What does the concept of being a “data-driven organization” really mean? A data-driven organization identifies the insights it needs data to inform, effectively manages that data and empowers its team to use the data. And a successful data project is one that is tied completely to business outcomes, spans multiple teams, organizations and domains of expertise. 

As a marketer, how can you use data to drive business growth and revenue? How can you enable collaborative decision-making amongst your team, Product, Sales teams and Agencies?

What is the organization’s design to bridge silos? What should be the operating strategy for market expansion/new market entry? If you’ve ever wondered about some of these questions, 

Read on to find out how Adobe led strategic transformation, amongst top companies such as Netflix and Amazon. 

Despite Photoshop being a term synonymous with image editing, when faced with the threat of digital disruption, Adobe found itself moving beyond its traditional core of creative software into digital experiences, marketing, commerce platforms and analytics while changing its business model from packaged software to cloud subscriptions. 

The transition from taking an acquisition-driven approach to an optimization-driven approach was fraught with challenges such as an unclear connection between customer journey KPIs, inconsistent measurement across organizations, and limited accountability over essential metrics.

With this in mind, data laid the foundation for Adobe’s data-driven operating model (DDOM). It took over a year to aggregate data from across the company into a unified data architecture and transparent governance, which was then accessible in a real-time dashboard built with a persona-based approach. Everyone at different levels of the organization was then able to access the information in the dashboard (single source of truth) to drive actionable insights. 

The core pillars of its DDOM can be summarised as follows: 

• KPIs: Aligned KPIs to be tied to business drivers
• Data & Systems: Single source of truth for all stakeholders
• Process & Organization: Disciplined process & accountabili

A DDOM can be contextualized to various industries – for example, retail banking, where there is increased industry focus on deepening insights into customer needs and experiences. According to a 2020 Adobe Digital Trends report, 44% of retail banks face roadblocks in accessing an integrated view of data across the enterprise, and 43% of retail banks hit a wall when it comes to engaging across all communications channels in a relevant fashion. These are roadblocks that DDOM’s core pillars of data, KPIs, process and organization can help to address. 

Adopting a DDOM indubitably comes with challenges: for one, in the process to obtain a single source of truth, data and technology can be consuming, but do not give up on keeping data updated and accurate even if it takes years. The yield of optimized time and resources will show that it’s worth it. Change is also difficult when it comes to getting people to change their ways of working for cross-functional collaboration. However, business in the digital landscape is dynamic and we need to keep evolving to keep up (and even ahead) of the times. 

Contact Merkle Singapore at Singapore@MerkleInc.com to find out how you can adopt a data-driven operating model for strategic transformation.