How to Turn CVM Technology Projects into Revenue

Why Listen

This time on CVM Stories, Dushyant Panchal, Senior Lead – CVM at MyRepublic, shares lessons from 10–15 telco marketing automation rollouts across Southeast Asia and South America.

Buying a new tool is the easy part. But how do you make sure your next CVM technology project turns into revenue? Dushyant shares his playbook and why the answer starts long before go-live.

5 Tips to Turn CVM Technology Projects into Revenue

It’s not always a technology game, as Dushyant says. A CVM technology project pays off only when three phases hold: business case, implementation and adoption. Here’s his playbook.

Phase 1 – Business Case

1. Start with the Revenue Goal

Why are you buying this? Answer that first. For CVM, it’s CLTV. Then upsell, retention, engagement and loyalty.

Tip: put the CLTV target and these sub-goals in the business case before you decide on any platform.

2. Put a Number on Speed

Launching one campaign takes 2 hours today. On the new platform – 5 to 10 minutes. That time saved belongs in the business case.

Tip: time how long one campaign for one segment takes today, then set the target for the new platform.

Phase 2 – Implementation

3. Align Every Team Before Day One

Does analytics know the goal? Is IT security ready for new data feeds? Can data science support the models? Has every team shared its roadmap?

Tip: explain the objective, not just the request then run a daily 15-minute stand-up until launch.

4. Keep the Business Running

A platform switch can’t stop the business. Ten campaigns ran on the old platform? Run ten on day one of the new one with better results. That’s the real success.

Tip: count the campaigns you run today. That number is your go-live target – on the new platform, with better output.

Phase 3 – Adoption

5. Train Until Nobody Is Surprised

Other teams will ask: why change? The old one was better. That’s normal. Keep them aligned, informed and trained on the platform, so nobody is surprised at go-live.

Tip: show every team what the platform changes and how it helps them reach their own goals.

Episode Highlights

• Pricing wars are pushing telco revenues down in every market
• Gaming, insurance and roaming open new telco revenue lines
• CLTV is the first business outcome to define
• Check data readiness before you switch platforms
• Speed to market: 2 hours per campaign vs 5–10 minutes
• Explain the objective to every department, not just the request
• Align analytics, IT security and data science early
• Business continuity is the real measure of a launch
• Keep training teams until go-live brings no surprises
• A full end-to-end migration delivered in 70 days

Recommendations for Growth as a Professional

CVM sits between commercial and technology, so build both skills. Learn to think like a customer and ask what they need at each stage. Most of all, position yourself as a commercial partner, not just a campaign manager – when you talk commercial, everyone is interested.

Final Words

Buying the tool is the easy part. The revenue comes from the three phases around it: a business case before you buy, an implementation that keeps the business running, and adoption across teams. Skip one, and your revenue will be much harder to reach.

Transcript

[00:00:00] Dushyant: So the business outcome, that is the first question which we should be thinking. And they might think that why these people are changing this. The previous one was better. Launching a project is not only the success rate, how efficiently we are launching a project. That’s the real success.

[00:00:14] Exacaster: Welcome to CVM Stories, the podcast on customer value management. Together, we explore how companies can be more successful and the customers happier through the use of latest customer value management techniques. Learn key commercial and analytical insights from telecoms, retail, finance and other industries that drive CVM forward.

[00:00:33] Egidijus: Hi, I’m your host, Egidijus. Today our guest is Dushyant Panchal, senior CVM lead at MyRepublic in Singapore. Dushyant has spent over 13 years in customer value management on both sides of the table, serving as a vendor and now working as a customer value manager inside an operator. Today we will talk about marketing technology projects, and the chant will share his experience on rolling out CVM platforms for telecoms from Latin America to Southeast Asia, as well as generating the real business impact and much more. So let’s dive in. Thank you for joining us today in CVM Stories episode. I am really excited to talk with you today. Before we start the chant, um, could you briefly introduce yourself and tell a little bit of the story? How did you end up in customer value management field?

[00:01:43] Dushyant: Uh, honestly, uh, I did not, uh, plan my journey, uh, very well in advance, but I can walk you through with my whatever is my journey. So, hi, my name is, and, uh, currently I Currently, I am working with my Republic and I am serving as the head of CVM and prior to working with my Republic Limited, I was working with StarHub where my primary responsibility was to implement MarTech and manage some of the special projects with respect to our marketing and customer lifecycle management. And prior to working with StarHub, I was working for a company called Playtex Mobile Solutions Private Limited, where I almost worked eight years. And during this eight years, I had a multiple responsibility of rolling out a marketing automation platform throughout the globe, which is like a South East Asia to South America as well. And like throughout my, my journey, I would have managed around more than 10 to 15 marketing automation implementation. So oh my God.

