Most people, who worked in the publishing industry long ago, forecasted the death of printed books and were counting on the rise of e-books. Publishers embraced it for they feared survival. This discussion is around bringing a digital mindset to the organisations and ensuring that every department and stakeholder within a publishing organisation is part of that discussion.
How many publishing organisations in India have a chief digital officer (CDO)?
Is there a need in the current ecosystem? I would like to look at the role and responsibility of the CDO. I am writing this since many people within the industry requested me to write about this. Functioning CDOs please pardon me if I get this wrong.
The digital role in most organisations falls under the marketing department and is often focused on e-commerce and social media. This needs to change.
The role and the team a CDO builds must have wide ranging competencies and should be business oriented. The range of functions within this team would be customer relationship, online analytics, merchandising, distribution and finally marketing. This will be for all experiences using the mobile, web and other emerging platforms. This is the team that can tell you who buys, what attracts them, how is the reader engaged and finally how is the content consumed (what and when). The most important within this team is the role with UX/UI experience. Most organisations ignore this one key function and I would like to call out this.The clever thing to do is to hire a CDO who is likely to have a technology background, but make sure that they are trained for marketing and sales.

Talking digital, organisations must pay importance to brand building. Organisations must spend more time and rupees on brand. In the digital world the relationships between brands and their customers have now become very important even after purchase.
Remember that the emerging technologies include blockchain, artificial intelligence and augmented reality to help customers have a better experience.
There is strong hope that artificial intelligence (AI) will finally deliver real-life benefits to early-adopting companies. The number of manufacturers producing VR devises/headsets is increasing by the day and it’s no surprise that the price points are dropping significantly.
Technology is an enabler and humans continue to have the choice to think.
Will the schools/students buy tablets or VR headsets or both?