Embrace “Madtech” For Marketing – Modernizing Your Data & Tech Foundation From the Ground Up
Jan 21, 2022 1:30 PM - 2:30 PM EST
As a member of the business world over the past couple of years, you’ve experienced firsthand a digital transformation that has rocked the way people operate and communicate. Now, business leaders are left to adapt to the data-driven landscape — including the new culture of madtech.
Madtech, the merging of marketing, advertising, and technology, offers incredible opportunities — and incredible challenges — for current businesses. From closing the gap between marketing and IT to preparing for a cookieless future, executives must modernize to keep up. So, what can you do to navigate your madtech journey as effectively as possible?
Tune in as Digital Strategist Tiffany Serbus-Gustaveson sits down with Trinadha Kandi and Kelly Leger of Deloitte Digital to discuss how to navigate the new world of madtech. Together, they talk about the common challenges business leaders are having on their madtech journeys and what you can do to overcome them. They also share tips for merging your marketing and IT, evolving your data approach, and embracing a cookieless future.
Deloitte Digital offers strategic, mobile, digital content, digital ERP, web, and digital design, and communication solutions.
Connect with Deloitte DigitalManaging Director, Marketing Technology & Operations at Deloitte Digital
Trinadha Kandi is the Managing Director of Marketing Technology & Operations at Deloitte Digital. With over 20 years of global experience, Trinadha specializes in the intersection of marketing, technology, and data. He currently leads Deloitte Digital’s advertising, marketing, and commerce practice, where he advises clients across a range of industries, including retail, media, technology, life sciences, and healthcare. Previously, Trinadha was a Director of Digital Marketing and Analytics Services at Cognizant.
Senior Digital Strategist at BWG Connect
BWG Connect provides executive strategy & networking sessions that help brands from any industry with their overall business planning and execution. BWG has built an exclusive network of 125,000+ senior professionals and hosts over 2,000 virtual and in-person networking events on an annual basis.
Partner Managing Director at Deloitte Digital
Kelly Leger is the Partner Managing Director at Deloitte Digital, where she focuses on data, identity, and CRM/CXM solutions for clients. Kelly has almost two decades of leadership experience that spans the US, UK, and EMEA. With a wide range of expertise, she has worked on the ground floor of data startups, held leadership positions for a global ad agency, and gained extensive knowledge in media and publishing. Before joining Deloitte Digital, Kelly was the Senior Vice President and Head of Sales & Solutions at Merkury.
Managing Director, Marketing Technology & Operations at Deloitte Digital
Trinadha Kandi is the Managing Director of Marketing Technology & Operations at Deloitte Digital. With over 20 years of global experience, Trinadha specializes in the intersection of marketing, technology, and data. He currently leads Deloitte Digital’s advertising, marketing, and commerce practice, where he advises clients across a range of industries, including retail, media, technology, life sciences, and healthcare. Previously, Trinadha was a Director of Digital Marketing and Analytics Services at Cognizant.
Senior Digital Strategist at BWG Connect
BWG Connect provides executive strategy & networking sessions that help brands from any industry with their overall business planning and execution. BWG has built an exclusive network of 125,000+ senior professionals and hosts over 2,000 virtual and in-person networking events on an annual basis.
Partner Managing Director at Deloitte Digital
Kelly Leger is the Partner Managing Director at Deloitte Digital, where she focuses on data, identity, and CRM/CXM solutions for clients. Kelly has almost two decades of leadership experience that spans the US, UK, and EMEA. With a wide range of expertise, she has worked on the ground floor of data startups, held leadership positions for a global ad agency, and gained extensive knowledge in media and publishing. Before joining Deloitte Digital, Kelly was the Senior Vice President and Head of Sales & Solutions at Merkury.
Senior Digital Strategist at BWG Connect
BWG Connect provides executive strategy & networking sessions that help brands from any industry with their overall business planning and execution.
Senior Digital Strategist Tiffany Serbus-Gustaveson runs the group & connects with dozens of brand executives every week, always for free.
