Transcript 0:00 [on-hold music] One of the biggest issues that companies dealt with was how do we maintain our employees and how do we get them working remotely? Can we do that effectively? 0:12 In a lot of cases, the technology was already there. It existed, whether that was on, on video or on voice. What changed almost overnight was the use case. 0:24 Never before was there a use case demand to say that, "Hey, we need to move ninety percent of enterprises into remote working in a period of maybe three, four weeks and keep those in business." 0:42 [upbeat music] Welcome back to The Peggy Smedley Show, the podcasting voice of IoT and digital transformation. Hello, listeners, and welcome back to The Peggy Smedley Show. I'm your host, Peggy Smedley. 0:56 My next guest is responsible for leading the strategy and execution of Mitel's global marketing brand partner enablement and digital demand functions. 1:05 He is passionate about balancing the art and science of marketing and has built a reputation for innovative and integrated marketing strategies that drive disruption. 1:16 Dave has more than twenty-five years of experience leading international marketing teams across the communications, networking, and cybersecurity segments. Please welcome Dave Silk, Chief Marketing Officer at Mitel. 1:30 Dave, welcome to the show. Thank you, Peggy. Thank you a million for having me. It's a pleasure to be here. 1:36 So Dave, it's exciting to have you talk to us today because you're based in a beautiful part of the world, so it's, it's kind of exciting to have you on the show. 1:45 So you've had an opportunity to see the world because you've had an opportunity to see business and innovation from a whole global perspective, and with everything going on in the world today, we've seen the pandemic kind of shut us down in a different way. 2:01 But I'd like to take a view from your perspective in a different way. So let's talk about business technology innovation in general. Do you believe growth is really possible during a pandemic? 2:15 Because we've all been shut down for this past year, and it's really had a hard impact on a lot of companies. But what I found intriguing is you view it from a whole different perspective. Well, first of all, it's... 2:27 Is growth possible? It's definitely possible. I think it's, uh, critically important, first of all, to recognize the enormity of the challenges that everybody has gone through over the past twelve months. 2:39 As you mentioned, I, I'm sitting here in Galway on the west coast of Ireland today, and my last trip was, was twelve months ago. 2:47 And what we saw, not just in Galway and Ireland, but all over the world back in March of, of twenty-twenty, was just this immediate reaction in terms of, "Hey, we've got to keep our businesses going. 3:00 We are going to rely on technology and remote working in a way that we never thought possible weeks beforehand." And we've seen incredible innovation. 3:09 We've seen companies really taking a look at the way that they communicate and drive new experiences with the customers that they serve. So I think it's important to recognize, has it been difficult? 3:22 Oh my, yes, for, for so many different people, for so many different companies. 3:27 But there's definitely opportunities in terms of growth, and for me, in a lot of cases, it really comes down to the experiences that, uh, customers are really trying to drive with the, uh, consumers and the customers they serve. 3:39 It's kind of an interesting way of looking at it because I think when we look at business today, business has changed in a lot of different ways, and I think you have to think about your customers. 3:50 You have to think about their needs, their, their businesses. Do people really look at their businesses in different ways? Do they have to think about the, what the business is? 4:02 I mean, can you give me examples of what that means? Because when I think about business today in a pandemic, we've had to shift our models. We have to say business today isn't business as usual. 4:12 It's not about just doing business as normal, it's about doing business better. And so in a pandemic, you've had to do business differently, and, and I know you have really great examples. 4:23 Can we talk about what some of those are? Yeah. We, we've seen businesses... You, you take a look at some of the verticals that had to respond immediately. 4:32 So retail moved from the storefront to the digital front almost immediately. That spurned increases in businesses such as the online security, but also the courier services, the delivery package services. 4:49 All of a sudden, those companies that, you know, they may have driven a, a hybrid in-store model with, with digital and online, all of a sudden the majority of their business moved to an online motion. 5:01 Saw the same thing when it came to healthcare. Healthcare immediately became the front foot of, of how to deal with COVID and the pandemic. We've seen a huge increase in the use of technology. 5:14 Uh, I think you see innovation that's happening in areas that may not have been described as, as, as even healthcare before the pandemic. 5:21 So we've got pop-up testing, we've got tracing applications, we've got contact and the use of data, uh, in a completely and utterly new way. 5:31 Uh, and I think one of the overwhelming things, certainly as Mitel as a, as a communications company that we've noticed is that in all of the cases, each of those companies radically needed to rethink how it was that they were going to effectively communicate with their, with their customers to make sure that they were doing that effectively and not just in one way, and the one way previously may have been in person. 