 Ladies and gentlemen, moving forward before we do that, I'd like to request all of you once again to not forget to tweet to us using the hashtag techmunch and give us your key highlights from the session so far. And as we are moving forward to our next keynote session for the day, which will be discussing and talking upon driving true partnerships between marketers and technologists for business growth by Mr. David Kagnoski. Now David is responsible for the overall technology agenda at WaveMaker, including the technology investments by the agency and leading the WaveMaker Technology Consulting Unit. He has also held positions at Ernst & Young and Price Waterhouse Coopers, spanning a broad range of consulting services, but always with the focus on leveraging technology to deliver value and manage risk. So ladies and gentlemen, please put your hands together, even the virtual ones for Mr. David Kagnoski, Global Chief Technology Officer WaveMaker. Very warm welcome to you. Thank you very much. Thank you very much. I'm going to share my slides and I guess I will say first and foremost thank you for inviting me and for having me at this event. It's very exciting to me on a personal level. I'm a big fan of India and I love coming to India and I wish I was there with you in person. In fact, my very last trip on an airplane was February 28th, 2020, coming back from a week in Mumbai. So hopefully my first trip internationally will be back to visit your lovely country. I also want to note that I know that on an individual basis, as a country, I hope everyone's in good health and continues to battle this terrible pandemic and hopefully we'll all be on the other side of it very soon. So yes, let's talk about a technology and the technology landscape and hopefully my slides are visible. Yes, David. Wonderful. I think we've heard it, we've heard it many, many times. In fact, I'm really actually quite pleased that I'm following Rahul's presentation or speech because he talked about the complexity of technology, the technology ecosystem that is in front of us. You know, how we identify customers, how we target consumers is changing. What's happening in the browser, what's happening in the app world, it's transformational. We're in the midst of that transformation right now. We talk about the last milers like Instacart or NookBasket. They're changing the way that delivery is done and even how consumers are looking for product. I just read the other day that Instacart is expecting a $1 billion business in 2021 just out of their retail media side, meaning showing advertisements to consumers as they search their application. So it's really just an amazing thing that's happening. And of course, on the tech front alone, how many of you have DMPs, may have invested in a DMP and are now probably thinking about a CDP and are thinking about artificial intelligence and are thinking about automation. Needless to say, marketers are not bored with everything that is happening right now. And that's really what Rahul had talked about quite extensively and really brought it to life from his perspective. So let me tell you a little bit about how some of these things probably come together from a consumer perspective. As I was inspired in a conversation with one of my children the other day, my daughter Naomi, who's 16 years old, and we talked about how the ecosystem in which she operates and the physical, the virtual, the social, how they all come together in her world and all of that is powered by technology. We know it's powered by technology, but then the question is going to be, well, how do we take advantage of this? And I definitely will hit on those points as we get through this conversation. Imagine Naomi and her friends going to an amazing mall and as they enter the mall in her social feed, because the mall is geofenced, she receives a notification and an invitation to download the augmented reality app that one of her brands has created. And of course, she takes the opportunity, she downloads this and as she is walking through the mall, this AR app, this augmented reality application actually creates a world in which it guides her towards a store where her brand, the brand's merchandise is sold. Perhaps prodding her along the way, perhaps games, perhaps even offering for her try on in a virtual way, try on some of their product or somehow experience their product in that virtual world, not just on her own but with her companions with her friends in a social way. As she arrives at the store, Naomi of course receives a coupon as a reward for actually arriving at that store and maybe even an offer to increase the value of that coupon simply by using a particular hashtag. This AR has brought her to the store and it's done so not just because they're giving her some generic content, but because they're able to provide content that is meaningful and interesting to Naomi because they have some ethically collected privacy compliant data, first party data about her, about who she is as an individual, as a human being, not just demographic information. And she gets to the store, she tries on the outfits, she's in the dressing rooms, they're taking pictures together, they're posting them on social media and of course she ends up making a purchase using the coupon. But not only is she making a purchase, but one of her friends who's not in the store sees the social posts, they also make a purchase and now we're able to share that experience together. And how cool is something like that? I think it's really cool in fact because it is a human level interaction. It is not technology driving the human, it's the human leveraging technology in a very natural way, in a way that feels natural to everybody who is engaged. And by the way, this isn't fantasy of course we all know, this is all real, all of the stuff can happen today, it's just a question of creating those experiences. We see that we've got a number of different platforms at play, we've got augmented reality to guide her into that physical location to let her interact with content and to interact with the brand's products. We've got that rich set of first party data to help engage Naomi on that personal level. And because we use headless commerce, we can support that purchasing experience regardless of whether it's done in the store, in a physical location, online, on a social app, anywhere where that