- Chances are you've embarked
on your journey toward digital transformation
in some meaningful way,
but how far have you gone?
How much farther do you have to go?
Let me offer some thoughts
about the mile markers along the way
to true digital maturity.
There are five stages of digital maturity.
Digitally present, digitally active, digitally engaged,
digitally competitive, and digitally mature.
Let's take a look at an example.
The Washington Post was founded in 1977
and it spent more than a 100 years as an analog business
with the physical paper as it's product.
With the emergence of the internet in the 1990s,
the company received the push it needed
to begin it's digital journey.
The company became digitally present
in 1996 when they launched their website.
This took the traditional product, the newspaper,
and rendered some aspects of it online.
The Post became digitally active in 2009
when the company integrated it's print in online operations.
The company created a multi-platform group
to manage the handling of content
from prints online and mobile.
The Post became digitally engaged in 2013
when Jeff Bezos acquired the paper.
While Bezos doesn't have an operational role,
he's infused the organization
with a customer-centric startup mindset,
and stressed the importance of experimentation.
Bezos also encouraged the Post
to build it's own software,
leading to the more than doubling
of the Post IT division to 300 people.
This set the foundation for their advancement
through the subsequent stages of digital maturity.
The Post became digitally competitive when it fully
committed to housing it's own in house tech solutions
to improve the publishing process.
Digital advertising, optimization,
and digital subscription development.
For example, a product called Zeus
boosted low times by 75% and viewability by 20%
without relying on Google or Facebook Instant Articles.
Another in house tool, Clavis,
is a content recommendation system
while Fuse enables the Post to deliver ads natively.
This aggressive product development resulted
in monthly web visitors sky rocketing
from 30.5 million in late 2013 when Bezos made his purchase,
to 74 million by early 2016.
The Post became digitally mature
with the launch and aggressive expansion
of it's software as a service-based Arc Publishing,
a suite of interconnected publishing, advertising,
and digital subscription tools
that they license to other publications.
Arc has quickly grown into a strategic business
with it's own PNL and CIO, Shailesh Prakash
sees it growing into a $100 million per year business.
With Arc, the Post is mirroring Amazon's approach
with Amazon Web Services.
Build a technology stack for internal use,
develop for a first and best customer,
and then license it to the world.
This SAS model represents unique revenue generated
from digital products and services,
enabling them to diversify beyond advertising
and subscription revenue.
Though it may take some creative thinking
to translate this media company example
back into your environment, do so.
How do your efforts compare?
Continue to strive for greater levels of maturity,
as that's the path to a sustainable,
strong performance for your company.