[00:00:00] Matt Duench: Welcome to Mistaken Identity. I'm Matt Duench. Today, I'll interview Randy Mercer, Chief Product Officer at OneWorldSync. We'll talk about how to understand and serve the demographics of your customers, as well as considerations for implementing AI at your company. 

[00:00:16] Welcome to today's episode of Mistaken Identity. I'm Matt Duench. I'm excited to be joined today by Randy Mercer. Randy, welcome.

[00:00:23] Randy Mercer: Hey, thanks, Matt. Appreciate, uh, appreciate you having me on today.

[00:00:27] Matt Duench: Yeah, I'm very excited to have you, you know, give us some insight into product content or orchestration and what that means and really excited to dive in today to get your experience on how you've thought about building, you know, customer experiences, leveraging identity. But before we do all of that, maybe give the folks that are watching or listening to today's episode a bit of insight into what you do at 1WorldSync and what 1WorldSync does.

[00:00:52] Randy Mercer: All right, well, I'll start with what OneWorldSync does, so... Uh, the short story is we are a, we are a SaaS platform that sits between, uh, CPG manufacturers primarily. So think of any product you buy in a, you know, uh, a grocery store or mass merchandiser. We sit between those manufacturers and the retailers, right?

[00:01:10] The, the, the brick and mortar retailers, e tailers and so forth. And the purpose of our platform is to allow brands, uh, the CPG manufacturers to share content with the retailers that ultimately is going to enable item setup, supply chain operations, selling online, really operating all the sales channels.

[00:01:30] So, that's what we do as a business. I run product management here at OneWorldSync. My history is, I've been in this space for about 20 years, got into it mildly accidentally by helping a customer who was a CPG manufacturer that needed to do what our platform now does. Uh, with that endeavor and we basically grew that into a number of tools that we sell today.

[00:01:52] Matt Duench: Well, that's awesome. Yeah, I'm really excited to dive into some of your experience in the CPG space. I know that at Okta and even within Identity, we're seeing a lot of interest from CPG companies and how they can build better experiences for their customers and better profiles, given some of the examples that you just, uh, you just gave.

[00:02:09] What led you to be chief product officer at One World Sync?

[00:02:13] Randy Mercer: Yeah, so, you know, I'll go back to, you know, about 20 years to the beginnings of the company that I now work for and at the time I worked for a software develop, uh, development organization and I was a developer. And as I mentioned, I, um, I was approached by one of my customers and they said, Hey, we have to start putting our content, our product information in this platform. We don't know what it is, we don't know how to do it, would you be willing to just figure it out for us and build us, you know, write some code for us? And so I did that and very quickly realized that a lot of my other customers were going to have the same problem. And so we productized that original solution, um, and I, I co sold that solution with my previous company and the one I now work for for about 13 years, uh, before ultimately I just joined OneWorldSync. To sell that solution internally to this organization. And, uh, about five years ago, took over the product management. And then that led me to the role that I'm in today, which I've had for about a year now.

[00:03:12] Matt Duench: Well, that's awesome. So when you think about your role now as Chief Product Officer, what are some of the ways that you guide your teams, instruct your teams, lead your teams to think about how they execute on building a really great digital strategy for your customers?

[00:03:26] Randy Mercer: The way that we think about our role with our customer base today goes way beyond just that master data alignment aspect that we serviced for so many years. And we now think, you know, very much about the consumer experience, the digital experience. And how do we take that information that's in our platform and add solutions around that that contribute to the consumer experience very holistically, right? And what I mean by that is when you look at a product on any e com site, today we have solutions that really contribute content, pretty much every aspect of the detail that you'd see on that.

[00:04:01] On that site. So for my product managers, it's, it's, um, really innate to the solutions that we're, that we're very focused on today. Um, as related to the consumer experience that we're trying to support there.

[00:04:13] Matt Duench: And, and balancing that customer experience, I got to believe is, is a challenge for your product teams, but how do you think about, you know, balancing that experience, but also keeping the content that you provide your customers impactful, accurate, up to date? And also, how do you think about building new solutions and products for that customer base as well?

[00:04:32] Randy Mercer: Alright, so when you look at the aspects of keeping, uh, keeping content current, you know, that's really innate to just the, you know, what we've done as a business for many years in taking content from a brand and moving it to a retailer or distributor that needs it to run their business. And what we learned a long time ago is that a lot of brands are challenged with that. They don't have, uh, some of the content or they're just not very good at managing it in such a way that it is kept, uh, you know, kept fresh, accurate, uh, complete as related to what the retailers and distributors are looking for. So, long ago, we started adding solutions to our portfolio that were very much aimed at helping the brands fill those deficiencies in terms of content creation and content management and then ultimately distribution.

