Session Information:

How to Drive True Digital Transformation with a Unique Methodology that Generates Results

With the world rapidly evolving, organizations are required to keep pace or risk irrelevance. The biggest risk organizations face is falling behind because they aren’t adapting quickly enough. This is what the Honeywell team faced when they evaluated their digital operational lead-to-revenue lifecycle. Under-leveraged technology, lack of sales and marketing alignment and complex internal processes. 

In response, Zahra orchestrated a transformation to modernize the customer experience and the back-end systems and processes to drive true change.

Join this session with Zahra Mahedi, Global Digital Leader at Honeywell PMT division, to learn:

• How the digital team executed an overhaul of Honeywell’s digital operational lead-to-revenue lifecycle
• The methodology created and implemented for digital transformation
• Why people, processes and technologies are key for any transformation
• How connecting the dots, will increase contribution to revenue

Session Transcript:

This session going to bring us a real treat, how to drive true digital transformation with a unique methodology that generates results. I'd like to welcome Zahra my head. The Zara is the Global Digital Leader for Marketing Automation and Lead Management Optimization at Honeywell.

Anxiety is joining us today from beautiful Vancouver Canada. She is a passionate, collaborative, and empathetic martech leader within the digital space for about 15 years. She leads marketing and operational digital transformation for the one for Honeywell globally, and prior to that she held leadership positions at Dove Craft, FedEx, RBC, Royal Bank, and ... Financial, Zara. It's a real privilege to have you with us, and I very much look forward to your presentation.

Thanks for, thanks for having me. Really excited to be here. Good morning, good afternoon, Good evening, everyone. We have a global audience.

Thank you for being here. I'm very excited to be here. And, you know, the world around us is rapidly evolving, right? It's the time where organizations have to step up and start evolving if they have not already done so. Or risks. The risks becoming irrelevant. So today, I'm excited to share with you how we at Honeywell have digitally transform and are transforming with our unique methodologies.

So this is what I feel a digital transformation is it's like, we're flying an airplane and trying to change our engine at the same time. Digital transformation is not for the faint of heart.

It is hard because we are changing in so many different places. And you're looking at the organization holistically, try to connect the dots. You know, people who are not in it, think it's some sort of magic that we do on the backend, and make it make things happen. But people who are in it, you know, if you're embarking on your journey, if you're, in the middle of your journey, if you've completed your journey, kudos to all of you, because it's not for the faint of heart. But it is necessary, and it is becoming more and more necessary given our current circumstances. So who is Honeywell?

Want to share a little bit about Honeywell and who we are. So we're 100 year old company and we're fortunate 100 Global conglomerate. So we have many different businesses within Honeywell sell hundreds of products and solutions actually thousands of products and solutions. We're headquartered in Charlotte, North Carolina, we have four major divisions and the aerospace. Aerospace building solutions, we have safety and productivity. And then Performance, Material Technologies, and that's PMT. That's the area that I'm in. It's about 11 billion. And it we have 13 different businesses within that. So we are complex, and as we're about 37, 37 million holistically at Honeywell, so just a little bit about us.

What I'm going to share with you today is our story Division, what we went, what we've been going through, and really how we got there. So, I'll start off with a bit of our story and our North Star.

So, when we started on this journey, we said, what are we trying to do, right? And we put it simply, we're really trying to turn leads into sales, from a marketing standpoint, and customers into fans.

So, that's very easily said it took us awhile to come up with that, but that is, then we dug a little bit deeper deeper. What does it mean to turn leads into sales. Well, we wanted to send sales the best quality leads so they can focus on selling, right? Giving them people who are ready to buy on specific products or solutions. And then look, being able to look at the lead. So the person coming in, look at them, and see them to go through the funnel and really increase contribution to revenue. So this is a big piece here because Marketers at one point in time where administrators we are now have a seat at the table because most people are Online, and if you're online, you're coming through a marketing channel. And if you're coming through a marketing channel and You're you're interested in buying? Well.

Well, that's know should be contributed to marketing. So we're now able to contribute our our efforts to revenue, which is a big change from you know 15 years ago when I started. And I started in this in this area. The other thing was we said, OK, you want to we want to turn customers into fans. So we want to build evangelists. We want to build customer advocates, so we buy that. We meet, we said, we need to create authentic experiences for them.

We need to really understand who, who our people are, and give them what they want, feed them up with the right content.

