Transformation

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Four Healthcare Trends to Watch in 2021

Why healthcare companies may never be the same.

Because 2020 torched so many assumptions in the healthcare and life sciences universe, making predictions about the year ahead feels a little like tempting fate. And while the odds are good (at least one would hope) that ’21 will be less tumultuous, four trends are likely to continue their rapid acceleration. 

Each of these changes was well underway before anyone had heard of COVID-19. But as the pandemic sparked massive shifts in regulations, priorities, technology and consumer expectations, they took off–and will continue to do so in the coming months. 

“We need to build out a digital continuum with the use of automation to seamlessly escalate someone from an asynchronous e-visit, to a video virtual visit, to an in-person visit.”

Diagnostics and Services Go Home 

After years of building vast multidiscipline medical campuses, systems are looking to decentralize, with more lab tests moving from provider offices to people’s homes. Brands like Cologuard pioneered home testing.

And such companies as Abbott Laboratories and Ellume Health are getting into the game with kits that detect the COVID-19 virus and antibodies. Others include Let’s Get Checked, which detects kidney disease, and Tyto, a device that makes it easy for parents to diagnose ear infections and sore throats while CVS is conducting clinical trials to offer dialysis to patients at home.  

This healthcare trend will continue to go mainstream, only as a matter of convenience. Once people are aware that they can get reliable test results without having to brave the doctor’s office, they’ll expect more. 

Redefining the Care Continuum

Telemedicine exploded last year, and that will continue. But the best care comes not from thinking about whether care is delivered digitally or in-person but how it’s all sewn together into a single experience. “We need to build out a digital continuum with the use of automation to seamlessly escalate someone from an asynchronous e-visit, to a video virtual visit, to an in-person visit,” says Nick Patel, MD, Chief Digital Officer of Prisma Health.

Look for providers to back away from the approach of handing patients off from one care point to another. Instead, they will seek newer, better ways to link and unify the complete care experience. As the multichannel experience goes from drawing board to reality, there will be a growing realization that high-quality patient experiences are either made or broken in the cracks of this digital healthcare consumerism continuum. 

Digital Selling Becomes More Human—and More Effective

Over the years, sales teams have resigned themselves to ever-decreasing direct contact with healthcare systems. And they’ve been investing heavily in digital selling tools to compensate. So, when COVID-19 triggered a drastic decline in in-person sales, they wanted to believe they were ready. But too often–digital tools aside–they were relying on outdated processes, thinking and talent. Yes, they have the technology to deliver targeted emails instantly. But that doesn’t matter if it still takes months to get internal approvals for their messages. 

It’s clear that virtual sales calls are here to stay, with SERMO reporting that 84 percent of physicians are expecting more remote interactions. Smart companies are focusing on what they must do better. Remote calls, for example, are 20 percent shorter than in-person visits. And what providers want more than anything – at 55 percent–is information about new products. 

The most modern selling organizations are changing the way they microsegment audiences, creating targeted digital content for every audience’s customer journey. Of course, this stepped-up content approach is technology-driven (and often requires hiring a new type of sales professional.) But the real change enabling it is at the human level, with an appreciation of speed and an increase in empathy. 

Reinventing the Employee Relationship

The basic “deal” between employers and employees–what each expects to get out of the relationship–is undergoing a rapid shift. The ability to work remotely is part of the equation. While many providers have to be on-site, others–administrators, procurement specialists and even hands-off providers, like radiologists–can work from the comfort and safety of their homes. 

And that’s changing recruiting and retention because it means, at least potentially, that someone could take a job hundreds of miles away without having to leave their home. 

And all that is occurring at a time when awareness of the importance and perils of healthcare peaks. Even as doctors and nurses are leaving the field in record numbers,  medical schools are fielding more applications than ever in a trend they’re calling “The Fauci effect.” Many fields are regaining luster they haven’t seen since the days of Jonas Salk. 

Organizations are redefining the employee value propositions, looking for ways to build and improve their cultures, providing engagement opportunities that are as meaningful for remote employees as they are for those who work in person.  

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Even with cases rising and the cost implications of the pandemic building, expect the most agile healthcare companies to find new ways to enrich the patient and customer experience, meeting changing demands and expectations. While 2020 was chaotic in many ways, the months ahead offer many opportunities for innovation and growth. 

Contact our healthcare team today to learn more about driving consumer-led transformation for your organization. 

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Vanishing Hierarchy: The Unspoken Upside to Zoom

Remote work lets more voices be heard and more ideas to surface, increasing organizational health.

Flatter, less top-down and more innovative. How working virtually might increase your organizational health in important ways and the actions to take to preserve it.

The pandemic sent most workers into the world of working from home in mid-March of 2020. Within weeks, countless articles had already been written about the shift to working life “on camera” and about managing “Zoom fatigue”. We quickly learned that countless neuropsychological issues, including the inability to look at someone’s eyes and listen, to create physical synchrony and the mirror image presented of ourselves all contribute to this phenomenon. Seen through a different lens, however, it’s also possible that working through the medium of video conferencing might have an unexpected and positive outcome on some aspects of organizational culture.

An Unexpected Insight From Our Fall Executive Roundtable

In October, Helen Rosethorn, my Organization & Culture practice co-lead, and I convened an Executive Roundtable to review an early draft of The Slingshot Effect, our point of view on how leaders might use the concurrent crises of social justice and pandemic to accelerate necessary change in their organizations.

We brought together senior leaders from across industries, including entertainment, financial services, pharmaceuticals, retail, technology, transportation and manufacturing, and from roles spanning R&D, commercialization, product, operations, information technology and human resources. Our conversation was full of heartfelt sharing of insights where we found many commonalities across industries, geographies and organizational functions.

One executive observed something that we had not considered before. That in this moment where knowledge workers are uniformly working from home, they were observing a radical reduction in hierarchical behaviors and ways of working.

Flatter Structures Create Space For More Voices and New Ideas

In a physical office, we have many ways of signaling hierarchy, for instance, whether one is afforded an office. And, if one does have an office, its location and furniture typically provide further clues about organizational hierarchy. In our current situation, however, things are starkly different. Because even if someone is clearly working from a nicely furnished home office in a swanky suburb, the size of their box in a Zoom or Teams screen is the same as everyone else. There’s also no such thing as privileged seating in video conferencing. It’s a constant game of virtual musical chairs. When you arrive determines screen placement and each person’s view of participant sequence is individualized based on arrival time. Moreover, the host does not have the opportunity to display privilege by inviting you into an elite space like a private conference room or executive dining room. Your CEO’s Zoom meeting is the exact same Zoom experience as that of your summer intern.

“Your CEO’s Zoom meeting is the exact same Zoom experience as that of your summer intern.”

