What If? So What?
What If? So What? is the podcast where we discover what’s possible with digital and figure out how to make it real in your business. Join host Jim Hertzfeld, Vice President Strategy, as he interviews industry experts and veterans to dissect the buzz, challenge the status quo, and translate grand visions into tangible actions. Because it's not just about dreaming big, it's about asking the right questions: 'What If?' 'So What?’, and most importantly, “Now What?”
What If? So What?
What if Your Mobile Provider Could Predict When Your Car Would Break Down? An Interview With Kevin Colletti
In this episode, Jim Hertzfeld explores the convergence of the communications, media, and technology (CMT) industries with guest Kevin Colletti from Perficient. Jim and Kevin discuss how digital transformation is reshaping these industries, from bundled consumer services to the impact of 5G and IoT on businesses. Kevin offers practical advice for companies navigating this rapidly evolving landscape, providing listeners with a glimpse into the future of digital connectivity and its wide-ranging implications.
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I think the open ecosystem of connected devices, from smartphones to smart homes, to industrial machinery, to mobility, are creating vast opportunities out there. And AI, right, so it enables AI too, and I didn't talk in generative AI, yet, I'm talking traditional AI and machine learning In CMT. Those companies are really the backbone. Right, we're talking about 5G connected device interactivity.
Jim Hertzfeld:Welcome to what If so what, the podcast where we explore what's possible with digital and discover how to make it real in your business. I'm your host, Jim Hertzfeld, and we get shit done by asking digital leaders the right questions what, if so what and, most importantly now, what? Okay, I'm always excited about having a colleague on the show. In this episode, we have Kevin Colletti. Fellow strategist. Kevin, welcome to the show. Tell us a little bit about yourself and what you do here at Proficient.
Kevin Colletti:Great First off. Thanks for having me on your show, Jim. Long-time listener, first-time guest, happy to be here. Yeah, so I've been with been proficient for about five years now just shy of five years.
Kevin Colletti:Diverse background I was on the corporate side of the business at a global Fortune 500 company for about eight years as a head of e-business strategy in operations in the US. I worked at a large national ad agency for a number of years and have also run two startup companies, one digital company, one I was CEO of a software company. So I've been on the corporate side, startup side, digital side and consulting side. So I think that rounds up nice for what we do here as a team at Perficient. I guess I have maybe two themes to my role here. So one is as a director on digital strategy team. I work with clients and prospects to identify the best strategy and solution based on their goals, objectives, their challenges and what they're trying to accomplish. And the dual role that I have is I also run the go-to-market strategy. I'm the GTM lead for the communications, media and technology industry practice.
Jim Hertzfeld:Which is really why we have you here, right, and I know when we first started looking at telecom and high tech and media. Every now and then you have to kind of wake up, look around, see what's going on in the industry, to make sure that we understand where our clients are going, how they're operating, more importantly, really, what their customers are looking for. And what we found is what we call CMT, which I first thought was country music television. I knew we were onto something, but yeah, it really is a confluence of really disparate industries which have really been brought together through digital. And again, this is just sort of like our own categorization. So I think every organization has its own unique footprint. Every organization in the CMT category has their own ambitions. They're all different, right, they're all special. But from your perspective and some of the analysis that you did, what was kind of driving this category consolidation?
Kevin Colletti:Yeah, a few things. That's a good question. So, as far as why we established a CMT, we did, as you mentioned, a pretty complete assessment. So we looked at our competitors to see what they were doing. We looked at our partners to see what they were doing in the industry at large, and most of our competitors and clients and partners really started to cluster these the C and the M and the T together.
Kevin Colletti:There's really been, maybe over the last few years, a confusion among what's the difference between a communications, which historically have been telecommunications company, a media company, and technology company, and where do they slot right? So a good example I'll give you one is Meta, right. So Meta, it has Facebook, it's known as a media company, a social media company, but they, would, you know, clarify themselves distinctly as a technology company. It says it right on their site, it says it right on there when you look it up. So people think of them as a media, but they're technology. So where do you slot them?
