Striking the right balance between narrow targeting and broad brand-building, between inhousing and outsourcing, and between generalist and specialist is still puzzling brands.

Ogilvy APAC chief experience officer Tom Voirol called out the “lumpy” nature of digital transformation projects, and the need to more strategically allocate investment.

Many businesses are currently trapped in a vicious circle where they put an initial “big cash injection” into a project, don’t allocate any further resources to improving it over the next few years, and then start the cycle again, Voirol said.

“When this happens, the experience deteriorates as expectations rise,” he said.

Additionally, too often businesses are spending millions of dollars on Adobe, Sitecore and Salesforce technology without realising their full potential, Voirol said.

“The number one complaint I get from [those software providers] is that clients have bought a massive tech stack and are only using 5% of it. They are using it for web content but not personalisation or full automation,” he said.

Instead, reallocating resources to drip-feed continuous investment over a number of years will allow businesses to “continuously improve” their digital experience, rather than just maintaining it until the next mass overhaul, Voirol said.

Continually evolving the functionality of a website or app also prevents users from having a “traumatic” experience where “everything they have just gotten used to suddenly changes”, he added.

“Think back to the early days when Facebook made massive changes to its app and everyone was unhappy. Now Facebook releases updates every two weeks, and they are always small and gradual, but if you compare it over a year there is massive change,” Voirol said.

Read in full on Campaignasia.com.