In this episode of the Six Five Podcast – Marketing: Art & Science CMO advisor and host Lisa Martin welcomes VP of Marketing at OSI Digital, Karen Dosanjh. Karen, who was recently honored as one of BC Business magazine’s “Women of the Year” in the entrepreneurial leader category, shares how MarTech, communications, and relationships helped her transform OSI Consulting into OSI Digital, to the delight of customers and employees globally.
Their discussion covers:
- How AI and predictive analytics are crucial for understanding customer behavior and future trends.
- The importance of using AI ethically, emphasizing data privacy and transparency to build trust.
- How rebranding OSI from a traditional consulting firm to OSI Digital – led by Karen – improved customer engagement and drove revenue growth.
- How marketing can act as a change agent by addressing internal resistance and aligning brand messaging with modern needs.
Learn more at OSI Digital.
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Disclosure: The Futurum Group is a research and advisory firm that engages or has engaged in research, analysis, and advisory services with many technology companies, including those mentioned in this webcast. The author does not hold any equity positions with any company mentioned in this webcast.
Analysis and opinions expressed herein are specific to the analyst individually and data and other information that might have been provided for validation, not those of The Futurum Group as a whole.
Transcript:
Lisa Martin: Hi, everyone. Welcome to this newest episode of Marketing: Art and Science. I’m CMO Advisor and Host, Lisa Martin. This is a webcast where we really dive into the artistry, the science that is modern marketing today. How marketing leaders are flexing those levers, leveraging emerging technologies like AI, predictive, gen AI to really inform and transform the customer journey. My guest on this segment is Karen Dosanjh, my friend who is a VP of marketing at OSI Digital. Karen, it’s so great to see you. Thanks so much for joining us on the program today.
Karen Dosanjh: Thank you for having me, Lisa.
Lisa Martin: I wanted to share with the audience a little bit about … I’m going to do a little bit of bragging on Karen’s behalf. She was just named Woman of the Year in the Entrepreneurial Leader category at BC Biz Magazine. And she made the cover of the magazine, saw that on social media. Karen, congratulations. Tell us a little bit about that.
Karen Dosanjh: Thank you so much. I guess being selected as Woman of the Year by BC Business was not on my bingo card. But it was an absolute honor. It was a total surprise. I was interviewed and thought I might be possibly selected for my category, and had no idea that they were going to select me for the cover. It’s not lost on me that you don’t often see women of South Asian heritage on the cover of mainstream business magazines. It’s very rare. I felt that I wasn’t just representing myself on this cover. I did feel like I was representing my whole community. I’m hopefully inspiring future generations of girls and women to see themself on a cover like that, and as a possibility for them, too. It was really exciting.
Lisa Martin: Very exciting, very inspirational. Again, congratulations. You also have had a great career in marketing. Tell the audience a little bit about your journey to being a marketing executive at OSI Digital. What was that path like? I often hear folks say it was very zig-zaggy, it wasn’t linear. But give us that backstory.
Karen Dosanjh: Yeah. I spent about 25 plus years in marketing, PR, and corporate communications. All different functional areas within an organization, but they relate. There are similar muscles, and talent, and skills that you need across those roles. I have worked predominantly in tech. I work for everything from small tech startups to Canada’s largest, one of the largest telcos, to one of the world’s largest conglomerates with GE. That’s just to name a few. I’ve had some pretty vast experience in different industries, and a chance to flex these marketing muscles to elevate some incredible brands. But really, small, mid-size, large. That’s the advice that I give to people starting out, is just to get experience in a lot of different spaces and figure out where you learn some things. Break some things. But really, learn where your talents and skills are aligned. All of that work has led me to OSI Digital in the current role that I’m in.