Tiffany Serbus-Gustaveson 0:18
Welcome, everybody. My name is Tiffany Serbus-Gustaveson. I am a digital strategist here at BWG Connect. We are a network and knowledge sharing group. We say on top of the newest trends, strategies, challenges, whatever it is that is shaping this ever changing digital landscape that we chose to live in. We are on track to do almost 500 of these virtual events this year, I simply due to the increase in demand of people wanting to know more about what's going on in digital. And in conjunction with that, we're also going to be hosting at least 100 in-person, small format dinners. So if you happen to be in a tier one city, definitely feel free to drop us an email, these dinners tend to be 15 to 20 people sitting around a table having a discussion about a single digital topic. So we're more than happy to send you an invite. At BWG Connect, we spend our days or weeks continuously talking to brands to stay on top of different trends. I'd love to have a conversation with you. So if you'd like to drop me an email, my email is Tiffany, tiffany@BWGconnect.com. And it's from these conversations, we generate topic ideas that people want to learn about. That's how we get the resident experts such as Deloitte Digital, who's here today, welcome. And anybody that we do ask to teach within our community, they have come highly recommended for multiple brands within our network. And with that, if you ever need recommendations on anything in the digital space, you can contact me, we have put the time together to aggregate the best of the best, we have the short list of the highest recommended service providers in the industry. So there's no need for you to go to Google, start doing your homework, we did the homework for you the heavy lifting, we have the list, and we'd be happy to talk to you. Also, we have actually now a talent agency. So there's a lot of hiring activity going on out there. So if you're looking for talent, please reach out to me and I will connect you with BWG talent. So a couple of housekeeping items. We want this to be educational, we want it to be conversational, you know, robust dialogue all around. So please drop in questions into the chat bar, you can email me as well, Tiffany@BWGconnect. And just so you know, I'll be reaching out to audience members to get a better understanding of your madtech experience, successes, pain points, have you started, have you not the why we just want to keep that dialogue flowing. So it's fruitful for everybody. And then you'll notice that we started about three to four minutes after the hour. So you can rest assured that we will stop about four minutes before the end of the hour. And that will give you enough time to grab a cup of coffee and get your next meeting. So with that, then we can roll and start with the introductions and embrace med tech. So the team at Deloitte Digital have been great friends, supporters, partners of the network. Trinadha Kandi and Kelly Leger will be leading the conversation with the rest of their team. And I think maybe everybody just takes a moment to introduce themselves for a brief overview of who you are and who is Deloitte Digital, that would be great. So I'll kick it off to you, Kelly.
Kelly Leger 3:51
Sure. So my name is Kelly Leger. I am a Partner Managing Director here at Deloitte Digital and I sit in our experience management practice. I work on all things cookieless future advertising and martech strategy, identity. You know, providers are on borders, as we used to call them and now they're turning into identity providers and the martech and adtech space. And so that's me. I've been in this in this space for about 20 years. deep background in ad tech in large ad agency holding companies and product and go to market functions. So nice to meet everyone today.
Tiffany Serbus-Gustaveson 4:38
Fantastic. Thank you Trinadha.
Trinadha Kandi 4:40
Yeah, sure. Hey everyone, this is Trinadha Kandi, Managing Director in Deloitte Digital within our marketing transformation practice, 20 years of global experience, broadly around marketing technology and data. I serve as a I would say resident CTO for internally for all Our marketing transformation in these initiatives, as well as an expert advisor to many of our clients, helping them to navigate through the complex adtech and martech ecosystems, excited to be here to share some of our perspectives and what we are seeing in the marketplace as a key trends. Thank you.
Tiffany Serbus-Gustaveson 5:17
Fantastic. Thank you. So I think we can jump into the first question. And Kelly, I'm gonna volley it over to you. Madtech, coolest name, everyone near me wants to say I'm working on madtech today. But what is it? Why is it important? Why is that the future for the marketing world?
Kelly Leger 5:38
Sure. So my viewpoint on madtech is that it is the convergence of what we probably would have called About two years ago, our advertising ecosystems and our marketing ecosystems sort of conjoining together to create, whether you would call them like your large stack, you know, enterprise stack, essentially platforms, companies, big tech partners in the ecosystem that are working on all things paid and owned and operated. And really, I think that convergence is helping clients to consolidate to have efficiencies, create efficiencies in their tech stack and their spend and investments. And so yeah, so I think that's what we would consider madtech.
Tiffany Serbus-Gustaveson 6:27
Awesome. Trinadha do you have anything to add to the mad?
Trinadha Kandi 6:34
Just to add to what Kelly said, the word Madtech. What we started seeing in that in the marketplace, especially with the CMOS, owning the growth agenda for the brands, and then started owning the customer journey end to end in traditional world, most of the advertising work is being done by the agencies. And then there is a traditional marketing tactics and this digital marketing tactics, we are seeing more and more, all of them are actually merging. And the CMOS are really looking at this end to end to support the customer experience journeys end to end, starting from, again, the audience journey to the customer journey to the loyalty journey, everything together, not to support that journey aspect. The technologies behind the scene are actually coming together, there is a game, we heard this many times, there's a martech, there's an adtech, there is a data tech, there is an analytics, there's a sales tech. There's so many technologies supporting all these different capabilities. But more and more from a CMO growth agenda standpoint, marketing and advertising coming together supported by the data underlying data. Hence, the word madtech is actually becoming.
