Reimagine Marketing: A podcast from SAS

STEVEN HOFMANS: Hi there. And welcome to the SAS Reimagine Marketing Podcast. My name is Steven Hofmans. And I will be your host for today's session on how to implement marketing solutions across the globe. During this episode, we will try to answer questions like, what are best practices to share knowledge during a rollout? When should you centralize or decentralize a part of your marketing organization? How do you infuse in-scale innovation? And how do you measure success of such a rollout? To do this, I have invited Geert Moens.

Geert has gained extensive experience in the world of marketing, first as a CRM consultant, and later on as a program manager for Digital Worldwide at Atlas Copco, making him for me, the perfect sparring partner to share key insights on what makes marketing solution rollouts so successful. Welcome to the show, Geert.

GEERT MOENS: Thank you. Thank you, Steven.

STEVEN HOFMANS: As you know, every guest that comes to my episode has to bring a quote. So what is your quote? And why do you find it important?

GEERT MOENS: OK, Steven. Yeah for me, people aspects are the most important aspects. So the quote I chose is related to that. So people are key to value. For me, it's always about people. You can choose the right technology. You can implement it in the right way. If you don't have the people on board to deal with the process and the projects that you have, it will always be a failure. It will never get the results that you can reach with the right people on board. So for me, people are key to value is absolutely valid for everything you do on the marketing value.

STEVEN HOFMANS: And what do you do? Do you first get the people on board and then choose the technology? Or the other way around?

GEERT MOENS: I think it's a little bit a combination. Most of the time, I think it's first, you choose the technology. Then you choose about the approach that you want to change, and the people comes most of the time latest in the picture. But it's very clear that whenever choosing a technology, it already starts with the people-- the sales guy of technology provider that cannot motivate people internally, that is not the trust of the organization, will never manage to get the solution on board. So I think it starts on all the levels that people are key.

But the key, the people, that will have to do it at the end, are most of the time, the local country people, the people that are really working in the organization. And these ones you do not always choose. And these are already in place doing other topics and whatever you bring in, will have to come on top of their normal daily activities. So a big part of the key of the people aspect is indeed training the people, changing the mentality of the people, and preparing them for the new challenges that they will have. So it's a bit a combination. For some aspects, you choose the people first. But in most of the cases, you have to motivate the people to join your initiatives.

STEVEN HOFMANS: So I retain really from this, people and trust. I think, trust what you emphasize, trust it starts at the beginning with the vendor and the technology vendor all to the end of the people. And having a common ground on trust is actually also key for having success.

GEERT MOENS: Absolutely. It's definitely one of the things that I believe in strongly, that the trust of the people is key to build a good team, to build a good atmosphere of the things that you're doing. The trust in the people is very important. It should go bottom down. The people should trust the messages that you bring, that you have thought about it, that the plan is right.

But also the opposite way, around the moment, you give the people the authority to do things on their own level, that you trust them, and that you give them the guidance, and that you let them go, and that you believe that they will do the things that they are supposed to do. So trust is indeed key on all of these aspects, during the whole implementation, but also during the rollout afterwards.

STEVEN HOFMANS: OK, thanks. Great insight, great insight. Thank you. So I went a bit to look at your profile. And I looked at your resume. And I noticed you have been working in digital and CRM programs since 1998. For those who can't remember 1998, it was a time that we were running with CD-ROMs to install software on computers. And USB sticks and flash memory cards weren't invented yet. I mean, during your career, I think yet you have seen really a digital revolution. And I was wondering, through the course of your career, how has marketing changed according to you?

GEERT MOENS: Yeah, it has changed a lot in these years. But the key always has come back. I started as a CRM consultant at a certain moment in my career. And at the end, it's all about putting the customer first. That was definitely the statement. Put the customer first at that time. It was with limited technology comparing to what we had today. Limited insights, you had to build and believe that it was the right way to focus.

And also limited service, whatever is the result, there were not a lot of examples of companies that did focus on customers in the right way and got great success with it. It always were cowboy stories about, yeah and that company has done it great. But it was not always clear that what was the key for the success in the different companies. But putting the customer first is important that they won. And is still an important aspect of today.