[00:05:12] So today, we have solutions that range from Mr. Brand, give me your product and I'll just do it all for you. And we have image studios where we can, you know, produce the imagery that's needed in an e com context, imagery that's used for planogramming for in store experience. Those kinds of things. And these days, we're starting to add some elements of AI into the aspects of how do you ensure the accuracy of that content and reconcile content that may be coming from different sources, all in the interest of just completeness and accuracy, and then ultimately currency. So, you know, those are things that we've been doing for many years, and it's still just a primary focus for us today.

[00:05:47] Matt Duench: Yeah. And when you think about how you build those customer profiles, obviously, I got to believe data integrity, data accuracy, and the consent to use that data probably go all hand in hand. How do you, how do you think about building that in, keeping the data current, the data fresh and also building up a profile of those customers over time? Because I got to believe that's something that the CPG companies, consumer packaged goods companies are really thinking about.

[00:06:13] Randy Mercer: Yeah, I mean, it's, uh, again, just as we continue to advance the ways that we... That we help our target market with the concept of aligning this master data and this content that's going to be used in pretty much all sales channels. That's one of the things that we continue to just, um, uh, evolve and refine is our understanding of the demographics that, number one, that content is going to serve. But then, number two, the personas and the demographics of the folks that interact with that content in a couple of different contexts. And one of them, you know, as, as related to conversation today is really that consumer interaction. And when we look at the solutions that we have that produce that content that really are going to be consumer facing and empower a digital experience, we have a number of sets of analytics that relate to different areas of that content that are all intended to understand, what is the interaction rate of the consumer? More and more today, one of the things that we just recently added to our portfolio of solutions is, is in the realm of ratings and reviews and user generated content, right? So, you know, no, no more direct interaction with the consumer and getting their sentiments and understandings about products than that. Um, so we're actually learning a lot just from that set of solutions that we're ultimately can apply to some of our other solutions to really just build that intelligence around who's interacting with the content. And what's the net result of those interactions?

[00:07:38] Matt Duench: Yeah, I think that makes a lot of sense. And you, you mentioned earlier, you were talking about AI and how that's becoming, you know, a key for how you think about building that into your products. What are, are there some recent examples of how you've been able to incorporate AI into some of the product products that you've delivered or developed for your customers?

[00:07:56] Randy Mercer: So just very recently we introduced, um, uh, a GPT function. So, you know, a content generation function that is, um, that is used by our brand customers to in some instances create content that ultimately is going to be surfaced online. And the example, um, that we just released was, uh, to create SEO. Uh, copy, um, in the form of marketing text and feature value bullet points or YBIs, as we sometimes call it, right? So, you know, nothing, probably not too surprising, you know, you hear, you hear the term chat GPT a lot these days and folks using it to write term papers and stuff like that. We're actually training those models over fact based data that's in our system, right? To build that content over products that maybe don't exist in the public domain yet, right? Which is what often, you know, chat GPT is looking at things on the internet. So trying to make that, that kind of capability more specific and more usable is related to, to something that really doesn't exist anywhere yet.

[00:08:56] We're already just introducing it to the market. So that's one example, but you know, where we see more value is using it in more back office situations. You asked earlier about the, you know, the, the, the nuances of product information that may be originating from our brand and maybe the ownership by that brand versus, um, content that we're creating as part of our solutions. And a lot of the content that you'd see surfaced by us online is a mixture of both of those. It originates from the brand, and then maybe we do some things to enhance it, or maybe we, you know, create some of that content ourselves. And when you look at both of those things happening at the same time, there's this reconciliation requirement that happens there, where you've got to make sure that you're combining that stuff in such a way that it, you know, really accurately represents the brand, um, and the, you know, specific product online. So that's where we're finding more applications for AI is just in that reconciliation and that cross checking and the QA exercises that go along with it. So for us you don't necessarily see it and it's not that exciting to talk about but that's where we're going to get more value out of it. And give more value to our customers.