Kevin Colletti:There's still nuances, of course, between traditional communications, telecom companies versus media companies, but there's definitely enough crossover. We just start combining the C, the M and the T together as one industry. Just start kind of playing across the board here and, just to add, one of the major drivers, a really big driver, is a lot of these companies in communication and technology are looking for new revenue streams, right. So a lot of the telecommunication companies historically are turning into technology companies and working with media companies as well, because they're trying to really broaden their offerings and drive new revenue streams. So you'll hear a lot of buzz around transitioning or creating a new business model, around telco accelerating to techno as a shift in the business and it's really providing more end-to-end technology solutions, more than just being a network provider such as creating new revenue streams around streaming media and helping really, you know, with sustainable growth.
Jim Hertzfeld:So I remember years ago working for a cable company, I would call it a cable company, part of a larger conglomerate. I remember at the time they were getting into streaming media. They know they were doing a lot of R&D, you know, to do what I think Netflix really kind of paved the way for, and they kind of had to do it because they were just really the plumbing right? And so I think the Spectrums and Frontiers and the customers and those companies we know today have done that, or they've had to evolve these new capabilities, just not just from a revenue stream, but just from a survival differentiation, absolutely. And I think also when Netflix became a content company, so I had signed up for Netflix when I was getting DVDs in the mail, and then I remember streaming kind of popped up right, but then they launched their own content, their own studios.
Jim Hertzfeld:Of course Amazon's done the same right, so that's all kind of in the same merge of offerings. Is that right? Is that fair to say, Kevin? Yeah, yeah, absolutely. How does this impact their customers? And I think what's interesting to me is, like a lot of categories, there's a consumer side that we all know because we're consumers, but there's often a commercial or a B2B side that most of us may not be familiar with, unless we were one of those customers. Maybe we own a small business and I need a bigger pipe into my office, but how is all this, I think, at the end of the day, impacting their customers?
Kevin Colletti:Yeah, and I see this as ultimately a benefit for customers and I mean that from a consumer point of view, business to business and commercial, as you mentioned. Commercial, and I'll run it through a couple of examples right, it leads into some of the bundling stuff you were kind of mentioning a moment ago around new revenue streams. So a great real world example is, you know, a lot of companies are bundling their offerings, right, so you go sign up for Verizon or AT&T or Charter or Frontier or what have you, for a mobile phone plan, right, and actually I just did this when my daughter got her first phone a couple weeks ago, and we could do a whole podcast on our own about, about, that. It can be a whole episode, I'll tell you.
Jim Hertzfeld:We'll get that in a year after your daughter has a year of with her own phone.
Kevin Colletti:It's a challenge, I say the least. But yeah, I digress. So you know, when you go there, you walk into the Verizon store or online ATandT, you sign up for a plan, you instantly have the option to include cloud storage . So you're talking to a telecommunications or a cable company and now y ou're doing traditional technology with the cloud storage offering, and then you have the option to include streaming. So would you like Apple Music with that? Would you like the plan that comes with a Disney and Hulu bundle? You know, streaming service, so traditional media offering.
Kevin Colletti:So that's where that's a good example of you know the C and the M and the T working closely together and it's AT&T or Verizon offering it either on their own or through these ecosystem partnerships throughout the C, M and T. You know to like, like you mentioned, be sustainable growth. You know, try to be their go-to place. Y ou come to us and you sign up for Netflix or Amazon. You don't go outside and go around us per se. So I think that's a good example. It's really a convergence on I'll say complementary offerings. Right, you expect these kind of add-on offerings to come together.
Jim Hertzfeld:Mm-hmm. And from a commercial side, do you see equivalent offers? Do you see the CMT category shifting away from the consumer market? I know in other categories like consumer goods and manufacturing, we're seeing a little more emphasis on more of a commercial B2B offering. Do you see big changes on the commercial side of this category as well? How are they standing out and differentiating?
