 From the SiliconANGLE Media Office in Boston, Massachusetts, it's theCUBE. Now, here's your host, Stu Miniman. Hi, I'm Stu Miniman, and this is theCUBE's Boston Area Studio. Happy to welcome back to the program. I guess we've had in on a number of times, but first time in the new world, Nancy Pearson, now the CMO of OpenLink. Nancy, thanks for joining us here in the office, and great to see you. Great to see you, Stu. All right, so we've had you on in your previous role at a number of big events. Tell us, what led you to OpenLink? Well, I was really attracted to OpenLink because of the position that they hold in the market in terms of being the leader in trading, treasury, and risk management across multiple industries. And I also took a look at their clients, and they have a pretty impressive client roster. Companies and businesses that are really instrumental to the industry. And I wanted to have an impact in that kind of an environment. So that's why I looked at OpenLink. Yeah, Nancy, your whole career, you've been looking at, there's so much change happening in the industry. Digital is more than just a buzzword. What do you see today in your clients here at OpenLink? Yeah, what I see, and going from a large enterprise environment where people jumped on the digital bandwagon fairly early, in many other industries, it's been a little bit of a struggle to understand what does that really mean for our business. And one of the first things I noticed about coming to OpenLink is they really weren't on the digital network. They were doing events very heavily into email, et cetera, that type of marketing, but it was really important to get them on the digital platform. So that's digital advertising. And to really think about a digital-first, data-driven, camp-pane type approach for demand generation as well. And what does digital mean for your customers? Well, it's really important to them as well. I mean, they're modernizing their business. Digital is disrupting their business. So on the side of their house, they have to actually embrace it and understand, well, what does that mean for my business? What do I need to put in place to be more visible, to understand the new game of engaging with clients in a digital format? I mean, 70% of clients and prospects actually do the investigatory work to understand which vendors they're gonna be partnering with before they ever actually reach out to that client. So it's really important that you have a very strong website and that was one of the first things that we started with at OpenLink. Yeah, what kind of things do you change the website to make it more modern, more digital? Well, we completely redesigned the website from the bottom up. So a new content management system, a totally new designed website with engagement, everything from thought leadership down to rethinking how we actually presented our products, as well as adding personalization. So you're able to really find what you want by your role, by industry, and by even deeper subject matter expertise and areas of focus. Yeah, what's the mindset of your customers? I think a couple of years ago, it was like, oh my gosh, I'm gonna get Netflixed, I'm gonna get disrupted by digital. Is this now a weapon or an opportunity for them, or is it still a mix? No, it's definitely an opportunity because digital levels the playing field for companies. So it doesn't matter the size of the business, the complexity of the business. The winner is the person that at the end of the day can engage clients through their digital website and also through Google, through LinkedIn, through all the different mechanisms today where you can engage with personalization. You can see and understand what your client's needs are. And whoever serves that best is gonna be the winner at the end of the day, which is why I say digital really helps create a level playing field. But you have to know how to use the tools. Okay, I'd love to hear more about what are your customers doing, how does OpenLink help them? So for example, one of the big questions right up front is usually, how important is digital and social media? And a lot of large enterprise clients struggle with that. The ones that have learned to use it as a tool really well and targeted, can extend their reach triple fold out in the market and really get their story out in a way that they couldn't previously. So digital and social media is one thing related to awareness and your shared voice in the market. But your website, how you design that website through a client journey is really what makes all of the difference. It turns opportunity into demand and leads and helps clients take action along the way. So a combination of being on the digital network, having a very strong website and then modernizing the rest of your marketing tools for personalization. Yeah, any examples you can give, like kind of anonymized from your clients, I think most people know kind of the consumer brands or you know, retail, how they interact. You know, I know I travel a lot and see how the airlines are super responsive but you know, you've got some pretty specific industries. It's true and we do some very highly targeted marketing. So you know, for example, knowing where our clients go to get their information, knowing how to mirror that type of content through even third party and how we build content on our own website to attract them and have them coming back for more is really the intricacies of how you actually build engagement and how you convert that engagement into leads, annuity and then client references, storytelling. So we really turned our content from pushing out content to telling stories. You'll see that everywhere. You'll see a lot of the very sophisticated players using storytelling, a lot of commercials today are storytelling mode, but we can do