[00:10:01] Matt Duench: Yeah. And I got to believe even with obviously the AI tools that you're incorporating it, it really does matter. About the data that you're putting into the model, uh, on the outputs that you actually get, right? So when you think about that and how you think about building, you know, successful experiences and products, How do you, are there any trends that you're thinking about on how that could maybe impact how you build a really great customer experience? For example, there's a lot of talk about cookie, cookie less world, right? So the concept of third party cookies going away and the ability to build really strong 360 degree views of our customers becoming challenged, uh, there. And, uh, we'd love to hear your thoughts on if that's impacting what you're thinking about for how you build those experiences or how some of the brands that you work with are thinking about that as well.

[00:10:50] Randy Mercer: Yeah, yeah, all of those things are impacting how we think about a couple of our solutions. And just, you know, you know, to, to paint a frame of reference for that. You know, we literally have a storefront solution, right? Which, you know, some of our organizations, our customers use that to operate their, their consumer experience. Um, so clearly there's all kinds of aspects there about, you know, who's, who's signing into that. How do you keep them safe? Um, we're an ISO certified and SOC 2 compliant platform, and so we, you know, and that extends across our portfolio of solutions. So we have to kind of keep thinking about that as we add capabilities they have to fit within those. Within those parameters, you know? So there's certainly, uh, that aspect of, of it that we have to, that we have to consider for sure.

[00:11:31] Matt Duench: There's probably multiple scenarios where you mentioned kind of like the login and the signup experience, where you're needing to provide different types of solutions so you can not only help those customers log in and interact with those brands and obviously your content as well, but also balance the concept between this, this idea of convenience, right, giving them really quick access to secure, making sure that it's, there's enough friction involved in that process that it's, uh, it's really secure. How have you thought about balancing, or have you ever thought about even making trade offs between those two things? And how do you sort of approach that balance between security and convenience?

[00:12:11] Randy Mercer: you know, we think about it within the context of, of the specific area of solutioning, you know, that we're providing. And when you think of that storefront experience, right, where the consumer's coming in, there's a point in time where you have to have some pretty intimate interactions with that consumer, right? You have to know who he is. Uh, how do you, how do you ship the stuff from them? There's, you know, some payment, uh, you know, uh, uh, pieces of information that go into that, right? So, so that context, um, all the things that you can imagine, you know, that you interact with on a daily basis anytime you go on to any kind of an e com shopping site. You know, you end up giving some information there, right? So, from our perspective, constantly thinking about how do we keep that, that, um, you know, secure. And, and we, we do, you know, tons of work around that, you know, from a penetration, uh, testing perspective and those kinds of things. When you look at some of the other solutions, like, like just now, go back to the reviews example. Again, it's a direct interaction with the consumer, but you don't need to know very much about that guy, right? So, you know, we think, you know, how do you make it as easy as possible for that guy to write a review, yet still understand enough about who that person is that you can do some sentiment analysis later that's going to be helpful from a demographic perspective?

[00:13:20] So, you know, those are just two, you know, varying ends of the scale in terms of how we have to think about, um, you know, how much or how deep we're learning about that consumer and the implications of that. And where we can just not have to go that deep and, uh, and make it a little bit easier. And as you mentioned, just frictionless for the, for the consumer.

[00:13:39] Matt Duench: Yeah. And even a lot of what you're describing here as well, we've seen a lot of our customers that are starting to implement systems and solutions around this, around progressive profiling, because no one wants to, to have to fill out a long registration form or have multiple steps to log in, you know, to interact with that brand. I think that's something that, you know, when we think about that balance of, of the experience and security or friction, um, something like a progressive profiling can really help because over time you're building trust in that relationship with the customer. It's not about getting all those attributes that you mentioned up front. You can do that over time, asking them questions about the brands that they'd like to see or the content that they'd like to be served, and even the AI tools that you mentioned, being able to leverage that information and that data to better serve them, uh, content. Are you thinking about progressive profiling and sort of that capacity as well?

[00:14:30] Randy Mercer: Yeah, you know, it's interesting that you bring that up because, um, you know, part of how we've grown our platform a lot over the last couple of years is through acquisitions. So we've acquired a number of different technology platforms and solutions that we've ultimately integrated into our portfolio. And one of the recent, um, acquisitions going back about six months was an organization in Germany. And, uh, so if you know anything about Europe and, and some of the implications over there from a, from a security and, and privacy perspective, GDPR and just how they think about PII and so forth. They think about it completely differently. So we, we very quickly learned a few things from them just about, you know, our interactions with the European market and so forth, but just related to what you're talking about there. We, we, we've within our own business for our customers, so not the consumer, but the customers that use our solutions to ultimately interact with, with consumers. We, we had an, uh, an online store that customers could go in and they could, you know, uh, basically buy our products just right off of that store. And we made it as hard as we possibly could on a customer to come in and do that in terms of, you know, we asked them 10, 000 questions up front, just so that they could, you know, buy something, you know, fairly simple. And, uh, and again, we didn't think that hard about that until we saw, um, our, our new organization in Germany and how they think about it.

