 Live from Las Vegas, it's theCUBE covering Oracle Modern Customer Experience 2017, brought to you by Oracle. Okay, welcome back everyone. Live here in Las Vegas at the Mandalay Bay Convention Center. This is Silicon Angles theCUBE. This is our flagship program. When we go out to the events and extract the signal to noise, I'm John Furrier, the co-founder of Silicon Angles with Peter Burris, head of research at SiliconAngles wikibon.com team. Our next guest is Marta Federici, who's with Royal Philips, who head of CRM. So CRM customer relationship management, the old way to do things, now transitioning to modern customer experience. Welcome to theCUBE, you look fabulous. Thanks for joining us. Thank you, thank you for inviting me. Pleasure to be here. Great to have you on because one of the things that we're really focused on with our research that Peter's doing is the practitioners, how they're thinking about executing the customer experience and on our reporting side, we're seeing huge reports that these platforms are providing great value, but at the edge, the customer's expectations are higher than the value that the platforms are delivering. We're seeing with fake news, we're seeing it all over the place. People want authentic experiences relevant to them. This is the whole purpose. Yeah, yeah, exactly. It's the people factor. That's what you're going to be on state deck tomorrow morning. Tomorrow morning at 9 a.m., yeah, indeed. So I would say to be authentic, to be genuine toward your customers, you always need to be relevant to them. You need to listen, you need to learn. You need to know what they need. You need to be ahead of what can they possibly do. You need to study, you need to focus on the insights. You have to really connect all the dots. I think one of the biggest challenges that we have as a company, but I think it can be a shared challenge with many of the companies across the globe is that sometimes you not always have the opportunity to break the silence within a large organization and work really horizontally. And this is something that we really strive to do, especially when we have specific projects or innovation related project, innovation driven technology project as well. So we try to build a multifunctional team that really can work hand in hand together to deliver the higher ROI, the better results, the best customer engagement and be always relevant when it's needed for our customers, for our consumers and even for our patients, by the way. So let's talk about your team then and how your team fits within Royal Philips. Describe how you've constituted it, how you've put it together and how it connects into some of the other functions necessary to drive customer experience. Yeah, so by the way, I'm very proud of my team. I would say as a start we, I mean, I built this team in the past three years and my team is composed in a particular way. I have a person of the team that is focusing on business to consumer CRM, a portion of the team on business to business CRM and then I have, I would say, two layers in between. One is about CRM technology that spans across both domains and one is about insights. I would say all of them work together and I really like the fact that also the business to consumer and the business to business team, they can enrich each other, sharing challenges and really learning from one another. When I think about my, I would say my product owner, actually we work very, very closely through his team with the IT department on one end because also we own This is the technology side. Exactly, the technology side of the story I would say because we own, for example, the market automation tooling Eloqua that we leverage for any digital campaign management activity on both B2C and B2B as well as the identity system, et cetera. On the other hand, through the inside team, we also work very, very much closely together with the enterprise information management teams. So any team who works with databases, with reporting, with advanced analytics and predictive analytics. So through them and through the more business side of my team, we can build quite nice stories for our customers. So you got a B2B practice, a B2C practice supported by technology and analytics. Yeah, technology and inside, exactly, exactly. That's the structure of the team. How did you build the team? I mean, talk a little bit about, we talked about the customer journey and CRM and related technologies needing to intercept and serve customers as they seek their solutions and the value propositions that they want to build. Yeah. How did this play out at Phillips? How did it, where did it start? How did it evolve over time to get to where you are? And obviously at some point in time, we're going to ask you, and where do you think it's going to go? But how has it gotten to where it is? Sure. I would say when I started, I had a blank page, a totally blank page. And I started hiring some experts in key areas. Actually, the first expert I hired were on the technology side because we were supposed to deploy Eloqua first for the first time on a global level. So that was the first piece of the puzzle together with the inside team and also with some key expert in terms of B2C and B2B business domains. So then I started realizing, okay, but this structure needs to make some sense. They need support, they need help. We enable, as a, I would say, CRM, a corporate team, any countries across the globe, and any businesses, B2C or B2B. So we deal with a lot of stakeholders. We have multiple stakeholders and we run and manage multiple projects at the same time. So let's say