Welcome to a Different ILLUMULUS
January 4, 2020
By Frank Trevino
Digital Transformation & Artificial Intelligence Experiences
Every company today reads about, thinks about it, knows they should do it or are already doing it. Its digital transformation and it’s is all about becoming digital. But let’s take a deeper dive into the concept of digital transformation. Digital Transformation is not just a process that organizations go through to become digital. We as individuals go through the same transformation process throughout our careers and our lives, especially as we embrace the ever-changing world of technology and digitization. For me personally, changes in my career and with Illumulus are more about adapting to the changing needs of my customers who are embracing the digital age. Illumulus is now transitioning from a marketing strategy organization to an artificial intelligence transformation strategy organization. I am helping companies understand and leverage their data by turning it into value-driven digital assets.
I started my career in advertising and marketing. I focused on gathering the right data, analyzing it and used these insights to make better marketing and business decisions. In the early days of marketing, we were limited with the amount and type of data we could gather but over time new technology allowed me and fellow marketers to start understanding our audience better, the true impact of our messaging and how we connected with our customers.
My journey continued as an entrepreneur with a number of startups while still involved with large corporations, but still tied to marketing in one way or another. Throughout my journey in the space, telecommunications, and technology sectors, the common denominator was emerging data-driven technology. The evolution of emerging technology solutions such as cloud, big data, data analysis and computing power all bring us to the digital transformation and artificial intelligence experiences we read and hear about today.
Marketing is changing and so did my role as a marketer as well as for marketers in general. Once considered only responsible for selling product and driving revenue numbers. Today, marketing is using market data, customer data, product data and industry data to understand its impact throughout the entire business model process and how it shapes the experiences around this.
- Understanding the customers pain points experience (Problem)
- Validating new market-driven solutions while improving products through customer insights (Solution)
- Measuring the right data (Metrics)
- Effectively communicating the company’s value proposition to build the brand (Value Proposition)
- Using market data and testing to validate and drive innovation (Disruptive Advantage)
- Understanding the customer journey touch points to connect with the audience and changing markets (Channels/Customers Segments)
- Price modeling to offset costs (Cost Structure)
- Continuous revenue optimization and opportunities (Revenue Streams)
It’s this impact that organizations are now realizing the value of not just marketing but the sources behind its efforts, data. Yes, we can easily say that data and technology falls under the role of the Chief Information Officer or Chief Technology Officer, but the real value comes from turning that data into a digital asset and connecting that data back with the customer, the audience, the user and their experiences. Data alone is still data and let’s remember in digital transformation, it’s not about technology. This is where marketing makes that connection.
My efforts providing marketing strategies to my customers is now transitioning to offer a company digital transformation strategy with data-driven efforts. Marketing is still involved but organizations now want to understand the data they create, the data they capture, and the data they need to capture, but they need to know the value of the data as it relates to their audience and their experiences. Companies do not exist without its customers, so this is the common force leading organizations to re-think in terms of digital vs marketing. It’s not about the marketing experience anymore, it’s about the digital experience both for the customer and for the organization. Organizations are now realizing that it makes sense that the digital experiences expert, aka marketers, should also lead the digital charge both externally and internally within the organization. This includes leading digital transformation across the company because just like customers, employees are just as impactful to the success of the company, so digital transformation should be treated with the same amount of effort to be successful. This is not to say that all other departments should be left out, digital transformation is a company-wide effort but if marketing is key to connecting with customer experiences, then it stands to reason that marketing, now digital, will help transition any organization to connect with its employees to lead them into the digital age.
As I work with organizations, digital transformation also includes the artificial intelligence experience. Many think of artificial intelligence as a buzzword but today, I work with many organizations that are leveraging the value of AI. Organizations understand the challenges with artificial intelligence but over time they are also understanding the value of data and the need to stay competitive in the digital age. As I develop their digital transformation strategy (albeit artificial intelligence experiences), it involves the four key pillars of people, process, product and technology as the foundation. Over time, these artificial intelligence experiences range from learning models such as machine learning, object detection and neural networks but also include natural language processing through chatbots and natural language generation for content creation. Its understanding what the organization is capable of and how to leverage data from automation to predictive analytics.
As of 2020, Illumulus is now shifting its positioning model. We are providing digital transformation strategies, digital implementation models and creating artificial intelligence experiences as our primary focus. In the past, this was secondary to the main focus of marketing strategies, but now the goal is to lead others to become a digital data-driven organization by turning data into digital assets.
Frank Trevino is 20-year digital strategy veteran and expat with 10+ years leadership experience in Asia, Africa, and Europe working in technology, telco and the space sectors.
Frank’s digital transformation philosophy is to connect People, Products, Process, and Technology to turn data into digital assets.
Frank’s accomplishments are recognized and featured in Inc. Magazine, CBS, Geek News and is a winner of numerous Communicator Awards, a Silver Anvil Award, & two-time SBA Award.
Frank holds an MBA from the University of Houston and a BS from the University of Texas at Austin.
