Tag Archives: digital transformation

An experiential workplace is here with the Metaverse. Lets play

The Metaverse workplace is still sparse but already the workplace looks vastly different from what could have imagined just a couple of years ago.The pandemic on the job experiences unlocked new insights. Some of these insights have led to ‘worth adopting’ experiential journeys within the workplace for hybrid and remote workers, even nomads.

Now, the metaverse promises to bring new levels of social connectedness, mobility, and collaboration to a world of virtual work. 

The metaverse is poised to reshape the world of work in at least four major ways:

  1. new immersive forms of team collaboration;
  2. the emergence of new digital, AI-enabled colleagues;
  3. the acceleration of learning and skills acquisition through virtualization and gamified technologies;
  4. the eventual rise of a metaverse economy with completely new enterprises and work roles

The metaverse also opens up new possibilities to rethink the office and work environment, introducing elements of adventure, spontaneity, and surprise.

Workplace challenges and solutions | S. Ernest Paul

A virtual office doesn’t have to be a drab, uniform corporate environment downtown: why not a beach location, an ocean cruise, or even another world

Our work colleagues in the metaverse will not be limited to the avatars of our real-world colleagues. Increasingly, we will be joined by an array of digital colleagues — highly realistic, AI-powered, human-like bots.

The metaverse could also revolutionize training and skills development, drastically compressing the time needed to develop and acquire new skills.

While still in its early stages, the emergent metaverse provides an opportunity for enterprises to reset the balance in hybrid and remote work, to recapture the spontaneity, interactivity, and fun of team-based working and learning, while maintaining the flexibility, productivity, and convenience of working from home.

Imagine a world where you could have a beachside conversation with your colleagues, take meeting notes while floating around a space station, or teleport from your office in London to New York, all without taking a step outside your front door.

Feeling under pressure with too many meetings scheduled today? Then why not send your AI-enabled digital twin instead to take the load off your shoulders?

These examples offer but a glimpse into the future vision of work promised by “the metaverse,” a term originally coined by author Neal Stephenson in 1992 to describe a future world of virtual reality.

While defying precise definition, the metaverse is generally regarded as a network of 3-D virtual worlds where people can interact, do business, and forge social connections through their virtual “avatars.” Think about it as a virtual reality version of today’s internet.

While still nascent in many respects, the metaverse has suddenly become big business, with technology titans and gaming giants such as Meta(previously Facebook), Microsoft, Epic Games, Roblox, and others all creating their own virtual worlds or metaverses.

The metaverse draws on a vast ensemble of different technologies, including virtual reality platforms, gaming, machine learning, blockchain, 3-D graphics, digital currencies, sensors, and (in some cases) VR-enabled headsets.

The Metaverse has the potential to influence employee behavior

S. Ernest Paul

Q. How do you get to the metaverse?

A. Many current workplace metaverse solutions require no more than a computer, mouse, and keyboard keys, but for the full 3-D surround experience you usually have to don a VR-enabled headset.

However, rapid progress is also taking place in computer-generated holography that dispenses with the need for headsets, either by using virtual viewing windows that create holographic displays from computer images, or by deploying specially designed holographic pods to project people and images into actual space at events or meetings).

Companies such as Meta are also pioneering haptic (touch) gloves that enable users to interact with 3-D virtual objects and experience sensations such as movement, texture, and pressure.

Within the metaverse, you can make friends, rear virtual pets, design virtual fashion items, buy virtual real estate, attend events, create and sell digital art — and earn money to boot. But, until recently, the implications of the emerging metaverse for the world of work have received little attention.

Like Being There: Teamwork and Collaboration in the Metaverse

The metaverse promises to bring new levels of social connection, mobility, and collaboration to a world of virtual work.

NextMeet, based in India, is an avatar-based immersive reality platform focused on interactive working, collaboration, and learning solutions. Its mission is to remove the isolation and workforce disconnectedness that can result from remote and hybrid work. I interviewed Pushpak Kypuram, Founder-Director of NextMeet, who explained the inspiration behind their virtual workplace solution: “With the shift to remote working from the pandemic, keeping employees engaged has become a top challenge for many companies. You can’t keep 20 people engaged in the flat 2-D environment of a video call; some people don’t like appearing on camera; you’re not simulating a real-life scenario. That is why companies are turning to metaverse-based platforms.”

With NextMeet’s immersive platform, employee digital avatars can pop in and out of virtual offices and meeting rooms in real-time, walk up to a virtual help desk, give a live presentation from the dais, relax with colleagues in a networking lounge, or roam a conference center or exhibition using a customizable avatar. Participants access the virtual environment via their desktop computer or mobile device, pick or design their avatar, and then use keyboard buttons to navigate the space: arrow keys to move around, double click to sit on a chair, and so forth. Kypuram gives the example of employee onboarding: “If you’re onboarding 10 new colleagues and show or give them a PDF document to introduce the company, they will lose concentration after 10 minutes. What we do instead is have them walk along a 3-D hall or gallery, with 20 interactive stands, where they can explore the company. You make them want to walk the virtual hall, not read a document.”

Other metaverse companies are emphasizing workplace solutions that help counter video meeting fatigue and the social disconnectedness of remote work. PixelMax, a UK-based start-up, helps organizations create immersive workplaces designed to enhance team cohesion, employee wellness, and collaboration. Their virtual workplaces, which are entered via a web-based system on your computer and don’t require headsets, include features such as:

  • “Bump into” experiences: PixelMax’s immersive technology allows you to see your colleagues’ avatars in real-time, making it easier to stop them for a chat when you bump into them in the virtual workplace. In a recent interview, Shay O’Carroll, co-founder of PixelMax, explained that: “Informal and spontaneous conversations account for a huge amount of business communications — research suggests up to 90% in areas such as R&D — and during the pandemic we lost a lot of this vital communication.
  • Well-being spaces:These are dedicated areas for users of the world to take a break and experience something different. As Shay O’Carroll explained: “We have created well-being areas designed as forests, or aquariums. They could even be on the moon. These areas can contain on-demand content such as guided meditations and/or exercise classes.”
  • Delivery to your physical space:Clients can add features such as the ability to order take-out food or books and other merchandise within the virtual environment and have these delivered to your physical location (e.g., home).
  • Live status tracking:Just as in the physical workplace, you can walk around and get that panoramic sweep of the office floor, see where colleagues are located and who’s free, drop in for a quick chat, etc.

The ultimate vision, according to Andy Sands, co-founder of PixelMax, is being able to connect different virtual workplaces. It is currently building a virtual workplace for a group of 40 leading manufacturers in interior design that are co-located in Manchester, England. “It’s about community building, conversations and interactions. We want to enable worker avatars to move between a manufacturing world and an interior design world, or equally take that avatar and go and watch a concert in Roblox and Fortnite.”

Remote work can be stressful. Research by Nuffield in the UK found that almost one third of UK remote workers were experiencing difficulties in separating home and work life, with more than one quarter finding it hard to switch off when the work day finishes. Virtual workplaces can provide a better demarcation between home and work life, creating the sensation of walking into the workplace each day and then leaving and saying goodbye to colleagues when your work is done. In the virtual workplace, your avatar provides a means of communicating your status — in a meeting, gone for your lunch break, and so on — making it easier to stay connected to colleagues without feeling chained to the computer or cellphone, a frequent source of stress in traditional remote work situations.

Better teamwork and communication will certainly be key drivers of the virtual workplace, but why stop there? The metaverse opens up new possibilities to rethink the office and work environment, introducing elements of adventure, spontaneity, and surprise. A virtual office doesn’t have to be a drab, uniform corporate environment downtown: why not a beach location, an ocean cruise, or even another world?

This vision provides the inspiration for Gather, an international virtual reality platform that allows employees and organizations to “build their own office.” These dream offices can vary from “The Space-Station Office” with views of planet Earth to “The Pirate Office,” complete with ocean views, a Captain’s Cabin, and a Forecastle Lounge for socializing. For the less adventurous, you can choose from options like the virtual Rooftop Party or meeting in the Zen Gardens.

Introducing Your Digital Colleague

Our work colleagues in the metaverse will not be limited to the avatars of our real-world colleagues. Increasingly, we will be joined by an array of digital colleagues — highly realistic, AI-powered, human-like bots. These AI agents will act as advisors and assistants, doing much of the heavy lifting of work in the metaverse and, in theory, freeing up human workers for more productive, value-added tasks.

Recent years have seen tremendous progress in conversational AI systems — algorithms that can understand text and voice conversations and converse in natural language. Such algorithms are now morphing into digital humans that can sense and interpret context, show emotions, make human-like gestures, and make decisions.

One example is UneeQ, an international technology platform that focuses on creating “digital humans” that can work across a wide variety of fields and different roles.

  • UneeQ’s digital workers include Nola, a digital shopping assistant or concierge for the Noel Leeming stores in New Zealand;
  • Rachel, an always-on mortgage adviser; and
  • Daniel, a digital double of the UBS Chief Economist, who can meet multiple clients at once to provide personalized wealth management advice.

Emotions are the next frontier in the metaverse.

SoulMachines, a New-Zealand-based technology start-up, is bringing together advances in AI (such as machine learning and computer vision) and in autonomous animation (such as expression rendering, gaze direction, and real-time gesturing) to create lifelike, emotionally-responsive digital humans. Its digital humans are taking on roles as diverse as skincare consultants, a covid health adviser, real-estate agents, and educational coaches for college applicants.

Digital human technology opens up a vast realm of possibilities for workers and organizations. Digital humans are highly scalable — they don’t take coffee breaks — and can be deployed in multiple locations at once. They can be deployed to more repetitive, dull, or dangerous work in the metaverse. Human workers will increasingly have the option to design and create their own digital colleagues, personalized and tailored to work alongside them. But digital humans will also bring risks, such as increased automation and displacement of human work for lower-skilled workers who generally have fewer opportunities to move to alternative roles, or possible erosion of cultural and behavioral norms if humans become more disinhibited in their interactions with digital humans, behavior that could then carry over to their real-world interactions.

Faster Learning in the Metaverse

The metaverse could revolutionize training and skills development, drastically compressing the time needed to develop and acquire new skills.