[00:02:58] Dushyant: That’s how my journey was. And like. And the interesting part is I know both the side because I worked almost eight years at a vendor side and yet around seven years at like operator side and operator side. Also, I have a different experience from end to end. So that’s, that’s, that’s how my journey. That’s what about my journey?

[00:03:25] Egidijus: It’s, I really appreciate your experience. And it’s like, it’s very interesting. It will be really interesting to, uh, talk to you on very, a lot of questions related to that because, um, uh, what I understand is usually like telcos change mark tech technology, you know, every seven, ten years, uh, maybe even in a longer time spans. So usually the CVM team does not remember the last time they changed the tech stack and all. It’s always a new experience.

[00:04:05] Speaker 4: Uh.

[00:04:06] Dushyant: Correct. Correct. Always. It’s a new experience. And like, people keep on moving from one company to another company. So it’s.

[00:04:12] Speaker 4: Yes.

[00:04:13] Dushyant: It’s a cycle of life. So yeah.

[00:04:15] Egidijus: Yeah. Uh, exactly. So kind of for every telco, it’s usually a new experience. And for you, it’s like, oh, I’ve done that multiple times and I can help to learn. So we will definitely ask you to share some of your learnings.

[00:04:33] Speaker 4: Sure, sure.

[00:04:33] Egidijus: But before we go there, I wanted to start from a little bit bigger picture. So, uh, how do you see what are the biggest challenges for the telcos today in terms of, uh, uh, how to do, how to grow Customer value.

[00:04:55] Dushyant: See? Honestly. Uh. If you are personally ask me. In my opinion, telcos are now seeing a drop in their roots, which traditionally when that the the era was initially, uh, in like 2002 thousand till 2010 and 15, like price were going up and up and up. But after that, price suddenly started going down and down and down. And there is a, there is in each and every market, you can see a pricing war. You can see the, uh, like, uh, customers are reshuffling from here to there. And some of the mature markets like Southeast Asia, you can consider Singapore, New Zealand, Australia, all those markets were mostly a postpaid dominating customer there. It’s it’s there also, we are seeing the same trend. And even when we talk about markets like an immature market, there also it’s the same same pricing war. So what’s what’s happening there is that you can you can talk about like a Latin American market or for that matter, African market. So, or for that matter, India as a market. So each and every people keep more than 2 or 3 SIM cards and what they do, wherever they will get the best offer, they will go and reach that. So it’s a huge challenge for those market to keep customer constantly engaged and get a value out of it.

[00:06:32] Dushyant: But in a nutshell, telco revenues are going down. So and now telcos are moving towards the different different service provider. So like they are providing a different services like a value added services like that. Now the next gen value added services are something different, like, say, Edutech, then gaming security, then uh, insurance. So all those and obviously shopping and all those things. So telcos are now moving that word so that they can at least try and get some additional revenue from the additional services, which, and it’s basically it’s everywhere. It’s the same game. It’s like if you talk about like, say earlier, let’s say 15, 20 years back, there was a two type of war, right? Like, like customer market share and customer revenue share. But now everything is moving towards customer revenue, customer market share only if you have a customer, you can get a revenue some other time, but at least you have to retain your customer. So that’s how like telco market is now going in, uh, like drop in revenue, but they have other pillars. If they, If. If. Focus on. Rightly focus on those. Then definitely they can increase a lifetime value for the customer.

[00:07:58] Egidijus: When revenue drops, uh, teams usually say, okay, uh, if the if the revenue is dropping, you know, maybe we need to purchase something to help to increase.

[00:08:15] Speaker 4: The revenue.

[00:08:16] Dushyant: That always doesn’t work. Yeah. That always doesn’t work. And that’s where we come into a picture and helping, uh, uh, like marketing team to generate more and more revenue.

[00:08:26] Egidijus: Before, if, if I understand correctly, uh, upsell was the primary revenue generation thing. Yes. Now, how does the cross-sell, uh, of those additional service lines? Uh, uh, what’s the weight of, of, of these sales Becomes kind of in your portfolio.

