#H2HChat Shareology Edition: "The Connected CIO in the Age of the Customer"

Hey everybody, how are you doing? This is Bryan Kramer. I am coming to you live from McDonald's. I'm not kidding, I really am at McDonald's and I am having my first HTH chat up near my son's campground. I came down out of the woods to be here for this awesome chat. I could not miss it and I'm really excited by it because we're going to talk about something I don't think we've had the honor and so much fun to be able to talk about the working relationship, the interesting art and the science behind working with CIOs and CMOs. And we have some really great guests here to talk about that today. Before I get into having them introduce themselves, first I wanted to just let you know that You can, you can go on to H2H Chat on Twitter under #H2HChat, that's numeral 2. So if you're a first-time Twitter user, make sure you go on Twitter and use that to be able to have a conversation alongside this. Suzy is there, she's the girl with the red hair, you can't miss her, bright red hair, and she's going to be helping to have a conversation alongside this. And not only that, I want you guys to pose some questions back along side of this too, because for the second half of this we're going to be taking your questions and I will be delivering them back to our 3 panelists. So without further ado, again, this is an H2H chat, it's a Shareology series, and this series, this particular event today is sponsored and we are partnered and excited to present our partner Newstar here today, who I'll start by having Mark Tonneson introduce himself, who is actually Alright,

thanks Bryan, really appreciate it, great to be here. I am the CIO and Head of Operations for NewStar, and for those of you who don't know who NewStar is, we are an authoritative source for internet identity. So think about mobile and as well as internet traffic across all channels. We actually understand the flow of information, the flow of identity across the internet, and we facilitate the traffic. So we are probably a little-known company that services many of the telcos that you're all aware of and service providers, but we're in the information services business.

Well, welcome Mark, and just to make things a little more fun, we added 2 Marks to this, and so I'll introduce or have Mark Waxman introduce himself here next.

Great, thanks Bryan. So my name is Mark Waxman, I'm the CMO of a company called CBiz, and CBiz is a professional services firm. And I know everybody says their companies differently, let's see, everybody says their company is a little bit different. Our company is different than normally you think about professional services, you think about maybe accounting. We are an accounting firm, but we're also accounting, insurance, payroll, HR. We have a lot of different business lines, which presents a lot of different business challenges. The couple things I'd say about our business that affect this conversation are one, that because— well, one, that we do have so much data in a lot of different ways, integrating is a big challenge for us. We'll talk about that. The other is that as a professional service firm, we have a very high degree, a very unusual degree of retention. People don't switch accountants very often, things like that. So because of that, we focus a lot of our data on the acquisition side of the business more than on the retention side, so we'll talk about that in a little bit too. And I'm the CMO, so I manage across the enterprise, and we have marketing managers at every one of our product lines that Report up to me, that's my role, and that's us.

And just real quick, and I'll go back to the other Mark as well. Mark, how many employees?

Yeah, we have 1,500 employees worldwide.

Great, and then Mark Waxman?

Yeah, we have just under 5,000.

Great, and let's move on to Ray Wang, another good friend and also one of the fastest tweeters I think I've ever known. But Ray, why don't you go ahead and introduce yourself?

Well, it's all live, so that's the good news. But yeah, I'm Ray Wong, I'm the CEO of Constellation Research. We are a Silicon Valley-based research firm trying to understand all the disruptive business models that are coming up, and really the new technology trends that impact businesses. So we spend a lot of time working with CIOs and CMOs and Chief Digital Officers as they're navigating this H2H world, as well as what's going on in terms of the broader perspectives of technology. Okay, great.

There we go, so we've had our first human mention. First blood. So we are well on our way to beating the 10 total humans said in one HTH chat. So let me kick this off by asking you guys, one of the things that is really, I think, interesting is just what data is most critical to your role, to each of your roles. And how does that help you with your overall business strategy? So why don't we start with Mark Waxman on that.

Okay, well like I said, going back to the fact that we kind of acquisition of new client, because we keep them so long, 7 to 9 years, we have 90% retention. Acquisition trumps retention for us, so we're always looking at client acquisition. That is just our whole grail. There's 2 kinds of data that we look at. One is triggers. We are always looking for— because we have so many specialized services, we're looking for a trigger that indicates that an individual is looking for a specialized service. That can be an external— they download a white paper, they go on a webinar. There's a lot of marketing activities, social activities, web activities that they do. We look for those triggers. There are also our own client data triggers. For example, we're a payroll company. When somebody goes and they change their number of withholdings on their payroll, that usually indicates a life change. They had a baby, they got married, something. That's a trigger because that means they probably have different insurance needs. We use our client data for triggers, we use external data for triggers. All of those are things that tell us we have a potential to get either more clients or more share of an existing client. Those are the 2 things we look for. The other one that's big is relationships. Because we're a professional service firm, we don't have product. We sell people. That's why for us, H2H matters because we believe that our business people do business with each other every day. Relationships and professional Professional services are just so key, so we're always looking at data to see the level of engagement, not just of the people, clients, but our own people. Our professionals have to have a high level of engagement with their potential clients and prospects and referral sources and things like that. So an unusual kind of look at data for us is the level of engagement of our own people. That's our 2.

Great, awesome. Ray, as an analyst, how do you How do you see companies obviously when you work with them in that respect?

