The Exchanges

Q Why is this happening? Why is personalization so important now?

A I think there's, there's a number of reasons. I, I think there's, um, there's demographic changes, right? The, the buyers are becoming younger. The, the baby boomers are, are retiring and, and millennials are becoming the, uh, the primary buyer, right? It's, it's close to 60% of B to B buyers are now, uh, millennials and they were born online, right? They expect the same Uh, the same kind of, of experience that they get in their consumer lives in, in business, right? They, uh, it doesn't make sense to them that they have to, you know, fill out paperwork or call a sales rep or do both to, you know, to make a purchase. They want to pick up their phone. They want to go online. They want to do all these things themselves. I think that's a, a large, large driver of, uh, of this change is just the demographics, uh, of it. And then of course there's, there's the technology and, and the technology is obviously something that is constantly changing and, and improving. I mean, I think the ability to, uh, to either consolidate platforms or, or stitch platforms together in a way that allows this seamless experience, uh, is easier than it's ever been before using platforms like Salesforce or, uh, or others to, you know, to make these experiences personalized and, and frictionless is, is becoming less of a barrier to entry than it was certainly, uh, a decade ago. And I, I think those are rea…

AI assessment note: “there's demographic changes, right? The, the buyers are becoming younger.”

Q AI models in the voice mode and they're incredibly friendly and super helpful. And over time they remember who you are and they remember the details of the conversations you have with them. It's like a friend really. And so for, for sales, for, for you to have that, and for it to have that memory, it knows the configuration of your order. So why do you need humans then?

A I think that's a, it's a really great question. And I think the, the answer depends on, on the what and the, what you're buying, right? Cause a lot of B to B right there are ordering the same thing every month, the same thing every quarter, right? These are our long tail orders that are largely the same every month, right? Think about hospital systems that are buying consumables or, you know, manufacturers that are buying, you know, bolts and things that are just. Uh, you need to buy, you know, the, the same quantity of, or, or pretty close to the same quantity of, uh, you know, over the course of, uh, over the course of the year, pretty consistently, right? Those are the, the types of orders that we do want to drive to almost a hundred percent digital, because you don't really like, to your point, need a sales rep to, uh, to, you know, create or, or process an order, uh, when you know it's going to be the same every month. Um, now, Where a sales rep can come in and is, uh, effective is cross-sell upsell opportunities or where that, that customer may be wanting to explore new applications or, or new use cases, uh, that they are, you know, not taking advantage of from that particular manufacturer for that particular, um, for the, from the organization that they're buying from today. So utilizing the sales rep to, you know, to educate on, Uh, on new product or new applications of…

AI assessment note: “Where a sales rep can come in and is, effective is cross-sell upsell opportunities”

Q How do you balance the time and energy of your team to implement these initiatives while also not losing their focus on serving the customers you already have and using the existing processes that you have?

A Uh, that's a great question. And, uh, I, I wish I had, I wish I had a perfect answer in that we were doing a great job, uh, at, at striking a perfect balance, but the truth is we're, we're probably not right. Cause we still are a, you know, a small nimble organization that, you know, while we did raise funding, right. Resources are still limited in, you know, in how we deploy our capital. And, um, we are, we are trying to do our best in, in kind of siphoning off Um, both capital and, and people resources to make sure that we're dedicating a, a portion of our, um, of our consultants time and our team's time to work exclusively on that. But as we know, right, uh, Everyone's got a plan until they get punched in the face and professional services is one of those industries that you get punched in the face a lot. So, uh, there is always going to be competing priorities with how you use time and resources when it comes to serving customers. And we, we are experiencing that on a, you know, on a monthly and quarterly basis where we have to, you know, pull resources away from internal work to help, uh, help get a customer over a line because they're on a deadline and, uh, and things are running a little bit behind or, Um, you know, we've got, uh, we've got the need to, uh, to help a customer, um, unexpectedly and, and, uh, and it's a good problem to have, right? We have a project that w…

AI assessment note: “trying to do our best in, in kind of siphoning off Um, both capital and, and people resources”

Q So what are you working on internally that you're able to talk about that's new and exciting, something that you're passionate about that you're not maybe talking about too much?

A Yeah. Um, it, it's on the topic of AI, right? We're, we're spending a lot of time and a lot of resources, uh, with, with how we use AI internally. And, you know, we're a professional services company. We develop software and what, what we do with AI is becoming more and more important for our own, you know, efficiencies in our own, um, Our own kind of quality of life from, from our consultants point of view, right? We have a, a very, uh, you know, labor intensive, uh, you know, service offering, right? We do project based services and, and AI is, you know, disrupting, disrupting the way that, you know, consultants and professional services organizations do work in, in a pretty meaningful way. And, and we want to be on the bleeding edge of, Uh, of using it in a way that, um, that allows us to, uh, not only do our job better, but do it in a way that benefits our, our customer and, um, and those benefits, meaning, you know, time to market, you know, help get done, things get done faster, uh, help get it done at a, at a more competitive price because we're able to do things faster. Um, and of course, right. Most consultancies, uh, our work still working on, Uh, you know, some sort of fee based or, or time and materials, uh, type fee structure. Um, so we're working on, on tooling internally that allows us to take our kind of historical, um, historical context and, and how we develop…

AI assessment note: “we're working on, on tooling internally that allows us to take our kind of historical”