 Live from Las Vegas, it's theCUBE. Covering Adobe Summit 2019, brought to you by Accenture Interactive. Welcome back everyone to live CUBE coverage here in Las Vegas for Adobe Summit 2019. I'm John Furrier with my co-host Jeff Frick, we're here for two days of wall-to-wall coverage. We're on day two. Our next guest, Mark Andre Sinclair, Director of Digital Marketing Platform Content Strategy Export Development Canada EDC. Welcome to theCUBE. Thank you. So love your title, digital marketing platform, content strategy, that's kind of in the center of all the action. So, you know, you've been doing some transformation. Tell us your story. What do you guys do? What's the story? So I joined EDC Export Development Canada two years ago, really helping them out on the overall digital transformation. So I've been fortunate to join the organization as the moment that the organization really wanted to change. Like we were on a mandate to gain back some relevancy in the market. EDC exists to help Canadian businesses go beyond the borders, go international. So they really wanted to be relevant to the market because we're not competing with the market. We're really just like a compliment to the market. So we've been on that journey to transformation for the last two years. We are now completing the first phase of a transformation and just about two years, which normally takes four years in the industry. And we're now at midway to our overall digital transformation. We want to critical the number of customers that we have in four years, but it's a very aggressive target. What we call normally like a stretch goal that our COS put. So that's what we've been up in the last two years. And what was the catalyst? Why the change? Because what was going on kind of behind the scenes to make such an aggressive move? If you look at the industry overall, there's a major shift in what is export. So exporting means merchandising goods for most of the people. But when you look at the shift in industry to software and services, these folks are not perceiving themselves as being an exporter. Like really, you build a software, you sell it, you don't think about your software getting beyond the borders. So the industry, the overall market size or the number of companies that we could help in the country has grown, but our number of customers remain flat. So we wanted to catch back at that market reach. And there was a few other imperatives that forced us to change, but basically it started with our CEO putting forward a strong paper culture. Like it really forced people to think differently and change. What's the progress like? Are you happy with the progress so far? Absolutely. What are some of the things you've knocked down already? What was the, take us through the steps, take us through the plan. What was the, what is the plan? What is completed? How much is left? Okay, so it started for us as a strong investments in overall, all the marketing tech stacks. We started obviously we're at Adobe Summit. So we started in investments with the Adobe Experience Manager. And it was about us changing the technology that we had in terms of delivering a customer experience. So the approach we took was people process and technology, but at the middle, we really put the customer experience at the forefront of everything, at the art of every decisions makings. So for us, we're migrating, we're finishing the migration as we speak right now. That's the first phase. And now with the partner that we have Accenture, we're looking in terms of, okay, how can we build capabilities back in the business? Because we've outsourced our full function to our partner. And now it's about how do we get the right level of cost, talent, scalability for the future so we can deliver premium customer experience. So there are a lot of activities have happened. We went in an agile transformation at the same time. The organization has embraced agile overall. And now we're really thinking about what's the future? Data, customer experience. So these are the biggest shifts that the organization is looking at. As we stand right now, we've done the migration and we can now start to think about personalizations, experimentations. These are all the cool things that we have ahead of us. What was the heavy lifting hard part of getting this off the ground? What's some learning or any experiences where you failed miserably and rebooted or reset? I mean, you learn through iteration we see these successful projects. What's the key learnings? Have you had any moments like that? Definitely. So first of all, I'd like to talk a bit about the fail approach because this is something that was not necessarily part of the organization. And that is something fundamental to a change in an organization. So to quote my boss, fail stands for first attempt in learning. So you got to get out and you got to try things and really get an experiment. Otherwise you're not really pushing the boundaries. So I'm proud of our failure. And actually I won an award about failure last year at my organization. So they have corporate awards that recognize people that do fails but move on and fail fast. Like that's the spirit. So for us, I'd say at the beginning the biggest part of our project was to get the, what I call the MVP zero. So we had to change from a non-premise to a cloud architectures. And