Furthermore, video conferencing tends to highlight, and possibly deter, certain behaviors of the organizationally privileged. For instance, it’s hard to take control of a conversation on Zoom without it being glaringly obvious. In person, people may be more likely to let behaviors such as talking over someone or cutting them off pass without comment. Speaking over or cutting someone off is highly magnified on Zoom and more people seem to feel obliged to stop and apologize. This can create more room for contribution from anyone who might have felt it too hard or dangerous to contribute, e.g., because of their rank, neurotype, gender or race.

Additionally, an oft-quoted study suggests that hierarchical structures are useful for decision making but quell idea generation. And indeed, a number of our roundtable attendees reported that they observed great creativity emerge from their organizations during the crises of 2020, not least because working virtually tends to thwart the efforts of those who might prefer to micromanage their direct reports.

Finally, for many senior clients, we interact with there is a fresh enthusiasm to use these technologies to be more available to their teams. The challenge of being “seen” as a senior executive, apart from once a year at a sales conference, for example, has quickly been surpassed by all being present to address questions on Zoom in a far more regular and, in the best cases, more authentic fashion.

Taking Action to Preserve the Gains

Of course, in the immediate face of the pandemic back at the start of the year, many organizations unleashed a sense of empowerment and pushed decision-making rights downward to manage how they adapted and survived. That too created a belief for many that hierarchy was being dismantled. But was it?

The natural question for firms that are now finding themselves less hierarchical thanks to the pandemic, is how might they preserve whatever advantages that they may be discovering right now? At Prophet, we use our Human-Centered Transformation Model as a tool for diagnosing and resolving organizational issues holistically. In this instance, what is being observed is a change primarily in the Soul – the ways of working within the company. In other words, remote work is changing the behaviors and mindsets of employees. And hopefully, at least this one aspect of our current situation is impacting employee engagement in a positive way.

In the transition out of 100 percent remote work, leaders should examine what might need to change to maintain any positive gains. Obviously, many will focus on being more digital-first in their workplace. But what else might you wish to consider? Here are four key questions to ask yourself, using our framework:

  1. Body: Are there elements of your operating model or the organizational design itself which bear reconsideration? Might an organizational flattening effort be overdue?
  2. Mind: Thinking about the skills and competencies of your staff – what might need to change to ensure success in a flatter organization? Do your managers need different skills, for instance, to enable them to push decision rights downwards and coach more effectively?
  3. Soul: What methods might you use to create belief in your organization that your ways of working are consciously changing as it relates to hierarchy and inclusion? What new rituals or symbols would best reinforce those signals?
  4. DNA: Finally, is it possible that there’s something in your organizational DNA, perhaps your organizational Values, that has unintentionally reinforced unnecessary elements of hierarchy? Is there something about your employee value proposition that might be improved by explicitly removing it

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Asking these simple questions will point towards immediate opportunities to lock in the cultural gains you have made over the course of 2020. And, if you’re looking for even more opportunities to increase organizational health based on your experiences this year, we’ve identified 12 specific shifts to make with immediate and specific actions in The Slingshot Effect report.

If you’d like to discuss your organizational structure and transformation planning, then our expert team can help. Contact us today. 

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Five Reasons Why the CMO is Becoming the Best Salesperson

As sales and marketing become more aligned, some CMOs are cultivating traits to get closer to customers.

Today, marketing plays an outsized role in shaping the experiences of customers and prospects. Chief marketing officers are increasingly responsible for delivering on company growth objectives, which means playing a larger part in the selling process. And this trend is intensifying as more customers demand highly-personalized interactions, requiring much deeper marketing and sales alignment.

These shifting dynamics position a CMO as the best tool, ally and salesperson the company may have. Let’s uncover five traits of great salespeople, where many CMOs already excel.

1. They’re hungry.

The best salespeople are eager to take on new accounts— aggressively delivering for the company.

With more digital marketing and measurement in place for most firms, the C-suite now expects marketing to not only contribute to growth objectives but also lead and deliver in a measured way. Increasingly, CEOs expect marketing to drive the bottom-of-funnel demand generation. With availability 24 hours a day, the modern marketing engine is constantly targeting advertising to attract new customers. More targeted marketing leads to more targeted customer-segment success. Both, marketing and sales teams are eager, hungry and incentivized to take on business outcomes by delivering an insightful view into how best to attract, convert, and serve the most desirable customers.

Many marketers are already there. Our Altimeter 2020 State of Digital Marketing report finds that the top objectives for digital marketing are to acquire new customers (40%) and increasing revenue from current customers (39%) are the top objectives for digital marketers.

2. They’re empathic listeners.

Top sellers have to be great listeners. They must understand the customer’s needs and how best to position the company, its products and services to suit them.

Listening to customer needs and delivering insights isn’t a new marketing function or capability. What has changed is the breadth and depth of that involvement for marketing. Marketing is much more involved, using insights to drive segmentation strategies leveraged by many different channels to sense and differentiate experiences based on segment needs.

Emerging self-service and “always-on” digital channels that can initiate interaction and carry it through to a sale are becoming more common, even in complex B2B selling scenarios. As marketing plays a critical role in developing customer experiences, the need for more personalized content, driven by marketing and sales, is also growing. As before, marketing must play a key role in listening to customers in all channels to generate meaningful insights. Marketing is also best positioned to enable more and better interactions, playing back sufficient empathy for customer needs in real-time.

Our research found that 95 percent of companies can personalize messaging and experiences based on customer data, with almost one-fifth using AI-driven predictive analytics to do so. (Altimeter 2020 State of Digital Marketing)

3. They build trust.

Effective selling requires strong relationships built on trust. That includes internal relationships. 

There has been a notable increase in collaboration with sales, with 75 percent of companies in our research said they have stepped up the way the marketing and sales functions work together in the last two years. And 60 percent have increased collaboration between marketing and customer service.

As prospects enter a firm’s funnel, marketing plays a critical role in capturing, quantifying, measuring and reporting more data on behaviors exhibited by different prospect groups. As marketing’s personalized interactions drive interest and affinity, the coordination of sales and marketing efforts highlights opportunities to build trust and loyal relationships with customers.

Just like a good salesperson remembers birthdays and children’s names to build familiarity, marketing is now capturing important details to reinforce important and tailored messages. Marketing can also scale this level of intimacy with existing customers to improve repeat purchases, cross-sell, up-sell and grow advocacy to gain new customer referrals.

There has been a notable increase in collaboration with sales, with 75% of companies increasing collaboration between marketing and sales in the last two years, and a 60% increase in collaboration between marketing and customer service. (Altimeter 2020 State of Digital Marketing)

4. They are prepared to optimize efficiencies.

The best salespeople are always well prepared. For full closed-loop reporting and deep customer insight to be achieved, marketing and sales are linking their data to back-office data.

Stitching together this back-office account information to customer behavior is the next big play for companies. It’s how they can deliver better experiences, improve operating models to focus on business outcomes and enrich overall decision-making.

It’s not surprising that the most desired skills for digital marketing new hires were data analysis (42%) and marketing automation expertise (39%).