AI-enabled digital coaches could be on-hand to assist in employee training and with career advice. In the metaverse, every object — a training manual, machine, or product, for example — could be made to be interactive, providing 3-D displays and step-by-step “how to” guides. Virtual reality role-play exercises and simulations will become common, enabling worker avatars to learn in highly realistic, “game play” scenarios, such as “the high-pressure sales presentation,” “the difficult client,” or “a challenging employee conversation.”

Virtual-reality technologies are already being used in many sectors to accelerate skills development: Surgical technology company

Medivis is using Microsoft’s HoloLens technology to train medical students through interaction with 3-D anatomy models;

Embodied Labs have used 360-degree video to help medical workers experience the effects of Alzheimer’s Disease and age-related audiovisual impairments, to assist in making diagnoses; manufacturing giant Bosch and the Ford Motor Company have pioneered a VR-training tool, using the Oculus Quest headset, to train technicians on electric vehicle maintenance. UK-based company

Met-averse Learning worked with the UK Skills Partnership to create a series of nine augmented reality training models for front-line nurses in the UK, using 3-D animation and augmented reality to test learners’ skills in specific scenarios and to reinforce best practices in nursing care.

With deep roots in online gaming, the metaverse can also start to tap the potential of gamified learning technologies for easier and faster skills acquisition.

PixelMax O’Carroll observed: “The game becomes the learning activity. In the medical world, we’ve used gamified technologies to train lab technicians; you’ll break out in different groups and then go to, say, a virtual PCR testing machine where you’ll go through stages of learning about how operate that machine, with your training result then recorded.” For the first responder community in the UK — police, fire fighters, medical crew, etc. —  PixelMax is working on games that combine physical training with immersive gamification to enable first responders to do repeat training, try different strategies, see different outcomes, and look at different ways of working as a team.

Research has established that virtual-world training can offer important advantages over traditional instructor or classroom-based training, as it provides a greater scope for visually demonstrating concepts (e.g., an engineering design) and work practices, a greater opportunity for learning by doing, and overall higher engagement through immersion in games and problem-solving through “quest-based” methods.

Virtual-world learning can also make use of virtual agents, AI-powered bots that can assist learners when they get stuck, provide nudges, and set scaled challenges. The visual and interactive nature of metaverse-based learning is also likely to appeal particularly to autistic people, who respond better to visual as opposed to verbal cues. Virtual reality tools can also be used to combat social anxiety in work situations, for example by creating realistic but safe spaces to practice public presentations and meeting interactions.

New Roles in the Metaverse Economy

The internet didn’t just bring new ways of working: it brought a whole new digital economy — new enterprises, new jobs, and new roles. So too will the metaverse, as the immersive 3-D economy gathers momentum over the decade ahead.

IMVU, an avatar-based social network with more than 7 million users per month, has thousands of creators whomake and sell their own virtual products for the metaverse — designer outfits, furniture, make-up, music, stickers, pets — generating around $7 million per month in revenues. Alongside the creators are the “meshers,” developers who design the basic 3-D templates that others can customize and tailor as virtual products. A successful mesh can be replicated and sold thousands of times, earning significant income for its developer.

The Decentraland platform is creating virtual realtors, enabling users to buy, sell, and build businesses upon parcels of virtual land, earning a digital money called “Mana.”

Looking further ahead, just as we talk about digital-native companies today, we are likely to see the emergence of metaverse-native enterprises, companies entirely conceived and developed within the virtual, 3-D world. And just as the internet has brought new roles that barely existed 20 years ago — such as digital marketing managers, social media advisors, and cyber-security professionals — so, too, will the metaverse likely bring a vast swathe of new roles that we can only imagine today: avatar conversation designers, “holoporting” travel agents to ease mobility across different virtual worlds, metaverse digital wealth management and asset managers, etc.

Challenges and Imperatives

Despite its vast future promise, the metaverse is still in its infancy in many respects. Significant obstacles could stymie its future progress: the computing infrastructure and power requirements for a full-fledged working metaverse are formidable, and today’s metaverse consists of different virtual worlds that are not unified in the way the original internet was. The metaverse also brings a thicket of regulatory and HR compliance issues, for example around potential risks of addiction, or unacceptable behaviors such as bullying or harassment in the virtual world, of which there has been some concern-of late. While many issues remain, business leaders, policy makers, and HR leaders can start with the following imperatives for successful collaboration in the metaverse:

  • Make portability of skills a priority: For workers, there will be concerns around portability of skills and qualifications: “Will experience or credentials gained in one virtual world or enterprise be relevant in another, or in my real-world life?” Employers, educators, and training institutions can create more liquid skills by agreeing upon properly certified standards for skills acquired in the metaverse, with appropriate accreditation of training providers. This will help to avoid quality dilution and provide the necessary assurance to metaverse-based workers and future employers.
  • Be truly hybrid: As the rush to remote work during the pandemic showed, many enterprises had been laggards when it came to the adoption of truly digital ways of working, with outdated policies, lack of infrastructure, and a strict demarcation between consumer and business technologies. Enterprises must avoid these mistakes in the metaverse, creating integrated working models from the start that allow employees to move seamlessly between physical, online, and 3-D virtual working styles, using the consumer technologies native to the metaverse: avatars, gaming consoles, VR headsets, hand-track controllers with haptics and motion control that map the user’s position in the real world into the virtual world (although some versions use only cameras). Yet this is only the start. Some companiesare developing virtual locomotion technologies such as leg attachments and treadmills to create realistic walking experiences. Nextminduses ECG electrodes to decode neural signals so that users can control objects with their minds.
  • Talk to your kids: The metaverse will force companies to completely reinvent how they think about training, with a focus on highly stimulative, immersive, challenge-based content. In designing their workplace metaverses, companies should look particularly to the younger generation, many of whom have grown up in a gaming, 3-D, socially-connected environment. Reverse intergenerational learning — where members of the younger generation coach and train their older colleagues — could greatly assist the spread of metaverse-based working among the overall workforce.
  • Keep it open: The metaverse of today has largely emerged in an open, decentralized manner, spurred on by the efforts of millions of developers, gamers, and designers. To fully harness the power of this democratized movement for their workers, enterprises must not only guard against efforts to control or dominate the metaverse, but must actively seek to extend and open it up even further, for example by pursuing open-source standards and software where possible, and by pushing for “interoperability” — seamless connections — between different virtual worlds. Otherwise, as we have seen in the social media sphere, the metaverse could become quickly dominated by major technology companies, reducing choice and lessening the potential for grass-roots innovation.

The workplace of the 2020s already looks vastly different from what we could have imagined just a couple of years ago: the rise of remote and hybrid working has truly changed expectations around why, where and how people work. But the story of workplace transformation doesn’t end there. While still in its early stages, the emergent metaverse provides an opportunity for enterprises to reset the balance in hybrid and remote work, to recapture the spontaneity, interactivity, and fun of team-based working and learning while maintaining the flexibility, productivity, and convenience of working from home.

But three things are clear.

First, speed of adoption will be important. With most of the technology and infrastructure already in place, large enterprises will need to act fast to keep up with metaverse technologies and virtual services, or risk being outflanked in the market for talent by more nimble competitors.

Second, the metaverse will only be successful if it is deployed as a tool for employee engagement and experiences, not for supervision and control.

And, third, metaverse-based work must match the virtual experiences that workers, particularly younger workers, have come to expect of the technology in their consumer and gaming lives.

Guided by these principles, business leaders can start to imagine and create their own workplaces of the future.

For strategy and use cases specific to your vertical, geography and industry reach out to S. Ernest Paul at 336.287.1085.

AI use cases for marketing plus ChatGPT3

There is a vibrant stride underway for the application of AI in marketing. Brands who are adopting AI are engaging with customers in a way which they want. The brands have greater insight with data and user experience [UX] making conversations possible.

Google is on a ‘code red’ got caught basking in its search monopoly. They have called in the founders to weigh in on the Open.ai & ChatGPT threat to their dominant position in search.

I/ we have been quietly mulling why searching on google is not a rapid process. It is best to anticipate customer needs, wants and the unidentified needs. ‘I/we’ are the customers in the image below. When I ask myself ‘how well am I served by google’ ? I would say – Not well at all. Google has woken up to a competitive threat rather than being in tune with the customer. Some of you may remember the browser ‘Netscape’ and how it was a threat to Microsoft. It led to a better browser. Well, we need a better search experience here. It is the smaller companies who innovate and seem to wake up the giants. That is a sad commentary for American technology innovation.

Customer needs & wants | S.Ernest Paul

Testing ChatGPT3:

https://chat.openai.com/chat

I searched for – ‘AI use cases for marketing in an essay’.

You be the judge of utilizing AI for content creation. A copy and paste may not be advisable. In conjunction adding your own content is an upgraded strategy. Unfortunately there is no emotion in the writing style (differentiates from human vs AI driven). Compensate for the ‘blah’ and robotic voice and tone.

  1. Predictive analytics: AI can be used to analyze customer data and predict future behavior, allowing marketers to target their campaigns more effectively and improve ROI.
  2. Personalization: AI can be used to personalize content and recommendations for individual customers, improving the customer experience and increasing engagement.
  3. Chatbots: AI-powered chatbots can be used to provide 24/7 customer service and support, answering questions and helping customers navigate a website or app.
  4. Image and video recognition: AI can be used to analyze images and videos, for example, to automatically tag and classify visual content for better organization and searchability.
  5. Voice assistants: AI-powered voice assistants can be integrated into smart speakers and other devices to provide hands-free interaction with customers, allowing them to make purchases or get information quickly and easily.
  6. Social media monitoring: AI can be used to monitor social media for mentions of a brand or product, allowing marketers to respond quickly to customer feedback and complaints.
  7. Email marketing: AI can be used to analyze customer data and predict which customers are most likely to open and click on an email, allowing marketers to send targeted campaigns and improve their email marketing ROI.
  8. Campaign optimization: AI can be used to optimize ad campaigns in real-time, adjusting targeting, bid prices, and other parameters based on performance data to improve results.
  9. Fraud detection: AI can be used to detect fraudulent behavior, such as click fraud, in online advertising, helping to protect a company’s advertising budget.
  10. Content generation: AI can be used to generate new content, such as product descriptions or social media posts, saving time and effort for marketers.
  11. Ok good. What did you think ? Worth or not worth. The hoopla about school essay & AI manufactured content aside
  12. Seriously, the navigation has the potential to be a minimalist & frustration free search journey. With, stellar results it will be the bomb.
  13. We don’t really need semi-conducting to power up the speed of search. The flavors in this ice cream are good. In fact they are more than good. I can anticipate saving hours which I spend distilling ‘Google’ search results.
pertinent search | S Ernest Paul

The next iteration of the search experience has begun. The battle of the giants it is. Google versus Microsoft. The alarm bells for a $160B search pie. I have a feeling we are going to be the beneficiaries in the end.

