Hello, hello. My name is Vaishali, and I work as a Senior customer experience strategist. I believe in integrating emotions in the world of technology and MarTech, and today we have a very, very exciting topic that's very close to Akshay and I where we're going to dive into the digital transformation and manufacturing on a digital customer experience podcast and series. Over to you, Akshay. Hey, my name is Akshay. I've been doing this for quite a bit. I'm a partner as well as a composable architect at Konabos.

So today, our very exciting topic is digital transformation in the world of manufacturing. How do you feel about it, and what is it all about? Very curious to ask you. Akshay, yeah, so digital transformation is anything to do with the digital efforts of it, of in the manufacturing industry, right? So from a manufacturer's perspective, it's staying current with their customers using the same channels they do, being able to message them and reach them where they are if they have a need for E commerce, being able to provide that whether you're doing a B to B or B to C. At the end of the day, the world is changing. From a digital perspective, it's for manufacturers to find the right tools and right ways to meet the customers where they are, whether they are other businesses or end to end customers.

Very interesting. And I absolutely agree with you. I wonder why businesses really care. Besides, you know, the whole customer engagement and profitability, is there any other things I know you've been working with manufacturing. We've been working in manufacturing for so long now. What do you think is that one thing that businesses really believe in the power of digital transformation? Yeah, I mean, I think it's twofold, right? So I know profitability at the end of the day is what every customer wants. Is they want to be successful, but the way they get it is super important. One is on one end, you want customer satisfaction. On the other end, if you operate efficiently, use the right tools, the tools that helps you make a difference. Then, from an operation efficiency, you gain that you can use this resources for other things, which might need more energy. From your perspective, it's just streamlining everything internal from your end, so you achieve the goals, and externally, you're keeping the customers happy, keeping them loyal. It makes you stay competitive in the industry.

And you know, we work very, very closely with marketers, right and within manufacturing industries, and I think their major focus is also, how can we create those personalized experiences or components that they can view, which makes not only the page look pretty and nice, but also is very user friendly in terms of whether they are like creating partner portals, dealer portals or authenticated website visitors. What's their journey like? What content do they see and not see? You know, whether it's their payment process and all of that stock and product information, which I know is your favorite topic on the product data piece, I think that's very important for them, and having everything cohesive, right data in place really helps marketers kind of convey the right message to customers and set the right expectations and in place from a technical perspective, why do you think It's important in a manufacturing space? Yeah, and you mentioned pretty much most of them right, just making sure everything is seamless, internal and external. So from an internal perspective, making sure you're using the right technology, and most of the time you'll probably have it, you just need to use it in a proper, streamlined way, use it in a way that the data flows, the content flows the right way, gives all the right people, right stakeholders, the right access to do the things properly, just streamlining your business. And from that perspective, from your users, whether they're dealers or distributors or end use end users, seamlessness, like if they are creating a login for one brand, and you're a multi brand company, you don't want them to create 15 logins. You just want to create one being able to provide dealer portals, like you said, where they can do all their business in one spot, being able to, like, if you're an architect who's building things and you need a schematic for a bathtub, not having to run through, you know, go through hoops to get the blueprints for Apata, being able to do the builder spec, I think, is super important. So, I think a seamless experience, internal and external, being more focused on efficiency is probably the best takeaway. I would say, out of this, like, what's yours?

I think resistance to change needs to evolve and change in this space. That's the biggest takeaway is because these businesses are almost, you know, 100 years old. They've been in industry, in space, for so, so long, and while they've seen the world, technological and landscape evolve, there's a piece and part of them that is not willing to change. It's like, Oh, are we doing the right thing? And is change managed? Meant better for them, that resistance needs to kind of evolve and needs to become more positive for them to be able to say, You know what, actually, that's the right thing for the customer, and just not only and that in return, is good for the business, rather than only thinking like is whatever we're using absolutely fine, and our customers are very happy, because today's day and age competition is absolutely insane, but a lot more to spill beans on this topic, so stay tuned, and thank you for watching us. You.