Because, when you have good products and good solutions, it's a matter of, if there is a customer demand, it's a matter of, when they want to buy, right? So, and then optimizing our marketing automation. So, marketing automation is, um, you know, there's many tools out there in that, in the marketing space.

And I'll talk about that in a bit, But really, looking at how to optimize your marketing automation by thinking about the customer first, and then connecting the dots between marketing and sales. That's a really big thing, right, as I mentioned earlier. So, that was our North Star, started there. And then we said, OK, How are we going to? What are we going to do to work towards creating that, that patient?

And, so we said, let's evaluate our technology, our process, and our people that will allow us to work through the, the, the strategy and then the implementation. So, with the technology, you know, evaluating our tech stack, looking at all of our different technologies are integrations or enhancements, what we needed to do, looking at our processes. What are our current processes, and what's working? What's not working on identifying all the gaps, right. That's a big thing, because that's how you improve, and that's how you connect the dots, and then looking at people who are the key stakeholders? Who do we want to help? We want to help our customers. We want to help the sales organization, we want to help customer marketing, who will be impacted? And then, how are we going to do change management.

All of that combined, looking at all, that, is how we put together our methodology for digital transformation. And, again, I'll get to our results, But we've had some pretty significant results since starting since starting our journey.

So, the technology, for those of you who are in the digital space, and in marketing, know there, there are over 8000 tools out there. So, what you see in front of you is our landscape, the marketing landscape, in 20 14, There was just a few hundred. So the fact that they've, we've grown so quickly, there's so many different options out there. And they keep growing mutuals come out Year, over year, And this number is gonna continue to grow. So, with the many Options, you need to pick and choose what to move forward with based on your Vision, your North Star.

And, so, that's what we did. We had a few in place. Then, we said, let's start looking at what is really going to work with providing customers better experiences and what are, how are we going to get that better experience for sales where we're sending leads to them? And we're sending people to them.

And so, this is a stack that we have right now. And the key here is, you know, with the stack we have, we're looking to always optimize that. Because there's so many opportunities within the tools that you have. In, sometimes, you're just using like, the bare minimum, but it's about optimizing those. So, we believe in having a tight stack growing that staff but optimizing the stack you currently have. So that we started off with this. And you know, we've added, we're adding a few more, so Adobe, the entire Adobe Suite is a big thing for us.

Marketo's within that, you know, and then we have some top funnel marketing technology, tools, mobile apps, all of our social, you know, all of our event apps, right? Because marketing, we had to shift shift pretty quickly for off from all of our live events, to moving to online events. So, you know, bringing and tools to help us there, with moving everything online, and thinking through what tool is the best experience for our customers. So, the plan is to continue to grow, but optimize.

Now, the process. This is something that, you know, we said, let's work through our existing process.

So, what we did was, we sat down with hundreds of people across the organization, across different functions, So commercial excellence, sales, product marketing, customer marketing, and then we looked at to folks in different regions, and then, across different businesses. Because, as I mentioned, we have 13 different businesses, whereas 70 different regions. So, you know, talking to the major, the main regions, to see what we were doing in each of the regions. And so we built out this map that you see in front of you, and you can't see the details of it, but it is obviously complex and chaotic.

And that just proved how much, how important it was for us to, to change and evolve to connect the dots, but really make this process a lot more efficient, right? So it gave us a true understanding of our landscape. And, you know, it was a really interesting exercise, because when we talk to people, we were, we realize one function was doing something using one, maybe Salesforce instance, but then someone else was using a different Salesforce instance, and they're all connected, connected together, right. So it's: Are we doing it right, Should it be going through Salesforce? Or should it be going through marchetto, Right, the things, the decisions like that, we were able to to think through because we were able to see what the map looks like. So under understanding the foundation is really, really important on that process piece. So that was number one.

Number two, was we did a marketing maturity assessment, OK. So, we looked at data.

Channel, different channels, technology, content, conversion, analytics, and then the tech stack, right, and, we evaluated, and assess where we were now. When we initially started, we were kind of at the lower levels, the, the two and the ones.

And So, where we are now?

We're about From when we started implementation, where about a year and a half in? And so we're about 3 and 4 now, Our goal is to get to five, By the end of tech 2021, So, we said it's a 20, you know, a three year journey, but always, after that, it'll be continuous improvement. So, this never ends, right?