[00:08:51] Dushyant: So if you talk about from like in earlier days, what we used to call an upsell, like you are just laddering a customer up, right? And cross-sell is like same services with a different, like same connection with the different services. Let’s say people using voice, then we ask them to use our data and people use voice and data both. Then we go and ask them to use the SMS services. Now almost what what I have been observing is like now plans are. And the recharges are moving towards the. Everything is unlimited. Now we have to use these. The other products and services like say gaming. Gaming is very popular nowadays. Then you can say additional services like a roaming. Then roaming is also nowadays very popular. Many, many operators started giving the roaming sims as well. On top of that, if you talk about like insurance, so insurance also like a multi category insurance, right? When you can get travel insurance, you can get insurance, you can get well, you can get another insurance like your home insurance. So so those are the now new avenues for telcos where they are accelerating so that they can monetize their own subscribers.

[00:10:15] Egidijus: And from the customer value management perspective. Yes. So your job does not get easier. Yeah. Because if before.

[00:10:24] Speaker 4: That, yes.

[00:10:26] Egidijus: You, you would kind of try to retain a single service line. Now you have to, you know, retain the insurance line and other things. So how does the picture change?

[00:10:37] Dushyant: Everything got changed. The, the initially initially we used to promote all the like the inter services. Now we are selling as much as possible and everything is coming from the data insights, right? So how, how, how is your CDP designed so that like it comes from the CDP or your information coming out from your customer data platform? So how you are processing that data, summarizing it and giving a proper insights and like, and getting a proper insights from the platform that will really helping in redesigning this new generational digital services, like say, let’s say, if you want to promote an insurance, so you can see that who are the customers who are likely to buy. You can get the profiling of the customer who already purchase. You can try to correlate with your existing data set and try to offer something which is more meaningful for the customer, like, say, there is no point of promoting something to the like, say, customer who is always browsing through something called like, say, gaming services. Then then you have to think that people with gaming services, what, what else you can sell. You have to think from that, that point of view. So you can say, okay, no, now I customer is like into gaming. I have to promote him the devices device insurance and if they need a wifi services. So there are a lot of things which is coming in a picture when you start thinking it from the one service perspective. But being in a CVM, we have to think holistically that and have to create a multi segment so that each and every services we can justify, we can get revenue from each and every services the way we expect it.

[00:12:38] Egidijus: So now let’s go to the hard questions.

[00:12:43] Speaker 4: Yeah, let’s go ahead.

[00:12:46] Egidijus: Yeah. So the complexity is growing really tough. And many telco teams, they say, okay, so now we need to sell not only, uh, price plan updates, but also all these other services. And suddenly I need to manage my customer data differently. I need to run my marketing campaigns differently or personalization differently. And, uh, everything becomes complex hard. You know, you have all those stories, all those nice stories, how you want to cross-sell these, uh, uh, game gamers, etc.. And then the third thing that comes to my mind, so if I want to grab this extra revenue share or market share is I need a new platform and I need an AI and I will get revenue out of the box.

[00:13:44] Speaker 4: Is it true? Yeah.

[00:13:47] Dushyant: Yeah, yeah, that’s that’s really true. Because everyone thinks in the same way. So like, if I, if I’m whatever I’m using, I’m not happy or not giving me a value. Then let’s, let’s go ahead and get something which is more meaningful.

[00:14:02] Egidijus: But is, uh, in this case is the platform change the, the only answer or kind of how should you, uh, how should you think about this? Is it only like a technology game here?

[00:14:14] Dushyant: It’s not always a technology game, I would say, because, uh, it’s, it’s a two way game. Like, uh, there are sea changing and technology will only not, will not only help you have to rethink these engagement strategy as well. Because see, whatever platform you, you see, you have to think from the perspective like, on. If you are you. If you are changing a platform, whether your internal systems are capable or. Internal systems are very well aligned with the change. On top of that, you have to think from the customer journey point of view as well that how how the new platform help you in achieving a better customer journey and better engagement than the previous platform. If you like, see, when you, when you go for selecting a platform, like see, nowadays everything is like not only go by the demo. What? Because when, when you, when you go only by the demo, then say, okay, this, this looks very nice. That looks very good, very nice. But everything is nice. No, no platform is bad. I would say each platform is having its own, uh, proposition of selling. So it could be personalization, it could be AI enabled. It could be like a highly and real time, all those things. But when it actually comes, you have to assess from the different, different point of view. First point of view is like, how, how is your data readiness to support the platform? Because let’s say if you switch from platform to platform B, the way platform A consume your data might be different than platform B, so you have to do complete re-engineering for this data.

