Technology has transformed the way we live and work. To talk about the differences between our workday today and the way it wasfive years back, Ravi Santhanam, Chief Digital Officer, HDFC Bank, took the podium at the Tech Manch Digital conference 2018 held at Taj Santacruz, Mumbai. Speaking at the event, Santhanam added, “Five years back people would ask me who is your data guy, but today we have data scientists and that’s what primarily differentiates our working styles from how we use to work earlier. Earlier we had media planners but now we have platform specialists”. He went on to talk about marketing in an era of artificial intelligence and highlighted the need to understand digital transformation.  Here are the top takeaways from his session-

• Artificial Intelligence-Today reliability on artificial intelligence is much more than was expected.

1. ‘Artificial intelligence isn’t going to do the marketing for you, but it will define your marketing strategy.’
2. Don’t go behind the buzz road of Artificial Intelligence; go behind what it can deliver for the customers.
3. Go away from theoretical Artificial Intelligence, move towards Applied AI which is defining a very specific new space.
4. Data alone can’t stand on its own, until the human element is added because it brings the context to the conversation.

 

• Digital Transformation- As Santhanam proceeded, he spoke about ‘Digital Transformation’.

1. Everybody talks about AI and its consequences but nobody talks about where it is heading.
2. Start viewing the problems from the lens of consumers rather than just being digital.
3. Digital transformation cuts across the entire company, so as a marketer, it’s necessary to make sure that digital transformation is adopted from top to bottom.

He concluded his session by emphasizing the need to understand the whole consumer experience to outgrow the business rather than only focusing on aspects of digital.