Oh yeah, I mean data is playing a huge role. What we're trying to do is deal with the fact that content marketing is exploding, tons of data everywhere, tons of information, but what we're really not getting to is insights. And so what we're trying to do is help organizations think about context, right, time, location, sentiment, the weather. Even if you think about, you know, just what's happening in terms of your roles and relationships. bringing that together. And so context is playing a huge role in terms of driving how data is being used so that we can get to better insights and of course better decisions around there. The other piece that's really important when we think about data and what data is doing for organizations is it's helping them move from gut-driven decisions to data-driven decisions. So you start to surface up insights, you see some interesting patterns, and then you want to be able to act on it. Great example, we're working with an organization, they had, you know, a question about where their best salespeople were coming from, and what we determined was that 71 out of their top 100 salespeople had one trait that was really interesting. Now this is a company that spends millions of dollars trying to figure out how to train salespeople, recruit salespeople, bring them on board. It turns out the number one trait for 71 out of 100 salespeople was they didn't go to college. Oh God, hey, what happens there? Then when we look deeper, there's 331 out of 500 salespeople that actually had a similar trait but not the one about college. And it turns out that their best salespeople all had this one thing, which is They all started out in support, right, and that's the kind of things you want to get to, is like look at the data, study it, look at the angles, and then hopefully make better decisions about operations, customer service, experiences, and really the whole point is as we enter the digital world is to figure out how we humanize those digital experiences.

For both of what you said and because you used human. Mark Tonneson, how about yourself as a CIO? How are you using data?

Yeah, so at this company we're, you know, looking at not just the data, because there's a great swath of information coming into any enterprise. Clearly ours is no different, but really understanding, you know, who that individual is, not just a user ID, but, you know, let's understand a little bit more about them, you know, where they go, where they buy online. what communities, what interests they have, and just to correlate that information together so that we can help our customers better market, develop those human relationships that they're trying to drive, and really trying to bring— Sorry. And trying to improve that relationship that they have with their current customers, you know, à la customer service, but also more importantly I think is to develop new relationships that they don't have today, understanding who that individual is, that data becomes extremely important.

So everything that you guys are talking about is the partnership. You really have to work with marketing and technology together in order to get both, and I'm not going to clap for myself, the human element, the relationships and the technology to work together, it's critical, right. It's almost a must, there's no way around it. So with that said, I think we know the answer to this, but I'd love for you guys to describe how the lines between the CIO and marketing is blurring, and is it even to the point where you might Do you see a CIO as a marketer, or a marketer as a CIO, or I mean a combination of the two working within one position or one person, or is there other variations? Are there other things, are there Chief Technology Marketing Officers, that kind of thing. So I see Ray smiling. Ray, why don't we start with you.

So we've been talking about this for quite some time, trying to figure out what is going to happen between the CMO and the CIO and that conversion point. And so we saw the emergence of Chief Digital Officers kind of play a role in there. There are people talking about Chief Marketing Technology Officers. What's actually happening is that IT folks need to figure out what those marketing requirements are, and if they don't figure it out, someone else is going to. And we see that across the board, whether it's marketing, whether it's HR. Companies where their IT teams weren't being more strategic or more attuned to what the business side of the house was doing, you know, the business side just took off and did what they needed to do. On the other hand, it's really not necessarily marketing's primary role to be in the IT world, but they do want to take those new technologies and run with them and solve the business requirements. And so we see marketing folks getting very, very tuned to what the technology requirements are, but not necessarily understanding what it means across the enterprise, but for the marketing department they get to know that very well. I think over time in the next 2 to 3 years, we're going to see the IT folks get more business savvy, or they will probably go away. And we know that the marketing folks are definitely a lot more technology savvy, but the problem is when we get to analytics, when we get to integrating the data, when we get to mobilizing all this stuff, it gets harder to do if you keep running in silos. And so we'll see the conversion come back together. So I don't think we're going to see like marketing folks, you know, suddenly take out the CIO. I think marketing folks will be a lot more technologically savvy, and we're not going to see IT folks taking over marketing, because that's just not how it all works. And so we see these emergence of digital CXOs that actually understand that shift.

Mark Tonneson, agree, disagree, other thoughts?

Yeah, so I mostly agree. I would add to that, let's just, you know, if you step back for a second, who among us isn't, you know, to some degree a technologist, right? Anybody in an enterprise, in a business, they understand technology. We understand that the consumer is really driving the next generation of technologies in enterprises, and so you know, as a marketeer, you understand at some level what technology can bring, and you know that traditionally IT organizations are fairly slow. So a lot of what Ray said is, you know, spot on, right. If you don't come to the table and you're not delivering, then you'll be pushed aside. I think the other thing that we ought to talk about a little bit is this whole notion around continuous deployment, continuous development, continuous delivery of new capabilities. The one commodity that is the most precious is really time, and marketeers want to, you know, Tuesday at 1 and Wednesday at 9 and Thursday at 2:30, they want to be able to deliver a new program, turn something on, you know, react to a situation, and those kinds of capabilities technically are the things that CIOs need to be reacting to and delivering on, and they traditionally don't. Right, and you build requirements and then you go away and build some technology, that just isn't going to work. So this whole conversation around the 2 organizations or the 2 leaders, they have to come together and understand that this is about continually delivering new capabilities for your business and reacting to the community and your customers.

Great, yeah, I agree. Mark Waxman, sorry, a fly just went right into my screen. Yes, Mark, what are your thoughts on that?

