Google and Optimizely: Sneak peek at an AI powered future

Hear from Google Cloud’s Dr. Ali Arsanjani on the possibilities of generative AI for digital marketing and how Google Cloud and Optimizely are partnering to help businesses use AI to make data-driven decisions and scale their digital experiences.

• Responsible AI for the enterprise
• Use cases that are driving Optimizely and the market
• The future of AI and the changing technical landscape

Transcript

Alright.

Hello, everyone. It's our first breakout session. Who's excited?

Right? Here we go. Here we go. So you are in the session. Just as a reminder, if you didn't read the, you know, deck already here up on the screen, anticipating the future of b to b commerce, top trends and insights.

That'll be our topic for today's breakout session. I am Tina Nelson. I'm a product strategy director at Optimisley.

I am joined virtually.

You were probably like, wait, there's two names on this slide. There's one of you. Nicole Wilburton is joining me virtually. So I have a few videos that you'll get to see of her throughout today's conversation, but she is the digital product leader director at Polaris.

So you'll hear a little bit of, Polaris's story through today's conversation as well.

Alright. So what are we gonna cover today? We're gonna talk a little bit about market trends. We're gonna spend some time talking about the customer experience. We're gonna talk about omnichannel, and we're also gonna have a conversation about some quick insights as we kind of wrap things up in today's conversation.

So as we start to dive into market trends, we all know that and see firsthand, I'm sure for most of you, a lot of these economic headwinds, right, that are really making growth, from a b to b standpoint challenging, whether it's rising inflation, whether it's the labor challenges that are out there, supply chain disruptions, and frankly, the continued conversation around increased digital expectations.

These are all challenges that I'm sure facing in one way or another. Rising inflation, of course, is all focused on the the rising costs and that market pressure to be competitive In particular, when we talk about pricing, right? We know customers are definitely starting to expect much more transparency from the pricing side of things. We have labor challenges.

We all know that there was, you know, the challenges we had during the pandemic. We've come out of that, right? But we are still having difficulty finding folks to fill, whether it's CSR positions, or sales roles. We've got supply chain disruptions.

I've heard firsthand from customers saying, listen, not being able to predict when we will have proper inventory or materials to build that inventory, is absolutely causing a strain on on organization's revenue streams. And then we've got increased digital expectations, and you're gonna hear a lot about right, is, through all many sessions today. And you've heard about it in the past as well. It's it's a pretty constant. Right? Customers and consumers are expecting more and more and more from all of us as it relates to those digital expectations.

So as we start to think about and dive into market trends, it's really important to take a moment to look at what are the sales looking like for B2B and B2C channels? So B2B has surpassed B2C in e commerce sales in twenty twenty three based on projections, and this trend, of course, is is absolutely expected to remain.

You probably are wondering a little bit about why is there this big growth, or maybe you're already aware. But you're starting to see a lot more B2B organizations, expanding their reach. So as they start to expand their reach, it's starting to bring together a convergence of both the b to b business model, as well as that b to c business model.

This convergence kinda like the Swifty NFL.

Right? What a great time for this convergence to happen?

The interesting thing about this convergence as we talk about even from a market trend standpoint is you think about millennials. And you look at the NFL, the NFL today is an aging demographic frankly. Right? They don't have a ton of millennials super interested in NFL football until Taylor Swift decides to date somebody that's on an NFL football team by the name of Travis Kelsey.

And is very interested. All of a sudden, there are Taylor Swift's football one zero one pages that exist, and we're all happening in the bandwagon. Right? So the NFL has been able to expand their network, and really this convergence is kind of an interesting one as we think about these different models.

I think Travis Kelsey's, Jersey sales went up like four hundred percent or something crazy. It was nuts. Anyway, just an interesting convergence as we we look at current market trends. Right?

So back to business, the the example of another example of convergence, right? Is that we're beginning to see a lot more manufacturing organizations that are b to b focused, of course, that are starting to expand into this middle space. So this middle space might be called eight a all to all. It might be the b to x or b to everyone. It might be this b to b to c, business to business to consumer models.