experience occurs. Maybe let's dig a little bit deeper into each one of these. So augmented reality is that intersection between the physical and the virtual world. It gives us the ability to see and interact in new ways, more than just with our eyes. And of course, this is different. This is different than virtual reality, where virtual reality aims to take you out of your physical world and put you in a purely digital world. Augmented reality is more akin to adding yet another dimension to your physical world. It allows you to enhance your world through digital means and through your senses. You can do it visually, you can do it through audio, you can do it through haptic feedback, the different haptics that occur within the device, even smell. And the only one I don't think that we've seen tackled yet is taste, but I'm assuming that somebody's working on that right now. And it actually comes to life in something that I was able to experience earlier this year. I know that TikTok is not necessarily available for you in India, but earlier this year, they released a really interesting augmented reality filter that took advantage of some of my phone's capabilities. Essentially, it was a rising New Year's Eve ball for Switch from 2020 to 2021. And as that virtual ball would rise, it would explode upon reaching the end of the contact, a countdown. As the explosion happens, the virtual confetti falls all over the viewing area on people, on surfaces everywhere. But what makes it really interesting is that all of that confetti, and there's a lot of pieces of confetti, all of it is able to interact with that physical world. Meaning, if I would brush the confetti off my shoulder, it actually would fall off in a very natural way. If I would bend a little bit, that confetti would fall off just like it would be in a natural way. And in this case, it was all leveraging LiDAR, which is capability in an iPhone 12. Now, I imagine Naomi, in my example, in my little mall example, she would be using the same augmented reality capability to try on a piece of clothing when she's with her friends. Now, this isn't just putting a two-dimensional piece of clothing on top of a human being, but actually allowing her to wear it. And for the fabrics to move as she moves, for the fabrics to flow as she does, and for it to really become a very real experience about what that piece of clothing would look like on her, not just in a static way, but as she's active, as she interacts with it. That's possible today. And the fact of the matter is that augmented reality capability is coming into all mobile phones. And I'm going to venture to say that within five years, all of it's going to be available. We have to start planning for that today. In fact, while we don't have critical mass in mobile devices around the world with this capability, I don't think we can wait for critical mass. We've got to start getting ready for that, and which means starting the technology planning in order to get to the point where our capabilities are ready and can ready to interact with the consumer. We'll talk about a plan more than once today. Now, first-party data, hopefully you're hearing this word over and over and over again. It's becoming one of those critical topics in our industry. We know that data helps a brand understand the consumer and truly connect with them on a human level, not just in terms of what their demographics are, but actually to get to know the consumer in a holistic way in a 360-degree way based on who they are, based on where they are, purchase data, certainly some demographic data, and then really a fusion with any other data that's available, whether it's panel or syndicated data, because you see, I don't think we need to necessarily know everything. It isn't about hoovering up a tremendous collection of data, but it's about collecting enough and having enough that you can make smart inferences into the types of behavior and the types of experiences that the consumer will be receptive to. Of course, I want to keep saying this and keep emphasizing it. It's important that we do so in a privacy-compliant way, in a way that doesn't turn off consumers, but actually demonstrates to them the value of that data exchange for the experiences, for the content, and for the capabilities that they would like to be able to see. Of course, it all begins with starting to build that first-party data collection. Build it, build it, build it. If you don't have an initiative around that, it really has to be core and critical. Finally, it's this idea of headless commerce. As I mentioned, you want to be able to have a purchasing experience that is consistent across all of the different places in which a purchase can occur, as I said, in a physical store, virtually within a social network, and all of those have to be seamless and have to be integrated. Headless commerce is really this idea. It's an architectural idea more than anything else of separating the front end and the back end of your purchasing technology, so that you can have multiple shop fronts that have been decoupled from a consistent, single back end. That way, you can provide the experience that is seamless in the place in which the consumer actually exists. You see, a traditional website, it can give you some content, and you can move some content around within the framing. However, you're still going to be limited to the parameters and to the templates that you have set up. In a headless world, you're truly optimizing to the platform in which the individual consumer is operating in. I think one of the best benefits of that is that you don't necessarily then have to conform to those existing templates, that you can really create an optimized experience for the consumer. That brings us back to then what I really love, which is technology, and how technology enables all of this stuff. You see, it's no longer, you can no longer be in a world in which we simply buy or acquire bits of technology. We've got to come up with a plan, a plan that is not only comprehensive, but a plan that is constantly evolving. Many, many years ago, I did some expert witness work for a lawsuit, which is why you see Legos on the screen in front of you. I did some expert witness work where a very large enterprise software company was being sued by a very unsatisfied customer. These were big, big companies. The lawsuit was something