Marketing Darwinism:  Dharmesh you’ve been on our pages before, welcome back.  Tells us about the progress at Advaiya.

Dharmesh: Thanks Paul.  2020 has been a year of massive amplitudes.  In society, there are many people who are suffering and have lost loves ones and jobs. In the business world, companies of all sizes have been jolted into a new state of being; many have realized that all of the earlier talk about sustainability, disaster recovery, and- frankly- agility was real.  Black swan events happen and will happen and companies need the digital infrastructure and a corresponding culture to manage through them.  We’ve been very fortunate to be able to help a variety of organizations through this process this year.

Marketing Darwinism:  Can you give us more specifics? Can we move away from “Digital Transformation” as a one-size fits all approach?

Dharmesh:  We agree.  The details and nuances are the nub of the matter.  We believe very strongly in a vertical contextuality not just a patina of “understanding” that is really in practice superficial.  I can’t help a Financial Services company create a digital backbone if I don’t understand its customers, its regulatory environment, and the changing landscape in the space.  Similarly, we’ve seen the healthcare system buckle under lack of capacity because earlier consultants thought of them as “any old” industry and convinced them to be “just in time.” In reality, they are a social service that requires a peak load view not a base load view.  These snapshots of vertical insight differentiate us often.

Marketing Darwinism:  In a WFH or now Work-From-Anywhere context, how do organizations need to think about digitization?

Dharmesh:  We have believed in WFA and SFA (Source from Anywhere) for a long time.  We have understood that the best talent for the job can be found anywhere and that our customers themselves are not fixed in time and space.  We believe that in a WFH and WFA context, the “silicon” isn’t the full solution- people and culture are a big part of the equation.  Technology infrastructure and applications need to enable them to uncover new scenarios and act on them.  That is the heart of real innovation and progress.

Marketing Darwinism:  How is Advaiya’s growth orientation?

Dharmesh:  Over the last 5 years, we’ve had a continuous, secular growth trajectory.  Q2 of this year was a hiccup as we all adjusted to the new reality of Covid.  But as companies sought change and wisdom and frankly help in Q3, we’ve seen our growth return.  Right now, we are focused purely on customers and partnerships; growth will persist if we maintain that focus.

Marketing Darwinism:  You work a lot in aiding marketing organizations.  How is that going?

Dharmesh:  In our incarnation as an agency- for content, digital assets, analytics, visualization of data, and so on, we attempt to be an organic part of the teams we support.  Marketing teams have been wonderful to work with- at times we are simply a human-being extension and at times we are developing markets together.  None of our offerings are atomic- they all connect to a larger marketing reality.

Marketing Darwinism:  What’s next?

Dharmesh:  We have a lot planned for 2021. We are continuing our big push with applications and infrastructure but also with our “last mile” customer work.  As we grow in both North America and Asia, we’ve been able to bring on some exceptional talent.  As with everything, they’ll help us define what is next!

Marketing Darwinism spoke to an old friend and associate, Vivek Bhaskaran, Founder and CEO of QuestionPro.

Marketing Darwinism: Vivek, some big changes in QuestionPro I see. Can you tell us more?

Vivek: Paul, thanks. Yes, we’ve moved the company to Austin, Texas and are ready for our next large phase of investment and growth. We hit 200 people and I realized that we were no longer the scrappy startup full of hungry, footloose folks. We are now an established brand with world-class talent and as such wanted to find a city that would sustain us as we double revenue and increase the team substantially. Austin has proved to be a perfect location for QP.

Marketing Darwinism: Other than the move, what else is new and exciting at QP?

Vivek: Well, we’ve been asked by customers, partners, and users to help them use research, information gathering, and other elements to provide amazing experiences to their customers and ecosystem; as we thought about their feedback, we realized that while twenty years ago, we were a “survey” company, we are now truly a company that facilitates what we call “e(t)” or “experience transformation.” The markets are simply too crowded for any organization to NOT help its customers provide experiences to their customers. We are very happy with this concept, which we see not so much as a pivot but as a continuation of our QP proposition.

Marketing Darwinism: Vivek, QuestionPro has a set of “sister” companies that you’ve helped create. Tell us about them.