A simpler interface powered by AI aid coming delivering a laser focused singular search result

OpenAI’s opportunity is to narrow search to the most relevant response and save consumers the painful experience of scrolling and picking links to click on.

The Future of work and a Global Team winning culture

Global culture team dynamic are ever so important during COVID and post COVID as remote work becomes the norm. With it comes cultural sensitivities and diplomacy to succeed.

Confusion, misunderstandings stemming from cultural differences are ever more leading to a breakdown of almost every offshore outsourcing project. In fact, in a recent CIO Magazine survey, 51% of the CIOs said that the greatest offshore outsourcing challenge is overcoming culture differences.

Global team dynamics have played a major role for global companies. With the advent of COVID remote work has begun to take hold at English speaking companies with employees located in foreign countries.

This cultural divide is subtle, intangible, rarely quantified, and ill addressed. By understanding and interpreting cultural differences a healthy fusion is achievable. Before undertaking a project with international participants, cultural challenges specific to the countries and regions ought to be shared and accommodations discussed.

Team Psychological mechanics increasing Call for a Global RETHINK

S. Ernest Paul
S. Ernest Paul

With advances in technology worldwide teams can be constructed using a variety of collaboration technologies. To bridge the time zones, long distance communication is a necessity. These long distance teams will inevitably face cultural differences. Our own culture is invisible to us and it is usually the foreign cultures that appear ‘strange’.

Here is an attempt to address some of these differences amongst cultures, in a work environment.

Culture is acquired. It allows people to behave and likewise react in a predictable manner. These signals, reactions, gestures, body language is directly related to the values, mores, roles, hierarchies and attitudes of that specific culture.

Key areas where these differences are apparent and deserve special consideration when negotiating, socializing, and working together

S. Ernest Paul
Cultural considerations | S. Ernest Paul

Task Oriented versus Relationship Oriented – Workers in the United States, Japan and Germany are extremely task oriented. ‘Time is money’ is the adage. A mercenary approach to a project is common. The vocational school approach has given additional rise to perfect the cog in the wheel, in Germany. Not to forget, Japan and Germany were built in large part with the US brain trust after WW11. However, in countries like France and Russia work relationships take precedent. India and China are currently somewhere in the middle but gradually shifting to task-oriented attitudes.

•      Individuality versus Collectivity – The US worker will voice his/her opinion to advance or enhance personal ambition. There is a great degree of individual jousting. Whereas workers in India, China will choose the collective approach. India, a former colonial country and China attempting to shed its Communist roots will move in the middle as the outsourcing trends shift from BPO/ITO to KPO (Knowledge Process Outsourcing) in the coming years.

•      Importance of Class, Rank and Caste – Rank and Class do not play any significant role in the US workplace. However, in Britain, Ireland, and India they do. All former colonial countries show signs of importance associated with class and rank. In India, the additional aspect of caste seems to play a role. A higher caste individual generally would gain respect quicker as an authority figure. A lack of migration within India has culturally concentrated individuals, in various hub cities which deserves additional attention.

•      Work for the Present versus the Future – The workers in India and China are extremely focused on a secure financial future and rarely take risks to jeopardize their job security. However, the approach in Russia is ‘to live for today’. In the US, the workers are in the middle with a gradual shift towards ‘looking to the future’ as global conditions put pressure on US workers.

•      Space and Distance – When conversing, social distance matters. In the Middle East, it is normal for individuals to be only a foot apart from each other while conversing, whereas in the US this would be an invasion of personal space. A US worker would take any open seat in a conference room. This would be a no-no for Japanese or an Indian worker. Rank and power would dictate seating.

•      Importance of Materialism – A US Manager would gladly take the largest office and drive an expensive car. Japanese managers would be alongside their workers to feel the pulse of the office. A Scandinavian Manager would get a pat on the back from workers for driving a beat-up car.

•      Fluidity of Time – In the US, deadlines are taken very seriously. In some cultures, time is irrelevant and works more like a doctor’s office appointment. In India, deadlines are not taken as seriously as they are in the US. Thus, clarity of deadlines and task completion expectations should be assessed ahead of time and stressed upon.

•      Importance of Friendship at Work – In countries like India, France, and Israel, friendships and business relationships take a long time to develop, whereas in the US these relationships are extremely transitory because of an internally mobile and migrant society.

•      Agreements and understanding – In some cultures, a handshake deal is as good as gold. In others, a formal contract is the norm. However, in the Outsourcing/Offshoring arena, formal contracts have become standard and have crossed cultural boundaries. Disagreements by workers in the US, India, France get vocal, whereas in China and Japan they are quite subdued.

•      Language – Language barriers have led to misunderstandings. In a Call Center, where there is direct contact with a customer scenario, linguistic missteps have led to disastrous results. Spoken English is different in the US versus, say India. Some words may be taken literally in one country and not in another. Region-specific references may not be understood by the team in another country over a conference call. Where English is not the. native language, the preferred method of communication by foreign workers is IM, rather than the telephone.

some time now, for example software coding is done in India, whereas the software testing is done in the US. In another scenario, part of the team is located in another country, while simultaneous work goes on in both locations.

Several factors that deserve scrutiny and attention when assembling these cross-cultural teams

S. Ernest Paul
S. Ernest Paul

Work Plans – In the US, when planning for new work or for an upcoming project the style that works best is one of an announcement followed by a discussion, in perhaps a town hall type setting. This ‘inclusiveness in the decision making’ motivates the workers to ‘buy in’. However, in authoritarian countries like India, once the top brass has confirmed the work, it is defined, assigned and distributed to the workers.

Decisions – In Asian cultures precedent and tradition guides decision making for the most part, whereas in the US and the Western countries the criteria is money, time and quality.

Conversation – In Asia, an extended physical distance between individuals is considered respectful to authority. Asians are more modest when sharing accomplishments whereas the American tendency to be open and honest is often construed as rude and boastful by Europeans.

Meetings – When hosting a meeting Americans get straight to the point and jump right into the thick of things and would abruptly end the meeting. This would be perfectly fine in the US but would be considered or perceived as rude by Europeans and Asian alike. The Asians and Europeans would indulge in a little bit of ‘idle time’ talk before and after the meeting. The relationship building part is given a lot more importance in other cultures.

Teamwork – Conversations, gestures, meeting of the eyes, and tones convey important messages and influence how a member of a team perceives another. Appearances could lead a team member to a preconceived notion or a cultural stereotype that could adversely affect the team karma.

Perceptions – Overseas teammates when visiting the US have known to have received a tough reception perhaps due to an existing stereotype. A prevailing false misconception of another’s abilities may falsely exist. First impressions are lasting – a certain trait or behavior could trigger a suspicion of inability.

Motivation – In cultures which encourage individualism, workers appreciate monetary recognition, whereas cultures like India where family and friendships are more important, time off would be preferred than a monetary reward.

The Future of Work for a Global Workforce – The Rules to follow

In conclusion, because values, habits, and mores differ in multicultural groups, it is best to share with the team the cultural hindrances and sync needed, in a combined forum ahead of project commencement, for the group to be effective in the long run. This is an essential building block of constructing a cross cultural team that will be highly productive.

The future of work is morphing and global brands have to adapt as a new digital and remote global workforce settles in for the long haul

Salesforce Marketing Cloud explained

“I led the Marketing Cloud selection process for Cigna, selecting Salesforce Marketing Cloud and implemented it in 14 counties including North America”

S. Ernest Paul

Ron Ross, Senior Strategic Account Executive @ Salesforce

The Marketing Cloud Journey

The Martech stack is evolving faster than ever, and to keep up, companies must adopt emerging products with technology advances of data consolidation, personalization, AI, ML, predictive analytics that will transform and accelerate their business. Th eleft brained marketer is now a right brained marketer as well. The Don Draper days have relinquished and Agile Marketing has taken shape. Which means, your technology platforms must be more versatile than just an ESP or a CMS. That’s where Salesforce Marketing Cloud (SFMC) comes in.

Originally known as ExactTarget back in the early days of email marketing, Buddy Media for Content creation, Radian6 for social listening, Salesforce Marketing Cloud has evolved from an email marketing software solution into a leading omnichannel marketing automation platform. Oracle Marketing Cloud and Adobe Marketing Cloud soon followed. With a robust suite of tools that covers and connects a variety of different channels in the customer journey, Marketing Cloud allows you to get a 360-degree view of your customers and engage them with the right message at the right time in the right channel.

And this transformation is resonating for brands. Salesforce Marketing Cloud’s revenue, along with Commerce Cloud, grew 28% year over year in 2020 as more brands moved to Salesforce as their innovative, 1:1 messaging engine.

S. Ernest Paul

But while it is easy to recognize at a high level why your business could benefit from Marketing Cloud, really understanding the power of the platform, along with how to implement it and connect it to the rest alleviate some of that burden by taking you through an overview of Salesforce Marketing Cloud, along with the benefits that the platform can provide and the keys for a successful implementation.

“Proven ROI on Salesforce Marketing Cloud selection & implementation”

S. Ernest Paul

“ Marketing Cloud’s revenue, along with Commerce Cloud, grew 28% year over year in 2020 as more brands moved to Salesforce as their innovative, 1:1 messaging engine.”

S. Ernest Paul

Salesforce Marketing Cloud Capabilities

The first step to realizing how Marketing Cloud can transform your business is to better understand its capabilities.

Personalization

As consumers’ expectations for personalization continue to accelerate, so do their expectations for omnichannel experiences. In 2019, consumers averaged nearly six touchpoints across channels when purchasing an item – and 50% regularly use more than four during their customer lifecycle – which is a staggering increase from 15 years ago when the average consumer used two touchpoints and only 7% used more than four on a regular basis.

Marketing Cloud works to meet those consumer demands by enabling brands to create seamless customer experiences across every touchpoint, including email, mobile, advertising, web, direct mail, sales, commerce, and service. It is a platform that allows your messaging strategies and customer engagement to shine.