Lisa Martin: That’s awesome. I still think you have great breadth. Of course, we know not only has marketing evolved so much in the last 10 years, it’s so scientific now, which is why we named the show Marketing: Art and Science. It’s not just the art piece, it’s the science piece, too. But we also know that the marketing role is different at different types of organizations. It sounds like what you’ve seen and what you’ve experienced as a marketing leader is different, based on where the company is in its journey. That probably helps really also inform maybe some of your advice to those that want to follow in your footsteps is get that perspective, and lean into how things are different. If a company’s pre-IPO, if it’s post IPO, if it’s in an acquisition phase, because all those are really important to creating that breadth that you have.
Karen Dosanjh: 100%. You really have to be locked in step with the business priorities of the company. And not just understand where the company is today, but where they want to be. I really see marketing as a change agent to help the organization get there. It’s critical that we have full visibility on the strategy, have inputs into the strategy so that we can align our efforts with it. It’s really important. It should never be considered as an afterthought. In fact, marketing should be 10 steps ahead and really help be that goalpost to where an organization wants to be. I definitely saw that when I was working with small startups. In building the vision, in the hope of this brand. Then eventually, the company gets there. It’s really exciting. I’ve been a part of major acquisitions. One of the largest Canadian tech acquisitions, with the purchase of Bit Stew Systems by GE Digital. Marketing had a very strategic hand in making that happen. It’s a value partner in any organization.
Lisa Martin: It is. Speaking of value partners, talk to the audience a little bit about OSI Digital. I met you through my work with Boomi. We’ve had their CMO, Alison Biggan, she was on the show a couple weeks ago. But talk to the audience a little bit about OSI Digital. How are you helping customers optimize performance, accelerate that all-important digital transformation? And then, where does partner marketing fit into that strategy?
Karen Dosanjh: OSI celebrates 30 years in business. Founded in California, and now operating worldwide. Our company’s really focused on being that digital transformation provider. So helping companies move through and really capitalize on everything from automation and AI, and machine intelligence, and all of these incredible technologies. We do that through the expertise of our people. Our people understand business and they understand tech. We’re not out there selling widgets. What we are selling is the expertise of our team. It is the relationships. It is very much a relationship driven company. And a really strong commitment to customer excellence, which is legendary at OSI. What’s been exciting is just being a part of that growth. I’ve been with this company for eight years. This year, we’re expanded globally. I’ve just been a part of that wave.
In partners, you mentioned partners. We work with some of the world’s leading tech platforms, including Boomi, Salesforce, NetSuite, and Oracle. That’s really our sweet spot, is understanding how these major platforms work, not just how they work, but how they work together and how the data moves from these platforms. We help integrate that data. We help our customers leverage that data so that they’re getting the most value from these massive technology investments that they’re making. That’s OSO’s sweet spot. That’s what makes us different.
Lisa Martin: That’s fantastic that you’re talking about the integration piece because we have this expectation, I think in our consumer lives that bleeds over into our business lives, that all the experiences that we have, whatever brand we’re interacting with, whether it’s an ecommerce purchase or a rideshare transaction, it’s going to be connected, integrated, seamless, omnichannel, relevant, personalized. But all of that is driven by marketing and the data. Interesting parallels there. Speaking of data, I would love to understand how you’re bringing in the data, the data science piece into OSI Digital marketing, and what that martech stack looks like, that is helping to convert those prospects to those vocal, loyal advocates.
Karen Dosanjh: Yeah. Our martech stack includes a very well-known marketing automation platform called HubSpot. We use HubSpot for everything from email campaigns, to landing pages for our website, to social media management. It’s really critical that we have an automation tool. We’re a relatively small team and we’ve got to get a lot of stuff done. And we’ve got to do it well. It was really important that we invest in a tool that allows us to manage a very high volume of digital campaigns both efficiently and effectively. HubSpot, it does that for us. It’s all about automating workflows, optimization, and greater impact. It’s the right tool for a company of our size as well.
Lisa Martin: Talk a little bit about flexing those muscles of the science piece, the art piece. I always think of them as levers. Then the data will help inform what’s working, what needs to be course corrected. I’d love to get your perspective on the fusion of the artistry and the science at OSI. And how it’s helping not only OSI to differentiate itself, but its partners in the communicates as well.