Tiffany Serbus-Gustaveson 7:57
Awesome. So now that we have an overview about madtech, why it's important what it is, I want to jump into a poll right now. So the poll is we're going to go into the chat bar, and you're going to write one through 10. So one meaning not mature, and to fully mature. And I want you to rate your marketing, tech maturity. So one not mature 10 fully mature. And we'll aggregate that. And then we'll show the results. And there is a few in the audience that offered to give their perspective on why they chose a scale they did. So a couple seconds to input that. We still have a few people coming in, which is awesome. All right. Beautiful. Thank you all for participating. Says interesting numbers. So Robert, you offered to give your perspective on your rating and your experience thus far, which we so appreciate. So we'd love you to jump in, introduce yourself and give you a perspective.
Rob 9:16
Yeah, so Rob, actually Director of Digital Banking for a bank. And so far as the heart scale, but I think we have a lot of technology. But I don't think we're using it in in this complete completeness or full capability to give give that great customer journey from end to end. So we have a lot of disparate technologies. And we're probably not utilizing to their fullest so we have opportunity there. So that's I put us right in the middle and I could see a set of four awesome
Tiffany Serbus-Gustaveson 10:03
And what is your challenge? Who owns the the madtech? In your world? Is it IT? Is it marketing? Or is there a collaborative?
Rob 10:12
I'm mostly marketing, um, and show jointly with my area on the digital banking side as well. And we kind of, we actually meet weekly to discuss digital and tech in the technology and the marketing plans and how we're going to do that. But at the moment, most of the expander budget on the madtech would fall in with the marketing area.
Tiffany Serbus-Gustaveson 10:48
Has there been any resistance? Or are you not there yet, of incorporating the IT team into it more? Is that a strategic move or just it organically hasn't happened?
Rob 10:59
Organicly hasn't happened. I think our IT traditionally has been very infrastructure oriented, as opposed to other applications. And we may get there. But we're not there right now. They're more traditional infrastructure and the business lines can push their own technologies.
Tiffany Serbus-Gustaveson 11:25
So Trinadha and Kelly, I can guarantee you probably get that a lot. And like, how do you bring those two totally different worlds? merge them together? And have them speak the same language when they really speak very different languages and have traditionally worked in siloed fashion?
Trinadha Kandi 11:51
I can go first, if that's okay. Okay, so, yeah, I think Tiffany, what Robert said, that's, that's a common thing, that common team that we hear from many of the clients out there many of the brands out there. And I said, No, we can really look back the rationale or the reasons why that's happening. Like, again, it traditionally the CEO organization traditionally is responsible for managing the all the enterprise applications. Now, in last few years, I would say last decade or so, right? When the marketing, trying to insource the capabilities, moving from agencies and trying to build in house agencies and in house capabilities. It's an admin skill, marketers, but they themselves are actually dabbling around that in terms of building a right talent pool, within the same organization to handle all the net new marketing capabilities traditionally, that was being run by agencies, right or other providers. Now, when you're bringing that capability in house, what what we have seen in our experience is the CIO organization wasn't really prepared to be the market savvy to understand the marketing applications, they that they can support. And so there is always a disconnect that we have seen in the marketplace when it comes to the IoT and marketing. And in fact, if everyone on this call understands that the world of market can really kind because of merging between IT and marketing together, so that there are some companies that have their own organization units, that is responsible for the market. Right. And as as Robert said, many clients that we work with, I've seen that marketing owns the martech aspect, when it comes to underlying the technologies, any of the integrations and development and all of that would stay in it. But most of that, including the data science, you can carry can speak a lot to that, that data science analytics, as a capability is actually feeding into our are actually getting my getting into the CMR medicine now. So more and more we are seeing those capabilities are getting built within the marketing organization. And they are depending on the interface, it functions only for the platform maintenance and monitoring, and also, marketing and advertising. Most of the platforms are what we thought are cloud based, right? Again, they are not necessarily you need to build in house, unless some of the largest retailers in fact, I was talking to one of the one of the largest retailer in North America yesterday, their global form two, and they have the engineering mindset. The technology team wants to build the capabilities in house, right? It could be the data platforms, it could be the orchestration platform they want to build in house. However, that is creating a net new challenges to the marketers. The ability to run the campaigns on time to push their messages on time is becoming a challenge. So that's a constant thing that we have received.