The the reasons why this convergence is happening So first and foremost, it's all about building relationships.

A lot of you, I I guarantee are are already thinking about this from that mindset, but now expand that mindset. Right? So in today's world, having relationships directly with those customers becomes crucial to your organization, and building a relationship directly with customers increases your chance of keeping loyal customers, right, for your brand.

This convergence, as we talk about, it doesn't always relate directly to a one to one increase in your revenue. It's really about building that loyal customer that you can connect with.

The second part of that and very much related is the customer data side of things. We all know third party data is it's there, but it's it's much less. It's starting to go away. And the the value of first party data is really key. Right? So you know, as we start to gather that first party data, we use that data then to target our communications with customers, and we're able to deliver that personalized experience that they expect because we own that data from a first party standpoint.

Gaining that first party data, is only available if you connect directly with your customers, hence the first party's outside of it.

The other one is is competitive pressure. Right? We know there's more competitive pressure in the market. There's an interest to lean into the middle to gain more opportunity to sell.

B2B companies, though need to really be cautious, and I'm sure many of you are already thinking about this. If you haven't already gone through it, in the potential channel conflicts that you're gonna experience with your current channel base. And then at the end of the day, growing your customer base efficiently, right? It's all about how are we being efficient and effective with growing that.

It's not gonna be a zero to to sixty. Right? It's how do we incrementally grow that in a positive way.

Gartner has an excellent study, that they ran, and it shows that sixty one percent of organizations engaged in both b to b and b to c digital commerce.

So as we talked about already, right? B2B companies are looking for these new revenue channels, but it's often less about driving that revenue and more about expanding that customer relationship.

We know that brands are facing increased competition as well in the digital space.

So as you look at sixty one percent, that's quite a healthy percentage, in this case, of of the survey that was ran. I'm curious, looking at all of you in the audience, with a raise of hands. How many of you today are running both a B2C and a B2B business channel?

It's a good number of you. And for those that didn't raise their hands, are your organizations talking about it? Is it on the table?

So just a few. Yeah.

So when we talk about the sixty one percent, it aligns pretty well with what we just seen in this room. Right? There's a lot of organizations that are really looking to balance both sides of that equation.

There's another Dartner study that is important to share because it starts to talk about what's the impact that b to b organizations can have if they go into the, you know, b to c or d to c market.

So from a current standpoint, it was at fifty six percent. After two years, it's jumped to sixty five. And five years from now, we're looking at seventy six percent impact.

So it's it's pretty, sizable from a positive impact that your organization could gain by looking at the D to C or B to C, model as well.

So as we start to talk about, you know, the convergence of b to b moving into this b to c or d to c realm, One of the best examples we could have is Polaris.

And we're really fortunate, like, as I mentioned, to have Nicole be with us virtually.

So I'm gonna head into a quick video that Nicole's gonna share a little bit of the background of Polaris for those of you who may not be familiar with that brand. And, she's gonna tell a little bit about their story and their their convergent story behind that.

Thanks, Tina. Happy to be here. So for those of you not familiar with Polaris, we are the global leader in Power Sports, driven to help people discover the joy of being outdoors.

Flares was founded in nineteen fifty four in Rosa, Minnesota. So we're coming up on our seventieth anniversary this year, which is pretty exciting. And we serve over one hundred countries across the globe with our product line of off road, on road, snowmobiles, marine, military, and commercial vehicles. All enhanced by our parts, garments, and accessories portfolio.

You may have seen that we were just named most trusted companies this year by newsweek. Which was a result of the evaluation of companies on consumer statements around trust as a customer trust in leadership and trust around employee well-being. So pretty cool.

So jumping into our story, we do have a direct to consumer, business today for our parts garments and accessories catalog.

It's a smaller slice of the pie, but continues to grow. And we didn't always have DUC for our PG and A business. We started on that path back around twenty fifteen.

And even with the set, the dealers are so very much involved with their fulfillment.

And in store experiences like pickup.

And our dealers will continue to play a big role as a critical channel.

Our goal is that customer walks into a dealership knowing they want to buy a Polaris.

