I'm Erin Hickman. I'm a senior digital experience consultant with Infomentum. I'm Jan Schulte, head of consulting at Magnolia. Oftentimes organizations are using software which has been around for many years, and nobody is really an expert. They're using it not because they chose it, they're using it because they have to use it. And many times we find that our customers tell us that they do not meet their current needs -in this current digital world. -I couldn't agree more with what I see. Also, pretty often, as you just described, it's just this legacy system. You look at it and you just think, gosh, it's from the 90s. How would that be possible that you're even able to work with something like this? And as you said, really? Um, it was always there and there was always some kind of resistance to kind of change. And then there's a lot of pain, a lot of frustration and no real results whatsoever. I mean, I've seen really projects where just a very simple thing, then just updating some kind of basic content really took almost half a day where just there was a lot of jumping around and over complicated, um, approval processes. Each and every single click -really took forever. -We often see that our customers come to us with really complex systems as well. So over time, things have been built on top of other things. And when it comes to update updates or security, it's really difficult to unpick all that. And they're spending a lot of time and a lot of money managing those platforms with other providers, and it tends to be really costly for them. Do you find -that to be the case? -It's an absolute classical scenario. It's just we had to upgrade just a minor version from another system that is also integrated. And because some kind of API's change in the background, the whole team was just basically blocked for over two months. So that is something that we see in, um, all the projects that finally migrate to Magnolia quite often. And um, it's one of my favorite stories. Once we just basically onboarded a client to Magnolia, and I just came back three, three years after the fact and just ask, hey, how's it going? Just, you know, all the systems back in the days that we integrated together, they are all gone. But there's just one constant and that's Magnolia, because it just makes it easy to bring in the systems that we really need. And because it's just easy to exchange everything and rewire absolutely everything. Yeah. So sometimes we find that our clients hesitate about moving to a new DXP system because they see the cost, and they think this is going to be a large project and it's really going to be expensive for us. But also we try to highlight to them that doing nothing to stay with these legacy systems, which are not being upgraded, which are not integrated, are going to be costly as well, especially if you have a situation where you have a problem with security and you can't. There's nothing that you can do other than upgrade. And then at that point it -becomes an emergency, doesn't it? -If you have a security breach, then obviously, anyways, it's a catastrophe. But even if you don't, um, hit such a situation, um, think about it. All the costs that you're going to invest to keep the machinery running and you're still stuck, and you cannot innovate and you cannot keep the pace it really need in the market to deliver those experiences that are really needed. That's really a big chunk of money that you just invest for something that is not really propelling you further, versus if you go with a modern platform, it's pretty easy basically to change and to move forward. Yeah, you're investing in your agility as a company to meet your customer's needs quickly, rather than the security of a system that maybe you know well -but isn't serving you anymore. -Yes, absolutely. And again, um, sometimes you're just really stuck in this thought. We have just mastered so much, and let's stick with it. It's also about a matter of perspective. It's really about what could be done, what are others doing, and can we really afford to deliver something that is just mediocre at best? Our clients want to feel like they're supplying their employees with the tools to do their job well, not just to do their job and to enjoy working at their organization. And having a modern digital experience platform is going to definitely contribute to that. Yes. Big time. And again, this is also one of those highlights for for myself. And I just come back after a year or so and just, hey, how's it going man? It's so much better. I cannot imagine that we just did this for five years. First of all, clearly you're going to lose revenue sooner or later because if as a client, I just see that I get basically the needs that I have solved somewhere else much more elegant and with much less friction, sooner or later those clients are going to, uh, to shift. That's pretty pretty obvious. The next thing is, um, in a normal world, on the actual world, everything is highly automated. So it's not like back in the days that I have to pick up the phone or send a fax or anything like this, you just really expect that with a few clicks you can even solve our complex processes. And what we also see with those clients that are stuck in the past, they really struggle on keeping up. So things are much more complex and they take way too long versus what others can offer in the end. So the digital experience platform isn't just for our end customers, is it? It's for internal employees as well, people who want to do a good job. They want to serve their organization. They want to get information out there quickly and accurately, and they're often held back by using legacy systems when they can't do their job efficiently. It's going to affect morale. It's going to affect them how happy they are to do their job. And they too, could be fickle and move to another organization that's going to allow them to do their job better in a more modern way. You could even argue at some kind of also respect that. You just make sure that your people can do the best work, because this is what you expect, really, um, efficient work and that people are able to enjoy what they do. And for that, obviously you just have to create the foundation to actually get going. Again, this is one of those stories where I just really heard, I cannot believe that I survived this five years before, with all the different steps that we had to take. We just introduced a certain feature to roll out content for different markets, for their platforms, and they just really described each and every single month. When we had our global campaign ready, the full team was just copy and pasting