Traditional thinking may translate to perceived limitations in a company’s infrastructure, personnel, speed, and legacy. This can be underscored in the way they view opportunities to accelerate their business through digital technology.
There is another way to think about this.
Digital can be like clay. Fully adaptable to the nuances of your company.
If you think back 5–10 years ago, the decision makers of installing technology were confined to the IT department. Harvard Business Review had a great point in a recent article re: digital disruption:
“Digital technology is no longer in the cordoned-off domain of IT; it is being applied to almost every part of a company’s value chain”
The author further points out how it’s easy to rationalize how managers may struggle to grasp what digital transformation actually means for them and what opportunities to pursue and prioritize.
One of the misconceptions may be that executives and managers expect the implementation of digital technology to come with a massive disruption of their business. The research concluded by HBS suggests for the vast majority of companies, digital change means something very different from outright disruption, in which the old ways are replaced 1:1 by the new.
Instead of replacement, incremental steps to deliver a common core objective can accomplish the common goal.
Let’s think about when the internet was first introduced as a viable commercial platform for brands in the early 2000’s. Internet advertising didn’t replace TV or print ads, it just became a vehicle that allowed brands for the first time to interact with their consumer. As time spent in the medium grew ad dollars followed. Today the internet co-exists with all other media.
Turn to the world of marketing automation In reality, it’s not disruptive when applied, if framed in the context of using digital tools to better serve enterprise common needs in applying marketing strategy.
At Eulerity, we do business with all types of multi-location businesses trying to market locally.
With a common objective to grow market share, the way to solve this objective can be dependent on subjective opinions from vendor to vendor. Through the use of marketing automation that relies on AI and more modernized systematic marketing systems, the answers lies in the data. Theories and opinions can be highly valuable in important parts of the marketing chain; less valuable to drive systemic and repeatable market share gains.
Next time you think about applying a new system using digital technology to replace a previous manual system — think about the following steps:
1 — How many hours am I using in the day to support my team, franchisee’s, business stakeholders? Is there a more efficient way to do this?
2 — Is my current system vulnerable to more efficient methods being used by my competitors?
3 — Are my decisions rooted in data or gut? Is my market share growth fueled by the opportunities that data presents?
4 — What’s the worst thing that can happen if I applied automation to my marketing practice to support my key stakeholders? What’s the best thing that can happen?
If the core thinking moves from “just too much disruption” to “let me take incremental steps in applying technology incrementally” — new growth awaits not just in market share, but in your organization.
These are exciting times.
Adam Chandler