Well, I definitely agree. I mean, there's no question the roles have changed and they've blurred. That's happened naturally. I live that every day. What I think has happened, you know, the old days marketing had ideas and IT was there to say, no, that won't work, or you know, there's some compliance or regulatory or safety risk issue that will prevent you from doing that. So there was almost a real battle, I think, in the olden days. That's changed a lot. IT, a good CIO is no longer just focused on security and compliance, they have to be part of the business, they have to be, and they have to understand what marketing does. And marketing people, marketing has changed, and so much of what marketing does every day and every hour and every dollar is in technology, so we have to become more technologically savvy. So there's a natural kind of rush to the middle. I agree with Ray, they're not going to ever coincide. I think there's an interesting sort of Venn diagram-like overlap where subsets of IT departments are going to be focused specifically on the marketing function, or in marketing departments they're going to have people who are very specific to the technology side of working in technology, so they are going to work together at that level as well. I don't think they are ever going to become one. One thing that I think is interesting, a little soapbox, and I'm curious what other people say, because the role of CMO, and I'm the only CMO on here, has shifted so much because the technology has shifted so much, what people look for in a CMO by nature I think has changed. And so people are looking for understanding metrics and the deliverables that come along with digital marketing, which are so much more measurable. My question is, do we have any potential to lose the other side of marketing in the rush to be so good at tracking data, etc., that we lose— you know, because marketing has always been art and science, right? And over the years, these last years, it's definitely shifted more science, less art. Do we run risk of losing the idea, creative inspiration idea of marketing which is sort of the other side of the brain in the pursuit of the technology and the data and that sort of thing. And I personally worry that we forget that part sometimes. I don't know what other people think about that one.

Well, let's keep going on that. What do you guys think, Mark Tonneson and Ray, what about the art side, especially as a CIO? How do you view art in a technology position?

Yeah, I mean, I think for a technologist, you know, I live in data, I live in the science and ones and zeros to some degree. So yeah, you have to count on the artist or the marketeer who understands his or her market, who can react, and a lot of it's experience and somewhat based on data, but you've got to react to situations. And that's not always a science, it is absolutely an art. I think, you know, most often what happens is that gaps between the CMO and the CIO get filled, and who fills them, well, you know, that really in some cases really depends. And so I think where the CIO isn't able to step up bringing good science, good data to the table, the marketeer fills that void. And as was mentioned, you know, then maybe the art of marketing is left behind. So I think this is, you know, somewhat interdependent between the two organizations and the roles to make sure that there's a good balance between the art and the science. And I think as a CIO, geez, I better be stepping up to the science part of this as best I can.

I'm going to take an orthogonal view and say that we The more data that marketers get doesn't necessarily mean they're going to be more down the science track. It actually allows them to refine the art of marketing. And what it's really doing is helping them validate hypotheses, test them, and try something new. And that orchestration, the way you communicate, the way you tell the brand, the way you get excited about a brand mission, and coming back and seeing what the data shows, the ability to constantly do testing— it's not just A/B testing, it's like A to X. That allows you to be even more creative in terms of how you deploy your resources. And it's that feedback loop that is just fun, right? It changes the way you look at marketing, and it's not just guessing and hoping and praying that something's going to happen. It's that you can keep testing, you can get to these precision marketing capabilities, and of course come back to figuring out what's the art, what's the behavior, and tying that back to the science. So I think we're in a revolutionary period for marketing, especially for digital marketing folks.

That's interesting. So I'm going to go off script here a little bit, not that we've actually been on script, but— You're

changing all the questions again?

Yeah, you guys are going to like, love, grow to love me. So, sorry, a Big Mac just showed up. So—

You're killing me, man.

I'm so sorry, it's killing me. So one of the things that I'm curious about is what just happened over the last, call it 5, maybe 10 years, when social media came along. Let's even go before that, when digital marketing came along, when marketing automation happened, and then social marketing happened. Now what? Now how is all that going to affect each of your roles in social, you know, with automation, social, I think we were talking about art and science and how we maintain all this. We have 1,000 channels coming at us in marketing, but also we've got to have the technology to support it and vice versa. What do you see next in the marketing technology field? Ray, do you want to go first?

I'll let the experts talk. Sure, I think the big shift is the fact that we have all this data, and what we're doing is we're actually bringing that data to a level of insight. The question is, how do we do that? How would you formulate those hypotheses? Like, you know, those are some questions you wonder, like, do people buy more at 2 PM versus 8 PM? Do people buy more when they're surrounded by 2 or 3 friends? What are those influencers? But at the end of the day, what we're trying to get to is either conversion rate optimization or click-through rates. And the creativity around that and the science is really, okay, we know what we're tracking, we know what we're getting to, we know those numbers. The art is really, how do I tell the story to get someone engaged? How do I tell a story to get someone to actually rise above the fray of all this morass of content that doesn't make any sense and really get people's attention? Because we're living in a post-sale, on-demand attention economy, and if you're not capturing my time or attention, I'm going to ignore you. And that's the art, right? Getting that story, getting that precision of really finding something that gets people emotionally connected, and then of course we'll tie all the logical and the scientific stuff behind it. So that's why I'm really excited about what's happening in this shift in general around digital marketing, because there's so much that's about to happen, and a lot of people that are making it happen at the

And so Mark Waxman, you've had your own ad agencies, and I mean traditional ad agencies as well as digital agencies, consultancy, and then now CMO. So you've seen that progress. So where do you see the evolution going with everything that we're talking about here, that art, that science, and technology, and so on and so forth?