5:56 All of a sudden, consumers wanted multiple ways to reach out to the companies that serve them, whether that was text or chat or video or lots of different things and, and that made, you know, all of a sudden companies really needed to think about how are they going to communicate with their customers, uh, in a completely... 6:15 and just in a, in a way that literally changed in a matter of weeks.It's funny you should say that because think about how businesses had to ramp up, whether that online motion you talk about, healthcare, tracing contact, the contactless m- idea of things. 6:30 We thought about we're all a touchy kind of society when we think about the way we think about things. 6:36 We're moving out of, we, at least we hope, at least I hope, being sheltering in place for this almost a year that we just talked about. 6:43 So I'm kind of curious, in your mind, because as you talk about being a kind of a communications company that's had to... 6:50 We, we've had to think about things, and I guess I've got this long-winded question, is how does companies now, when we look at this, we have to think about helping businesses thrive now. 7:02 How much of our businesses are going to be the way they are because of the pandemic has changed the way we go about doing business now? We, we've had to think about things differently. 7:12 Cities are never going to be the same because it's this contactless, you know, tracing that you just described. How do you help them implement all these new strategies that we've had to do now? 7:22 Because the, you know, society, we, we've got to think about the pandemic not just now, but going forward. What advice do you give them to say, "Here's what you have to implement. 7:32 Here's how you gotta be careful of the bad guys who are constantly going to try to strike at you." And as a company like yourself, you're constantly helping your customers make sure they're doing the right move. 7:43 So I, I know I threw a lot at you, but can you kind of peel back the onion and help? 7:48 Because I know everybody listening is looking at a company like you to help them understand how do they communicate the right messages to their customers. Yeah. 7:57 I, I mean, the, the challenge you, you mentioned peel back the onion, the, the challenge is, is that it's, it's a big onion that needs to be peeled back. 8:04 I think that the customers that Mitel serves, w- usually they're, they're mid-market enterprises in all facets of life. 8:12 So in a lot of cases, they will look to Mitel for a fundamental need which has not changed, which is how do we make sure that we ensure connections? 8:23 How do we make sure that we ensure that each and every one of those companies maintains the ability to communicate effectively with their customers? 8:33 In a lot of cases, those companies would work with IT partners all over the world, and I think that the role of those IT partners has just massively changed in the last twelve months. 8:45 Uh, all of a sudden, they've moved away from, "Hey, I'm gonna be the IT seller that sells you a piece of software or some piece of hardware," into, uh, "I'm now going to become the consultant that's going to help you to really think through the impact of this pandemic on your business, and you need to think about what are the, the security issues, what are the data issues, what are the ways that you're going to need to make sure that you efficiently create a new customer experience?" 9:15 Uh, and again, I think one of the lessons learned, and you asked the question about providing guidance and, and what would we, we say, one of the biggest issues that companies dealt with was how do we maintain our employees, and how do we get them working remotely? 9:30 Can we do that effectively? In a lot of cases, the technology was already there. It existed, whether that was on, on video or on voice. What changed almost overnight was the use case. 9:43 Never before was there a use case demand to say that, "Hey, we need to move ninety percent of enterprises into remote working in a period of maybe three, four weeks and keep those in business." 9:55 So I, I think what really was fundamental and the big change was even though the technology would have been there in terms of keeping communications going, the use cases had to be adapted very, very quickly to ensure that those businesses could get their employees working effectively using remote solutions, and that wouldn't have been the case before. 10:18 There might have been some hybrid motion. It might have been ten percent work from home. 10:23 Uh, all of a sudden, that was turned on its head, and it became ninety, if not a hundred percent work from home, uh, and let, let's make sure that we keep your business running at the same time, and that was a big, big, big shift. 10:33 Are there one industry or another that's going to have the bigger challenge with this, that they're gonna find we're better at working remotely? 10:41 Because you're, you're a master, I think, at, at achieving success at working remotely. You, you understand it. You just talked about being a, in Galway, Ireland. I mean... 10:50 And you know that, and you're able to advise people on how to do it. But the idea is you have to have empathy. You have to understand. 10:56 You know, we're a society that has to get better at working remotely, but it's, it's more than just working remotely. 