Much of this work starts with more alignment of sales and marketing incentives and integration of their processes. This complete view allows the organization to coordinate marketing and sales efforts for greater efficiency. Marketing can then leverage AI/machine learning to automate many processes, delivering both marketing and sales interactions. Marketing can now sense the next customer need. When marketing is fully prepared, sales can show up ready for anything, armed with the right insight and offer at just the right time.

It’s not surprising that the most desired skills for digital marketing new hires were data analysis (42%) and marketing automation expertise (39%). (Altimeter 2020 State of Digital Marketing)

5. They’re polished.

Even the most likable salespeople underperform when they aren’t professional and organized.

While it’s wonderful that so many sales departments are rebuilding Customer Relationship Management systems, Content Management Systems and Campaign Automation technologies, these silos need to be linked together effectively. Whether they are from Microsoft, Adobe, Salesforce or others, they can become vast repositories of disconnected data.

“When marketing is fully prepared, sales can show up ready for anything, armed with the right insight and offer at just the right time.”

Companies can and are stitching these technologies together to drive integrated workflows for both sales and marketing. One central area that highlights this collaboration is demand generation, where marketing and sales integrate information for identifying, scoring and routing marketing leads. This streamlining and automating joint sales and marketing processes drive speed and efficiency, allowing both marketing and sales to show up as thoughtfully coordinated. They can deliver a polished customer experience.

But it isn’t easy. Fifty-two percent of our respondents say that integrating technology in this manner is their top digital marketing challenge. (Altimeter 2020 State of Digital Marketing)

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Is your CEO pounding the table and demanding more results? Marketing is increasingly becoming the sales department’s strongest ally. And in many ways, we’re finding that CMOs can (and should be) the sales teams’ biggest champions.

To learn more about enabling CMOs and their marketing departments to super-charge sales, contact Hanif or David.

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Back to the Office: Reimagining the Workplace

Modern workplaces need some places that promote collaboration, and others that enable concentration.

After months of working from home, some businesses are eager to return to the office–and many remote employees can’t wait to get out of the house.

But as case numbers continue to surge, employers are moving deeper into pre-emptive planning. When will it be safe to go back to work, and when it is, what should offices look like? How should they function, especially with millions of people planning to continue to work remotely?

Workplaces used to be default destinations–a place we went just because we had a job. Now, as 42 percent of Americans continue to work at home, we have learned we don’t need to be in an office building to be productive. But the truth is, we all seek human connections, and many companies are aware that while the work is still getting done, leaders worry that employees are not as engaged or collaborative as they used to be – the jury is still out.

“The truth is, we all seek human connections, and many companies are aware that while the work is still getting done, leaders worry that employees are not as engaged or collaborative as they used to be

The design questions keep multiplying. First, there’s safety. How many people in an elevator? Are HVAC systems adequate? What about contact tracing? Fairness is also an issue: Can workspaces integrate and support digital workers and those who are physically in the building? And perhaps most importantly, there are concerns about adaptability, how do we design offices for a hybrid workforce that will use spaces in ways that continue to evolve and change?

As Prophet reconfigures our own workspaces, we’re taking into account a need- and desire- to be physically together, at least some of the time. And we’re using service design to zero in on the four major “use cases” that our new offices will need to support: connection, collaboration, concentration and culture. While these principles have always been a big part of our work lives and office design, they will be enabled in the workplace in different proportions now.

A more intentional design inverts the current allocation of space from productivity to collaboration. Besides potentially reducing square footage by 20 to 30 percent, it also requires that the office become a place that supports the work of both physically present and remote team members.

[Figure 1a & 1b:] A more intentional design would invert the current allocation of space from a “productivity” orientation to be more “collaboration” focused.

Flexibility is key to these plans. The question for all businesses isn’t so much who will work remotely and who won’t, but rather, when do team members need to be in an office and when will they be working from other locations.  The share of working days spent at home is expected to climb from 5 percent, pre-COVID, to 20 percent. Experts say employers should envision a world where people work remotely from one to three days per week. How can they work better when they are remote? And what “jobs to be done” should be supported on days when they choose to work from an office?

While offices must accommodate the activities of some specialists, the new space configuration must primarily work for an interdisciplinary workforce and support a wide variety of activities. Multi-functionality and flexibility will be important to feasibly and practically accommodate these four use cases.

Connection: Co-workers need each other

The need to connect goes beyond the transactional aspect of production and knowledge sharing – even the most intense introverts need to know they are part of a larger whole. We’re envisioning this space as informal, with cafes, kitchens and casual spots to catch up, as well as digital, with places to check-in and gather daily information.

[Figure 2:] Connection includes digital check-in capabilities, casual touch base areas and kitchen amenities.

Collaboration: Building better ideas

For many companies, the biggest emerging challenge in remote working has been in encouraging innovation. Like Netflix CEO Reed Hastings, some call working from home “a pure negative” when it comes to ideas and creativity. We have been employing effective ways to be creative with a more distributed workforce, but after canvassing our team we recognized a need for providing ways to work together in our offices.

We see the need for at least three types of space: traditional–but teleconference enabled–conference and teaming spaces, more fixed “studio” areas with workstations and equipment that doesn’t travel easily and work that benefits from collective interactions, and flexibly outfitted areas that can accommodate medium to large groups in easily re-staged, digitally supported environments with moveable equipment, furniture and fixtures.

[Figure 3a & 3b:] Collaboration spaces include digitally-enabled conference and team rooms, flexibly outfitted spaces for medium to large groups and more fixed studio areas with workstations that enable collective teamwork.

Concentration: Alone together

Perhaps one of the pandemic’s biggest take-aways is that not everyone can focus while at home, with working parents especially struggling. And even those in more collaborative roles still need a quiet space to write a memo or a phone booth for a conference call.

Quiet rooms for more individual “deep work” like copywriting or product design and development, are becoming a destination for those jobs requiring more solo work, more mental focus and concentration. But they still want to be close to others, creating more of an “alone together” feeling.

[Figure 4:] Concentration supports workstations and furnishings and lighting to enable deep thinking for solo practitioners.

Culture: This is who we are

Finally, shared spaces need to do something less easily defined. They should express what an organization stands for, accommodate its rituals and project its values. Again, flexibility is critical–how can these spaces make occasional large group interactions and events possible? How can they bring teams together–both in-person and virtual–in new ways to reflect a new way of working?

Ultimately, this piece of the puzzle may be the most important. The pandemic has taught us that “work is not a place;” and that the workplace can be so much more than a lobby, a desk and a conference room.

The spaces and functions of the workplace need to come together for a purpose–and with a purpose; representing and enabling what an organization stands for and believes.

[Figure 5:] Culture space includes flexible but well-equipped environments with fixed and movable equipment and furnishings that support external meetings and internal gatherings.

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Organizations must continue to envision their future by balancing the threat of rising case levels, the hope for vaccines and the genuine costs of remote worker burnout. But designing offices for a return to “normal” is not enough; we must challenge our default assumptions and build on what we’ve learned to reimagine the workspace. We believe that the best designs will accommodate hybrid office-based/distributed workforces–and they will also say something about who we are.