The focus has been changed. We have a lot more insights. We build up a lot more insights. Now it is all about personalization, about marketing automation. Use the knowledge that you have about your customers. In the old days we could only dream about that. We knew a lot about the customers. But using it on the right way, on the right spot, was a very difficult situation.

It's also about what you share with your customers is also a lot completely different. In the old days, it was a one way direction. We communicated to the customer and hoped they would respond. These days with social media, with a lot of focus on interactions on your website. There's a whole new world opening in customers showing what they really want, customers being involved, what they really want. And it's more and more important to differentiate on these kind of aspects. It's not good enough anymore to just share information.

Whatever you do, you need to make sure that you create a kind of an experience for your customers and that only goes with bringing that extra service and extra experience that the customer is referring to. So it's really a lot more difficult these days to have your product that's important, to have your services. But also to bring them in a way that the customer sees added value for them. So I see a huge evolution in these 20 years from one direction communication into a completely double interaction.

And in all the knowledge that you have, if you don't use it anymore today, you look like a fool to your customer. If he raised a complaint, and half an hour later, whoever contacts that same customer and has no clue about that complaint, is making himself a fool. People are not accepting that anymore. You don't accept that for every service that you buy for yourself. So for the services that you deliver as a company, people are just not accepting that anymore.

And that for me is a very big, big change and a great evolution, if you look it from the right perspective. Yeah, customers are much more empowered than they were today. And I hear everyone saying that. But it's really the case in everything you do.

STEVEN HOFMANS: And that's what is interesting. Atlas Copco is coming, it's a manufacturing company. And even in manufacturing, you see the trend. So what I understand is that it used to be more about advanced communication and pushing actually more advertising related communication. It has totally changed to data driven marketing. If you're not in data driven marketing today, you're actually making a fool of yourself. That's what I understand from the conversation.

GEERT MOENS: Yes.

STEVEN HOFMANS: And when in the program, right? You worked 18 years at Atlas Copco. When did you start implementing this change and making a first digital move at Atlas Copco as a program manager?

GEERT MOENS: Yeah. The first thing Atlas Copco, I worked a few years on a kind of distributor portal. And then afterwards, I took the responsibility of all the websites of Atlas Copco. That was the first project where we initially launched all the website from a global approach. Before that, every website had a local team. Difficult to manage, difficult to maintain. We start approaching it from a global level.

So we did. And we pushed on a kind of web content management system all over the world to all the different countries. But at that moment, it was seen as high technology, because it was multilingual. It was also looking a lot on SEO. So it was, for these days, it was really the way to go. We were very early in the process in Atlas Copco.

But afterwards, you saw that the world is completely changing. There were always new things coming on top and new aspects. Products became more important. E-commerce became more important. At a certain moment, and I don't know exactly what time it was, also the more analytical. Analytics were always there, but in the beginning it was just have some statistics.

But at a certain moment, the role of analytics became more and more important. So actually when that switch happened, it's for me very difficult to mention. But we saw step by step, more and more focus on the analytical part, more and more focus on the marketing automation aspects, more and more initiatives on personalization.

I am not saying that in Atlas Copco, all of these are already in place and are already implemented. But you saw the initiatives going. You saw the interest going. And in a big company, it's also nice to try and eventually fail, if there are things. If the company is, there is the power and the capabilities to try out something in one country, in a few countries, and then see it's not yet a success, we wait for it. And we push it. And we see later how it works. So you really have that possibility. I'm not sure that it was used to the optimal level. But the possibility is to experiment with certain aspects are definitely there.

STEVEN HOFMANS: So the first phase actually at Atlas Copco was making sure that there is one global brand by standardizing the websites, and making sure that whatever website that you would visit in the world it would have the same feeling. And once actually that standardization is done, and you have one unified brand, actually your next step was to start implementing more personalized approaches towards your global customers.

GEERT MOENS: Yes.

STEVEN HOFMANS: Is that correct?

GEERT MOENS: Yes, that's correct. The first initiatives were also purely financially driven. Rolling out a website in the country has a certain cost. Moving it to the global level has a much lower cost. In the beginning, it was mainly also driven by financials. What can we do for the money that we have? So in the beginning, it was really focusing on the budgets and doing a return on investment for every initiative that you take. At a certain moment, the focus was more and more towards the experience of the customer.