Kevin Colletti:Yeah, so customer experience is a big deal right, and we'll get into that maybe in a few minutes. But from a commercial point of view it's more of an open architecture ecosystem, right, these people are working together. So the commercial is really combining partnerships for easy access to small business. So, for example, they have fixed wireless access you can get now right, it's an offering in 5G until that's up and running. Small businesses have fixed wireless access you can get now right. It's an offering in 5G until that's up and running. You know small business can get a fixed wireless access, which is almost like their own internet within an internet box, right, that they can have in their home. So the FWA is really helping, you know, bridge a gap until you know, five or a larger broadband happens for small businesses and on the commercial side, well, 5G is interesting.
Jim Hertzfeld:I'm just going to go on a tangent here a little bit, because I think that just the nature of 5G is opening up all kinds of new almost digital operations. Right, devices talking to each other on the shop floor, using 5G for robots to talk to each other, have conversations, you know, work out their plans to take over the humans.
Jim Hertzfeld:So I mean, there's, you know, some of that. It's kind of like what we used to call market makers. Is that, you see this, some of these companies, and maybe even partnering with device companies as well, to really invent and create whole new categories, subcategories in the industry.
Kevin Colletti:That gets into internet activity and connected devices, right, and I think you know 5G is an enabler of that with the throughput and the connections. And there's also something in the communications world called O-RAN or open RAN and that's really with the traditional telecom companies decoupling their infrastructure in their service layer. Right, it used to be all combined but now they can, you know, decouple that and they can be the backbone and the services on top of that, but I think the open ecosystem and connected devices, from smartphones to smart homes, to industrial machinery, to mobility, are creating, you know, vast opportunities out there. And AI, right, so it enables AI too, and I don't, I didn't talk in generative AI yet, I'm talking traditional. AI and machine learning, you know, in CMT, those companies are really the backbone, right, when you're talking about 5G connected device interactivity, that's the backbone of industries like automotive or connected cars and mobility.
Kevin Colletti:Companies like John Deere in manufacturing are doing things for years already. People don't even know about it because it's on the commercial side where the connected farming they're calling it right and the machines and autonomous farming and enabling, you know, I don't want to say less workers, but the automation of autonomous, you know vehicles. You know running the farms for them without having to have the people there.
Jim Hertzfeld:Right, you don't have to have more kids to be able to sustain your family farm. It was also a dangerous occupation. So, kevin, there's a lot of promise there. I think we understand a lot of the drivers. It's sort of natural in a lot of ways. But what are some of the challenges? I think this has not been overnight for a lot of companies. There's been some consolidation, I think, some acquisitions to divorce the portfolio of things that, let's say, dish has done a really good job at. But what are some of the challenges that you see these companies facing in CMT?
Kevin Colletti:Yeah, I think there's a lot of challenges, you know, again, they're the backbone of everything that's going on out there that you hear about.
Kevin Colletti:You know, when you're in technology world of communications you're really driving a lot of the changes, a lot of high expectations there. So the expectations around seamless connectivity right, you have to always be on comprehensive security. People don't know about security unless there's a breach. Breach is such a huge challenge right now. Everybody's like lightning fast services, lightning fast, always connected. I have to be secure and it has to be flawless. So I mean that of itself will keep you up all night. These chief information security officers, these people don't sleep because of what's going on here. And I think consumers ever growing demand for accessibility right, because we're talking about media companies we're talking about, like Netflix, to your point, or Amazon, and you have to have your specialized content and everybody's viewing things on multiple devices. So I think the internet connecting device from device anywhere, anytime, always adds intense pressure, right, so it's a broad kind of challenge that they have, especially as they try to look at, you know, new revenue streams.
Kevin Colletti:There's also a challenge in what I'll call disruptive technologies and capabilities. Right, and I won't get too tactical into it. But you know we talked about Open RAN. You know, a moment ago, and you know some of the more mainstream worlds, we talked about 5G. But I think immersive experiences, a lot going on with VR, virtual reality, augmented reality, especially in the media and communications worlds, and the expectations are that if you play in this space, you have to be a leader. Right, because, to your point, John Deere is coming to AT&T and saying, hey, we just signed a $50 million deal to expedite 5G and connected farming.