Karen Dosanjh: Yeah. I love these questions because I really haven’t thought a lot about the art and the science of marketing, but it truly is. It really is those two things coming together. When they come together well, that’s where the magic happens.
Lisa Martin: Yeah.
Karen Dosanjh: To me, the true art of marketing is about balancing creativity and strategic thinking, both of those things together. Understanding your customer behavior, effectively communicating your value prop, and then driving results. That creativity really speaks to your brand’s presence.
Lisa Martin: Yeah.
Karen Dosanjh: Your storytelling, in terms of the digital content you create. That’s a really big thing for us. For us, our storytelling is through the voice of our customer and customer use cases. Really, the proof points. Those are the proof points that we can then share with prospects and sell. “This is what we’re able to achieve for customer A or B.” Really, that art is the elegant modern design is part of the art. Modern technology, brand building, that is part of the art, which OSI has developed into in the time that I’ve been here. People don’t realize this, but I hand select every single image that is used in all of our campaigns, on our website. It goes through me because I understand the art of our brand. It has to reflect who we are, and it has to convey modern technology in action. That’s what you see when you see a lot of OSI’s imagery. It takes me a lot of time. To me, that is the magic of the art in marketing.
Lisa Martin: That’s awesome. That’s fantastic that you’re so involved there, from a creative perspective. When you look at key performance metrics, what are some of the ones that you measure that boil up to the C-suite, for example, in terms of marketing’s impact on the business, on revenue? How is the martech stack helping you to deliver some of those results that the business is wowed by?
Karen Dosanjh: Yeah. For us, marketing does drive revenue. We do that through attracting and training prospects, who then convert to customers. That could be building brand awareness. We do that through education. I mentioned how we’re not selling widgets. What we are bringing to the market is our expertise. Our deep business and technical expertise. We do that by hosting a variety of webinars, which are learning and educational opportunities. But really, it’s showcasing how we did that thing for a real customer. We invite prospects to attend. We see competitors attending. These webinars really allow us to showcase our deep expertise and reach a wide global audience.
I had mentioned that we’ve expanded our footprint and brand into new regions, including Europe and in Japan, APJ. We’re hosting webinars for these markets and we’re combining that with relevant assets, case studies, white papers. It’s really allowed us to leverage this thought leadership strategy and generate leads in brand new spaces, spaces that we’ve never been before. It’s exciting. We’re getting to know those markets and what is keeping the CTOs up at night.
Lisa Martin: Yeah.
Karen Dosanjh: We’re building our campaigns around that. It’s been really exciting. It’s been a huge expansion of my role this year.
Lisa Martin: That’s exciting. How is the marketing technology stack helping to deliver that, in terms of the impact? Or enabling you to understand different customers and new markets? What’s the tech stack’s influence there?
Karen Dosanjh: What’s exciting is that we can see when we’re working with a prospect, their lifecycle with us. They’ve attended these webinars, they’re interested in these topics. Or they’re going in and they’re downloading these specific datasheets. We can see how they’re engaging with us. The tool does allow us to collect data about our customer and it acts as a CRM, along with being that automation tool. It’s both things. We’re using martech in ways that we can track and we can analyze individual customer behaviors in realtime. We can see what is working and what isn’t. Then we can customize our campaigns to specific target audiences, which is really powerful. Honestly, I think that we’ve just tapped into the potential of that. I think there’s so much more that we can do to really capitalize on the tools that we have. There’s so much more potential there.
Lisa Martin: It’s so important to be able to have the visibility that you talked about. It isn’t a “nice to have” anymore. As we’ve seen marketing evolve so much the last 10 years alone, it’s table stakes, that visibility. Whose engaging with us? What are they engaging with? What messages are resonating? What isn’t? Is just foundational for marketing organizations to be able to take those prospects to leads, to opportunities, to booked business. No longer is that, “That’s great if we have some tools.” It’s one of the things probably that you use to differentiate OSI Digital.