Well, you know, part of it is what Ray talked about and what you've talked about, which is the ability to get people's attention in this sea of information out there on the consumer side. And part of that is H2H. It's talking to them like people, people communicating with people, not talking about business talking to businesses anymore. They just don't do that. So part of that is when people speak with real voices and they are speaking with real— that rises above the fray and that's where it's more artistic, it's more creative, it's more human than it is the numbers. So that's part of it, but I think the other challenge— you said what's next— you know, marketing automation is still really in its infancy in a lot of ways, and it's an imperfect still set of tools. So I think if you go back to when the internet was born, what Google figured out was that there's plenty of information, what we need to do is be able to find it. Well, that's exactly what has to happen in marketing. There is plenty of information out there in the world, plenty of information for marketing. What we've got to do is figure out how to find the right information and most importantly then what is actionable and what's not. Sifting down through the sea of data that comes in for the things that move the needle, that are actionable, that make a change, that's the key, that's the Holy Grail, that's where we've got to get to.

And Mark Thompson, what do you think about that?

Yeah, well, so I generally agree, but I would say, you know, just to reemphasize a point, and that is that we have new sources of information that are coming at us daily, right. So we're not in a shortage of those sources. I think, I'm not sure we understand even in a lot of cases what the right questions are. So to be able to figure out what's actionable and what isn't, you have to first start with what questions do we want to ask, what's relevant for me, what's relevant for my business. And I don't think that we have a lot of that. We have a lot of traditional questions, right, the old marketing and and marketeers, but I think what's new is this personalization of the relationship that we, you know, have moved beyond, right, the enterprise, and it is now an individual, and I think that's the nature of what the data has to tell us. We have to learn how to ask the right kind of questions.

So actually, you just mentioned my next question. Which is around personalization. And I think we've all kind of touched on it, but I want to dig into it deeper, because we are, in my opinion, still all lazy marketers on some level, and we are all lazy technologists on some level. Combine the two, and personalization is not easy. It's not there yet. It's not targeted to the right people at the right time. It still comes across saying— You know, in brackets, name instead of our actual name, or it goes to spam, or it just says the same thing to everyone without being properly segmented. And at what point does technology start to actually personalize to each person the way that it really, really should? And Mark, actually, you guys kind of do that at Newstar, right? Personalization is a part of what you guys do. You want to talk about that a little bit, and then we can kind of move down?

Yeah, I mean, I think you hit the nail on the head. I mean, understanding not just, you know, Mark Tennyson, who is he in terms of his professional life, but also the personal side, and understanding that 360-degree view of an individual is very, very critical. And then of course, you know, what are my behaviors and how do those things relate? And then of course, how do I take advantage of that, right, in terms of marketing or selling or or communicating or whatever it happens to be. And I think one of the things that NewStar really tries to do is understand the actual identity, right, that personalized who is Mark, what is he, what is his background experience, and you know, where does he go, what does he do online. I mean, those are the kind of things that become important for other companies to begin to take advantage of. And you know, I think You know, to be honest, we're not completely there yet. We're definitely in a stage where we've got a lot of information and we're trying to sift through it, but that is exactly where I think, you know, I think our core competency is here at Newstar, and I think it's something that is playing very, very well in the marketplace.

Great. Mark Waxman, from a CMO's perspective, how do you How do you personalize?

Well, understanding again from our business, we have a little bit of a different situation because our product is delivered, our service is delivered offline, almost 100%. So there's a transition that we have to create between our online presence and offline. So we deliver personal, human, that's how our service is delivered, right? It has to be. So when we look at it, we kind of took a little bit of a different approach, although we do All the things that we're talking about, about trying to personalize the technology, what we've tried to do is we've tried to drive the marketing to the individual practitioners. Now that would be the equivalent of salespeople, except most of our salespeople aren't salespeople. They're accountants and insurance people, and they actually deliver service. But they're the ones who are communicating so that it is more of a human person-to-person kind of experience. So we've taken the opposite route. Instead of trying to take a huge message and make it appear to be personal. We've instead tried to empower the individuals to be the ones delivering the message, and we're making it as easy as possible for them to do that, so they are having a genuine personal human communication.

So you threw in 3 humans, and I know that, I just didn't want to interrupt you. And actually, people are tweeting me telling me I'm not I'm actually applauding for you, so I want everyone to know I actually am counting. I just don't want to interrupt this good content. Anyway, there you go. So Ray, how about yourself?

You know, I think the shift here happens when we completely understand how to take that marketing strategy, that story, and then we start looking at all the different interaction points. We've got to work back those interaction points and You know, people call that a journey, a funnel, but we all know that people don't take funnels, they don't take journeys. Every day is like a choose-your-own-adventure book, and for customers, you know, you might not be part of the story for their life at that point, but it's how you bring them back when they jump back into, you know, the journey that becomes important. So it transcends channels, and it's really about delivering on continuity of customer experience. Right, and we're starting to see that, right, especially with Internet of Things. You know, your car is a setting, your home is a setting, your office is a setting, the environment you're in is a setting, and each one of these spaces and settings that are out there, you have to carry that context with you. And so we're going to see more and more of that over time in terms of, you know, how we try to navigate between those settings, how we navigate between the brand mission of what we're trying to do in marketing, and all this is part of what's happening in this digital economy, right? humanizing these digital experiences where we can, and wherever we're successful, that authenticity becomes the most important thing. It can't be planned, it can't be forced. People need to know that these are genuine, and we'll see the balance between that, between trust and transparency.

