How can entrepreneurs get ready now for the future on digital platforms like Uber Eats and Amazon?

The future of business is on a platforms like Uber Eats, Amazon or in China Taobao or JD.com Even in the B2B segment trading platforms and market places are transforming how companies can find, market and close deals. The question is how can an entrepreneur compete in these hyper commercial environments where proximity is no longer a condition of success?  Arvind Murali spends his  days as Chief Data Strategist at Perficient on "Why & How" Organizations can become Digitally competitive using Data & AI and how to get there quickly.  We talk about the importance of content, demonstrating transactions and where AI will take us. 

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Transcript

Arvind Murali: 0:00

This is going to be our future. You can be in agriculture, you can be in technology space. It does not matter. Right. Digital economy is going to be the future of any country in the world. That is why platform is such an important topic to have now whether you're a small business, whether you're a large business, you need to think about the platform approach. How do you use information about your customers effectively and more importantly, ethically? So that you derive that personalized message to your customers.

Jim James: 0:30

Hello and welcome to this episode of the UnNoticed show today. I'm delighted to have joining me Arvind Murali, who is the Chief Data S trategist with Perficient Arvind. Thank you for joining me all the way from Texas today.

Arvind Murali: 0:42

Glad to be here, Jim, glad to be here

Jim James: 0:45

You've got a double master's. I think

Arvind Murali: 0:47

the first master's was in science and the second master's was MBA.

Jim James: 0:51

so you obviously get data, but what we're going to talk about today is data and platforms and how business owners, entrepreneurs can make the most of getting onto platforms. Because if they're not on a platform like Uber eats or Amazon, they may not have a business. So with your background at Perficient, can you tell us how can they get noticed by these big platform operators?

Arvind Murali: 1:14

Sure. Sure. great question, Jim. So let's talk about the evolution of platform first, right? I won't take more than two to three minutes to explain it. So back in the eighties and nineties software and hardware companies dominated the world. Right. So think about Intel or Wintel think about Apple, Microsoft. These are the companies that basically had both software and hardware, software and or hardware that are upfront right. And very popular now in the nineties. There was this new family of businesses. They're small companies called Netflix and Amazon that nobody knew of. They started. Right. And basically their offering was how can I make e-commerce or e anything as an offering as a internet based company. That's how they started their business. Of course, I don't have to tell you today. They dominate the world. Right. in the two thousands, these new social media companies started popping up. So these are Facebooks, LinkedIn, Twitter, all of these guys, right? They said, all we are doing is we are inviting you to participate in our platform, but you can talk to your friends. You can do all of that, but use our platform to talk to your friends and families. So this whole social media revolution started in the two thousands. We're here now. Right now it's the age of platforms. So the simple example is Uber is the largest taxi company in the world. They own zero taxis. Airbnb is the largest real estate company in the world. And they don't have much real estate at all, if that much right. They use the power of platform. And then look at Alibaba. Alibaba is China's largest platform, right? Essentially the digital economy is driving the platforms to be extremely popular. Now, 30, 40 years from now, we'll be talking about blockchain. Which is very real. the value of NFTs and the cryptocurrencies are slowly but surely popping up in the mainstream. So blockchain is a bunch of platforms that is going to talk to each other. Yet you will know from a digital asset standpoint where that conversation originated, this is going to be our future. You can be in agriculture, you can be in technology space. It does not matter. Right. Digital economy is going to be the future of any country in the world. So that is why platform is such an important topic to have. Now, whether you're a small business, whether you're a large business, you need to think about the platform approach.

