Last week, Aceik and Sitecore brought together 16 digital experts from around Australia to discuss digital transformation – the trends, challenges and risks facing a new project in 2021. And it wouldn’t be a robust discussion without a wine tasting – kindly delivered by SocialTable and Price’s Wines.

Our moderator introduced two topics then guests were divided into groups of 6 to discuss. Upon return to the main track, guests then shared their unique discussion. And today, we wanted to share the key highlights.

Question 1

What are the biggest factors you think will influence investment and digital transformation over the next 12 months?

• Customer-driven service channel
• Being reactive to competitor demand
• We’re not competing with competitors anymore, we’re competing with the most recent best experience the customer has had, and that’s the new benchmark
• Depending on which industry the impact of COVID-19 varied (ie retail saw loads of money move into their ecommerce stores)
• COVID-19 made getting sign-off easier on digital projects. Because digital was pretty much the only active channel
• Increased emphasis on ROI now
• Public sector using data in marketing campaigns
• Coming out of COVID-19 lockdowns might be the perfect time to be disruptive

Question 2

What do you think are the biggest risks or pain points that companies aren’t aware of when embarking on a digital transformation project.

• Budget 😊
• Ensuring exec team is along on the journey
• Lack of understanding of what digital transformation means
• Finding the right agency to work with and trust
• Exec team churn.
• Getting staff buy in early
• Ongoing costs of systems implementations not considered
• Silo’d environments
• Staff can be resistant
• Defining success criteria
• Lack of a clear project leader
• Failing to train!