And, and to get to that level five, All of those pieces that you see in front of you. So, you know, for data, really having that single customer view, because we have thousands of products, If a customer comes to us, we need to know, we need to have our system set up. So, we need to know everything that they're interested in, because that provides the best experience. Having 1 to 1 targeting, where you're talking to your customer, like, they, they, they're the only ones out there, right? Making them feel important because that's how you build evangelists. That's how you make your customers into fans, right? Giving them what they want, when, when they want it, and, and so, the channel piece is very important because, that's providing them with the unique experience.

regardless of where they go, whether it's an e-commerce site, a different website, going to an event, having that omnichannel experiencing that right message at the right time. Like I mentioned, for content. You know, content is very important, right? How many times, if someone's sending you something that's irrelevant to you, just hit delete, right? Or if you go to a website, you're looking for something, and it's not there, do you just go, hop off and go to a competitor, right? And that's why it's really important for the content to be relevant for customers.

Having a fully integrated fund, also, seeing the person, the lead come through, and watching them go through the funnel and see how they get to sales and then go through the sales funnels really important. So we can attribute it to revenue. You know, getting to some predictability and being able to forecast our funnel and predictive analytics is a big piece and then having integrated technology, right, So connecting the dots across the systems and having a seamless experience on the backend. And as you saw, our existing process map was pretty complex and chaotic. So this is where we, the maturity assessment, allowed us to say, OK, this is where we are.

This is where we want to go to. And getting to that level five is, is our goal, and it aligns with our North Star inner journey.

Now, what we then did is we said, Let's look at best practices. Let's look at what's out there, and let's put together a proposed opera, a operational process map for this transformation. And so, that's what we did, We said, we put it, we put it together based on the best practices, and we said, you know, we created this funnel. Now you can see this is a lot more streamlined than that previous one you saw. And so, we did the thinking through it, but what then we needed to do was get sign off on it, get everyone aligned on it.

And that's when, that's what takes me to the next one, which is the most important.

You can have technology, You can have process improvement, but without the people, you're not getting anything done, right. So whether it's, you know, your internal folks, whether, you know, whether, whatever level it's at, it's getting the sign off from the people, and having them having their buy in.

And so, this was very, this is where we, I think, differ from other organizations. So we held a workshop, a three day workshop, and we brought key stakeholders together.

And those key stakeholders were from where our leaders across the organizations were, but also our execution team.

So, we had people from different roles joining, we had people from different functions, so we had commercial excellence, we had the digital team, we had IT, We had, folks from our digital, are different Centers of Excellence, is, we had project management, customer marketing. And then we had folks from all the different businesses, the multiple businesses, like I mentioned earlier, with 13, right? So, we brought everyone together and, you know, it was a three day in person workshop for the, and we had some folks dialing in. So overall, we had close to 40 people who joined us to really think through how to move this forward.

And, at that workshop, what we did was, we print it out and massive, massive sheets, and we hung them around the, the: the, the room, our existing process, and our proposed process. Now, we walked everyone through that, and, obviously, ever, people had opinions, so having that proposed process allowed us to talk through each piece of it, and then also get sign off, right? And sign off from whoever we needed to get sign off on, because we had everyone in the room.

So often what happens from a workshop, you'll, you'll bring people together, and then you'll leave, and then you have to go get all the sign offs and get everything done. But what we got out of this workshop, and it was amazing collaborations. We also started off with You know, I started off with yoga every day. I made them do a little bit of yoga, or find game to get everyone kind of aligned together. And that actually, you know, some days, when we're talking about some technical, really, getting into the granular details, or stuff, the yoga meditation with, actually help people. So, you know, five minutes of meditation worked.

So then we, after this three day workshop, we were able to come up with this new lead to revenue operational.

So the proposed one was a bit slimmer than this one but we were able to talk through a few of the details. And obviously, there was a lot more work we did on the backend, but we came through this process and we said, OK, going back to our North Star, what do we want to do? And we said, so I'll walk you through this. This process, we said, leads me to come in.

They need to come into our marketing automation tool. All of our tools, our, you know, our social, like I mentioned, all of our different tools, the social tools, our event tools, the Adobe Suite, all of them need to be connected into, Marketo because Marketo is our customer database in that we need to have some scoring models in order to make sure that we're talking to the people At the right time and and scoring them to what sales one.

Right? Because the goal was also to send sales the highest quality leads and the ones they need to focus on set. So, we said we put together some scoring models around that.

