Firstly, a very good afternoon, ladies and gentlemen. A very warm welcome to all of you to this Exchange for Media's ongoing series called Moments Made by Marketing sponsored by Salesforce. Now, marketing for financial services in a digital-first world, where we explore how technology brands help create marketing moments and personalized experience. And that is what today's discussion, the webinar is going to be about, where brands today interconnect with consumers through hyper-personalized messaging in an only channel environment, creating a moment made by marketing that elevates the consumer experience. In digital-first world, even our financial services need to be there, right? How do we choose them? How does marketeers bring out those financial services to the forefront? The financial services sector is built on transparency and hinges on data and technology. However, the diuge of data available to a marketeer can impede marketing efforts. Hence, brands seek technology that offers real-time engagement, consumer insights and hyper-personalization, which of course can help create agile solutions, offer seamless customer engagement across the service lifecycle. We have the stalwarts of the industry right here with me on this webinar. So I'm not gonna say much right here, but introduce them to all of you as we will talk about today, marketing of financial services in a digital-first world. Joining us on this webinar on the panel will have with us Mr. Aalob Khan, Chief Marketing Officer of MaxLife Insurance. Very warm welcome to you, Mr. Khan. Thank you very much. Very nice to be here. We also have with us Mr. Subhashish Ghosh, Joint President and Head Institutional Business, Marketing and Alliances, Kotak Mahindra Life Insurance. A very warm welcome to you, Mr. Ghosh. Thank you very much. On the panel, we also have Mr. Lakshman Vilyotham, Chief Marketing Officer, Udjeevan Small Finance Bank. A very warm welcome to you, sir. Good afternoon, Cathy and everyone, and thank you so much. On the panel, we also have Vishwajit Parashar, Chief Marketing Officer from Bajaj Capital. A very warm welcome to you, Mr. Parashar. Thank you, Cathy. Pleasure to be on this panel. Thank you. Thank you. Last but not the least, on the panel, we have Aniruddha Joshi, Director of Marketing Cloud from Salesforce. A very warm welcome to you, Mr. Joshi. Hello, everyone. Thanks for the warm welcome. Happy to be here. And chairing this session, we have with us Ronda Mitra, Founder and Chief Strategist, Brand Eagle Consulting. A very warm welcome to you, Mr. Mitra. Thank you. Thank you, Cathy, and look forward to the discussion. Absolutely. Now before I hand over the session to you, Mr. Mitra, I want to urge all our viewers right here that the discussions will get enriched and you will benefit most from it if you keep asking questions. So while the discussions are on, we encourage you to use the Q&A tab on the screens and send us your questions. Ms. Mitra will try and kind of include all the questions possible during the discussion. So please go ahead and do so and over to you, Ms. Mitra. Thank you, Cathy. So we've all seen the world being a completely and altogether different place from what it was since the pandemic has set in. And we've all witnessed massive shifts in the way we've been living our lives. We've seen that technology has leapfrogged by several years in the last few months and has actually been at the forefront of driving many of these shifts. This escalation in the adoption of technology has redefined marketing. It has redefined what brands need to do to strengthen themselves. Or sometimes, in fact, to stay relevant. It has had deep and significant implications on how brands need to interact with its customers and deepen customer engagement. BFSI has always been one industry that has been ahead of the technology curve. In today's panel discussion, let's listen to and learn from the experiences and wisdom of some of the very senior leaders from the BFSI industry as to how they have taken technology to the next level to deliver personalized experiences and superior customer experiences. To begin with, can I ask each one of you, all five of you on the panel, to very quickly talk about one key moment in the last 15 months that you have witnessed with your customer, which was a standout moment, completely unexpected, completely took you by surprise and was a big learning as to the big changes that are about to come about, that are about to face them and us. So can I ask each one of you to quickly talk about one such key moment? And then I'll ask the individual questions. Yes, Alok, would you like to go first? I guess I'm sitting on the panel as on my screen. It's the first box, so I'm just taking that opportunity. Thanks a lot. Well, if I look at your question and say that one singular, one standout moment, it is difficult for me to pick it up as a single moment because moments are many. And one needs to identify a moment that really is the most relevant for the category that your brand is talking about. And in our category, which is life insurance, our category is about the family. It's about the family's protection for future financial protection and everything else. So what we associate at least at max life with ourselves is how do we bring our category in relevance to family moments and make it relevant for the consumer as such. Now, ours is an emotional category. So it's all about trying to bring about a change in the perception of the consumers with respect to life insurance. Now, historically, life insurance has been a funny daddy, old talk about death, talk about morose-ness, talk about what will happen to the family in the past, but now with consumers changing. And more importantly, even now in this situation, the data and technology coming to fold with so much of information that we all get that we at MaxLight, and I think even at the industry and hopefully Subashish would agree with me that we are changing the narrative from fear than moving it towards happiness and making the category more relevant for the current environment. This is not the India of the 60s and the 70s where we were going through various issues with respect to our own country and its economic development. We are no longer a developing country. We are pretty much reasonably in the developed kind of a state and getting there. So even we do realize that consumers' narratives are not coming from limitations, but that today's consumer is reasonably well aware of his opportunities, and he is not in the game of saying, oh, God, what's gonna happen to me? This generation is pretty much in a positive frame. So our thinking is that family still anchors at least India pretty much. So we need to be in the space where the family is going to associate their happiness with our category and hence make our category more relevant. So I believe that we want to use more depend on the life in life insurance versus the topicalities of death, et cetera. And the moment you start talking about family, it's relevance is towards happiness and it's towards positivity. So it's a half glass, full and half glass empty. We have seen our loyalty scores and our engagement scores. Whenever we participate with using the family events like let's say even events like Diwali and Holy and all these festivals where families get together to bring relevance of our category, it comes in quite, quite well. We actually create a sufficient number of conversation starters, which helps our sales teams to initiate a conversation at the top of the funnel. So it's a way for addressing, instead of using the regular old examples of what if you don't come home tomorrow? I think that that era is over, but making the breadwinner feel while feel responsible, not feel burdened. That is where we have changed and we've seen sufficient good conversation starters giving our agents and our sellers reasonable amount of entry into the houses of our prospective consumers and customers. Very clearly progressive outlook, not towards the old age stuff, not discussing death, but discussing how your life can become better once you make plans. As they say, if you fail to plan, you plan to fail. So we are using those lingos to get our consumers to be ready for the future.  So a plan B is what makes a plan A that much more beneficial, live for your plan A, but have a plan B. And we use all those occasions to celebrate the breadwinner in the occasions on family events. That's how we've seen a very good response from our consumers. Thank you. Thank you, Alok. Very interesting family moments, move from fear to positivity and actually enable the sales team with these insights to actually convert that into business opportunities. Anirvoth, can I request you to come next? And just a small request to all of you for this particular question, if we can just be a little quick about this particular question because we have lots to cover so that our audience can really gain from this discussion. I would really like it to be as enriching as possible. Yes, Anirvoth. Sure. So again, I will not talk about a particular moment, but generally a trends that I have seen so far I have whatever discussions I have with my customers during my conversations. So if you ask me, the few trends that we see are more related to the general theme about these trends is that how can I be more contextual or personalized in my interactions with the customer? So how can I be more relevant during the conversation that I'm having? And in that sense, if you ask me the trends that I am seeing is, how can I be more real time proactive in my conversations being personalized? So that's very important to me. Then other things that I have seen is that the moments that matter, they're not necessarily digital only. They are assisted as well. So these are coming out very clearly in our customer conversations. Third thing that I want to see as a trend, may not be a moment as such, but in general trend that marketers are asking us is that how can AI assist in some of these moments that matter the most? Can AI help us in delivering that right personalized content or right personalized messaging at the right moment in time? Thank you. Thank you, Aniruddh. Very, very interesting, contextual, personalized, real time. And I'll definitely come back to you on the bit about AI so that you can tell our audience more about how you've been leveraging, helping your customers leverage AI. So Yuvish Vajit, can I ask you to go next? Thank you. So Bajaj Capital is a financial distribution house or since 1964. And we have an open architecture like we help people achieve their financial goals through mutual funds, life insurance, bonds, all kind of products under one group. And I would say there are decades when nothing happens and there are days when decades happen. So last two years, if I would really put it and if I really come out with moments, there were two very important things which we have discovered. I want to take you back to the month of April when there was a lot of human cry, panic, and people were down with COVID. So what we did, we proactively tried to sense the voice of customers, what is it actually they are feeling? And we realized that they have a lot of customers have taken many claim from us. So what we proactively did, we tried to connect with them. We tried to help them with finding the right hospitals with oxygen beds because there were a lot of fake messages that were floating if you recall. And we set up, we did a set up, proactively help desk to guide in our clients as to how can they have a cashless medical facility? How can we on their behalf, speak to TPAs, connect with health insurance providers? And you will not imagine the kind of emotions were so high. And when we help them in during those times to get their medical reimbursements or to get them cashless reimbursements, they are NPS scores jumped from 17 to 30. In just one month, we did the survey. And the second thing, again, the voice of customers, people who were not down with COVID, they were in a very panic mode. They were concerned about the market volatility because of their portfolios. They were not clear whether the, and the feeling was that the country will is locked down. So markets will close. So what