I started and figured out, okay, what are the talents that I need on a business perspective to really make sure that we design the right journeys, that we build the right campaigns, that we can interpret the data properly. So piece by piece, I started really feeling out all the boxes that I had in my mind and now I think this organization is really working. So the team is very motivated, very committed, very passionate. And in the past months, actually, also recently, we deliver quite some best practices. So yeah, a lot of winning best practices. Marta, talk about the learnings. You're on a transformation and CRM certainly is important as you move and transform it to the modern era of relationship management with customers. What are the learnings that you have taken away that you could share with folks that are either on a different part of the journey path than you are or just anything that you would like to share that would be helpful. So when I think about also what Laura Ibsen, for example, talked about this morning, the marketing heroes. I think technology is very- No, Laura Ibsen runs all those modern marketing products. She's the head hancho. She's the head hancho, as they say. SVP of Oracle Marketing Cloud. So when I listened to her this morning, she was talking about those marketing heroes, also while talking to Time Warner, CMO. And I think in order to start and to succeed in any transformation, any digital transformation that you want to carry forward with, you really need the right talents, with the right attitudes, with the right skills, with the right mindset, by the way. And I think O1N technology can really help you, can really be a game changer, a key enabler, but without the right people on your company side and also on your vendor side. They work together with you on a daily basis. You cannot achieve great results. And what about the partners? Oracle obviously has a good team. We've been following them now for multiple years. It's our eighth year covering Oracle. We're seeing the transformation within Oracle, but also they have partners too. I mean, do you interface with them and what's your advice for folks that are trying to sort their partnership component out with the vendor? Yeah, let's say one peculiarity of my team and what we do every day is that we work daily with Oracle and we also like to embrace any other partners that they suggest us to work with. For example, in a recent campaign, we built a huge back Friday best practice for our North America market and we also scale it globally, achieving great results. And we partnered up with O1N with Oracle, strategic services, expert services, but also with Return Paths, which is one of their also, I would say, preferred partners to make of this campaign something really, really good and to ensure a very good broadcasting performance. On the other hand, we also partnered with some of their additional partners that can be related to some apps specifically or some talents that they have internally and no matter if it's about consultancy, strategy, technical expert. So, yeah, we pretty much are open, very open-minded and very, I would say we embrace any inputs, any good inputs. Also because, on one hand, what is important for us is to share the challenge that we have with our vendors, with our partners and of course, asking for help. But at the same time, we like to onboard them to make them understood about what's the real challenge, how do we feel about it? We need to have a common sense of purpose if we really want to take a project to the next level and make it a success. So, as you implement these tools and put these relationships in place, the productivity and the effectiveness of marketing goes up. How is, therefore, the role of marketing starting to change within Philips as a basis of these new competencies and these new capabilities that presumably the rest of the organization finds valuable? Let's say, Philips has a great mission. So we... And one that's transforming and has gone through a lot of change over the last few years. Exactly. Pretty successful, you might have. Exactly, exactly. We are a health technology company. We employ 70,000 people across the globe, across other countries. Our mission is to improve people's lives through meaningful innovation that matters to our consumers and to our customers. So, I would say this is a huge challenge. We say that we would like to improve three billion people's lives by 2025. It's a huge mission. And how are we going to do that? Through innovation, through one-on-one customer relationships. So, and this is where... I mean, we also recently, we started focusing more and more on our customer. We started being truly obsessed. No matter if we talk about consumers on B2C domain or if we talk about customers. So, customer obsession is really at the core of any of our marketing activity right now. And it will be even more. By the way, in the past six to nine months, we also had the opportunity to have CRM, as well as our, I would say, shop capabilities, becoming core marketing capabilities. Of course, these come with a lot of pressure, a lot of, I would say, attention also. Some sleep was nice. Exactly, exactly. But it's quite exciting. We also would like to continue to invest on our connected proposition. So, we also build products which are connected to apps. And what's the best way to engage CRM? So, what's the best tactics or strategy or how can we build a consistent, long-lasting engagement and that delivers the higher results and the higher ROI? So that, I mean, CRM can be really a game changer there. So, Philips is quite legendary and