3 Trends in Digital Transformation Analytics Every Leader Should Be Aware Of

Every company is tackling digital transformation differently. Like artificial intelligence, digital transformation can become a catchall term that refers to a variety of things. That means businesses often have a hard time identifying whether they’ve even accomplished what they set out to do.

That’s why it’s sometimes easier to define it and its importance through examples of how it’s being implemented. While not every brand views digital transformation the same way, there’s bound to be a company out there that’s looking to digitize its approach and processes in a way very similar to yours.

Analytics are a key component of digital transformation — and the best way to showcase what it can do. The Home Depot, Holland America Line and SmugMug all invested in their brands’ digital transformation and came out the other side with lessons any leader can benefit from.  

One stat sums up everything The Home Depot is doing. With $108 billion in sales in 2018, you could argue that the brand doesn’t have to be aggressively focused on innovation. 

But the company views it as both a present and future endeavor. It carries the kinds of products that lend themselves well to in-store pickup. Eight percent of its sales last year were online. Half of those customers chose to pick up in store; of those customers, 20 percent made an additional purchase. This almost reads like an old-school word problem in math class, with two trains going at different speeds. 

But one result underscores the meaning of all those other numbers: The brand created an additional $1 billion in revenuejust by creating the right customer experience path that led customers to buy online, pick up in store and grab something else. 

The Home Depot focused on the customer journey, not on developing separate online and offline strategies. The truth is that every situation — and every incentive — can drive a customer to choose one over the other. These days, you’d be hard-pressed to find a consumer who solely purchases in brick-and-mortar stores or only online. People are frequently just making a choice based on convenience, cost and time. 

If you’re The Home Depot, you know that with the right customer journey analytics and experience platform to act on the insights, you can determine how to create that “grab something else” moment more often. And that’s where the brand’s focus is: The quality of the experience, the convenience of the experience and recommendations are just as important as the product itself now. That’s how a brand finds a way to thrive in retail, even when it — and the market — is undergoing systemic changes. 

You shouldn’t view retail as one channel versus another. You should view it as having multiple flexible touchpoints that can be used to create the right customer journey at the right time for anyone. It’s all about creating serendipity by using the data at your disposal.