And we do this with offering an easy and engaging shopping experience online.

Supported by tools like help me choose inventory search. Get local price, find a dealer, and of course our three d builder. And why this is so important is that many of our dealers are multi line dealers. So if we can help our customers shop and find what they need online.

When they get to the dealership, they aren't even looking at the competition on the floor.

Excellent.

Polaris has done such a great job of building a deep partnership with their dealer network, yet they've been able to gain those direct insights that we've been talking about, right, from directly from their customers as well. They've also had some great ways to engage dealers in that customer's buying cycle based on what Nicole was just describing. Right? It's not about just going direct to consumer, but how do you bring your B2B channel along with you, right, and make them part of that buying cycle.

You know, I think her her very last statement about, you know, having customers, they they expect customers to have done their research before they come into the dealership. So there's no question. They know they wanna buy a Polaris. Right?

But they're buying it from that dealership. So pretty impactful story.

Another example, but let's go the opposite direction. Right? Instead of the b to b channel moving into the b to c, we'll we'll reverse that. Right? Let's think about the b to c channel going into the b to b space. And allbirds is an absolutely excellent example of this as well. I don't know if you guys are familiar with them, but they are focused on sustainable shoes.

So they use a wool fabric that is made specifically for footwear.

Environmental sustainability is a big part of who they are, and they've used that, to really strike a chord with their customers. So they started back in March twenty sixteen, on Kickstarter. Funny enough. And then they used Instagram to promote their product. So it was all about sell direct to the customer. They were trying to raise their own brand awareness using social media, and they went direct to the customer with that.

In February of this year, they made the decision to expand into wholesale as well. So they actually work with three specific retailers. They work with Dicks. They work with Nordstrom, and then they also work with REI. And they were very purposeful about selecting those three retailers.

They wanted to, be mindful of as they enter into the wholesale, you know, market they wanted their strategy to be proactive and deliberate. And their co CEO noted that they wanted to to really focus on partnering with you know, retailers that were in premium locations and that at the end of the day were brand additive. Right? They wanted to raise their brand awareness and broaden their reach.

So that brand awareness has a downstream effect, right, to increasing your revenue, of course, but also their initial goal is really focused on awareness in the market. They're not going out saying we're expecting revenue to increase. They're going out to the market saying we want more people to know about allbirds. That's their main goal.

So when we talk about both the Polaris example and the Allbirds example, it really is all about showing that value and the drivers that this convergence is really bringing and what we're seeing today in the market.

Alright. So let's spend a little bit of time talking about customer expectations.

We know customers today, as they have, probably in the last few years, in particular, have so many different choices. Right? Folks are overwhelmed with the amount of information we're all trying to consume on a daily basis. I mean, I think the status, like, Americans check their phones, like ninety six times or, like, once every ten minutes in a day.

I'm guilty myself. So it's it's pretty common. Right? So the question becomes, how are brands breaking through that noise?

How are you actually getting to that customer to make that engagement happen? And at the end of the day, it's all built on trust. Right? Trust is the table stakes.

Or any business. Trust builds retention. It builds loyalty. And obviously, it builds that growing revenue for your for your business.

So when we talk about customer experiences, and the market trends on connecting with your customers. Building Trust is really a fundamental and foundational goal.

One of the best ways you can build trust is personalization.

Right? In today's world, the way you deliver a personalized, relevant experience with your customers is making it your, you know, you're making it easy to do business with. Right? And when you make it easy to do business with, people are more likely to be sticky. So personalization allows you to really create that brand trust. It's that reason that they are actually interested in staying committed to working with your your business and, you know, the experience that you're giving them.

So when we talk about personalization building trust in in that customer loyalty, also need to do this the right way. Right? So you need to think about both the economic as well as the emotional connection that you're gaining with customers. You know, the economic side could be things that are as simple as improving top line.

It could be cost reductions. It could be product quality.

Scalability, maybe it's innovation.

But the emotional side when you think about your buyers is how do I reduce their anxiety? How do I make this easier? Right? How do I give them, you know, reputational assurance that they can trust?