So that's indeed an evolution that you see in a lot of countries. Yes, in a lot of countries.

STEVEN HOFMANS: So actually, cost was the main driver to change things in the beginning. And now it's really about, OK, we see that experience of the customers becoming more valuable. And it's not always tangible probably, to measure what the value is when you give a good experience.

GEERT MOENS: Yes. And in a big company as Atlas Copco, we also have quite a lot of-- yeah, every country is different. You have a lot of countries. And also you have a lot of brands. So there are brands that position themselves on the highest level in the market and position products that are higher standards of the Atlas Copco products.

But they were also that were more for the lower for the more common functionality. So you had different brands. You had different countries. Each of them has a different approach and a different need for their marketing. There were countries that were not as mature as the other ones, so they really wanted to do the basics, while there were countries that were state-of-the-art on a lot of functionalities. They wanted to go really far. So that balance you have in big companies as well, the speed of the countries is absolutely not the same.

And in Atlas Copco, it was even made more complicated with the number of brands. There were quite a lot of brands. And each of them had their own marketing approach. Some of them focused on distributing. Some of them focused on direct customers. Some of them on the combination. So it is a really complicated setup and landscape to deal with that. And one of the keys, in my opinion, was to listen to the countries, and listen to the brands, and to make sure that they can do the things that they really make see for themselves as differentiators.

STEVEN HOFMANS: That's what I find very interesting, because what you actually describe, it's a very complex landscape, right? It's global. It has different kind of views for every kind of market. So are you being responsible at that time for the rollout of a marketing automation package? Where do you start? If I'm tomorrow becoming the program manager of a global company for the rollout of a solution, where should I start? What is your experience as a program manager to make a good start?

GEERT MOENS: Yeah, I had the advantage to start when there were not that many expectations. So a lot of the things that we did were new. So when you start rolling out something that no one else has tried, then you learn on the way. You learn on the fly. And that's one of the aspects that is maybe an interesting focus point. But you learn a lot on the fly, on the road.

So you see that despite the fact that every of these new technologies is different, and every of these has their own key differentiators to make it success or not, it is still a certain pattern that comes back. Trial and error, correct fast, listen to the people, see what works, try to read about a lot about these kind of initiatives. So that was the key how we did it.

If today you start with, in a big company completely from scratch. I don't think it's always from scratch, because they have a backlog of initiatives they already taken, some of them successful, some of them less successful. So you take a certain reputation with you of things that you have to overcome. So making sure that the onboarding everyone is, I think even these days, more important than years ago. So make sure everyone is on board of the initiatives that you want to do. And make sure that there is a lot of room for potential enhancements. You learn on the fly. You learn step by step. So you have to make sure that there is enough room for incorporating what you learn during the process.

STEVEN HOFMANS: And do you start with, for example, a smaller country like Belgium? Or do you go immediately for a big fish like United States or Brazil? How do you choose where to start? It's not an easy one.

GEERT MOENS: No, it's not an easy one. It's not an easy one. Yeah, whatever you choose, there's always a risk involved. If you start with a country that is too small, and it is a success, then they say, yeah but it works in a small country. But it's not applicable for a bigger country. If you start with a bigger country and it fails, then it becomes a problem as well. So I think it's a wild guess that you sometimes do. You try to look for the countries where you have a trust in the people. It goes back to the trust. So where you trust the people that you say, OK, whatever you do, they will listen to the advice that we are presenting.

I can tell you, in all these years, there were countries that promised to do in a certain way and never delivered. There were also countries that you never heard about them and were a pain in the arse until the moment they start delivering in a way that you said, I've never seen this in the company before.

So it's a little bit about trust and knowing your network of people. And yeah, it's a guess. I could say it's a guess. There is no best approach. The only thing is what works to limit that risk is to balance out, is instead of in a company as Atlas Copco, you have to roll out to 180 countries. So whatever you do, if you start one by one, and you do have one country every three months, it takes you, yeah you're going on your pension for every project you do. So that you cannot do. So you have to make sure that you roll out faster.

So I would also say in the example, that most of the time we took a bunch of countries. We took a few countries, and a bigger one, a smaller one, et cetera. So you combine a few countries. And then you roll out to these countries. But it's a risk. It's a risk. It all depends on good luck and good guidance of making sure this it is a success. But it's always a risk.