Is your organization thinking about how to return to the office and what that might look like for its employees? Reach out today to our team of innovation strategists and experienced designers.

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Report: Benchmarking Digital Maturity in B2B Companies

Discover the main drivers of digital transformation investments and initiatives for B2B companies, based on 170 interviews.

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B2B organizations have made drastic changes in response to COVID-19 – shifting to remote work, digitizing customer offerings and moving commerce online. Digitization planned to take years happened in months.

Based on conversations with 170 senior B2B transformation leaders and C-suite executives, this report reveals the main drivers of digital transformation investments and initiatives for B2B companies in 2020.

Here’s what you can expect to learn:

  • Substantial Operational Shifts Due to COVID-19
  • COVID-19 Exposed Significant Gaps in Digital Selling Capabilities
  • Marketing Transformation Continues Despite and Because of the Pandemic
  • Five Stages of Digital Transformation Maturity
  • Most Companies Continue Transformation Initiatives – Digitally Mature Are Accelerating
  • Application of Digital Tools Varies by Maturity Stage
  • Technology Priorities Reflect Level of Digital Transformation Maturity
  • Digital Transformation Sponsored Primarily by CIO/CTOs and CEOs

Download the full study to explore additional findings and examine detailed charts for each of the headlines provided above.

About the Authors

Fred Geyer and Joerg Niessing are co-authors of The Definitive Guide to B2B Digital Transformation, curators of B2BDigitalTransformation.com – an online resource center for B2B transformation leaders and facilitators of a monthly webinar series featuring senior B2B executives discussing the challenges of B2B digital transformation. For more information about the guide, the webinar series or to gain access to the online resources go to B2BDT.com. Fred is a Strategic Advisor at Prophet, a leading growth and transformation consultancy and Joerg is Senior Affiliate Professor of Marketing at INSEAD and director of INSEAD’s “B2B Marketing Strategies” and “Leading Digital Marketing” programs.

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A Modern Model for Organizational Transformation

It’s time to look deeper into your organization’s DNA, mind, body and soul.

Everyone acknowledges that orchestrating organizational change is a crucial component of successful business transformations, so why is it always the Achilles heel?

Digital Transformation

Many organizations have struggled to meet the challenges of the new millennium, where stakeholder and customer needs and demands have changed dramatically and new market entrants continually threaten disruption. Companies need to ask themselves the following:

  • “What would our organization look like if it had been designed in the last 10 or 20 years?”
  • “In what different ways might an organization like that create value?”
  • “What customers would it serve and how?”
  • “How might you work backwards from that vision to build a roadmap for bringing your digitally transformed organization to life, properly leveraging the assets and value they already have in hand?”

Customer-led Transformation

No matter how digital organizations become in the new millennium, it will still be humans who ultimately run the organization. Many organizations – some digitally native and some not – understand and treat their humans well. But we’ve also observed that some of those companies have lost track of some equally important humans outside of their organization: their customers! The products, services and experiences they are offering are frustrating the very people who will ultimately determine the survival of the business.

These organizations need to change dramatically to continue to have relevance in the marketplace. They need to inculcate a customer-centric mindset and identify if skills gaps are preventing them from creating more relevant products and experiences. They need to understand where and how their operating model might need to change to support the kinds of pivots and adaptations needed to reconnect with customers and other important stakeholders.

Prophet’s Human-Centered Transformation Model™

We view all organizations as a macrocosm of the individual: having a collective DNA, Body, Mind and a Soul. An organization’s culture needs to be understood as a holistic ecosystem and successful transformation today requires leaders to think about every aspect of this ecosystem.

DNA

The DNA is comprised of things that provide direction and tend to change infrequently. The elements that define the destination and direction of travel such as the corporate purpose, values, brand, strategy and employee value proposition.

Soul

It is the elements of the Soul which motivate employees to believe in the DNA. Those are the mindsets and the daily behaviors and ways of working those mindsets motivate; and it’s the stories and symbols that are used to signpost what an organization will and will not embrace.

Mind

The skills and capabilities of an organization’s talent are the Mind of the organization and when properly cared for and nurtured, enable goals to be achieved.

Body

The Body is how collective efforts can be directed. It’s the operating model and organizational design, and the governance, processes, systems, and tools which enable it to cohere.

We debuted this model in our 2019 research report titled Catalysts: The Cultural Levers of Transformation where we identified fundamentals and accelerators for cultural change and then in our 2020 follow-on report, Catalysts in Action: Applying the Cultural Levers of Transformation, we identified helpful pathways to initiate large-scale change based on primary organizational roadblocks.

“An organization’s culture needs to be understood as a holistic ecosystem and successful transformation today requires leaders to think about every aspect of this ecosystem.”

Why We Use the Model

Transformations frequently stumble on cultural roadblocks, which is best expressed in the time-honored truism attributed to legendary business theorist Peter Drucker: “Culture eats strategy for breakfast.”

We apply our Human-Centered Transformation Model™ as a lens for unpacking and refocusing the complexities of organizational and cultural dynamics into specific components that can be more easily digested, explored and understood.

We believe that our model’s holistic nature enables us to look clearly at all the interrelated elements that ultimately manifest in the experience of an organization’s culture. It ensures that our understanding is appropriately layered, helping us to make connections between the explicit and implicit elements that sometimes go undiscussed. Most importantly, it supports nuanced diagnoses of organizational challenges and helps us to design a clear roadmap for change, against which progress can be measured.

If you’d like to discuss your transformation, be it digital or customer-led, then our expert team can help. Contact us today. 

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The Human-Centered Transformation Model™ helps us think comprehensively about the vision for a digitally transformed organization, the skills and competencies it requires and how to design an operating model that will bring it to life. It helps us think comprehensively about increasing customer centricity, identifying the capabilities needed to create more relevant products and services and how to design an operating model that will enable increased focus on the marketplace. And our experience is that by failing to address the elements of the model holistically, the transformation will not be sustained, nor deliver the value anticipated.

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What Amazon Pharmacy Means for Organizations Looking for Post-COVID Growth Moves

This latest disruption is potentially enormous. It also exposes plenty of behavioral white spaces.

Amazon just announced its online pharmacy, news the healthcare world has long expected. And while much will be said about what Amazon Pharmacy means for the $1.2 trillion prescription drug business, we believe there’s something even bigger going on here. And it offers lessons to every company seeking growth in the post-COVID-19 world.

Amazon is proving once again that digital transformation isn’t just about technology. It’s about moving at “the speed of digital” and giving customers what they need. The e-commerce giant is merely acting on a template for growth that works in every industry and for every brand: When people begin to start moving through their lives differently, it creates upheaval, revealing new pockets of need. And the space between these changed behaviors offers abundant growth opportunities for every business willing to study them closely and act. We call these pockets of new opportunity behavioral white spaces.

