Building and Managing a CommTech System

In the Pathfinder stage, building and managing a CommTech system moves from communicating what we want stakeholders to know and increasingly focuses on what we want them to do by designing and nurturing them along prescribed journeys. We shift from publishing digital content to managing digital campaigns, and we shift from measuring beliefs or attitudes to measuring actions and behaviors.

What You Do

1. Establish Agile teams.
   • To design, manage and improve campaigns, your team requires several disciplines and skill sets – content, data analytics, design – and it needs to work quickly and iteratively, making decisions based on data that is as real-time as possible. The team needs to be empowered to act with speed. This is Agile.
   • Agile is not a synonym for fast and flexible. It is a new, data-driven method of getting work done with teams. Its origins are in modern software development, but it is being rapidly applied to many business functions and operations. To be effective, Agile teams must be formally trained, organized, equipped and run in a prescribed way.
2. Target your audiences. 
   • Your team understands and targets your audience through analyses of their digital behavior (e.g., search, social activity, ad clicking). In some cases, particularly in B2B applications, it’s also important to analyze the target audience’s networks – who they follow, who follows them, strength and reach of influencers.
   • Example: Clarissa Haller’s team at Siemens developed “Coffee Mug,” a mobile app for employees driven by machine learning. Employees select 5, 10 or 15 minutes of content, select topics of interest and the time of day and frequency at which they want to receive news and information. The system understands content inside and outside of Siemens and, based on each employee’s profile, personalizes content for them. The system continuously learns based on how much time each employee spends on content and improves its recommendations.
3. Design the journey.
   • What action do you want the target audience to take? Working backwards from that outcome, your team designs journeys with defined touchpoints. The initial touchpoint might be an e-mail, which contains an embedded link, which leads to a website, which leads to an action – for example, a webinar to enhance learning, a portal to explore job opportunities and upload CVs, a simulation tool, or a free trial of a service or product.
4. Create content for each touchpoint.
   • Your content creators tailor content for the target audience and for each stage in the journey. For example, a 20-minute educational webinar is best suited for later stages in the journey.
5. Launch and analyze campaigns.
   • With your journey designed, with each touchpoint supported by tailored content, with audience targeting in hand, your team is ready to launch your digital campaign. Because your team is Agile, it is prepared to rapidly iterate your content, your audience targeting, the digital experience, and your use of paid based on the performance of your campaign.
   • Multivariate testing and Agile methodology are key here. Develop hypotheses about what types of content will drive the desired behavior and vary its elements (subject lines, link placement, images, copy, calls-to-action, and so forth) to observe user behavior.
6. Address fake news and deepfakes.
   • The CommTech team becomes an integral part of the organization’s cyber defense system, which continuously detects, defends and protects the company against cyberattacks. These attacks have primarily assaulted company data centers, but they will go increasingly after a company’s brand and reputation through manipulated, altered and completely fabricated digital content created and amplified by bots and AI.
   • In addition, modern cybersecurity includes regular programs of testing, education and discipline to ensure all employees observe security measures and protect enterprise data and personal privacy. The CommTech team must be fully integrated into these processes, not simply to publicize them, but to help shape them, based on its professional knowledge of the company’s context and its broader conversation.