Digital transformation is not easy with all this data! 

In social media marketing and business people were talking about silos many years ago. Most people forgot about the time it takes to integrate data. Many organisations have still not even started integrating social media within their businesses and they haven’t even started integrating their own customer data and email; let alone operational, mobile and other marketing data together to form a clear picture of the business and gain valuable insights.
 
Marketing and IT “silos” (hate the word silo too!) are now being brought together across entire businesses, with a people-first focus. It is necessary to look at how they work across the organisations together and within their businesses. Reducing the silos that have inevitably been created when the businesses grew is necessary to give management access to all the reports they need to find opportunities and cost savings.
 
The reasons for this are not obvious from the outside because corporations are very quiet about what they are doing and in most cases not doing, they are not exactly going to say “Actually it will take us another three years to be fully integrated and by that time the market will have changed and…”Social media marketing is still in its infancy so rather than telling people about how they should be using IoT to grow their business why not start somewhere better and easier to understand!
 
Lots of businesses have embraced it already, but the best is only yet to come. Organisations that are fully integrated are now reaping the rewards. The ones that have started working on planning out their complete “Strategy” as opposed to their social media “Tactics” are light years ahead.
 
The challenge now is that businesses and different functions within are actually drowning with data, they have so much of it that without hiring expert teams to assist them the silos are getting more difficult to manage. Much of the culture change that is needed is going to take at least three to five years to get these “traditional siloed” organisations to adapt without imploding!
 
Now it is possible to complete decades of research within a matter of weeks, but it is still not possible to adapt fast internally to make sure the entire ecosystems are not destroyed. In heavily regulated industries it is even harder with security protocols that have to be signed off.
 
The key element within digital change management is to remind every department why they are actually working for “the business!” it’s for the customer! Yes, I said the “CUSTOMER” not the shareholders, but for the people that pay your wages the customers!
 
Fragmentation is part of the problem, but as long as the customer is kept in focus and propels the transformation it is possible to change within every business, providing the right level of forward-thinking management is in place and the right outside innovation is in place.
 
How businesses are thinking about the journey and how are the roles within the business bridging the gaps are key questions to ask (always keeping the customer in focus). Organisations have to break down these”silos”, and strategic operational data analysis is key to really transforming these corporations.
 
Businesses that are able to maintain existing data silos for operational efficiency and break them down at the same time are the winners.
Ensuring they have no downtime and feasible customer-centric solutions. If they get these implementations rolling now they will reap rewards moving forwards, ensuring a total picture of the organisation as a whole and how decisions can affect all stakeholders.
 
So whilst we all hate the word silo in social media and digital, the revolution is just beginning and before you get your organisation thinking about wearable technologies why don’t you fix the simplest most easily adopted technological breakthroughs, rather than confusing your C-suite explain things in plain English with no techno-speak and then your organisation will flourish within your space and be around for many years to come.
 
If you would like to speak to me my door is always open.

Photo credit https://www.flickr.com/photos/waltstoneburner/