06/27/2022 | Press release | Distributed by Public on 06/27/2022 03:11
Digital commerce is fast becoming a dominant priority for organizations. Many leaders are increasing the strategic importance of digital commerce by investing more in initiatives. They are also evolving the way their organizations do business to accelerate digital commerce growth.
Digital commerce organization design is a hot topic right now that is top of mind for many senior leaders. Increasing ownership of digital commerce throughout the organization is a critical key outcome they are looking to achieve. Simply put they are driving change to make digital commerce an initiative that is owned by the many, not the few!
The burning question leaders are asking is "what should our organization look like to accelerate digital commerce growth?". Leaders should look at growth in a holistic sense in terms of commercial growth, but also the growth of business capabilities (talent, partners, and cross-functional working).
We see four common digital commerce organization models in practice shown in the graphic below. The concept of shared organizational ownership of digital commerce steadily increases from left to right. The increase in organization ownership results in the strengthening of business capabilities to execute an organization's digital commerce strategy.
Well, unfortunately, there is not a straightforward answer to this question. It depends on several things including your organization's digital commerce strategy, the broader organization structure, and cultural aspects such as cross-functional working behaviors.
We would encourage you to take stock of your current digital commerce organization focusing on your current structure, talent/external partner capabilities, and strengths and weaknesses. For example, strengths can include leadership belief in digital commerce growth opportunities, while a weakness could be underdeveloped cross-functional working.
The next step is to define or refine your organization's digital commerce strategy. Your strategy sets the critical context for what your digital commerce organization needs to look like to deliver commercial and capability growth ambitions. This will help to influence the most appropriate organization model to deliver your strategy.
Once you have decided on your target model it then becomes a journey of evolution to establish each model sequentially from left to right. For example, let's say your organization currently identifies as unstructured, and your target is a hybrid model. First, you would establish a centralized model, then evolve to a hybrid model. This will build business change activities incrementally as you build maturity and capabilities toward your target model.
Gartner clients can schedule an inquiry to discuss our research and work through the above points in more detail.