You're gonna have their back, right, with the decisions that they're making. They're expanding their networks. If you've got social responsibility. Right?

That's become a a big topic in today's world as well. And so, basically, it's all these different aspects about what affects them as a person because those play into their buying process as well. So This quote's kind of an interesting one. Right?

A Breon's loyalty strategy must be about forging and leveraging an emotional emotional connection. With its customers by identifying these key moments in those journeys that are really gonna spark and shape different emotions. And so it's all about meeting your customers where they're at. And really finding that right moment to create that spark.

So when we look at how important personalization really is, B2B personalization is just as important as the B2C personalization side of things. And we we we'd start to talk about the convergence of the business models that we were just speaking about. It applies so much in how we think about personalization. Right?

Your customers aren't going into the office and forgetting their experiences of how they do their shopping for maybe some things at home. Right? That's carrying over. These different, experiences are blending.

And we need to make sure we're we're cognizant of that and and, leveraging that in how we work with them. So eighty four percent of customers say that being treated like a person Not a number is important to winning their business. The interesting takeaway is eighty four percent, and it's not eighty four percent for just one of those channels. It's eighty four and eighty three.

Like, they're pretty much the same number. Right? So when we talk about the level of importance, really doesn't matter. What model you are currently working in, personalization is a key for the success.

So there's a few other stats. That are always good, right, as we sit and talk about personalization that kinda ground us in the importance of that. So buyers are expecting, of course, you two understand them. Eighty three percent of buyers are believed that personalization enhances their purchasing experience. Fifty six percent of b2b decision makers believe it's critical to their buying journey. And sixty five percent of b to b buyers feel that vendors are not demonstrating adequate understanding of their needs.

That last one's kind of interesting. Right? So we know buyers want personalization.

We know that half of organizations understand the importance of it, but we're also seeing that sixty five percent of folks are feeling like we're actually not delivering on it.

It's a pretty impactful story. Right? Forrester has actually given us a name, and they call it the trust gap. And I kinda like the the phrase the trust gap.

Right? It says gap between what your B2B organization believes it's delivering on and what you think of yourselves in that realm of delivering on personalization. And what cap customers are actually feeling about it. Right?

So there's this gap, and this gap has never been larger according to Forrester.

Yet we know at the same time that our buyers are craving this level of personalization.

So As we think about personalization, again, it's critical to really think about this potential trust gap that you might have and how you can really help to bridge that gap.

If you are able to start building some bridges with that gap, you get a lot of, great revenue impact from personalization.

So seventy nine percent of businesses that exceed revenue goals have a documented personalization strategy.

And personalization in the B2B space, in B2B sales can lead to one point four times revenue growth.

Right? Those are are pretty impressive numbers. If you are able to deliver upon that personalization, and and make an impact in that as well.

So as we talk about personalization, though, one size does not fit all. Right? It's not that simple and straightforward. It would be great, but that's not the reality of today. So you have to be mindful of that, notion.

It could be show me the promotions, right, that are relevant to me. Make that per purchase process fast and seamless. You know, surprise me of things I didn't even know I needed. So, you know, in in terms of show me only the promotions that are relevant to me, if you know my interests, you provide me with promotions, that relate to what I am interested in.

It may not be something I even realized. So some of these start to come together. Right? I recently logged into a site.

They knew my age. Right? They they had my information, yet they chose to show me a banner ad for people over sixty five.

And I went just completely missed your opportunity. And it was so easy because you actually had my information.

Yeah. You didn't even have to go searching for it. And yet, you weren't capitalizing on it. Another good example is Shopify, excuse me, it's Spotify.

Spotify develops, right, curated lists based on what you're listening to, your listening history, your search queries, and they develop that and continue to change that over time. Right? So it's a really interesting way as we think about that personalization, your preferences, and the things you do in their application, continue to change with you and grow with you. So whether it's they have mixes like the daily mix, the daily lift, things like that, all of those playlists, are based on listening habits and what they think that you might like.

So they also try to broaden your your music listening as well. But it's a really good example of the one size doesn't fit all. Right? They're leveraging that.