Features

  • Journeys and automation: Unification and marketing automation, behavioral data integration, and triggering
  • Channel activation: SMS, social, push, ads, email, direct mail, and custom journey activities
  • Content production and builds: AMPscript for interactive email, mobile optimization, Einstein recommendations, and Content Builder SDK and customization
  • Capabilities activation: Einstein, journey path optimizer, Social Studio, and Interaction Studio
  • Unified customer view: Connecting all data sources and providing with a 360-degree customer view to solve data-silo issues

Salesforce Marketing Cloud to Elevate Digital Transformation                                  

Most brands are striving to achieve a full omnichannel setup. But often this is attempted using different and fragmented platforms and stand- alone channels, leading to disparate tracking data without a unified customer experience. Additionally, the effort to unify the offline and online experience is a huge challenge, with separate business departments typically creating silos. Marketing Cloud provides one robust platform that can handle all global and local marketing efforts in one place so that businesses can overcome these challenges.

Benefits which Payoff

  • Cohesive messages and experiences across channels
  • The ability to unify offline and online experiences
  • A scalable platform that provides a constellation of add-ons for every need
  • Marketing automation strategies to send the right messages to the right people at the right time
  • Omnichannel capabilities that provide greater control for brands increasing engagement and conversion

Marketing Cloud gives a tremendous boost to business transformation because it provides the opportunity and instruments a brand needs to essentially rethink and redesign its go-to-market strategy.

“Keys to successful implementations, analytics, and support”

S. Ernest Paul

A common mistake that businesses make when implementing Marketing Cloud is to just use the platform to deploy emails, treating it as an email marketing service like MailChimp. With this approach, the ROI will not be realized, as brands are missing out on maximizing what they can achieve with automations, data insights, Einstein, and so much more.

01  Marketing Automation

The need for personalized, 1:1 experiences delivered via Pardot to every customer cannot happen through manually built and scheduled campaigns alone. Customers expect tailored messages delivered in the moment wherever they are, and no brand has the manpower to manage this on its own.

You must rely on automations to help drive engagement, from transactional emails (order confirmation, shipping, etc.) and next-best-action (abandoned cart, abandoned browse) to automated and personalized content blocks within your general campaigns.

02   Data centralization and CDP

While messaging activation is the main output of Marketing Cloud’s capabilities, a solid data foundation is critical to a successful implementation. Make sure you have a well-scaled first-party data asset that is rooted in customer intelligence. A CDP – specifically Salesforce CDP – can be your centralized hub for segmentation, identity management, and consent that pushes data.                                                                

“ Your brand still has to be organized to operate in a way to make the most out of the technology you have and reduce operational costs and deployment errors and improve time to deployment.”

out to your Marketing Cloud platforms and provides both a single view of your customers and the ability to personalize experiences.

03   ESP implementation and migration

It’s critical to ensure that the right solution is designed during the implementation, as this will be key to a scalable and successful marketing automation program. Use the implementation process as an opportunity to refresh your existing programs. Be ambitious, set high goals, and use this step to build all your key requirements that meet your business objectives.

04   Social Studio, Interaction Studio, and Advertising Studio integrations

Our recommendation is to pick and choose these solutions based on your brand’s needs. It doesn’t have to be all or nothing. If your business relies on a lot of social behavior, then you will want Interaction Studio to better understand and target based on behavior. But there is also some service crossover if you already have Service Cloud. So, evaluate your business needs and choose accordingly.

05   Operational audit

Just having the technology isn’t enough for success. Your brand still has to be organized to operate in a way to make the most out of the technology you have and reduce operational costs and deployment errors and improve time to deployment. An operational audit offers an in- depth review of your existing operational process across your people, processes, technology, and data. This will help to build an operating model that covers the entire marketing journey across touchpoints based on industry and platform best practices.

06   Third-party integrations

Despite how robust the Marketing Cloud platform is, you will still likely need to rely on third-party tools for specific and targeted tactics. Salesforce’s connectors allow the platform to integrate easily with nearly any external tool, and for added simplicity and ease in the integration, see which platforms can be installed and integrated directly into Marketing Cloud using Salesforce’s AppExchange.

07  Deliverability and inbox placement

Many brands face challenges that limit their email marketing effectiveness, with the most common challenges being inbox placement and email deliverability. Meaning, did your emails reach your customers’ inboxes and do they have the highest probability of being seen? Many times, inbox-placement issues result from poor list hygiene. If you have a large number of inactive subscribers, for example, that will impact your deliverability and diminish your engagement metrics. Starting out with a clean list from the outset is the best way to ensure your messages are hitting the right inboxes

“Keys to successful campaign management and journey management”

S. Ernest Paul

Once you have the pieces of Marketing Cloud in place, you will be ready to start running campaigns. Here are some tips for successfully managing customer journeys and campaigns.

01  Journey creation

Remember, journeys are non-linear. The retail purchasing cycle can be long, rapid, sporadic, and unpredictable. Consumers expect brands to meet them with continuity where they are and on their terms.

Utilizing Journey Builder can help you map cross-channel touchpoints against customer-need states to identify highs, lows, and gaps in the experience across the lifecycle.

02  Behavioral and triggered email campaigns

While emails that promote your latest deals and products are undoubtedly important, to get the most out of Marketing Cloud, you need effective behavior and triggered emails. These are emails like abandoned cart, abandoned browse, and post-purchase transactional emails that provide transparency and encourage customers to take action.

03  Campaign segmentation and deployment

An important part of personalized experiences is not just that customers receive the content that matters most, but also that they don’t get any content they don’t care about. Audience segmentation is critical to maintaining an engaged based and preventing churn. So, not only do you want to avoid overwhelming subscribers with messages, but you also don’t want to turn them away by sending them deals or announcements for products they aren’t interested in buying.

04   Content creation

Leverage Marketing Cloud’s Content Builder for building highly engaging and mobile-optimized content in just minutes thanks to its intuitive and codeless platform. Content Builder allows for brands to use their own templates or built-in templates, and the drag-and- drop method adds flexibility and simplicity to the content-building experiences. The content you create can then be leveraged throughout email, SMS, and mobile, and by incorporating Journey Builder, you can then execute omnichannel journeys.

Connecting Marketing Cloud to the rest of your technology stack

S. Ernest Paul

While Marketing Cloud can serve as a standalone platform, it works best when connected with Sales, Service, Experience, and Commerce Cloud. If you have one view of the customer, with all the data in one centralized place, it’s easier for a brand to engage with them at the right time. Salesforce allows you to connect with your customers in real time in a singular view instead of having the connection broken. It also provides the customer with a seamless experience whenever they are engaging.

Implemented Salesforce Marketing Cloud in 14 countries with outstanding results

S. Ernest Paul

Conclusion

Marketing is now an always-on experience as brands try to meet consumers’ needs and stand out in a crowded marketplace. From the acquisition stage through post-purchase loyalty, 1:1 messaging is a necessity and Marketing Cloud is increasingly becoming the platform of choice to power those critical messages. And while the sophistication and intuitiveness of the platform will make these experiences easier to produce, plenty of work still must be done from brands themselves to ensure they have the resources, processes, and capabilities to make the most of what Marketing Cloud has to offer.

Some Content Courtesy of Dentsu

AI driven Marketing has announced its arrival, but privacy concerns prevail

S. Ernest Paul

With Cookies going away, and Apple hosting pixels which reveal open rates for emails for Marketing Automation there are concerns – driven by privacy spurred by GDPR and cookie consent – the DMPs are dead. With the latest iOS 15 update the IP addresses which revealed location data also took a nose drive

First party data which brands hold in data warehouses and data lakes are akin to the 11 finger lakes in Upstate NY.

Disparate, with no data governance platforms / frameworks / normalized data or elastic data is still nascent at many brands, with no sign of a Chief Data Officer, albeit staffed with a good sized platoon of data scientists.

The Data ship needs a captain, and the lakes need to be bridged & governed

Fig: The Disparate State Of Data

Few years ago, at the advent of Social listening, the term social selling kicked in and at a Payor a tweet ‘Hello, I am turning 26 on and no longer going to be on my Mom’s insurance’ was a melody.

Just this nugget, a trigger to the Healthcare marketer was exciting. However now with RPA incorporated into social listening intelligence these finds are self-driven.

When I was at Cigna and set up their Social media practice from scratch, the key piece from an intelligence perspective was ‘social listening’. I did set up the Social listening listening along with the publishing and the front line conversations.

Except today, this ’nugget’ would be picked up by AI without any human intervention

Real Time Marketing needs to get Real

Real-time marketing capabilities do emphasize the actionability of marketing capabilities, however the entire chain is not strong enough yet allowing marketers to actively manage their marketing activities and track marketing capability development for products and services improvement, relying on AI -driven insights.

The same Real-time marketing capabilities also help marketers gain situational awareness for their marketing actions, which allow marketers to focus on each customer conversation that matters most to customers with real-time monitoring and big data analytics. By doing so, marketers can make the right decision at the right time

The Buyer’s Journey, The Sales Funnel – allow visitors to evaluate a product & formulate a decisioning rationale to make a purchase and then continue as customers and exhibit possible loyalty. See Fig 1, a couple of paragraphs below.

Marketing Goals have not changed but the goal posts have

The goals for the business and marketers is to generate more conversions (which primarily consists of sales). They deploy various marketing tactics, Marketing automation – segment the population set and send personalized communications via eMail/ SMS etc. They supplement their marketing efforts (MQLs) Marketing qualified leads and then filter it down to (SQLs) for the sales teams to follow up. The brand communication support the effort via various tactics and channels from SEO/SEM/ Targeted Advertising, Social media, Retargeting, Conversion rate optimization, and other methods.

Internal Data clean-up for AI – please can we do this first?

Lately, many brands have been able to clean their internal data, removed and eliminated disparate data warehouses and data lakes, made it possible for the data to be housed and queried. The data science teams have worked hard to make this happen as a result AI has been able to isolate, pick-out customers and gently nudge customers towards marketing and sales cycle, and improving the conversion rates and keeping the cost of acquisition (CAC) within manageable budgets.

Customer Loyalty and Retention reflects the LTV (Long Term-Value

S. Ernest Paul

Fig1: Sales Funnel / Buyers’ Journey / Customers Lifecycle

If the Retention is not holding and the data is elusive customers are fickle they will leave for a competitor, especially now when the COVID tension is high and attention spans are shrinking. We really need ‘Nudge’ to sharpen the experiences and personalize the journeys or we will end up with a Chinese Menu with a million items to choose from – a maze. Now compare that to ta Starbucks menu (Nudge-inspired). Thank you, Prof Thaler @Kellogg for Nudge economics.