Amazon’s timing offers an important lesson. This move has been brewing for years, even before its acquisition of PillPack in 2018. The company’s value proposition–getting people what they need, fast–made pharmacy an obvious extension. Who wouldn’t like to get routine prescriptions filled online, as quickly and seamlessly as every other Amazon Prime purchase?

But while it had been laying the groundwork for years, COVID-19 changed the way the world views healthcare. Consumers have always been eager for digital solutions to staying healthy and making their lives more convenient. The pandemic is clarifying, crystallizing and augmenting these new preferences, creating the perfect moment for Amazon’s launch.

Assessing the new playing field

Growth strategists should look beyond the inevitable “Amazon set to crush yet another industry” headlines. First, we are not sure it will prove to be true. Secondly, the news is more significant than that, highlighting an equal-opportunity growth moment. While there are multiple moves available, the best choices will differ depending on each company’s purpose and value proposition. Amazon is just following the universal rules of innovation and customer-centricity: What are the new customer needs, and how can we meet them in new and better ways?

There are many ways to win within today’s environment. Other companies have capitalized on the need for home care and the benefits and convenience of home delivery. Take Express Scripts Pharmacy as an example which relaunched its enhanced digital experience and consumer-centric brand earlier this summer. Unlike Amazon or new entrants in the pharmacy space, they’re building upon their deep clinical expertise, legacy in practicing pharmacy, ease and convenience of home delivery, coupled with 24/7 access to specially trained pharmacists.

“The space between these changed behaviors offers abundant growth opportunities for every business willing to study them closely and act.”

Express Scripts Pharmacy used key insights to understand that for many consumers, particularly those with multiple chronic conditions, pharmacist expertise matters more than convenience. And it’s worth pointing out that Americans have enormous trust and respect for their pharmacists, with Gallup reporting they are just behind nurses and doctors.

That’s just two players attacking the space from two different angles. There are certainly many other moves still available.

One way to analyze potential growth moves is to think about three different roles organizations can play as consumers continue to speed through these rapid changes in both needs and expectations. We like to use the “transformers, creators and invaders” framework when thinking about industry disruption. Healthcare provides some stellar examples.

Express Scripts Pharmacy is a transformer. It’s an example of a company reinventing itself and its offerings, using experience-first initiatives to reach its customers in new–and better–ways. Companies, like Teladoc, Oscar and Higi, are creators. And then there are invaders, like Amazon, moving from one category to another.

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Whether one’s ambition is to be a transformer, creator or invader, the lesson is the same: For enterprises prepared to meet the moment, dive into these behavioral white spaces and listen to consumers, the opportunities for uncommon growth are there for the taking.

Wondering what behavioral white spaces are opening up for your organization and how to map out the best growth opportunities in the post-pandemic world? Contact us today.

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Digital Transformation in Southeast Asia: Three Key Aspects that Accelerate Growth

Our research shows that optimism, commitment and ambition are powering major regional gains.

With the backdrop of the COVID-19 crisis, there is more pressure for digital transformation to accelerate in many organizations. In our latest global study, Altimeter, a Prophet company surveyed more than 600 key executives, including 100 in Southeast Asia (SEA) across Singapore, Indonesia and Vietnam, about how they are pursuing digital transformation and the impact of the pandemic.

Our study reveals interesting differences between digital transformation efforts and sentiment in Southeast Asia versus the rest of the world. (Download the full SEA report here)

There are three distinct aspects that made Southeast Asia companies’ digital transformation journey stand out.

1. Optimism: Accelerating Digital Transformation Amid COVID-19 Crisis

While the rest of the world is becoming more risk-averse amid the crisis, SEA expresses optimism about the future. In fact, a significantly higher number of companies have accelerated their digital transformation initiatives and are focused on growth.

Figure 1: Digital Transformation Initiatives Shifted Amidst COVID-19
“How have your digital transformation initiatives shifted because of the spread of COVID-19”

Similar to the rest of the world, SEA companies have seen or are anticipating drop-offs of revenue as a result of COVID-19; however, the impact is less significant. Thanks to the massive and quick preventive measures enacted by the government at an early stage, Vietnam is suffering the least financially during COVID-19. Specifically, 27 percent of respondents stated that they have seen no impact on revenue or don’t anticipate any future impact, followed by Indonesia (15%) and Singapore (13%)

Figure 2: The Impact of COVID-19 on Financial Performance
“What impact has COVID-19 had on your financial performance?”

Vietnam’s commitment to transform digitally had already started before the pandemic with the launch of the National Public Service Portal and Resolution for Industry 4.0. It accelerated during the COVID-19 outbreak when offline economic activities slowed down because of strong government policies. In June 2020, the country launched a National Digital Transformation Roadmap to further advance digital transformation around three key pillars i.e. e-government, e-economy and e-society. The Singapore government also launched similar initiatives offering subsidies and grants to help companies embark or accelerate its digital transformation programs.

“While the rest of the world is becoming more risk-averse amid the crisis, SEA expresses optimism about the future.”

2. Commitment: Focused Executive Sponsorship to Carry out Change

There is stronger executive sponsorship on digital transformation in SEA. Here, digital transformation is primarily driven by the CEO (30% in SEA vs. 25% in rest of the world), and twice as likely to be owned by the CDO (27% in SEA vs. 13% in rest of the world) or Board of Directors (14% in SEA vs. 6% in rest of the world).

Figure 3: Executive Sponsorship for Digital Transformation
“Which executive officially owns or sponsors the digital transformation initiative”

Leaders in SEA not only sponsor digital transformation in spirit, but understand its importance and follow through with frequent and visible support. Seventy-two percent of the executives in SEA see digital transformation as one of their top three business priorities. Thirty-four percent say digital transformation is constantly connected to higher business strategy and a top priority (vs. 23% in the rest of the world).

Figure 4: Nature of Executive Leadership
“Which of these statements best describes the nature of executive leadership in your organization”

With strong leadership, digital transformation is optimistically embraced throughout organizations in SEA. When asked about their sentiment towards digital transformation, SEA companies appear to be more optimistic across multiple aspects — stronger culture, engaged workforce and stronger prospects. Leadership’s confidence in digital transformation is stronger than other global countries, with 90 percent leadership support vs. 76 percent in the rest of the world.

Figure 5: Overall Sentiment Towards Digital Transformation
“Please indicate how much you agree with each of the following statements, from 1 (strongly disagree) to 5 (strongly agree), T2B%”

3. Ambition: Investing in Technologies to Drive Exponential Growth

Comprising some of the world’s fastest-growing markets, digital transformation in SEA is about efficient market expansion and customer acquisition supported by agile and flexible operations, innovation and technologies.

The SEA market is highly diverse in terms of language, culture and behavior. Digital transformation ensures that the technology and data are in place to better support operations (48% in SEA vs. 32% in rest of the world), and allow agility and flexibility to quickly capture opportunities (36% in SEA vs. 30% in the rest of the world). With a more positive market outlook, SEA companies are less concerned about ‘playing defense’ with initiatives like creating a culture to handle disruption (8% in SEA vs. 15% in the rest of the world).