should we do? What should we do? They will be doing with their money. So we in a way, you know, and our industries go to do with education and awareness because people normally trust financial talents like us with their hard and money. So we created a lot of, you know, awareness campaigns through webinars. We made them available, the top fund managers to discuss their portfolios. Portfolios were discussed and thanks to, you know, our regulators, you know, there is something called digital onboarding which is called KYC. And in previous days, it used to be clear customers with a lot of papers, but now thanks to regulators, it is digital onboarding is very, very seamless process now. So that is one thing that we started for new customer acquisition and you know, understand their emotions. We tied up within a company called Omni Life where we tried to help them understand their health issues. You know, they're trying to convert their pessimistic into optimistic mode to yoga teachers, instructors, best of the, you know, people available in the market. So that there is a regular engagement with our existing clients. So broadly, I would say those were the real testing times and there was a lot of moments, not just one moment. Very interesting. Thank you so much, Vishwajeev. Very, very interesting, you know, proactive inciting and solutions for your customers. And I'm going to come back to you for a little more discussion around the insights and the moments actually. Subhashish, can we hear from you on life insurance? We've already got one perspective of life insurance, looking forward to getting another perspective from the same industry. I'll tell you since you've asked about one moment, I'll tell you that one moment. When the lockdown happened over a year ago, and obviously we were not, and none of us were that digitally to serve or everything for the customer. So for the reason for which they had to come to the branch, we had to very quickly replicate and make sure that nobody ever needs to come to the branch. So very quickly we went around it. Our NPS course took on most days. What we found out is that, and which probably instinctively now with hindsight we should have known, India is a very high context economy, a very high cultural context. People want to meet people, people want to talk. And so one side is transaction, the other side is advice. Transaction, yes, you can probably do online advice. Probably still people want to meet face to face. So once we got that feedback and we would see it coming, we actually had to scramble and open within the COVID guidelines, the government guidelines and our own situation, the way it was. We'd opened the branches for two hours a day, three hours a day, four hours a day to take care of the walk-ins because people wanted to come and talk to you. In spite of whatever tools you gave them to service them online, there were certain set of people who did want to come and talk to you. And surprisingly it was not dependent upon age to think that it was the 50 plus who walked in was wrong. People of all types walked in. People wanted clarification is COVID covered, various types of clarification people wanted. Yeah, in critical illness is COVID covered or otherwise also is COVID covered. Or so many other questions that we otherwise they hadn't thought about. Some people quickly got in their nominees to be adjusted. Probably when they took a policy, the nominee was somebody else, now maybe they are different. So I think the interesting part, while we tried to give all digital tools and we did give digital tools, we were interestingly enough found out that a lot of people did want that physical comfort of an ITO, I think. So I think I cannot look too far in the future, probably like three years, maybe five years, it still has to be physical and digital, but I don't think it's either one. Very interesting. So while technology has pretty much really taken over our lives, dominated our lives, the importance of the face-to-face interaction in India is equally important. And your point about the advisory, the nominees was very interesting. And I'll probably come back to you once again on that, when we talk a little more about customer journey. You know, maybe you can talk a little more in detail about that. Lakshman, what about you on quickly, on any key moment that was a highlight? So at Ujjivan Small Finance Bank, we primarily serve the unserved and underserved segment, which predominantly has seen the traditional forms of banking. And with COVID, they were thrown into the world of the digital space. So what we realized is that, we had to carry them with us. So over the last two years, we realized this challenge long back. So we always combined financial literacy with banking in every aspect or any initiative that we did across the group. Moreover, we moved to assisted forms of banking much early around three years back. And we guided our customers and slowly segmented our customers understanding, know which customer is willing to adopt the digital channel, which requires more of assisted purposes and which requires branched comment. And this really helped us during the COVID period because when the market rules were introduced, now we could catch up on the early adopters very well. And also in the process, we streamlined many of our processes to make banking part more similar. So we saw an update happening in the digital space in a very big way. But as we go along, we also realized that trust is an important factor for this segment. So the physical as well as assisted, as well as the digital form will continue to evolve in its various formats across customer segments. And this is something that I will elaborate as we go on. Sure, thank you very interesting. But I think the most interesting take out for me from what you just said is that you had even before COVID, you had proactively been working on some of the solutions, assisted digital solutions for your customers going by the segmentation. And I think that's a very important learning for many of us, which is to constantly, proactively keep working on things. So from there can be, let's look at some of the specific aspects of how technology has helped us take forward businesses in the last one year. Subhashesh, can I ask you to talk about technology? Yes, you did talk about the importance of face to face also, but if we just focus on the technology side, technology does help in one aspect which is hyper personalization. And have you used Omni channel communication to create personalized communication and personalized experiences for your customers in any way? Yes, that's precisely what we are doing. And we are in a journey for that. We are very cautious that India is a large country, not everybody is fluent in English. So we are very clear that most of our communications now going forward, and some of it has already started happening, is in vernacular. And we are trying to figure out from which landing page is he or she coming to our web? And can our website be responsive? We haven't done it, but we're on the way to see that then can the website look and feel and even the images, everything change to take care of the person from where he has come. Because going forward, we are very clear about it, vernacular voice video. These are the three things going forward. We have to be that person, whom the person is most comfortable. We cannot put our values and our thought process and say, look, you have to be that. The same thing, you know, we had to open the branches for two hours a day because people wanted to meet us, they're my clients. I can't tell him that, sorry. I can nudge, but beyond that, have to be responsive to what she wants. And the other thing is that the kind of social media platforms that we're in, normal five, which everybody is, which is Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Instagram, and so on, so forth. Customer can come to me, she can come to me from any form. She can write to me in Instagram, she can write to me in Twitter, she can put it on LinkedIn, and I should be ready to respond to her in every which way. I cannot say, now you fill up this five-page form necessarily, I may guide her there, but I should be able to respond to anybody in each channel. All these modes of communication have to be put in together, though your personality may be slightly different in each of these channels, which obviously LinkedIn and Facebook may not go in per-sadi types. But ultimately, if the customer is asking, I have to respond to that person in that way, whatever channel he or she is most comfortable with. Very interesting, Parshish, because I think, very important thing that you have talked about is actually making technology. When you talk about vernacular voice video, it's not just about what works for the brand or the organization, but it's really what will work for the consumer. And therefore using technology to make yourself, make your brand more familiar, more accessible to the consumer by making it less intimidating, more approachable, more human. Mam, it's always the consumer. It's always the consumer. It has to be that we exist, I mean, all of us exist for the consumer. Consumer doesn't exist for us, we exist for the consumer. And we make a big mistake if you think it otherwise. Absolutely. And I think, thanks for reiterating that, because I think in any marketing forum that is something that we need to keep reiterating at every possible opportunity. And hopefully keep reminding that to the young audiences that would be listening in to all of you. Alok, now there has been quite a data deluge since over the last few years, I would say, but definitely in the last few months. How have you used this data deluge to your advantage to possibly develop meaningful propositions, solutions, services for your customers? So very quickly, I think data is not something that's been of recent 20, it's been there with us for almost 10, 12 years. I would actually say that this time around, the data is identified as a new normal and data is the new oil, the way I understand it to be. And therefore for marketers like us, if we are still sitting on the creative landscape without understanding the data and becoming some sort of data scientists ourselves, then we are losing out on the moments that we are that consumers are looking for. Data is very important, not only is data but it's analytics is that much more important. Now at MaxLives, we've been on this journey for about 10 years, way back in 2011, we set up a small function called the AI works team. So AI has an artificial intelligence and we embedded artificial intelligence professionals in our core functions. So they could understand the business, not just come from data scientists and say, this is the way it's done but contextualize the need for data. And increasingly, we've been using the marketing analytics, the Google 360 stacks to create personas for our own customers because that's what you need to do to be able to efficient, to make your funnel that much more efficient. So I'll give you a few things that we did, typically from MaxLives perspective. On our marketing, and I'm coming from a marketing perspective, I'm not talking the operations and the underwriting, that's all data and everything else. So on marketing campaigns, we checked the campaign performance analytics using the tools there to decide where to spend our monies more. We would then also in the various funnel do a drop off analysis to know when the customers have dropped off in their cycles and readdress them, personifying the area where they left to try and address their requirements from there itself. On the consumer side, we do analytics to understand what kind of products work for which segments, using again data analytics stacks and everything else. On our online sales, mostly online, not so much on the offline side, but more on the online sales. We know exactly which funnel or which stage of the funnel did the customer drop. We know which media mix will work for a particular persona and that's the way we define. How do we address him again? We will not leave him alone if he's dropped off. We will remarket to him. So the remarketing tools are all coming from data analytics that happen there. We do an A-B