by: Christine Penchuk, Search Strategy Marketing (Excerpt)

If you’re a CMO or another type of marketing professional and clicked on the link to this blog, chances are good that you are, or seek to be, a change agent in your company. You see the need for digital business transformation in your company and recognize the importance of embracing the digital customer. What you need now are tools to become a driver for the change in your company. You’ve come to the right place at the right time.

Welcome to an introduction to digital transformation.

Groundbreaking research from Altimeter, a Prophet Company, has defined the six stages of digital transformation. And as a HubSpot agency, this is what we do for companies on a day-to-day basis. This brief introduction will help you determine where in this journey your company resides and give you ideas and tools on how to move ahead as a change agent. Study authors Brian Solis and Jaimy Szymanski note, “We live in an era of ‘Digital Darwinism,’ where society and technology evolve faster than the ability to adapt.” Disruptive technologies are affecting market dynamics and how businesses must respond to them. Instead of throwing up their hands and entrenching themselves in the old ways of doing business, Solis and Szymanski offer hope and a pathway for businesses to adapt to these constant changes through digital transformation.

They define digital transformation as: “The realignment of, or new investment in technology, business models, and processes to drive new value for customers and employees to effectively compete in an ever-changing digital economy.”

They have learned that digital transformation does not follow a single path. Rather it must evolve through a company’s own values and practices. Still, the transformations they have seen through a wide array of industries and institutions fall within six stages, though each transformation seems to shift in and out of stages, sometimes even divisions within a company passing through different stages at the same time in the process.

They define the six stages as:

1. Business as Usual: Customer operations maintain the status quo.

2. Present and Active: New technology sparks imagination and experimentation.

3. Formalized: A sense of urgency accelerates change.

4. Strategic: The strive for relevance accelerates, and companies formulate strategic approach to change.

5. Converged: Transformation is in the DNA as companies officially converge in their approach.

6. Innovative and Adaptive: Culture of innovation becomes a company’s top priority.

Change in People, Not Just Technology

While technology is the keystone to digital transformation, it’s more about a transformation of the corporate mindset, which must be driven by a clear purpose, vision and motivated people.

Solis and Szymanski focus the emphasis of digital transformation on the following elements in the organization:

• Governance and Leadership

• People and Operations

• Customer Experience

• Data and Analytics

• Technology Integration

• Digital Literacy

They also note that digital transformation is a journey, not a destination. Wherever your company finds itself along the journey, the important point it to map a course to take you further along the journey. Depending upon the size and scope of your company, this could take many different routes, even different routes and paces within divisions of the company. Finding change agents within various divisions and in the corporate office is going to make this a smoother journey for your company. Of course, by the time your company has reached stage 6, the transformation will have taken place across each division and all will be working in concert to ensure the company remains on the journey and lives the digital transformation.