In the last year I have learned that there is one thing you can rely on ‘Down Under’ and that’s good humoured Aussie optimism, resilience, and a determination to make progress which has been humbling.
Like many leaders and consultants, I am watching (both) business and consumer confidence indices with interest and as we move into ‘new normal’, whatever that means, we can certainly see some encouraging data; though the position remains fragile (See: Westpac and ANZ-Roy Morgan).
There is no shortage of research highlighting the seismic shifts in consumer behaviours that COVID has catalysed and which will continue to help focus the attention of Australian business leaders in respect of the priority for digital channels and importance of customer experience more broadly.
There are also some notable and recurrent themes in Martech industry surveys globally, and in the APAC region specifically, which leave me confident that DMPG are a top choice for any Australian business that are looking to combat the top ranked data management challenges¹ and data analysis & optimisation challenges² – It’s what we do extremely well.
One recent data point that I found interesting was the proportion of marketers who stated that they are ‘very confident in the accuracy of their data’. More than the number itself was the disconnect which emerged when comparing marketing execs VS director or lower positions; 54% vs 30% respectively.
The delta suggests that the view from the top of the organisation may be disconnected from the reality on the ground which is consistent with what I have seen to date in the majority of cases. ‘Accurate, validated data’ was ranked as the number 1 factor critical for success which is good news given that it is an area where we love to get stuck in – looking at valuable insight gems and hunting for data collection issues to fix or valuable problems to solve.
Leaders in Australia want a rounded view, and this is where I am keen to emphasise our technology agnostic position; our only agenda is delivering optimal customer experiences and business value. We are experienced, pragmatic and flexible and we quickly become an invaluable extension of client teams meaning capability can be created quickly.
One of our service offerings which I expect to draw particular interest is the ‘capability audit’ wherein we help clients assess their current state/future state across key items such as (People/Data/Tech/Process) and make recommendations for quickly growing maturity. This deliverable provides a strong footing from which executives can affect change, drive value and it also helps make roadmaps more resilient to people movements/turnover.
For those elite few who are already delivering awesome experiences then the challenges often become scaling & automation else ‘clearing a rising bar’; a bar which is set according to whom you are being compared with – i.e. your customer’s best experience to date – from any sector.
We work very closely with a selection of leading vendors to extend and help evolve their platform offerings and this enables us to help push the boundaries of what’s possible not least in relation to automation and chasing diminishing returns. A great example of this is one of our recent solutions which is being spun out as a stand alone product for Adobe analytics/target customers – we will be releasing more details on this the coming weeks.
Digital transformation is an area where Australian businesses, in both the private and public sectors, have been struggling to realise value for years³ and it is an area that we can support uniquely by bringing our data smarts and experience to bear.
For any sizable undertaking, we typically advocate starting with a vision and executive sponsor to create a mandate for change, a clear view of business fundamentals before prioritising the problems to solve for and help evangelise the wins.
We advise clients to create a dynamic customer centric strategy which can flex to meet evolving consumer expectations. Top priority should be given to data quality with disparate sources being federated behind an API-first architecture.
A critical and often overlooked element is how to nurture a data driven culture which we find takes a real commitment to align and educate people, provide governance and rewards and ways of working that embeds data in decisioning processes.
The final element, which is key to sustaining the journey, is to quantify impact – The finance team/person should be your friend and sign off on the methodology by which returns and clearly linked to investments.
I believe big consultancies in Australia have been getting away with charging too much and delivering too little in digital for too long. We are going to work to challenge this by helping to deliver the next generation of capability, which we are currently working with clients in the UK and USA on: Customer data platform (CDP) deployment.
Footnotes
¹ [1] Data accuracy [2] Ability to connect & unify data from multiple sources [3] data accessibility
² [1] Ability to share, collaborate on data analysis across key internal/external stakeholders [2] Connecting marketing investments/activities to business outcomes [3] Using insights to engage audiences with the right content or offers.
Source: Salesforce – Marketing Intelligence Report Asia Pacific
³ ‘Banks can’t do tech transformations’’
³ “Report: Data blindspots leading to digital and customer transformation failure”
³ “Australian companies have failed to digitally scale: Gartner”