testing to understand where all can we readdress a consumer segment. At the end of the day, the objective really run it as to make our business more efficient and we have been able to reduce our cost of acquisition on the online side at least by at least 30 to 40% by using data and by using marketing analytical tools. So yeah, I mean, if you don't know data, then you are out. I know India is a large country, but I'm actually surprised the pandemic made me realize that even the mid to old age, I mean, my parents kind of adults are adopting two technologies. So it's like almost like hand in glove. I mean, my father-in-law is fighting with me that please use Paytm, help me use Paytm, help me use UPI. I don't want to go to the branch. So for me, data is or digital is equal to we call it DIY. I call it contactless. And that is what I think is a key part by in the pandemic times, contactless journeys have become the need of the art. While I agree with Subhashish, mostly that life insurance is quite fidgetful instead of digital only. But increasingly, if life insurance companies are not able to provide a complete digital journey, then we will lose out. Depends on the consumer, he wants to peel off and go back to physical. We should have that ability available. Fascinating. So this is actually another lens to how you make technology human and accessible to consumers across consumer segments, regardless of their profile, regardless of their age and the biases completely drop about, you know, who can use technology and who cannot use technology. And fascinating how you're using technology for deep end performance marketing, you're using analytics for deep end performance marketing to drive business. Vishwajit, coming to you and coming back to your point around insights that you mentioned during the first round, how have you used marketing analytics? For example, have you used marketing analytics to actually develop, generate consumer insights and, you know, develop solutions that are critical? So I would say let me throw some data because we're discussing data. So 90% of the data was created in last two years and 80% of the data is still unstructured. So I have seen the way the organizations have evolved. Analytics was used to be R and D initially. Then it moved on to, you know, with big data, et cetera. And then finally, I think today we are in an insight of economy kind of a thing where everything, whatever data you have, you need to have some insights. Otherwise there's no use of data because in an organization like us, which is a five decade old, there are a lot of data which is lying in silos. So how do we use that? How do we get insights out of that? So I think what Mr. Bahan also mentioned, so a lot of things, I think these are all, every marketer tries to do that. How can we bring costs down, whether it is, you know, new client activation. So you don't do initially used to do bombard with emailers to your existing clients. All kind of products offers used to be used to share with them. But now you don't want to, you only want to send relevant information and you know the personas of the client, the segmentation is clearly defined so that, you know, these kinds of clients will not get these kinds of mailers. In my case, you know, there are high net worth clients. So why to send them a small product offering? You are spoiling the experience. So within the organization, I think market forecasting statistical, as to, you know, or whether it is called, you know, competing mix modeling, whether which model, as Mr. Bahan was also mentioning, which media will work, which media will not work with this persona. So all these kind of analytics are happening in, I think in organizations so that we can evolve from a brick and mortar model to totally digital first organization where even if somebody enters digitally, we should know the behavior, the intentions, the emotions as to what is the client is that is seeking from brand like Bajaj Capital and basis that the solution has to be done. And I completely agree, you know, data is the core in the business today because ultimately, you know, it's a financial distribution house. So if you don't understand the sensitivity of the client's investment behaviors and you know, the sensitivities of the markets, you will not be able to advise. So there are platforms where you are coming to Robo advisory models rather than just, you know, physical models. So everything is based on data and then only you can survive in these kind of markets. So I would say whether you have to understand the client lifetime value, whether it is, you know, the way you engage for everything else, you need data. And otherwise kind of experience you are going to give is not going to be what customers are expecting from you because it is the same customer who's dealing on Amazon. It's the same customer who's dealing in all other kind of, you know, consumer related apps. So you have to have similar or wow experience. Wow experience is now a given. So you have to deliver something to differentiate that this is not what, you know, what you stand for and how you are more relevant in his life rather than just throwing our mailers or bombarding, you know, information which is not relevant for them. Very, very interesting because, you know, it's really overwhelming and I'm sure for the audience, I'm sure a lot of the audiences in the same situation where, you know, when you say 80% of the data is still unstructured with just kind of highlights the extent of work, the enormity of work that's lying ahead. And fascinating when you talk about the wow moment because now technology is far for the course. How does each brand therefore, what does it need to do to do that delta, you know, that very insightful delta to create the wow moment for consumers? You know, can't just do what everybody's doing. Huge challenges to really deep dive and get insightful. Okay, that's enough from me. Anirudh, I think what's coming out is that at the core of all this technology, you know, deep end user technology and something that we cannot do without AI is at the core of a lot of the insight thing. So how have you been, can you give us some examples of how AI and ML could be used for sharper decision making and customer engagement? Sure. So I'm going to build upon the answers given Mr. Ban and Mr. Parash, right? So it was, it is really important that you have that data and AI sort of builds on top of it. Without data, AI is nothing, it's not possible. And generally, when we speak about AI, we have this notion of a self-driving car and we'll put some automation on it and then automatically things will start happening. Well, that's, that may not be the reality of the AI. So what I'm going to do is I'm going to talk about very practical things that are happening in AI for marketing reasons at least. So when you look at AI, you can't just say that how I'm going to, or rather, what is the automation that I'm going to achieve with AI? It will be always in these discrete components for marketers, right? It is supposed to assist the marketers. So what we at Salesforce are doing is that we are using AI with these discrete components in our tools so that it assists marketers to take better decisions or to give better personalization or to give right contextual communication at the right time. So these are the things that we are doing. So now if I have to divide that into like two, three areas, I would say that one of the areas in marketing where AI is assisting, let's say if you're an operations manager and your job, your daily job is actually to execute campaigns every day, day in, day out, and you're running 10 or 15 campaigns a day, then it is your job also to monitor how the campaigns are performing. Can I assist the operations manager? Can I say that out of the 10 campaigns that you are running, these two campaigns did better and these three did not. So you might want to reallocate your budgets, exchange those budgets, et cetera. So can I assist the marketer? So that's one type of AI where it gives you these insights that Mr. Parashar was talking about. The second one is related to, let's say, design or design better campaigns.  And example for this would be like, which are my segments that are performing better? Can I get some insights automatically through AI engine which can tell me these segments are performing better? Or can it give me a data set where it says that a segment of population is actually converting better? So all these kinds of insights I should be able to get. The third type of AI is more like a, so this type of AI was more like an advisor. It is trying to help the marketer in designing better campaigns. The third type of AI is more like a decision system. So where I have a list of attributes about all my customers, let's say I have, Mr. Ban was talking about data and attributes. Mr. Parashar also talked about it. So I have this attributes of my customers. How can I use those attributes to decide which offer to give to that customer at the right point? I don't have to sit and decide, okay, this is my segment, I'm going to use this offer for this segment. Can the AI automatically take those decisions? So these are the types of AIs that are available within the Salesforce ecosystem and these will improve in the future. And for that data is important. So the marketer doesn't have to be a data scientist. He just has to use the right AI tools to deliver the right context on messaging is what we are trying to do. I'm sure that's a huge learning and a huge help for the audience that's listening in on how AI can actually make a big difference on how they're doing their day-to-day business. Thanks for that, Anirvath. Lakshman, given your business and the customer profile that you have, where you talked about, the really the underserved segment of the market, through last year, given the high dependence on technology, what kind of challenges and barriers did you face in trying to shift them towards technology? And therefore a better and therefore a more seamless experience with you, you know? So with the onset of pandemic one, we did reach out to all our customers, explaining them, I mean, we were very clear from day one that, when we are offering banking services, it goes along with financial literacy plus anything that the customer needs to know. So with the onset of COVID, we reached out to all our customers, we spoke to them about COVID, we had EMI monitoring, we spoke to them, we educated them. At the same time, we offered them alternate channels. For example, we tied up with, we had our own outlets, our branches, we tied up with local retailers to enable them go into the shop and pay online. We introduced them to internet and banking services. As Subash has mentioned, we also, all our communication is in one night. So anything that we do is in 12 languages across the board. So currently, we had, we developed videos on production services and basics of banking. Now the fact that you can use a ATM, and our internet and mobile banking is equal in 12 languages. So we encourage the customers to start looking at these alternate channels across the board. And also, we have tied up now, you can do your payments through all the other alternate digital platforms that are available. So for example, recently we did a campaign, we saw an uptake of closer on UX in terms of the number of customers adopting to digital transactions. And during the COVID, we saw a 3.3 and a half times increase in UPI, use of UPI across the board. Okay, so what we realized is that, it is important to listen to the customer and see what is it that the customer is willing to adopt to. It is like, no, I, it takes me back to the time when GEO got introduced. Okay, and there was a search in terms of adoption of digital channels in the severe one and the urban segment. And that's the segment we primarily catered. Is there any challenge? You can't hear me? No, we can hear you. Thank you.  