Jim James: 3:44

Now, what does that mean for the company that's starting up or mid size from a marketing and getting noticed perspective because presumably you've got to get approved by the platform to be in the platform. That's the first stage. Can you just take us through that then? Arvin. Yeah. If you're a small business, right? What are some of the things you need to think about? If you want to participate in the platform, you don't need to be the platform that's once in a lifetime, these kinds of companies show up. Right. but if you want to be a part of a platform, think about what value proposition you offer. Right. Say for example if you are a company that is a small business, a small shoe company, a retail company that is starting in some remote parts of the United States, then your essential goal is how do I make myself appear in Amazon? Because everybody around you shops in Amazon. Right. So the easiest way is how do I start working with Amazon, the platform? How do I onboard my little company, my little world in Amazon. Now, if you're a restaurant who's starting your number one objective is how do I be a part of Uber eats? How do I make my little startup so accessible to Uber eats so that he will show up anytime when I searched for a let's say a Chinese restaurant, if you're a Chinese restaurant as a startup, and essentially you want to show up as the number one list in the platform. Right. So you're now actually participating in the platform, but what's important. There is you got to have the technology that supports them to operate with you seamlessly. So think about application programming, interfaces, API APIs, easy ways to pay easy ways to interact, easy ways to choose a menu because of course COVID has changed the way we don't have paper menus in the U S anymore. We have digital menus. Right? You scan it. A barcode and then your menu shows up in the phone. So how do I make my customer or how do I make my company so appealing that I show up as the top of the list? Of course the food has to be good too. Don't get me wrong. that's an example of how startups can think about participating in the platform economy. And let's say they've managed to get presumably a a shop or a place on Amazon or Uber eats. How did they muscle in to would be a very crowded space and with your background in the data science and the data analytics start to track how they're doing, because in the old days, you'd maybe have a restaurant in the high street and you could see footfall your number of customers coming in. It sounds like a very different game for the new retailer entrepreneur business owner.

Arvind Murali: 6:20

So if you're a new business owner, the first thing you need to think about is a little bit of empathetical thinking. So if you're in the shoes of Amazon, how do you think about this ecosystem of many, many startups? You're not the only startup, right? how do they think about it? Well, they think about it in two or three different ways. So number one, they look at from an experience perspective, how is a customer's experience with you? The startup. That can be a rating system. That can be the unique value proposition that you offer. The more your rating grows, right? So you start with a one-star and then you go all the way up to five stars. You start with one review, maybe now you have 15,000 reviews. These are all ways that Amazon looks at you and say, and shows up in the top of the list, right? Something called Amazon recommended. Kind of looks at this from an algorithmic standpoint. So this has no human being behind the scenes. This is all machines calculating this, right. And you need to show up in that list. Now, obviously, if you're a startup from day one, you're not going to have 15,000 reviews, but it's always important. You constantly look at your review and you take it very seriously. And then you start doing things that will change the review. If it's bad, number one. Right. Number two. The other one that, that Amazon looks at is the number of transactions that are happening. We're talking about Amazon as one example, but any platform player looks at it similarly, right? so essentially they will. The second thing they will look at is how many transactions are happening in a day and a week and in a month, in a year with your company. The more the transactions happen, the more they will favor you in their list of returns when I searched for some startup, right? So some specific niche area, the same works with Uber, same works with any other platform company. The other thing that they look at is recommendations. What are the three, four, five key words, right? That you offer keywords, meaning again, going back to the Chinese restaurant example, right? I don't remember the menu, but if let's say you are offering a particular type of food best in class, right. Then your keyword should be that anytime when somebody searches for that, you should show up. Just a general Chinese restaurant is not going to help. Some value proposition has to be there. And you got to know what that is to register to these platform vendors. Right? So I think those are the things Jim, that I can think of. if you empathize yourself and put yourself in the shoes of Facebook or Amazon or Twitter, some of these larger players, which you want to be a part of. Right. And the last, but certainly not the least. Content is going to be the driver for this. If you're a startup, the biggest advantage for you is that you need to put a lot of contents. This can be videos about your company. This can be some PDFs and some, little brochures about your company. Put them out there in social media. If you're playing in the space of technology, LinkedIn is an extremely powerful tool, right? If you're blaming the. Social like restaurants and some other value proposition. Facebook is a very powerful tool. They call this process the network effect. So let's say your technology shows up in LinkedIn and I go and just click on it and I press the word like right. I press the like button. My network will then receive a notice that says, Arvin liked this little startup technology company. Let me go and explore it. And then the chain continues. Right. So you got to think about that network effect, and that's why I'm saying don't get disappointed if you don't get too many likes for your contents, keep uploading content in social media. That is a big value driver for these platforms. They have machine learning algorithms that looks for these things.

