The New Change Agents: How Top IT and Marketing Teams Drive CX Innovation

We're going to have a number of fantastic brands join us for a panel discussion. And we're going to chat about blending the art of marketing this time with the science of IT and using that to drive CX innovation. And some of the topics that our fabulous panel are going to touch on will be bringing customer centric vision to life. Becoming a strategic partner that drives efficiency, using actionable data to unlock revenue driving personal analyzation initiative, something I know is near and dear to everybody here's heart. And how do you really build a CX optimized tech stack? I'm not sure we always think about our tech stacks from that perspective. So lots of thought provoking questions there, I think. I will not be hosting this panel, because I am delighted that we have a special guest who is going to do for us. Alicia Espazito from retail touch points. She is the VP of content and is responsible for orchestrating all of the content strategy and the tactical execution for this retail publication. So she knows both marketing and retail very well and is going to bring her own wealth of insights And we've been very fortunate in a Marsha to actually partner with retail touch points over the last year to get a better understanding of latest industry trends and research. And I know Alicia gonna bring a lot of that to the table. So without further ado, I will pass things to Alicia to kick things off. Welcome, Alicia. Sarah, thank you so much for the kind words and the warm welcome. Really excited to be here, especially driving this incredible panel of experts and tishners who are essentially living and reading this every day. And I know we only have thirty minutes and we have a lot to dig into. Some of the pillars and best practices we're gonna be discussing today have a lot of meat to them. So to kick things off, I think it'll be really important for us to do a quick round robin of introductions, so to speak, be because all of the folks on this panel do have different perspectives. They're part of different organizations, different categories, and ultimately different cultures, which I think will add a level of nuance and insight to this entire discussion. So panel would for you to kind of go in order of the slides, make things a little bit easier, just introduce yourself, and just share a sentence or two about your role, your priorities and kind of how you're thinking about this idea of IT and marketing collaborating together. Christian, let's start with you. Hey, Alicia. How are you? Thank you to the MRC team for having me. I'm Christian Serrano. I'm leading all the ecommerce and direct to consumer business unit into tech mobile. We are a technology distribution company and basically I oversee all the operations in America's region. Awesome. Lynn? Good morning, everyone. Thank you for having me as well. I'm excited to be here. My name is Lynn Calhoun. I am head of marketing in ecommerce for replacements limited, where we are a direct to consumer. Company looking to help connect people and to create memorable experience through creating beautiful tablescapes and ensuring that those folks collecting tableware have all their pieces at the right time at the right place so they can have their gatherings. Beautiful, Lynn. Erin. Welcome. Introduce yourself. Hi, everyone. Really excited to be here. So I'm Aaron Bradley. I'm the global vice president of technology, innovation, and experience at Wellac Company. And we primarily focus on the professional beauty, hair, nails, and beauty tech. And my role within Wala Company is to look after and drive the digital experiences and technologies across the whole organization. From e commerce solutions all the way through to our customer service and frontline sales tools. Amazing. And finally, again, hello. Oh, there. Very nice to meet you all. So thank you very much for that. So I'm Jan Hart based in in the Nordics working with with global retailers focusing on helping to connect customer data from offline to online. Create the customer three sixty model and pair that with the right message to the right user at the right time. So creative and and data in combination. Amazing. So as you all can see very different backgrounds, day to day, but I think some really nice synergies that are gonna bring this conversation to a level of, you know, insight, actionable takeaways, things that you guys can hopefully apply all of your businesses. But I think that the key underlying theme or or focus, I think they're kind of already touched on this, is now more than ever marketing and IT really need to work synergistically in order to bring c x to its full potential. I I think historically, I know we've seen it in our coverage on retail touch points is that CX has always kind of been, you know, pushed towards marketing. It's their mandate. They need to support, you know, service, ecomm, digital. But now obviously, as things are getting more digitally connected consumers are expecting more seamlessly more personalization, IT does need to have a hand in bringing these strategies to life in order to you know, best, not just orchestrate the channels and the tactics, but also, you know, determine impactful these these efforts are, and we're gonna be getting into a lot of this. But at a glance, these are the four pillars or or four keys to success, you know, for marketing and IT to collaborate. So we're gonna be digging into all of these and getting some additional insights from our panelists. So let's start