Fig2: Customers leaving for a competitor

A New Alliance is being Stitched – CIO & CMO

To stop this leakage and to have the ability to identify, predict and react in near real time a new team/ alliance from within has been born. The key decision makers in defining the Long-Term AI strategy are the CIO and the CMO. Lately the role of the CDO (Chief Data Officer) has taken shape as the origins of all AI driven activity points to the glaciers of data.

Fig3: The stakeholders involved in shaping and championing Data, Machine Learning, AI

The technologies involved before AI kicks-in

S. Ernest Paul

How do artificial intelligence, machine learning, neural networks, and deep learning relate?

Perhaps the easiest way to think about artificial intelligence, machine learning, neural networks, and deep learning is to think of them like Russian nesting dolls. Each is essentially a component of the prior term.

That is, machine learning is a subfield of artificial intelligence. Deep learning is a subfield of machine learning, and neural networks make up the backbone of deep learning algorithms. In fact, it is the number of node layers, or depth, of neural networks that distinguishes a single neural network from a deep learning algorithm, which must have more than three.

The nodes at work below are illustrative

If Retention is not sticky and the experience is elusive, the customers are fickle and will leave for a competitor unless of course you are locked into a Xfinity / Comcast deal from which there is no escape for they only tailor to ‘acquisition’ (new customers). I , along with many of us are in the ‘retention’ phase – we get little attention & deals – of course specific to the industry with complete disregard to the sanctity of the ‘Sherman Act’ – my apologies I went on a tangent there).

Data still remains a nemesis

S. Ernest Paul

My creation below illustrates the phases and advances towards AI – however data remains a nemesis. Without it, Marketing and Sales teams are blinded. The Marketers still use Marketing Automation platforms & Lead Generation tools crunch MQLs (Marketing Qualified Leads) with segmentation / identity / personas / personalization – however the ROI on the the MQLs translating to ( SQLs) Sales Qualified Leads is shabby.

AI can only deliver if the data is reliable

Awareness > Consideration > Decision > Loyalty

The No. 1 goal for most businesses is to generate more conversions (which primarily consists of sales). This can be through their marketing efforts, sales tactics, brand communication, conversion rate optimization, and other methods. Of late, many companies have developed critical competencies in using AI to nudge customers towards sales, and have improved their numbers drastically as a result.

The customers are increasing puzzled with the COVID phenomenon and there is mad scramble to get UX / Design thinking and User-Centric design right.

AI, machine learning, and big data technology can all work hand-in-hand to improve the customer experience and support an optimized customer journey, which leads to more conversions in several key ways.

Let’s talk about how you can start using AI tech in each stage of the funnel.

Awareness

Marketing strategies these days are often heavily focused on the top of the funnel to build brand awareness and attract new customers. For many businesses, recognition is nearly equivalent to the value of their brand. Elena Veselinova and Marija Gogova Samonikov explain in their book Building Brand Equity and Consumer Trust Through Radical Transparency Practices that brand impact is a continuous process that insures purchases, cash flow, revenue and share value. Brand communication and experience creates and builds a loyal base of customers that do not consider any other brand.

Brand Awareness

Creating a strong level of brand awareness takes time and strategy. Companies spend millions of dollars on marketing campaigns and advertising to increase their reach and recognition, but AI tech is able to take the guesswork out of these strategies by analyzing huge volumes of consumer data for more targeted campaigns. For example, predictive analytics software can collect, track, and analyze datasets from past customers to determine which strategies or tactics performed well. These datasets are turned into reports with insights to guide marketing efforts and place relevant content in front of the most interested eyes at the right times.

With AI-assisted marketing, advertising strategies can be backed with data to optimize ad placement. Machine learning systems can even identify the best influencers for brands to partner with in order to reach relevant audiences and grow brand familiarity.

Consideration

The next step of the buyer’s journey is often overlooked by marketers because it can drag on for a long time, depending on the product and the customer’s needs. During the consideration phase, a customer is already familiar with a brand or product but are unsure of whether or not to actually purchase. Customers will typically research the product’s reviews, compare prices to competitors, and look for alternatives during this stage. Due to this, the number of potential customers tends to narrow down considerably as they move from this step to the decision phase.

Brands must work to combat each customer’s concerns and questions standing in the way of a purchase decision. One of the best ways to do this is by offering personalized content that is relevant to each person, making it easy for them to find the information they are seeking.

AI systems can be used to predict a customer’s needs based on consumer data and previous online behavior, and then encourage conversions with a tailored UX or even a completely customized landing page that displays content relevant to that customer.

For example, if a site visitor has viewed a certain product page and played a video demonstrating its features, these actions can trigger an AI system to target them with personalized content that prompts a conversion if they don’t proceed to buy immediately. This content could be something as simple as an email message with more information or a display ad with a special offer for the specific product.

Then there are platforms that use conversational AI tech (such as chatbots and voice assistants) to power automated, text- or audio-based interactions between a business and its customers. These platforms can understand speech, decipher intent, differentiate between languages, and mimic human conversations with great accuracy. Increasingly, they are advanced enough to even understand individual context and personalize the conversation accordingly.

Data Insights

Based on data insights, AI tech can curate content that matches up with the issues that are most important to that person, whether it be product features, immediate delivery, long term savings, etc. Customers respond quite well to personalized offers — an Accenture study reported that 91% of consumers are more likely to purchase from a company that sent them targeted deals or recommendations.

Decision Making

Once a customer moves from consideration to action, AI tools can be used to support a positive sales experience and eliminate any bumps along the way. If a customer encounters an issue while browsing the site, or during checkout or payment, it could be an instant sales killer, if it isn’t handled immediately by something like live chat.

A challenging consideration towards a design response is certainly necessary.

According to multiple studies, one of the most frustrating parts about online customer service is long wait times. By using AI-enabled chatbots, companies can instantly answer common questions and resolve issues or roadblocks affecting the progression of the buyer’s journey. And customers certainly appreciate these quick response times. AI systems can significantly increase conversions with effective personalization and swift customer service.

Loyalty & LTV

The last step of the customer journey is possibly the most valuable. Over half of customers reportedly stay loyal to brands that “get them.” Returning customers also tend to spend more money than new ones, and an oft-reported stat says that on average 65% of businesses’ revenue comes from existing customers.

What can the Business do

Businesses (and customers) can benefit greatly from loyalty programs that are backed with machine learning technology. Starbucks famously uses AI tech to analyze customer behavior, improve convenience, and identify which promotions would perform best based on that person’s drink or food preferences, location, and purchase frequency. Their loyalty program uses this data to send out thousands of offers each day for the products their customers are most likely to buy. Their customer loyalty program grew 16% YoY last year as a direct result of their Deep Brew AI engine.

While a positive shopping experience and great products are certainly important factors in a customer’s decision to buy again, data-driven marketing campaigns that encourage loyalty can also help a company to grow their numbers of repeat sales. Again, AI-assisted personalization techniques can boost the chances of a customer coming back for more, especially if they receive targeted offers or shopping suggestions based on previous interactions.

The Wrap

AI is proving to be the tool of the future for marketers. It allows marketing teams to use predictive insights and analytical data to encourage and assist every micro-decision taken by consumers. AI systems not only help customer

Who is S. Ernest Paul ?

Notable – He was recently recognized in the Top 10 CMO in the Country in 2021

b) He was recognized in the top 100 in Finance in 2021

Finance Magazine | C Level Focus

A thought leader in Data, Digital Strategy, Social Media, Content Platforms , Content Strategy, Digital Marketing, Adtech, Access Management, Identity, Adtech, Search engine Optimization, ML, Neural Networks, AI, and a Marketing Technology editor at Digitalbrine.com and author.

He is also a staff writer at Medium for ‘Data Driven Investor’ and other publications.

Robotic Process Automation is a win-win

S. Ernest Paul

Robotic Process Automation has delivered and continues to deliver a very healthy ROI for brands Strong business leaders who are looking beyond cost reduction are leveraging RPA as part of the Digital transformation effort – freeing up valued human capital and realigning them to new tasks with the highest business value, which often enables new consumer-facing business models.

My research has shown RPA is the largest recipient of healthcare budgetary allocation for this year and counting, in the emerging technology class.

S. Ernest Paul

Let’s face it – Healthcare organizations accumulate patient data at a rapid pace daily. With affordable Cloud storage availability, the rapid emergence of new technology, processing speed, tools, software, and a soon 5G speed implementation, RPA is a prime candidate in healthcare to gain on process efficiencies providing a partial solution for a larger Digital Transformation effort within Pharma, Life Sciences, Hospitals and Health Systems

Gains, efficiencies and consumer trust can be achieved from RPA initiatives resulting in budgetary shifts with employees aligned to focus on critical digital customer-facing initiatives firmly placing the customer at the center.

Key forward thinking digital hires, customer facing digital properties and key marketing technology personalization initiatives have to provide a concerted and impactful effort to plug customer retention leakage and reignite LTV

Fresh digital and omnichannel engagement initiatives with redirected capital from RPA driven savings just makes sense. The NPS scores and lower acquisition rates need immediate attention. RPA initiatives running parallel provides this assuring equilibrium.

Legislative background

With the passage of the Affordable Care Act in 2010 and The Health Information Technology for Economic and Clinical Health (HITECH) Act of 2009 was an ambitious policy effort to increase the adoption of electronic health records (EHRs).

THE HITECH Act was enacted, prompted by evidence that the use of EHRs could substantially improve the quality and efficiency of care delivered. We are now soon heading into 2020 and the good news is that adults with health insurance is +20 million since 2010 according to the National Center for Health Statistics.

The current Financial health of Hospitals and Health systems

This improved access to healthcare juxtaposed with an aging baby boomer population with increased healthcare needs and medical care has burdened hospitals and health systems financially. Data suggests greater than 50% of hospital and health systems revenue is from their market investments than from their core business of healthcare, a troubling sign. According to Deloitte, between 51 and 60% of hospitals could see negative margins by 2025 if they are unable to achieve productivity targets.

What are Health systems, hospitals, and others doing to get ahead of the curve

There are multiple concerted efforts by Pharma, Life sciences, Health systems and Hospitals to harness data to spawn new ventures, explore and partner with adjacent ecosystems. Some are seeking to consolidate with other health systems and hospitals and leverage economies of scale.