Great, great. So this is a— I'm going to start with questions because we've got a ton of questions rolling in from everyone, and keep the questions coming everyone. So let's start with Bryan Moran, a good friend Brian said, when does budget come into play for maintaining data? And his second part of that question is, at what point are we adding only hay and no needles? So why don't we start with Mark Waxman? You want to start with that?

Sure. Because I Because I face that all the time. Yeah, budget is always a challenge. We're a company with a lot of, as I mentioned right from the start, you know, a lot of different service lines, a lot of different data sources, which means we have a lot of hay to find a few needles in, and not always enough resources to do it. So I think it's a really valid question. A big part of my job, I think, and it goes a little bit back to what Mark was saying earlier, is identifying the right questions. So we can't have yet, although it is our holy grail to have the perfect view of our customer and all the services and all the things that they deliver. We are working towards it, but in the meantime we have to take the phases and we are not letting the perfect, having every bit of data, be the enemy of the good, the data that we can use today. So a big part of the role is saying, okay, again, what are the things that we know that have impact on our business on our close ratios, on our click-through. What are the things that move the needle? And that to me is, I mean, I spend, I think a huge part of my role is helping us kind of sift through and find those things and not waste our time on mountains of data that's not useful. Instead, by focusing, by asking the right questions, aligning with our business goals, what are we trying to do here? What works for us? Align that with what we're trying to— with the data that we're trying to find, and that's the key. And so then we don't set the rest aside, we don't ignore it, we just focus on the things that we can have that are most actionable, and then we build on that and build on that so that at some point we will have that perfect view.

Man, we're all striving for that one perfect view, that one dashboard that that combines all software into one place that we can go, the mecca of all dashboards that shows us exactly what we want when we want it. I don't think it exists, and that could be an entirely different HTH Chat. Mark Tonneson, how about yourself?

Yeah, so I would echo one point, which is the cost discussion that's always front and center, right? So you've got— and I You know, as a, let's say, a cost function, you know, I'm under cost pressure all the time. I think, you know, the demand really is in the longer-term relationship of the information that you bring in, because today you're bringing in a lot of hay, as was pointed out. You get a few needles here and there, and you've got to have 2 things. One, you've got to have enough time and enough data to be able to draw some correlations, and that generally isn't, hey, last month's transaction from all these different sources. You need a much longer history here to really tell what's going on. That's the first thing. But secondly, you can't be afraid to throw away information, right. Make decisions on what you have, but if new information is not adding any value, you've got to be quick to be able to put it aside and go after something new, because Guess what, the sources that you use today are not going to be the relevant sources of tomorrow. You have to understand that and move much more quickly. So as I mentioned earlier, I think that the enemy of all of us is really time. You have to be able to make these decisions quickly, move on, and make the best decisions on the data and the needles hopefully that you have in front of you.

Ray, anything to add to that?

I like that conversation about time. I think that's a really good point, right. The only commodity we really can't really replace is time, so we are definitely competing for time and attention, and I see that all across the board. So I'm in definite agreement, I think that's a great point.

So Ray, why don't we start with you on this question here. What do you see, what have you researched to find— actually, this is from Axley Nielsen. What factors define the

No, great question. I think CIOs— there are 4 types of CIOs that we typically look at. There are folks that focus on infrastructure, the Chief Infrastructure Officer is one of the archetypes of CIOs, and what they tend to do is focus on the inside piece. I think for those individuals it's about getting that stuff outsourced, getting that stuff managed in the cloud, getting that stuff to a point where you're getting massive efficiencies. There are Chief Integration Officers. And they tend to work differently. Their job is to connect all these systems, internal and external, back into the organization so that, you know, things are working, things are harmonious. You're connecting islands of data, silos of information, silos of processes, bringing them together. Then we get to some very interesting pieces, which are the Chief Intelligence Officers, getting the right information to the right person at the right time in the right form factor and in the right security model. And that's where we start to see some very interesting things as we're taking that data to information, information to insight, and then insight to decisions, there's a big role in terms of making sure that, you know, while we only have different types of data sources, we get that data to the people so that they can quickly make decisions, what we call precision decisions. Then the last piece is the Chief Innovation Officer, and we're starting to see Chief Innovation Officers play a role trying to experiment with different technologies, work with business leaders, business leads, so that you can create a framework so that people can try new technologies. Because what really happens is that CIOs spend all their time trying to stabilize environments, make sure they are safe and secure, make sure that they scale out, and the problem is they tend to work like this. I mean, they work in step function on the way up, actually this way. And what actually happens is that they have shorter and shorter periods on those steps going forward. Business folks don't care, business folks are just going boom, right, I need to get the job done. And it's that tension that's been creating the CIO-CMO battle that's been going on for some time. The CIOs that understand what the business side have to do, they tend to build these platforms. They tend to allow for the ability for people to plug into these different types of platforms and architectures so that the business side can keep moving even though the IT side hasn't caught up yet. They eventually will, and we'll assume that in the next version of a platform. And so we're seeing massive iterations on the IT side to catch up with what business requirements are, and along the way I think we're going to find some happy medium, but honestly it's like 24 months out at the best in most organizations.

Well, if you can't find a happy medium, get a Happy Meal.

You're making me so hungry, I'm getting a Big Mac right after this.

So clearly you haven't done any thinking on this topic. I'm kidding, but how— actually, Mark Tonneson, what do you think about what he just said?