Kevin Colletti:Where are things right now? Right? So are you ahead of the game? You always have to be ahead. So I think CMT has immense pressure to always kind of be in front of the puck, not fall on the puck, as Wayne Gretzky, you know, would say.
Kevin Colletti:But I think one of the major challenges is there's a lot going on. They always have to be ahead of the game, but they have to be careful not to take their eye off their ball, right? So I think, if they're looking at, hey, there's so many things we have to be doing out there, how do we navigate through the noise? Right, because a disruption for one person is an opportunity for another person and vice versa. So I think the challenge is finding the right partner like us, or the right confidant, to work with, to help clear out the noise, because one thing is to say here's the trend. It's another thing to say here is how it applies to you as your specific business needs. Here's how it's going to get you forward into the future and make you more future-proof.
Jim Hertzfeld:Right, right. So how does digital? These are really digitally driven companies. These are companies that are innovating on and because of digital, but from a competitive business.
Kevin Colletti:Yeah, yeah for sure. And I'll just add one more key thing on the challenge though I think you hit on it a second ago is there's frequent M&A. Mergers and acquisitions are huge in communications, media and technology. They're always redefining, they're always pivoting and I think you have to be very agile as well as innovative, and like you mentioned, companies are in wireless areas they weren't in before, now they're communication companies, now media companies and they have to learn that new asset or pivot that they have and then grow and sustain going forward.
Kevin Colletti:I think a lot of it comes back to differentiating and delivering customer experience. So I think that's one asset, right? I think customer experience becomes a key differentiator. You know why would you go from one provider to another provider, right, services I'll get on in a second, you know, but I think the experience is important. So if you're having a bad throughput or you're down or you can't understand how to navigate something, I think you're just going to move on to someone else. So I think leveraging, we're talking about customer experience, I think leveraging some of these technologies like AR, VR, and brands can cultivate engaging, frictionless experiences, and deeper connections and reducing churn.
Kevin Colletti:I think a big challenge that we hear about in the CMT world is churn - reducing churn and retention. Because it's easy to change to a different communication company or technology or media provider, just like we always talk about in financial service around banks, right. So how many banks do you work with? You probably have six different or eight different accounts and switching is like nothing these days. So, same thing in the media world. You have a Hulu, you have a Disney, you have a Netflix, you work with Verizon here. We work with AT&T here. You have Frontier for your home phone, if you still have a home phone. So I think the experience is important to be a differentiator and it's back to what I was saying before you have to be connected, you have to be secure, you have to be always on and where they want it. I think that's a big deal. But I think when you talk about when there's an issue, because there's always going to be an issue, I think looking at the contact center or the customer service center is a key place to start when you're trying to differentiate yourself.
Kevin Colletti:So, bringing in the new technologies we've been talking about around AI to better understand the customer. You know, predict their challenges or problems, or provide real-time, self-service solutions in an efficient, accepted way. You know, and that's for the consumer. That's just as well for commercial, because the John Deere example we talked about - their machines are out there farming and tilling and planting their crops out there.
Kevin Colletti:If there's a glitch in the system or something goes off the rails, that's not just A the machine broken, that is massive, that's massive downtime disruption to their business. That's not just the machine broken, that is massive right, that's massive downtime disruption to the business. That's not just you know Bob calling in sick that day, that's a machine going off the rails. That could, just, you know, really have a big impact. So I think I think it's important to be trusted and be connected and I think the last point on this is being data-driven as well, because data-driven, you know we're talking about 5G this is being data-driven as well, because data-driven, we talk about 5G, we talk about AI. We talked about predictive analytics. Not just predictive as in a consumer calling up, but predictive is hey, this machine usually fails on the 199th hour of this day and this is why it fails. So it's predicting downtime before downtime happens. I think that's a huge component of the data that we can get now through 5G and AI and ML.