Karen Dosanjh: Absolutely. Absolutely. Like I said, with things like AB testing, we’re able to test different messages based on the audience. There’s so much more that we can do. I think truly, it’s just the tip of the iceberg in terms of what we’ve been able to capitalize on. Just seeing how the expansion into new markets this year so seamlessly, through the marketing tools that we already have has helped us significantly. We’ve been able to move quickly. It’s been really exciting to see that.
Lisa Martin: Talk about the use of … Gen AI came on the scene about, I guess about 20 months ago. AI has been around for decades, as we all know. But the catalyst that gen AI has been for every company to use that powered by AI everywhere. I go to so many technology conferences, cover so many different companies, and interview executives across the board, and it’s everywhere. What I’d love to understand is how are organizations, particularly marketing leaders, using emerging technologies like AI, gen AI, automation, predictive analytics to really fine tune that value prop so that the differentiation is there. What are some of the practical applications of automation, AI, gen AI in OSI Digital that are really moving the levers?
Karen Dosanjh: I truly believe, as a marketer, that if you’re not learning or strategizing on how to leverage AI in your job today that there is a danger that your role will become obsolete. That you will get asked, you will get tapped on the shoulder saying, “Hey, how are you working with this new technology?” In marketing, producing digital content is the biggest challenge for us. We’re constantly trying to churn out really strong content in a timely manner. We’re really good at that. I’ve personally, and my team has already started leveraging tools like ChatGPT. Really, what it is is a starting point to drive research on certain topics, and look at how these certain technologies are positioned in the industry.
You don’t just stop there. You then have to take that content, and you have to edit it, turn it into the OSI voice. You have to insert your value prop. You have to know how to do that. But by just getting there, to that point, saves us a lot of time. To have to go out and do research, we can get that instantaneously. We are actually able to produce content even more quickly than we have in the past. To be honest, you still need the human. You still need the human to do that. I feel that’s where you showcase your value to your organization. Is that, “Yes, I’m leveraging AI, but I’m the one that is turning it into marketing gold,” at the end of the day. I really have learned over my decades in tech is that we have to be flexible. We have to be adaptable. We have to move with it. If we don’t do that, you will get left behind. Study emerging technologies and figure out how to work with them so that you don’t just survive in your industry, you also thrive.
Lisa Martin: Definitely. I talk with CMOs every week and that’s a running theme, in terms of leveraging tools like gen AI, ChatGPT, other gen AI platforms to do things like even overhauling parts of websites where they’re seeing faster conversions. I was just on Schwab Network the other day, talking about the AI revolution. I said there’s so much visibility on gen AI and the big companies that are helping to power it. The investments are billions, hundreds of billions of dollars a year. Now we’re seeing investors really put the spotlight on some of those big companies.
What are the results? How do you justify this spend on emerging technologies and infrastructure, and what are some of the results its generating? Where the conundrum is a lot of organizations are still in the early phases of pilot projects. Or really going, “We’re going to start using this technology to drive efficiencies.” Like you talked about, being able to create customized content faster. Being able to probably, ultimately, convert a prospect to a lead, to an opportunity, to a customer faster to impact revenue. I think it’s all there. Do you feel any pressure using emerging technologies to be able to demonstrate that? Is that something that’s on your radar?
Karen Dosanjh: Not yet, but I do think that it’s coming.
Lisa Martin: Yeah.
Karen Dosanjh: To be able to future cast. Where are we going? What are the future trends? What are customer behaviors? I think AI and predictive analytics has a huge potential for that for us. Again, we have just tapped into that. Our customers are asking for it too, by the way. They are coming to OSI and saying, “How do we leverage AI within our businesses?” We’re working with them to figure out the best way forward. Truly, it is about future proofing not just your jobs, but it’s about future proofing your business as well. I think that we’re in a brave new world right now.
