
- Laying a digital foundation requires the acquisition of commerce technologies and their integration to core applications to establish the right foundation, and be in a position to move information across a company’s expanded ecosystem with speed. ERP, CRM and business intelligence (BI) applications will play core roles in the ecosystem along with other adjacent technologies.
- The focus must be on the reinvention of core processes that are digitally enabled across these core systems. This becomes the foundation upon which all other technologies will be launched.
- Research shows 60-90 percent of buyers start their product search online, and search engines further dictate that this content must be differentiating for optimal SEO.
- Content now goes well beyond product-only information and must incorporate social content such as ratings and reviews, questions and answers, access to product experts, etc. For organizations with large SKU counts, it is imperative that the program to acquire content be phased and multi-faceted so as to not inhibit the speed of digital deployments.
- Investing in marketing is the third mandatory key component. In Phase I, the balance of the investment not spent on technology and content primarily should be allocated to marketing and digital resource development. In subsequent phases, technology and content investments may be reduced but investments in marketing will likely rise.
- Along with typical digital marketing investments, don’t overlook marketing and operational programs required to drive adoption. Continuous improvements must be intentionally sought out to achieve results that align with the goals driving the metric based returns established by an organization. Planning ahead to rapidly overcome objections to internal and external adoption as they arise will help companies gain momentum and drive success.