with really the foundation of it all. I think, which is this idea of customer centricity. It's definitely not a new concept, and it would be covering it for quite quite a bit on retail touch points. Friends that have been trying to make that shift, you know, from brand centric or product centric to centering around the customer. And obviously, companies are in different stages of that process. So, yes, I think I'm gonna go first. Because you work with so many different companies, you may have that nice high level look at as far as where companies are. And ultimately, what some of the challenges are, like, as they're trying to make that shift? What are you seeing right now? Yeah. Thanks a lot. This show So I fully agree to to their points here. We what I hear from many local regional and also global brands is to there many of them are moving from from a product centric view to a customer centric view. So so it really matches with your headline here. And I think there are some macro effects accelerating that as well, like the capitalist future that is particularly here and and will be fully here shortly. So a lot of companies is investing in customer data platforms and those type of things. Then they when they start to have these type of neighbors, they also start about thinking about, okay. So so what can we do with these tools? And should we adapt our ways of working and potentially change our operating model? Forth. So so so transforming the company culture is very like just as important as as building the right tech. And and and so forth. So so that will bring and accelerate the customer understanding. So yep. I think that's my point of use right now. No. It's great. And when I know in our first cover station. You you spoke a lot about what that journey looks like for you. So I I'd love to share you I'd love for you to share your perspective. Because I I know you did emphasize that it is very much a journey. Right? So how how are you thinking about things within your organization? I think for replacements, we have always been I I feel like this is just very cliche customer focus. I mean, customers are are north star. They are the reason for us being, and our focus on them starts with we retain a customer contact center where we take calls, we listen to the customers, we have a daily survey that goes out to our customers. We review that survey. We look at our CSAT scores, our net promoter scores, and more specifically the comments that we're receiving from customers. And we're aggregating that and looking to say what action do we need to take on this information we're seeing. And we layer on that a desire to get in front of the customer and then ask them, how is that experience? What is it that we can do better? And we utilize tools on our website that allows us to intercept and ask those questions so we can collect real time data. And so that is not how we feel think or want our customers to behave. But look at the data that shows here is their journey. These are the areas of friction. And what are they saying to us about them and how can we look to improve it? Christian, anything resonate with you there as far as accessing and and leveraging that data to create that holistic view or or centralized view of the customer? Yeah. Absolutely, Alicia. I think we are all kind of experiencing the same. For example, for us, I think the biggest challenge has been to adapt all the processes. We were born as a b to b company. And in that shift in terms of business to consumer, it's been very, very complex to try to align all these course functional areas and make them understand to our peers why it's very, very important to have, you know, seamless and frictionless yearings for the final consumer. So, you know, the North Star, I think that for us, for all of us, it's consumer, but also we have kind of a mantra that it's starting before technology. Technology has no limits. But if you don't define where you wanna go, it's very, very complicated to get there. So basically, I think, again, the biggest challenge you know is is change the DNA, adapt all the processes that were originally created, and ensure that we have a very, very frictionless process to the final consumer. Whether it is, I don't know, tax refund, return or exchange or a normal purchase. Right? Yeah. Christian, I love that point that that technology is essentially limitless. You you need a guidepost or you both brought brought up the phrase North star which I I feel like I need to emphasize because you do need that centralized point that you're always pointing towards and that needs to be the customer. Before we move on to the next point, Erin, I I wanna go to you because I know in our first conversation, you brought up the the shift to being more individual centric, which I think is a really interesting nuance. So can you expand what that means to you and your work but also more broadly your your organization? Yeah. Of course. So Well, our company is quite lucky that we operate across b to b, b to b to c, and and d to c. And we see a lot of fluidity across the customers and the options that we've got across consumers than and and more traditional customers. So we're making a shift from having a business entity in a database to understanding them as an individual, not just as a customer, but potentially also as as consumers. And if we focus for a moment on the b to b aspect of of why I look after a a weller, and we work with a huge amount of sounds. And the salon can be from an in the an independent hairstylist all the way to a multi