STEVEN HOFMANS: And when choosing countries, when doing this, what are typical caveats that I need to take into account? What are the booby traps that can be laid out when rolling out a program globally?

GEERT MOENS: Yeah. I would definitely say the practical things. Make sure that you focus on taking countries in the same time zone. Taking countries in the same language. Taking countries in with the same, a little bit same principles. So but don't take the most extremes. Don't take a country in three languages combined with a country where they hardly speak any language. Don't take a complicated brand together with a simple brand.

So try to find a good balance, that it is practically that you can explain everything. If every country has a completely different way of working, then it will be complicated, because you're still learning. And you cannot focus on changing everything at the same goal at the same moment. So I would definitely say, focus on making it easy for yourself.

I remember a situation where we rolled out a training program. And in four weeks' time, I had to travel during three different time zones. Afterwards, it's fun. I'm not saying that. But afterwards, you have to recover for a few weeks, because you're dead tired. So I know it's a bit, it looks a bit stupid, but keeping in mind that the people that has to do it still have a life and still have to survive whatever you do, is very important. So I would definitely say, if you choose, be very pragmatic. And make it easy for yourself, for the people that have to do it.

STEVEN HOFMANS: So key really is finding similarities between countries that are more or less similar, equal?

GEERT MOENS: Yes.

STEVEN HOFMANS: And taking into account both cultural aspects well as company or organizational product? Say, you said from a product view they need to be, or a brand view, they need to be kind of similar. But also from a cultural point of view, they need to be kind of similar. Otherwise, it's hard to get success?

GEERT MOENS: Yes.

STEVEN HOFMANS: Actually, when working with these different countries. We also discussed that every country has its own opinion. Some countries are small. Some countries are bigger. Then from a corporate point of view, everybody wants to centralize everything, because that brings efficiency gains.

But decentralization is also has efficiency gains, because they maybe better know the local culture and market. So how do you decide when to centralize something? When to say, we are going to centralize the marketing department, for example, and this program for those countries? Or to say, we are going to decentralize and say, OK, in this matter it makes sense to have a decoupled organization and to sell at your own course.

GEERT MOENS: Yes. Yeah, of course there are multiple ways to deal with that. But what I have good experiences with, is to be, again, a little bit pragmatic and split in different categories. So you take there are countries that definitely have not the capacities to do anything. There are countries that are in a process, that they are maybe capable of doing something, but maybe not have the maturity to do it, but are probably interesting to learn. And there are countries that are definitely saying, yeah, we are more than capable of doing it on their own.

So you split them. You take an approach that handles these three different types of countries. And then it's a matter of who do you find what countries in what category. And what we most of the time did was based on some figures. How many articles that you create? How many initiatives have you taken in the past? How many people do you have in the team? And create a kind of list.

Five people, are you belong in the top category. Three people, you belong in the middle category. No person, you belong in the lowest category. So make a kind of a split based on some basic rules. That's the theory. And then you inform everyone about the category doctrine. And then the negotiation process starts. Some countries think, yeah, can you push us in a different category? And we are not capable of dealing with that. Can you not lower us? But if that's the key country, then you don't want to lower them.

So it's a matter of negotiating with each country in what category they belong. Also a very important motivator is the cost. And I don't know, maybe it does not make sense at the first sight. But the higher in the category you want, the more you have to pay globally to participate. So a country that wants to do everything on their own, you charge them higher prices than the countries that are lower in the market, because you believe if they can put the effort on the local level to assign people to focus on it, the return on investment should be higher. So they have also a part of that profit should also go to the global program to make it affordable for everyone.

So that's also an aspect that you look at. The more authority you give, the higher the prices are for that authority. So it makes a bit, it looks a bit contradictory, but that's really the way we handled it in Atlas Copco, because to make sure that--

STEVEN HOFMANS: You buy your autonomy.

GEERT MOENS: You buy your autonomy, yes. Actually, yes. And of course, you give a global services linked to data. If a big country pays a lot higher, you give them a faster response on in case of emergency tickets. You make sure that every automated monitoring is focusing on their country. You make sure that the process of supporting them in their process is as good as you can deliver for all the country. So there is a certain trade-off on the price.

