Easing your company into digital transformation shouldn’t be met with trepidation, but laying the groundwork can make it a lot easier. Your team will be more ready to embrace change if change is an expectation.
I’ve mentioned before business growth and change in organisations are both inevitable and that while change is happening, you’ll need to stay ahead of the technology disruption. How can you do this? It’s creating an empowerment within your team and create an agile company culture. The chief marketing officer (CMO) should lead this.
The CMO leads a company’s digital transformation 34 percent of the time, according to new research.
This is more often than other C-suite positions. It might surprise some to learn of this development—conventional thinking has always named chief information officers (CIOs) and chief technology officers (CTOs) as the leaders.
In my experience, though, it makes sense to put the CMO in charge of change. Here are a few reasons why:
The customer drives digital transformation, and the CMO is responsible for the customer.
The CMO’s role in customer management takes on digital and technological aspects.
CMOs can help shed light on the types of technology that will attract and retain customers.
In their new roles as both customer relations managers and leaders of digital transformation, CMOs can work with other C-suite positions to make sure that everyone is on the same page about new initiatives and innovations.
One of the CMO’s major priorities has always been customer loyalty and retention.
When the CMO combines a long-view understanding of the organization’s customers and other external stakeholders with an intricate understanding of the new technologies that can help meet customer demands, the result is a win-win situation for customers and the company.
The most successful business leaders in today’s market have this in common: When disruptions happen, they are ready.
Business agility in the most successfully integrated companies begins with the executive band of a company, and the CMO should and can, lead the charge. It’s a shift in corporate thinking for many CMOs to consider themselves the guardians and leaders of digital transformation, but it’s a shift worth making.
For organizations to be truly competitive in today’s marketplace, a CMO’s perspective may be just what’s needed to guide the organization through digital change.