Industry Voices: Are All Retailers Undergoing a Digital Transformation?

These days, a majority of companies in the US are in the process of digital transformation. According to February 2019 data from Fujitsu Future Insights, 29% of wholesale and retail companies worldwide have implemented it and delivered outcomes, while another 44% of respondents said they’re currently in the process of digitally transforming their company. Still, 13% of respondents haven’t planned anything yet.

We recently sat down with retailers, including Natori, Article and Enjoy Life Foods, to discuss their current marketing efforts and how they define digital transformation. Previously, we dug into the marketing channels they rely on most, whether they’ve acquired enough first-party data and how they create a unified customer view. In today’s “Industry Voices: A Focus on Retail” video, we look at how they’ve undergone a digital transformation and what that looks like.

“Article was born as a digitally native business, so we're not particularly working on digital transformation," said Duncan Blair, director of marketing at Article. "We would say that technology is at the core of our operation. We use technology not as a means to an end, but as a way to deliver a remarkably better customer experience. We're always thinking about how to apply technology to make that end-to-end experience better. Data literacy is a key capability of any employee coming into Article. We look for people who are able to not only interpret data, but build actionable insights that can be applied across the business. It's not just being able to build a dashboard, it's being able to take the results out of that dashboard and do something with them that's important.”

“When we look at digital transformation, it's not just about marketing and it's not just about supply chain,” said Joel Warady, general manager of chief sales and marketing officer at Enjoy Life Foods, a wholly owned subsidiary of Mondelez. “It really does have to be in the DNA of the whole business, so some of the things we're looking at as a company is the idea of working from anywhere. How does that allow a company to transform itself digitally? This idea of having brick-and-mortar offices, is it really the way of the future? Certainly we've always allowed our sales team to be remote, but what about the rest of our team? If companies are truly going to transform digitally, it has to be in all facets of the business, and that's one of the things that we're looking at."

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Watch our previous "Industry Voices: A Focus on Retail" videos below:

Retailers' Most Measurable Marketing Channels

Retailers Weigh in on Marketing Channels They Find Most Effective

Have Retailers Acquired Enough First-Party Data?

The Challenges Retailers Face in Creating a Unified View of the Customer