We then said, oh, we're going to automatically get them over to the sales organization. So, we heard what sales wanted, you know, We said, OK, We'll automatically give them to you building, not process out and connect connecting the systems between your CRM and your automation system. Not an easy task, because there's a lot of field mapping and, you know, a lot of anomalies between the systems that you need to integrate in order to do automation. So, we said, OK, that's what we want to do, Our ideal state. We want to send out some, you know, trigger e-mails to remind sales folks to process the leads, or at least let us know whether or not they are good leads. Because we can do everything we want through automation, but if, you know, there might be some chances where sales says, you know, this person is not ready to buy, but at least they picked up the phone.

They've talked to the customer, and they have the option to either move to the lead through the funnel, or move them back, and recycle them for us to then pick up, to recycle it into nurture.

So, that's, you know, that in a nutshell, you know, what we came up with and that we had to operationalize, so the real digital transformation started when we started building this, and as I mentioned, it's, we've been on this journey for a while now, so, to build this is is not for the faint pirates. Right, lot of passionate people involved, and a lot of, folks know, from different functions with different viewpoints to build this out.

So, what we did was, we said, OK, who is our core team? I brought the core team together, and the goal was to empower that for our team, to stand up, and do the Wave B, the early adopters, of the wave, because those are the people that are going to be operationalizing it and speak to other people about it. So, with any change, most folks are resistant. We know that. And so with any change, you, need to get the core group of people to be those early adopters and stand up to that, and who are excited, and who are passionate and driven and accountable. So, we did that by putting this team together by sharing our North Star and also working through core values.

So before we even kicked off, so we had a project kickoff and we talked about our core values, and we built the core values together as a team.

And, I think collaboration is super important for big projects, big scale projects, because collaboration, and having those core values are really important, because it sets the foundation.

And so, for us, our core values were, and I'll walk you through them, and I think they're, they're very interesting, And they're very important, because this is what we were able to always go back to. Right? You have your North Star, you go back to me, you have your core values. So, you go back to because there's inevitably, There's always problems, right? But, my belief is, every problem is figure out about you can, you can solve the problem, right? As long as you put the time into it, you can solve a problem, you know? And When we say one more thing, when we said we wanted to go forward with this, I think people were like, OK, good luck with that, right?

Good luck! It seems complicated to go from that old process to that new process. But good luck and, you know, the, the organization supported us in doing that. So, setting this, the, the core values important. So, we said, we're aiming for good results and not perfection. So, you know, perfection is a pursuit. It's about progress, right, making striving for progress. So, using the 80 20 rule to go live with different MVPs is how we rolled.

Because, otherwise, you could, you could just get stuck and say, it's never good enough, Right? So, going out with, with something with an MVP and we're on MVP for now and then accountability. So, every person on the team was very accountable, and the other pieces, empathy. And listening and asking questions of speaking up when, when you need to being flexible and Agile, right. Being able to shift and pivot. Which we had to do very quickly. When you know covert hit, we had to make a bunch of changes, bring in some new technologies, and and pivot a little bit on collaboration and teamwork, And respecting each, other's times of starting up, meetings on time and being solution focused, and the last two are from Renee Brown.

Her book, Dare to Lead. If you're not familiar with her, she's a really good. She's an empathetic psychological leader in the space, and she talks about being radical candor and how important it is to have that on the team. So, we said, if you have a problem, come talk to the person directly. And, let's be honest, let's be open and honest, and work through problems, because, and then also being clear, because clear is being clear, is being Connie being unclear. When you're ambiguous about things, It just causes for confusion. And then you can't get to where you need to get to. So the collaboration on that as setting the core values at the beginning of the project and reviewing them throughout the project, was key to our success.

The other big thing we did was we had two teams under one umbrella. So I was able to had my operations team and then I had my digital transformation team. And the beauty here was, as we were going out with our MVPs on the digital transformation team, were able to operationalize it very quickly because it was all under one umbrella. So, you know, the training and the changes were able to go into the operations team very quickly. Which is why we have seen results in the last 1.5 years.

So, we had that sort of, we had to, you know, deal with the 30 folks in the transformation team and the 14 people on the operations team. And they had to connect often in order to get at each MVP they had to kind of connect often to two.

To get the get the exit and get the transformation out the door, the MVPs out the door.

Now, the other big thing here was and there's a lot on people as you can see and we did that purposely. We said we want to focus on our people because our people are but the most important, the training and the change management.

