Despite Greater Access To Marketing Technology – Businesses Still Struggle With Digital Readiness

A new study released by Wunderma in partnership with Penn Schoen Berland, finds that despite having access to more innovative marketing tools and systems than ever, 68% of global senior business decision makers (BDMs), are still struggling to bring their data, creative and technology together. Wunderman has introduced Future Ready as a call to action for business and marketing leaders to act now in order to prepare their businesses for the future.

The survey, which was completed by 250 senior executives from global brands, 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. 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.

Other key findings from global BDMs include:

•     While 99% of global BDMs believe data is critical to achieve success, 62% are unable to turn data into insights or action.
•     68% of companies can’t change their creative based on insights from their data.
•     73% say their companies are siloed and 89% of those believe these silos impact their ability to deliver cohesive messaging.
•     59% 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:

•     Set Up to Win (Performance): Clear KPIs, business outcomes and a process for tracking and measuring results.
•     Align and Conquer (Clarity): A unified vision for an organization’s goals and the roles each person, team and discipline plays.
•     Adapt and Fail (Speed): Ability to deliver real time information and act ahead of changing consumer and marketplace needs.
•     Insight Drives Experience (Transparency): Consistent access to high quality data, business performance information and insights across divisions.
•     Be Disruption Proof (Transformation): Ability to adapt structures, processes and creative capabilities to address new opportunities.

“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,” explains Jamie Gutfreund, Wunderman’s Global CMO. “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.”