Understand The Need For Digital Transformation Funding

Expectation for great digital experiences is really not the issue but it can be buy-in and execution

Expectation for great digital experiences is really not the issue but it can be buy-in and execution. B2B marketers and their IT colleagues understand something needs to change in the result of increasing digital aspirations but often have many internal barriers to do it. Digital Transformation Funding

Episerver surveyed 700 worldwide B2B decision-makers and gave insights into what experts need to do today, tomorrow and in the long term to solve the disparity in customer center between what their clients want and what they actually achieve.

Today’s Digital Experience Digital Transformation Funding

A high proportion of marketers and technology experts say their website provides outstanding customer experience and follows good practices in the industry. Based on Episerver’s research, 86% of the experts surveyed said they produce industry-leading websites, and 84% said they deliver great online customer experiences.

However, that trust overturns when marketers and technology professionals are questioned about their internal weaknesses. In particular, marketing experts were more common compared to their websites to offer a lack of quality digital experience for users, stakeholders and sales team than their IT colleagues.

Marketing experts call internal culture as weakness, much more than their IT peers.

• 6% of marketers accept or fully agree that cultural resistance to digital technology adoption occurs.
• 40% of technology experts disagree or totally disagree that cultural resistance to digital technology adoption occurs.

Marketers think they lack funding to push the digital transformation while technical experts disagreed.

• 60% of marketers agreed that senior executive funding for digital transformation projects is lacking.
• 48% of technology experts disagree or strongly disagree with the lack of senior management funding to carry out digital transformation projects.

Marketers say they’re delivering poor digital experiences, technical experts disagreed.

• 54% of marketers agreed to provide their customers, partners and sales team with a poor digital experience.
• 56% of technology experts disagree or strongly disagree with providing their clients, stakeholders and sales team with a poor digital experience. 

Tomorrow’s Digital experience

The marketing and technology experts were worried about many sectors when asked about external risk to their organization. Nearly 50 % of respondents strongly agreed that the following risks would be suffered in the next three years from new digital startups to rising costs:

• New digitally native startups.
• Rising expense to attract new clients.
• Platform confrontation will inhibit them from the online sale.
• Rising digital experiences of our clients or stakeholders.
• Being outspend on digital technologies by our competitors.

All marketing and technology experts agreed the rising digital customers’ expectations and stakeholders as risks. It proves shifting customers’ expectations for digital tools is a key problem for marketing and IT professionals. Competitors may develop and expense will also increase, but digital expectations of clients and stakeholders will constantly improve and develop that tend to be most threatening to these groups.

Marketers were highly sensitive to being overtopped by competitors (71% agreed / strongly agreed) and faced with digitally native startups interrupting their sector (69% agreed / strongly agreed). Technical experts were more neutral or dissatisfied with these risks, but still recognized them to be true. 

Digital Experience In The Future 

How are marketers and their IT peers going to react to these risks? Increasing client experience, supplying their sales teams with digital tools and selling directly to end-users are the greatest chances in the next 3 years.

When they are questioned about “What are the most important chances for your company within the next three years?” marketing and technology professionals concurred:

• Increased online customer experience (17%)
• Supplying digital tools to their sales team (13%)
• Direct sales to online clients are main concerns (13%)

Both digital marketers and technical experts have slightly distinct secondary and tertiary objectives within their peers.

Approximately 57% of technical experts said enhancing online client experience was one of three top chances; this is a general status for all IT leaders.

Marketing experts are wanting to take a more practical approach with some marketing experts reporting that reducing seller complexity (28%), efficiently selling online to new markets (27%) and providing personalized experiences (26%) were top three objectives. These opportunities brought more marketer reactions than technologists.

Comparison with marketing professionals, the technologists have stood out in three other sectors. Nearly 19 percent of technologists said moving from on-premise to cloud-based technologies was a top-three chance (compared to 9 percent). Technologists were also optimistic about expansion into new geographic areas (30% vs. 23%) and 26% of technologists said centralizing and analyzing client data was a top-three chance (compared to 18% of marketers).

Compared to 49% of marketers, 59% of technology experts said web analytics was the highest ranked likely investment.

Compared to just 29% of technicians, email marketing systems took a bigger proportion of the top three likely marketing professionals investments (47%).

The E-commerce platforms were a top three primary concern, agreed by both marketing and technology experts.

Many marketers think that AI is more able to change human labor in marketing functions in 2022 than IT peers.

While over 50% of all survey participants said they agreed or strongly agreed that AI will be used to remove human labor, marketing experts were more likely to think that AI would replace human labor; 68% either agreed or strongly agreed that AI would substitute human labor in the marketing sector. Compare that to 59 percent of technicians who agree or strongly agree that AI will replace human labor.

Professionals in marketing may already see the use of AI technology substitute more daily tasks in their jobs than technicians. Or perhaps technical experts are more suspicious about the AI’s potential to remove a human labor than marketing. Or the other way, there is widespread agreement that AI will be used to change employees in the next few years.

Purposes of AI are predominantly agreed that AI will be used to discover new leads, customize experiences, communicate with consumers, make better decisions and strengthen product development.

With the right decisions and strategy and the digital transformation view of each department will be a rewarding journey that makes an organization develop better.

Source: Smart Insight