location, huge chain of salons. But it's the people that we really focus on and that relationship that we wanna build for a lifetime relationship. And loyalty with Wella Company. I love that. And I'm sure there are a few folks in the audience right now that may have that more b to b to c or b to c to b or however you wanna shuffle the letters together because these revenue models are getting a bit more complex and go across different platforms. So I think, again, it down to the individual level, understanding that Nuance through data is really powerful. So let's go to the next point around strategic partnership. Because, again, Christian, I think this goes to your point. The technology is limitless, but you need a guidepost marketing needs to provide the data and the strata the strategic insight rather to to be that guide post. So let's get into a little bit. Yens, I I wanna get your perspective on that how critical that alignment is. And ultimately what the long tail effect is in terms of revenue, productivity, performance. Because I think it's easy for us to be like, oh, yeah. Like, we collaborate. Like, we should collaborate. It's all great and dandy. But, like, what are the outcomes if a company does or does not achieve that alignment? Yeah. So I think painting the North Star. Are we talked about is kind of crucial to start there, to think about how would you like customers to have the experience and and what use cases do you need to improve or build and stuff like that. And then going across silos will be also key key to success because there as as we also mentioned earlier. Technology is immense. I mean, there it opens up tremendous of opportunities. And and then you can easily fall into rabbit holes when it comes technology. And then you also have the business side who who might have some specific perspectives of So so bringing the IT side together with the business side is is crucial to to help define our of the possible and and where to go and and then build the plan, basically. So so and I would also call out to invite the legal department since stuff like GDPR and so forth. I've also met many times that that can be misperceptions and and misunderstandings. So the earlier you can align and where you want to go and see the business values. That will help to set the direction for for the project going ahead. So That's that's a really good point. Yeah. I I didn't think about the the legal implications there, but sure some marketers are like, oh, yeah. That's true. Like, how many times have you had a great idea? And, like, wigles had to kind of reel it in a little bit. Right? But I want to turn it to our practitioners on the line because I know you all have have talked about how critical it is for marketing and IT to be aligned in the good fight, so to speak, aligned on a vision for a new initiative or a new approach, need to be aligned on how success is gonna be measured and how it's gonna ladder up to goals. This this could probably lead to an hour conversation in and of itself. But how are you doing that? Especially because as we think about I mean, the the two days of this content, right, the art side and the science side. Sometimes the languages don't always mesh. Sometimes they're not always speaking the same language at all. So how are you getting teams on on the same page and and, you know, rallying around a centralized vision. Aaron, do you have any perspectives and and maybe like how measurement and and measures for success specifically kinda tie into speaking that same language? Yeah. Absolutely. So the way that we tackle it is we focus on capabilities. So if I think of building an execution team based on capabilities across multiple different functions and leveraging the correct level of capabilities that all of the different areas can have into one single execution board team, then we can leverage as Jensment and it mentioned earlier, the the knowledge of the legal team for data protection, the marketing brandex, experts, the IT experts as well. But it's really important that they have a single goal. And and for us, we always make sure there's a measurable outcome on what we're spending our time and effort on. And typically, that means there needs to be commercially recognized within the business unit, the the market or region or or business function. So it's not about just building a technology solution and then handing it over, the delivery of the technology solution doesn't do anything. It's what the business impact that it enables it to have. So it's really important that that that combined team have that aligned business outcome and not just delivery dates for certain pieces of technology. Or even creative content. That's great. Linda, I saw you nodding your head as Eric was going through his response. Anything you wanna add there? No. I appreciate what was said because I do think it's working towards a common vision. And if you think about the session before, it's over communicating. Right? So taking that time, spending that time together, talking through what that shared vision is, what that potentially look like and the why is what the customer is looking for, and the technology is the the solution. Right? The how do we get them there? And the nuts and bolts of it. And then having those shared measures of success and understanding the the the goals and the outcomes of that. So and I think that the collaboration, the overcommunication, the evangelizing your work, in the data just all gets reinforced through those relationships you build across functions to focus