[00:15:46] And they've gotten, um, very progressive about how they handle that interaction. And again, for them, it's still a, you know, it's still a B2B, uh, circumstance in which they were. You know, surfacing the same need that we were servicing over here, but just the way that they were doing it were more along the lines of just a softer interaction up front, let the, let the, the, the customer browse, uh, the available solutions and then ultimately, you know, incrementally get to a point where you could actually execute that transition or transaction. So, uh, for us, very, very quickly, we were doing it the hard way. They're thinking about it a lot harder and doing it really well. So ultimately it's one of the things that we'll just adopt across our platform in terms of how we interact with our customer, our consumer. Uh, which is, you know, that B2B nuance of it, but it goes along the same lines, right? Just, you know, progressively learning more about that customer throughout the transaction so that when you get to the end, you know everything you need to know to actually execute a sale.

[00:16:38] Matt Duench: I think that makes a lot of sense, you know, leveraging, you're kind of mentioning to the zero party and first party data of how they actually interact with your, with not only your site, your solution, but also the content that you're serving too. That makes, uh, that makes a lot of sense. Just shifting gears a little bit, and you've obviously mentioned, um, One World Sync is a, is a B2B SaaS company, you started out that way, um, have a solution that, that services that industry as well. And in B2B SaaS, oftentimes there's this concept of build versus buy, right? It's how can I get to market fast in the most efficient way with the least disruption to my development team so I can build what I need to build and get to market fast. When you're building applications like that, how do you, how do you think about that in the development process? Uh, or I should say products. How do you think about that in the development process of some of the products that you build?

[00:17:27] Randy Mercer: Yeah, another great question. So, you know, for about the first probably 17 years of the existence of this organization, um, of which I watched the first 13 years of that from a distance, but then became an employee about 10 years ago. So I started seeing that more up close. But we spent the first, you know, like I said, about 17 years in, it was pretty much build only, you know, we, we built things, partnered for a little bit, um, but, but, you know, only if it was, you know, kind of a non strategic offering. Um, so really focused on just building and what we realized was we, we just can't advance fast enough that way. So about three years ago, we really shifted into this buy mentality and really just examined our portfolio and where we wanted it to be, you know, in the context of a, you know, a three year, five year plan and looked at where we had gaps, um, as related to our plans. And we just went into M& A mode, and we just started looking for technologies that would fill those gaps. And so, build means something different to us today than it did. Ten years ago, where build meant we're building every single piece of functionality. Today, build means we're going to take some technology that we acquired and just build the, the integrations into our core platform.

[00:18:37] It has been more about buy than it, than it has been about build. And it's just, for us, it just came down to just velocity of building the business. And that was a faster way to get there.

[00:18:46] Matt Duench: Yeah. Getting to market fast. I definitely, I can resonate with that as well, because I think a lot of our customers that we work with too, that they do the same thing. They might start even a bit smaller and start building out all the systems that they need, thinking, Oh, this is no problem. My developers can do this easily. They're builders, they're developers. It's what they do. And then they start heading down this path of, you know, increasing scale requirements, you know, privacy requirements and more customers and greater demands from customers on privacy and security and also different types of login and soon it becomes just an impossibility to manage and it's that almost that user centric approach that I'd love your thoughts on as well is considering, uh, you know, leading more heavily sort of on the buy side, but incorporating those elements of technology into what you're building.

[00:19:35] How do you still remain focused on a user centric approach to what you're building so that those customers, those end users don't even, they can't even feel the tech that they're actually using.

[00:19:46] Randy Mercer: Yeah. Again, going back to just the concept of integrating this in such a way that it, it, it feels like a seamless experience, regardless of which of the solutions might, you might be interacting with and, and literally on a product detail page, you could be interacting independently with three or four of our solutions.

[00:20:01] Seamless fluid experience for, you know, for the, for the consumer, you know, the integration and how those things interoperate just very much goes, it goes into that. So. the resources and the talent maybe that goes into some of those aspects, going back to, you know, we were very much a B2B organization for many years, and we didn't think very much about the consumer experience because a lot of the data that we were moving was really oriented to the back office activities of ordering and shipping and warehousing and all that kind of stuff that you don't really, you don't really appreciate when you're looking at it online. And so as we've started to add some of these more consumer facing, uh, elements to our portfolio, it's really forced us to step back and just go all the way to the beginning and think about how can we do all of that in a different way, knowing that eventually the consumer is impacted, right? So it's just forced us to be much more consumer centric about how we think about the whole process, you know, and what, and that process we call product content orchestration, right?

