marketing, not IT!

2) Digital Transformation is a Marketing Strategy

This i perhaps the main reason why Digital Transformation projects fail. Tech experts think technology when it comes to Digital Transformation. This may be true, but definitely not in the beginning! In fact, even many Marketers believe Digital Transformation is a tool or software solution!

Isn't it so that every Web experience has a certain purpose or motivation? Too often do tech leads discuss a solution, but ignore the purpose behind it.

Any conversion rate, any successful revenue stream, all that is based on activities driven by users/visitors/consumers. If you can't engage (with) them, you most likely will not succeed. Therefore it's a marketing process to define a strategy to engage with (potential) consumers.

3) See Digital Transformation as a Marketing Strategy

Before starting any technology initiative, marketers should define a strategy to attract and engage with their visitors and consumers. There are of course many ways and concepts to do so, but usually it tapers down to these three points:

1. What is the purpose and outcome of my marketing strategy?
2. What possibilities and options do I have to make it worth for a visitor to connect and engage with my Web presence?
3. How do I transform this strategy into a compelling Web experience.

Note that at no time did we talk "technology", however, we already used the term transformation.

The perhaps easiest way to engage with users is by providing compelling/emotional content to attract attention and by providing "take-aways" (products, discounts, etc.) to initiate an engagement and monetize the journey.

4) Think Content Strategy first

This is perhaps the most important marketing piece in a Digital Transformation process. This process is often known as story telling. Meanwhile even TV ads are baked into stories (although many are ridiculously stupid...). Perhaps the best example of story telling is that cigarette brand with the cowboy on a horse. Or check the Air New Zealand security video (more than 18 million views!).

Story telling is the foundation of a Digital Transformation process. We analyze user behaviors, chose content carefully and write a story, a journey, which shall attract visitors and consumers. And it's still all a marketing strategy!

Some Trivia

Story telling was such an important factor for the success of Internet projects at SapientNitro that Gaston Legorburu and Darren McColl, two brilliant marketers, wrote a book about story telling: Storyscaping.

5) Time for Technology - Select the Technology

Once marketers know exactly what message they want to send to visitors and consumers, that's when we think about transforming such journeys into a compelling and attractive Web experience. Technology is what drives the marketing strategy.

Selecting the right technology is a rather complex process. In a modern Web experience you don't have just one solution. Building a complex Web experience most likely relies on an eco-system of tools. This can be very costly and have an impact on the skills of the solution engineers.

The goal of the tool selection should be a software stack that gives a high-level of content control to the authors/marketers. You want to react to marketing disruptions in hours or days, not weeks and months. I usually follow this pattern:

1. Select a content-centric Content Management System. Make sure authors/marketers have (full) control over the content, from creation to publishing. My favorites are JCR-based CMS solutions like Adobe AEM, Magnolia, Jahia or Peregrine.
2. Select social collaboration tools. At some point you want to engage with your visitors. These tools should enable a high-level of control by authors, e.g. moderation, real-time communication, etc. Ideally, the content generated from these tools should be collected and manageable. It will be used to tune the experience, but also improve products and services.
3. Select analytical tools. You always want to keep track of user activities, user decision making and success factors. You will hear the term KPI (Key performance indicator), but start simple, define what you consider "success" and measure it.
4. Select an E-Commerce tool. Today most Web experiences have some sort of revenue-generating components. Unlike modern tools, integrating an E-Commerce solution with a CMS is a pain-in-the-neck. These tools are typically engines to manage products and catalogs, but have poor presentation-layer capabilities. Such integrations usually eliminate a lot of the sophisticated features of a content-centric CMS. And they are expensive!
5. Reduce integrations as far as possible. Integrations are cumbersome and expensive. And they are seldom author-friendly. Not only will you constantly need engineers to keep integrations alive, but authors will need to learn these systems to do their marketing thing. At the same time though integrations are inevitable. Live with them, but keep them to a minimum.

Some Trivia

Point 4, adding E-Commerce components to a Web site, has been challenging me for years. Integrating an RDBMS system into a content-centric CMS is just no fit. Together with Ruben Reusser from headwire.com, we tried to integrate Konakart into Magnolia. It just didn't fit. That's why I started JECIS, an E-Commerce framework that installs into the CMS and takes advantage of all features. No integration needed, no new tools to learn and best of all: you create your commerce-experience with your CMS. JECIS is available for Adobe AEM, Magnolia, Jahia and Peregrine.

6) More Technology - Define and Build the Web Experience

This is typically the last part of the Digital Transformation process. Unfortunately, it's also the one that often goes wrong. Some of the most common mistakes I see:

1. Marketing hands off a solid marketing strategy and user journey to the IT folks, but does not follow the process. Marketers must be involved in the solution building process.
2. IT folks are techies. Analyzing and understanding a marketing strategy is not necessarily in their DNA. They think technology. I see (too) many projects where it's all about micro services, Java platforms, JavaScript frameworks etc. and hardly any mentioning of content.
3. The solution is not compliant to the selected software eco-system. I see (too) many projects using Adobe AEM and ignoring the authoring capabilities completely (!). Lately Single-Page-Applications are bubbling up again, a relict from E-Commerce days. Why build an SPA with a content-centric CMS? Lately I read about "headless CMS", so techies are writing micro services to retrieve content, completely ignoring the fact that these CMS have these capabilities out-of-the-box. In one case I counted 57 Web service calls to populate two Web pages with content...

7) Marketing and Technology have to work together!

If you want to run a Digital Transformation process successfully, it is inevitable that marketing and technology work together. Digital Transformation starts with a marketing strategy and ends with a Web experience that promotes and underlays these strategies. I would even be more provocative and recommend melting part of Marketing and IT into a new division: Marketing Technology. A successful Digital Transformation process is a combination of a brilliant marketing strategy and a comprehensive technical solution.

Some Trivia

In 2010 I gave a paper MT is the new IT, a presentation about why the typical IT department is dying out and Marketing Technology is the new technology organization in modern companies. I guess it was too early, I got a lot of boohs.... Today though I might give it another try ;-)

To Summarize

IMHO there are two reasons a Digital Transformation process fails:

1. Digital Transformation is not considered a marketing strategy process
2. IT builds solutions based on what they consider the Web experience should look like and that don't comply to the selected software eco-system.

Some last Trivia

A famous racing organization wanted to rebuild their Web presence. In the first meetings it was all about what the solution should do. At some point I asked about the purpose of the experience. The main answer was: "Grow our fan base". When asked about monetization, they mentioned their agency takes care of that. Following the seven steps mentioned, it was rather easy to be successful, since a racing organization has emotional and exciting content in galore, such as races, statistics, interviews, etc., everything a vivid fan wishes for. We just needed to bake this valuable content into a compelling Web experience. The result was even for me surprising: The organization fired their agency and now controls the content, especially the monetization part. We launched on a race day and were constantly facing a break-down of the servers, due to the shear amount of fans registering to the new site. Today this organization controls one of the biggest fan bases and generates way more revenue than their agency could ever generate. A successful Digital Transformation, from a marketing strategy to a compelling Web experience!

Please ignite the Discussion!

It's your turn! Please add your comments and experiences. What do you consider "Digital Transformation"? What have your experiences been?