Matt Preschern is Executive Vice President and Chief Marketing Officer of HCL Technologies, a US$6.0 billion global information technology services company. As the company's CMO, Matt leads all marketing functions including global business and strategic marketing, sales enablement and corporate communications. HCL Technologies has over 106,000 employees around the globe, competing in 31 countries and growing rapidly.
Matt Preschern, CMO of HCL Technologies
Preschern has over two decades of leadership experience in marketing and strategic business development. Here are 11 lessons based on my conversation with Preschern:
1. Employees are the 'idea-preneurs' are core to your value system - Preschern believes that the authenticity of your brand must be reflected through your employees. Many companies adopt an ethos of customer centricity but HCL clearly recognizes the value of employees. You cannot build a great company without great employees.
2. A strong sales culture delivers a brand promise that values relationship beyond the contract - "The relationship with our customers truly begins when we signed the contract. It doesn't end there," said Preschern. Growth companies know that the marriage experience must be better than the courtship experience. To achieve this objective, a culture of customer-centricity is key, where every single employees is trained, empowered and accountable for delivering to your company's brand promise.
3. Growth is not a given and requires introspective mindset - regardless of your growth trajectory, healthy businesses continuously ask if they are doing the right thing, or moving fast enough. Preschern points to healthy skepticism and challenging of the status quo which he believes is pervasive throughout the HCL culture.
4. Your company culture is your company's brand - The CEO of HCL Technologies Anant Gupta believes that culture is an extension of the brand. As the CMO, Preschern is cultivating a culture that is creative, challenges the status quo, moves fast, celebrates passionate custodians of the brand, and actively promotes doing work that fuels growth and accountability.
5. Welcome to the age of the empowered customer - Today's customers are more knowledgeable and connected than ever before. When our sales and marketing organizations interact with customers, they must know that the customer is more informed about our company, culture and products than we may expect. The role of the CMO and marketing is to ensure that the company is as informed about our customers.
6. Technology is the great equalizer - Preschern believes that we are no longer in the B2B or B2C era, but rather the individual-to-individual (I2I) networked age. Most have access to technology and the reach and scale is global. The use of CRM technology, marketing automation and analytics is enabling marketers to personalize the content, delivery across preferred channels and execute will high degree of precision. The rate and pace of innovation combined with how empowered your customers are lends itself to a very different culture of how we need to market and interact," said Preschern.
7. Digital marketers must embrace a culture of experimentation - Preschern believes that companies must embrace a culture of experimentation, or a culture that is comfortable with 'failing fast' - which means you have to experiment and if it works you scale it, and if it doesn't work you move away -and you do it better again, right - in order to compete in today's market. To do this well, Preschern points to the need for co-innovation and collaboration with customers and partners.
8. The empowered customer expects a digital experience across all engagement points - It could be your call center, your company web page, your billing department, a Google search, or your marketing campaigns - customers will expect a consistent experience and the same brand promise at every single touch point. Every prospect and existing customer has access to technology and an expectation of a much shorter news cycle. And the experience dimensions extends far beyond the product itself. "If you have a product that you know is selling great, but your customer support and call center is not working when you have an issue, then the customer experience will actually land itself to some level of reaction," said Preschern. In the social and hyper connected economy, companies have to continuously improve the product and service experience. The goal is to convert customer to an advocate and it all starts with delivery a great customer experience.
9. Every employee is a digital employee - Gartner recently noted that IT no longer holds a monopoly on IT and that today's employees possess a greater degree of digital dexterity. Preschern believes that digital business transformation is not just about use of mobile, social, cloud and analytics solutions, but also about the entire ecosystem of connections (systems and people), starting with employees. The employees are the engine that fuels digital digitization of business.
"Are you giving your employees access to the right systems? Are you training employees in the right way? Are you giving them the leeway to interact properly with peers, partners and customers? This is an ongoing journey and not about simply deploying a new CRM system or changing the web experience," said Preschern.
10. Digital transformation is not about deployment of a point solution - A digital enterprise is more than having a mobile app, a web portal, social CRM or a community, and other use of interactive technologies. Preschern points to Uber and Airbnb as examples of a digital enterprise. Without ownership of assets, these companies re-engineered the user experience using digital across the entire value chain and ecosystem. Uber looked at drivers, cars and pricing and then created an end-to-end service delivery using mobile, social, cloud computing and analytics. Digital is more than front-end customer interactions. Preschern defines digital transformation as interconnection of customer facing front applications with back-end systems, supported by well trained and empowered employees who are motivated to delight customers.
11. Advice to CxOs: Digital business transformation is a team sport - As a team sport, you have to work across silos, knowing that your customers care less about the different lines-of-business within your company; they simply care about a consistent user experience based on the brand promise. "They're looking for the experience that is hopefully seamless and it gives them exactly what they're looking for. Collaboration between marketing, sales, and IT is more important than ever before," said Preschern.
To learn more about large scale marketing and the importance of digital business transformation, you can watch the full interview with Matt Preschern here. Please join me and Michael Krigsman every Friday at 3PM as we host CXOTalk -- connecting with thought leaders and innovative executives who are pushing the boundaries within their companies and their fields.