around $750 million, and a lot of money was on the line. Essentially, the customer was unhappy that the software company referred to their product as being out of the box. Instead, the software company ended up taking them on what they described as a long and unsuccessful implementation process. To defend the software company, we came up with a simple, but I think a fairly clever analogy, which is that software is like buying a box of Legos. You get the pieces, but you still have to put it together properly if you want to see that thing that's on the front of the box, whether it's a pirate ship or a castle, whatever it is that's on the front, you still have to put those pieces together, and configuration of software is that putting pieces together, and customizations when you start actually cutting those pieces and super gluing them together, and that's a very different thing. Out of the box doesn't mean ready. It means it's ready for you to do the hard work behind it, the planning and the execution behind how you put those pieces together. That's a very important thing to consider when it's out of the box. I don't think it's not enough. It's no longer appropriate to simply buy tech when the need arises or when a hot new thing appears. It may not be a very nice thing for me to say, or maybe it's a little bit critical, but I've seen a lot of decisions on technology purchases made by marketers based on what's hot, what's a trend, but also lacking a real understanding of the context within which that technology will sit. That comes from the perspective not just of the tech itself, but the integrations that are going to be needed, the business case, the long-term costs, even when they're told that that product that they're buying is out of the box. You've got to start considering what that tech that you're buying, what is it, and how does it sit within that broader context? How does it sit within the context of people, process, and the technology itself? You'll hear me say those three words, people process and technology a few more times. It was only recently that I saw a lot of DMP purchases, for example, occur without a plan. Unfortunately, it's unfortunate for me to say this, but a lot of money was wasted buying tech that ultimately did not fulfill the promise or certainly didn't return the investment. There was no ROI on that investment because the technology was purchased without that context. Of course, it's not uncommon for a project to not deliver when this sort of thing occurs. I actually saw a study recently by the Project Management Institute that said that 14% of IT projects fail. At first, I thought, well, that's not so bad. I thought the number would be higher, but then when you scratch away at it, you realize that that number only represents the total and complete failures. Of the projects that don't fail, you still have 31% that didn't meet their goals, 43% that exceeded their initial budget, and 49% that were late. These are IT projects, meaning these are projects by people who have been part of an industry that for 50, 60 years has been deploying technology. If you're a marketer, really, you've got some challenge ahead and you've got to be able to identify how are you going to avoid failure as much as possible, even though we know that it's just going to be a part of what you're going to do. What I propose and what I think is so simple and it's so obvious, but it's hard for me to believe that it's just not done university. That is to have a plan. When you consider your retirement, when you think about where you're going to go post retirement, you've got to think about, well, how much money am I going to need? Where am I going to live? How many weddings am I going to have to pay for? You've got to think about all these questions and as part of that, you create your understanding of your destination. That's your financial plan. Of course, that plan exists not just to be static but to change because as your situation changes, as your income goes up, maybe the income goes down, in each of those cases, you can then adjust your plan for that new situation. The same thing happens with technology. You've got to have a plan that considers the capabilities that you need to achieve and how you will achieve them from the perspective of people, process, and technology. So there we are. We know that we've got a complex world. We know that we have an opportunity to create a unique valuable experiences for consumers. We know that we need the right mix of technology, people, and process. So what tactics should you consider? I'd like to propose two different tactics for consideration and for implementation within your organizations. The first one, and by the way, they all seem so simple when you say it, but they don't happen often enough. That's why I bring them up. And the first one is to build relationships with tech partners. A long time ago, I was actually a consultant at PWC, as was mentioned in my introduction, and actually for about seven years, I only had one client, which is GE. General Electric was, at that point, absolutely at the top of the corporate world. It was a half a trillion-dollar company in so many different businesses. It was really just an amazing organization for me to work with. But what they realized at that time is that they had a real gap between how IT and finance executives communicated. And as a result, they asked me to write a course called IT for Finance, which not only did I write, but I got a chance to deliver to over 400 professionals, 400 of their finance executives. And we didn't cover, you know, this is a laptop, and this is a server, and this is a PBX. That wasn't the point of the class. The point of the class was to help finance executives understand their role in the success of the technology agenda, their role in the success of software development, in process architecture, in security, and in go live planning. It helped bridge a gap in the language spoken by IT and finance so that those CFOs could be more effective at partnering with IT to bring about success. And today, I think in our world, I see the same gap between the CMO and the CIO, where there's a gap in communications. And I would say in some ways, maybe the gap between the CIO and CMO is even larger than with the CFO, because those lines between digital, IT, tech, you know, all those lines are blurred, and everyone's a little