I’ve recently been involved in two large-scale digital transformation projects, including project managing one. I wanted to share some key learnings to help other marketers in similar situations, as more and more marketers are involved with, if not leading, digital transformation projects. I know this can be a big impact on your role and being able to multi-task, prioritise and shift mindsets quickly has never been more important.
A bit about me: I’ve been in marketing for 12 plus years, and in that time I’ve been fortunate enough to have been involved with a few digital transformation projects and website redevelopments. All of my roles have had a technical element – from way back at the start when I was using Mailchimp, Silverstripe, WordPress and Drupal, then onto NetSuite, and then I ended up at a SaaS / transformation consultancy company where they implemented Salesforce, NetSuite, GSuite, and also did custom/bespoke builds for companies around New Zealand. I have now been using HubSpot for 4 years as a CRM, CMS and Marketing Automation platform.
Please note, while I hope my learnings are valuable to you, please don’t use this to replace expert advice from a technology partner or expert.
Take your time in choosing your technology partner. Do your due diligence, ask for references, talk to people in your industry, and make sure you give your project the best possible chance of success. Here are some key attributes I believe are needed in a good partner:
There are a lot of shiny tools out there and it’s easy to read case studies and think to yourself, “I want that system!”. But it’s important to first start by knowing what you are trying to achieve in your business with a new system/development, and what problem you’re tyring to solve. Then you need to do your due diligence and explore a number of possibilities while keeping an open mind.
There are plenty of options available, including big global platforms, smaller more targeted options, and then of course custom builds and bespoke developments unique to your business. There may be a case for any of these options, but you won’t know until you investigate and talk to a few experts to get a clearer idea.
The reality is, there are probably a few options that could deliver what you need – so you’ll need to weigh up your budget and costs and who is locally available to deliver the solution to you.
For small to medium sized companies who don’t have the luxury of having a full team of data / developers / business analysts, you’ll need to make sure you plan ahead for resource. You will need someone internally to manage the project, or at the very least be heavily involved in the project. While your technology partner should do a lot of the heavy lifting, they won’t have the intricate knowledge of your internal data and processes like you do. So, you’ll need someone to be involved to ensure nothing is missed and to work alongside your tech partner. Projects take time! And time is deceiving. What you might think would take a few hours, can actually take days and sometimes weeks. Data and systems are complex, there’s so many moving parts, and unless you live and breathe some projects – it’s really hard to grasp how much detail and thought is needed for what might seem a simple part of the project.
Make sure you think of the full circle of your customer’s journey and ensure your system is setup for the entire lifecycle. Try and plan for every different scenario and every different path that your customer can take. How do they enter your database – where do they go from there? What if they leave and don’t can’t access their account, what is the best process to manage that? What if they want to go down path B and not path A – does their profile get updated if they do certain things. What is the most vital information you need to capture – are you setup to capture that easily? So. Many. Things. to. Consider.
Spend time planning for all of the above. Put yourselves in your customer’s shoes. And test.
Bring people within the company along on the journey – from the start. Have regular standups explaining what the plan is and where you’re headed. Be open about the challenges you’ve faced and how you’re overcoming them.
You need to ensure the wider team have adequate training. And you want them to feel secure – knowing they can ask questions when they need to. This will take available resource freed up to have time spent on doing this. And, of course, a big part of training should be coming directly from your tech partner. This should be built into the project and you should ask for details around the time they will invest in staff training.
A lot, if not most, systems have some form of integration with another system. Whether that’s your CRM to your eCommerce. Or your eCommerce to your payment provider. I have been involved with a project where the integration was robust: we had WooCommerce (WordPress), which integrated into HubSpot as a CRM, and there was an integration with Zapier and then Xero. It was complex. With any integration you want to ensure this is setup correctly. You need to ensure you know what information is captured in each platform, and what is shared / passed between the systems (integration architecture).
If you end up working in two separate CRMs this will be a challenge for you. Especially if both CRMs have disparate data. If you need to work with an integration, you should first ask why and is it necessary? Could this be achieved in one system? If not, why not?
Integrations need to be designed carefully. And this links back to the first tip, choose your tech partner well. You need to understand what data each platform holds, why it does, and does this integrate to the other platform. Is the integration two-way? Make sure you know all the information, and again, consider the entire customer lifecycle.
Depending on the size of your project, it’s likely that testing will take a lot longer than you first may think. Make sure you plan into the project timeline sufficient time to test, ask your technology partner what they would recommend. My recommendation would be between 3 to 6 weeks depending on how many people need to test and provide feedback, and also how much time you can spend on testing rather than doing other work. Remember you’ll likely find something that needs fixing or changing in your testing schedule, so plan time for feedback loops and then further work to be done, then to test that again.
If you’ve been appointed as the project lead, or if you’re the one doing the appointing, here’s a few traits that will be very useful, if not necessary, to be successful:
✔️ Ability to multi-task: trust me, there’s a lot of moving parts to any large project and if you’re also doing another role, you’ll need the ability to switch between tasks.
✔️ Organisation skills: you’ll need to keep track of the entire project and specific tasks are at (I ended up keeping a project WIP document that was approx. 89 pages by the end of the project).
✔️ Great stakeholder management skills: you’ll likely be dealing with a range of people, and you’ll need to be the centre person that aligns internal stakeholders and external stakeholders. If you don’t think you’ve got extensive stakeholder management skills – don’t worry! You will have these skills once the project is done 😊
✔️ Versatile: things will change, not go to plan, and likely some deadlines will be missed. Don’t panic, just keep doing your best and plan for these things to happen.
Remember to enjoy the journey and the process. It may be overwhelming at times and busy, but you’re likely working on a pretty cool project, doing some pretty cool things. It will no doubt be great stakeholder management experience. Take it all in, be open to learning, use your critical thinking skills, and you’ll do great!
I have a lot of expertise in HubSpot as a CMS, CRM, eCommerce platform, and marketing automation platform. So if you have any questions about HubSpot, or if you have any questions on project managing a digital transformation project, please feel free to reach out! We are always happy to help where and if we can: danielle@marketing.org.nz.