11:03 It's having workspaces that are properly equipped and understand, as I mentioned, you know, you have to have the security. You have to be able to work with your customers and understand their needs. 11:13 I always say it's like an old Clairol commercial and so on and so on and so on, and we really need to understand those needs. 11:20 How do you communicate those needs for every different vertical and knowing which vertical or market segment is going to be more successful than another when it's manufacturing and retail and transportation? 11:31 Every different segment has every different need. 11:34 You used a great word, which was empathy, and I do really believe that a company such as Mitel, where we have tens of millions of users all over the world, we have to listen. 11:48 And in every case, it's not just a matter of providing some point solution for your communications needs. 11:55 You really need to take the time to listen to the challenges that your customer faces because every single vertical will be different. I think about education as a, as a great example. 12:07 Uh, education has all over the world moved virtually and online. 12:12 Think about the creative spaces that education has to make in a, in a virtual world where you have a three-year-old or a four-year-old with completely different needs to a, a mature student who may be more adaptable at working in that virtual environment. 12:28 What is the user experience? So I, I think very quickly we're all getting tired of-The screen interface, how is that going to evolve over time? 12:37 So I really do think that the use of the word empathy and, and really thinking through the challenges that the customer faces, because there will not be one single solution to fit everybody. 12:47 You really need to think through their use case and the challenges that each and every one of those vertical or businesses face. I keep saying this is gonna be the generation of the screener, Dave. 12:57 So I mean, that's why we're getting tired of this. [laughs] I, I agree with you on that one. 13:01 So what would you tell others who have just started doing it, all the successful advice you've just described, how do you tell them now, let's look to the next year, let's look beyond and moving forward, what advice do you give them? 13:15 Let, let's jumpstart. Let's look beyond this pandemic. Let's think positive, 'cause I'm always a positive kind of gal. 13:20 I want people to get and see that they can move beyond this pandemic and see that light at that end of the tunnel. What advice do you wanna give our listeners right now? Yeah. I, I'm, I'm with you on that. 13:31 I'm, uh, the eternal optimist too. [laughs] And I, I think there's, you know, there's definitely hope, and there's definitely light, and I think there's, there's, there's three things. 13:41 The first is, if you're a company, no matter what you're providing, you've gotta be flexible. You've gotta be flexible with the solutions that you provide. 13:48 You've gotta be flexible in the way that you finance those solutions for your customer, because in many cases they may not simply be able to pay it all upfront. 13:57 They're gonna look for a way to spread that cost out over a longer period of time. The tha- second thing I think is, you really gotta think through the challenge that the customer is facing. 14:08 So in the past, you may have provided one solution to fix a particular need. It's unlikely now that that one solution will address all of the problems. 14:18 You're going to need to think in multiple ways, whether that's some form of hybrid solution, whether it's just thinking about it differently. 14:24 And the third piece is really, uh, what are the experiences now that you're looking to create? So the experience in hospitality will radically change irrespective of what comes after, you know, the next number of months. 14:37 We're seeing the adoption of technology in hospitality. We're seeing the adoption of clean spaces and safe spaces and home away from home spaces in hospitality. 14:47 So in every single instance, I really do think that company need to think about what is the uniqueness of the experience that they're creating for their customer, uh, and then think about how it is you serve that and be incredibly flexible, uh, throughout that because that's so important. 15:03 Well, Dave Silk, Chief Marketing Officer at Mitel, thank you so much for your time today. I really learned a lot listening and having this conversation with you. 15:11 Where can our listeners go to learn more about what you're doing at Mitel? Yeah. And thank you so much for the opportunity. To www.mitel.com. It's full of stories. 15:21 It's full of examples of how it is that we're helping customers every single day of the week. So check us out there. There's lots of information. Well, Dave, I hope you'll come back, and thank you again for your time. 15:31 Thank you very much. It was a pleasure. All right, listeners, we are out of time today. Remember, we are broadcast live every Tuesday at twelve PM Central. 15:38 You can check out our website at connectedworld.com, our show website at thepeggySmedleyShow.com. 15:43 But most importantly, tweet at us @ConnectedWMag, and I will bet that Dave will join me in some tweets this week, and we will answer any questions that you have. All right. 15:52 This is The Peggy Smedley Show, the podcasting voice of IoT and digital transformation. And remember, with great technology comes great responsibility. Have an awesome week. [upbeat music]