for at least 2 or 3 days. So just all of it, everybody. For marketing versus nowadays, the campaign is just prepared. One click, everything is just rolled out. And that was just really those words. I cannot believe that we did this -added momentum. -We always want to help customers understand their customer journey and understand those touchpoints they have with their customer. But we also want to internally understand their employees journey. And what does it look like for their employees to be using their current platforms? And sometimes we find that they'll say to us, well, we just manage this through a shared spreadsheet, um, which has a whole host of issues accuracy, the fact that it's shared information being overwritten, the spreadsheet itself being lost. It's just not a modern way to be dealing with information, which is so important, so integral to an organization. So when a customer tells us we currently do this on a spreadsheet, we know we're going to be able to put very quickly a process in place that's going to improve their situation. -Yes. -I mean, just also just some anecdote campaign management. That is something that I've seen exactly as you described it with spreadsheets. Are we just plan to a three weeks that we're going to have maybe a campaign, and then we're going to start to distribute all those things by hand, and then you can say, hey, have you ever thought about just have this centralized campaign planning tool where you just can prepare everything in advance and then the distribution will just happen automatically? What do you mean automatically? Automatically? Let me show you. -Oh, absolutely. -Sometimes we have clients who say to us, it's really important that this piece of information go out at exactly this time on exactly this date. It's really a big deal. And if you're using a legacy system, somebody may need to be up at 5:00 in the morning to press the button to publish. But when you're using a system like Magnolia, you could make sure that all of that is automated. And you can trust that those things are going to be published exactly when they are supposed -to be. -Yes, absolutely. And yeah, sometimes what what I see is just up to the second that certain campaigns are just changed, sometimes multiple times a day at the morning, there's a certain campaign running in the evening, there's a certain campaign running. And if you think about events like Black Friday or so, then it becomes even more complex, with just different campaigns on different channels that are really going to, um, flip during the day and then sometimes even more advanced when you just have some of the personalization bit, um, added when you just have multiple campaigns running. But those campaigns are then even specific for different segments and so on. Yeah. And then again, think about that with a spreadsheet. It's really important that organizations send out the right content at the right time, and that it's been approved by the right people as well. So we find it in momentum. A lot of times, our clients speak to us about needing to have workflow approvals to be sure that if somebody publishes a piece of content, that the right eyes are on that content before it then gets published to the world. And with Magnolia, we found that you can put in those complex sort of workflow processes, which in the end are going to send you quite save you quite a -lot of time. Do you agree? -100%, especially in big organizations with many different departments, workflows really a crucial part because having that stuff, um, actually efficient is really, really important. Otherwise you just stick with this one case that we had with a big bank, and they wanted to be more efficient, and they had still this ten I's approval workflow. And um, in the old world, it was not really implemented. Well. They needed this workflow with translation and legal and so on. But yeah, it just took them over two weeks just to get everything together. And then again, if you have a modern solution where everything is just interlinked, also with external solutions, everybody gets just notified on the spot and also just get them those reminders that are tasks out there that are pending. That's okay. Click let's go up to the next stage. Yeah. If you get this really down then big organizations can absolutely benefit. Sometimes we find that the legacy systems our clients are using are not even that old. Um, but it could be that they were based on an open source system like WordPress or Drupal, and they've just outgrown those systems. It was a custom solution at the time that worked. But in this modern world, they need something more now, and they need to be able to integrate, and they need to be able to take their dxp to the next -level. -That's a classical scenario that I also see quite often. So one of the typical scenarios is, hey, we have 15 instances of those open source systems somehow running, and then suddenly the cost of maintaining those becomes just overwhelming. And it's not just maintaining those, it's just also bringing them together, having that single source of truth. And that's really hard to achieve. And again, think about having your CI CD for your company. And if your visual brand language is just replicated multiple times on multiple systems, first of all, you have duplicated, uh, quadrupled effort for all those different template sets to actually deliver. Um, the content by itself is where it already starts way before the -content by itself. -We've had several clients who have gone through rebrands where they needed to, maybe even it was just to change their brand colors, and they're working with multiple systems and nobody really knows where those things are stored. This is solved when you have just a single point of truth, just one dxp where if we have to change anything, we know exactly where to go, exactly what to change. And that really reduces the likelihood that the wrong brand, the wrong information is going to get out there from a system that nobody was -keeping track of. -What I also see, if you just have all those scattered systems around, who's in charge of the system, uh, which agency can actually work with this kind of templates? Who understands those? All those problems are basically gone. If you just have one system where everything is under one umbrella, and then it's pretty easy just to address those different things, all those. -Problems, your turnaround. -Times for your different partners may be completely different. You want to rebrand in a month, and it's going to take six months for one of your partners to update some legacy system that you don't -actually have access to. -Yes.