Almost half of all businesses could be falling behind in an increasingly digital world, according to a new report which claims this “go slow” is having a serious impact on brands’ data strategies, including the quest to build a single customer view.
The ‘Evolving the customer journey’ report from the DMA and Williams Lea Tag, shows that 43% of businesses currently have no plan or timescale to implement a digitisation strategy, and even among those which have, over a third (36%) believe that GDPR has slowed down their firm’s progress.
The research highlights how this lack of digitisation and strategy may also be damaging organisations’ ability to develop an effective single customer view (SCV), with 43% of respondents describing the ability within their business as either ‘poor’ or ‘very poor’.
Half of marketers (47%) also believe GDPR has made it more difficult to form an SCV, although just under a third (31%) feel the opposite is true.
DMA managing director Rachel Aldighieri said: “In what seems like no time at all, the variety of channels available to consumers and marketers has exploded, offering all sorts of routes to market for brands, and myriad ways for customers to engage, try and buy.
“Despite the challenges in keeping pace with this change, what’s most important is that these are all within an organisation’s own power to resolve. By putting the customer first, organisations can focus on experience and journeys they want, aligning their digital futures to these.”
Even so, the vast majority of marketers polled believe their customer communications have become more digitised in recent years. Some 72% agree these communications had become much or moderately more digital, while just 2% said there had been no advancement.
Williams Lea Tag EMEA chief executive Jonathan Simpson-Dent said: “The days of the well-trodden and predicable path to a physical check-out are gone. For most consumers, this simple, well-defined linear journey has been replaced by multiple virtual tributaries and collision points along the path to purchase.
“Organisations are scrambling to keep their brands afloat in the choppy waters of disruption – digitising customer journeys is imperative for businesses today and organisations that do not embrace digital transformation stand to lose relevance and market share to more adaptable rivals.”
In an increasingly connected world, with so many digital channels at their disposal and so much data being produced, marketing departments should still be awash with data, despite GDPR. This customer insight is integral to helping organisations understand the performance and how to optimise campaigns.
Most marketers (59%) did agree their business was able to review campaign performance across both physical and digital customer communications channels. However, one in three businesses (35%) cannot capture and analyse performance data, and, even among those who could, almost half (49%) claimed they were not able to action any insights gleaned from channel performance analysis.
To read more about the DMA and WLT’s research, including the full ‘Evolving the customer journey’ report, click here>
Related stories
How brands can achieve a 720° view of their customers
Building the business case for a single customer view