Figure 6: Top Drivers of Digital Transformation
“What are the key drivers of digital transformation within your organization?”

Thanks to higher proliferation of mobile devices and more affordable networks, internet users in SEA had exceeded 300M by 2019. In order to meet the growing demand of this community, technology investments in SEA are more about connectivity and social & consumer platforms.

E-commerce and ride-hailing are the most promising sectors in SEA, supported by investments from China and U.S. tech giants e.g. Alibaba, Tencent, Didi and Amazon. Relevant technologies are receiving higher attention than the rest of the world. Forty percent of respondents selected IoT as their investment priority (vs. 29% in the rest of the world), 26 percent selected e-commerce platform (vs. 19% in the rest of world), and 21 percent selected AR/VR (vs. 14% in the rest of world).

Figure 7: Prioritized Technology Investments
“What are your top priorities for technology investments in 2020”

While global companies are still at the testing or infancy stage of using AI, it is increasingly implemented on a regular basis and adopted in SEA. The majority of the respondents are leveraging AI extensively in driving new products, business models and customer experiences, much higher than the global (29% in SEA vs. 19% in rest of the world).

Figure 8: Use of Artificial Intelligence Within Organization
“To what extent do you use artificial intelligence (including machine learning, computer vision, natural language process, robotics, or deep learning) within your organization”

One major source of momentum is the booming of fintech and digital banking, the biggest adopters who use AI technology to enable mobile payment and fast lending services.

From a country perspective, Singapore is taking a substantial lead in AI development and adoption, fuelled by investments from the government on both software and physical infrastructure e.g., joint-innovation on intelligent robots, increased data storage capacity, open data and open government platforms, as well as high-speed network and advanced IT security.  Other countries such as the Philippines, Malaysia, Vietnam and Indonesia are lagging, but gradually catching up.

However, SEA is still catching up on developing more modern tech infrastructure e.g. cloud and cybersecurity (see Figure 7).

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Regardless of financial challenges, COVID-19 has in fact presented more opportunities for companies in Southeast Asia to accelerate their digital transformation agendas. As the fourth largest trading and consuming region in the world, with one of the largest young and digitally savvy segments, companies in SEA should keep investing in building new digital capabilities and technologies to stay competitive, while conveying a strong strategic vision and executive leadership. Last but not least, it is important to increase efforts on modernizing IT infrastructure to catch up with other leading markets in the world.

Download the full PDF report, or get in touch to learn more about how to accelerate your digital transformation in SEA to drive uncommon growth.

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Reclaiming Interest: A Transformation Playbook for the Insurance Industry

Learn to transform your organization from the inside-out, adding the capabilities and talent needed right now.

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While insurance companies have made much progress in reinventing themselves for today’s customers, the results are clear: there’s still some way to go. As many turn their attention toward planning and formulating their strategies for the year ahead, this playbook from our Financial Services practice outlines the different levers to pull in order to speed up digital transformation efforts and customer experience initiatives.

In this playbook you will learn:

  • How insurers can transform their organizations from the inside out by effecting culture change and equipping the business with the right talent and capabilities to succeed in 2021.
  • How a customer-centric approach can help your business, how to get started and how to measure you efforts.
  • What the state of transformation is in the industry today and the reasons to hit the gas now.

Download the full report below.

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Five Healthcare Shifts: Pandemic Pressure Creates New Possibilities

As patients speed-race through their own digital epiphanies, they’re demanding consumer-centricity in healthcare.

Healthcare organizations have long acknowledged they’re digital slowpokes. Businesses aren’t likely to disrupt themselves until they have to. However, COVID-19 forced–and perhaps freed–them to accelerate change in ways they couldn’t have imagined.

And while much of the progress providers, payers and life-science companies have made in the pandemic’s early months is surprising, it also underscores problems we’ve been talking about for some time. With patients speed-racing through their own digital epiphanies, they’re demanding consumer-centricity in healthcare. And the more digital experiences become normalized–buying groceries online, taking app-based Spanish lessons or dressing up for Zoom weddings–the more they expect from healthcare.

“With patients speed-racing through their own digital epiphanies, they’re demanding consumer-centricity in healthcare.”

In 2019, Scott Davis and I published a book, Making the Healthcare Shift: The Transformation to Consumer-Centricity, and we think it’s more relevant than ever. Based on more than 70 in-depth interviews with healthcare executives at companies like Pfizer, Novartis and Eli Lilly & Company, Mayo Clinic, Anthem and Intermountain Healthcare, followed by a survey of 240 global healthcare leaders, it outlines the five most critical changes organizations need to make to keep pace with demanding consumers.

There are many ways the pandemic has accelerated the shift towards consumer-centricity. Virtual care is perhaps the most obvious example.

“We’ve done 400,000 virtual visits so far in 2020, up from approximately 20,000 visits last fiscal year,” says Nick Patel, M.D., Chief Digital Officer at Prisma Health, in a recent interview with Prophet. “I didn’t expect to hit numbers like that for many years.”

For Prisma, a nonprofit healthcare system in South Carolina, COVID-19 continues to accelerate digital transformation in dizzying ways. Patel says his teams are learning to use data differently, linking virtual visits to chatbot follow-ups, sending devices to patients’ homes and expanding in-office virtual health solutions. “I don’t think I ever thought I’d see that level of adoption in my lifetime.”

All five of these healthcare shifts are intensifying and organizations need to pay attention or risk business disruption from unexpected places:

First shift: From tactical fixes to a holistic experience strategy

Pre-COVID, healthcare organizations often started enhancing consumer experiences with one-off initiatives. But the pandemic has made it clear that experience strategy can’t just be based on location–the idea that treating people well only when they are on the premises falls apart in a virtual universe. Of course, it’s critical to make the physical experiences meaningful. People expect safe and respectful treatment. They want to see COVID-era innovations, like streamlined check-ins, minimal wait times and practical text messaging.

But attention to experience must extend far beyond the four walls of the provider’s office. It must encompass virtual-health offerings, accessible patient portals and mobile experiences that are at least as good as other non-healthcare brands.

Our book highlights how Geisinger Healthcare, Piedmont Healthcare and Intermountain Healthcare are making this shift by breaking their business models, writing manifestos and increasing investments.

Second shift: From fragmented care to connected ecosystems

Payers, providers, device and pharma companies had been making limited progress on their ability to collaborate, awkwardly stitching together fragments of the healthcare journey. But COVID’s destruction of the healthcare economy underscores just how inefficient their operating models are. U.S. hospital systems are drowning in losses of $323 billion this year. And provider compensation is under pressure, with 97 percent of medical practices reporting negative financial impact.

