The Hard Work In HOW
Di McIntosh, DBZ’s Head of Delivery talks about her role, not taking shortcuts and being clear on HOW.
How long have you worked at DBZ?
I started working for DBZ in June 2019. I have worked on numerous consulting projects with Dana Teahan (DBZ Founder and CEO) since 2011 in various industries and joined the MarTech space in 2019.
What is your role?
As Head of Delivery, I am responsible for ensuring that the project teams successfully deliver marketing technology projects across a broad portfolio of clients, working as efficiently and effectively as possible by adhering to the DBZ Delivery Methodology. I promote a culture of business innovation and continual improvement across the business ensuring the project teams continue to grow and develop, both personally and professionally.
What’s your career background?
I started my career in banking (Commercial and Private) and transitioned from there into becoming a business analyst - Project and Program Manager implementing large CRM and business transformation projects in these environments. I have also spent time as, Head of Operations and now as Head of Delivery for DBZ.
What have your observations been in helping customers of DBZ with achieving their personalization journey?
I have worked with clients such as Bupa Health Insurance, Cashrewards, Countdown NZ, Endeavour Drinks Group, and ING Australia, on various project initiatives helping them to build out and implement solutions that in time will enable them to achieve personalisation at scale. These initiatives involved campaign management process remediation/transformation, and implementation of various platforms involving CDPs, CEPs and, MRM/DAM.
I believe that achieving personalisation at scale is a complex journey and consists of several components, combining people, process, and systems in a way that enables organisations to achieve their strategic goals incrementally, whilst at the same time ensuring their customers are receiving personalised communications at the right time and in the right channel.
In my experience, there are no shortcuts.
It’s costly and complex and you need to have the end goal in mind and the roadmap of HOW to get there.
I know the word HOW is baulked at. In my opinion, the reason for this is that it implies a lot of hard work, cost and in most cases is seen as unnecessary.
We automatically assume all stakeholders have an in-depth knowledge of their processes and requirements, these are well documented and understood, and they know how to leverage technology to achieve the outcomes sought. If that was true, then configuring systems, integrating these into the processes that use them, would be easy and less costly.
Well not so! Too many times I have seen very glamorous power point presentations that tell everyone WHAT needs doing, and models that promise a return on investment that will make you starry eyed and ready to rake in the dollars, only to be disappointed when the true cost, time, complexity and lack of ROI is revealed.
One could use the analogy of building a puzzle in the case of a roadmap. Without a border (framework) and the right number of pieces (components), one will never have the complete view. You can start building without the border in place but the easiest way to progress is by building the border first, grouping similar pieces together and finally cobbling these together to complete the picture. In the marketing sense, without a strategy, customer communication framework and best practice campaign management process in place, clearly articulated goals and benefits with success measurement criteria agreed and documented, it’s not possible to achieve personalisation at scale.
It is equally important to ensure that all stakeholder groups involved in building this capability are singing off the same hymn sheet!
Easier said than done.
I have also noticed that the understanding between the IT Development Teams, Vendors who sell platform capability and the Marketing Teams, are not aligned. This is not helpful and, in most cases, proves to be detrimental to outcomes and costly.
To maximise and leverage technology capability, these teams need to be co-located, with representatives from each area. Having a clear roadmap with goals defined, a good understanding of what the other teams are doing, a common understanding of definitions and terminology used, processes undertaken and how these are brought together to achieve the outcome sought, is vital.
In my experience it is very rare to find these disparate teams working side by side, attending joint meetings to understand or educate themselves to ensure better outcomes.
The projects that have been most successful are ones where this integration and interconnectedness and understanding of these disparate teams have been achieved.
Personalisation needs to be lead by the business, with technology underpinning and supporting the execution of marketing communications and processes as and when needed.