Kelly Leger 15:05
Yeah, I was gonna say I think the translation between IT and marketing has been something that's been a slow, very slow progression over the last couple of years really bringing it into the fold, or the under the umbrella of what some of these mad tech platforms do. And getting them bought into that from a sort of center of excellence or, you know, steering committee point of view, like, I'm starting to see more of that with my clients, for sure. Really bringing it into the meetings, getting them bought into an understanding the solution and, and how they're important and how they play a role. But um, you know, to turn out as point like the sort of build in house mentality that traditional IT organizations have versus March Madness, madtech organizations, right, where things move so quickly, and you have to be the sort of speed to market is paramount to any overpaid activity that you're doing. there sort of a conflict there. So I think is the next couple of years, we'll see this, whether we're going to call it the chief experience officer, I think we'll see the rise of that that'll bring sort of those two worlds together a little bit more of a, I would say a marketing person with a heavy it understanding but maybe a different view on sort of built in house or capitalize externally and sort of the split of what to build in house versus what to capitalize in externally from the madtech platforms, but agree with everything turned out I said earlier,
Tiffany Serbus-Gustaveson 16:45
Excellent. Does anybody want to share in the group, their experience of migrating culture into a madtech culture that traditionally has been siloed of it on one side and marketing on the other? We will love your stories. You can unmute.
Trinadha Kandi 17:06
Tiffany, you if I may, if I may share right. One of the clients story, so to say right, again, they're one of the largest retailer, I think how they try to address the gap between IT and marketing. As Kelly was saying earlier, they are creating enact new teams, right? You call it an agile parts, and everyone was agile marketing. They are creating a net new parts. And they're bringing the people from different functions into one part. And they use that for so this specific line went on the personalization journey, it's a two year journey. They're very clear what they want to do the personalization journey. They can starting from advertising, marketing content, creative technology, data, all of that. And and they took three months or so to set up the whole governance and operating model and created those roles and have the people to fill in those roles. And that function is actually executing the personalization, aspiration for the brand. So it's a collaborative effort across CSO CIO CMO, everyone, the C C suite. But there is a net new team that got created to deliver onto the personalization promise, and we are seeing that they can. And one of the leading bank in Canada, they went heavy on agile marketing. So they created is different delivery ports on specific initiatives. And then after the initiative, after the initiatives done again, it goes into strategic operations, right? It's an ongoing operations part of it, then the C level folks can decide where the skills can reside. And it's the marketing around it. But as the companies go onto the transformation journeys, most brands are really rethinking rewiring how the app model or operating model should look like for the duration of the transformation.
Tiffany Serbus-Gustaveson 19:10
In getting that buy in, yeah, yeah. Excellent. Thank you. That was a great example. And looking at the results, and we have across the board. Hilary, would you be open to sharing you had a one? And just interested in your experience thus far? And if you see that, as you move into this new culture shift if there's going to be a lot of challenges or not.
Hilary 19:37
Now, absolutely. Our I put a one because ours is is ever changing, because our demographic so I work for a large online insurance brokerage specific focus is Medicare. So the healthcare environment is complex. I think it's probably and being a veteran of this of the healthcare industry. Both on you know, I've worked in hospitals, I've worked for the carriers. And now I'm working in brokerage. So I've seen all facets of it. It's a really complex industry. And it's disheartening. Because if you are just a lay person trying to figure out how to get the best care that's affordable to you, depending on your health condition, and especially in the Medicare space, we deal with folks that are retired and on fixed incomes, it's a lot of information to digest. It's copious amounts. I mean, imagine it's public policy you're reading as a consumer. And so we try really hard the premise of my organization is transparency, being able to be a one stop shop where you can get unbiased information, and education, and enter in your specific information and circumstances, you know, if you have to see a specialist because you have a chronic condition, or if you have drugs that are maybe out of formulary, and you need to just look at plans that have your drugs in network, that they're covered. So it's a lot of different things that we're dealing with. And so we're ever changing. So I think we're a little bit better than a one. But I put one because we're constantly chasing opportunities to make the information digestible. And then we we talk a lot about patient journeys, because everybody has a stake in this you have to lead your consumer down a path of the like, you want them to do these correct behaviors in order to maximize it. So you've got to tell them that story, why I want you to take these next steps, but why it's going to be beneficial to you. And then on the opposite side of the spectrum, choosing a health plan has implications for the provider as it pertains to value based care agreements. And then also to the carrier. I mean, it's just it's, it's a big, big roadmap with a lot of choose your own adventures, to guide the consumer down the correct patient journey to, okay, you have a great doctor, or maybe you don't, okay, select a provider, okay, now, you should select an insurance that is in network with that provider or hospital that you intend to get your services from. Now, let's look at your drugs and even further filter down the choices for you to make sure that your economic you know, your your out of pocket expenses are going to be limited. But doing those things is ultimately going to land you in a spot as a consumer that you have everything aligned, you have your doctor, your drugs, your insurance, all aligned for the best health care outcomes and the best financial proposition for you as a consumer to we're constantly evolving as the rules change. And the focus of our our clients who are the carriers, the Aetna is in United Health groups of the world. And then the large health system systems that we service in this space as well. So we've got two different customers, if you will. And then a lot of public policy that we're trying to unravel and put into laypeople terms that's digestible and understandable.
