Marketing as innovation function (ep17)
INTRO:
Our today’s Chairtalk will give you insight how the marketing department can be an innovation generator for a company that has 14 sub companies in its system and has an extremely diversified portfolio that has grown in 25 years long history.
About this we talked with Aleksandar Vrastonjic Gligorijevic, CMO of Telegroup.
N: So, the Telegroup is, as I said, started as a family company, and now it’s a pool of companies that is working under one umbrella. My question to you is how challenging is to lead marketing in a system like this and how you juggle between strategic and operational functions? And, by that, you can be a generator of innovation.
Aleksandar: Well, that’s a great question, thanks. Well, I’ll have to go back a few steps first and when the company started itself, it was a clear, you know, duo between the two founders, my step dad and my mother. And basically, she was the person who was, you know, dealing with marketing and dealing with everything that’s coming around the curve. And he was the straight operations guy, making sure that everything runs smoothly, and that the deadlines are met, and that the projects are being done and performed well to the satisfaction of everybody.
So her shoes are the ones that I filled last year when I became CMO of Telegroup System. Although, I am a software engineer and my passion for technology has driven me, you know, mostly from technology to sales and then now to marketing. So I’m a little bit out of my comfort zone but it’s super exciting to be in this field right now because a lot of things are now, you know, as you’re well aware, being done based on data, based on information that is exact concrete and rather less from the gut and from the feeling. But, of course, you have to have that as well. Although, we are now empowered by all these tools and this world that is familiar to me, it has been familiar to me since my high school basically.
And so, you know, coming to today where we are doing marketing in Telegroup in such a way that we have been doing it for so long, one part of the team is basically focused on what’s going to come tomorrow, what are our business development opportunities, which markets are we going to target, which customers, where are those technological trends that are driving the industry forward and everything. And the other half of the team, well, let’s say, this entire team does the same thing but the half of their time they’re doing this and the other half of the time they’re doing standard marketing operations, PR, we’re creating content, we’re trying to, we’ll try we’re doing what we think we do best and that is delivering this unique and consistent customer experience for all our customers across the globe no matter where they are, having the touchpoint with Telegroup as the system.
Because obviously, as you said, we are a group of companies, a system of 14 different companies. We have a very different portfolio depending on the region which we cover and in that sense what we basically sell and what our value proposition to the customer is, is Telegroup as an image, you know. And this image needs to be projected very well and on time, and in place, and relevant to the customer depending on who they are, where they are at what point. So, this is our very big issue that we in operations wise need to tackle every day and need to revisit, and this is a continuous game. So, to answer your question, this is something that we are very proud of the fact that we see marketing as more than just advertising, that is mostly, you know, understood by. And that a lot of it is actually about the standards of creating the product depending on the customer needs, creating the service depending on the customer needs, being in touch with this customer, understanding what they need, and, of course, having a lot of engineers like myself and technological engineers, communications. In the team, in our marketing team helps a lot because otherwise, we wouldn’t be able to understand the customer so well.
And, so, one part of us, of our team discusses with the customer and then we come in with the sales guys and the pre-sales guys, and the tech team, and then they do their business and the funnel they’re part of the story whereas we continue on trying to find new and exciting things to do and, you know, new customers and, as I said, new geographical locations on the globe where we can work and where we can provide some value to the customer. So that’s mostly it.
N: I will go back to the customers later in terms of innovation, but I want to ask you, regarding your department, how you approach innovation itself? How do you decide what to do next or where to go next?
Aleksandar: Well, as you know, innovation, there’s a lot of approaches to innovation. You can copy something that works somewhere else and try to make it work in your own environment or setting. This is sometimes possible but sometimes it is not, and I think, thinking that that is the only way to go is a problem because something that works in Poland or Czech Republic may not work in Serbia. Although we are a similar market.
Then you can incrementally improve your own existing products and services through different innovations which is a normal way of life cycle of a product or service. So, these things we, of course, do depending on the feedback that we get from our customers, you know, the rate of success is defined by the rate of accepting feedback so this is something that we try to constantly have an ear on the ground on what’s new, what the customers want and what their needs are. And also there’s a whole part of you navigating the unknown, you know, the trying to find out what our customer wants or, let’s say, what their business requires because sometimes what they want and what the business requires is not the same thing. And so discovering…
N: Or what they think they want.
Aleksandar: Exactly, yeah! Because, you know, a lot of times you are in a position where you come to the customer and they already have solved their problem themselves, or they think they have, and they’re just asking you to do the work for them. And then when you start asking tricky questions and when you start bringing them back to the drawing table and trying to discover whether the problem they have identified is the origin problem or is there something else behind it, sometimes they get offended with this and they’re like, you’re not going to tell me how to do my job.