How do you begin to start to build this personalization strategy?

So it really starts with a solid foundation. Right? Your ability to move up this digital maturity curve around personalization really relies on having a solid foundation of four key pillars. Data, logic, experiences, and measurement.

So when it comes to data, we talked about this earlier, but it's all about using that data build that data up with your customers, whether that's first or third party data. From a logic standpoint, it's all about bringing content together and bringing that customer data into it to create better target segments.

The experience really is what pulls it all together. Right? I consider that to be a bit of moment, right, that magic moment of getting your customer to the right place at the right time. And then the measurement, of course, you always want to be looking at the analytics of it validating the performance and then making any adjustments as necessary.

And so when we think about these four key pillars, AI always comes into the conversation. Right? How do we make this this experience better? And this is, of course, a a hot topic today. You'll hear a lot about it here, at Opticon as well. It's all about the ability to bring the customer and that content together and finding that magic moment that you can send into the experience. So AI fits really nicely into this logic pillar as we think about it today.

We know as we think about AI, that the number of businesses that are adopting AI has grown two hundred and seventy percent in the past four years. So we've all been impacted in one way or another, of course, by AI, but it's definitely a a good major disruptor.

That being said, and I think Alex has shared this. A lot of folks are trying to just figure out where it fits do we use it? How do we actually leverage it? We all know that it's out there and it can help us so much, but understanding how to apply it so that you're actually getting the ROI you need is the part that we're all still, you know, folks are trying to figure out. So when we start to think about some of the advantages that AI can bring to the table from a b to b perspective.

You know, the first one's analyzing, analyzing, excuse me, some large volumes of data. Right? We know that AI can help us mine and review and read these large volumes of data that will help you get deeper insights into the and define these better and more personalized experiences, for your customer journeys.

Improved ad targeting. Right? We all know we we've experienced this all all in our own own ways of shopping online, but leading to more effective ads. Right? That reduce your marketing spend and increase your revenue for your organization.

Smart or personalized recommendations for products that are gonna go well with their current purchase that might lead to a higher upsell.

Frankly, just a better customer experience.

So AI powered chat bots are a good one, right, that go beyond the basics And they start to use NLP or natural language processing, as well as, you know, sentiment analysis to help provide shoppers with a better experience, improving the search experience.

There's a lot of conversations around search. Right? But understanding some of these nuances, in search is really key. And so how can you, when someone searches for a term? It's not just about looking up what is that term and where does that actually fit one to one, but looking at the nuances of that term as well and displaying some relevant results.

And lastly, custom or detailed customer data. Right? It's all about using AI to help analyze some of these important customer data that allow brands to create these improved segments, right, and more targeted segments as we've been talking about to offer better offers, and, you know, improve their own processes to help deliver on these customer pain points and simplify some of the the vast amounts of information.

So a lot of good opportunities when it comes to AI in the B2B space. So I'm gonna talk through a couple different use cases.

The first being self-service.

So advanced conversations with customers. Right? So think about having a virtual agent, that can bring data from a variety of different sources. This might be FAQs.

This might be a knowledge base that you have, a health center. Or frankly just other content pages that you have and being able to bring together that set of of content and data to provide answers to a customer in a conversational way. So now customers are able to actually use the agent, ask a relevant question. But instead of just getting a a list of links, listen.

Here's the, you know, the five things I think you might be interested in. It actually is smart enough to be able to come back with a more relevant and conversational answer. That's where we're really gonna get a lot of the value out of that self-service.

So there's a few tools that relate to this, adaptive search, Obviously, that goes back as we mentioned, right, being able to understand the context of that search using mobile voice and mobile image search. The mobile image search is interesting because we you know what you're searching for. You have an image of it, but you might not know the name being able to search in that, alternate way. Based on on your products could be a very impactful use case.

Another good use case is just improving the experience overall. Trying to understand what your customers are are asking for. Right? So as customers shop around, right, they're always looking for the best supplier before they're gonna make their purchase.