No, I think he's absolutely spot on. I think all of us as a CIO And on some days you're Chief Infrastructure Officer, and other days you're, you know, Chief Information or Innovation Officer, so I think it does fluctuate. But I think those that are going to remain and stay in the job have to know when to play which of the 4 types of roles. And quite frankly, those that can move from the infrastructure layer on up to innovation much more quickly are the ones that are going to be successful. Because as Ray pointed out, you know, those are the ones that you get, you know, successes, and those are the real benefits that are going to drive the company. And that's what, you know, you don't get, you know, all the money and glory just making infrastructure run, right? I mean, that's the stuff you just got to get done as quickly as possible and get it out of your hair. So, you know, he's absolutely spot on, and the faster you move up that ladder, as he pointed out, the more successful you're going to be.

Mark Waxman, unless you had anything to add there. No,

I agree, I absolutely agree.

I do have a question now about the relationship, the actual relationship between the CTO and the CMO, and I'm talking about the fundamental relationships, like do you guys go out for a beer? How do you get along? How do you build trust and rapport between technology and marketing, and actually two different people that are working towards maybe different things, different values that they bring to the table for the company? Mark Waxman, how do you approach this?

Yes, so it relates a little to the last question in the sense that if the focus is only on compliance and regulatory and keeping the trains running on time and all of that sort of thing, then it's really difficult to have a more meaningful business relationship with them. And that's kind of a— that's why the evolution of CIOs has changed, and the CIOs of today— and I had the good fortune relatively recently of being a part of the search for the new CIO for our company. So we have these conversations all the time exactly about What those different roles are and what the values are and what things are more important. So we're fortunate in having somebody who's moved along that chain, and so we do have a really good relationship. Now we have an odd thing in that we're physically distant, but we align ourselves both— yeah, we go out to dinner and socialize and all that sort of stuff for sure. But I think the reason that we work well together is one, that we start kind of at the top with the same business goals. We spend a lot of time in our company making sure that everybody, all the businesses and all the operational people know exactly what the company is trying to accomplish, so we've got the same goals. We have the same objectives, so we're on the same side. And the other thing is our role. We both see, our CIO and I both see our role as helping to empower the client-facing people who are generating the revenue to make them more successful. So our job is the same, we have the same job. My job is to make them more successful, his job is to make them more successful. He has a certain skill set to do that, I have a certain skill set to do that, and we work together to try to figure out the endgame. So we start with the same goal, we have the same role, and yes, we go off for a beer.

That's great. Ray or Mark, do you guys have anything to add to that, or do you want me to move on to another question?

Yeah, I would just add one small little piece, and that is, at least in my experience, I think it's on the part of the CIO in today's kind of world to reach out. You know, I don't want to call it— it is a 50/50 relationship, but I put a little bit more onus on the CIO to reach out. And the reason I say that is because the CMO has to— and back to Ray's point, they have to get their job done. They're going to get their job done with or without the CIO, so that person has to reach out first and foremost. You know, with the olive branch to make sure that relationship and that partnership, and as Mark mentioned, the MBOs, the objectives are tightly integrated. So I do think it can happen, but I think somebody's got to reach out first, and I really think the CIO's got to make the first move.

Wow, that's interesting. So it's like who dates and who asks who out, and then who gives a first Right, it can work

either way, right, but I mean, you know, I think in the end the marketeer is going to go as fast as he or she can go, and the CIO is going to be left behind if they are not careful. So better they get up out of their chair, walk over, drive over, fly over, and introduce themselves and say, hey, I'm here to help and I'm going to make you successful. Otherwise, you know, it's just a hope and a prayer.

Well, and can I just add one quick thing to that, and that is that it is a recipe for a workaround. In real-world situations, if the CIO isn't reaching out, the CMO and the business people are going to figure out a way to get the job done and ask permission or beg forgiveness later. Absolutely, that's right. So you've got to start on the front end or else it's going to go through the back door every time.

Yep. So hey Ray, Courtney has a question here. I think we both know who Courtney is. Any examples on how data insights changed a decision? How— yeah, just across the board, I'm just going to leave it at that because that was her question.

Yeah, no, definitely, right. I mean, we see different examples of this all across the board. One great example is when we look at speed of decisions. Right, so if you've got data that can tell you, for example, GE Power, their job is to deliver, you know, power at 99.999999% uptime. And they've got all this information that can tell when a power line is going to go down 8 to 10 days before it happens. That's crazy. Think about it. They look at wind speed, they look at vibration, they look at humidity, they look at temperature, they look at the cable manufacturer, you know, which crew put that cord up. And they know that a power line is coming down. I mean, that's just incredible, right? And that helps them in terms of do better planning. They understand where the parts have to be there. They understand which technicians they need to schedule, what places, what locations are at risk. They understand what conditions are harsher than others, right? And they can go back to suppliers and actually build better products to make sure the power is up and running. Or they can change the way people work so that you can anticipate when something's going to happen and do preventative maintenance so that a power line never, ever goes down. And that's the kind of crazy stuff that we're getting from not just the data, it's the information in a process that's applied to that data, the insights that come out of the context on that information, and then more importantly surfacing up patterns, trying to figure out what's happening and asking questions of our data so we can make better decisions. Oh, looks like we

may have lost Bryan.

No, he's still there

I see

him. But they are different parts of it.

But could data predict that I was going to lose my internet connection?

Probably.

McDonald's could.