The one standout knight in the playbook is RPA, traditionally outsourced can now be brought in-house or used as RPA as a Service from Beyondiris Consulting.

Key Area of Opportunity is Productivity utilizing RPA

RPA in its nascent form are software programs or ‘bots’ that can perform repetitive and mundane tasks with accuracy, speed, and compliance – a digital workforce of sorts, following predetermined rules mechanically performing business tasks. Once these clerical type tasks are automated workers can allocate their business intellect and acumen and direct them towards accomplishing activities requiring human touch and knowledge.

What can RPA do?

This digital workforce of ‘bots’ can be tasked via software such as ‘UI Path’, ‘Automation Anywhere’ or ‘Blue Prism’ to open and send emails, login into web applications, input data into forms, extract data from multiple internal data stores, scrape data and follow if this- then that (think of IFFT) type functionality and deliver or email a report. Viola!

Design thinking led Patient-Centric Use cases for RPA in Healthcare

1.  Billing and Claims – These time-consuming administrative tasks can be accomplished utilizing RPA driven ‘bots’. 30% – 40% of claims can be denied due to non-compliance with regulations. The necessary authorizations and paperwork required by healthcare providers to treat and care for patients can be delegated to ‘bots’ eliminating any delays, errors or miscommunication, so the patient/consumer experience is not hindered, interrupted or compromised.

2.  Patient and transactional data – Life science and Healthcare organizations can delegate ‘bot’s to translate, format and input data instead, streamlining and layering compliance with new defenses. These activities performed via RPA would relieve employees to train their attention on tasks that deliver on the patient experience, quality, key consumer insights and building upon the NPS score.

3.  Clinician Notes delivered via speech to text – Built into the new clinician-patient interaction process, an emphasis on maintaining eye contact with the patient is key. It conveys attentiveness – perpetuating an emphasis on patient empathy – a critical value from the patient’s lens. Instead of note-taking, the clinician would switch to audio-recording the patient’s condition, drug usage, vital statistics typically entered manually into the patient’s EHR. In this new interactive process, Natural language processing (NLP) would translate the conversation into text and format it directly into the EHR database via RPA ‘bots’.

4.  Simplification of Patient appointment scheduling – Appointments that are typically scheduled online often encounter scheduling conflicts with different doctors and different hospitals. Cancellations and doctor unavailability lead to tedious and testy phone calls to all parties involved. With RPA – let the ‘bots’ optimally schedule appointments according to the diagnosis, doctor availability, location, and other key criteria. The RPA system would scan the patient data and pass it on to a ‘referral management representative’ to book the appointment. Furthermore, the ‘bot’ can automatically notify the patient if the doctor is running behind or perhaps caught up in an emergency. The RPA software would continually cross-reference the doctor’s schedule and alert the patient if the need arises alleviating the ‘wait’ anxiety. It is a winner. Remember the Patient is at the center of the wheel.

5.  Implementation of discharge instructions – Upon discharge, patients have to follow discharge guidelines, including expectant compliance which may include medications, follow up appointments or an inadvertent adverse reaction from a post-op procedure. Following up on patient compliance can be shifted to an RPA driven process. RPA driven cognitive-behavioral nudges in the form of encouraging incentivized mobile reminders enhances the patient’s experience, compliance leading to a reduction in re-admissions.

Regulatory compliance, efficiency, optimization, and revenue opportunity Use Cases

6.  Recording audit procedures for risk assessment – Healthcare is a regulated industry with multiple tasks and processes which have to be followed up by reports generated for verification, approvals, patient safety and maintaining the quality of services. All these are necessary components of regulatory compliance and can at times result in unintended errors. With RPA – audits can be optimized by RPA including the recording of data, sharing, approvals, and generation of reports meant for multiple entities. RPA can also detect and inform on any non-compliance and violations.

7.  Optimizing and improving the healthcare cycle – The voluminous data collected by healthcare organizations includes key diagnosis insights and treatment cycles. This data is the new oil when layered with data science & analytics. Remarkable trends and brand-new insights plus new revenue opportunities can be derived and have resulted in success. Mature and data-savvy organizations have been able to harvest new revenue streams, some spawning profitable ventures, and startups.

NOTABLE STANDOUT IN THE HOSPITAL SPACE – Setting the pace

The Mayo Clinic is one institution with 300+ AI driven projects with diversified revenue streams from ventures. Resulting success has allowed them to explore, diversify and dip into adjacent ecosystems and are early adopters with a ‘Usain Bolt’ like stride

8.  Population health, remote monitoring & utilization management – There is a great demand for data scientists and universities are gearing up with new graduate programs. This wealth of data which exists, unfortunately, cannot be leveraged by RPA alone. RPA is efficient with structured data only. The Unstructured data which exists in systems like Epic and EHR is massaged with data science statistical modeling and promising results are fed into machine learning systems layered with AI. This lane is wide open for opportunities.

Fig: Open EHR Specification Components Block Diagram

The Future of Healthcare with Innovation and Digital Transformation

The Chief Medical Officer and his/her team are best matched and partner with the Data Science team to constantly explore and test scores of Clinical use cases often resulting in new utilization optimization gold. Payers, Pharma, and Life Sciences are leading the charge with armies of data scientists testing new clinical hypotheses daily, often succeeding in striking virgin oilfields.

Prediction - A Chief Data Strategy Officer + Chief Medical Officer TEAM

A new congruence of likely alliances shall emerge to deliver value

My prediction is that a newly created position of a Chief Data Strategy Officer would likely emerge and tag team with the Chief Medical Officer and his/her team to lead the charge within this relatively uncharted continent. There is a lot of runway in this space and it is just getting started.

The maturity of Cognitive computing, at present, somewhat restrained by Quantum computing lag – when at near maturity should give rise to a V10 muscle car with a 0-100 mph in mere nanoseconds firing simulated human thought processes in a computerized model. Nascar nor the Grand Prix shall ever be the same.

Self-learning algorithms, data mining, pattern recognition with semantic NLP gushing unstructured interoperable EHR data blended with personalization shall flourish. Consider a reality with structured customer data illuminated with luminescent strings of hundreds of personas compared to the 5-10 at best, marketing automation teams fuel consumer engagement with, today.

Would this not be the very Shangri-la of nudge driven marketing orchestrated with masterful accuracy and precision of just the product you had wished for – a perfect selection, paired with an accompaniment you just could not do without, executed, purchased and delivered with a mere head nod.

Oh, what a utopian consumer experience. Pure couture design thinking at its cognitive best.

Could cancer diagnosis and subsequent cures be narrowed down to the make/model/year/type and further broken down to just one of the 3 billion base pairs of the entire genome?

"Genomics mechanics in its finest attire"

Genomics role in healthcare. The why, the what, the how, implications & the role of genomics in healthcare & pharmaceuticals ecosystem.

Have you wondered why you can never delete the Health App from the iPhone? 

Do #getoutofthecube with me. Meet me at ernestpaul@gmail.com . Feel the urge to just say Hello. Just do it. 336.287.1085

I live in Avon, Connecticut. I blog on Digital Strategy topics on Digitalbrine and am a Staff writer for ‘Data-Driven Investor’ on Medium.

Choosing a Customer Data Platform [CDP]

CDPs have become incredibly popular for companies looking to get more out of their data. It’s easy to see why. CDPs help companies unify their data, get a better understanding of their customers and create more personalized marketing campaigns.

Finding the right CDP for your company isn’t an easy process. There are a lot to choose from, but it’s not something that should be taken lightly. That’s why we put together this guide to help you easily identify the best CDP for your company.

CDPs do this by consolidating data from different customer touch points. By breaking down da and bringing together first-party data covering all customer interactions, you can get a detailed, 360-degree view of how customers use your product and what those customers do on your website or mobile app.

A potential customer might start with an organic search on a laptop that leads her to a blog post. The next day, she visits your website again from her phone while commuting to work. Two days later, she signs up for email updates from you. A week later, she clicks through an email for a free trial. Her free trial expires after a week, and then nothing. She doesn’t visit your website again for a month. Eventually, she does come back to your website, and signs up for a monthly subscription to become a new customer.

Without a CDP, that scenario would be hard to track. You’d have all these data points, but it would be stored in multiple places. As a result, you might only know that she took a free trial and then made a purchase. Your CDP brings all of those interactions across different data sources together and consolidates them into a single omnichannel customer profile to help you get a full understanding of customer behavior and engagement.

With that knowledge, marketers can create better marketing campaigns that facilitate customer engagement at the most opportune times. A single customer view enables detailed segmentation (e.g. using demographic or behavioral data) that marketing teams can further use to create personalized experiences and improve conversion rates by targeting the ideal customer profile.

And, CDPs can help with more than just marketing. With a superior understanding of your existing customers and how they use your product, you can improve customer loyalty and retention.

If you’re ready to take that jump and use a CDP to make your company more data-driven, you need to start by comparing different CDPs to find the best one for your company.

Finding the right CDP for your company isn’t an easy process. There are a lot to choose from, but it’s not something that should be taken lightly. Your CDP is going to be handling customer data. Anytime you’re dealing with your customers’ data, you need to be extra sure that their data is safely and ethically handled.

That’s why we put together this guide to help you easily identify the best CDP for your company.

6 steps to choose the best customer data platform (CDP)

Below we walk through 6 important steps that you should go through when choosing a CDP. Following these steps will ensure that you choose a CDP fitted to your goals and resources.

Step 1: Bring stakeholders into the process

Before you even decide which CDPs you’re going to evaluate, you need to bring internal stakeholders into the process. The CDP you choose is going to be working with data from different departments within your company, so it’s important that everyone is bought in.

The question you need to ask yourself at this point is: Who else collects data that your CDP will handle?

There’s a good chance your sales team’s customer relationship management (CRM) platform stores data that your CDP will need access to. A stakeholder from sales should be part of the buying process.

What about your customer success team? There’s a good chance that your customer success team uses tools that handle customer data. A stakeholder from the customer success team will likely be part of this process too.

You don’t need each stakeholder individually evaluating each CDP, but you will need their input on various parts of the buying process. At the very least, talk to each stakeholder and let them know why you’re looking to purchase a CDP and what you hope to get out of it.