Tiffany Serbus-Gustaveson 23:27
Lots of challenges.
Hilary 23:29
Yeah, it's a moving target. So I put one because we're always looking at it, we're always looking for a better way to tell the story and to guide the consumer down the journey.
Tiffany Serbus-Gustaveson 23:42
Kelly, Trinadha, your experience I'm sure with health care providers and medical and how complex that world is. And Hilary is confirming that. Any suggestions? Any insights?
Trinadha Kandi 23:59
So I think I agree with everything what our Hilary said and that's, that's unfortunately, the state of diverse right now. It's it's evolving, again, it it is not, there is no proven solution out there. It's an constant evolving landscape. There's another thing that we are also seeing in the same example, what Elite is talking is when when we flip the coin to as a marketer, from a marketing operations standpoint as a marketer, there is an other nuances in the healthcare and life sciences world, which is your compliance. Any content that needs to go out, has to go through the MLS process. And we are seeing we work with some of the large pharma clients out there and the better clients that we work with that. We've seen that that's a step very critical step in the in that journey often or looked. And they think that that's something that they can just dynamically kind of get it ready. Unfortunately, the legal reviews takes a lot of time. So that is, that is where we've seen the mark tech platforms are becoming handy to elevate not necessarily it can, it cannot take the entire entire burden because every company in the pharma space in the in the healthcare space is different. However, you do elevate the pain of reducing the operational burden. Once we use the right tech platform that can automate the process, the MLF process legal review process so that the content can be really whenever the communication has to go out to the payer, or to the patient. That's that's one constant thing that address I have seen
Hilary 25:54
you hit the nail on the head you that is one of the largest in addition to unfurling all of the complexity, to make it consumer in, you know, digestible, you first have to make sure that you are running parallel with CMS guidelines, standards and regulations, and guidance. So you you set them out for you are 100%, correct, Kelly, anything to add?
Kelly Leger 26:24
When it comes to healthcare clients, the data that you if you have data, the data that you have access to can be so valuable, and helping funnel the correct people to you. But to turn out as point the compliance and the privacy, and sort of the rules and regs around using that data is so it's so important to understand, and there's just so much of it, there are partners who are starting to do a really good job of doing some of the heavy lifting, and making sure their platforms are compliant when when trying to funnel, you know, use the funnel to get people toward you as a brand or towards your solution. But other than that, it's a complicated process. And it sounds like Hilary, you are in it. And we are here to support if you need help. But yeah, other than that, I don't have anything else to add.
Tiffany Serbus-Gustaveson 27:21
So excellent. And thank you, Hilary for sharing your experience. We appreciate that. We'll do one more, and then we'll move on to the next topic, because we have Colleen, she rated a three. So Colleen, we'd love to hear your perspective.
