From Center of Excellence to Digital Factory: Scaling Digital Transformation in B2B and Industrial Sectors

In today’s B2B, industrial, and wholesale/distribution sectors, the pace of change is relentless. Customer expectations are shaped by digital-first disruptors, and the pressure to deliver seamless, omnichannel experiences is higher than ever. For established players, the journey from a Digital Center of Excellence (COE) to a fully realized Digital Factory is not just a matter of maturity—it’s an operational imperative for relevance and growth.

The Evolution: From COE to Digital Factory

A Digital Center of Excellence is often the first step for organizations embarking on digital transformation. It centralizes expertise, standardizes best practices, and creates shared digital assets that can be leveraged across business units. However, while a COE is invaluable for building foundational capabilities, it often lacks the formal authority and agility to drive enterprise-wide change at scale. The next stage of maturity is the Digital Factory—a centralized, agile operation that unifies technology, customer data, and innovation across all business units and geographies.

A Digital Factory is more than a hub of digital expertise. It is a centralized operation where all software applications relevant to the corporation are governed, built, maintained, and adapted for distribution and reuse across local operating companies. This model enables organizations to prioritize business outcomes, deliver value quickly, and scale innovation globally while maintaining local relevance.

Why the Digital Factory Model Matters in B2B and Industrial Sectors

B2B and industrial organizations face unique challenges:

• Siloed Technology Decisions: Different teams, regions, or brands often implement their own solutions, leading to duplicative applications and fragmented customer experiences.
• Decentralized Operations: With operations spanning dozens of countries and business units, aligning digital initiatives is complex.
• Uneven Digital Maturity: Larger markets may have advanced platforms and budgets, while smaller ones lag behind, creating inconsistency.
• Limited Customer Centricity: Siloed data across sales, delivery, and support teams results in a fragmented view of the customer, making onboarding and service inconsistent and slow.

The Digital Factory model addresses these challenges by providing a unified approach to technology, data, and process. It enables organizations to:

• Retain and grow customers by delivering consistent, omnichannel experiences.
• Acquire new customers through data-driven insights and rapid test-and-learn cycles.
• Create new value propositions for suppliers and partners by enabling innovation at scale.

Common Roadblocks to Scaling Digital Transformation

Transitioning to a Digital Factory is not without its hurdles. Four major roadblocks often stand in the way:

1. Limited Customer Centricity: Siloed sales and service models hinder a unified customer experience and slow down onboarding.
2. Lack of Homogeneity in Systems: Managing hundreds or thousands of disparate applications leads to inefficiency and outdated technology landscapes.
3. Highly Decentralized Organization: Extended autonomy at the local level can result in misaligned initiatives and missed opportunities for synergy.
4. Uneven Digital Maturity: Disparities in technology investment and capability across regions create operational friction and inhibit scaling.

Principles for Building a Successful Digital Factory

To overcome these challenges and realize the full potential of a Digital Factory, organizations should focus on six actionable principles:

1. Be Customer Obsessed: Use data, A/B testing, and customer feedback to ensure solutions are relevant and valuable. Prototyping and usability testing reduce the risk of building on assumptions.
2. Design for Flexibility and Modularity: Accommodate local needs within a central governance model. Adapt to varying digital maturity and technology capabilities across markets.
3. Focus on Adoption from the Start: Change management is critical. Appoint local champions, manage change based on evidence, and involve the entire organization in the journey.
4. Co-construct with Stakeholders: Foster a one-team spirit where central and local teams jointly own the roadmap, products, and outcomes.
5. Deliver Value Quickly, Then Scale: Use agile methods to deliver minimum viable products in pilot markets, share successes, and adapt before scaling enterprise-wide.
6. Balance Global Efficiency with Local Relevance: Assign clear roles at global, regional, and local levels to ensure every release is both efficient and market-relevant.

The Operational Impact: Accelerating Innovation and Growth

A well-executed Digital Factory transforms how B2B and industrial organizations operate. It streamlines technology, unifies customer data, and accelerates the delivery of new digital products and services. The result is a more agile, customer-centric organization that can:

• Rapidly respond to market changes and customer needs
• Scale innovation across business units and geographies
• Optimize operations and reduce costs through standardization and reuse
• Foster stronger partnerships with suppliers and customers

Measurable Business Outcomes: Publicis Sapient Client Successes

Publicis Sapient has guided complex, multinational organizations through every stage of digital transformation. Our clients have achieved:

• A 300% increase in website launch capability and a 200% faster time-to-market for innovation by implementing a digital operating model across 75 countries.
• The launch of over 60 direct-to-consumer sites using agile delivery and cloud-based platforms, reducing time-to-market for new brands from months to weeks and boosting engagement.
• Enhanced customer data capture and activation, enabling more meaningful one-to-one relationships and improved operational efficiency.

Publicis Sapient: Your Partner for Digital Factory Transformation

Our approach combines strategy, technology, experience, and engineering to help you break down silos, unify data, and build the agile operating models needed to compete in today’s digital economy. Whether you’re just beginning your journey or ready to scale, we partner with you to design, build, and operate a Digital Factory that delivers measurable business outcomes—now and in the future.

Ready to move from Center of Excellence to Digital Factory? Connect with our experts to discover how we can help you scale digital transformation and unlock new value across your organization.

Relevant Links

• Accelerating Consumer-Centric Innovation with a Digital Core Operating Model
• La Fábrica Digital: Un Modelo Operativo Esencial para la Transformación B2B en América Latina (LATAM)
• La Fábrica Digital: Un Modelo Operativo Esencial para la Transformación B2B en América Latina (LATAM)
• Les modèles d’exploitation digitale au cœur de la transformation des entreprises européennes (Europe)
• Accelerating Consumer-Centric Innovation with a Digital Core Operating Model
• La transformation digitale des modèles opérationnels dans les produits de grande consommation en Europe (Europe)
• La Fábrica Digital: Un Modelo Operativo Esencial para la Transformación B2B en América Latina (LATAM)
• Regional Deep Dive: Digital Core Operating Models in EMEA and APAC Consumer Products