But the smarter ones, they actually listen, and this is from our experience, we have some customers that we are very proud of, that have gone through the entire uh journey with us, so they have brought their top management on the table with us, so we bring our consultants to it, so this is our innovation team. So these consultants, they are versed in technology but they’re also versed in business and with the top management of the customer and a cross-functional team of their people from different departments, we go through a series of workshops and masterclasses where we try to identify the real problem. And once this problem is identified and the goals are set, then it’s a matter of discussing whether what kind of resources we have at our disposal to be able to solve this problem and then to go onward and onward.
This also gives us an opportunity to join partnerships. I strongly believe that partnerships are the way to go for tomorrow because you, with your company, you can bring us a certain type of clients that we have something to offer to, but without you, we wouldn’t be able to. And maybe you are B2C, we are B2B, so we can support you but there is a joint interest in reaching new real estate if we do things together, not us as a service to you, rather in a cross-functional team, your guys, our guys or whatever. So this is something that is a crucial step for us, if we are to go into that direction, is to gain the trust of the customer and to make them our partner. And this is the way our entire market evolves because our suppliers are becoming our competition, our yesterday’s customers are becoming our partners today when jointly we are getting out of our system integration field of industry and trying to become something else, like change into a, from a caterpillar to a butterfly.
You know, trying to completely change our way of doing things or where we are without forgetting who we were and what our core business is. And that is actually the reason why we have so many different companies in the system because, you know, throughout the years, the last 25 years we have managed to get into various different types of industries, businesses, mostly based on communication, mostly based on getting people to connect safely, to improve automate and, so with this underlying thread of telecommunications, we have managed to get into cybersecurity, we’ve managed to get into agriculture, smart agriculture, we’ve managed to get into finance. So these are different types of industries and you cannot have those teams under the same roof all the time. You just create a lot…
N: It’s a different way of thinking, a different perspective, different type of personality, right?
Aleksandar: Absolutely. So that is the reason why we have, we are very proud of our core team that does the telecommunications, the access networks, the heavy stuff, the hard work that has to be done for us to be able to even have 5G tomorrow. But then we also have these teams that provide services over this network that we have introduced to our customers.
I like to make this joke sometimes, but it’s true, we’ve, for a lot of people in the region here in Balkans region, we have introduced telephones for the first time in their houses, in their businesses, we have introduced internet for the first time, some of them even electricity and, you know, once we’ve already provided you all this infrastructure, now we’re providing you the services because who knows you best. And so we help a lot our customers, our business customers, the operators, the large incumbent utility companies, etc. We help them to be able to run faster basically and adapt faster, and they by themselves would be a lot prone to disruption without companies such as us. And we help them be more agile, be faster, respond to customer’s requests faster, and thus, we also get to go into different ventures, and, well, successfully get new businesses from the ground.
N: My next question was how to involve the customer’s innovation process but you already answered this and it’s a good thing that you answer it, but let’s move from there to… I want to ask you what are the contingencies and the trade-offs with different types of involvement with the customers? Can you give me some examples of different involvements that you have with your customers?
Aleksandar: Well, in the innovation process you mean?
N: Yeah.
Aleksandar: All right. Well, some examples would be that, as I said, one of them would be when we jointly come up with the top management and we do the whole thing, the whole shebang, whereas this is not the case sometimes, and sometimes you have to work with what you’ve got. And so sometimes you only get a piece of the company, on the other end, sometimes you don’t get the buy-in that’s necessary. And we are aware of the fact that this is necessary but you cannot just say to the customer, you got to be here, you have to work with, as I said, with what you’ve got. So we have some examples where we’ve done, we’ve been brought in to like digitize a part of the process at some point for one customer, and essentially this would bring them, let’s say, a 10 or 15 fold sales funnel that they would otherwise have in their daily business. And when this boils down, it boils down to two people. And these two people have been, let’s say, when they’re very good, they can do 50 requests per week and this digitalized process would bring them 500 requests per week.
N: So you change the business but business itself it’s not ready for a change?
Aleksandar: Exactly. And when you point this out, then usually what you would get is, ok, we’re stopping this project for now and then we’ll come back to you once we’re ready. And so this is something that is one example of the trade-off when you don’t get everybody on at the table in the first place. On the other hand, it is also, it’s normal for us to make mistakes and we sometimes, we push for change somewhere where the local, let’s say, politics of the organization, the culture, etc. is just not ready for change. And we have trained ourselves well in the past to identify these moments and to say, sorry but we can’t help you right now. So this is something that for me personally has been a challenge because I don’t like to say, no, I don’t like to… Actually, I have a big problem with saying no, that’s how I got here. You asked me and I was like, yeah, sure.
