Marketing, the change catalyst for digital business transformation: Lessons learned from the modernisation of a B2B marketing organisation

Abstract

This paper first summarises the principal drivers of digital business transformation and their impact on the marketing strategy, customer experience, branding, technology, people, organisation and capabilities. Secondly, summarise key challenges a B2B chief marketing officer (CMO) may face to stay relevant during the transformation journey and what role he or she should play to become a change catalyst in the transformation journey. Thirdly, it presents the framework we applied to modernise the B2B marketing division to become more agile, digital savvy, data driven and revenue enabling to support TM ONE Business transformation and growth aspirations. Outline the new practices that need to be implemented to drive effectively digital marketing, customer journey, personas, content marketing, sales enablement and predictive marketing. The paper concludes with lessons learned from this journey, the importance of balancing between all marketing channels and adopting new digital marketing practices and technologies, automation, people capabilities and skills and how to drive and implement the change management successfully.