And so you really wanna make sure that you can engage with them to deliver your own unique selling points as part of those product offerings. So a lot of this goes into, you know, product recommendations, the auto generation of lists and promotions. But the piece that that also plays a part in this is really the sales process and thinking about hybrid sales, right, in this idea that yes, there's in person sales, but folks are looking on at things online. And so when we think about improving that experience and getting you know, the right, unique selling points to that customer.

It's a big part of, of where does that hybrid sales process work? Right? Where does that fit, meeting the customer where they're at and anticipating what they're asking for and getting in front of that, or a couple different good AI use cases.

Alright. So I wanna transition to another video from Nicole at Polaris and have her share her view on customer experience, including personalization and AI.

So at Polaris, we know our customers want to be known and recognized.

You know, across all the numerous studies that I've been a part of over the last handful of years, The sentiment that stands out is our customers saying, I love Polaris. I want Polaris to love me.

You know, this phrase has resonated across business units, across audiences, and it's just so important that we know and understand our customers so that we can provide an experience they need, want, and expect.

And customers are starving for real authentic experiences offline and online.

And how we're able to do this is by leveraging our customer data.

In combination with consistent research to find those actionable customer insights.

So it's all about building that relationship.

Building that trust that Tina mentioned earlier, How do we build a customer experience that drives engagement in high value actions with frequency?

You know, we start by keeping the customer at the center of everything we do. And, you know, a critical piece in how we do this is by centralizing our customer data, our source of truth. It's a three sixty view of our customer actions across touch points. And leveraging this data enables that personalized customer experience.

You know, a primary focus of mine over the last few years has been building Clares account.

It's one password to everything, Polaris, centralizing and unifying.

The customer experience in a very personalized way. And it's showing that we know them and that we care about what they care about and I know Tina also mentioned you, a little bit of AI. Right?

An AI accelerating the need to leverage emerging tech and drive innovation. And, you know, we are not unlike others in that our execs are interested and and players is currently exploring beth, a beth path to AI. In areas like SEO, content, translations, and a whole list of other opportunities.

Alright. So it's it's great to hear Polaris' perspective on personalization and customer experiences. Right? It's all about being that trusted company. And it's clear they know the value of that trust, and they're continuing to build upon that in their different channels, with both customers and their dealers.

So let's transition now and talk a little bit about where we're, you know, meeting customers where they're at. Kind of our third topic for today.

So according to Gartner, by twenty twenty five, eighty percent of B2B sales interactions between suppliers and buyers are going to occur in digital channels.

Right? This continued trend to drive forward with this omnichannel approach is really important to being able to meet your customers where they're at.

So as we talk about omni channel, it's important to also have perspective on multichannel versus omnichannel.

They operate differently. Right? So multichannel is really focused on having multiple channels as shown, on the screens now. Multiple channels, but they're gonna run independent of each other.

Right? They have their own data silos. So as we think about multichannel, then we move into omnichannel, omnichannel is all about customer centricity, right, putting the customer at the middle. So collecting customer data to be able to offer that seamless personalized and relevant experience across all of your channels.

So no matter what channel your customer decides to engage with, they're gonna get the same experience. And the same personalized experience across all of those those different channels.

We know that from a B2B standpoint, customers are using likely ten or more channels to engage with with their sellers. So this might be through their own online research. It might be through reviewing other sites. It might be through social media, or honestly just peer recommendations.

So when we think about what's important to customers, personalization, as we've spoken about a good amount today, right? We've discussed, this is really table stakes. So customers want you to provide that information that's relevant to them. Product availability though is another key topic.

Right? So transparency and knowing what what product availability, is there is really what's gonna help you build trust as well. So thinking about how challenging it can be, If a customer comes out to the site, you're not showing product availability. They make an order, but they find out they actually can't get their product for another three months.

That's that's a disappointing customer experience. When if you showed that availability online, they could make a conscious decision and say, I still want that product, but I know I'm gonna have to wait, and that's okay with me. They get to make that decision. And so that transparency really is important to those customers from an omnichannel perspective.