My prediction? I believe these losses will continue, illuminating the absurdity of healthcare operating models, with overcrowded hospitals losing more money than ever. And that will make organizations fight harder to transform toward value-based reimbursement.  This healthcare trend will become obvious to all as organizations continue to strike partnerships across the ecosystem that enable the success of these new reimbursement models. And from the current chaos, they will find their way to a business strategy that is more stable and orients financial incentives with the wellbeing of patients.

In our book, we illustrate how companies like MyFitnessPal, Zocdoc and Eli Lilly & Company are developing wrap-around solutions that embrace consumers all the time, not just when they’re in a provider’s office.

Third shift: From population-centric to person-centered

After years of talking about how data would lead to more personalized healthcare, the pandemic is finally bringing that data-driven healthcare trend and promise to life. With the increase in digital interactions, providers are getting closer to integrating personal preferences with primary research, behavioral data and clinical insights, producing a more holistic view of patients.

Increasingly, consumers are driving this healthcare shift. They recognize that it’s smart to give up their data–as long as they get something meaningful in return. An example we love: The Multiple Myeloma Research Foundation, devoted to finding a cure for cancer of the blood, partnered with Prophet to launch the MMRF “CureCloud.” Based on free at-home genomic testing, the digital dashboard displays personalized treatment options for myeloma patients, democratizing access to clinical insights. Customer research uncovered that the most important benefits to patients in a partner like MMRF is personalized communication and recommendations in exchange for their data–including insights they can bring to their providers for smarter care.

Our book looks at how companies like Medtronic Care Management Services are learning from personalization wizards like Spotify and Netflix, making sure people get content and messages just right for their condition.

Fourth Shift: From incremental improvements to pervasive innovation

We think the most beneficial byproduct of COVID-19 is that it has shown healthcare organizations how fast they can move and that they don’t need to settle for small tests and micro-progress.

As an example, Advocate Healthcare, a large Midwestern health system, used the approach of starting with a minimally viable product, or MVP, when introducing the radical idea of same-day scheduling. With the goal of improving both access and flexibility, it started with just one area–mammograms. “Call Today, Be Seen Today,” tripled the number of appointments made and increased awareness of its breast cancer efforts. More importantly, it showed the entire organization that this shift could be made and that it was well worth the effort.

A team from the Carle Illinois College of Medicine, a partnership between the University of Illinois and Carle Health, developed a prototype for a new ventilator in days, as did the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Gilead got FDA approval for Remdesivir in weeks. And accelerated trials have us holding out hope for effective vaccination in 18 months, not the usual four years.

One pharma exec put it to us this way: “If Dyson can pivot from making vacuum cleaners to ventilators in 10 days, we should be able to get an email campaign approved in less than 80.”

Business models are also flexing. Sales reps have lost physical access to providers, so the digital marketing healthcare trend is intensifying. Companies are stepping up their e-commerce offers, from medical devices to pharmaceuticals, targeting healthcare clients and consumers.

Our book examines the ways executives from companies like Teva Pharmaceuticals, Tonic Health and Boehringer Ingelheim are accelerating the corporate approach to innovation.

Fifth shift: From insights as a department to a culture of consumer obsession

With the world changing rapidly, tracking consumer preferences and expectations matters more than it did six months ago. Organizations are beginning to explore ways to build what we call Insights Operating System (IOS), to help organizations get to the right insights, drive the right decisions at the right time and win with the right consumers.

As enterprises pursue this new consumer-centricity healthcare trend, they have to stop relying on occasional research reports to shape their path forward. They must recognize that there are signposts to the future in every patient and customer interaction.

Our book looks at the ways companies like Novant Health and Amgen are striving to become constant listeners, so they can respond faster to emerging needs.

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Healthcare organizations should all be shifting toward this consumer-centricity. If you’d like help staying up to date with healthcare trends, building an Insights Operating System, elevating the innovation process or improving personalization efforts, contact Scott or Jeff today.

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How Digital Disruption Is Changing My Industry

Transformation has to challenge customer strategy, product innovation and the enterprise itself.

There is no doubt that “digital disruption” is the newest digital buzzword. Eight or nine years ago, we heard about “digital strategy” and then it shifted to “digital transformation,” but it seemed only a few industries were dipping their toes in the water. Industries like consumer goods, healthcare, media and travel made efforts to become more digital as their customer base became more tech-savvy. And many of these companies realized tangible business benefits by embracing emerging technologies.

Yet, for the most part, companies were slow to act in a significant way toward the development of digital strategies. There was a bit of a waiting game as companies stayed on the sidelines and watched who in their industry would “fail fast” first. Yes, some CIOs, CMOs and other early movers experimented or piloted shifts, but the potential of digital was a novelty in the boardroom – something that perhaps felt inevitable, but still unproven.

“Companies can no longer sit on the sidelines, waiting for the right time to pull the trigger on a digital strategy.”

Today, virtually all industries, including “old economy” ones such as aviation, chemicals, energy, logistics and manufacturing are not only being disrupted by digital, but forced into digital because of COVID-19. Companies can no longer sit on the sidelines, waiting for the right time to pull the trigger on a digital strategy.

The Digital Disruption

Digital disruption has become widespread, affecting every aspect of business from customer behavior and leadership behaviors to supply chains and marketing department organization. Specifically, we see massive, digital-driven breakthroughs happening across four fronts:

1. Consumers and consumer behavior

Organizing customer data, insights and analytics was listed as the third most important initiative for organizations undergoing digital transformation. Consumers across every demographic, geography and psychographic have become more digital, which has shifted both their expectations and behaviors. More and more offline or physical transactions are shifting online, so the available transactional and behavioral data is growing, building an ever-richer view of the customer. Given the shifts away from in-store shopping, it makes sense that “The 2020 State of Digital Transformation” report revealed retailers to be the most focused on increasing profitable growth from existing customers (36%) and better understanding the customer journey (33%).

2. Product and service innovation

Digital technology has made it possible for companies to rewrite the rules around value creation and drive changes in industry models. Clients across categories, including our client MMRF and AXA, have built deeper customer relationships with digital.

Value proposition principles have been redefined. Not only is what we make new, but so is how we make it, the speed at which we make it, and who we make it. As these elements change, so does the value they can create for the enterprise.

3. Major enterprise processes and capabilities

According to “The State of Digital Transformation” report, the overall top driver of digital transformation today, is to “Increase productivity to streamline operations.” Even for traditional “non-digital” businesses, we’re seeing processes across the enterprise — from marketing and manufacturing to human resources and the back office — become enabled, and even reimagined through technology. Automation frees up heads and hands for new tasks, but also requires new skills and culture building.

That said, while COVID-19 has caused the need for digital transformation, nearly half of respondents (41%) felt their organization’s digital transformations were handicapped due to budget cuts resulting from the pandemic. As businesses attempt to navigate the post-COVID market and world ahead, digital transformation should be at the forefront of their strategy. And how companies evolve their culture and capabilities around digital will be the difference between fast-movers and laggards.