Colleen 27:40
Sure, so we're a global CPG company. For those who aren't familiar with the master brand name, I personally work on the body, and hair color divisions, dial soap and Schwarzkopf. And also we have a sub brand, you know, we are really making a lot of efforts to get more advanced with our madtech with the you know, combining the adtech, the marketing the data, I read us a three because we have a lot of good groundwork in the works. But we're still waiting for it to all come together, it's definitely a focus of the company. We obviously are aware of the upcoming limitations on the available third party data. So we really want to become experts at building our own source of opted in compliant first party data, we think that's going to be critical. So we're currently putting all kinds of plans into market that help with our acquisition. And you know, not just to obtain that data, but also to provide a better experience for our consumers, you know, in our categories. each brand has a very different demographic. each brand has a lot of specificity within those categories. Think for example, hair color, like of all our brands, and why are you coloring your hair? Is it a fashion look? Are you going to a Kpop concert and you're 18 or you're 55 and you want to cover your grays? If you want to cover your grid, what color do you want? Are you a redhead to your brunette. So this is where you know really specific data is going to be super helpful to us in making that experience really relevant and letting our consumers know we understand them, who they are, what they want, and how we can best provide solutions for them. Same thing with dial you know we have body wash, we have soap we have all kinds of solutions for men, for women, for kids, and honing in on you know what someone is really after in terms of a benefit. And a product that is going to come from data. So obviously with this requires a great deal of infrastructure behind the scenes to be able to, you know, bring together first of all systems that can build this data help us build and organize this data and then roll it out in a marketing experience in a meaningful way. So It's right now in the architecture phase, the awareness is there that we need it, it's being built. And then I just think it's going to take a little bit of time because it is so complex. It does require resources, it requires human resources, it requires upskilling on, you know, how to leverage and build the the information that we have, you know, it's one thing to pull all the data in, but then how do you activate it in a meaningful way? So we are on that path right now. With a lot of different partners, as well as building in house systems. So just the future looks promising, but it's just still gonna take a lot of work to get there.
Tiffany Serbus-Gustaveson 30:48
Colleen sounds like she's there on the right path. Obviously, they know how big of a endeavor it is. And they're being realistic with their goals and the timeline. But yeah, how do you take that data? Kelly, and that play into the CDP role, and going into that cookieless world that are waiting to jump into whenever we go cookieless
Kelly Leger 31:14
Yeah, shout out to Colleen is so great to see CPG companies getting it together when it comes to data, because, you know, traditionally CPG companies have had nothing because they've been dis intermediated between the customer right selling through your local grocery store, or your pharmacy or your, wherever the products are available. And a lot of that data never comes back to you as the brand and the manufacturer. And it's really awesome to see a lot of CPG companies really saying like, it's time to take control of the situation and start building, we don't have first party data, we're going to start using the next best effort, which is probably offline, you know, third party data that's been, you know, privacy opted in, or has gone through sort of robust privacy and transparency, vetting, right, to be able to use and understand and have sort of a sense of truth, and then be able to understand more about the consumers in market who are purchasing their products, and not relying or waiting on the the stores that are selling their products to sort of do them a solid and give them some data back, right. Like it's rare. It's rare, those partnerships have been a long time coming. And I think what's interesting now is with the cookieless, worlds coming into play next year, and already, we've been seeing signal loss for the last couple of years with the browser deprecations, Apple shutting down its IDFA, its ad Id really the signals being stripped out of the digital marketing capabilities. What's great is this whole new rush of platforms that are going to lean more into verified known data, which is CDP's. And being able to use a CDP is crucial as you as we move into this sort of cookieless world one, so that you sort of control and understand your data asset as a brand, right? You're not unnecessarily deferring that power to some other platform, you're harnessing the power. And to to be able to use that sort of verified sense of truth, that data to better inform your marketing, which will cause efficiencies and effectiveness all through your mad tech stack. And through your Ono and media sort of paid media spend. Because it'll be your source of truth. So I'm super amped to hear calling to hear you say everything that you've said, because I feel like CPGs really are they're really taking, taking ownership of this where there are a lot of industries that are still sort of what do we do what's going to happen in a year when the cookieless when the you know, Google flips the switch. A lot of people are still sort of waiting for a substitute solution. And unfortunately, there won't be one. And so really taking that power in internally and working on either the data that you have or bringing in additional data. It's super important. And then obviously the platforms that will support that. You know, those are the things that we work on all day long with clients and so it was great to hear. That's where you guys are calling in like congrats, kudos. That's awesome.
Tiffany Serbus-Gustaveson 34:37
Exciting. Thank you Colleen for sharing. So as we talk about the CDP is a customer database platform, correct? Why don’t we do another poll, one through five. So one, your company is not talking about the cookieless world doesn't even know what a CDP is, it's not top of mine, five, meaning it is number one priority in the organization and you're laser focused on doing something about it. So in the chat, if you can do one least five most important, and then we'll aggregate that and call upon some people on the why they chose the ranking they did give a couple minutes here. So David, are you still on?
David 36:05
Yes, I am Tiffany. Sorry, I had to unmute. I'm not sure I understand the question. Can you I was gonna ask in the chat, can you please rephrase it?