[00:20:59] Um, so how do you sustainably operate this process of creating content, getting it out into the marketplace, understanding how it's doing. And then all the way down to just understanding those interactions with the consumer. So today we just think very hard about that. And when we look at the technologies that we've bolted into our platform, the beautiful part about that is you don't just get the technology, you get the people that built it typically, right? And those folks bring along just these asp, or you know, these perspectives that have just added to our organization in terms of how we think about all of that.

[00:21:28] Matt Duench: Thinking a little bit about how that plays into innovation, right? And how you pursue. What, what does that mean to you? Like, what do you think is most important or what's important to you right now with how you drive innovation at One World Sync?

[00:21:43] Randy Mercer: Yeah, you know, again, a lot has come out of, of, uh, you know, bringing these new technologies into our platform and bolting those in, and it just very quickly opens your eyes to some opportunities that, that you have to innovate further back in the process, right? So some of the foundational aspects of our platform, what are the, the things that we could do? And again, a lot of it ties back to content quality and completeness and just those, those just very foundational aspects of how we serve our target market. Uh, but just you learn very quickly about, man, if I just did this better and, and, and, you know, innovated a little bit, innovated a little bit harder early on, I'd have a much better end result when I get, you know, further down the downstream and start interacting with some of these other solutions. So for that, you know, it's, it's that aspect of it, you know, just this organic learning based on some of these technologies that we're bringing in. But, you know, when you look at our customer base and the interactions that we have with our customers, you know, these are, in many cases, the largest CPG manufacturers on the planet. You know, you could probably name them just based on, you know, what's in your, on the shelves in your kitchen.

[00:22:46] Matt Duench: Yeah.

[00:22:46] Randy Mercer: Um, but then the, yeah, exactly. Look around and they're probably our customer. And then on the retail side, same thing, you know, the biggest retailers, um, you know, around the planet, you know, just so we have, you know, massive footprint here in North America, but now Europe. Um, big footprint in Latin America, so, trust me, they all tell you, you know, where you need to be, um, innovating and what you're lacking and how things could be working better and that's... Um, you know, today I spend just a ton of my time with some of those enterprise level customers on both sides of the fence, both manufacturer and retail. And that's what I'm there to learn is, what should I be doing to service them a little bit better and just make their lives easier, which is ultimately what I'm here for. So

[00:23:26] Matt Duench: Right on. And I mean, what are some of the, those things that I'm telling you, like in terms of the big trends that you're seeing in your industry and just in technology in general? We talked a lot about AI, but what are some of your big enterprise customers talking about? Like, what are they looking for? What are you seeing in your own industry from a technology perspective that you're really thinking of incorporating into the development process?

[00:23:46] Randy Mercer: Interestingly, the, the, the most current trend is, you know, we've, we've spent three years thinking so hard about the, the, the consumer experience that is the end result of a lot of the data that we move. And we've added so many technologies. So when we talk to our customers, deep interest in just intense integration of all of those things for the, you know, for the sole purpose of when they look at their solution matrix today, often they're buying solutions from, you know, just countless vendors. And so to now have an opportunity to maybe, you know, use solutions from a single platform is super key to them. Integration from a technological perspective, but then also integration from just a go to market perspective, right? Just making the buying of experience around those solutions easier is just key, key to all of those guys. But an interesting trend that we've seen here just over the last probably six months. Is this, this return to the very beginnings of how, how retailers think about acquiring the content that they need, um, all the way from just the operational layer of it, you know, the item setup and, and those kinds of things, and then fast forward to the consumer experience. So, as much as just the consumer experience, like, how do we get there? Like, how do we get there from a master data perspective? And so. They're really forcing us to kind of go back a little bit in time and think about how do we apply some innovation earlier on in the process. Um, because to them, the, you know, the, the operational aspects are not optional, right?

[00:25:20] If you don't do that, you cannot run your business as a retailer, right? When you think of the consumer experience, you know, obviously the better it is, the more, the higher performance you're going to have from a. From an e com perspective, but to some extent it's kind of optional. I don't have to have some of those aspects. I, you know, I just want them, right? So really forcing us to go back and just think about how do we get smarter about, about the foundational level of a layer of our platform so that we get a better consumer experience down the line.