So in the 19th century century, the German psychologist, not say his name correctly, but Hermine E, By E, bought us, tested memory, and over periods of time. And he came up with the following, the kitchen, which is the forgetting curve. And the forgetting curve basically shows that basically, after seven days, people retain less than 20% of what's actually been shared with them, right? So, with that, was understanding that what we did was we ensured that we did continuous training with folks, whether they are live or whether they were online, and also had a really good communication plan. So, prior to even go live, we'd send out communications, We talk to the folks.

We have sessions, and we're gonna continue that, So having that change, having that training plan in place, and that change management plan in place, allowed us for people to adopt, doctor.

Last one on people is celebrating success.

Know, too often, I find, we are moving on to the next, and not celebrating the hard work we're doing, and so very important to celebrate the success, and recognize the people who have been involved in, in, in the, in the projects, and that's something that we did.

And you know, we learned very quickly, because we went from one, the first time we went from one MVP to the next, and it causes burnout. So, we spent the time to say, you know what, Maybe maybe we need a bit of a gap between the next MVP. and let's celebrate people. So, you know, Just recently, we went live with MVP MVP. And brought everyone together after you know, the day after. And we had a big, You know, obviously, we're not all in one space nowadays. Everyone is at home, but we brought everyone together to talk about The Good things we did, and we just focused on the Good things we, we do post. We'll do a post-mortem, but that's separate right. No need to mix it all together, so celebrating the people in the hardware people did was really important for us and it.

It allows us to move to the next one, right and the next MVP because as we said, this is a journey is not something that stops digital is going to continue. The digital transform or animation is going to continue to evolve into the AI space and robotic space, and, you know, it's just gonna keep going, right?

So, it's really important to recognize that the results.

So, really connecting the dots, I believe. You connect the dots. You get the results.

And, what we did, you know, over the last year and a half when we started implementation, was really, we've increased marketing contribution to revenue by 300%.

And that is massive. Our, our goal is to continue to grow that.

We have a Romney return on marketing investment investment of over 20 and we have really moved the needle on this now. You know, even when we've had, you know our challenges, right? Obviously budgets are cut with, you know, with Kobe and you know things, we had to pivot and move money in different places. We've still been able to see an increase in our contribution to revenue and that's because we connected the dots because your systems are connected. You have good.

You have good products, you have good solutions, people are buying. And if the dots are connected, you generate results. So for me that was very exciting. It's it was we were able to win as we've seen the results come in.

It's, it's beautiful because it all aligns to our North Star and, and just alliance for our North Star and we've actually brought it to fruition and generated some great results thus far.

My last slide, taking us back to our first slide, is basically, you know, transformation is not for the faint of heart. So for those of you guys were involved in it, you know how we do it is we try to do it singing our favorite song, right? If we're going to do it let's embrace it. Let's enjoy it and learn from it And if we do it and we're happy about it not butting heads but we're happy about it and we work together and collaborate. We can truly see success and and that's how why I believe we've seen success because we've worked together and you know we sometimes do sing on our calls. So, you know, I'll leave it with the last message from Zig Ziglar which success is not a destination, but it is a journey.

Terrific. Terrific, Zahra.

Thank you so much for that presentation. We had the, some of your great questions come in during the during your presentation. So I'm going to start with Antonio or Keys, and Antonio is as well known for asking good questions. So I'm Tanya. We noticed that throughout all the presentations, your inquisitive mind has really help us shape some great conversations here. So we're thankful for that. He says, Thanks for sharing your thoughtful and systematic approach to your digital transformation. And the and his question is with the pandemic. now. Which changes did you have to adopt in your framework for this post colvin, world that we're living in.

Yeah. Great question. So, you know, I touched on this, but it was more about we had to we went to look at our technologies. So, move, our biggest, you know, our biggest lead generator, what what is events? And so we had to, you know, make a big pivot, right? A lot of our customers are used to coming to our event. So moving to online events was a big thing. We had to do similar to what we had to do for this event, right, And so we had to evaluate the technologies. The different technologies that were out there, and we had to bring in a new technology for our different types of events. So that was our biggest pivot.

And then, you know, with that, we had to restructure some of the team to get to to do every everything online. Because with not doing the online event, doing the live events now, everyone has to adopt a new technology and learn a new technology. So they can host these live events. So it was a lot of learning change, management, and process process change to make that pivot.