Tiffany Serbus-Gustaveson 36:14
Yeah, so CDP, a customer database platform, is the new solution. Once the world goes cookieless, and you don't have that option of tracking your customer and really knowing what your customer wants? And curious if it's a top of mind issue in your organization? Or if it's still an unknown
David 36:37
That's difficult for me, because I'm in pharmaceuticals, and our customers are our patients. So I'm not sure how to answer that question I'm just kind of pondering it's a little bit difficult are, our focus is to, to put our patients first and to design our studies and our work for our patients. It's a little bit so we have to consider impacts on all of the patients on our design of our studies, or clinical studies on patient facing materials and devices, translations, ethics, you know, the forms that you sign up at drugstores, etc, to get to get the drugs. So it's a little bit hard, I can really relate to it relative to maybe other industries.
Tiffany Serbus-Gustaveson 37:28
Can you expand upon any challenges your organization is having outside of that?
David 37:34
As sorry, outside of what
Tiffany Serbus-Gustaveson 37:38
Outside of the cookieless world if that's not a priority, or obviously restrictions around because of the world that you work in? But then any other challenges when it comes to madtech or your tech stack?
David 37:53
Yeah. I think the COVID prices obviously is very big. It's a very big threat. And it's something that has made us really reorganize and change the way we think. And I think one of the relative to tech, it's really important that we start thinking about how do we structure data? And how do we change the way that we review our data? So it's been called the digital transformation, a digital disruption? Because basically, everything right now is in documents, right? So we submit documents, but it's that data that the health authorities, FDA and other health authorities need to access. So I think one of our our big questions right now with technology is how do we move away from the digitized world that we're in which is organized for more data focused world, data oriented world with structured content, moving from text to data, so that we can answer any question about our drugs or any, any issues with data in a very speedy way. And also, of course, focusing on our patients, and really trying to realize trustworthy medically sound reliable data in the context of this evolving digital ecosystem that we're in, and the very many growing ways that we're generating evidence, real world evidence for for our drugs. Sorry, if I'm getting too technical, but is that kind of what you were looking for?
Tiffany Serbus-Gustaveson 39:42
Yeah and Kelly, Trinadha, did you want to expand on that?
Trinadha Kandi 39:45
Yeah. COVID Respect. Yeah, sure. So let me share at least the perspective of my experience working with some of the healthcare companies. Again, as David said, It's always challenging, traditionally, on the data collection side. Because, again, most of the clients that we work with at least are not mature enough in terms of the capabilities that will enable them to collect the data. And there is a net, there is a new complexity in the world because the when we take a patient journey, right, not necessarily all the touch points on the digital side, unlike CPG, and unlike a sari, unlike retail, or unlike financial services clients, it has a offline touchpoints at the hospitals that the doctor side sales reps when when it when we talk about the HCPs providers. And what we've seen is at is how we are helping clients is this week, we have this whole omni channel, journey, design orchestration, when when when these companies go on the digital transformation agendas, the omni channel plays a huge role. And then we actually try to phase it out. Email is a probably I would say, the I won't call easiest channel. But there's probably more consumable channel when it comes to the patient journeys. And then portals. So the portals and the emails are the two touch points, how we advise clients to start with the omni channel journey, because those two give an opportunity to collect the data about the patients. When we create those, those platforms or those applications, there is a PII data, the sensitivity data, we want to be careful on how what we collect and how we store that information and how we use it information. So that's one part of the journey. The other part of the journey is the patients that are patients providing the information to this to the doctors. Now, most of that information sits in into the different data systems. And this is where we talk about mactech. Right? And the beauty of it is right how do we take the data from different systems and stitch it and create the patient profile, unified patient profile that where we can deliver the seamless experience and the drug information, the products and relevant products to the patients? As I say most definitely, this is a journey. Many of the large pharma clients out there healthcare companies out there. He's been going through this omni channel journey, we can call it actually one of our one of our biggest customers in this space is Amgen. And Amgen took like a four year three transformation journey. And they took they actually siloed the channels, they said let's start with email. Let's start with Portal. Let's start collecting the information. Once you get more understanding about the patients, right, how do you activate more channels? So it's a crawl, walk run approach? Tiffany, is what we've seen most of the companies out there taking on the digital transformation side?
David 43:22
Yeah, I agree. Absolutely. And there are major strides, like you said, can be there major strides are being made for patient automation to help. Yep, yep. Yeah. Yeah. See what we can do from our side with with the work that we're doing for preparing for these trials for patients.
Tiffany Serbus-Gustaveson 43:57
Paige, I'm going to ask you, you were able to join any challenges opportunities you're seeing with potentially or if you are implementing madtech.
Paige 44:13
Currently, with our division, we aren't facing that challenge just because we're using internal data storage that we can reference to. So I don't feel like that really applies to our division that I work in anyways, that might apply to a different division.