So there the customer learned ways to adopt to the digital platform. So what we realized is that, you need to give a good reason for the customers to reach out to them. And when you introduce alternate options, customers do tend to pick up these channels and do their payments, especially when it comes to EMI payments, we have seen customers willing to go that extra mile and adopt those digital platforms. Use even Bharat Pill pay service where required to pay on the EMI. So of course, in some segments, we have had to assist them through our sales force, but what we have realized is that, a little of guidance and a willingness to listen and understand their issues and provide relevant solutions has really helped us. And these numbers, which I quoted are primarily because of a collaborative effort of combining physical and assisted forms to leverage the digital space in a big way. And also we realized that the fact that when we introduced 7% savings account, we reached out to those customers through our market tools, where it was an automated campaign. We reached out to customers, asset customers, we reached out to our empty customers, asking them to use the digital medium and to invest their savings with Ujjivan. And we saw a tremendous upsurge happening out there in a very big way. So you need to give the customer a reason and the customer is more than willing to listen to you and also not adopt to this digital channels in a very... So big learning from what you're saying, Lakshman is how empathy is at the core of building your brand. Empathy and connecting to the consumer via what works for the consumer and using technology therefore to bridge that gap. Very, very important. And so, thanks. I think that's a very important learning. So I wanted to add some perspective. Bajaj Capital being a brick and mortar model from almost four decades. So during this COVID times, we realized that this physical will not work. So you got to get ready for technical digital experiences. So now what we call as high tech or high tech and high touch. So the same centers, 250 centers are now more of an engagement centers with clients and transactions normally to get the scale and cost efficiencies is tech enabled. So ideas technology will enable to cost efficiency and scale, whereas the engagement centers or the relationship managers are to empathize with clients and to build that relationship, continue with that relationship so that the digital plus digital experience continues. Otherwise, just one channel may not be good for everyone. So you have to have a mix of a hybrid approach to our clients like in India, where you don't understand 100% digital or 100% physical. So we need to have both the channels and all the channels, majorly two, three channels we need to focus what customers need you. You need not have all the channels open for them because sometimes we realize that those channels are not even being approached by clients. So focus on two, three channels and give that ultimate experience. I think that is what the key is. I think some of the things that have come through so far is technology, how it can be a powerful of powerful assistance or an enabler. However, we are still in a world in India where we cannot ignore the physical aspect and therefore we have to balance out. It's not about either going from an extreme of the culturally aligned physical that we are as Indians. It's not about being completely physical or completely going the high end of technology. But I think what all of you have brought alive is technology being a very powerful enabler, playing a very powerful role of assisting marketeers, assisting consumers, but also it's got to be a blend and balance of technology and personal and physical. So Bhashish, in that context, you were also mentioning advisory, you were also mentioning this balance. Is there any aspect of the customer journey where you have managing the customer journey is very critical to deliver superior customer experience? So what aspect of that customer journey have you seen which has been of great challenge? You were mentioning advisory for earlier. Is there anything else or would you like to build on advisory more? Yeah, there was a mute. As a life insurance company, we, what do we do? We come and approach you and you tell us, we ask you that let's take care of your financial planning for the next 20 years. Now you understand in the case of pandemic when there are job losses or if at least the incomes of people have gone down. At that time, if I come and tell you, can you commit to me a new policy for 20 years? You will require a lot more understanding and I'll also require a lot more understanding of you and your needs and your disposable income for me to give you a genuine advice which is right for you as a customer. So therefore that requires trust. Ultimately, advice has to be based on trust. You have to be trusting me with the details. And you trust that I will give you advice that is good for you and not necessarily good for me. And trust is a bit difficult to build up in a long-term remotely, at least so. See, if it's a journey, then it is fine. You know, over a period of time, we build it up and people move from physical to virtual, it's fine, but suddenly there's a break. You can't develop trust suddenly overnight. Transaction as I make a distinction between transaction and advice. Transaction certainly will do overnight. People move from UPA, everybody started paying to that, they scanned and did all that. But trust doesn't come, it's difficult, I can give you information. So we did a lot of webinars. In fact, if you really want to know one of the things that we did, we got our advices that since you are not able to speak to people, you call them over. So we had webinars of 12,000 people. And then geographies were broken.  That time they were free during the day or evening as the case may be. And we did webinars and we talked about certain products of ours. It was now geography was history. So you could talk to people across and you could have your three best trainers or speakers or conceptually right person speaking to 12,000 people across the country instead of, so advisors brought in people in a webinar format and we addressed them countrywide. The trick part was how did you close the deal there? Chalo, he has understood. How do you then explain to the person after that? And how do you then ensure that the advice that you get is the right advice? And there, honestly, I think people struggle. I think it was not so easy. So it took time, it's still taking time. I think everybody's story story now getting used to it. Like this discussion would have never happened two years ago. It would have happened in real life, in reality. Now we are very used to it. So people will get used to it over a period of time. And it's the journey that we're talking about. So yes, 100% the advice over time will shift to little bit to a gradual journey. I don't see it will be overnight. And it's certainly, at least I'm only see that three years, beyond three, four years, very difficult for me to kind of see what will happen in the future. Because future is ever changing. And if you see the speed, so we don't know what will happen. Whether the products will get simpler, that is easy. Complex products, whether people will understand so well or do you have videos, which almost talk to you like a human, they can answer whatever question you want. The person uses the tone, the English, the skin color, which is the person you normally will associate yourself with. And then you almost feel as if you are looking at a genuine human being who's answering your questions, genuinely as the case may be. Then that journey would be interesting going forward. Right, so it was really baptism by fire through last year.  If you don't mind if I may just add to what Subashish was saying. It's a very interesting aspect that is picked up, you know, and I heard people talk about more journeys and digital and physical or the digital and everything else. All those are pretty much terminologies everybody is using, but in our industry, which is an industry that is based on trust. See, we're talking about life of people 20 years, 25 years hence, when like Subashish said, I can't even say anything about three years forward. We're making promises for 20 years. And therefore, how do we get a consumer who in any case is in a bit of a doubtful mind with respect to life insurance. We talk about trust and the life insurance industry has faced issues of trust for the last so many years. So in this journey, how do you get to that trust quotient is the challenge that has been there in our experience as well. We all move from face to face to what we call edge to edge from F to F to edge to edge, which is home to home. Now you can keep skilling your agents, you know, the profile of our agents in the industry are mostly housewives, retired professionals, the successful ones to bring them and make them more digitally aware and amicable to digital stuff. And also then for customers to agree to move from a face to face to a webinar or to a Zoom call. I mean, Zoom has become the most important, often used word with the entire family now has been a challenge. I'm not saying that we haven't been successful or anybody hasn't been successful. 60, 70% of conversions have happened digitally but at the, I would say that as the first drop of a hat, the moment unlockdowns happen, we come back and go back to our older ways of doing things because we are just more comfortable meeting people. We are frankly social animals, right? You can keep on seeing social distancing but that impact is not so much there. It'll improve. I don't think some muscle that has been built up will not go away. But I hope not that we need a few more lockdowns to make this more permanent. But I think life will change, is changing. I think Subashish is being very futuristic by saying three years. I can't think about three months ahead right now. Like just the way we all got caught in the wave two, we may get caught again in wave three, hoping not keeping fingers crossed. So the net net answer for me is that data, again coming back to that core point, data and technology is actually the data is actually the beacon of trust because the proof of the pudding of what you are, how does trust happen? If there is a proof of what you are saying, what you are promising is going to get delivered. That's how trust happens. And the only way I can prove in us, typically in a non-personal environment is through data. That look, I told you, I will be able to provide you this service. Here is the data providing you that service. For example, at Max Life, we have a very important, not for the industry, a very important metric is the claim paid ratio. How many, what percentage of your claims that have come on you have you paid, right? And I'm bringing this topic obviously because Max Life is leading in that. The regulator doesn't allow us to say number one, but yeah, we are leaders in that. So we have, the marketing team has coined a term called Barosega number. Again, the Barosa is that you make a claim, we are giving you the fact that we will honor your claim. And then the data comes back and tells us, yeah, 99.35% of the claims value-wise made, we have paid. So that's what builds trust. So the data, very, very critical to even prove trust. I'll leave the last line by saying, data for a marketer must tell a story. Pure data has no relevance. Data has to tell a story which can connect with the consumer and thereby build the brand and solve for the consumer. We are pretty much adding to Subashish's point only. So I think both of you collectively have actually answered one, a very important point about how we can use technology to just go beyond transaction, go beyond mere transactional efficiency to actually building a very big relationship and actually touching what matters to the consumer, which is connecting with stories, connecting with insights and building trust. Because finally, that's at the heart of the relationship between a brand and the customer. Thanks for that. So that's very, very important. Anirudha, I think what's come about is undoubtedly the whole surge in data generation and technology. How have you been advising customers and the industry in the adoption of cloud to manage this whole surge in data and maybe in decision making? So one thing that I must start, the adoption of cloud for Salesforce actually is not a problem because Salesforce as a company, if you, when we started the company, it