[00:16:20] Dushyant: Second point is like a customer identity and the decisioning how and the customer journey orchestration. So when I say identity is like nowadays because of so much of security and all those things, and the data goes sometime cross border and all those things. There is a there is a regulatory concern or all those concerns will be there. So and from organization point of view also, you need to be very careful with the customer data. So in this case you have to you can mask the data or you can just pass the relevant information and just correlated information. You just create something like instead of customer name, address details, you just send them encrypted data and you have to put a decryption logic when it talks to your actual customer. So all those things you need to, you need to take care. On top of that, uh, what you have to make sure is like a channel orchestration, right? So if your channel orchestration is how, how, how easy and how, and you can do what kind of like a personalization using those journeys like general orchestration journey. And at the end, your data is there, your customer journeys are there, your, uh, channel orchestration is there. And at the last, what you have to make sure is the personalization. And the other thing is like the reporting, what it must be highly customized in terms of like capturing the response when I say highly customized means each campaign will have its own and different characteristics, right? So when it comes to like upsell, then it might be like one layer up.

[00:18:24] Dushyant: You just track those conversions. But when it comes to engagement, you have to add in this digital world now SMS is always, always a preferred channel for everyone, but nowadays more preferred channels are your emails and your push notification and mobile applications. So so how let’s say if you are running a campaign for a product awareness that time you might track a different, uh, different attributes as compared to the, what you track for your product purchase journey. So everything is different in a way, right? So platform must be highly capable to like capture those responses. Basically, I would say the attribution should be correct attribution to the correct, uh, KPIs to the correct campaign and to the correct campaign objective. So that’s, that’s how I choose the marketing automation platform when it, when and when I want to choose it. And obviously now every, everything is like going towards, uh, AI. So we need to make sure that the AI capabilities also must be there. And the common, uh, thing, which is now across is like a churn prediction and your product affinity, then your product propensity, all those models. Also how, how, how platform can consume those model or maybe how platform can generate insights and take the data from the customer and auto calibrate the, this, uh, like entire modeling.

[00:20:10] Egidijus: What I like about the way you structure about like, okay, uh, uh, if I ask you about, uh, campaign management platform, etc., uh, you think a lot about the capabilities, but you do not describe the business impact. Yeah. Yeah. Because if I understand correctly, these two are very, very different things. You know, platform and business.

[00:20:38] Speaker 4: Impact.

[00:20:40] Egidijus: So can you describe this part?

[00:20:45] Dushyant: So the business outcome, right. Every every that that is the first question which we should be, uh, like thinking before deciding or changing or getting a new platform that what business outcome it will give. So when we talk about business outcome, so it’s so every. If you, if you personally ask me from my perspective, uh, if from CVM technology perspective, the first is like how much CLTV I can increase. That’s, that’s the main objective. Then there are other sub objectives. Could be like how I can increase my upsell rate, how that can help me, how I can increase my retention, how I can increase my engagement rate, how I can increase my loyalty. So all those will be the sub sub questions will be will be think through before we go and decide. And when we create the business case for the marketing automation.

[00:21:47] Egidijus: And, uh, can you start thinking about, uh, new platform before you have a business case?

[00:21:55] Dushyant: What we need to do is we need to think from the feature perspective as well.

[00:22:01] Speaker 4: Right?

[00:22:02] Dushyant: So when we talk about a feature, let’s say, what is the segmentation capability, whether it can directly connect to my it’s, it’s already connected to my CDP. But if I want to introduce a new way of processing the data, how capable the platform is, then you might launch some new service line, or you might launch some new product. Whether it is your current platform or current stack is capable to process that. Or maybe like you, what you need to do is like, you can think that, okay, I want to go and get the new platform or I want to enhance the current one. You have to first assess all those parameters. Let’s say if, if you are using a platform which is already capable to like, generate and accept and process the new service line data, then no need to go and invent a new will you just use existing one? But if that platform is outdated, you are you are not able to get a value out of it. It’s very hard to like just configure the campaign because nowadays campaign configuration is like, uh, you can do a campaign configuration in a minutes or maybe and then just go live. But you have to assess from go to market perspective as well. Like, okay, if my, my, if my go to market now, if I want to launch one campaign, I have to spend, let’s say two hours. But after implementing a new platform, it would be like, okay, 5 minutes or 10 minutes for that matter, but for at least one segment, let’s talk about only one segment. So all those parameters you have to think through in advance, and then you can decide that whether I need a new platform or I can enhance my existing one.