But actually, it's the local country that decides, yes, I want to do this on my own. I believe in this functionality. I believe in this aspect. I pay for it to make sure that I can implement it on a local level. And yeah, of course, if it's about cost, it's always about negotiation. If there is a crisis and countries come back and say, yeah, but we paid so much the past years, can we not negotiate? And in a few years' time, you see a country growing. And the general manager sees it as a next step on the level to success in the Atlas Copco world to make sure that they can also level the digital aspects to a higher level.

So they actually want to get in that higher level automatically as well. So it's a very tangible and political discussion. But it worked, I think. If you don't have that pricing and that cost aspect, people will just, all of them want to be in the top category. And most of them probably will not be able to deal with that. And if you buy that pricing, people really have to motivate and really have the effort and make sure that they bring the added value for their local country, but also for the group in total.

STEVEN HOFMANS: You talked about that you use of parameters. And you looked at past success they had.

GEERT MOENS: Yes.

STEVEN HOFMANS: With different programs. You talked about the size of the team. So that makes me wonder, how do you measure your success of a program? Of your program globally? And how do you measure local success? What are good parameters to look at when rolling out a technology, like a marketing solution? What are good parameters to look at success? And how have you been evaluated, actually, on that success? How does a manufacturing company look at that?

GEERT MOENS: Yeah. That's a difficult one, because success is not always purely a return on investment. At the end, if you do digital initiatives, you want to sell more. That's the key element. But it's very difficult to see the result of your initiatives you do. During the past years, we have been more and more implementing result driven initiatives.

So lead generation, for example, was something that in the past was not really-- there was always lead generation. On your side, people could send a request. But the last few years, lead generation has become really a topic that is followed up on an almost daily basis. How many leads do we have? And what do they bring until the end of the results?

So following the chain from a customer trying to look for something, until the customer actually buy or not buy the products. That lead generation was an important measurement for success. But that is an aspect that we only focused on the last few years, because before that, it was not available.

So the average success was probably on the parameters that were not always the most relevant. How many visitors do you have? Do you see an impact of the changes you make on your website? But actually, 100% measuring return on investment of your customers to the digital initiative was, and is, still very difficult for bigger companies.

But it doesn't make any negative aspect on the fact that it is important to measure. There are definitely initiatives that you can do. And you can perfectly imagine and put some initiatives towards your initiatives that you do.

I give an example. If you improve your website on look and feel, then you can definitely measure, what is the experience of the customers on that? What is the satisfaction level on the customer? And a better website, a nicer website, does it automatically return in more product sales and more service sales? That's more difficult to measure. But it is any way possible to make your local goals and to compare your goals with the goals of the other countries.

STEVEN HOFMANS: Was there ever a look at, for example, what we call usage metrics? Because some of the metrics are sales driven, which is indeed high level. But you being a program manager of that digital rollout, that you looked at the volumes of campaigns that were being used, the amount of user adoption that a platform's more customer success metrics. Were those also part of the program to evaluate it? Or was it purely looking at revenue?

GEERT MOENS: No, no, no. We also did this more user based figures. I know one of the communication managers in Atlas Copco that had problems selling his new ideas into the company. And he made it 100% result driven. He said at a certain moment, if I do this initiative, and I bring in so many more visitors, so many more. And he put really criteria on his list of objectives, if I manage to reach this, do you automatically give me approval for my next initiative? And he started doing it that way.

So actually, negotiating at the first start, I will give you these results. You give me the next time the budgets again. And I like that aggressive approach. It's a little bit assertive on some aspects. And it's also-- but he takes responsibility. And I like that approach. I like the fact that he dares to take the responsibilities and links it to results. So he says, if I can make the return on investment, on the key parameters of success of my project, give me the possibilities to do it again. So I really like this kind of approach. Do something. Take responsibilities. And also deliver them afterwards. And that could be the restarting the circle.

At a certain moment, we have tried to implement that on a global level. Of course, it is very important to put whatever you do, is to put some results into your key performance of the year. So if you're a communication manager, it is good to link success on the digital aspect, success on the website, into your yearly objectives. In Atlas Copco, everyone had a personal goals for their task. So link it to the goal. So that you have your bonus link to it. That's always a good way of dealing with it. So I always like that. People are awarded in their bonus for the initiatives that they support and the success that they have.