on your NorthStar, your in their experience. That's great. Christian, anything you wanna add there? Yeah. I think we are on the same path. We are experiencing exactly the same. It's it sounds very, very simple like collaboration, and you know, working together. But I think it absolutely makes sense. We are start to in buying the IT teams since the beginning of the projects at the brainstorm stage. Because they can understand in that way the thought process behind any requirement. I don't know. Just as an example, it's not the same to just sent the IT team a request of creating, I don't know, a million new customer profiles on the ERP. Instead of explaining to them the importance of have a full profile of each of our consumers, and the impact that these can have in terms of life and body, customer segmentation, and growth per per Right? So sometimes during this discovery phase, they offer us better solutions in order to achieve the outcome that we are looking for. So I think it's very, very important to include the IT team since the beginning. Yep. I guess, a a great point. I think knowing, you know, almost the limitations of your own knowledge. Right? I I think in in our coverage of culture and what true collaboration looks like. It's like there's always that mention of like removal of the ego. Right? Like there are certain things that you simply just know within the confines of your own work. So bringing in true experts and trusting them in this case IT and marketing, and, you know, being able to fill those gaps with without the bias of like, well, that's not like how I would think about it. But It definitely helps, you know, get everyone on the same page. So the the next topic obviously is with this alignment and the centralized vision is, you know, making sure that both teams have the insight and the knowledge they need to do their jobs well. Obviously, you know, data is what drives personalization. It's what drives best in class customer experiences. So, I mean, I'd love to open it up for whoever wants to share their perspectives first around, you know, what your data strategy looks like, and and and most of all, how how you ensure that this data is integrated accessible and most of all actionable for everyone within your teams. Because I think that actual piece is sometimes what's really missing from a lot of organizational strategies. Is there anyone that wants to to jump in first? I can. Go for it. Yeah. I was gonna call it someone next, so thank you. So one of the one of the big initiatives that I've been driving within weller is a concept of weller one. And what that means is that this consolidation from an operations perspective of connecting the data across all different experiences into one location. This allows us to build a lot stronger profile knowledge of those individuals like I mentioned earlier and therefore allows us to make sure that we're leveraging that data to build the best experiences. Now the problem that you sort of touched on before is how do you make it actionable data? And what I've been lucky enough to be able to do is to build a capabilities team based on the data to help up skill and support the different functions around the business in how do you use that data to make better decisions, but how do you actually use that data to actually generate more revenue or business impact across the different the different functions as well. Because I think one of the problems that some companies have is we gather a lot of data, but what do we do with it? Are we mature enough to actually start executing on it and do we measure the the actual benefits associated with the actions that we've had. So having the technical operations there, having a single data infrastructure, and then having the capabilities around using it as is is the sort of the direction that I'm sort of driving at the moment. That's amazing. And Christian, maybe one area that you can dig into a little bit since I know we have to move the session along and we're almost at a time. Is not just using data to inform the customer experience and what is being pushed out into the world, so to speak. But how is data being used to support business operations? You know, marketing efficiency, marketing performance. I'm sure a lot of marketing teams on the line right now may be navigating their own pressures as far as validating their investments, validating any technologies they wanna invest in. Can you share anything there like as far as, you know, how you're using, you know, performance data and customer insight to make those improvements, make those refinements to workflows and how teens are working every day? Absolutely, Alicia. I think some of the things that we have implemented, I think it's too many tips, the first one is regarding the use of the data. Sometimes, real organizations made a mistake to set, let's say, sales as the objective. Right? My personal opinion is that sales should be the consequence of the things that we do. It's not the objective. So, of course, we need to start to set our sales goal or sales forecast. But again, achieving that number, it's it's a consequence of what we are doing. So basically, we are using the data to change the KPIs we are measuring. So, for example, we are focusing on order cancellation rates, product return rates, the sold out do stock out. You know, we are afraid to enhance our CPF Air process, life and value, increasing growing and growth, of any investment that we are doing at repurchase. As an example, we've been able to jump from five percent of repurchase