[00:25:49] Matt Duench: That's super interesting. Yeah. It almost sounds like to me that it comes down to how do you get better quality data, right, uh, into, into the process to make better decisions so that, yeah, you can drive innovation. That's, that's really interesting.

[00:26:02] Randy Mercer: Yep. 100%.

[00:26:04] Matt Duench: So then I suppose building on that as well, what's, what's top of mind for you in your industry right now? What are you thinking about? 

[00:26:11] Randy Mercer: Just the, the AI elements that we're starting to weave in into our portfolio and what we're, what we're learning a lot is, it's, as much as it's about just the technical aspects of how do you use that and how do you refine those capabilities to the, you know, to the context of your solution portfolio and the, and the types of, of things that you're trying to achieve. Within that, it's, it's very much about the perceptions of your target market of AI in general and the tolerance of your customers, um, to, uh, to interact with AI, right? So, um, we've learned a lot about the AI policy that we have to have as an organization and that we have to be transparent about with our customers so that they have a very solid understanding of where we're, you know, maybe using AI and where we're not. And then the other thing that you have to be prepared for is, are the organizations that say, in no way, shape, or form should AI be touching my content. Right. I just, I don't trust it. And, um, and I, you know, I just, I'm not there yet. Right. So, so it adds another layer of, of how you integrate those capabilities into your platform when for one guy, you may have to just turn it off.

[00:27:17] So for me, that's just front of mind, probably, you know, for, for our organization in total, you know, including our engineers and our security teams and so forth. That's, we're just, that's, that's just current for us today.

[00:27:30] Matt Duench: Yeah. And that AI one is a, is a super interesting point for me too. I'd love to stay there for a second as well, because there's so many, so many companies are, are integrating Okta Included AI into their, into their core products to make things easier, to make recommendations easier, uh, through assistants and co pilots, et cetera. Um, and I know there's a segment of, of people who are a bit skeptical on the security element, the keeping my data private element, there's just alarm bell, alarm bells that I think that goes off in their heads. How, how are you thinking about that? Like, how do you educate customers on, you know, it, it's, it's not disruptive. In fact, it's, it's a technology accelerant to your business. Um, how are you kind of assuring your customers that everything is going to be okay?

[00:28:11] Randy Mercer: Some of what we're doing with AI is back office. So the customers, you know, they, they, you can say they'd never know it was there, right? With that, you know, we still decided we have to be transparent about things that we're, that we're doing with it. The generative AI component that allows, it literally allows a brand who's in our platform, working on their content, to click a button which says, you know, hey, have AI write some content for me based on the other facts that we, you know, that I've put in the platform. Right there on the screen, we have, you know, things like pop ups and educational things that help them understand, hey, you know, this is what's happening behind the scenes, just so you know.

[00:28:47] Um, we've got, um, documentation that we share that just explains our, just our, our, um, position on AI and how we think about it, why we think it's important, why we think it's helpful and so forth. So some of those educational aspects of it really can be an accelerant to what you're doing with, you know, with our platform in general.

[00:29:06] But ultimately, the end goal of just getting to market faster, this is, you know, one thing that's going to help you get there, right? So, it's an educational thing, and to be honest, I mean, we've been kind of surprised, um, you know, as related to the reactions that we've gotten from customers about the use of AI. To the extent that they're just way across the spectrum, you know, you've got some folks that are just, they're scared to death and very, um, you know, just a hard position on don't want it. Other folks aren't even thinking about it. Unbelievably, it's like, what's this AI thing, right? And they know what it is, but they just really haven't thought about it. So it made us, you know, it makes us think that we do have to be an educator relative to how AI can impact, you know, what we do for our target market and just what are the ways that we can do. You know, that we can educate our customers, you know, webinars, educational aspects, and then the things just right within the platform that explain how we're using it and what it's doing.