How Industries Can Evolve With a Sound Digital Transformation Strategy

Digital transformation has never been more urgent for businesses.. There are higher expectations from customers, employees and the market. Companies today must have a broader set of solutions that will set them on the path to growth.

A successful digital transformation strategy will help a business become what we call an ‘Evolved Enterprise.’ An Evolved Enterprise possesses a wide and deep view of its customer, reframes a broader ambition and then uses digital to transform key pillars of its business – resulting in faster growth, better performance, larger impact and higher valuation.

 A Digital Transformation Strategy Should Focus on These Three Functional Areas:

1. Strategic marketing and customer strategy

Employ digital technologies to enhance the way you build and manage your brand, develop data-driven decision-making and engage your customers.

2. Product and service innovation

Harness digital technologies to develop transformative customer experiences and new products and services (or reimagine existing ones) that will fuel new growth.

3. The enterprise itself

Design new revenue models, create new ecosystems with partners, employ agile and effective processes, and build the culture and capabilities needed to deliver growth in this new era. Transformation on the outside requires evolution on the inside. Altimeter’s 2020 report covers many of these talent and skillset challenges.

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These are exciting times. It takes courage and ambition to design a digital transformation strategy with the aim of creating a breakthrough for the customer and your brand. But disruption is not the enemy or the threat. It’s a reality to embrace in order to survive and thrive.

Is it time for your company to get off the sideline and transform digitally? Contact Prophet to learn how we can help your organization develop a successful digital transformation strategy.

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7 Steps to Building a Digital Marketing Strategy

Understanding your target and setting goals are important. So is clarifying what you need to get there.

Digital has become increasingly integrated into who an organization is, what it does and how it grows. As a result, a digital transformation strategy becomes more interwoven in a company’s marketing approach. However, even in these digital times, it would be a mistake to not also plan for digital as its own separate entity.

While all marketing has a digital layer, all-digital encompasses more than just what’s apparent in traditional marketing. For this reason, we’ve put together a complete guide to building a powerful digital marketing strategy in 2020. We’ll cover what digital marketing is, its key elements and how to get started.

What is Digital Marketing Strategy?

Digital marketing strategy defines how a company can achieve its business objectives using digital channels, platforms and thinking. It asserts clear targets, prioritizes audiences, recognizes customer needs and behaviors, and details channel use and platform requirements. Put simply, it sets out how you plan and use digital to remain relentlessly relevant.

“All-digital encompasses more than just what’s apparent in traditional marketing.”

Intersections of digital marketing exist not only within branding and CRM but also in user experience (UX), customer experience (CX) and customer care as well:

  • Artificial Intelligence (AI) and the Internet of Things (IoT) embed the brand into our product experience.
  • Content strategy includes not only traditional marketing assets, but all content that can be levers for growth.
  • Digital innovation is creating new services, products and experiences – things actually worth marketing.

How to Create an Effective Digital Marketing Strategy

In our work with clients across industries and markets, we’ve identified the seven steps needed to form a modern digital marketing strategy.

1. Determine the Potential

The status quo has changed and digital is imperative to be current, competitive and attractive in the market. On which channels are your customers engaging with you? What are your competitors doing to be transformative in digital? How discoverable is your brand and how many inbound leads have been converted to sales? If you don’t know, you’re probably already behind.

2. Define the Role of Digital Marketing

How does digital marketing contribute to the business? This shouldn’t be a laundry list of marketing objectives, but instead a deliberate vision and series of intentional choices that indicates what digital marketing can and should do for the organization.

Ensure that you recognize the relationship digital marketing has with related elements in your ecosystem, which often include: brand, data, marketing, content, CX, UX, CRM, support/customer care, product innovation and media. By simply writing out what is at stake and which opportunities are available, you can quickly clarify your focus. Based on this assessment, you can then develop key performance indicators (KPIs) that clearly communicate to your executive team how digital is impacting the business.

3. Understand Your Target Audiences

Create robust digital profiles (what they want, how they behave, how to engage with them and with whom else they interact), map the customer journey in detail and identify value exchanges all along with it. These profiles often start with traditional segmentation, but you need to go steps further to recognize behaviors, interactions and content, functionality and experience needs.

With many clients, especially in B2B, digital profiles aren’t necessarily built around precisely who the customers are, but rather which objectives the target audience is trying to solve. Goals versus roles. Doing this early on keeps you cognizant of customer needs and allows you to match your objectives to meet them.

4. Take a Multi-Channel Approach

Create a modern channel strategy by taking advantage of and activating key channels like search, web, social and email. Specific platforms and touchpoints may beg for unique ‘channel charters’, identify how to best use them for the brand and the business, and what’s needed internally to pull it off.

  • View social as a sales driver, not just a media or customer care channel. How can social be used to meet your business objectives?
  • Be clear about search. Can incorporating organic or paid search engine optimization (SEO) help build brand credibility, drive web traffic or fend off competitors?
  • Think fresh about web. Is your website positioned to attract, obtain and convert leads?
  • Do you nurture former, existing or potential clients effectively using email or marketing automation platforms.

5. Identify the Resources Needed

Use all of the information charted above to determine what you need to execute against this strategy – include headcount, budget and your marketing technology system (platforms, APIs, services and data integration points). As Mayur Gupta of Spotify said, “Technology is the interface of marketing” and “the pipes connecting the different pieces together.”

Governance is crucial – build guidelines and playbooks for people (roles, responsibilities and skills), processes and tools. Many companies don’t pay enough attention to governance, yet it’s needed so people know their role and how they contribute to the success of the program. Plus, if you’re a global or complex organization, you’ll need to establish “market types” to help local leaders see where they are and understand what’s needed to grow in a new direction.

6. Create a Roadmap for Execution

Organize and prioritize initiatives into a roadmap that takes you from strategy to execution, even if it’s paced and phased over six, twelve and 24 months. Don’t be too slow or too cautious, don’t wait for annual planning cycles; be ready and agile with alternative scenarios available. Organizational digital transformation may take time, but marketing should be the nimblest driver and ready to act on available opportunities.

7. Support Your Digital Transformation Strategy

Identify how digital marketing can go beyond doing its day job efficiently and act as a powerful lever in this new era of digital transformation. It could be by using creativity in storytelling, innovating digital services or allowing the customer voice to influence media spend, uncover engagement opportunities and discover new audiences. Embracing digital in your marketing function can serve as a catalyst internally, as your culture becomes more comfortable and emboldened by the opportunities of digital transformation.

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Constructing a digital marketing strategy that includes all seven of these components will allow your digital team—and the executive suite—to have a clear understanding of how digital can impact your business, plans for how to best do so and appropriate measures in place to benchmark and assess the effectiveness of your efforts.

If digital is a priority in your organization, as it should be, you’re likely going to need some experts in strategy and execution to assist with creating your digital strategy, identifying opportunities for digital disruption or driving digital transformation in your organization.

Contact our team and learn how we can help jumpstart your digital transformation journey.

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