started in cloud. We've been doing this for a long time. We have, I think, been doing this for 20 odd years now. So cloud as an adoption, when we are talking about data and the volumes of data, that is what is driving the cloud adoptions today. So if you look at some of the trends that I am seeing in the cloud adoption in terms of what is driving really, it's not necessarily only the pandemic that is driving this cloud technology or cloud behavior or people adopting cloud. It is more to do with, also to do with, in fact, innovations that are being done on the cloud technology. The agility that the cloud technology brings in. So the agility to transform things. So had the cloud technology not been available last year would have been really very difficult for people to adapt to. Now, if you look at the last year itself, right? So from the cloud technology adoption perspective, we looked at people who were working remotely as well. So people wanted to have access to the right data and the right points in time. Our employees were working away from home, working from home. The accessibility of the system itself was some of the driving behavior to the cloud, right? So the adoption of the cloud started increasing because of that as well. Now with cloud technology, also what happens is there are some concerns about data security and things that are related to data security. But during pandemic, what has happened is that many people are now much more open to accept that as a technology. That is what is the change that I have seen in the adoption of the cloud behavior. So all this points, large data sets, different innovations that you're bringing in, faster things that you're doing are driving this cloud adoption for us and for many of the financial services organizations that I see. Wonderful. Thanks for that, Anirudh. Coming to you, Lakshman, at the end of the day, for everything that we do, measuring ROI and effectiveness of all our activities and programs is very critical. So have you been able to use technology or has technology helped you in really measuring ROI or effectiveness? Has it been possible at all to measure ROI and effectiveness given the pace of change through last year? What have you experienced? One is when it comes to the acquiring customers, our entire process is digital, fully digital. Okay, so one is, no, you make paperwork lesser. Second is you look at the different life stages. What is the customer journey in this entire process? For example, we just introduced a program called Aajeeva, which is Life-Averse Event-Based Banking Services. So let's say right from birth, and when you're a minor to a major, then you get married, maybe an unforeseen circumstance such as a divorce or maybe death. You know, the point is if you don't have a nominee or a senior account, later on, when you need to operate these banking services or even the basic savings account, it is going to be a challenge for any of your family members. So when you look at metrics is now, how do you introduce metrics and how do you measure in terms of making banking simpler and convenient for your customers? So, before introducing this program to the customers, no, we generate this to internally and ask ourselves, how many of our employees are aware of built awareness programs? No, we re-looked, re-engineered the entire processes completely so that it's far more easier for the customer. And right now, from what we were to pre-COVID levels today, close to 90% of the customers that we acquire automatically sign up on the nominee. So making the entire banking process far more efficient and better. And even in terms of all these services, our average that has improved from 90%. So the idea is that, how to look at those metrics which directly impact the customer's life? Well, there are many metrics to measure and those are equally important. But when it comes to a customer-centric point of view, does the customer leave the bank happier at the end of every interaction or a transaction? Does he feel better that, okay, I feel better banking with you? Because our mission is very clear that we are into the business of building better likes. Which means that when a customer builds a relationship with Ujjiva, it is all about realizing their dreams and aspirations. Of course, every set of, there are challenges from time to time. The point is, are we conscious enough to work towards identifying what are the bottlenecks and seamlessly working towards removing them? So this is an ongoing process which means that, as I mentioned earlier, you have to be in a continuous engagement with our customers. For example, which either comes with inputs from the sales team through our research and through many months. So one metric is, you ask your customer, how satisfied are you? Okay, while we have still not gotten to a net promoter score and otherwise, but we have regular checks on a quarterly basis with our field team to assess, how is the customer feeling about the entire process? And we look at, as I mentioned earlier, we have started now looking at different customer segments and trying to understand what are their needs, what is their lifestyle, and then pick up certain metrics and don't measure them because you can't be measuring all of the metrics. So that's the direction that we're taking. Very interesting. So not necessarily do what the entire industry is doing just because everybody's talking about NPS, not necessarily that has to be relevant for everyone, but you pick up the selective metrics which are actually important for building your relationship with your customer and taking business forward. Very, very relevant. Vishwajit, finally coming back to you, since you were so keen to talk about moments when we started off, all this finally boils down to what has really worked. I mean, there are challenges. We have to come to a blend and balance. A lot of things have worked well. A lot of things have been learnings, not so well. Can you talk about anything that has really worked very well for you and therefore helped you in creating memorable moments for your customer? Yeah, so I think we since we're talking about data analytics and NPS course and the kind of experience during the pandemic time, people have experienced through our brand. So we did some data analytics and we realized that a lot of people are retiring and there is no tool which is available to help them. This is called distribution phase. So there are tools available. If you go to Google, how should you plan for your retirement? And there are tools which will tell you that you must save this much month, every month or that much amount and you'll create this much of corpus. But if somebody is retiring at 60 and during pandemic time, he's nowhere connecting to any relationship manager. So we rely that there is a need for that kind of product. So we came out with a tool which helped retirees to plan their retirement corpus, the superannuation funds. And you will be surprised 90% of the people do not have a written retirement plan in our country. So they are just living a dark life and they're not realizing if they're retiring after 60, they might live till 140 years. That is what we are made for. We spoil our lives through bad lifestyle but ultimately we're expected to live 100. And so we came out with this research and during this pandemic time, we came out with a tool which is helping people to get a written retirement plan during this pandemic time. So now they have a, now they can visualize next 40 years as to how much regular money they are going to get, which instrument they have to invest, and what are, so know how of all the products where they can invest. So I think that is not going to focus purely on this segment because we realize that this is an untouched segment and people are, you know, people are not aware about their not financially literate and to what to do with their superannuation funds. So I think this, during these times, we have learned a new business opportunity because of data analytics. I mean, this is what is very, very, making us very, very special and we are acquiring new customers, this is that. So entire model now, there is a tool, there are webinars, there are, you know, collateral to support. And last thing, you know, what Subash is also mentioning, we need to be transparent to get that trust. Trust cannot be bought, it has to be earned. So more transparent you are and how do you give that relationship experience which you are giving through critical online? I think if you can develop that online boarding, you know, or online relationship with the clients, I think that is where the key is to both the channels can work, hybrid approach will also work, but they both can be independently also working and can get businesses for the audience. Thank you, thank you. Okay, now what I'm going to do is there are two questions that have come from the audience. So I'm going to pose the question to the entire panel and you know, y'all can choose who wants to answer. The first question is, which tools can you recommend for analyzing data of leads and existing customers? Alok, Subashish, would you all like to handle this or Vishwajit, since you would be handling a lot of leads as a distribution house? I leave it open to y'all. So each company will have its own tool and I wouldn't really want to talk about the brand because that's like promoting some brand, but yeah, I mean, all of us would have a, I mean, we have to definitely, I'm very sure Alok and Vishwajit's company also will have a robust tool where first of all, it starts with capturing the lead. You capture the lead then to which channel it goes to. Yeah, but could lead come from an existing client it could come from brand new prospect. So there would be a CVM, there'll be a separate team that will then allocate the lead because in life insurance industry, somebody is getting a lead because the original customer could have come into a particular channel to an agent. If that agent is like, the lead should go to that person. That's very important. You can't give one person lead to another person that will create channel conflict and agency conflict. So that is the first step that you will do. And then of course you rigorously follow up to see whether the lead is correctly followed up or not at which stage. So each company will have a defined own stage, stage one, stage two, which is defined. What is stage one, what is stage two, what is stage three, that we clearly defined as a part of the training process. And finally, either the lead will be dropped as possible if not go through or it'll be in cold storage for a while and then you again have to revive it. Maybe the person was just fishing for information. And then of course they could be closure. Of course you have to be very fast on leads if somebody is calling you online or talking to you to reach that person immediately. That's what some companies, particularly web aggregators, they do it extremely well. When you're searching online, you almost get a phone call to say that how can I help you in your journey and how can I help you close the sale as it were. So that's what we do. I'm sure every company must be in Alok and I'm sure talk about this. Hey, the turnaround time, what you're saying is that the turnaround time is extremely important. Yes, yes, very good. Contact to the time you get back. And I think Alok in any case, I'd mentioned earlier about the various stages of the funnel, not just acquisition and lead, but managing the various stages of the funnel with deep dive performance marketing. Alok, would you like to build on this, on this answer, on this question? If you talk about a tool, I would think like Swashish said, I won't be able to give you a specific name, but all of us have our own CRMS. Mostly that CRM is the main thing that picks up the lead from various parts of the system and then keeps it captured. I will leave the answer to the tool to Anurad because then he can certainly talk about some tool from Salesforce and certainly after the call, we can discuss whether it makes sense and then whether we should adopt or adapt that. But yeah, see my experience in business has been that for sellers, if you give them leads and you will call them qualified