perhaps because of its Dutch heritage, because the Dutch had to engage a lot of people from a lot of different backgrounds and a lot of places to make their businesses great. Philips is quite legendary at being responsive to and responsible to a lot of different people on a global basis. How are some of those cultural values being amplified inside Philips as you bring more of this customer discussion there? Yeah, yeah. So, let's say Philips is a quarter in the Netherlands and in the Netherlands, I would say Dutch people are always ready to listen. You need to always find a sort of consensus before you can move forward with any strategy or with any project or program. You always listen also to any inputs because you want to really make sure that your idea on one end is agreed or on the other hand it's really analyzed into the least of the details. So, what do we do is really try to understand all perspectives because any point of view can reach an initial idea that you have. And I would say our business is also so diverse. If you look at all the business units that we have and sometimes can be difficult to understand Philips as a whole but in the end every single of our business unit really cooperate together to the greater goal of innovation that matters and improving people lives. So, you will find this through any of our stories, any of the products that we deliver that we build also together with our customers. So, I would say Philips has many but also it can be also just one at same time. It's transforming as GE says, they went to bed an industrial company one night and woke up a software analytics company. Yeah. That's really what's happening. Exactly, and you know what? We are also focusing on delivering services and delivering information because what we also strive to do is to work within the health continuum from prevention to diagnosis to care, also home care. And this is what we are really aiming to do at this stage also establishing a connection in between a consumer that can also be a patient on the other side and delivering the right information to the hospital to take care of them. So, in this health continuum story it's really a game changer I think within I would say an health tech industry. And having the data is critical. Mark, the final question for you. Yeah. Take a minute to share what's exciting here at this event. Why is the modern customer experience show this year so important? There's a big buzz around this platform. There's a big buzz about the early days we're in with modern customer experience being thought differently with AI and seeing this beginning trajectory. What should people get excited about? What's the most important thing in your mind? I think the first thing I notice while coming here, okay, first of all, this year the event is a new vibe. I think this event is even more inspiring to the past edition that I have been through. And I think the fact that they renamed also the events into modern customer experience instead of modern marketing events is really a signal that something is changing also on Oracle's side. And this is what I noticed at the first side. And in the end when yesterday during Mark Hart I would say opening keynote he mentioned the artificial intelligence. I was pretty pleased to see this focus through there. I would say app environment where if you looked at the services that this app is going to be linked to, you won't see the marketing cloud anymore. You see the CX. So it's all about the CX in the end. And this is in the end. They're bringing it together. Yeah, they're bringing it together. The technology is the marketing cloud. Oracle is transforming again. The outcome is the CX. Yeah, exactly. So and I think they are going to focus more and more on that. Also I mean technology wise doesn't make sense to have silent anymore. Yeah, what does this mean for you? How does, when you see that, what's the impact to your world? I can be only a pay. Because we are always challenged to look at the CX and to start with the CX to produce an even more enhanced one. So if I look at the opportunity that this can bring to us I can only be very, very positive. Also the focus on AI is truly important. The focus on data. Also this morning, Laura Ibsen was talking a lot about the importance of insight and data and how this is going to be a game changer. And also this morning with Mark Carr, the breakfast, he mentioned data is the new currency. No way. We were also discussing a bit, okay, third party data, who are the biggest player? He said, of course, Facebook and Google. Of course. But still, the value that every company should build alone is owning his own data. Every company should really care to build an extremely good database to start with. Because anyone can have access to third party data, but this can be just an easy escape. Easy or fast. So you feel confidence in data that's going to determine your differentiation. That is the game changer for sure. And you're excited by Mark Carr's comments this morning at breakfast. Definitely. He's been on theCUBE. I did a 15. Which means he's now excited too. Mark, if you're watching, we need you back on theCUBE. He's good. He gets the marketplace. He understands the pulse, but he's also data-driven guy. Yeah. Pretty much. Even though he's old school like us, but. Pretty much. Mark, thank you so much for coming on theCUBE. Mark, Federici, head of CRM. Thank you so much for sharing your perspective and insight and data with us. Thank you. It's theCUBE. I'm John Furrier, Peter Burris. We'll be back with more from Oracle. Modern customer experience after this short break.