Well, 12:46 at a McDonald's and a bus of teenagers coming through means the wireless Wi-Fi is going to go

down. But you are seeing this happen more and more, right? I mean, even you know, GE, they're looking at, you know, the whole concept of Internet of Things, right? If you can put sensors in a washing machine or in a dishwasher or something and you can really sense that the motor is overheating, then you can actually, you know, proactively take some action on a maintenance situation versus, you know, waiting for something to fail, taking an impact on customer sat, and then dealing with that situation. So there are a million applications where I think You know, as we talked about, Ray talked about Internet of Things, this is going to change the way businesses make decisions now and into the future.

You know, Mark is right, and actually it reminded me of something that happened this weekend. I must be the last person in San Francisco to walk into the connected home exhibit at Target by the Metreon, right. And I'm watching there in fascination how all this home automation is happening, right. So it knows that it's raining, there's a leak, it sets off a sensor, the sensor then tells someone to go set a repair, to send someone out and coming, right. It knows I'm coming in, I'm getting up, let's send a note to the coffee maker that I've woken up, let's make sure the coffee gets brewed, and by the way, here's 15 other things you need to do to look at your appointment. I mean, this stuff is starting to happen. Now, in the beginning, it's all defined rule sets, right. We've got definitive rule sets, deterministic models, but actually what's happening over time is we're going to move to more intention-driven models. So take predictive out of it, I don't know, like Mark, one of you guys probably gets coffee in the morning at the same time. You know, if you all get it at 7 PM at a Starbucks and get the same thing every day, the question is what happens at 2 PM? Do you get something different? If your heart's racing faster because you've gone off for a run, do you get an iced coffee instead of hot coffee? Right. If you are on the road, do you always get a coffee? Maybe you get something else. You don't get coffee, you get tea, or you never make it to Starbucks. That's the kind of stuff that we're starting to figure out. And not only is it— it's not predictive. We're trying to learn what you're going to do next, and that's where it gets very interesting. And I think when we take that forward, then we start to see like the future of where data is going and really about insights and insight business models that are popping up.

So let's— Julie Zisman, who is actually a Shareology sponsor from Little Bird, good friend as well, she asked a question. Innovation is happening so quickly, how do you decide where to become an early adopter or wait for more broad adoption on products, especially I think this applies to both technology and marketing. I mean, when, you know, cool shiny penny, I do it all the time. If anybody knows me, I mean, I'm the first one to get an Apple Watch, I'm the first one to get an iPhone, the first one to get things. And I'll do the same thing for my company because I want to get things that are going to make us more productive, make us more efficient, make us, you know, get us to the point where we can do things maybe a little differently, be a little more creative. So how's your approach to that? What's too soon and what needs to wait? Mark Tonneson, you want to go first?

Yeah, sure. So I don't know if there's ever a too soon. I think the way I view it is, you know, there are many shiny pennies out there. You know, a lot of these shiny pennies actually call me and try to sell me their penny, but the— I don't

think anybody on this knows what you're talking about.

100 shiny pennies don't make a dollar?

That's right. And so I think the first question I try to ask is, okay, if you're going to go down this path and you're looking at this shiny penny, what are you trying to do? I mean, at least have some idea of what I'm going to try to apply this to, what decision I want to make, what data I'm going to search through and try to learn something. I mean, just have some semblance of an idea of what you're going to do. That is probably the first thing, because I can tell you from my experience the idea hamsters are everywhere and they look at these shiny pennies, let me start looking at this, this, this, and this, with not really a desired outcome in mind, and then you waste a lot of time. The second thing I would say is fail fast, right. So, you know, if you have this fail fast concept where let's try something but let's not spend forever and let's not spend an inordinate amount of money, let's go at this thing very quickly and let's see what we can see and see if there's value and then move forward or Mark Waxman,

how about yourself?

Well, a couple of things. One, I look at it as sort of nice to have, need to have. There's a lot of things that come by and they look great and they sound great and they do interesting things, but when one comes along and I was like, wow, that actually solves a problem that I've had, then that sort of raises the level a whole lot more. That's not just something that might be interesting, that's something that I've had a problem with. So that's one way of looking at it. The other thing I do is, and I feel a little bit fortunate in this because I think in general, and this is probably not completely true, but a lot of times the consumer on the marketing side, the consumer marketing leads a little bit to B2B, which leads a little bit to especially the service industry. So I have a great position. I get to watch. I do monitor all of the things that are on that very, very bleeding edge. I get to look at all the shiny pennies, but I get to see the shiny pennies put into the vending machine and see which ones actually have something nice come out, and based on that, I get to start testing them. So I get a little bit— I have a great role to be able to look at them all, watch them all, and then see which ones are starting to gain a little traction. And so what I do from a budget standpoint is I always have kind of a A skunkworks or an experiment budget in addition to all the things that I know work. I always have some money to try some things, to test some things that I've seen out there in the world that seem to be doing something. So those are the 2 things.

So now, Ray, Mr. Shiny Penny, how do you see this? I mean this as an analyst, probably not as a person because we all know your shiny pennies habit.

You know, I think the idea of checking out shiny pennies is really to, as you were saying, really expose people to a different way of thinking or to see the possibilities of what happens. One way to do that is to have a shiny penny day, which is basically an innovation day where you bring different types of vendors, technologies, business models, ideas, futurists Good idea. And just to get people the opportunity to say, here's the future, right, here's what could happen, and make that part of the ideation sessions that people have. One of the things that's really important across a lot of organizations as people are putting innovation centers throughout the Valley, as people are thinking about how they jumpstart growth, is really to get exposure to these new ideas. I mean, we see lots of clients that come through the Valley for their annual Silicon Valley tour, and we just like You know, you really need to do this more than once a year, but sure, okay. You know, and so I think it's just being exposed to the ideas, but I think what people really need to understand is it's not the technologies they should be looking at. They should really fundamentally start looking at their business models and understand what kind of business model shifts they want to make. Then the technologies will come together. But sometimes it takes a technology to kickstart people and say, oh wow, I can completely shift my business model because I can do something I couldn't do before.