[00:30:00] Matt Duench: Yeah, and I think that's so important, the education piece, because AI is more than just an awesome idea, right? It's something that I think you need to do a little education around and how, how the data is going to be collected and used and also giving customers opt out abilities as well when perhaps, uh, uh, they might, they might not want to opt into things like that. So I think that makes a lot of sense as well. Uh, thinking a little more future looking or even into the next 12 months. What's something that you're excited? Uh, to launch this year,

[00:30:34] Randy Mercer: Yeah, we're just looking at, um, just, uh, more, uh, sophisticated ways of creating content on behalf of our users. And just one of the... One of the aspects that I would, um, that I would refer to is, you know, when you look at the online experience, the first thing you think of is the imagery that's available to you as a consumer, right? And what we've, you know, recognized, we do a lot of consumer surveys to understand how consumers are thinking about their, their interactions with e com sites and, and so forth. Because that's, you know, drives a lot of our thinking in terms of what we're going to provide. And what we've learned about consumers is they get more impatient by the day in terms of how quickly they want to learn something about a product, right? To the point where when you think of the text that you see on websites today, nobody reads it, right? It's, it's there to power SEO and parametric search and all of that kind of stuff. But nobody's, you know, is going to take the time to read that. And so they're looking for that information in the form of... of the imagery that they see. And, you know, we think a lot today about, um, you know, mobile ready hero imagery, right? So I'm, I'm on my phone, limited bandwidth sometimes. So I don't want to have to flip through 50 pictures and scroll through a bunch of text and all this kind of stuff. I want to see a picture that has everything I want to. I want to learn there. So textual and factual information integrated into that imagery. So that's something that we've, you know, we've got capabilities in that realm today, but we're thinking harder about how do we make that more automatic in terms of the production of that imagery and using, again, some AI elements to do that.

[00:32:08] Um, you know, some of the hero imagery that you see today, where you see a front facing image of the product and you call out some specific facts about it and maybe quiet down some other things that are happening. There's, you know, things that you can do with AI to understand, you know, what should that look like? What are the facts that you should either, you know, make more obvious or calm down? What is the color schemes that you want to orient that stuff to? So those are some of the things that we're going to just try to make more automatic for our customers, make their lives easier, knowing that it's just a, it's a consumer requirement today to have those just more comprehensive sets of imagery to, to make a conversion decision.

[00:32:45] Matt Duench: Yeah. And I think, 'cause that's the key word or the active word there is conversions as well, right? It's, you know, we, we want the experience, but the, the obvious business goal or outcome is, is to create a more happy customer. One that will convert, one that will interact with the brands that will drive revenue. Um, and I think to do that, that's the important piece, is to drive those conversions. You really need to focus on that customer experience. So I think you hit the nail on the head there. That's exactly what you need to think about is how do you drive, you know, the, the best experience possible in the least obtrusive way? Because think about this, like, everyone interacts with their brand and, and, uh, you know, their favorite applications on their phone. 

[00:33:24] It's that level of almost invisible hand to the experience that is just, it's an incredible thing. And that really showcases the power of everything that you mentioned, the power of the data that you have, of the, of what you understand about your customer, of the profile and the trust ultimately that you've been able to build with that customer over time, they're going to interact with, with your brand in a convenient and seamless way. It's going to drive more conversions. And that's such an, uh, such an important point. And even just on that operative word, operative word of conversion, um, I think is a really key one.

[00:33:57] Randy Mercer: You know, it really is, and you mentioned consumer trust, and there's no, no, uh, faster way to break consumer trust than to, than to produce a conversion, um, only for them to find out that they weren't very well informed about the product, and they get it, and it's not what they want, and then they have to return it. Um, and so we talk a lot about the concept of, of manufacturing returns by not doing a very good job with the consumer experience, and all of the expense that that introduces into the equation. When you now have to take that thing back and go through this reverse supply chain situation, right? So we think a lot about, about that in terms of, you know, conversion, you want conversion, but it has to be an accurate conversion, or you're just causing a lot of other problems.

[00:34:41] And then you mentioned that concept of, you know, I buy some, it feels so easy, I just buy it on my phone, and then I walk up to this counter and it's sitting there. All the master data that goes into making that happen, right? Consumer doesn't even know it exists. They don't see it. They don't appreciate it, but if it's not there and it's not right, none of that works. Right. So, you know, we just always, and again, like I said, our, our customers are just forcing us to go back and just continue to fine tune that and just make that more, uh, more accurate, uh, faster, more efficient. Um, so that, that buying experience can actually be produced, right?

[00:35:15] Matt Duench: I feel like it's a really good, you know, point, uh, to end on for the segment, but before we do, I want to get some, uh, some quick hits, just, you know, things you're reading, some underrated, under, uh, underrated product skills. So we'll start with this. What is your favorite thing that you're reading or watching right now?