Lisa Martin: Yeah. Well, it’s so dynamic. Things are changing constantly across the board. In every industry, no company is safe from it, if you will. Being able to adjust those levers using emerging technologies is really foundational for organizations these days. What’s your advice to other marketing leaders who maybe aren’t dipping their toes in the water yet when it comes to predictive analytics, automation, gen AI? I can’t imagine. They’re pretty far behind if they’re not dipping their toes in the water. Or at least, defining some business use cases where those tools should be applied.
Karen Dosanjh: I think it’s one of the biggest benefits of AI right now is understanding your customer. Really then, personalizing your marketing. We know that AI can leverage large amounts of customer data. You can understand your customers behaviors, their insights, their preferences, purchasing decisions, all of those things. I think organizations really need to tap into the potential of that. And then, maybe shift change what could be their supply chain, in terms of the things that they have on inventory. We saw that through COVID, especially when there was a huge break in the supply chain.
Lisa Martin: Yes.
Karen Dosanjh: A lot of our customers were really struggling at that time to fulfill customer needs and expectations. I think that now, the brave world of the future is to really understand the whole supply chain and your operations, and resources, and all of that, all of that. AI can help with that. This is one of the biggest opportunities that is out there. For sure, from an OSI perspective, we feel that we can help. We’ve done a few webinars, by the way, on just supply chain disruption, and how technology can help avoid that. There’s a huge opportunity in this space.
Lisa Martin: The visibility that you talked about is also absolutely critical these days. Organizations need to be able to see into everything, like it’s absolutely see-through transparent. But I liked how you talked about really leveraging emerging technologies, AI, gen AI, predictive analytics to understand the customer. Because at the end of the day, customers have this expectation that our customer lives comes into our business lives. That any brand we interact with is going to know us, service relevant content, and personalize the experience. And make it omnichannel so that I can engage on whatever channel I want. And you’re going to be able to follow me in a non-creepy way to make that experience really tailored to me so that I, as the customer, feel valued. There’s transparency. There’s trust within the organization. It’s really, I think, foundational for marketers these days to infuse that into their organization because it does really boil up to the top. It does affect companies’ bottom line. I think the more stories like that that can be told, I think the more value folks will see in AI and gen AI as a good thing, rather than something to be afraid of.
Karen Dosanjh: Yeah, absolutely. I 100% agree.
Lisa Martin: Karen, you did a great job of explaining a lot of the artistry and the impact that it makes, that you’ve already made. Where does the science piece of marketing come into you? How do you pull those levers to deliver what the end user customer is expecting?
Karen Dosanjh: To me, the science is always the integration and the automation of various marketing tools into one system of use. For us currently, I mentioned we use HubSpot. We’re able to hit multiple channels and audiences with just one click. It’s very seamless. The goal of a very well-designed martech stack is to take those tools, integrate them seamlessly, optimize your marketing efforts, and as a result, drive leads and drive revenue. That’s, to me, really the science. Then being able to look back and track all the results of your campaigns in real time, have real time insights. Be able to test things. Make changes. To me, that is the real science of marketing is that there is a whole lot of data underlying that we now have access to that we may not have had in the past. Your value is really being able to leverage that data.
Lisa Martin: Yeah, that visibility. You mentioned realtime, that’s key as well. I think we have this expectation that we’re going to have real time experiences with whatever brand we’re interacting with. But to your point, marketing has evolved so much over the last 10 years. It’s why we have the title of the show the way that it is. It’s not just the artistry, and the sizzle, and the creativity. That science piece is so beneficial because it probably empowers you much more than it ever has to really empower the rest of the organization. That’s outstanding.
Now let’s do the ethical AI word. We talked a lot about AI, Karen, generative AI. Your use cases, some of the things that you’re doing now, and I’m sure some great things coming up in the future. When people think of AI, there’s a lot of fear factor out there in the mass media. I think as marketers and technology, I think we have a responsibility to be able to share some of the positive use cases that are already coming. But we can’t talk about AI without talking about ethics. What are some of the ethical considerations with respect to AI that you bring into what you’re doing?