last year. To twenty percent of report Chase during the first six months of this year. So among few others, KPIs. Right? But I mean, it's enhancing the methods that we are seeing as a consequence, better customer satisfaction. We are seeing an increase in terms of sales, profitability in terms of you know, spending less money or investing in a more intelligent way. And the other big initiative that we have, it's creating, and I think Gens bring that to a table a few moments ago, it's build this kind of little small, SWAT teams, Burberry agile teams that we call squads, and it's basically having one people of each of the areas. Right? So we have legal IT, finance, digital marketing operations. You name it. In order to ensure that in any initiative, in any project that we are doing, all the possible gaps are covered there. So I think that's what we are doing. Amazing. I love that little actionable tidbit there. That could be something that our audience can can test out within their own organization. We do have one final point to go through before we close things up and that's the tech stack. Like Sarah said, you know, this is an area that I think a lot of companies are focusing on more. Again, because because they need to validate their investments. So I wanna close things out with Lynn and Jens for this one. So this this whole idea of you know, developing a framework or a roadmap for future CX investment send and then, of course, innovation's always the goal. Right? But, of course, you need, like, an actual plan. You need to use data to inform where you're going to go with your tech stack investments. So, Linda, I'd love your your perspectives on, like, how you're kind of establishing that. So how are you setting a framework for future innovation? How are you thinking about improving upon your tech stack? And if there are any challenges or areas you need to be thinking about as you kind of move forward with your with your future strategies? Yeah. Josh. That's such a big question for us and such a focus for us. We are a mature mid f s size company with the legacy system. So the considerations we have, I feel, are very complicated in that we're working off the legacy system that is the foundation for all of our efforts in understanding the implications of making any adjustments in where we can. So, honestly, we are at the we have been at a stage where we are having those conversations as to understanding mapping out what it is how we use, what we use, and then what are our options so that we can run-in parallel with doing any harm. So I'm actually very open too in looking for any real advice as to others who might be working through this themselves. Oh, great. Yes. Maybe we look to you to close this conversation out because, again, you work with so many different companies. You you've seen the data. You've seen the the evolution of so many organizations. Any any closing tips or or thoughts around how or — Yeah. — or any of our panelists can can tackle this. It burns. So yeah. I think I'm basically having a data driven approach to change is is usually a good way. So, again, you have the North Star break it down to smaller targets and build that roadmap. That where where you have opportunities to set it and test it as we say on this slide, so you can realize value. So so so the value doesn't come twenty four months ahead or problem months ahead. You can perhaps realize value in in a month or two months or three months. And that would be the stepping stone to the next initiative or the next stream to build your tech stack for improved consumer experience. So And it could also be that you already have a lot of unhidden opportune hidden opportunities with current technology. That that you might just be missing out on. So or adding some simple technology to on top of what you already have could open up a lot of new images. So so this is exciting and but you need to measure and and show results, then then you will get the excitement and and investment needed to take the next step. So Amazing. Thank you so much, Yansa. And and thank you to the rest of the panel. I I feel like we could've gone on and on for a few more hours, but I know you guys have a few more sessions lined up. Do wanna call out if folks wanna dig deeper into these four areas that we discussed, even dig into a few more exam goals. The QR code brings you to the white paper that our our teams collaborated on retail touch points in a Marsis. On helping provide a framework for tackling all of these issues and a few more resources as well if you want to assess your strategy. And, of course, you know, dig into some of the tech technical, you know, tech investments and areas that we discussed during this conversation. Thanks so much, everyone. Thank you, Alicia, and thank you to our fantastic panel. I think that was a really interesting and insightful conversation. And the only shame is that we had to bring it to a close. If you have any questions for our fabulous panels that you weren't able to get a chance to ask, there's some contact details on the screen ahead. I think, you know, Alicia wrapped it up really well, but I think one of the things I took away from this is, you know, marketing, we understand consumers. We do need our CEIs, CIOs who really do understand tech and help us to drive that CX innovation together. And if we do work together, then we can craft visions and tactics that build out world class CX, which neither of us are actually able to do on our own. So that's some of the things I'm going to take away from this session.