Step 2: Define use cases

There’s another big question you need to answer before deciding which CDP is best for your company: What is the reason you’re looking to use a CDP?

It’s easy to get caught up in the fact that you need a CDP because it will consolidate your data into a single customer database, but what are you actually hoping to get out of that? Consolidating your data isn’t going to make you more data-driven. It’s just a step along the way. To choose the right CDP, you need to define your use cases ahead of time.

Take some time to think about what you want your CDP to help with. Then, talk to the other stakeholders about their ideal use cases. From there, try to identify three or fewer ideal use cases. Limiting your use cases to just the top three will make it easier to evaluate all of the CDP vendors.

Here are a few of the most common use cases:

  • Fully understanding our customer journey
  • Creating a more personalized customer experience on our website
  • Creating more targeted multichannel advertising campaigns
  • Combining online and offline data

Once you’ve defined your use cases, spend some time studying your potential CDPs. Look at their website; read reviews of their products; talk to colleagues at other companies who use these tools. Does your ideal use case fit with what any of these companies are doing? If yes, make a list of those companies. At this point, it’s probably going to be a pretty big list.

Step 3: Determine the tools needed

You need to get a handle on the tools your company uses that will be connected to your CDP.

To get an idea of what tools and functionality you’ll need, start by focusing on your use cases. Which tools do you need to accomplish the specific use cases that you laid out in Step 2? Make a list of those tools.

Next, make a list of all the tools that interact with your customer in one way or another. You’ll want to include website tools, CRM systems, real-time live chat, payment processors, email platforms, and help desk systems, just to name a few.

At this point, go to your other stakeholders and double-check that you haven’t missed any important tools that will need to be connected.

Most often, we see customers start with:

Once you’ve determined the tools you need, make sure the CDPs you’re evaluating already have those integrations. If one doesn’t have the majority of the tools you use, knock it out of contention. This step might narrow your list by a large number.

Step 4: Gather requirements

There’s more to a CDP than a way to consolidate data and solve your use cases. You also need to think of the other requirements for your CDP. Requirements are different than your use cases because a requirement is more like a feature, rather than an outcome.

For example, let’s say one of your requirements is that the CDP you choose should help you get a solid understanding of each piece of data that you’re collecting. To pull that off, you’ll need a CDP that can help you build a data-tracking plan.

If you’re not sure what other requirements you need to consider, here’s a list of common requirements that our customers have:

  • We’d like our CDP to help with GDPR and CCPA compliance. If that’s something you’re interested in, then you’ll need a CDP that will that will enable you to suppress data collection or delete customer data when requested, which is a requirement for both the GDPR and CCPA.
  • Our CDP should help us get a full view of our customer journey. If this is a requirement for your company, make sure that the CDP you’re evaluating has some form of identity resolution, which helps identify users across different channels.
  • Our CDP needs to have top-notch security. This is becoming a more frequent requirement. Make sure the CDP you’re evaluating has a credible, independent security certification like ISO 27001 or SOC 2. Those certifications ensure that the CDP is continuously monitoring and upgrading their security practices.

Another good place to gather requirements from are the pricing pages of each CDP. Read through the features that are listed on those pages, and make a note of anything that’s going to be important to your company.

For example, you might see that one CDP has an uptime guarantee, while another doesn’t. If an uptime guarantee is important, you might want to make it a requirement.

Step 5: Compare vendors

At this point, you should have a list of just a few CDPs that fit your use cases, have the necessary integrations, and meet all of your requirements. Now, it’s time to compare each CDP. Don’t take pricing into consideration yet. We’ll get to that in the next step.

Start by considering your industry. Find CDPs that have customers most similar to your company. If you work at an enterprise-level company, find a CDP that has a track record of working with companies at that level. If you work at a startup, make sure the CDPs you’re evaluating have experience in that space. Chances are there will be an overlap with CDPs that have a track record in all industries, but that’s okay.

If you’ve determined that all of the CDPs you’re considering have the right experience, it’s time to go a step deeper. Make sure each CDP has:

  • A track record of accomplishing the use cases that you defined in Step 2.
  • A solution for data compliance. CDPs handle data, so they should enable your compliance with the GDPR or the CCPA.
  • The right integrations for your current and future use cases. Is each CDP continually adding new integrations to their integration catalog?
  • Excellent customer service to help you set up, use, and maintain your CDP.

Don’t forget to look at review websites for user reviews of each CDP too. G2and Capterra both have dedicated pages for CDP reviews.

Step 6: Consider ROI

The ROI of the CDPs you’re evaluating is the final piece you need to consider. ROI doesn’t mean that you should choose the cheapest option. It’s more about which option will give you the best value. How do you determine that value upfront, before you choose your CDP?

Start by using our ROI worksheet. This will help you determine the cost of your engineers’ time. Without a CDP, your engineers have to spend hours building and maintaining integrations for each tool. Those hours add up quickly, which can result in significant costs just to build and maintain one integration. If you have ten integrations that need to be handled by your engineering team, you can see that the hours will quickly become unmanageable.

That cost is one of the biggest reasons to use a CDP. Good CDPs should reduce the amount of time your engineers spend building integrations between tools, which can result in a huge cost savings.

That’s why you need to calculate the costs and consider ROI ahead of time. If you choose a CDP that doesn’t give your engineering team the maximum amount of time-savings, it may not be worth the cost at all.

What CDP do you need?

Choosing a CDP isn’t a quick process. You need to make sure you’re doing your due diligence to find the right CDP based on your specific use-cases and requirements.

Once you’ve done that, you’ll be able to get more value out of your data and get a better understanding of your customers. Plus, your engineering team will thank you for reducing their workload since they won’t have to spend time building and maintaining integrations with your tools.

Courtesy: Segment

The quest to deliver Customer Personalization – Marketing Technology

S. Ernest Paul | Shutterstock

Brands have to identify and understand each and every customer 

Ever been to a restaurant where they know you by name? and the waiter happens to know your preferred drink of choice and like magic brings it to your table while you are getting seated. The ‘Cheers’ kind of experience for those of us who recall the sitcom. These one-on-one personable interactions make experiences special.

We live in a digital world now and demand similar experiences from brands. We want to associate with a brand who knows us. We gravitate towards these brands, rare as they might be. However such a rendezvous brings familiarity & comfort. Trust soon follows. I recently called up my banking institution over the phone, a few taps on the phone initiated by me and there was a friendly voice greeting me personally instantly. Voila! All done with voice print. We expect similar experiences, minimalist, natural, efficient and transferable across devices.

"Patience in today's hyper connected world is on a diet due to clumsy marketing tactics"

What do customers want from brands?

On occasions while dining I have often witnessed all individuals seated at a table nearby simultaneously glued to their mobile phones. Digital and mobile may have taken us all by storm long ago but we do seem to prefer company even if it of the silent variety. This mobile solitude may be amusing to some, not marketers. To marketers, this means real time location data, related contextual information including weather, possibly to trigger a nearby physical store location reminder.

Customers want relevant, meaningful and tailored information and offers from brands who meet their specific needs. Irrelevant offers and emails induce customer paralysis and prove to be counterproductive. In this era of instant gratification and attention span deficit, there is little room for off target customer communications. With a thorough understanding of customer needs, both parties are likely to benefit.

Customers have long declared their expectations. See Figure below:

Delivering on customer expectations enhances customer engagement leading to loyalty for brands, resulting in reduced acquisition costs, a revenue upside and increased retention rates.

The journey begins with data

Brands seeking customer-centric nirvana have to become data-centric, first. None of this degree of hyper-personalization at scale can be accomplished without customer data.

"Data is the new oil. Refining or anticipating customer needs is the beginning of personalization"

This crude oil or rich behavioral customer data, customer interactions, social media activity, demographics, customer life cycle stage recognition and transactional data can be segmented and further sub-segmented. Personalization dividends can be harnessed today without a full blown implementation of technology such as a Customer Data Platform, a CDP. Existing data can be used in cross-sell initiatives, enablement & activation of a few consumer use-cases based on past purchases and behavior. Sometimes using less data is more effective prior to incorporating external purchased data sets.

Incorporation of 2nd & 3rd party external data adds dimensional layers to the refinement process and further enriches customer data. Multiple digital identities, which many consumers use online can be merged into a single record to eliminate redundancy. Iterative cycles of customer behavior and interactions captured via analytics continually refine customer data. Behavior solidarity within customer ‘data sets’ feeds pattern discovery and recognition. With confirmation and accuracy of patterns, machine learning kicks the ‘data sets’ up a notch. With continuous cycles of deep learning & artificial intelligence, predictive analytics begin to unlock future customer behavior. 

How far along is your organization in channeling this new oil, 
piping it, refining it, triaging it, harnessing it to extract
measurable value?

Agile, cross functional teams – marketing, tech experts & operations must work together

Working in silos is kryptonite for personalization. Having a cross functional team in a test and learn mode, sharing insights within a ‘not afraid to fail culture‘ is the best environment to productively deliver, preferably in a war room like setting.

The personalization DNA resides in behavioral data. Its application rests on a thorough mapping and intersection of customer journeys, triggers, devices, events, marketing campaigns and collateral aligned to customer segments with matching behavior. A cross functional team serves this proposition well.

Marketing & Operations realignment

Organizations must look at the personalization ecosystem in its entirety, from data manage­ment to advanced analytics to customer en­gagement, through to measure­ment and optimization. Marketing resources are generally organized by specific skill. For example: Analytics or Campaign management or even by Chan­nel – Social or Search. There is an unintentional siloed ecosystem risk to be wary of. Although optimizing for different elements is import­ant, the whole is greater than the sum of its parts. An understanding of how the different parts interact and how to inte­grate them to support personalization is what differentiates high-performing marketing organizations from poorly performing ones.

Building the customer journey

Grouping customers together with matching needs and behavior is a good place to begin. Armed with a handful of these groupings or segments, align each segment with its own customer journey & map the series of interactions with the company brand. Examples: Visits to a broker, agent, company website, calls to a call center, social media posts, even tracking prospect visits to the company brand’s competitor, etc.

Building customer segments

Hundreds of mini-segments may emerge as a result of combining journeys and customer segments. Each mini-segment may be nuanced and one more valuable than the other. Each should be considered & prioritized by its relative value. For example: Consider a leading insurer who may find it more valuable to engage with its customers who are within their ‘renewal window’ by sending them a reminder that their policy is nearing expiration. Rather than pushing them towards a cross-sell product and risk losing the customer to a competitor, the insurer chooses to send a limited-time policy renewal loyalty-offer.

