https://www.martechadvisor.com/inte...ews/interview-with-david-keane-ceo-bigtincan/
“Interview with David Keane, CEO - bigtincan
Former Contributor May 05 2016 | 02:29 PM | 5 Mins Read
1. Could you tell me a little about your background and how you came to be the CEO at bigtincan?
I’ve always worked in IT, since my first job with Novell through to the founding of bigtincan. Throughout my career, I have constantly been faced with scenarios where the end users of IT solutions never actually enjoyed using the technology. In fact, for many of them, technology solutions have been frustrating, complex and often a roadblock to achieving their best in work. bigtincan was founded on the principle that the mobile device could be a way to change all that. I remember the day the first iPad was announced by Steve Jobs. After the keynote a few of us got together and said “Gee, the iPad is a lot more than just a big iPod Touch – it could be the way that we help business users enjoy their connection with IT and improve how they work with their customers.” And thus bigtincan and our bigtincan hub offering were created, with that mission in mind.
2. What is the core marketing technology capability of bigtincan? Where does your product fit in vis-a-vis the customer life cycle?
bigtincan provides a single unified solution that securely and automatically delivers the right content to the right sales person for the right sales scenario depending on what sales stage the opportunity is in – on any mobile device. With our mobile content enablement platform, bigtincan hub, marketers transform the way business is done on a mobile device by not only driving the use of the most relevant marketing content in a specific scenario, but feeding that intelligence back into marketing groups for future content creation and delivery.
Marketers gain insight into what content is resonating with customers and are able to directly measure the impact that these tools have on the sales pipeline and revenue.
For sales people in the field, bigtincan provides guided selling with real-time curation of content to match whatever sales scenario they might be facing. With that in mind, bigtincan fits in every area of the customer life cycle, from the very first touch point, onwards.
3. From a technology perspective, what are some of the biggest challenges that marketing teams face today?
Three of the biggest challenges facing marketing teams today when it comes to technology all have to do with insights into how marketing content is utilized, it’s effectiveness on the sales pipeline and understanding what sales teams need to win.
Technology can enable these teams to better manage the flood of content they release into the enterprise and eliminate content silos, getting the right content into the right hands at the right time and can provide data on how exactly that content made a difference to the pipeline.
4. How can marketers optimize their content for a wider and more effective reach? How does bigtincan enable this?
By making the right content available to the right user at the right time and location across any device screen. When we change the navigational paradigm from one where mobile device users pull content from content repositories to one where marketing departments and sales enablement teams push the content directly to their devices. This includes criteria based on where they are working, with which prospects and in which industries, and based on the success that top performers in the sales team have had using content to close sales in similar scenarios. This is what bigtincan hub was created for, and how companies are better leveraging marketing content for sales success, not just support.
5. How does bigtincan hub™ enable sales and service professionals to create and customize content consequently improving customer interactions? Are there any other new features or upcoming upgrades that you're excited about and would like to give us a sneak peek into?
With bigtincan hub, organizations can leverage content analytics to better understand who is using what content, how often, and when. This analytical insight can help marketers identify which content they produce is working in the sales field and which is not—reducing time and money spent churning out materials that never get used. Essentially, content with context. This insight goes both ways, giving these teams a better understanding of kinds of content are the most effective with customers helps them to determine what new content to create and invest in.
Earlier this month, we launched the latest version of bigtincan hub. The hub draws content from more than 35 integrated content repositories—that includes marketing automation systems, content management systems, and cloud-based storage spaces such as Box and Dropbox. On top of customization, users can interact via video and chat to collaborate remotely and we’ve also included deeper integrations with CRM systems, which will help automate key processes of content-share recording.
6. What is your take on the massive explosion of MarTech cos across so many categories? Do you see competition, opportunities to partner and/or integrate?
MarTech offers marketing executives a new opportunity – to finally put some of the promise of technology to work to help them to not just do their job better – but to help the sales teams that they are guiding do their work better.
MarTech has proliferated across so many categories as it is one of the few technology areas that can really have a significant effect on the organization’s bottom line.
Helping take the great content and materials that marketing creates and assisting sales teams to make the best use of it is only the start. I see continued extension of MarTech across all areas of the business in the years to come.
And whilst the number of players in the space is set to grow, I expect to see even more opportunity for us to integrate and partner and grow our existing list of over 35 integrations across even more systems.
7. How do you weigh in on the whole 'buying into vs building a marketing cloud' choices that marketers have to face today?
You only have to look back at the last few generational changes in technology – the Laptop PC and the Web itself - as examples of the way software market maturity affects the build vs buy mentality.
In the early stages of the market, organizations are forced to create often the entire stack of technology – as happened in the early days of the Web with companies creating their own CMS, middleware, and even presentation java based code – as there were no tried and tested solutions on the market that could be integrated quickly and cost effectively. But over time – imagine the impact of Lotus Notes on PCs and SharePoint on Web – business realized that they need to move faster, and with certainty in development cycles and budgets by moving to tools that they can buy into.
We see a similar transition happening in the MarTech world now – but with the added significant scalability offered by cloud solutions making the transition happen even faster than in the past.
8. Can you share a screenshot of the homepage of your smartphone (iOS/Android/other)? It would be interesting to see some of the apps you personally use on a daily basis to get things done and stay on top of your day.”
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