leads or a core lead or a hot lead, et cetera, I don't know whether sellers, they love to want to lead, but they do a one call on the lead and if the lead doesn't pick up, it becomes a poor lead. So your CRM systems have to be able to give the supervisors sufficient feedback that this particular lead has not yet been approached or has been approached in a very flimsy manner. So our systems come up and say, yeah, this lead has been met first time after five days, let's say. Now, if you meet a lead after five days, the lead from hot has already become cold or from cold has already become frozen. So we measure who are lead management systems that how long are you taking to superstitious point for channel conflict? We do also put in systems that if it's a lead that's been given to channel A and if the channel A has not done its due diligence on the lead till let's say day X, then day X plus one that lead moves out of this channel and is given to another channel because for the enterprise, that consumer is relevant, is important. We will keep on trying with him till we do a good correct. At the same time, data will come back and tell us this lead has been met through four times over. There have been four responses by the consumer and he keeps on delaying his decision. That data will tell us drop the lead because then it is more money being wasted on that consumer. That goes back again to define what's the right persona that we should focus on for our leads and makes our acquisition cost pretty low. So we have identified personas through all data analytics on leads that happen and how many approaches, what kind of customer, what persona responds faster to our proposition or what proposition is meant for a particular persona. So like you talked about retirement, Mr. Jit and I was thinking of telling you, man, leave something for insurance companies also. The retirement is a very insurance company product. But yeah, we are very clear that our products, at what age do we enter retirement? Retirement conversations. Like Subashish said, sorry, Mr. Jit said 60 years, we don't enter at 60, we enter at 45 because our products are 15 or 20 years. So we call them the pre-retirement segment. Acquisition, yeah. Yeah, it should happen at 45. So those kinds of things happen, I guess, I mean, everybody who's done business can talk and talk and talk about leads. Sellers hate the idea of leads because they think it's pressure on them. And hence it's more important to give them qualified leads. If it suits them, fine. If it doesn't, then in any case goes into a wasteful funnel. All right, so. I was going to say. Okay, we just have three minutes. So you have exactly one minute so that I can do a wrap up in the final two minutes. I was just going to say that, you know, I am biased, but you can use Salesforce. I'm about to ask that. I just want to leave you out of the answer because I think everyone can get in touch with you offline. And I think there is also been opportunity, collaborative opportunities that have emerged on this call between Alok and Vishwajit and Subashish in future. And you know, Lakshman, you can, you can figure out who you want to collaborate with. I'm about to add that, you know, in our organization, it is said, tea should be called before it gets cold. It goes waste. And there is concept called Uberization in every organization nowadays. So if somebody is not taking the call seriously, it has to be transferred to somebody else. And we have used Salesforce and we sell Kotak also and we sell Max also. Okay, wonderful. So basically, one can't do without Bajaj Capital and I'm glad you're here because, yeah, yeah. Offer on this conversation of Kotak versus Max Life, please. No, Vishwajit has basically ensured that he's completely indispensable and this panel would not have been complete without him. Okay, point taken. And Anirudh, I'm deliberately leaving you out of any lead tool kind of question because it would just completely hijack this panel discussion for the entire audience segment. Anirudh is here from Salesforce if anyone wants to get in touch with him offline. So very, very... Oh, Vanta, you're giving him leads now. You're giving him leads. That's true. He was so keen to speak that this was the only way I could avoid him from speaking. Okay, I think we just have the final one minute to go and I, you know, the audience, I'm echoing this, I'm sure on behalf of the audience, it's been one of the most enriching panel discussions, the diverse perspectives which have come from all of you. And you know, the whole strategic perspective to what technology can do and the role that technology can really play in taking your business forward and strengthening your brand and deepening customer engagement in times that we're living in which is changing so fast and so rapidly. I think we've got a lot of insights, a lot of knowledge and a lot of wisdom from this discussion. But one of the most, some of the most important things that stand out for me is that it's not an either or world, it's not a black or white world. Yes, the dependence on technology has increased manifold, it has leapfrogged, but it's really got to be a blend of technology and the face to face. It's got to be about technology being human. It's got to be about technology being a very powerful enabler when it comes to driving productivity, efficiency and every other aspect of business. However, it's also got to be about technology, data, delivering the end game for any brand which is to develop trust with its customers. Because finally, no matter how efficient your transactions are and no matter how much you contact the customer before child can be hojai, but you know finally it's really got to add up to building trust because finally that will develop the long-term sustainable relationship with customers. Very interesting because we've got, we also got a lot of insights from different aspects of different facets of financial services industry and businesses that are covering different customer segments. From Lakshman's underserved customer to the life insurance, which has again a huge wide spectrum to Bajaj Capital, again dealing with finance intermediaries to B2C having Anirudh with a B2B perspective. I think we've just had covered as much perspective as could be possible in any discussion. Thank you all very, very much. Thank you, Rana. Thank you for what you just said. Thank you everybody. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you to all our panelists for your time and insights. And thank you, Rana Ta for steering this very interesting conversation and a valuable conversation that all our viewers have enjoyed. I want to invite all our viewers to go ahead and send in your highlights of the discussions so that we know what were the highlights for you. And once again, from Exchange for Media Group, we'd like to thank all our panelists and our session chair for coming out here and talking about the moments made by marketing in the finance sector. Thank you so much. And for all of you viewers, stay tuned for more insights on moments made by marketing in different sectors, different industries. It's an ongoing series sponsored by Salesforce, presented by Exchange for Media Group. So stay tuned to know more. Thank you so much. This is Khyati Kaliya who's signing off. Have a very good evening, everyone. Thank you, Rana Ta for hosting us. Thank you very much. Thank you, Rana. Wonderful session.


Live from San Diego, California, it's theCUBE. Covering Cisco Live US 2019. Brought to you by Cisco and its ecosystem partners. Welcome back to theCUBE's coverage of Cisco Live day three from buzzy sunny San Diego. I'm Lisa Martin, my co-host is Stu Miniman and Stu and I are pleased to welcome to theCUBE Stephanie Weibald, senior product manager, hybrid networking and SD-WAN from CenturyLink. Stephanie, welcome to theCUBE. Thank you, I'm glad to be here. Yeah, so welcome to the buzzy DevNet zone. This place has been buzzing for three days now. It is definitely an active session over here today. It is, so let's talk about SD-WAN. We've heard a lot in the last few days about the massive transformations to the network. Changing customer demands, changing customer needs. Talk to us about the SD-WAN marketplace overall. So, we don't have a conversation with any of our customers these days that don't include some kind of a conversation about SD-WAN. Everybody's looking to transform their networks and they're looking for the next best thing. They're also trying to future-proof their networks. Some of the customer drivers that we see are folks looking to augment existing MPLS networks with lower cost access, making the best use of their assets, both from an equipment perspective, as well as a network perspective, and then having that sort of centralized command and control capability that SD-WAN provides them. All right, so Stephanie, the SD-WAN space, while most customers are familiar with it, it's not a monolithic space. It's not like there's five products in the market and they're all very similar. There's a few different areas and even Cisco has two primary products that you're offering. Can you give us a little bit about the lay of the land as to what use cases there are for the various pieces? How do you decide which there are, I know I've talked to customers that have had multiple SD-WAN solutions. That's a good point. So when we initially started looking at SD-WAN, we kind of did an RFI on about 15 or so different vendors. The market has compressed a little bit since then through acquisitions and mergers, but we at CenturyLink in particular recognized that one size does not fit all for all customers. So we wanted to offer a choice of services for our customers and most of the vendors have very similar kind of capability, but some have other features that some don't. For example, the Maraki one, we typically have our branch customers are customers that have many homogenous kind of like sites, that they want something simple and something easy and not something that has a lot of bells and whistles. That's a perfect fit for them. It's very easy to install and get it up and running where something like Viptella that has a lot more capability and a lot more customization available would be perfect for some of our larger customers. Viptella, for example, is we have a large install base of customers already using Cisco Gear, the ASR and the ISR, where that's very attractive to those folks where they can just lay the software on top of their existing assets without having to do a full network swap out. And then our other option is our Versa, which was our initial launch, which is in 2016. Again, that's a full featured SD-WAN capability. So it kind of depends. And we try to bring the customers in, have that conversation, understand what their drivers are so that we can help tailor them and select and help them select one of the options that we have. Yeah, I have to imagine that most of the time you're really helping the customer down there.  