when you start to do these things at an organization that has never done cloud you uncover a lot of stuff. A lot of security protocols, firewalls kicking in. Our first MVP zero just to set the infrastructure has been quite a challenge. I think we went three times out and the third time was the right one. But this is the critical one where you start to build credibility. And even though for us we're working in Agile every two weeks we deliver cradle to grave, everything full blown experience. This one was really a longer one. And we really made sure that the organization understood that this is complicated. When you do the foundation this is complicated. It goes, I was going to say it's foundational. So you got to take your time. You got to get that right. Can't have any cracks in the foundation. Because you're building on top of it. Exactly. So three attempts you said you went out for bid or what three attempts of building it, what was it? So the three attempts are about us deploying the full technology in the cloud. So first time we went uncover a few things. Second time nothing popped up, weren't aware. And then the third time we went out, third time's a charm to say. We went out, it was good. We nailed it on that time. I'm surprised Satya didn't invite you on stage. Cause I don't know if he caught that in the keynote towards the end of his keynote. He said we need to have an award for people that disprove their own hypothesis. Exactly, exactly. So what you said, it's interesting. You said the people part was hard in the process. And yet it was a top down initiative from the CEO. So was it not bought in at kind of the mid tier management level, the senior management? Why if the CEO said we need to do this? Was it hard to move those different parts of the organization? Well I'd say the people part was more about having the right talent and the right mindsets. So when the CEO put forward the culture paper, the stretch goals, really the organization started to organize themselves on are we going to make that thing happen now? Like we need to work differently. And this is not about just more cash, more ad counts. We really need to re-engineer a bit the way we were working. So I wouldn't say that there was an issue with the way or the people over there. It was just like you start to hire scrums, you start to hire a coach, you start to hire a PO. These are skillsets that you've never had. Like at the beginning of the project we had new marketing talent, we had new partner for digital delivery, we had new partner for agile, and we also had new technology. So you start with a lot of new stuff at the same time. So I'd say these are natural things that you have to do. Is it easy? No, not necessarily. But we had a lot of support from the C-level standpoint. It sounds like you guys have a very DevOps oriented culture. Because talking about failing fast is a cultural cloud concept. I mean, agile, iterating, scrums. This is a DevOps mindset infrastructure as code. Did you guys have that built in or you said you started three years ago? Was that the core cultural mindset? I wouldn't say that we're a DevOps type of culture of mentality. I would say actually it's probably the part that we still need to invest hard. Because now we build a fully-hauled machine that's scaling and pushing the machine. You start on cover that once you go that full cycle few things are popping up. So in the 90s or the beginning of the 2000s like when you were thinking about naltics people were always like okay, let's do this naltics use case or addition at the end. Let's do your documentation at the end. It tends to be the same thing with DevOps sometimes. We have a strong architecture but in terms of regression, automation and all these things we truly need to invest a bit more so we can have it. Because we're deploying every single two weeks that we want it or not. So that's a lot of pressure on all the people that do QA, UAT to make sure that everything is out as well. So you want to get it right first then kind of bolt it on after as a more of an operational model. So we had a very strong foundation and now we're spinning every single week. I got to ask you about the export piece of it because obviously international global competitiveness is a big force right now. People have to be global. And data privacy, you mentioned we've talked about GDPR before we came on camera. You have an opinion on this. I do have an opinion. Could you please share your view on GDPR? I thought it was valuable. Yeah, absolutely. So what I didn't mention when we chatted about that before is we fought a lot about do we need to comply to GDPR? Because this is a European regulation. And we ended up that yes, as because we have presence internationally in Europe, it's not everyone that has that opinion that they need to comply. But what we've uncovered was one or two weeks before the D dates on May 25th that we needed to be compliant. So what has happened is in two weeks we stopped everything, we worked 24 hours for two weeks to restructure the platform to make sure that we were like compliant to GDPR. And then after that, for the next three months we looked into are we going to make that thing right? Because people are scared of GDPR. But that you want it or not, this is just the beginning. We see it with the California Act. Canada has a