Vivek: Well, even though we try to be humble, I must say that when I look at the family of companies that I’ve helped build, lead, and grow, I think first of my incredible partners in crime- the team. QuestionPro has people all across the globe- who think about the mothership as well as Ideascale and TryMyUI, both lead by incredible friends and leaders. There are so many synergies in the QP family of companies and each has grown magnificently. We know it’s a combination of hard-work and luck so every day we thank our customers and amazing associates for their contributions to this.

Marketing Darwinism: What are some of the factors that aren’t captured in the numbers? Is there some sort of secret sauce?

Vivek: Well, I could say it’s our culture but so many organizations have great cultures. Frankly, I think it’s our business model which has always been predicated on ease of adoption, intense listening, and frictionless service. When your mantra is that you have to shave all friction out of the company in order to do what’s right- at the right price- for tens of thousands of customers then you’ll be successful irrespective of other factors. Well, you do need a great product too!

Marketing Darwinism: How does Marketing fit into your growth planning?

Vivek: Throughout our history, we’ve oscillated on this question but now, we take marketing and the marketing community incredibly seriously. In fact, my mentor is a marketer who lives in the Seattle area and he has always beat me up on this matter. We’ve realized that great marketers think about audiences and experiences and worry a bit less about the numbers and ROI. They come from audience and experience. So, yes, we are investing heavily in marketing and it has paid dividends.

Marketing Darwinism: Any parting thoughts?

Vivek: Well, I want to leave your readers with just a few thoughts. First, please check out QuestionPro and send me feedback if we don’t wow you. Second, for my fellow founders out there, build the company you want to build not the company that others put pressure on you to build. Finally, simplify always. Nothing else works.

Here’s a great video of me and Aseem Badshah the CEO of Socedo, a social media lead generation tool, talking about 7 ways Blockchain can transform marketing! We hope you enjoy it …

Two of my very good friends, Romi Mahajan of the KKM Group and Aseem Badshah of Socedo shot a video discussing our most recent blog post on the Return of the Marketing Mix. Ultimately, marketing is a mix of channels, tactics, and bets, of which some are measurable and some are not. It’s time for marketers to reclaim their role as engagers, risk-takers, and experimenters!!

In much of industry, the idea of “Digital Transformation” has taken root. At the core of this process is the need to replace antiquated and “slow” processes, products, and service offerings with agile, automated, and “smart” processes, products, and service offerings. In addition, digital transformation is about the inclusion of all potentially interested parties (employees, partners, customers, influencers) in the creation and execution of new lines of business and innovation.

While the concept of Digital Transformation has been around in the entire Internet Age, necessary elements have indeed been missing. First, not always were the underlying technologies ready for “prime-time.” What works in manicured and controlled environments doesn’t always work at scale or in fast-moving, instant-decision environments. Second, the culture of transformation has not always been present with many forces internally and externally being focused on the power of the status quo. Third, Digital Transformation requires the foregrounding of certain parts of the organization at the perceived expense of others parts. With these constraints, the prevailing scenario for transformation has been characterized by the gap between intention and execution.

Of the organizational barriers that impede the progress for Digital Transformation, the schism between IT and Business is perhaps the most profound. Business users in organizations are governed by entirely different imperatives than IT teams are. While business changes, roles and cultures do not always keep up with the dynamism of business models and the directives that come out of the C-suite.

Business users are defined by the “Power of NOW!” while IT is chartered with issues of security, governance, compliance (and at times control) that if applied in the canonical methodology, are antagonistic to the time-based agility that has come to define modern business.

This happens even when IT teams and Business teams are friendly and believe in the same overall set of goals. This is the result of technology configurations that were not flexible or adaptive, two defining characteristics of true Digital Transformation.

When IT and Business are in Harmony, agility is possible in a way that does not run afoul of the core mandates of IT. When IT and Business are in structural harmony, all of the manic energies of the organization can be trained on the same end goal.

Running IT like a Business and running Business in an IT-native world are keys to Digital Transformation. At stake here is the ability of organizations to navigate the shoals of modernity and complexity, in which every expanding pools of data and ever-growing avenues of expansion characterize business.

As such, Digital Transformation is the ultimate expression of IT-Business Harmony and IT-Business Harmony is the starting point of real Digital Transformation.

Guest post by:
Romi Mahajan, KKM Group
Srini Venugopal, Epicor Software