Last month Tenby Powell penned an article in the Herald talking about how New Zealand businesses were struggling to keep up, and those businesses who had digital savvy would be successful.
So how do you get this digital savvy? Where is this knowledge? Who can look at your business and help? There is just so much to do, so much technology to understand. In February this year MediaScope in Australia produce a 'lumiscape' - a map of digital technologies that Australian marketers could access to drive business performance. On that lumiscape there were over 1800 technologies! The number is only marginally less in New Zealand. Intimidating? No that should excite you.
Why should that be exciting?
With so much technology, the opportunity for commercial advantage over your competitors is immense. This technology spans sales, distribution, data, content, media, mobile, social, search and even creativity.
Where do you begin?
Well, where you have a problem seems a good place to start. The good thing here is the underlying principles of marketing and business have not changed. The technology has become an enabler and in many cases an accelerator. However, this technology will not solve the issues on its own.
Remember when you put in that CRM system a while back. You bought the dream. Complete customer knowledge that would allow you to modify your products and services to betters serve your customers, making them buy more stuff so that you drove more revenue, except it didn't! You could not get the sales team to enter their data, there was no process to how it went in and you ended up with a confusing mess that had the naysayers saying I told you so. Well, there is no longer room for naysayers, they have to go.
Throughout your network, in your business there is knowledge, in your supplier base there is knowledge, within your peer group there is knowledge. You need to seek these people out.
Through strong collaboration you can put people with knowledge in the right place, implement the right technology but the final piece of the puzzle remains, process.
These are the people that will help you 'cross the digital divide'. You must become a champion for collaboration. That is the only way. This is especially the case in New Zealand, a land of allrounders whose breadth of business knowledge is amazing but often, deep technical expertise is often hard to find.
Now you have sought out people in the know or at the very least, smart people with an appetite to handle change you now need to identify your challenge area.
It seems obvious to say this but people get excited about new technology and forget what the problem really is. Do not get distracted! Stay true to your underlying business model and limit your aperture to technology that will have most impact. You will be surprised how much stuff exists and how many advertising technology sales representatives will come knocking, these people have knowledge too.
I would also counsel when choosing technology providers in New Zealand, rely on these people as a knowledge resource as well. They want to make a sale but they also want to see their technology implemented and used well.
Some will want life at work to be easier, some will want things done faster, some will want something more rewarding and some will be a combination of all three.
Through strong collaboration you can put people with knowledge in the right place, implement the right technology but the final piece of the puzzle remains, process. This is about getting all your people to play correctly in your internal sandbox. Some of them would have already engaged but the rest need a reason.
The drivers here are simple.
Some will want life at work to be easier, some will want things done faster, some will want something more rewarding and some will be a combination of all three. Unfortunately there is no silver bullet but remember, motivation to change has to be powerful in today's very busy business environment.
Next week on Tuesday 17 November, Auckland University of Technology will host ad:tech New Zealand, New Zealand's premier digital leadership conference. This year's theme will be 'Crossing the digital divide and championing collaboration'.
The event has been shaped from the top down and bottom up by local industry leaders to move New Zealand's marketing and media community forward. At this year's ad:tech, marketers will learn what they need to be doing today to be ready for tomorrows shift. They'll experience first-hand new technologies that are changing the game, learn about new marketing strategies that break down the digital divide, as well as have the opportunity to rub shoulders with the very best marketing talent in the country.