castle, I'm pretty sure they're going to be very aggressive. So you need to make sure that you really invest in data privacy management and all these things. At the end of the day, if it's well done, your customers will love it. The issue is people are being a bit sneaky without the used data. But if you're being transparent and you're being honest with the way you use the data and you're being fully disclosing what you're doing, it's not an issue. You need to embrace it actually. I think that's a key message. Embrace it because it's going to be part of our journey that we want it or not. So do the tough work up front for you. You was forced upon you because you were building something new and then, wow, the deadline's here. So it was a struggle, it was hard work, so you had to grind it out. So once you get over that, prepare for it, invest in it, nurture the strategy for that. Yeah, absolutely. What's the advice that gives someone a stressor? Has to do the GDPR. It might not be under the time pressure, but it's starting out and saying, okay, I got to get my arms around this. What's the core issues? Well, getting started, not GDPR, but what's Playbook? So the Playbook, I'd say, if you think about GDPR, this is basically for the European, if they're not giving you the right to leverage cookies and tracking and all these things, you should not be doing it. So it's simply thinking in your implementation of a piece of software that goes at the beginning that says, do you want to have full functionality, full personalization or not? And don't look at GDPR, but look at the customer experience. If you put the customer once again at the forefront and you really think about, what does it make sense? You know, if you and I get on the websites and we see that thing that is prompting, A, I know what you've done last summer, like it's kind of creepy. You don't want to have these things. And so you just build that customer experience around data privacy management and then everything will fall together. So build it into the product, in this platform. Yeah, and do it the right way and compliance will follow. Don't do it to be compliant. Don't exactly do it for the customer experience. Right, right. So how's the success been in terms of getting into some of these new markets for you? In terms of software and services and some of the other export markets? So, interesting question because two years ago, EDC was focused on two core things, financial products and insurance products. So right now we've expanded our product line and we're now having this, what we call knowledge business. So if you think about a Canadian business or any business that wants to go beyond the borders, this is quite scary to go into the international game. So now we're capable of offering them a lot of insights on international market, out to exports, various key questions that they have on their journey. So we're not helping them toward their journey. And also as we're well embedded in the international supply chains, we're helping them with connecting with big companies that are leveraging or looking for some capabilities that we have in the country. So we've really scaled up the product line that we have. We're really shifting the model. We're working a lot with the banks and the way we're supporting the Canadian businesses. So it's days and nights, the type of products, the type of solution, the experience that we're providing from two years ago. Do we still have work? Absolutely. Like digital transformation is never such a thing that is completed. The key essence, the key message is it's never done and the customer experience has to be at the forefront. If you think about the customer experience, it just happened that most of the experience is digital these days. So transformation is never-handing. I think it's a great mindset. I think that's so smart. It's not just about mobile-first or cloud-first, it's customer-centric at the beginning. So we're going to ask you the question, what's it like working with Accenture in Iraq? And what role did they play? Were they easy to work with, are they good? What's the story? Absolutely. I'm very pleased with the team that we had. We have strong people from Accenture. We're fully leveraging the network that they have because they're distributed in a global business. Accenture for us is doing all the IT delivery stuff, the very difficult stuff behind the scene that is normally like your IT function that you have in an organization. So we've been extremely pleased and actually I think that by the fact that we're capable of delivering every single two weeks an agile, we're pure agile. You will hear in the industry that some people think they're agile but they're actually hybrid agile. So we're full-blown agile in the organization and they've been a strong partner with us on that journey. That's awesome. Well, I love the story. Looking forward to keeping it in touch. Keep us posted on when you get this transformation. I look forward to chatting with you and thanks for sharing your story and insight here on theCUBE. My pleasure. Marc-Andre Sinclair, customer here inside theCUBE. Telling about the journey and the struggles and GDPR, get on it and make it an advantage. Great line there and digital is the future. I'm John Furrier, Jeff Frick. More day two coverage with theCUBE after this short break.