Jim James: 10:11

So can you give us a case study from Perficient

Arvind Murali: 10:15

yeah. So we don't work with startup companies as much we work with enterprises, but I'll give you a thinking on how an enterprise is actually thinking about becoming a platform themselves. Right? So this is a very large pet adoption company. Essentially what they do is they are the largest, I'm going to say online pet adoption company. Now think about that for a second. I'm the guy who was looking for a pet to adopt for my house. So I go to this platform, this technology, this website, and I look for pets around me. I fill out my name, my address, my phone number, basic information. Five minutes after it. This technology allows me to map all the pets around me that are either in shelters that are either, with the retailers or wherever the pets are. And it will recommend the best pet based on certain. Certifications is the pet, having all the vaccinations is the pet well behaved are the people who own the pet giving good reviews about the behavior is the pet non hypo or hypoallergenic, all of those things, right? And it automatically looks for those patterns. I explained this example in less than two minutes, but the platform takes all of this. This is all pieces of data, right? about the pet adopter. And machine learning marries the two together with a variety of parameters. Right. And essentially this is the technology platform. When you fill up that form saying who you are, you're asking the technology to do some magic behind the scenes and map you the buyer or the adopter to a pet automatically in your circumference. if you say, I need to look for a pet within 50 mile radius. It will automatically take that consideration and give it back to you. Same way Uber works, right? When you look for a taxi, it works the same way. So it's the Uber. I use the word Uberization of the industry, but that's an example to show you the power of platform, right. And they're very serious about it. They've embarked that journey. They're building that platform to make them a very powerful force in the world for pet adoption, not just us.

Jim James: 12:25

Luckily my Beagle is still asleep. He didn't hear any of that. Did you bring Binkie he staying, Hey, stay here on the, and he's bed. He's be in for a walk. So really Arvind then no industry is going to be spared this, as you say, Uberization. what does that mean for like the marketing department of. Enterprises than SMEs because the traditional event management trade show, advertising DM department, what happens to all of those. how does that transition into this new app landscape?

Arvind Murali: 13:00

worldwide industry analysts, Gartner, and Forrester, you know who they are, right. They if you go look at their trends in 2021 the top 10 trends, customer data platform. Is one of their top 10 trends. Now that is their way of saying, Hey, digital marketer, if you want to personalize your interaction and your content to me Arvind Murali based on a certain characteristics of me, the persona, right? you have to use a lot of data and machine learning to get their customer data platforms gives you a platform approach of getting there. Right. So Gartner rated them as the top 10 because they thought it's important for organizations to think about this, to think about this platform approach, right? marketing is in such a sweet spot right now. And it's a very hot field at the moment. Yeah. Right. Absolutely. One of the reasons that is, is because traditionally marketers need lots of data and analytics to do what they do. how do I build a campaign? How do I launch a campaign? How do I find out the success of the campaign? They do a lot of that analysis day in and day out. And that means they need finance data, customer data, transaction, data, inventory, data. They need all of these data assets in the enterprise to do what they do best. Right. And these new breeds of digital marketers who are getting trained in college to start using analytics, they are coming in guns blazing asking for questions on their information. We've launched 15 campaigns the last month, how much will Facebook likes that we have, how many people actually moved on from just liking us to filling a form, to get back. How many of these people converted into a customer? How many of them became loyal customers? And they are advocating about us to their friends and family. They're tracking all of this to create a successful campaign, a very effective campaign. In addition, a marketer has to think about personalized message, right? My shopping patterns off electronics in best buy is going to be different from you. You're going to buy podcast, Mike, and you're going to buy headphones and other things I'm going to go buy iPhones and laptops. So they can't do the same message to you and I, because we're two different people. That's what personalization means, right? They will offer you something unique for yourself based on your pattern of shopping. They will offer me something unique for myself. That's all coming from the platform, right? And the more they offer you, these kinds of personalized contents, you're going to tell your friends, Hey, I love best buy because they're offering me something for me. Not for you. Yeah.

