Starting a Digital Transformation Journey:
The Story of Grand Design RV

Discussion Context & Summary

Headline Speakers:

• Tyler Maynard - Chief Solutions & Innovations Officer at Hoodoo Digital
• Lauren McCumber - Manager, Solutions Consulting at Hoodoo Digital
• Tom Holt - Director of Brand Experience and Marketing Operations at Grand Design RV
  
  

Topics Addressed:

• How GDRV began their Digital Transformation Journey
• What strategies and products they chose to use and why
• What they looked for in selecting an implementation partner to successfully approach a consultation process
• GDRV and Adobe Experience Cloud

Key discussions and takeaways:

• Grand Design RV’s (GDR) journey to get to where they are today started before their digital transformation begun
• In their first four years of business, they grew from 0 to $400 Million in their first 4 years, and since 2016 have grown exponentially up to $2.4 Billion
• Which is very significant growth despite being a small team
• While the pandemic had a net positive impact on the RV industry, Tom notes that industry leaders & economists all agree that there is continued growth potential and demand in the market
• Adopting and implementing the Adobe Experience Cloud played a major role in allowing GDR to adapt & fulfill their customers during the pandemic
• With the onset of the pandemic, GDR noticed a disconnect between team members due to shifting to remote work
• In an industry long attune with in-person collaboration, this had immediate impact on the team’s ability to create content
• Originally a search for a Digital Asset Management tool (DAM), it became increasingly clear that other aspects of the team’s digital collaboration was being affected by physical separation
• Like so many other organizations during the onset of the pandemic, the shift to a remote workforce gleaned light on potential weaknesses
• It initiated a difficult internal conversation of how to meaningfully move forward, which ultimately led to Tom & his team deciding to fully audit their strategy, processes & tools
• This was the true beginning of their digital transformation with Adobe & Hoodoo Digital
  
  
• The global pandemic had ripple effects that caused a major shift to digital commerce and all signs are indicating that trend continuing into the foreseeable future
• However, it was the brands that had already put an importance on digital before the onset of the pandemic that saw their efforts have an immediate impact
• There are merchants of all kinds that are at all different stages of their digital transformation and a lot of those have been put on an acceleration path due to the pandemic
• It’s commonly estimated that the global pandemic may have escalated the growth of digital commerce up to 5 years sooner than it may have otherwise organically have
  
  
• A common reason for delayed digital transformation can be merchants allowing the everyday tasks and fire drills to take the lionshare of their time, energy & efforts
• Getting too caught up in the everyday grind can cause merchants to keep their heads down too much and too often and therefore leaves them unable to have the ability to reflect and project future projects, plans or aspirations
• This is where a 3rd party service provider can come in and provide an agnostic look at how and what to prioritize as well as provide the additional time and resources to get it done
• However selecting the right partner is critically important

• When evaluating different solutions, it’s important to evaluate your current solutions environment and identify what tools / solutions work and which do not

○ This can help narrow down the search and give a more pointed list of needs vs. wants

■ For example, GDR was using the Adobe Creative Suite prior to onboarding the Experience Cloud

● While they wanted to keep the Adobe Creative Suite, they kept running into integrations that were either clunky or didn’t achieve their high standard of customer experience

○ What truly took their digital transformation journey come full circle was choosing the right right partner to integrate them on platform

■ For them, this was Hoodoo Digital initially because of their core organization value alignment and succeeded because of their extraordinary honest and open communication



• Implementation almost always runs into roadblocks along the way, and for the Hoodoo team, the most common one is aligning solutions with the expectations set in project planning

○ There are very few out-of-the-box solutions that are immediately able to provide merchants with meaningful, fully integrated and customized tools to use

■ It can take time to work through several demos along with significant dev work before solutions become ready for implementation

● However having confidence in the integration partner allows merchants to do this with confidence that the final product will truly solve their needs

Punchline
Digital transformation can be analogous and slightly paradoxical, to planting a tree. When is the best time to do it if you need one? Ideally, you would’ve already planted one in the past before you knew you needed one. When is the next best time to plant one? Right now, because delaying it will only set the fully grown tree further into the future. Digital transformation has shown to follow this same formula throughout the last 24 months all across the retail landscape.

For those merchants who began implementing change before they needed it, they have largely been the beneficiaries of a massive shift to digital. For those who did not, the question of timing is almost always called into question. While undoubtedly, common business factors like money and internal resources will always play a factor, it’s continuing to be proven throughout the last few years that the next best time to make the jump is now.

This is why having both short term and long term growth plans are essential and it’s important to constantly review and iterate them as often as necessary to adapt to economic, industry-specific or environmental changes that are constantly impacting business. Sometimes, bringing in 3rd party help can be the solution for making the time to do these evaluations.

Technology is not one size fits all, so it’s incredibly important to choose the right partner. Throwing more plug-ins or tools at a problem may seem like a solution in the moment, but it more than likely will end up costing more and making integrations, communications and evaluations much more difficult.