That is true. That is true. You know, Sometimes, it's hard for people to understand all the moving parts that happened behind the advanced, like, this, for example. And I'm sure you do that internally in the organization. With folks who have different levels of expertise and experience and Comfort really on doing something like that. So it's a it's quite a steep learning curve, and the any, and I'm sure that you had to adjust to that very quickly with with, that with the kogod situation. So that's great. Michael Prentice asks a specific question around enterprise architecture.

He wonders if you, if you have an enterprise architect 13 and And if you do How, and where did they interact with you in this effort?

Yeah, so we definitely have like a corporate team. And so they would, they would be involved with our project most definitely. So when I showed you that new process map that we put together or even at the workshop, we had, the corporate team, the enterprise team involved in that at that workshop. So we got sign off from everyone there. And then in terms of the architecture team. So, as we were building this out, we had them involved, but we had our own architects for the project specifically. So, we had our own, you know, CRM Architect Automation Architects that we would come up with solutions for, and then we bring in the architecture Team to ensure that we were building it building what we needed to build, and that worked across the enterprise. So, we would definitely always brought them in.

You know, it's, it comes down to time and availability, so that's why it was we bring them in kind of once we've scoped out or are built out the requirements.

And following up on that, tell us a little bit about the role that technology played on this, on this transformation, and the What was what what role did it play for you?

Yeah. Yeah, So for with the technology, the biggest connected. So there are three big connections, one was our marketing technology, right? So all that the social media, your event online, all the online or marketing technologies at the top, that needed to integrate into our marketing automation system, which is Marketo, right? So those are all technologies connecting, those, you know, some of them are easier to connect than others. So that was one connection and then the other connection was between the marketing automation and the Salesforce, Right, so Marketo and Salesforce. So, technology was integrating, those, two, was, very, very, it took a lot of time to do that, because there's anomalies between the systems.

So, and bringing those two together did take time.

Now, are you talking about technology as in the IT like organization? Are you talking about technology as and just how we connected the dots.

Love. Really both those are just interested on on how you use technology in general and this transformation and you have addressed that, There's some specific tools that you're using there. I don't assume that, do you have in this in the marketing space where you are operating here or maybe somewhere else where you are close to do you have applications of robotics process automation or artificial intelligence or anything like that? It's playing a role for you or not.

So, we do have that within the organization. It's not part of our scope of work, but it is something, you know, AI is something we want to move towards from an automation, from a marketing standpoint, right? Because we want to get there.

So, I think that's, you know, next couple of phases, right, to get to that. But we do have it in other businesses, I'm sure, yeah.

Good, and, you know, to your credit, you're, you know, you don't need to hear this from me, but you're absolutely doing the right order, which is, like, you're defining your process, and getting that collaboration. You know, right on what that process should look like for the organization. And the and now, as you mentioned, you know, follow phases, You can bring technology now to enable them to build those. Those agreed upon processes for that, because, as we both know, if you bring those technologies, that literature early becomes really messy, absolutely. It's about building the foundation, so we've built a solid foundation. And with that solid foundation, that's, you know, we're getting a 300% contribution to revenue. Now, what happens when we start bringing in The more technologies, Right. And integrating those. And that number should go up significantly.

Especially now that everyone's online, if you're online, you're coming through a marketing channel. So, your revenue, if 70, they say, I think the status 70, 70% of people online do the research online before they going to make a purchase. So if that's the case, then 70% should be attributed to marketing efforts, in my opinion. There you go. That's running.

Rule out all day, hasn't. It has a really interesting question, as she asks. You. know that that Honeywell is well known for its long term use of Lean six Sigma and having kind of the developed a disciplined approach to problem solving and improvement and innovation. And so the question is whether that has played any role for setting up the right environment and culture for this transformation, or the, you know, is there an influence from the work that the company does related to Lean six Sigma and discipline approaches in general to the work you have done here?

Yeah, I think indirectly, most definitely, right? So I'm six, and Greenbelt certified. six Sigma, you know, all of us are required to, to kind of use that methodologies. And so, you know, I believe it's indirectly because it's kind of a into us. So indirectly, we've incorporated an empty Yeah.

OK, and Rinaldo, Pele has has another great question here. He says first. Thank you for such a great presentation and His question is how do you balance? Marketing? Automation? With hyper personalization of content without losing the human touch in the conversion process with clients How to find that balance about automating things and keeping the human touch and and the relationship building with clients. Yeah, OK, good question, and I did, It was on my process map, but I didn't get into it. So, we created something called inside marketing and this is, again, something that we developed in house and inside marketing is the human connection to automation.