Jim James: 15:33

I've been looking at the platform called Vidyard for example, is really personalization at scale with video. Which is pretty cool. Can you think of any tools that SMEs and an enterprises can use that are off the shelf Arvind that don't need double, master's degrees to use because your average entrepreneur business owner, it doesn't have that gen Z gen X marketing team. Are there some tools that people can use that are relatively simple to manage?

Arvind Murali: 16:04

Just to be completely honest with you. I hate to say it. So Microsoft Excel is still the best tool in the world. Right? Everybody uses Excel. Everybody likes Excel and it's still the largest database in the world. You know, keep it simple. So it's not the tools and technologies that's going to make you effective. It's the kind of information you seek and you gather and you use, that's gonna make you an effective marketer. It's about the data, right? It's not about the tools. There are a number of tools. So Altryx, Tealium Salesforce, Adobe, all of these guys offer you tools that you can use as an effective digital marketer. It's not that it's. How do you use information about your customers effectively and more importantly, ethically? So that you derive that personalized message to your customers.

Jim James: 16:56

I think that's a great point about the ethical. Now we have GDPR here. any advice for companies around GDPR? is it in reality, something that people are being, companies have been prosecuted for or any safeguards that you think people need to put in place?

Arvind Murali: 17:12

data. Privacy is being taken very seriously. so in the U S we use CCPA California consumer protection act, right. which is the GDPR version for the U S right? So data privacy is taken very seriously by every organization. Make sure. You know how you're planning to use the data about your customers before you use them, ask a question, right? Use your company's a data team to ask those kinds of questions. Are, am I using this ethically? Am I using this the right way? and more importantly, am I using this legally as well? Right? So those are the questions you need to ask and it's yes it's a very serious violation. If you get into trouble.

Jim James: 17:54

But just to be clear, you can send out an email one time to people not you. It's just that you're not allowed to keep sending them information. If they have not asked for it. Otherwise people are thinking, how do you start the conversation with people? If you're never allowed to write to them? Unsolicited.

Arvind Murali: 18:09

it's not. So I don't think there's anything wrong in sending an email. Right? So what GDPR, and please don't quote me for it. I'm not a legal guy. but essentially what GDPR says is with your customer's consent, you can send information to them. You can communicate with them the moment your customer does not consent. Don't bother them. Okay. In a nutshell, that's what, in a simplified version. That's what GDPR and CCPA is.

Jim James: 18:36

I think what most people want to know is that they can send information, but they can't be a nuisance. Right. That's the nub of it. I think.

Arvind Murali: 18:44

Exactly.

Jim James: 18:44

Arvind Murali Chief Data S trategist with Perficient thank you so much for sharing, especially on about this concept of the platform. That's really thought provoking. If you want to find out more about you and the work you do, how can they find you?

Arvind Murali: 18:59

So I'm very active in LinkedIn. you can reach me out. You can add me at LinkedIn. You can also find me in Proficient Website. I believe Jim, you'll put all of that in the show notes.

Jim James: 19:10

Arvind thank you so much for joining me on the unnoticed show.

Arvind Murali: 19:13

Thank you for having me, Jim, it's a pleasure,

Jim James: 19:16

Absolute pleasure, and very insightful. So we've been listening to Arvin Murali. Who's a results driven chief data strategist with Proficient. And that's proficient.com and all those show notes as always a few to read. Thanks again for joining me on this episode of the unnoticed. And I wish you, in the meantime, the best of health, a profitable business, and that if you're going to be marketing your business, do you think about the data? Because that really is where the value is going to lie for your business. Thank you for joining me.