CMOs: championing the customer perspective during digital transformation

As an effective CMO, you know your customer – their needs, their perceptions of your organisation, where they will be in a year, and why they might choose your competitor. You are the glue between your organisation’s plans for growth and your ability to achieve that growth. This is why it’s critical for CMOs to play a central role during a digital transformation initiative, ensuring that the customer perspective is a key driver. 

VShift has led successful digital transformations in healthcare, financial services and other complex regulated industries that deliver customer-centred experiences and generate revenue growth and competitive market share. The common factor? A change-agent CMO: a leader who understands that successful transformations have marketing deeply involved in the process of adopting technology solutions that benefit the customer.

Here are four principles we focus on to maintain a customer-focused digital transformation:

Keep customer benefits central

In our experience, digital transformations work best when the customer experience is prioritised, and no one can champion the customer like the CMO. Why? Because CMOs own the customer experience, drive awareness, and manage brand perception to drive growth. We have found that when digital transformations are internally led and IT-focused, they tend to fail because they lack market focus and tangible customer benefits. But, when you give customer measures such as CSAT, engagement, conversions, loyalty and lifetime value, the same weight as technology and efficiency measures, everyone wins – from operations, IT, sales and marketing to the very customer you are serving with these initiatives.

Expect a leadership role on the digital transformation governance team

Don’t let yourself or your constituents be sidelined – you need a seat at the table equal in weight to technology, operations and risk. Your digital transformation goals will be set by this leadership team. If consumer benefits and marketing needs aren’t articulated from the start, your initiative won’t benefit your customers down the road.

In addition, as CMO, you have the skills in communication, engagement and raising awareness that the initiative will require to maintain momentum. Take on the responsibility for selling this initiative, listen to your internal stakeholders and communicate with them to retain their commitment.

Don’t lose the keys to the technology

The technology you use to interact with customers is likely to be reconsidered during a transformation initiative. Success in your role depends heavily on having the right technology tools and operating model in place, so make sure you can heavily influence its selection:

• Understand how any proposed technology will impact ability to operate and innovate
• Build in marketing and customer requirements for the future digital platform, such as time-to-market, implementation and operational costs, the ability to choose partners and access to customer data
• Learn about “composable”, “headless” and “decoupled” technologies that are less expensive, faster, flexible and give you more control so you can accelerate the pace of innovation and launch new initiatives when market opportunities arise

Don’t boil the ocean

Digital transformations frequently fail because they take too long. Stakeholders lose enthusiasm and clarity on why these transformations are important and stop caring. CMOs can help retain and generate excitement by showing early, tangible evidence of success.

“Collaboration and customer focus play a huge role in transformation success. Current operations are usually built on a lot of rigid systems, but the CMO can galvanise digital transformation efforts by aligning stakeholders and keeping them focused on the customer experience.” – Riham El-Lakany, enterprise-scale financial and healthcare CMO

One approach that has worked well for our clients is to run a “beacon” project. Look for a modest-sized project that demonstrates all the attributes of the future-state you will gain through this transformation. Your beacon should address a business problem, improve the user experience and show off the outcomes your organisation will gain. Keep the timeframe short, and ensure you have a strong internal champion – a leader who is passionate about your digital transformation and can articulate its benefits to the customer.

“Collaboration and customer focus play a huge role in transformation success. Current operations are usually built on a lot of rigid systems, but the CMO can galvanize digital transformation efforts by aligning stakeholders and keeping them focused on the customer experience,” said Riham El-Lakany, who has served as CMO for multiple enterprise-scale organizations in the financial and healthcare industries. “By refocusing on what your market needs, you can simplify complexity and motivate internal functions to streamline for the benefit of the customer.”

CMOs have a huge stake in digital transformations

Customers and their needs are what drive an organisation to modernise their technology and improve their customer journey – no one knows this more than the CMO. Digital transformation is necessary for organisations to evolve, improve their customer experience and build brand loyalty. At VShift, we have found that CMOs who advocate for their customers, collaborate with department heads and bring stakeholders into alignment are the key to successful digital transformations – ones that provide innovative and loyalty-building experiences benefitting their customers.

To learn more about driving corporate growth through digital transformation please visit us at www.vshift.com/campaigns/digital-transformation.

By Al Collins, Founder and CEO, VShift