That's some of the reason we would go to a CenturyLink is that you listen to them, understand that, and you've helped filter a lot of that for them and maybe get them down to, you know, so some of the, just what size they're buying. Yeah, and it's not just, you know, the vendors, the pure play vendors talk about, what we call it, the tip of the iceberg. So they talk about the SD-WAN capability, where CenturyLink can add a lot of value to that is we also provide hybrid WAN solutions and PLS. We also do, that's the public, the private section, and we recently, with the introduction of our SD-WAN services, started offering public connectivity and broadband and Wi-Fi so we can offer the mix of access along with the overlay service. We can be the single button to push for that, but we also have had extensive history and managed services, so we have done managed routers and managed I-ads for our voice, our data, and then the other big portion of that is we are a global provider, so for those customers looking to expand or already in our global network, we've got one of the largest global backbones in the world. So let's give our audience a view from a customer who is in the process of needing to upgrade their network, being able to, future-proof it, as you said a few minutes ago, be ready for Wi-Fi 6, say it's a bank with many different retail branches. What would be the ideal solution for them? Would it be something more like Viptela that is that more customizable, that in one branch you might need a much smaller pipe than you do at a much larger branch? Walk us through that for a customer that's going through that upgrade process to modernize their network. Yep, so we try to have our technical experts go in and sit down with a customer and kind of do a question and answer session and try to understand what their business drivers are, what solutions that they're trying to solve for and provide guidance and expertise along that lines and try to suss out. We also have what we call a transformation workshop where we like to bring customers in and have that kind of in-depth conversation, one-on-one conversation, show them some of the demos of the services that we offer and try to suss out what their real requirements are and then, again, we can offer solutions and say, hey, based on the footprint that you have, based on the connectivity options that you want, based on your timeframe, based on your cost, all of those things are factors into where we would direct a customer. So giving them sort of a prescriptive, customized pathway for that upgrade based on all the analysis about what they're currently at and what it looks like and where they want to get to. Exactly, exactly. So, Stephanie, I know you do those in-depth discussions with customers. One of the great opportunities about a show like Cisco is you've got, what, 28,000 people here coming by the booth, coming into sessions. So you get to speed date on some of these things. But what are some of the top things that they're asking for? What are some of those pain points that you're hearing from customers? Is SD-WAN one of the top things bringing them to you or what are some of those key conversations? SD-WAN, that's been kind of the industry term and so everybody knows a little bit about it and the crazy part is a lot of people coming in and have really done their homework and know a lot about the differences between the different platforms. Security is at the top of everybody's mind and that is another really big driver that everybody wants to have a conversation about security. How can I get security patches out to my endpoints faster and better and quicker? How do I integrate my security with an SD-WAN solution? And so we see those a lot. We have answers for those questions and we can help folks figure that out. So here we are at the 30th annual Cisco customer partner event. Lot of evolution in the last 30 years. A lot of work has been done by Cisco to transition from just a hardware network gear provider to hardware now software. Challenging for large organizations with the history and the product depth and the networking expertise that a company like Cisco has. I want to get your opinion. You've been with Centrelink for a long time, Centrelink and Cisco also go way back. What are some of the advantages or is Centrelink seeing by Cisco's transition to more of a software provider? Cisco's always been a great hardware provider partner for us and I hadn't worked in that space too much. However, the folks that we have been working with both on the Maraki side and the Vibtela side are super responsive, super willing to help. They're always available. What questions can we answer? Can we get in? Is there training that we can provide? They've been great, got super partners to work with. In terms of the customer reaction though, is it giving you guys a leg up and advantage that there's more of a software led approach? So looking at an old legacy company that is much more modernized, if you think of how Cisco would compete with the board and the cloud company, what is that kind of competitive advantage like for you guys? That's an interesting thing too. So where Cisco has traditionally been a hardware provider, a lot of our customers are very familiar. They're CCIE network certified. It's funny trying to get those folks over. Some are very, it's usually the younger set that's willing to go the whole software defined route. So it's a challenge. Some folks are very much old school and they want to stick with the hardware based solutions and they don't want to move to the digital world. However, things cloud computing and all the applications moving to the cloud is kind of forcing them there. So it's kind of a slow cycle on some of those and then some of their smaller groups and the early adopters were the ones that were, yeah, let's just jump in and go directly the software route, so. Yeah, Stephanie, you bring up a great point. I used to give presentations and when you would talk about rollout of technology in the network world, we measure it in a decade. It was like, okay, here comes 10 gig and there's the standard and here's the piece and all the things like that. What are some of those drivers in your customers? Because are they moving, we feel in general they are moving faster, speed is one of the things that we talk about, that agility to be able to respond. So what are some of those drivers from your companies that you work with that's helping them refresh faster, look at new technologies and be open to some change? I think it's just keeping up with the industry. Like you said, it used to take years to do things and now it's changing on a monthly and a weekly basis and people are, I think they're a little bit scared, it's like if we don't do something we're going to get left behind and the industry is kind of forcing people to make those changes. Cost driver is another one that we see and people having to hit their fiscal numbers and everything else like that, but network transformation is not a simple thing, it's not a quick go in, run something. It's something that requires a lot of planning, a lot of analysis and you want to, what are the old Carpenters say? You measure twice and cut once, right?  So it does take time and people are getting there. When we first started talking about SD-WAN there was a lot of talk, it was a lot of talk, it was a lot of talk, it was a lot of talk and all of a sudden then you start seeing and it seems to be speeding up, people wanting to make decisions. We've had people that have had experiences and that have shared experiences and I think that has helped people make their decisions to actually go. What are some of the factors like security as an accelerator, a business that maybe might be on the slower side to migrate and start moving to a multi-cloud which a lot of businesses live in? Security also just the threat of being uberized by a smaller company that isn't taking advantage right of whether it's network automation, SD-WAN, taking advantage of the expansion of 5G. What are some of those, how are some of the security and some of those other threats? Are they catalysts that you guys are leveraging with customers to help them understand why the transition is imperative? I think they are, I think the iPhones and the laptop devices where you can click and have that immediate user experience, that's starting to build people's expectations that you can get things that quickly and for the old legacy companies that aren't willing to get in there and to start thinking about doing that migration and change, they will get left behind. It's just where the industry is today. Great, Stephanie, want to give you the, give us the takeaway from Cisco Live, Cisco plus CenturyLink, what's that mean for customers? I'm sorry, I didn't catch all that. Cisco plus CenturyLink, the takeaway for customers. Yeah, we're great partners. We've been partners for years. We continue to be partners. I think we bring a great marriage of the SD-WAN services and our hybrid network and all of our managed services together. Lots of years of experience and we love helping our customers, both of us. We want to delight and provide that great customer experience. Well Stephanie, it's been a pleasure to have you on theCUBE talking about all things SD-WAN, marketplace, the drivers, the opportunities and the benefits, we appreciate your time. Thanks so much you guys, have a great show. Thank you. For Stu Miniman, I'm Lisa Martin. You're watching theCUBE Live from Cisco Live, San Diego.


Trini girl natural hi youtube welcome back to my channel today I'm excited to be coming on to review a basket bloom. Let's get started for the review, right? So yeah, so the first one we have is the gentle who about cleanser. So usually I see Something that says it's gentle. I'm like, you're right. I won't say that and when you put it on your hair You like screaming help save me save me because the size tripping your hair But this was actually gentle so I didn't go shy and then I put a lot because I wanted to make sure I really put To the test in terms of how moisturizing it is and it definitely added moisture My hair was soft and moisturized after I can still see my curl definition My hair wasn't stripped. My hair felt very clean and everything. So this is definitely a winner I definitely repurchasing these are the ingredients and it was a really interesting ingredients list So clear with you know people also use for cleansing and kind of conditioning as well So you curse a natural surfactant. I want to buy some plain you can just kind of DIY I'm trying to think if I did or not because I know I bought something But I think I bought soap nuts. So I want to buy you But that's part of why I got this because I had clay and you cut so two kind of natural Cleansers it has peppermint, which I did feel but it wasn't overpowering at all It was just nice. I know one of my friends cooking an oil sensitive or whatever and she loves this So you can still potentially risk it even if you don't typically like cooking an oil So what was interesting about the shampoo too is that it wasn't the usual light color shampoo was actually kind of dark So I was like, okay then So it was interesting. I kind of like it. It made it more Exotic, I guess I'm not even sure why it's dark like this. I mean, I know it has the clay and stuff But maybe I think it's probably some of the extracts that kind of gave this color But that was interesting to see and it did give me a good lava again You can look at my wash day video to kind of see exactly how these products Performed so if you are a shampoo girl, you want a good lava and a strong cleanse then with strong and gentle Then definitely give this a shot. I really loved it. Love. Love. Love Moisture, clean, soft, moisturized, crystal popping Double thumbs up. This was a go. Definitely check out my wash day video to see my reaction and just how much I love This shampoo. Okay, I was like And then I had to get myself happier. I had to figure out how did I happy up? As much as I love this and I love this. I love this even more the brami root hair mask The cleanser was great, of course, but it was a cleanser. So my hair felt conditioned But it didn't feel like out of this world but This left my hair feeling out of this world moisturized, hydrated, soft, crystal popping, defined Condition, deep conditioned everything and it was one of those instant workers So as soon as I put it on it felt great. Now it felt even better after that it sit But it gave me the immediate results, which I like in a really good deep conditioner After I rinse this out, I can still just put my hands through my hair. My hair was super soft Detangled, moisturized, hydrated and everything. So Definitely a winner.  