But that's also something that on a global level, you cannot offer that to everyone. You can propose that to the countries. But that authority on global level is not big enough to push that into everyone's goals for the next years. But of course, in some countries I did it. And I think it works for everyone. What is measured and what you get rewarded for, you focus a lot more on it. So if it gives you that extra motivation to do it in the right way.

STEVEN HOFMANS: Awesome. Awesome. I'm coming to my last question of the session. And imagine that my job is done, and 12 months after implementing, the whole project falls apart. And it's a complete failure. It happens, right? Not every story is a success story. So what are, me being the program, what are the potential things I've missed?

GEERT MOENS: Yeah. Of course, every case is different. But I think that, and this is a very dangerous pitfall, is that it only starts with implementing. So of course, you need to have your goals and your objectives. But most of the time, the projects are very tricky at the moment they are implemented. You get a lot of attention. You have the momentum in the organization. And at a certain moment, everyone drops out. So the people going back to their own desks, and going back to their own jobs. And that's always a risk that you have, that people are not continuing the actions that you are initiating. It's always a tricky situation.

And I think that most of the projects that will fail after a year, they will lack for continuation. I think that's the most difficult in bigger companies, to after the project becoming a real program, and making sure that the programs are followed up in a good way. There is no magical solution for that. Every project is, every situation is different.

But I think the only way is to create the kind of community. I think is make sure that people are continuously talking about it, focusing on it. But if linked to results, if the first few months you don't reach the results, then it comes a negative atmosphere about your project. It's a lot more difficult to correct it afterwards. So I think you need to be very sensitive for the internal feedback that you get about certain solutions. If it is not a success because you just don't reach the goals, then yeah, then it's maybe not bad to stop the project.

But if it is not a success because the company has not put the right efforts in it, then maybe it's a missed opportunity. So I think it's always a matter of evaluating that in the right way. I hope that in bigger projects that you start anyway with the possibilities to roll back or to stop when it is not a success. So start with a kind of pilot thing to avoid that bigger failure at the end.

I know that some people refer to it, try fast, fail fast, something like that. But I don't like that fail aspect in the sentence. I think it's more a matter of keeping that in mind upfront. If you're focusing on new technologies, people have to accept that you try something. And you evaluate success afterwards.

But I understand if it's a successful pilot, and then you roll out globally afterwards. And it becomes a failure for the rest of the organization. Yeah, then it will be anyway successful in a few countries. And then you can let the bigger countries that for which one it is a success, you let them continue. For the ones that it is not a success, you let it slowly go down. You let it stop slowly. And then you see afterwards what happens.

Maybe in a few years' time, there is the market again. And it's ready for that new initiative. Maybe it never will come up. I think it's in the global world with all of these local different cultures, et cetera. I think it's normal that not everything will be successful in all the countries.

And I think companies need to be a lot more aware of that aspect and be a lot more open for that. But I know that if you're working on a project like that, it's not nice to spend a year, one and a half year, or two years, maybe on a project, and then see that half of the world is not ready for it. I think people will see it as a personal failure.

And sometimes maybe it is a little bit linked to the person implementing it. But in a lot of cases, it's linked to circumstances. So it's a tricky situation. I don't want to cope with that too often. But it's, I think-- and in these kind of things, I think communicating transparent about the risks of the projects, about the things you need to do to make it success, are important.

I think that a mature project manager in this case would look at the risk, would communicate about risks, would come at a possible failure upfront, and then do his best to avoid the failures. But it's a tricky situation.

STEVEN HOFMANS: Thanks, Geert. Thanks for sharing your insight. It was again, a blast of an episode for me. I learned a lot, right? Trust. Everything starts with trust. I think trust is important in the beginning, from the vendor till execution. I heard the word value. If your project is valuable, right, it will keep on living on. And it's not because two countries fail that the project is a failure. You learn something. The countries that have implemented and are successful, they can go on. And with the countries that remain, those you can try new stuff. So that's very interesting. I would like to thank our audience for listening, and hope to see you soon again. Have a nice day. Bye.