[00:24:00] Egidijus: So over your career, you have done, uh, I, if I remember correctly, almost 20 different deployments, uh.

[00:24:09] Dushyant: To around around 10 to 15.

[00:24:12] Egidijus: Around 10 to 15. Okay. And, uh, obviously some of them were, uh, great successes. Some of them might have, uh, challenges down, down the road. Uh, what lessons? Uh, would you extract from those? Like what usually makes the deployment, uh, project success? And, uh, what are the key roadblocks that we, uh, to failures? From, from your experience.

[00:24:44] Dushyant: So from if I talk about my experience. So two, let’s see when you are, let’s say this is the second stage after you identified your marketing automation platform, now you are coming and trying to implement it, right? So, so first day when you are, uh, like initiating the project, what you have to make sure is you are, you have to align each and every vertical and department, whomever you need for this particular deployment, and then give them a heads up very much in advance that we will be needing this thing. We will be needing this thing from your side. These are the expectation. These are and most important, like don’t go and directly tell that we want this, this, this from your side. Just explain them the objective that what, what we are trying to achieve by changing this platform, the new platform is capable to do this, this, this, this will not only help us but help you as well in terms of like many other things, like if it is a customer service, then you can say you can send a real time contextual offer on customer chat bot when customers are chatting that the. So you can at least put three four intervention in between. So all those type of like alignment, you have to do it in advance so that when you are creating your project plan, you are very much sure that, okay, this will, this is my timeline.

[00:26:19] Dushyant: So and give them a heads up in a very much in advance so that they are aligned. And after that, you start initiating the project and to drive project effectively, at least between working committee, you just have regular check ins, maybe daily 15 minute stand up call, or maybe daily check ins of project progress that will really help you in managing the project in a efficient way. So and then then you go as per the timeline. And then like whenever launch is expected, you can just launch the project. But that’s launching a project is not only the success rate. So how efficiently we are launching a project that’s the real success. And in that case, let’s say what you have to like. The real success is like from the business continuity for that matter, because it’s a shift of the platform. So from your moving from platform to platform, be in a platform, a you you used to run, let’s say ten campaign. Now launch time you are running same ten campaign or maybe a different ten campaign, but getting a better output.

[00:27:34] Dushyant: That will be the real success. That and the lesson which I learned from my experience is like whenever you are launching any platform, you obviously feel like the person who was driving there, they might be confident about launching this, but other team members or maybe other departments may have certain questions to ask that. And they and they might think that after changing this, what will happen? What, why, why these people are changing this. Why? What was the. The previous one was better now because it’s a normal change process everywhere. So intermittently you keep and keep on aligning them on on the training or on the platform or for the use cases, so that they also feel confident when you are coming and changing the platform on the go live. No one will get surprised that, okay, this guy did something wonder like, right? So because it’s a common common objective for launching a platform for everyone. So the learning is like, keep, keep aligned, everyone inform, educate them on the platform, what changes it will bring and how positive that will help them in achieving their goals also, or maybe how, how efficient they can like finish their task or maybe achieve their KPI and so on and so forth.

[00:29:14] Exacaster: If you are interested in customer value management, check out our Customer Value Management, body of knowledge, CV, and CVM technology. Is a comprehensive guide for CVM professionals, offering tips, tools, and best practices to help you in your job. Visit cvs.com for more.

[00:29:31] Egidijus: And when you think about this alignment, yes. Because, uh, like if we would think from a customer value manager perspective who is running these sorts of project internally for the first time in their life, because in many situations it will be the first and maybe only time in their life when they will be running this project, which departments typically need to be aligned because like CVM technology is extremely cross-functional in organization, it touches like almost everything, you know. So what would be your playbook there? If you think from like a CVM technology perspective.

[00:30:13] Speaker 4: First.

[00:30:13] Dushyant: Uh, like, see, there might be like many inner organization, what used to happen is the data analytics team sitting in house in the customer lifecycle management or maybe marketing as a vertical. So first you have to align them. Uh, and because it’s your own department, you can align them easily. And, but most importantly, how to align your IT security team so that if any, any concern related to security or any data feeds, you want to develop something new, then they are they are aligned and they can pass on those information, uh, to the correct, uh, like a platform.