These are the ingredients So I was like when something has reached a moment, especially in the summer Because it adds some SPF and it's also just really good for your hair And of course, you know castor and avocado oil are both really good for your hair My hair loves avocado oil makes my hair really soft and really Helps with the moisture. So it's good to see that in here Of course raw honey is in here and you know how my hair feels about honey or any humectants So once I saw the honey, I was like not even worried. I know this was going to be great And it was great It has a little bit of hydrolyzed with protein at the very end But it's definitely more moisturizing on a protein treatment. This gave me so much moisture. So I'm so happy. I'm still happy about this. They all have that same slight herbal scent. So I like it. It's Maybe a favorite exotic tea or something not black or green, but something fancy I guess you could say that's probably what it smells like, but it's not strong. It's a very light fresh clean Slightly herbal, slightly floral, slightly sweet scent. This is the deep conditioner. It's really thick, but it melts into your hair And it has a kind of interesting whipped kind of texture So I guess I don't know. I really liked it. It really Pantryed it instantly and everything into my hair So You can see it's penetrating pretty well pretty instantly there as well And my hands feel nice now And next up we have the ease moisturizing leave-in conditioner And here are the ingredients So you can see the ingredients are really good It has the orange peel which I like and the hibiscus which I like because that's also good for like kill definition Both are good for pH balancing and kill definition Of course, aloe vera juice is always good.  It has a rich creamy Like look at this I wish I had some of the old one to tell you, but this does seem a little thicker So if you like thicker leave-ins, you probably like this even better I like mine a little more runny, but it was fine after I just added water And I think it'll be fine if I did it unsuking right here. I definitely recommend it I think for anybody, anybody looking for a moisturizing leave-in with great ingredients The leave-in definitely did a job. My hair was moisturized. My curls were defined I did have to kind of add a little bit of water I think I might like the original version better, but I don't hate this at all. This really did a job So next up, I have the silky aloe curl pudding And one of my friends really loved the sunriff about it and told me about it Truly natural me on instagram So here are the ingredients And this product is really kind of light like when I picked it up I was like worried for a second and was empty because it felt so light When I opened it, it definitely had stuff. It was pretty much full to the top I can't even push really really push in there. It's kind of pushing back. It's really solid It's whipped so it's not heavy physically, but it's really dense as you can see It's like a really good sealant. So it's very kind of creamy and ballerine I would almost call it a waxy, although I don't think there's any wax in here So I think this is really great for like people with higher porosity Me with me and my low porosity self It wasn't probably for me It felt really thick on my hair and I'm not used to using such like dense products on my hair I like that it has aloe vera gel first Both to give it a little bit of water and of course moisture and definition Last but not least definitely not least talking about the scents because everything smells really similar There's sweet slightly sweet scent. You can see I have the gel in my hair now. You can see my curls It is defined, but there is some frizz. It is light and fluffy It's not going to be like Nico's style of gel, which is like heavy and whatever It's going to be like like that like light and fluffy and happy. So if that's the kind of wash and go you want Definitely give this a try I wouldn't even say this is a medium to firm hold like I wouldn't even call it a soft hold Like there's no crunch, but it's definitely holding my curls in place And if it's doing that in this humidity, then I know, you know, and it's a real life gel I'm definitely happy with my hair. This is the texture of the gel. It is just runny, but You know, it's not super thick. You can see the whole thing running down. It's not slimy at all. Really Let's see if you can see that So it's a tad tad tad bit slimy, but it's really not that slimy I'm happy with just the amount of hole and moisture and everything I definitely shouldn't give me because it really didn't do a good job Especially considering how light the product is So I think you really can't go wrong if you're not a pj and you just want one line Because it has a great cleanser has a great deep conditioner great leaving a great twisting butter and a great gel So you're pretty much all set really throughout the year.  I'm definitely gonna stuck up next black friday I may not need cleansers because a little goes along with the cleanser Like I barely touched it and I used a lot But I'll definitely get some more deep conditioners and gel The ingredients and all of the products are really good and she uses a lot of Ayurvedic herbs and stuff like that So if you're just looking for a really healthy really clean Really top quality brand that this is definitely want to try So let me know if you use basket bloom or which are some of the other small businesses that you buy from Of course, this is like black owned woman owned black woman owned and I really enjoy supporting Each other and I also just enjoy Buying products from small businesses because you develop more of a relationship or friendship or you just know More about the person that's actually selling your products now to making your products Thanks so much for watching. I'll see you in the next one. Bye


Okay so let's look at an introduction to logarithms and so we have this fundamental definition of what a logarithm is and this goes back to any time we can write something as a power. So if I have a to power n equals b what I have immediately is I could rewrite this expression as log to base a of b is equal to n and there's our basic definition. Now a couple of terms that are worth noting look at the base of the exponent so here a is my base, a is the thing that's being raised to power n. It's the same as the base of logarithms so this expression with base a gives me an expression log to base a. Likewise the exponent, the actual exponent that I'm using here is the same thing as the log and finally the power, the thing that is the exponential, the power is the argument. Now if you haven't heard the term argument used in this sense before what it means is the argument is the thing that we're taking the log of. So this is log to base a of b and there's the argument the argument is b and b is the same as the power. Again be careful with the loose definition the power is this which is also equal to b. The exponent is n, the power is the whole thing. So there's two special bases that are worth considering. If the base is 10, so again if the base is 10 is the base of the exponent or the log is 10 then I don't need to write down the base itself I can just write down log L, O, G, and and what this means log n, no base specified, we read this to mean the same thing as log to base 10 of N and these are known as common logarithms. Why are they known as common logarithms? Well once upon a time they were actually pretty common but much much much much much more important is if the base is E, and E is a real number that's approximately 2.718 mumble, and the meaning of this actually shows up in calculus. It's the basis E. We change our expression entirely instead of writing out L of G, we write LN, and when I write LNN, log of N, this means the same thing as the log to base E of N. Sometimes people will call this the natural log of N, but really it is the one and only log that's actually important. So the way to read LNN, this is not natural log of N, this is not ln of N, as some people might read it, this is just simply log of N, and everything else we should specify the base on. Log of N, log base 10 of N, log to base A of B. So let's see what we can do with these exponential logarithmic expressions. Paper is cheap so we should write things down. We'll write down our definition of logarithms and compare to what we have, what we have with our definition. So our definition says A to power N equals B gives us log to same base, argument is the power, the actual log is the exponent. So this is A to power N equals B gives the log to base A of B is equal to N. So our first expression, 2 to power 5 equals 32, our base is 2, so that's the base of the logs. The argument, the thing that the power is, the power is equal to 32, so B is 32, and our exponent N is going to be 5, and so that allows me to write this as a logarithmic expression, log to base A of B equals N, log to base 2 of 32 equals 5. Likewise, for my second expression, my base is the base of the logs, that's going to be E, my power is the argument, is 10, my exponent is the log, is the exponent, and so log to base E of 10 is equal to x, and again, since we're working base E, I could write ln 10 equals x, so there's my expression. Well, let's see if we can evaluate a few logs. So say I want to evaluate log to base 5 of 125. Now, just to make sure all of our p's and q's are dotted, or something like that, what we might want to do here is I might want to say, well, I don't know what this is, but I can at least give it a name, log to base 5 of 125 equals x, and I will try to solve for x, and how I can do that? Well, paper is cheap, so I'll write down the definition of logarithms and see if I can rewrite the equation. So again, my definition of logarithms, A to power N equals B gives me log to base A of B equals N, and if I compare my definition with what I have, then that tells me that my base A, base of the logs, is 5, my power argument 125, and my exponent, the actual value of the log, is equal to x. So 5 to power x equals 125. Now, at this point, there's not really much we can do other than to try out different possibilities for x. And so here it helps to know some of the powers of 5, either if we know them offhand, or because they are just products of multiples, they're products of 5s, we can calculate them directly. 5 to power 1 is 5, 5 to power 2, that's 2, 5s multiplied together, 5 times 5 is 25, 5 to power 3, that's 5 times 5 times 5 is 125, and oh, there it is, 5 to the power 3, 125, 5 to power x, 125, x must be equal to 3. And so x equals 3, and put things back where you found them, log 5, 125 equals x, x is 3, any place I see x, I can replace it with 3, so I'll replace it back here.


Hey y'all Chris again for jessecasebrace.com Sorry about any type of difficulties when I went to pause the video actually stop recording it So the break itself will still be on the archive broadcast But we'll do a quick recap of all the hits from our big it express We'll start with the basketball. It's nice graded cards here white sparkle city clay 2020 dollars optic PSA 10 for the Pistons and Steve a A 2021 Donner's optic Jonas Valenchunus fast break black 101 PSA 9 for the New Orleans pelicans and Zach We'll save our big chaser for last get tracing a great signature swatches from I think 0708 Yes, and 0708 NBA SP game use 12 out of 15 for the Rockets and Samuel Got a nice Dennis Rodman By about a 49 from NBA one-on-one pinning the basketball Going to the bowls and Samuel Nice Josh giddy from 21 22 noir gold ink on the rookie autographs going to the funder and Alan Over to the football Marcus Allen one of one on the auto For the 2011. I'm assuming this is 2011 tops archive six years. That's for the Raiders and Alan Nice Desmond Redder rookie auto on the purple stars 18 out of 25 for a TL and Samuel And a nice Anthony Richardson. This is a rookie auto 2023 chronicles draft picks 25 out of 49 for the Indianapolis Colts and Three baseball hits here Manny Machado on the 2020 top series one global game medallion card and auto four out of five one of our other train whistles Dublin to the Padres and Zach Nice Ryan Wreckley PSA nine out of 99 from Bowman comb Bowman chrome first auto green tonic to the Giants and Alan And a nice Bobby with seven out of seven from 2022 tops crown collections crown real seven on the seven That's an awesome card right there. That's for the Kansas City Royals and Steve from those free spots and in the big hit Our cell sheet here for this break Kobe Bryant on the autograph from prison 2016 2017 such an awesome car man rest in peace to the goat. That's for the Lakers and Edward right there We go. That's the recap. Sorry again for any technical difficulties, but we're all good I'm gonna post this one as part two part ones I'll be the gonna be all the randomizers to see what team you all got all right perfect. Thanks again y'all. Sorry about that again


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