And what, what we did was we said, OK, we have this, we're gonna do this automation, but we want to make sure going back to our North Star is we want to give customers with the best experiences making them fans.

So, what we want to do is some of the leads we're sending automatically, you know, if someone says they've got, you know, they want to buy, of course, we're going to send that to sales directly. But then there's some people, while we're doing this automation, maybe they're not ready to buy. So we have an inside marketing team to follow up with those people directly, and talk to them one-on-one, so you're making that connection with them, to really see what they want. And so, after the automation, we're doing, and, yeah, great question, and yeah, it's, I don't know if any other organizations are doing it there. I know many organizations have something called inside sales. But inside marketing is just. it's really that second layer of qualification before sending it over to sales, so you're having that human connection and not losing that human connection.

That's right. And tell me a little bit about the resistance that you may have got from someone in the organization. Though, when you start automating marketing processes, sales processes, there is, there is always a part of the organizations as well, hold on. What I do is different, especially, I have this special types of client relationships. First, did you encountered some of those issues, and maybe how you have be able to accommodate for that?

Yeah, I think, you know, though, There was a demand from a marketing standpoint to automate because we get, were so big and we do get so many inquiries, right? So, I think that there's an appetite there from a sales standpoint. And there was also an appetite because we, at one point, we were sending them too much and they weren't qualified. So, I think there's an appetite on both sides, which is why we got the buy in, where, where we typically find that there is, resistance is the adoption of the technologies, right? So, this is the technology. You're using, the CRM. You need to take the seat, you need to take the lead, and you need to, know, process it. So, that's where we found that found a bit of the resistance, and that's why we focus, we knew that was gonna happen looking at that forgetting curve.

And because of the resistance, so, we continuously are following up with the sales folks, and working with them to make improvement. So, the other thing is, it's change management. So, if people came to us with, Hey, this is what you set up here. Didn't make sense, and if it was actually really good feedback, we were able to make changes very quickly, as well. Oh, you know what, you're right, OK, let's make this change, because it's Probably one person's complaining. But maybe 10 people actually feel it, right?

So, Yeah, that's what I did.

Very good, Very good. We have time for one quick question here. At the end, the Thanks for everybody for providing so many great questions. The Ana Martinis. she asks, Where do you think the shirt dress? The digital transformation function should fit in the org chart? Is it in IT or outside of IT? And the so that's the question. That's a great question, you know, because I used to be marketing and then I moved into digit.

Then I moved into digital and where I sit is kind of between sales, IT, and marketing, Right. Because the tools now for us specifically, like there are tools that I can evaluate because I understand what my needs are.

So I, I don't know if it needs to sit in IT. I think, you know, it's somewhere in-between and maybe there's this digital transformation team that can address all.

The great thing and I'm sure there's many different viewpoints on that. Very good. Yeah, so, so much driven by the contacts and the culture and also many other factors. But this fantastic Zara, we are so privileged to have you so grateful for you to take your time. I know he was, like, super early, was like, 5 30 in the morning in Vancouver, when you join for us, for this call. And we're so appreciative for you to share your insights and the, and the learner. And we'll show that we can, all, we all can learn from that experience. Thank you so much.

Really appreciate it. And thank you all for your time, And really appreciate the opportunity here. So if anyone has any more questions. find me on LinkedIn. I'm happy to chat. I love this stuff. And they can talk about it all day, So thank you all very much, and have a lovely day.

Thank you very much, Sarah.

All right, ladies and gentlemen, this completes our segment.

Our first segment for these are transformation live SSR has mention, you can go onto LinkedIn. We provided the links. You can look under my name on LinkedIn, and you can see the posting for digital transformation live. And you can ask questions there. You can make commentary about the presentations, and we'll answer and address as many of those as possible. Our speakers do that. I do that myself, so take advantage of that. It's kind of the follow up to the conference discussions. So, our next guest, coming at the top of the hour, is going to talk about intelligent automation and share services, just going to talk about intelligent automation, RPA, and, and how it's being done in the context of, of the future pipe industries. And, and so fascinating review of the industry and the organization and the implementation of this intelligent automation technologist. So you do not want to miss that.

So I'm going to close the session right now. We re-open at the top of the hour. And we hope to see you again.

Take care, everyone.