Tiffany Serbus-Gustaveson 44:28
Any challenges in general?
Paige 44:36
I think data consistency is probably the hardest thing. Having clean data that can be used that doesn't take hours to build is probably our biggest area of opportunity that I'm finding and I don't know if others are running into this. But typically to get data we have to sit down with another team who then has to go through and filter through a bunch of data To filtration systems that are pulling from everywhere. And so I think the time that it takes to build something than the time tantalize sometimes then you realize that there wasn't a piece that you didn't consider. And then you're going back and trying to add more information. And so I think, ideally, if we could get to a place where we can build a data system platform where we can just extract the data that we need at the touch of our fingertips, that's the ideal solution.
Tiffany Serbus-Gustaveson 45:34
Trinadha I wanted to go back to the journey, and what is realistic for that journey timeline? I know within your state company is going to vary. But this sounds like it's, you know, quite an undertaking, and what should be the expectation for our team that's starting to undertake that?
Trinadha Kandi 45:53
Yeah. So I think as you rightly said, right, it differs from industry to industry. Typically, when we talk to the retail industry, again, they're the ability to build and roll out the capabilities are much faster in in specific industries, and when in fact one of my client global clients right now in the in the license space, even the example that I was getting earlier, they have a multi year roadmaps. It. One thing I want to make sure everyone understands is one thing you want, we all have the same same base that tech is not the only the answer. By tech as an enabler. All of us know the technology is the same enabler. I think the biggest challenge is definitely what we see in most of the organizations that are going into the digital transformation journeys, is people in classes at option change management, having the right operating model and structures in place? In the beginning, I think I said I said this, as the marketers, as a CMO organizations are trying to bring the capabilities in house, it is a net new, I'll give an example of this global farmer client that we are working with, we are rolling out the omni channel capabilities globally. Which means when we are talking to the market as digital people in each of these countries, both, obviously not America, as well as in Europe, and Asia cosmic, everyone has a different level of maturity of understanding the omni channel capabilities, they can most of the people are not true marketers, like they didn't really build their careers as marketers, they are the country leads and they are they know the industry quite well, they know the patients quite well. But you we are expecting them to learn digital marketing, we are expecting them to learn the digital landscape, right, and so as the custodians of the digital brand, so that journey is actually more time consuming and time taking than others. The reason why I said earlier, the retail and even some of the tech, some of the largest tech brands out there technology brands out there are some of the media and entertainment brands out there, their, their adoption rate is much higher, because of the digital native, the people that they hire, they built even the whole services that the build on the digital landscape. So for them, the adoption is much higher than the traditional clients who are actually going into this large transformation programs. Can you feel how additional?
Kelly Leger 48:31
Yeah, I was gonna say to like, I think you're spot on, like people on processes huge. Where I see a lot of organizations fall down is they want to go buy the latest and greatest platform, but they don't have the people in the process to back up and make that platform successful. And oftentimes we come in to help them with the people in the process. And then we realize maybe the use cases weren't exactly spot on for the platform that you bought. So then we have to kind of retro actively work with them and making sure that they're getting the most out of their investment. So I think key is having the people and process in place. As you start your journey like that should be your core foundation. Having your use cases, having your center of excellence, like who's on the committee to make sure that the investment is the correct investment and the roadmap and your tech infrastructure is where you want to head and it's actually, you know, gonna ladder up to those use cases that you've come together as a center of excellence to create for the business so that you make sure your investment, you know, is monetized at the highest rate possible. There has been a massive compression on the market. When it comes to people who know how to operate a lot of these platforms. The reality is the speed at which these platforms have been built. The people who knows How to operate staffing building has not I would say kept up to the rate at which these platforms have released new features and new products and having deep level of expertise in those platforms is massively important. And we agile weights are here and we help a lot of folks in that matter because they're just, there's only so many people out in out there, right, who can help and help on these roadmaps in these journeys and with deep level expertise on these platforms. So as you start this journey, keep those people processes in mind and make sure that when you're when you're looking at Tech when you're investing in tech, you know you have the people to actually operate it and and realize and monetize your investment so.
Tiffany Serbus-Gustaveson 50:46
It's a great takeaway. Don't forget about the people. First and foremost. Awesome. Well, we are in about two minutes left here. So if anybody has any other questions or comments, feel free to you know, hop off mute, put it in the chat otherwise, we're gonna be wrapping up here so everybody can get on to their next meeting, or take the day off because the weekend.
Hilary 51:16
Thanks, everybody. This was a good conversation.