It’s a Renaissance Age of digital technology, yet despite having access to more innovative communications tools and systems than ever, new research from global digital agency Wunderman finds that 68 percent of global senior business decision makers (BDMs) are still struggling to bring their data, creative and technology together.
The firm’s recent survey of 250 senior executives from global brands, in partnership with Penn Schoen Berland, found a wide gap between companies’ abilities to identify the many challenges of digital transformation and their capacity to adopt and benefit from technology and creative investments in their sales and marketing. Their new initiative, Future Ready, is a call to action for business and marketing leaders to act now in order to prepare their businesses for the future.
The leading cause of this disconnect is the inability felt by executives at these large enterprises to sacrifice short-term gains to achieve long-term benefits. Wunderman believes that to become Future Ready, companies must stop reacting to change, and start inciting it.
“While many brands have invested heavily in technology to improve their business outcomes, few have shown the ability to use these new assets for true competitive advantage,” said Jamie Gutfreund, Wunderman’s global CMO, in a news release. “The time has come for leaders to face the reality that if they don’t have an effective means of activating their digital assets to benefit and motivate consumers, they will be left behind.”
Other key findings from the survey include:
- While 99 percent of global BDMs believe data is critical to achieve success, 62 percent are unable to turn data into insights or action.
- 68 percent of companies can’t change their creative based on insights from their data.
- 73 percent say their companies are siloed and 89 percent of those believe these silos impact their ability to deliver cohesive messaging.
- 59 percent of executives surveyed remain dissatisfied with their current marketing investments.
Wunderman has identified these five key steps for brands to take in order to realize the benefits of true digital transformation:
Performance
Set Up to Win: Clear KPIs, business outcomes and a process for tracking and measuring results.
Clarity
Align and Conquer: A unified vision for an organization’s goals and the roles each person, team and discipline plays.
Speed
Adapt and Fail: Ability to deliver real time information and act ahead of changing consumer and marketplace needs.
Transparency
Insight Drives Experience: Consistent access to high quality data, business performance information and insights across divisions.
Transformation
Be Disruption Proof: Ability to adapt structures, processes and creative capabilities to address new opportunities.