[00:30:55] Egidijus: First of all, you need to start from internal team and then your biggest partner in crime is at security. Yeah.

[00:31:03] Dushyant: Yeah. I mean, security definitely. And third one is like, you can, can align the data science team as well so that any, any support you need from the AI or modeling perspective, they can help you.

[00:31:16] Egidijus: And what are the typical roadblocks that you would hit? Uh, in, uh, in these sorts of projects? Like what are the unexpected things, uh, that for you are totally expected, but for CVM technology teams are absolutely not.

[00:31:37] Dushyant: There are many roadblocks in between. When you, when you, when you, when you deploy or when you try to do something which is cross-functional, it might be many roadblocks. So the typical challenge which comes in your way is the way CVM technology is trying to change their platform. And when you started, uh, with the project, you might not know that the system which you are, you are connecting with the CVM technology or the platform or the other thing which you are trying to connect to the CVM technology, those will be obsolete or those will be discontinued, and there will be a new platform or new system will come in the picture. So that time, like let’s say, assume that you are you say your mobile app version, your new you. You decided everything based on the current environment. And when it times comes to a deployment, they’ll say, okay, no, we are, we are going to change platform in next ten days or 15 days or 20 days that you don’t have any clue that what’s happening in other department. Right. So all those will be the typical roadmap roadblock you will face when you when you’re implementing a platform.

[00:32:48] Egidijus: So do you understand correctly that basically alignment and education is probably the most important, uh, uh, aspect in this, these sorts of projects. Yeah.

[00:33:03] Dushyant: Definitely. It will be. And maybe if you can add like something kind of like the future roadmap or future technology change in each and every team, which is cutting across. That will also really help you in planning your your your implementation.

[00:33:22] Egidijus: This. I guess that this part in typical project plans, you know, gets like 1% of attention. Usually like if you, if you, if you make it, this project plan is like, you know, this amount of hours integrations, data connections, like, you know, templates, creation, etcetera, etcetera, etcetera. And then there’s a small, small lines like kick off.

[00:33:50] Dushyant: Those, those small, small, small lines only take. Yeah. Turquoise. Turquoise is another thing because they also need to know the progress of the project that where are we? Are we able to launch all the time and still particularly like they also have to answer to the management that, okay, after launching this project, we are projecting this, this, this as a revenue KPIs or the incremental revenue. So they are also answerable. So also they also might be needing all each and every details as and when they and the project is progressing.

[00:34:25] Egidijus: So kind of so for all fellow customer value managers, we highly recommend to put a one big line of like aligning organization. And, uh, uh, here the key emphasis is realigning and realigning and realigning until the launch, basically. Yeah.

[00:34:45] Dushyant: Until the launch. Yes, definitely. That, that, that, that would be the way forward.

[00:34:50] Egidijus: Going back to the business impact. Yes. So if we, if we have the platform which has capabilities to manage journeys, orchestrate channels, you have capabilities to manage data, add new data sources, effectively, incorporate, uh, machine learning and AI recommendation stuff. So basically you have the list of capabilities. Yes. How, uh, how would you think then to leverage those capabilities to build this revenue growing strategy? And or where would you search for biggest revenue growth opportunities first?

[00:35:31] Dushyant: One important aspect is like nowadays, uh, see all the data crunching and analysis is happening outside. So first of all, like the important point I missed out could be like the platform which you are implementing must give you certain sort of like insights that who are your customer, who are likely to buy this product or the customer who, who are likely to churn what the customer who likely to upgrade. So now from, uh, you are bringing your actual analysis which you are doing outside to the platform. And now platform is doing doing all you are trying to do certain sort of analysis within the platform, and then you are trying to implement some campaign now. And obviously obvious goal is like, let’s say, first of all, you need to define the objective, right? What what’s your target percentage? What’s your, what’s your target revenue, which you are trying to aim? If you are defining this first layer is high level alignment of KPIs, which is like it could be incremental revenue, it could be customer save, it could be upsell rate of percentage. So all those you need to align it first. Then you have to go. And then you have to go as micro as you can. And importantly, you have to learn your subscribers behavior.