[00:35:32] Randy Mercer: You know, I continue to, um, to just educate myself on just the practice of product management and we follow, uh, pragmatic principles, uh, here, you know, which sounds, you know, it's a fancy word for, for common sense, I guess, but there are some, you know, some very specific aspects of how you think about that, right? Just the, you know, is, is a problem pervasive? Will somebody pay you for it? All of those kinds of things. And if they'll pay you, how many will pay you? Those kinds of things. So, I continue to just read a lot about that and, um, you know, it's just, it's, it's part of my job. And I like to learn more about that. So that's, uh, probably the, the thing that I'm interacting with the most.

[00:36:06] Matt Duench: That's a really good one. I resonate with that as well. Cause I keep a little pragmatic marketing framework on my desk and the number of times that I hold that up during the day, it would, it would blow your mind.

[00:36:17] Randy Mercer: Yeah. No, I'm not surprised. Yeah. I've got the same materials.

[00:36:20] Matt Duench: Yeah, I love it. That's amazing. Well, I mean, then based on that, what do you think are some underrated, underrated product, uh, management skills that you've, uh, that you've kind of uncovered either from Pragmatic or from other places?

[00:36:32] Randy Mercer: yeah, I think, you know, for us, what we, um, really have to continue to just elevate the skill set around just the commercial thinking around your product, right? So it's very easy for product managers to get bogged down in the feature function and not thinking so hard about how that translates to a commercial outcome for our company, right? At the end of the day, you can, you know, create a product, but if you, if it's not sellable and you can't sell it, um, that doesn't do you any good, right? So thinking just, you know, what are the commercial aspects of it? How am I going to, how is this going to translate to some kind of a rate card, for example?

[00:37:07] How's that going to translate to the, to the sales dialogue? And then making sure that your sales team is prepared to actually, you know, execute that sales dialogue and sell it. And what is the product manager's role in that, right? So, that's probably the, you know, the one thing that we have to just continue to work on the most.

[00:37:23] Matt Duench: Yeah. It's a very, very pragmatic answer, right? Thinking about being outside in versus inside out. It's not about what we can build. Uh, it's the outcome that it drives for that customer, right? And what is the challenge? That we are ultimately trying to solve for that customer. Uh, I like that a lot. What's the, uh, best tech advice that you've ever received?

[00:37:43] Randy Mercer: or Be very forward thinking about your product, right? So, when you start building something, just think, you know, early on about where do you see this thing in three, five, six years ago? And I think about that a lot because how I got into this business, that product that we built 20 years ago, we still sell it today. And if I had done that more early on, just, you know, from a technology perspective, just literally the tech stack that we built it on, had I been thinking real hard about it and had some forethought, I probably would have made some different decisions about it. So that's just, uh, you know, the, the big thing, I think, um, that, uh, that just early on I learned that and a few people helped me learn that. Um, and it was just great advice and I wish I had just appreciated it more earlier on.

[00:38:28] Matt Duench: That's awesome. Even bridging into the next question here. What's, who's the, or what's the best mentor that you've ever had?

[00:38:33] Randy Mercer: Oh man, I just answered this question yesterday. Um, and I, and I, it's a, it's a cliche answer and it's pretty boring, but I'd say good old mom and dad, right?

[00:38:42] Matt Duench: Oh, yeah, that's a great.

[00:38:43] Randy Mercer: On. Yeah, just, you know, just be a good person and just work really hard and things, good things come from that. And so that's just what I've, what I've focused on and in a variety of ways just in, you know, in my professional life and outside of that, you know, try to follow those things pretty closely and it's served me pretty well.

[00:39:00] Matt Duench: That's a great one. I, I, I feel like we should end on that. But before we do, where can folks find you online?

[00:39:06] Randy Mercer: Uh, LinkedIn is probably the best place to, to track me down. Yep. So, Randall Mercer at OneWorldSync. com there on LinkedIn.

[00:39:14] Matt Duench: Awesome. That's great. Well, Randy, once again, thank you so much for joining us on today's episode of Mistaken Identity. Uh, I feel like the title of this would be Pragmatic AI if I had to sum it up. Uh, you know, thinking about how we can build better, better tools for our customers within an outside in approach. Uh, but I want to thank you again.

[00:39:33] Randy Mercer: of course. Yeah. Thank you for having me on today. I appreciate it.

[00:39:36] TRA

[00:39:36] Matt Duench: That was Randy Mercer, Chief Product Officer at One World Sync. As we wrap up this episode, remember that when you're building great customer experiences, Our goal as product leaders is to deliver them with the least amount of friction as possible. I'm Matt Duench. Join me next time on Mistaken Identity as we explore how to leverage customer identity to your advantage and deliver great products that customers love.