Digital Transformation — Step 1

Know thyself — Take Inventory

Okay, now you’ve got the leadership agreeing to engage in the challenging digital transformation process, and the team is excited and inspired.

The first step in starting the journey of Digital Transformation is the boring exercise of taking inventory of a company’s internal and external digital footprint.

Externally, you should inventory all significant social media platforms, websites, owned URLs, online presentations or publications, third-party listing sites (especially Google or specialized industry platforms), marketplaces, etc., and who has primary access to those accounts. Logging them is as easy as using Google Sheets or Excel.

It’s also a fantastic time to do three things to build/rebuild foundations and are excellent practices for a small winery/company —

1. Ensure you have secured your business’s relevant social media handles and URLs so you never have to deal with a cyber-squatter. I’ll always remember when, at Vintank, we had to email some professional colleagues on Twitter because someone had scooped up the @OpusOneWinery Twitter handle and was promoting discounted wines from the account. Thankfully, they helped transfer the handle to the winery.
2. Consolidate login credentials around a single email (e.g., admin@company.com) and implement password management tools like LastPass, Dashlane, 1Password, Keeper, etc., to allow for sharing login information while maintaining security.
3. Build a file-sharing structure so all employees can access Google Drive, OneDrive, and Dropbox and be most efficient and effective with shared documents and assets.

Then, you need to do the tedious work of documenting internal software solutions and how those platforms work together. Document what tools operate your site: e-commerce, social media management, accounting, reservations systems, and more. It’s a simple list of platforms, departments, and account owners. Finally, I also recommend you take inventory of your brand pillars, KPIs, club amenities, customer personas, and customer journeys.

Organizing the Five Brand Pillars — here’s a good beginner’s guide to building brand pillars.

Pix Wine Consumer Persona

Another Pix Wine Consumer Persona

These are often challenging to obtain as they need to be created from scratch. Additionally, the team may lack experience which adds a learning curve and time.

A Good Map of the Steps of a Typical Journey

A nice infographic of a customer journey — use this sam template here.

Looking for instructions on how to map a journey? Here’s a great beginner’s guide and a nice software tool called Miro to make it easier. For data, you can use the reports from your e-commerce and wine club tools as a start.

Now you have all the ingredients to start the next steps for digital transformation — organizing the pieces, the next three key activities, foundational work, continual improvement processes, or high ROI activities.

Addendum — This is going to sound crazy, but you can tell a company will struggle incredibly with digital transformation if it cannot use shared files/document tools like Google Docs, or especially a tool like Slack. Four out of five companies that can’t grasp Slack have cultures that are too calcified to adapt. I recently joked with a colleague, “They can’t do jack if they aren’t even able to Slack.”