Great. That's a really good idea. You can almost do that for any sort of thing. It doesn't have to be just marketing, or it could be technology and so on and so forth. I like that. So one of the questions that came through is measurement. And we've got just a couple minutes left, so let's just do maybe a minute and a half each, if you guys don't mind. The question from Janet Fouts, many brands expect digital to be a direct sales contact conduit. Brands expect digital and marketing to be a direct sales conduit. How can we show them ROI without direct sales leads and ROI? What are the measurements that you guys each look for? And I think we'll close out there. Ray, do you want to start out?

Yeah, you know, despite what happens, it's still going to come down to conversion rate optimization. optimization and click-through rates. I don't care about all the metrics that are subset of that. So people look at NPS, people look at other marketing stats to see what's going on, because if you're ultimately not selling or capturing someone's attention, it doesn't even matter, right? So at the very, very high level, you need that. Now that's a very bold, broad statement. People are probably like, oh God, you know, there's something deeper here. But the other pieces that actually do have to happen really tie back to brand, and brand is one of those things that's very hard to measure. And brand is what protects you in a downturn. Brand is what protects you when things go wrong, when you have a tragedy or emergency crisis response. And so I think what is more important that people often underestimate is really understanding where your brand position is and what your brand value is. And that measure to me I think is much more important for the long-term health. But the problem is everyone is focused on short-term metrics like, you know, did this webinar get 10,000 hits, or did we convert like 5,000 leads from the trade show, should we have another trade show. You need that at an operational basis, but I think it's important for marketing teams to separate the day-to-day operational pieces with the strategic measurements. And I think you need both to be successful. We've gone too far down the operational route over the last 3 to 5 years.

So maybe the last 3 to 5 years was a shiny penny unto itself. I'm getting

you a bunch of pennies, man. Time for a Big Mac.

Marc Waxman, what about measurement? How do you divide between the two?

Yeah, you need the operational stuff because the operational stuff is what tells you what's working to do more of and what's not working to do less of. So you need that, and it's easier honestly in the digital marketing world to be able to see that— how many clicks, how many webinar visits, how many, you know, all that stuff. So you need all that, but it's relatively easy. The things that are important for us, and this is going to sound oversimplified, but the 2 big ones is because yes, at the end of the day When we get out of our conversation and we go to the CEO, the board, and we want budget, what they're going to ask is, did you generate revenue? That matters, at least in most companies. I'm sure it does in ours, that matters. We actually kind of engineer backwards. We look at every piece of business we close and identify source of business on multiple lines so then we can track it back and say okay, LinkedIn is a big one for us. We generated X million dollars in new business from LinkedIn. Most people say, how do you track that? Not hard. You don't track it on LinkedIn, you track it on your CRM when you close the business. Where did the business come from? So we reverse engineer, and that sounds really oversimplified, but I think a lot more people could do it than probably do, and I've got to tell you, it makes a huge difference. All the stats and all the statistics and all the data that I live with, that's the one that really matters to us. Then the other one is the one I mentioned earlier and that is just we really measure the engagement of our individual practitioners because we know that that's what results in business. Instead of measuring the engagement on the client side, we measure the engagement on our employee associates and professional basis. I don't think many people do that, but that really works.

That's interesting, and for anybody out there listening, this is obviously a shameless plug, but also a— if you're interested in seeing or reading more about what Mark was just talking about on how they use LinkedIn, because they do do it differently than most companies I've talked to, then it's actually a chapter in my book Shareology. So you can go in there and read about the actual process that he was just talking about, so definitely check that out. And Mark Tonneson, For the closeout, metrics and measurement, where do you stand?

Yeah, so I think there are 2 or 3 vectors to look at it. Clearly the operational and the more strategic are things that were just mentioned, but I think the ordnance that they need to be kind of modeled against is time. And I think as you put on an event, you see the result, I think we're all in this instant gratification mode. And I agree, you know, that's what the shareholders are looking for, so I understand that. But I think what we miss sometimes is the tail at the end of, you know, a marketing event or a launch of something, and I think that relationship between us and our consumers, that human interaction, I think that is something that can be measured over time. The longer that tail is, and of course the higher it is, the better off you are. So I think we look at that as not just short-term measurement, but longer-term tail measurement, and I think that's the key.

Fantastic, guys. We have a lot more questions that are on Twitter, and if you guys have just 10 minutes afterwards to just go back to Twitter and see if there's anything that resonates that you could just quickly answer for some people, that would be Fantastic. If you don't, we understand, but it is there and there's lots of good questions there. I know they'd love to hear from you. So that said, I really wanted to thank you guys for doing this. This has been fantastic. I know it's a little bit of time out of your day, but I appreciate it. I know everyone out there does as well. And to everyone out there, there's been a lot of tweets going on, and we really appreciate your questions, for you participating. and taking part in today's H2H chat. Again, this has been in partnership with Newstar, and so definitely thank you, Newstar. Thank you, Mark Tonneson, for helping to support Shareology and the series. Mark Waxman, Ray Wang, Mark Tonneson, thank you guys, and we will see you guys soon. Cheers!

Thank you. Take care.

Thank you.