Harnessing customer signals

The customer provides signals as to their intent with their online & offline interactions. Mature predictive analytics catch these signals and push them into a workflow to be followed up by an appropriate response. Each signal, nevertheless deserves a response, a timely and relevant trigger message, to close the loop.

Signals & Triggers at work

With advanced and meticulous planning, a library of signals and matching triggers have to be maintained and kept up to date. Each trigger with matching collateral can then be dynamically executed. Each of these combinations are continually refined & optimized by analytics. Upon a valid declaration, each becomes a business rule. For example: Consider a leading health insurer who learns of a dependent soon to be in the ‘dependent turning 26 window‘. The customer and/or dependent promptly receives a triggered message with a limited time offer towards a new personal health insurance policy for the dependent.

Pharma & Life sciences regulatory caution is giving way to customer personalization

Regulated industries in Pharma, Life Sciences, Healthcare and others have been increasing personalization related spend. Even with an innate regulatory driven caution, the portfolio trajectory is shifting from clinical trials customer data spend to customer/patient experience related personalization spend.

Customer data & personalization together aid in the identification of high-value patients, who can then be channeled towards physicians and therapists, realizing a tailored & personalized formulary experience. 

Insurers have personalization high on their portfolio spend agenda

Insurers are attaining underwriting efficiencies, realizing a not so far off dream of instant insurance for Health, Life and others. They are now providing customers Population health efficiencies and Genomics focused underwriting, all a result of data personalization. The race is on and competition is rife. Personalized internal & external customer data, including IoT customer data can now reside within a CDP or a similar configuration.

Stitching the Personalization DNA within your marketing technology stack or with an addition of a CDP

Achieving growth on a large scale, across all channels and geography requires immense preparation, alignment, governance and most of all leadership and talented human capital. 

Rerouting existing operational organizational alignment, restitching operational processes and RPA driven workflows, scaling across the company incrementally and globally requires a well-articulated blueprint with an equally agile playbook.

New marketing technology configurations equipped with a ‘smart brain‘, ready to direct traffic with rules & algorithms, can finally foster a new breed of a one-to-one marketing reality.

Avoiding pitfalls and traps

A series of steps may be necessary to arm an incumbent MarTech stack to minimize ROI leakage from new technology investments.

It is easy to rack up a bill in the millions on data integra­tions that magnetically pull all this information together into a data lake, prioritizing the most valuable types of data—the kind which drive the high value use cases. Identification of the required latency for each data element is critical at this juncture. Most use cases require real-time information for a limited set of data elements, so most real-time capability can be thankfully decelerated.

Discover business use cases which the technology would drive, not vice versa

Buttressed by an agile development process formulate business use cases supported by KPIs, business drivers and forecasts. Existing digital analytics would aid in benchmarking, revealing delta variances and future forecasting. The market­ing process is iterative, optimized and improved with each cycle. 

Collaborate closely with the Marketing teams to uncover functional requirements

In close collaboration with the marketing operations team, functional requirements must be well articulated and documented. Juxtaposed against the numerous technology solutions & providers which make up the MarTech landscape, this step is a cornerstone effort. Multiple use cases, storyboards or multiple contexts help in identifying a certain missing technology component. This good catch may lead you to a different vendor choice and selection when augmenting your technology to fit your personalization goals.

Align organizational needs and goals with a technology approach

Major integrated Marketing Cloud suite vendors including Oracle, Adobe and Salesforce do not support the personalization ecosystem end-to-end. Brands may already have one of these suites in place. In that case, a reasonable compromise would be to extend the capability of the existing suite with the best of breed of each functionality element missing from the existing MarTech stack. The downside would be a less than tight integration to the element supporting that specific functionality or service.

A key consideration for the analytics engine – The analytics engine ‘the brain ‘ should be customizable including the algo­rithms, data features and business rules specific to your requirements. The solution set should allow you control over the inputs to the analytics engine.

Build incrementally and via pilots 

A prudent approach would be to set your sights on an iterative and incremental value delivery approach supported by well-defined pilots. With each new element added for a new use case, costs rise.

However, the incremental value attained would likely align with the incremental investment, thus justifying the investment. A phase driven and stage-gated approach would smoothen the decision making for the CFO to fund the incremental spend.

Design thinking inspired Marketing & IT with Organizational design unlocks ROI

Houston! We have a problem. A note from the Chief Digital Officer

“We have invested in Digital marketing technology to enable and fast track our digital marketing efforts but the expectant ROI is under par, blowing up our forecasts.We have invested heavily in Digital marketing technology to enable and fast track our digital marketing efforts but the expectant ROI is blowing up our forecast

The rise of the millennials and digital disruption continues to refocus attention towards Customer centricity, Customer experience, Design thinking, Customer journeys, Agile, Lean, DevOps – bringing efficiency, rapid innovation with the customer in the center.

Well, it is easier said than done. 

Marketers have evolved from ‘Don Draper’ of ‘Madmen’ fame relying on behavior, psychology and creativity alone. The not so new digital marketing world is technology-fueled, is data-driven, with a laser focused eye on campaign optimization, nudge marketing infused. It is daunting for most marketers – a smart marketing spend strategy, with lists, personas and segments cleansed and optimized, ready for Demand generation, Direct response, Lead generation, D2C and Omni-Channel retail. Then, filtered by digital identity, delivering personalized experiences, all measured by clicks and tags with KPI driven dashboard displays using the latest BI tools.

Martech & Data contribute to Machine learning, then AI kicks in auto-pilot

The marketing technology works as advertised and is getting better at delivering personalized experiences for prospects and customers which are simple, pointed and perceptive. 

The key enablers to maximize the return lie in plain sight. 

Human/Digital marketing employee – place the Digital marketer in the center

The road to global digital marketing maturity from humble nascent origins to an omni-experiential state lies more so in key human factors which confine digital marketing technology maturity, than any other. It is the human digital marketing employee psyche which needs assurances and support. how business units/segments/departments/cost centers are traditionally setup which are at times present barriers to personable collaboration.

Below: Fig1: The mind of a digital marketer when Martech is continually introduced

Fig1 above: The mind of a digital marketer when Martech is continually introduced

A Digital Marketer lens POV powered by Design thinking – Abstract

While all the attention is on the ‘customer’, there is a risk of alienating internal customers. These customers/partners are very tightly aligned in a mature state of digital marketing. This is low hanging fruit with a bang. Establishing close relationships pays off.

Add a 30% + ∆ on campaigns delivering optimization

Technology enablement

Organizational structures for Cost centers, Departments, Segments & BUs

How business units/segments/departments/cost centers are traditionally setup which are at times present barriers to personable collaboration.

Coalesced Workplaces translate into high performing digital marketing teams

Imagine a redesigned open workplace, co-located digital marketing team members encouraging conversations, building and nurturing crucial cross-functional relationships with digital marketing technology, analytics, tagging, data science, optimization & reporting team members. For high performing digital marketing teams to prosper, key organizational, workplace alignment, technology and data human capital residing in close vicinity lend to successful digital marketing programs.

Retail is much further along in digital marketing technology maturity

Top digital marketers can visualize complete customer journeys blindfolded. They are drawn to data-driven outcomes, shepherd data integrity with tagging governance, rapid to optimize ongoing campaigns, working in close quarters with technology partners, product managers, reporting and data science members.

Legacy Workspaces a dichotomy to Digital Marketing Technology maturity

We could dispense with the cube-driven workspace culture designed for operational efficiency which seemingly limits the key cross-functional interaction needed to see the entire marketing campaign journey in 3D & 360º; ejecting the rectangular office furniture projecting postured face-offs rather than the desired bi-directional discussion. The legacy workspace is a dichotomy to the vision and desired outcome for success. An ideal colocated workplace lends to organic innovation, relationship building & collaboration while leveraging technology and data together, with common values and goals as denominators.

Leverage common values to enrich relationships with technology enablers

“Pull here, in case of an emergency approach is best suited for successful digital marketing technology programs”

Where does the Marketing Technology Budget reside?

Embedding a Tech savvy Marketing technologist within the Marketing Cost Center is key

The new CMO is tech savvy with a left-brained and right-brained persona. The shift has occurred gradually with smart spend budgets- mostly digital and now with Ad-tech, OTT and Programmatic spend delivering on KPIs makes it even more critical how media spend is distributed between Owned / Earned / Paid. Organizations use the POEM (paid, owned, and earned media) model to drive brand awareness, distribute content, engage prospects, and guide them through the sales funnel.

Continuous learning is critical for Marketers as Technology overpowers Marketing metrics reliant on Personalization, Segmentation, Identity and delivering experiences to targeted personas.

Author: S. Ernest Paul – Say Hello – 336.287.1085

Design thinking inspired IIOT Business focused Use Cases propel Marketing success

Digital transformation is built upon Business Use cases. Selecting and prioritizing them to drive real business impact which deliver a solve for all stakeholders and begin an era of a lasting legacy is a critical first step.

From the outset, it’s essential for business KPIs to lead IIoT transformations, and for each potential use case to be tested against the business value that it is trying to create. In some cases, the best solution may not be a technology play at all.

Design thinking IIOT inspired digital transformation does not sideline the excitement of advances in quantum computing, utilizing digital-twins versus legacy simulation with real-time – huge technology WOW factors. This future gravitas would render itself surmountable value if we included real customers, marketing and sales stakeholders in the product innovation and audience discovery sessions amplified by design thinking.

It is easy to get excited about the role a digital-twin can play and being at the advent of an impending 5G rollout. It is prudent for manufacturers to steer away from technology in mind and then try to build a business case around it, and this sets them up to fail. For marketing and sales to deliver the messaging and articulate each use cases to a potential customer, it’s essential for business KPIs to lead IIoT transformations, and for each potential use case to be tested against the business value that it is trying to create. In some cases, the best solution may not be a technology play at all.

Selecting Design thinking driven Use Cases with KPI driven business impact are critical before the handoff to Marketing and Sales

The following image, one of my personal favorite creations when I switch to my marketing outfit serves as a constant reminder and nudges to never forget the customer. After all, the audience segments which IIOT serves and the beneficiaries and recipients of the advances brought about by digital transformation we owe a responsible stewardship of the message delivered by the marketing and sales team to put a shine on the north star.