[Echelon Asia 2016] Robots, Service Design Thinking, Predictive Analytics and much more

Three stages, a startup competition with 100 contendants, over 90 speakers, 200 exhibitors, dozens of stands with the latest trends, including VR, AR, Fintech, Big Data and whatever you can imagine… And 4.000 attendees.

After playing with meleapp in some kind of Dragonball combat, trying the Fibrum headset (ligth and compact, great job guys), having a coffee with Braintree (by PayPal) & Cafebond.com and seeing again our Vietnamese friends we were ready for our first talk.

We started in the “Future” stage, listening about robotics: “Riding Into The Future Of Robotics And Smart Transportation With MOTOBOT”, by Hiroshi Saijou. Hiroshi talked about the importance of hiring “crazy people” willing to do what it takes to innovate and take things to the next level. His proposal to new employees: “make the dinosaur dance again”.

More information about Echelon Singapore in this link.

These are some of the talks we attended:

Designing Experience Drive Environments

Speaker: Caitlin Robinson, Creative Director, Experience Design, R/GA

Main point: we have to integrate digital and physical worlds to enrich the experiences our customers experience.

Key takeaways:

• We have to think more how to blend physical and digital realities. We tend to treat them separated, but in the future all will be blended.
• We are constantly switching between realities. We walk looking to our screens, for example.
• Experiences perish faster.
• Successful brands are creating experiences taking seriously the intersection between physical & digital. And using service  design to integrate them.
• Digital platforms may add a data layer.

Apart from that we could see the Equinox case and how they reformulate the experience of cycling, becoming it something fun. I mean, this is something I would love to do:

We could also take a look into R/GA methodology:

1. Define. Study the audience. In the Equinox case they identified the “lone wolf” (people who prefer to train alone), the group learner and people that were seeking a coach to explain them everything. They studied also the science behind the trainings.
2. Design. That involves testing & prototyping and looking for the best way to create a funny experience.
3. Deploy (refine & polish). Analyzing data to optimize the experience.
4. Extend. Applying to more sports and venues.

Remarkable results: +18% new users and +25% attendance. People shared the experience in social networks. They started with the system in 3 venues and now it is present in 75. Running experiences has been also developed.

Leveraging On Predictive Analytics To Create Game Changing Customer Experiences

Speaker: Anna Gong, CEO, Perx Technologies

Our marketing consultant heart could not miss the opportunity of listening to Anna Gong. When it comes about Predictive Analytics, the Echelon Summit 2016 has left some interesting takeaways to keep in our mind.

Main point: it is not only of having access the data. The most relevant thing is to know how to use those data to improve your relationship with your customers.

Key takeaways:

• The Target Pregnancy Story. A concerned father demanded to speak to the the manager of a Target store. His teenage daughter had received coupons for baby clothes: in his opinion the chain was encouraging her to get pregnant. But in fact the girl was pregnant: the purchases she made were enough for Target to predict that fact. The father had to apologize. You can read the whole story here.
• It is not only to have predictions, it is more important how you use it. Predictive analytics only give you a future/possible behaviour of your client, but it is on your roof to transform this information in an actionable touchpoint with your clients. Following with the previous example it is easy to answer the next question: will you send a letter congratulating the future mother or will you introduce new products (like diapers) just next to the typical coupons you used to send?
• Predictive Analytics is a mine gold for Retention.  Combining predictive analytics with a lifecycle management strategy helps brands to answer the most important question when you want to keep your customers: How will you reward and engage with your customers without changing their routines and daily life? 
• The days when brands rewarded customers based exclusively on transactions are gone.

Becoming a thought leader: “How I Grew My Business 1,000% In 12 Months By Becoming A Thought Leader”

Speaker: Josh Steimle, Founder & CEO, MWI

This was a very inspiring story. After years struggling Josh Steimle found himself close to the bankruptcy. But he did not give up. He decided his SEO and Online Marketing firm deserved to exist.

Key takeaways:

He started collaborating with Forbes, writing about entrepreneurship. But one day he decided to start writing about digital marketing: one of the posts was “4 tips for hiring the right SEO firm”. The post was a success and increased the sales so much they could not attend all the customers.

In this tweet Dustin Masancay summarizes the main takeaways of his amazing talk:

@joshsteimle shares tips:
1. Just do something
2. Focus on that blog
3. Answer customer’s questions #ECAsia2016pic.twitter.com/LK3mrgpHvu

— Dustin Masancay (@dustinmasancay) June 15, 2016

Venture Debt Financing for Growth Stage Startups

SPEAKER: Chin Chao, CEO, Southeast Asia, Innoven Capital

Main point: there are more tools for financing your startup. Venture debt minimizes dilution and is an additional way of funding.

Key takeaways:

The main benefits of Venture Debt:

• Reserve additional capital for later rounds and other investments.
• It is a way to reduce dilution.

Concerns

• Increasing burn rate.
• Losing control if a default is called.

The typical Venture debt terms are:

• Up to 3 years.
• Up to 4 million.
• No restrictions in the ways you can use money.
• No board.
• No personal guarantees.

But, remember, it needs to be paid back, not convertible into shares. It is not ideal if debt is servicing is more than 20% of monthly operating costs or if the company raised less than US$2m in equity capital.

Becoming the Next Unicorn – Power-up at Enterprise Scale

Speaker: Gunasekharan Chellappan, Business Unit Executive, BigData & Cloud Data Services, Asia Pacific, IBMGUNA

Main point: you compete not with other companies within your industry but with new insurgents.

Key takeaways:

• Let data power up your idea. Data makes a big difference, data can make you leap frog your competition.
• Once you know your customer, improve engagemet. First of all you must understand what your customer wants.
• Challenge the statu quo. Think different, act different and you could beat the bigger and better funded competitor in your sector.
• Start small, build quick and test your hunches. Do not wait until you have all what you need.
• Evolve as your business grow and the market changes. Your business today is not going to be your business of tomorrow.

Power up your ideas with Data. Insights. Actions.

 

A lot of learnings, insights and takeaways to keep in our mind and a lot of new inspiring people to follow. This is only a small summary about what we could see today.

As we would say in Spain “Tomorrow more and better” (mañana más y mejor)