bit in, you know, in those same worlds. But I really believe that the partnering with those internal IT technology professionals, those counterparts is absolutely critical. It's, these are productive partnerships. And I sometimes I see some resistance to them. And I think that the resistance typically comes from an experience where perhaps there's a perception that IT may not move as fast. But I think that's largely because IT is designed processes in order to manage risk in order to manage risk, but also enable delivery and enable delivery to be as fast as possible while you manage that risk. And I think that these partners, these internal partners have to be taken advantage of. Look, and I also think that you've got to take advantage of your external partners. I think your media agencies, for example, and of course I say this coming from a media agency, I think the media agencies sit at that crossroads of advertising, and they can be quite good partners. You've already established good relationships with them where you can, where it's possible, turn to those partners, those external partners for advice, for assistance and utilize them because they're already committed and should be committed to your long-term success. I think that those relationships will really help you evaluate, understand how to build your plan, how to change that plan as needed, and to make sure that you're looking over the horizon, not just in the world in front of you. The second tactic that I would propose is developing a reference architecture, and let me explain what that means if the term is not familiar to you. We talked about, again, people, process, and technology. And what we did at WaveMaker is we developed a framework for making decisions around where are we from a tech perspective and where do we need to go. And that's what we call our reference architecture. But there's no magic in creating that. Everyone can have one, and everyone should have one because what this does, unlike a Lumascape, unlike a Lumascape, which does show you the complexity of the vendor world, of the technology world in front of you, a reference architecture identifies, it gives you the categories, the placeholders of what are the possible things, the stuff that you may need to have in order to be able to achieve your goals. And that then allows you to audit yourself to say, what do we have today? And again, not only what stuff do we have or capabilities we have, where are we making investments, how good are those capabilities, how good are those investments? It gives you a common language, a common language that can use across the entire organization for identifying what you have. But even more important than that, it allows you to evaluate that current state against a future state. So you can paint that picture of where am I today? Where do I need to be? And how am I going to get there? And how are you going to get there is just a series of projects. And you do that on a rolling basis. I would recommend constantly having a plan of projects that is probably 18 to 24 months in length, I think any more than that, then it becomes highly strategic directional, but probably unlikely to be realistic. But having that roadmap built on the basis of a reference architecture of a common language, a Rosetta Stone for the entire organization to use, allows you to have that communication in a very, very consistent way across your organization. So that brings us to the conclusion, which is we've talked about how complex of this world is. I think it's very exciting. I think it's exciting. As I talked to my daughter Naomi about this scenario, she agreed, this is the world she lives in and this is the world she wants to live in. My recommendation is make decisions rationally and with consultations, find your partners. I recommend you build a framework for decision making and that you always have a frame of reference. That's a very critical grounding that to have. And after you've finished all of that, after all of that is done, then you can worry about other things like how do we ethically use data and AI. But maybe that's a topic I can cover on my next keynote. Thank you very much. Thank you so much, David. It was really insightful the entire session. I do have a couple of questions for you. If you can please address that for our audience. Absolutely. So we have a question which says, has technology made marketing complex in any way? Would you say so? I would change the, I would not answer the question directly. I would say that it has enabled so much richness in marketing that we have to take advantage of. And so complexity comes is a good thing, right? The human body is complex. And as a result, we have this wonderful physical existence. And so as long as you manage that complexity, then I think it can go a long way. Brilliant. Next question here from the audiences. What would be your suggestion to marketers to become more tech savvy? Read. Read, read, read. You don't have to be an engineer to become tech savvy. What you have to be is aware of the possibilities. Earlier today on the panel discussion, the question was asked about what books would be recommended. So I did the same thing. I looked it over at my library right here and I said, well, good, gosh, which book would I recommend? I read one a few years ago. It's a little bit dated, but it's called the big nine. And it talks about the big nine tech companies and what's happening in the AI space and how they are, how they're really progressing artificial intelligence. I think you find those kinds of topics, read as much as you can, read every day and you can be educated. When I talked about that IT for finance concept in my talk, it's creating that dialogue and make sure you talk to your colleagues that are tech savvy in order to understand what do they care about and where do they focus their energy? Right. So it just reminds me of this quote by Mr. Goldsmith who was here at one of our events. He mentioned that you don't have to be a technologist. You have to understand how technology influences the world and people around you. So I'm guessing that's exactly what you are also pointing here. 100%. It's a brilliant comment. Thank you. Thank you so much, David. It was a wonderful session. Thank you for your time and sharing your insights here with us, with all of you as thank you, everyone. Have a good one. Thank you. Bye-bye.