Real time and always available customer service, right, targeted real time information that's gonna allow you to meet the customer where they're in their journey, and then make sure they're always supported. So no matter where they are in their experience, in their buying journey, you can understand where they're at meet them, this also kind of starts to relate into some of that hybrid sales conversation as well. But you want them to make make sure that they're supported no matter if they are you know, making an initial purchase, maybe they're just researching, or maybe they're, you know, post sale support. So the customer service side is just as important.

Consistency in information. Right? So, again, as we think about omnichannel, no matter the channel they're gonna engage with, having consistent information, This seems like a no brainer. I understand, but I think sometimes it's it's actually quite challenging for organizations to create that level of consistency.

But it's so key to the success of omnichannel.

This mix of traditional sales, remote, and self-service, So this does tie very much into that hybrid sales conversation. Right? So as your customers are out there, they're gonna be researching online. How do you capture that?

Make sure your internal sales team might be aware of those to be able to engage with that customer and maybe provide materials that are gonna help move them forward or engage with them to have a conversation. So you're allowing both of these channels to operate in an efficient way. Right? You're allowing the research and some of the the independent, you know, self-service that folks are looking for in the sales cycle, but also supporting it with your knowledge that your sales reps bring.

And the the value add that they bring to that conversation as well. It's really important, to to figure out that balance And then lastly, and this one is a bit of an obvious one. Don't get me wrong, but it's the ability to purchase in any channel. Right?

So allowing me to purchase online in store, or with a rep, I should be able to engage with any of those channels and run the same same process.

So when we think about omni channel, there's kind of this growth chart you can consider in terms of maturity. And it all kind of focuses on getting started at the bottom. Right? So in the getting started zone, you're thinking about having that multichannel.

So again, the siloed channels that exist. They are in the right place, but they work in isolation. So how do we move up to that next level? It's all about building out what does that customer journey map look like?

Let's define the, you know, get more targeted KPIs.

Let's look at, defining the key roles that are impacted within our organization. And then plan to manage any channel conflict as well as you start to broaden. So when you hit that accelerate, you are already you have the plan in place And so you're starting to collect that customer data. You're able to share that data across a few of your different channels, You've got some go to market differentiation, again, because of the data that you're able to collect.

And then you're able to begin to leverage analytics more. Right? So we've got this data. Let's leverage some of that to help our sales and marketing automation tactics, whether that's, again, AI personalization, etcetera.

So as we start to want to move further up the maturity model, some of the things you need to think about are integrating obviously more than just the those two channels that exist, redefining that role of the sales rep. I've talked about that a couple different times today. But I think as we we look at the future of B2B, this hybrid approach to sales is gonna be common, very common across the board. And then just continued growth, right, continue to build upon that sales and marketing automation that we were discussing earlier.

So by the time you hit kind of the top and hit scale. Right? It is all about scaling. It's about looking at we've got these great multiple channels.

We're able to look at online. We're able to look at offline. We're sharing that data across all of those channels. We've now created a seamless experience for customers, and we're able to use personalization in real time.

So using some of these different components, bringing that together and really looking to build that more seamless experience for customers from an omnichannel perspective.

With that, Nicole's got a few more things to add. So we'll listen to to her. So historically, the only consumer facing channel was through our dealers. However, the customer journey is evolving and so have we. Customers expect a seamless experience across touch points. And every interaction makes an impact.

A good example of this is mobile. No surprise, but we continue to see mobile traffic grow. Therefore, our creative approach has shifted to mobile first design.

Our team is focused on meeting the customer where they're at, right time, right place, right message, and of course, right format.

So if the customer wants to order a Polaris palm beanie on their phone with an option to pick it up at the dealer while enjoying free shipping, they can. And is an easy and delightful experience.

So at Polaris, you know, we continue to focus on how we can stitch the physical and digital experiences into one cohesive experience for our customers asking ourselves how can we connect the experience together? In an intuitive, personalized and simple way.

One pretty simple yet impactful way we're doing this online is by leveraging optimizely and the shared use of templates, content blocks, and shopping tools, like me choose an inventory search across our pages and sites. And by doing this, it creates a consistent and intuitive experience for our customers.

