Last week our CTO Ashish Patel had the honour of hosting the Digital Transformation event as part of the American Marketing Association’s Legendary Leadership series. Digital Transformation is perhaps the biggest buzzword in Tech right now, so both Ashish and Tony Chapman, who delivered the keynote address, dove in headfirst to break it down. Specifically, they looked at Digital Transformation through a Marketing lens, discussing how to approach it by #EmbracingChange, common mistakes and misconceptions, as well as the importance of mindset.
Marketing decision-makers are increasingly being expected to navigate the more technical aspects of their business’ products and services. It’s no longer just about the 4 P’s (Product, Price, Promotion, Place), as Tony bluntly put it. The solution, in Ashish’s words, is that Marketing decision-makers need to think like a software company in order to navigate more successfully and gain competitive advantage.In order to start thinking like a software company it’s important not to stay fixed on the product that’s been made or shipped, but rather the ideas that haven’t yet been developed internally along with the company’s talent and culture.Many industries have gone through drastic evolutions, which then usually ushered in a time of struggle and discomfort for organizations who refused to change along with its industry. For instance, changes in the movie rental industry saw behemoth Blockbuster go under thanks to the new Netflix business model.
Tony Chapman encouraged us all to seize change and pursue our passions and interests. Here at Architech, our team is always driving forward and breaking through barriers by #ThinkingBig. He believes the sheer accessibility of technology, information, and resources position us to achieve our dreams better than ever before. If we simply look at some of the modern world’s most successful companies (Uber, Airbnb, Amazon), they leverage the platform economy to change the world and make money doing it.We know change is constant, so in order to stay relevant Ashish implored us to “learn to unlearn”, disrupting ourselves before someone else does it first. So often we get used to routine, and as creatures of habit, change is often uncomfortable and foreign to us. However, in business, being set in a specific set of ways breeds dangerous behaviors throughout the company as a whole.Tony and Ashish delivered a perfectly balanced evening exploring past innovations, the current landscape of technology, and how to practically navigate through disrupting industries using the tools innate in our companies today. We know change will continue to fill our horizon, and as long as we’re open to it and use the tools at our disposal, we are far better equipped to navigate it.