N: Hope you’re going to enjoy this.
Aleksandar: But, yeah, that is something that it’s a problem but you got to learn how to say and when to say no to the customer, sorry.
N: Earlier you told me that it’s like a fluid state that somebody today is your customer and tomorrow is competition. Can you involve even competitors in the innovation process?
Aleksandar: Sure. Actually, this is something that we’ve been doing for the past, well, ever since. We have for some unknown reason but I think that this lies in our founders and their imaging reputation in the world of business in our region, we have always been a name of trust. And I can tell you there’s been a lot of moments where it was necessary to involve the competition in some sort of business somewhere in order to be able to tackle it properly. And it was the case that the competition would say, if Telegroup is involved then ok, then we’re in, if they’re not in, then we’re not because we don’t trust you, guys, the other ones. And this is something we’re very proud of.
Actually, this is not an innovative thing that we’ve done but recently we have done a joint CSR activity with some of our competition. And we’ve helped some very great kids, very exciting kids go to a robotics contest in the US, this was a couple of years ago, actually, now that I remember. But this is something that started as an idea of one of the guys from the competition and then they rang us up and they were like, ok, we’ve got this idea but we need your help and maybe we should do this together. And I personally, I’ve worked in, as I said, in our direct competition and I’ve only had good experiences from that. I’ve kept a very good connection there and we understand each other, we understand the process, we understand that the market is fixed basically for us in the system integration sector and, if we are not doing products of our own, which in the core business we aren’t, we are just doing services, then we need to help each other sometimes. And this is something that where you know these are the opportunities where we can do things together, so I’m very hopeful that sometime in the future maybe you’ll see a joint activity of two big names such as us and somebody else in the market coming out with a product that will be our own startup or something like that. Probably with a customer on as a third party.
N: That sounds very exciting.
Aleksandar: Well, wait and see.
N: Ok, I wanna just touch base with your team and how you guys organized to be able to innovate, to generate innovations?
Aleksandar: All right, well, it all goes from the top. We have our goals, we have, we follow OKRs, that’s our way of doing things and making sure that we remain inspired. Also, this is a way of putting a measure to something that is not very directly measurable in the sales department as they have. So it was very important for me to introduce this system when I became the CMO because I really wanted to have my team feel the satisfaction of doing the work and actually seeing the results of their work. And seeing other people appreciating this, other people within the company, within the system. Because it wasn’t just about us being effective, it was about everybody else knowing that we are effective. And you can’t do that by on opinion-based, because everybody has an opinion and…
N: You need to measure it.
Aleksandar: You need to measure it, yes. And you have to be very transparent with this. And so what we do is we do our goals and key results at the beginning of the year, well, at the end of the previous year, then we published them to all our inner clients which would be the directors, the sales directors, the delivery teams… So we publish this, we tell, we call them to help us identify things that we have maybe missed or things that are completely unnecessary, that they see, they deem unnecessary to justify it and when they come back with this feedback, then we readjust our goals and then, and key results, and initiatives, and this is something that we do on every three months. So, this is something that the more we do it, the better we get at it, and keeps the flow going, keeps the information going between. Because one of our biggest roles in the system, as a marketing team, is actually to have everybody else know what everybody else is doing. So that’s a, it’s kind of quite a challenge but sometimes you need to talk to this guy, and you need to talk with this guy, and then you tell this guy to talk with that guy, and etc… And this is something that only we can do because we are an organization, a part of the company that is actually doing business with everybody else in the system. Everybody else is just working with their own geographical or industry sector, or limitations so that’s so to speak. But we try to perform what intelligent people do and this is gain insights from one context and then use it in another. And this is something that we are very proud of and this is something that keeps us going every year.
N: So, I know about one very specific innovation that the Telegroup generated lately and it’s in the realm of precise agriculture. Can you tell me a bit more about that? I’m sure that our viewers are going to find that very interesting.
Aleksandar: Well, thanks for the opportunity to talk about this because I think that is something that supersedes Telegroup as a company, this is something that it might be a little bit presumptuous but I think that is a ticket out of the slowly deteriorating state of agriculture in this country. Why? Because most of the things in the past have been done by hand and written down, and everything is in the head of the key person out there who knows everything that’s been done on the land and who is the absolute, godfather of everything. Of course, we are transitioning now in the business, well, in the business sense, you know, companies that have been founded in the 90s when it was possible, are now transferring their businesses to the second generation.