And from an operational efficiency standpoint, it's a no code situation to create meaningful, relevant content, and the team doesn't need to reinvent the wheel across all the sites.

We're also in the process of standing up ODP to apply more one to one personalization, leveraging our data to unlock new valuable experiences.

I know you've heard this from me a couple of times already, you know, but essentially, you know, we just continue to evolve as our customer's needs and wants evolve.

Alright. So it's great to hear how Polaris has made strides in building their own omnichannel approach, right? And they're how they're able to gain not just customer benefits, but their own internal operational efficiencies.

I think is key, to to note as well. They, I know are launching, or have recently launched a dealer portal for their EMEA dealers.

And all of their dealers outside of North America, I think, is the goal, which is around a thousand or so, outside of of North America. And so when we think about the connection, of all of those different customers, omnichannel is really where they need to be, and where they're focused as they move ahead.

So a couple quick insights as we wrap up today's session, the market evolution, right? You've heard a little bit about this.

In the sessions that we've already had here at Opticon.

But one topic that I haven't touched on too much today is really the the architecture side as we think about, you know, insights and trends. Right? Organizations we know are starting to move away from these heavily customized solutions.

And they are looking for more of a best in breed stack that's able to scale, allow for some of those customizations, but better meet their needs. And so that's really where these composable platforms come in on the the right hand side of the screen. Right? Organizations are looking for these composable platforms.

To look at the flexibility and the scalability that this architecture starts to provide. So we know that both b to b and B2C struggle with the ability to add new features as fast as you'd probably like.

The ability to have a composable platform, that provides more of the out of the box functionality, right, that can be added or removed and is able to deliver on those features and those experiences in a simple way. And with faster time to market. This is absolutely the trend, that you're going to be, you've seen, and you've, you've heard, as we talk about the flexibility and composability of the opti solution opt to be optimisly one. And you're gonna hear a lot more about this, for those of you who might be headed into the roadmap session, in the next half hour or so.

So I've highlighted just for your reference, a few of the commerce sessions that we've got out there so you can put them on your notes. So commerce roadmap is right after this one, and I believe it's across the hall. So definitely check that out. Josh Schoonmaker, our VP of Product, on the commerce side is gonna be leading that session.

We hear a lot of great things about what's coming in commerce. We've got a next generation, personalized commerce session tomorrow. We're gonna be talking much more about AI and promotions. So definitely check that out, especially as we talked a lot about those different items today as well.

We have a mobile session tomorrow that is gonna be talking about the importance of mobile. We've got a few partners or, excuse me, customers that are a part of that as well. I think they're three customers that are gonna be on a panel. So you'll get to hear directly from those customers and how they're using mobile in their own organizations.

Experimenting, with AI to optimize, to optimize, excuse me, b to b content, making bold bets pay off. You guys might not have seen this one, or looked more closely at this one, but this is actually run by Phyllis Davidson, who's with Forrester. And so this is all about, you know, experimentation as it relates to b to b as well. So if there's any interest in that, feel free to check that out.

And then the other one I just wanted to quickly mention is there is a road map to success. So if any of you are looking to dive deeper into the ROI, behind how do I plan this out? Check out the optimizely commerce blueprint workshop. It should be really impactful.

So in closing, today's session, a couple highlights to take away, convergence of the business models between B2B and B2C as organizations are driving to connect both with their customers and expand that customer reach. We have a continued focus on personalization and AI in personalization, right, to really work to build that trust and loyalty with customers. As we said, trust is really table six. We all need to be doing personalization to be able to meet that need.

And then at the the last point I'll make is is omnichannel is one of the best ways that you can provide that consistent experience, right, as you look at all of those channels, and this is frankly what customers are gonna start to expect. So how do you start to look at that growth chart that we were looking at earlier and figure out where use, you know, where we are and how do we move to the next level? So how do you grow? How do you you move into that and hit the scale at the end of the day?

And with that, Thank you for your time today. Thank you for attending this session. My contact information is up here. If you have any questions, feel free to reach out.

And thank you.