Own it: who owns digital transformation?

If you want change, for real, you should own it. What change do we want, though? There are four big battles that the world needs to win: technological breakthroughs, sustainability, collaborative marketing (in the broader sense of the term: engagement, dialogue) and a mindset of change.  

There is a common thread across the four items, which is the power of the ‘us’ before the ‘I’. Being able to dominate and make sense of the communal data that we produce will be key, if we want to act for a smarter, safer, cooperative and open-minded world.

If you will, sustainability1, as we said earlier, should be remarketed under the umbrella of a Total Marketing approach to our businesses and communities. Efficiencies can be realized faster, thanks to a wide penetration and clever use of exponential technologies.

This is why the adoption of a mindset of change is probably the priority item for any organization or company. The theory of a talking product and of a talking consumer is a few years from materializing itself, so the most important and urgent shift that we need to work on is our culture, processes and people.

Now, looking at corporations, or at startups and scaleups as a matter of fact, who owns change?  

As a gut reaction, it should be a mythical figure, which combines the skills of Chief Technology Officer, Chief Information Officer, Chief Human Resources Officer, Chief Marketing Officer, Chief Experience Officer, and CEO. Like a unicorn, this hero can master tech, people, communication and leadership abilities, all at once, with a pinch of futuristic vision as to where the world is going. The short answer is: this is not going to happen.

We need speed and scale in a digital transformation, and technology will help us for sure. But we need a structural adjustment to our organizational chart, so that change can flow faster and deeper through the corporate layers or through any organization. We need ownership.

We would suggest at this point three scenarios, which could be of help for a reader who wants to move into action mode. The recommendation is to craft the right organizational set-up, so that roles and responsibilities are in place, budgets have been disbursed, objectives clarified, and all that’s needed is, in the end, just a perfect execution of a shared master plan.

Here are our three scenarios:  

1. The creation, inside the C-Room, of a new role, called Chief Transformation Officer, whose mandate is to evolve the organization towards set objectives (KPIs), to maintain the tempo of the change and to constantly report back to the CEO and the Board.

   The Key Performance Indicators (KPI) should be wrapped around the four battles that we mentioned: adoption of what exponential technology and when; road to a fully sustainable company, in line with international treaties (Net Zero by 2030); creation of the infrastructure that allows all departments to have fast and fluid exchange with all stakeholders, internal and external; continuous training for reskilling and upskilling, to design a future proof organization.

   There are plenty of examples of this first scenario. Often, The Chief Strategy Officer enlarges their title and scope of action to include transformation as a priority at a global level.

2. The birth of a small committee of Chiefs, inside the C-Room, coordinated by the CEO, who takes full responsibility for the digital and cultural transformation of its organization. Same KPIs as above, but with a clear and direct, almost personal engagement of the CEO into the workings of the organization of the future.

   There are plenty of CEOs, who are directly involved in how their companies jump into new horizons, especially in mid-sized enterprises. This could be the case for large corporations, too, like for the transformation path headed by Björn Rosengren, CEO at ABB between 2020-2024.

3. The merge of the roles of the Chief Marketing Officer and Chief Information & Technology Officer. Marketing has always been the ‘eye’ of the consumer inside a company. Marketing has always entailed data collection and insight generation, to maximize the impact in offering any company proposition to the market.

   The superpowers provided by technology should allow a marketeer to leverage well-oiled skills for the construction of the highways of mutual communication with communities, suppliers, agencies, employees and users. The KPIs would be the same as the one listed above, for the other two scenarios. The big change is that the integration of the loop of suppliers, employees and consumers will feed new life into the organization, with trickle down effects on product innovation, advertising, trade and investors relationships, customer care, and so forth, giving new life to marketing and business acumen to tech stack procurement.

   One example of this third scenario is Coop Switzerland, where CIO/CTO and CMO were merged into one role some ten years ago. Coop is a retailer, trading other people’s stuff into buyers’ shopping carts. This specific example seems extremely interesting as to how tech can make that match between brands and fans seamless on a physical and digital turf. Can this scenario happen also for a non-retailer?

One thing is sure. The leader of the future will need to be more technologically savvy vs. the previous generations, boomers and Gen X-ers especially. Tech literacy needs to be accompanied and preceded by love for data, and for people above all, with the clear idea of building a long-term roadmap, to make any company a tech-driven, sustainable, communicative and open to its broader community.

The first and the second scenario has one major risk: the temptation to focus on numbers, results and short-term first. The third scenario needs to deliver against hard KPIs, for sure, but probably a CMO may have the muscles to see beyond the here and now and imagine a different future, or at least the budget and people to do the short and long of it. We could call him or her Chief Total Marketing Officer. Maybe.

We are in flux.

The world is ever changing, and nothing will be 100% perfect, once and for all. We hope this book helps, thanks to its theoretical concepts and real-life stories, current and futuristic, about the better world that we can and will build together. Thirty years ago, or so, Marketing was about serving fans. What if technology allowed us to learn from them, as we deliver our goods and services. What if all stakeholders could serve each other, enabled by data and technology, while zeroing unnecessary burdens to the planet.

Marketing is about vision. What if we could see better, if data was shared and data sources compensated fairly to keep feeding relevant information, at the right time and the right place. This requires us to be connected and, above, all to have a shared goal. Some will join for the money, some for the integration into a broader network. It doesn’t matter. As said at the beginning of the book, this is a journey towards 2030, more or less.

It’s a bumpy road. It requires investment and a culture of change. Our goal was to draw a different future, or to serve an appetizer of how the world could look like, if data was free to flow, and tech could help all humans to make sense of it.

• Will we have that chance? We believe so. We believe, because we are human.
• We believe in tech.
• We believe that making sense of data can unlock value, while serving fans, employees and suppliers.
• We believe that connecting and identifying digitally every individual on the planet will have more benefits than costs.
• We believe in exponential technologies, like AI and blockchain, guided by the human desire to radically simplify the old and imagine the new.
• We believe marketing should leverage tech to consume less of the earth, and rally everyone around a collaborative and open marketplace.
• We believe the public arena, from health to education, from finance to energy, could turn into a profit, innovation and talent maker.
• We believe in business, when co-created by suppliers, employees and brand lovers out there, to craft products and services that inspire and delight.
• We believe in success, shared across the food chain and compensated fairly, proportionally to everyone’s willingness to dance.
• We believe we can upgrade capitalism, and that marketing can change it all.
• It’s called Total Marketing, for a reason.
• We believe, because we are human.

This piece has been written by Mara Cassinari & Francesco Pagano. Have you read?
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