This is the same thing that is happening with the production of the agricultural land and we have younger generations coming in and they want tools, they want something that will help them manage their infrastructure better, manage their assets better, and this is what we started. We started as a, basically as an app for logging what you’ve done on the field as an agricultural producer. And it has since developed into something that is a multi-pronged platform called Agrolife and which can be served to the Government, to the Government sector, and also to the enterprises. So, we have like two different products but it’s part of the same platform, basically. And this is something that we are very proud of. We’ve spent a lot of time, a lot of resources in the last 4 or 5 years working in Agrolife, trying to and successfully positioning it as a solution for local municipalities here in the region, in Serbia, in Bosnia, and Montenegro.
We have a, I think, about 20 or something, 20 municipalities, which is about 10.000 users, which are every day logging what they’re doing on the field in the app and on the platform. And, on one hand, this is something that through a mobile app is what our farmers use and, on the other hand, is something that through the web app and through the back end it was what the municipalities ministries used to actually take care of the land and make sure that what’s happening is actually what they want to happen. And because there is a certain flow of products that are, let’s say, of crops that you need to follow once when you’re producing a certain agricultural product. Which means that if, you know, if you have grown corn then after that you have to grow something else which will be compatible and which will renew the land, it won’t use the same type of minerals that the corn uses, etc. And this is very important in field production. And, so, our idea was first to tackle this and have a, let’s say, have a digitalized historical database of what has been done before on the land and what we’re doing now.
After that, we’ve become interesting for partners and IBM came to us when they purchased the weather channel and they managed to offer us to switch their cloud, so we have a solution now that is fully in the IBM cloud and integrated with their IBM services, weather services. So, through the platform, now you have seasonal weather forecasting which is very important. So, not just day to day, but seasonal.
Then we have started working with the companies that actually provide you satellite imagery and these satellite images depending on the frequency that you need, and depending on where you have your land is very important for keeping the ear to the ground on what’s going on and possibly preventing something bad from happening to your crops. So, this is something that came up as, let’s say, a second upgrade. Then after that, we’ve started partnering with an Austrian company that creates sensors, very various different types of sensors. And we have just recently finished the project with the NALED here and German… It’s the German agency for, I apologize, but I forget what the actual name is in english. And so with them, we have covered the full regional project of implementing these meteo stations, weather stations in Serbia and locally farmers are now able to access these weather stations through the app. So, we’ve integrated their system with our system and it provides you with some information potentially what can happen if the rain is falling then you can expect a certain number of bad things happening to your crops that are outdoors, etc. And this is a system that can now, it is integrated in life and can perform and inform you of these warm you basically all these potential threats that are happening and depending on what the weather conditions are. So, this is, let’s say, our one stop-shop, for now, a platform for agriculture and we’re also now going into indoor production.
So, greenhouses, of course, this is where we’re not talking about crops anymore, but now, we’re talking about fruit and vegetables, something that is much more profitable, but also is a lot of, well, it demands a lot of attention, a lot of manual work, and a lot of that can be automated. So, now we have a small spin-off from our mother product which is called Agrobyte, which is a greenhouse smart system that it has like a turnkey solution to automating your greenhouse operations. So, with that, we have covered the outdoor and the indoor production and now we’re slowly moving to vineyards, we’re moving to livestock, essentially everything that produces food. We also have the, I think it’s called the green seal, so it basically allows you that if you follow certain rules through the app, you and, of course, can certify that, then you are certified organic producer which is, of course, very important and provides you with the clear way of showing where the origin of the food comes from. And now we are in talks with some foreign partners as well to tackle the European market with this and help our producers here become, have more access to foreign markets, become more competitive on them and essentially raise the productivity levels.
N: So, interesting times are coming, right?
Aleksandar: Yeah, definitely.
N: And, since our today’s episode is about how marketing function innovate, where is the marketing function in this whole story? How are you guys from the marketing department involved in this innovation?
Aleksandar: Well, you know, it’s not just about having the product. You have to formulate the value proposition for the end customer, for the various customers that you do. As I said, we have something that we offer for the Governments, we have something that we offer for the enterprises, not all enterprises are the same, some have land, some have distributed land. So, actually, working with the dev teams, working with the management of our sub-companies, we help them formulate their value proposition, their message to the company, to their clients. After that and in hand with that, we help them discover new tech, basically, new geographical locations where they can provide their service on a much better rate than they can currently. We open up various partnerships that they can give them new real estate, that they can partner with. So, we are essentially their recon, you know. The recon team that goes in front of the full army that clears the fog of war and shows you where the potential land is, or where the potential river is. And then comes back and shares all this information with the mother-ship.
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