Jim Hertzfeld:Yeah, yeah, that's cool. I'm seeing some of that, I think, with some of our other clients who've kind of been in the telematics game for a long time and have tried to build it on their own. I wonder what they would have done 10 years ago if some of this technology was in place. So I guess, in terms of a mindset and philosophy and I just like to take that to my final question, which is advice for the listener so it's an interesting category. I think technology is the reason why many of us got into this business in the first place. But again, this confluence of things just sort of happened. It had to happen. I think this is an industry that just had to do it. I don't want to call it survival, but I think it was a lot of opportunity what some of these companies have done to stay relevant. But if you're not in CMT, maybe peering into this category, you're thinking about your own business. How do you bring this same mindset to your own world? Like, what would you share? What would you tell our listeners?
Kevin Colletti:Yeah, I'd say make sure you have your company in mind? What are you trying to do? What are you trying to accomplish? Where's your vision going? And I mentioned earlier, it's important to understand what's happening out there, what's the trends, what's the contents, what's the constants, what's the challenges. But how does that apply to find someone that's going to help you through the noise? Don't follow the shiny object? I think us in technology have been saying that same line for about 25 years. Right, you know, since technology, you know, was born. Don't follow the shiny object. Understand the shiny object, how it applies to you and how you could leverage it or leapfrog it. But you have to know what's going on there. And, again, I think understanding what's important to your business, clearing out and understanding what the trend is. And, frankly, I think the value is saying here's how that applies to me. How does 5G work for me? Who are my customers? Now, Get the voice of the customer. What are they saying, how do they want us to apply, open rate into their world?
Kevin Colletti:If you're in a technology world, and I think assessing what you have, what your challenges are, what's right for your company, and putting a roadmap in place. I think that's important, right, so you can't do everything all at once. I mentioned before, taking your eye off the ball. You might have a good business, a stable business, and you lose focus too much saying, oh, I think we should pivot over here. You can't get away from your core business. Right, the opportunity is at hand and I guess I'll say that you know we always preach here and, Jim, I know you preach all the time. You know, have that big vision, know what the North star is. Think big. Right, you know where I'm going with this, right?
Kevin Colletti:And the second thing you want to move fast. Right, so it's succeed fast. Is it a catch up? Are you leapfrogging the competition. Is it an area you need to get into because you acquired a media company? Right, so you have to learn quickly and you have to fail quickly and iterate on ideas. So it's bringing somebody that you know you can be a large company, but I think you have to have that entrepreneurial spirit, a small company nimbleness, mindset, fail fast mindset, no matter the size of the company now, because technology is changing so fast and you can't keep up on everything and you can't try everything all at once.
Jim Hertzfeld:Yeah and that means kind of breaking into small chunks too right, think big, start small, move fast. Right, and, like you said, learn and fail. Yeah, I think that's great mindset, but I really like what you said around really unpack, like uncovering what really matters. So, yeah, and again, that's a whole other, maybe a whole other episode on shiny objects that we can talk to. I know we did one called the rundown. We're going to do another rundown. We take the shiny objects, figure out is it thumbs up or thumbs down? Is it real? So, yeah, great advice. Thanks for the overview, kevin. That's great. I want to thank the entire communications, media and technology category for making this podcast possible. Thanks for having us.
Jim Hertzfeld:It wasn't that long ago, we'd have to fly somewhere, get in a room, get some equipment. There's a reel-to-reel, there's a tape. You know going and you know right from our laptops and browsers. Here we are.
Kevin Colletti:This is brought to you by the CMT industry. Yeah, thanks, kevin. Thank you. Thanks for having me.
Joe Wentzel:You've been listening to What If? So, What? A digital strategy podcast from Perficient with Jim Hertzfeld. We want to thank our Proficient colleagues JD Norman and Rick Bauer for our music. Subscribe to the podcast and don't miss a single episode. You can find this season, along with show notes, at Perficient. com. Thanks for listening.
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