that within business and it's the most powerful marketing you can create. Yeah, it's, you know, we in theCUBE, we always talk about, you know, extracting the signal from the noise and you've got to be more personalized. You've got to tell those stories otherwise, right? It just becomes noise and it's tough for people to find something that captures them and that they're going to want to, you know, glom onto. And learn from, frankly. Yeah. Yeah, that's great. Nancy, CMO role, I have to imagine it's gone through a lot of changes recently. What are you seeing, you know, is there a kind of, you know, various types of roles as CMO? What are you seeing as some of the major changes there? I think that CMO roles changed a lot in the last five to seven years and in particular, it's no longer a push mechanism of your message out into the market. It's establishing that relationship with clients, doing it through your website, doing it where they go on digital and social media. And the message is really important. What is your specific differentiation and how does that help clients solve their business problems? So for OpenLink, we did an effort right up front that really talked about understanding the purpose that we have within our client environments, defining three core messages, you know, that we help clients establish and create a single source of the truth. For risk, you know, and in their business for trading treasury and risk, we also help them solve complex business problems and we bring expertise that they really can't get otherwise because OpenLink is a very unique solution. It's the leader, a platform that's really extensible across their enterprise, for medium-sized businesses to large-sized businesses. So getting that message out and being very specific about it with detail is an important part of getting the value to your clients. Yeah, it's interesting, there's that tough dynamic of, you know, we have the data, but how do I make sure I'm securing that data? The governance risk, you know, a lot of shows this year, GDPR has been a topic that's been popping up to make sure that if I've got that data, I need to make sure, oh, if the customer comes to me, I can make sure that that's being used in the right ways, not being used into, how's the changing landscape affecting your customers? Well, I think data is, you know, the new commodity, right? A new economy is being built from data and how do you utilize it? So for OpenLink, we have a platform that, you know, for whether it's energy companies, airlines, you know, these large enterprises that are data-rich, data-intensive environments, we have a huge opportunity to help them get more value from their data and creating a single view of that data across the silos of their business gives them the visibility and insight to be able to innovate and innovation is the name of the game for our clients. You know, things like going, getting into cloud, monetizing data and creating new services for different revenue streams. There's a tremendous amount of opportunity and that's really in the sweet spot of this business. Yeah, OpenLink Cloud is a new announcement that you had out. How does that impact how you reach your customers, how you market to your customers? Well, first of all, I mean, we've had a tremendous amount of uptake from the core clients that we have to move to cloud. And so it's created a lot of opportunity for us. Everyone is needing to modernize and you reduce their reliance on cost related to infrastructure. And cloud is an innovation platform. So in our business, this is our innovation platform and they can build on top of that once they move to that type of an environment and realize some of those cost benefits. The future is innovation as it relates to our OpenLink Cloud and we're really excited and very positive about the interest from our clients. And everyone needs to innovate today. You know, your point up front about disruption, you're either being disrupted or you're disrupting your industry. You know, those are the choices you have to make today. Yeah, right. Do you want to set the menu or be on the menu? Exactly. You know, so many companies say, Nancy, you talked about the website. What other changes have you been making to OpenLink so far and love to hear kind of, you know, what's on your plate for kind of the next six to 12 months? Well, right up front, the objective was to make marketing a strategic partner to the CEO and to the leadership. And so we're continuing on that journey. So we rebranded the business and really modernized our logo. As I mentioned, grounded back our message around differentiators from our client perspective and really being in touch with that, created a foundational website that's, you know, best of breed and leading edge. And now what I want to do going into 2018 is really just build on top of that. So how do we create demand? How do we provide more thought leadership and build content in a way that's meaningful to the industry and to our clients to help them increase their own proficiency in the spaces that we serve and be able to help make them successful as well. All right, talk about leveling the playing field. Whether you're a hundred-year-old company, a 25-year-old company, or, you know, a six-month-old company, what does it mean in today's market? It means that you can compete. It means that you can have the same voice and you don't have to have the same budget. You don't have to have the same size business. But if you know how to use the tools today and you know how to create incredible content, you can have an equal voice. Nancy Pearson, CMO of OpenLink. Great to catch up with you. Thanks so much for sharing with us all the updates. We look forward to tracking the progress of you and OpenLink. Thanks so much for watching. I'm Stu Miniman. You're watching theCUBE.