[00:37:07] Dushyant: And, and being in a CVM technology, you, we, we know that how micro. We can go and learn the subscribers behavior and then try to give them certain contextual offer. Sending too many communication is not the way like you will get. Let’s say today you are sort of like a some, let’s say you are sort of like a 5% revenue. Then you say, okay, I will target all the customer with this plan. That is not the right approach. So does the right approach is you, you go learn subscribers behavior as deep as you can. Try to see that what type of product they are buying, and then try to influence a little, little from there. Let’s say your customer is buying $10 product who are currently on, let’s say $9 product. So you cannot suddenly go. You cannot suddenly go and put a the product, which are like $15 or $20, right? You have to make you have to micro enhance the value slowly and gradually enhance the value. And for that, you need to plan very much in advance that, okay, this one I want to upgrade or let’s say some, some sort of 2%, 3% customer. Next month I will upgrade so on and so forth. So you have to learn from that point of view.

[00:38:36] Dushyant: You have to, you have to sorry, you have to implement from that point of view. Let’s say first you are implement. First you have a high level objective. Now you are breaking down the objective in a different, different section that, okay, let’s say if I need it, if I want to increase 5% revenue throughout the year, then I have to see that what weightage I can give it to upsell, what weightage I can give it to say what kind of weightage I will give you to the cross sell. And then you go micro inside and try to promote the offer which are relevant customer are taking from $9. They are taking $10. You cannot suddenly ask them to go on a $15. Right? That time they will say, okay, they are just simply concerned about the revenue. They are not concerned about the customer. Uh, so that’s why we have to go slowly and gradually and then see, CVM technology is the only platform which can influence customer’s journey, buying journey or, or which can influence customer. In that case, your messaging also have to messaging also play equal part, right? So you have to identify the right segment, right offer and right messaging at the right time will help you in achieving your all CVM technology targets.

[00:40:03] Egidijus: I really loved the way you structured, you know, the whole impact, uh, uh, flow. So you think about like, okay, how do we define our business objective? Let’s say our growth, etc. and then how do we split it between churn reduction, upsell, cross sell, and then go into micro level and analyze every, every customer or customer segments to search for those improvements. Yeah. And at this point, usually people get lost because, you know, if you have 10 million subscribers, you cannot open all subscribers in Excel. You know, it just doesn’t fit. So how, how, how do you bridge the gap between this goal and 1 to 1?

[00:40:57] Dushyant: So when we talk about, uh, see, that’s why I particularly mentioned that about like, because now telco data is like very big. Now that that crosses millions of subscriber base. And then when you are we are trying to identify the context. You are adding so many things in between. Like it could be a recharge system, external apps and all those things. And so that’s why you need one connected platform, which is, and the CDM platform can help you in designing and defining those hypotheses. Let’s say you have a 10 million subscriber base, but you want to see that customer. Then you practically cannot analyze those even into Excel or let’s say access or something, right? So that’s why you need a platform which can give you a good insights. And from so you have to use the platform for getting, generating the insight. Let’s say start with your hypothesis. Do as many tests as you can and then go ahead with your testing or the hypothesis. And. Because what’s really happening is in a CVM technology, particularly in CVM technology, if you say that my offer A performed really very well last month. That’s not necessary that this month also you will offer a perform very well, right. You need to go ahead with the different type of offerings. So that’s and for that you need to analyze and to analyze. You need to have a platform which can generate those insights for you. Let’s say you do cross tab analysis.

[00:42:56] Dushyant: You do heat mapping. You do all those like pie chart, Bar chart. All those charts its platform is generating are analyzing the way you want. Then you have certain confidence in going after each and every customer. And on top of that, if you can, if platform is capable, when you are analyzing and you realize that this is my target segment, you just lock the target segment, send it to your segments, uh, and just save that segment particularly. And then you, you know, that this type of people like what type of offer, and then you just design from, from there itself. But using Excel, it’s very hard to achieve that kind of like, uh, uh, speed and the beauty of, uh, like analytical ready platform is it can store the data the way you want. Let’s say when you are running some analysis outside, you have to take a lot of cedar’s transactional data, browsing data, customer data. But now CVM technology already have that, that data and summarized way. So each and every event or each and every trigger they know. So they can practically enhance the decision making from like the, the way you do a traditionally and the way you do with the platform. It is obviously a different. Right. So that’s, that’s way that’s how you can enhance your decision making so that you can achieve, you can define those type of like rules as fast as you can and then achieve your goals.

[00:44:51] Egidijus: Uh, but I have a tough question for you. It’s, um, you know, doing those analyses is really, really hard. You know, defining tens of segments, finding the good offer for them. You know, it’s super hard. Can you give me can I just put everything to AI and so that it would decide everything for me?

[00:45:16] Dushyant: Yes. When you have a robotics campaign running at that time, you can definitely say. But I have seen in a in some of the platforms where they run the robotic campaigns. But even though you have to give at least a strategy to the campaigns or the data sets, so that basically all those campaigns working on in like a lookalike audience most of the time, right? But when, when your market is changing, when your competitor is taking some actions. So that that insight, I don’t think so is going inside the modeling. So anyway, the offer, the the platform, whatever is suggesting you, you have to verify because last month people, let’s say people going from $9 to $10. But suddenly competitor came and put $7 offer in the market at that time, your lookalike audience strategy may not work. So you need to opt for a different strategy at that time. But yes, future will be. Future is looking like this, but definitely, uh, control must be with the CVM technology or the campaign managers who can take a decision whether I want to go live with this campaign or not. And the other aspect of this is the messaging. Because your messaging is the, is your creativity, which which is attracting your customer. And so that’s why, that’s why you need to manually write the prompt or manually write the creatives. Because now if you are promoting anything on a digital channel and by creating AI images or something, it’s obviously screening through. So some point of time, it may impact your open rate or your engagement rate, because people also might understand this is AI generated. It’s not a personalized content. So that’s also one of the aspect which you should be looking at.

[00:47:32] Egidijus: So you don’t have good news for me. You know, I will not be able to drink my coffee and get a revenue increase without putting my hard work in.

[00:47:45] Dushyant: Definitely have to put hard work because like, that’s why CVM technology is there, right? That’s why CVM technology is there. So if you just ask a robot to do all the things. Then what’s the need of CVM technology? CVM technology managers are like, they need to go as detailed as they can and then and then only they can get the value out of it. If there is some automation which can readily generate the revenue, then I don’t know what will happen. Practically this is not impossible, but conceptually it is impossible, I would say.

[00:48:22] Egidijus: So with this practical note, I will ask the closing questions. So over your beautiful career and different, different, uh, companies and different, uh, wearing different hats, what was your biggest failure that you are now able to laugh at, you know, throughout that career?

[00:48:46] Dushyant: So if you ask me, like, see, there is no room of failure in the marketing automation implementation, you can say. And for the CVM technology, if you talk about CVM technology, yes, it could be like a possible that your campaigns are not working. So it’s a constant feedback. So it’s there is no there is there is no terms called failure in CVM. Everything is like a learning.

[00:49:09] Egidijus: So so you haven’t sent the wrong message to the whole customer base at the wrong time.

[00:49:17] Dushyant: No no no, that that never happened till now.

[00:49:21] Egidijus: Okay. You are lucky like you then. Uh, for for for the fellow, uh, cvms. Uh, how would you recommend to learn this topic? You know.

[00:49:34] Dushyant: For, for a CVM technology, particularly if you have to get into this field, you need to have a two type of like a major qualities. And if you want to get into this and first one is, uh, your commercial skills. And the second one is technology because CVM technology is. CVM technology is combined. Of both of them. It is. You have to do commercial as well and you have to do a technology as well. If you are understanding both then this is the field for you.

[00:50:10] Egidijus: So it’s like a bridge between those two worlds.

[00:50:13] Dushyant: Correct. And and and the third aspect is think like a customer that what, what, what customer might be needing when at this stage that one will really help you in like. That will really help you in enhancing your CVM campaign journey.

[00:50:36] Egidijus: And the last question is, uh, how do we make customer value management managers famous?

[00:50:44] Dushyant: Wow. That’s, that’s a tough question because CVM technology is rather than Just, uh, looking at looking at campaign management team, look at them from the commercial management aspect. And, uh, yeah, that’s, that’s the only thing which I can say that if you, if you, if we try and, uh, like as a position CVM technology guy as a commercial support guy, that will make them a really famous because when it comes to a commercial, everyone is interested.

[00:51:24] Egidijus: So thank you. Thank you for sharing your, uh, really valuable experience and, uh, all the insights today.

[00:51:33] Dushyant: Thank you. Thank you very much for inviting me.

[00:51:36] Exacaster: CVM Stories is produced by Exacaster. We help companies take their customer value management to the next level. To stay updated on our latest episodes, subscribe to the podcast or sign up for an email newsletter at exacaster.com/cvmstories.