Karen Dosanjh: Yeah. You think about it, we’re consumers as well. We can definitely tell when we’ve been marketed to. We have to be really careful and cautious about that. In terms of my role, we’re very cautious about the frequency and the amount of touchpoints that we have when we’re reaching out to new prospects and current customers. We’re very respectful of just inundating people with information and data. You have to have that sense of responsibility with your campaigns. I feel that since AI relies very heavily on data and collecting personal information so they can train the algorithms, we have to prioritize data privacy and be fully transparent about how we’re using that data.
For example, we need consent for data collection. We have to ensure that we’re using tools that have security so that we’re not having data breaches. We’ve seen this happen, we’ve seen it in the news. Where large organizations, data is being breached. That’s the worst case scenario. Like I said, as consumers ourselves, we just want to know the things that we’re concerned about are the same things the customers are concerned about, too. AI definitely needs to build in some form of accountability and ethical compliance. But I still think that we’re in the early stages. It’s much like the advent of the internet. There was no governance. I think that will come, it’s needed. Once we get a little bit more accountability and compliance around AI is where we create a safe new world.
Lisa Martin: Great points. Accountability factor is key. And also, that transparency because that equals trust. It usually converts to trust. You talked about the relationship building that OSI does with its folks internally, with its customers. That is absolutely critical these days and really helps set organizations apart.
Karen Dosanjh: Yeah. We don’t want to see unsubscribes.
Lisa Martin: No.
Karen Dosanjh: When a customer gets to that point, they’re frustrated.
Lisa Martin: Yes.
Karen Dosanjh: And we’ve been hitting them with the wrong things. I think we’re really cautious about making sure that the information that we’re sending out, or anytime we’re outreaching to a customer or prospect, that we’re not just exhausting them with information that’s not relevant to their business. It has to mean something, it has to be meaningful. Then we know that they’re going to want to continue to engage with us, from a marketing perspective.
Lisa Martin: Yeah.
Karen Dosanjh: I think it’s something a lot of organizations don’t take to heart. That is why we’ll lose … You will get blocked. For sure.
Lisa Martin: Then we’ll wrap up here. I always say failure is not a bad F word. We learn so much from our failures. Well, we should. That’s in business life, that’s in personal life as well. Share a story of a business initiative or marketing initiative that wasn’t going according to plan. Or a shift change in the organization that you came in and really helped convert it to a very favorable, fantastic victory for the business.
Karen Dosanjh: Yeah. I can share a story of what really started out as a failure, but turned into something pretty fab. I learned myself, as a marketer, through the journey. When I started with OSI in 2018, we were going to change the name. I proposed that we change the name from OSI Consulting to OSI Digital. And really positioned the company from this traditional consulting company to more of a digital transformation provider, it was really where we needed to go. There was a lot of resistance to this change, this name change globally because of course, the name, it touches so many things. It touches the brand, but it touches all aspects of the business as well. From letterhead, to the website, to invoices, to building signage. Just so, so much.
There was a resistance as to, “We’ve been called this name for 25 years. Why do we need to change it? We’ve had some success.” I came to realize that that resistance was not due to people just digging their heels in or not wanting to do the work, because it also meant a lot of work for a lot of people. It was just about not really understanding the need for the change. In that moment, I realized that marketing has an incredible power to serve as that change agent. Through engagement, communications. And then helping masses and broad groups understand the need for the change. Each group cared about different things.
Lisa Martin: Yeah.
Karen Dosanjh: I spent a lot of time listening. What are their concerns? International has these concerns. Concerns are different for people who are working in admin. Different functions had different concerns because it would have different impacts for them. I really listened. Treated it like an overall global project. I listened, but I also explained it. I helped them understand the mission of why we needed to move to a digital transformation company. They bought in. I feel like once people understand the mission, and you’ve explained it, and you built that trust, they will go with you.
Lisa Martin: Yeah. Yeah.
Karen Dosanjh: That is essentially what happened. It took time. It was, I would say, a six-month project, which is relatively fast.
Lisa Martin: Yeah.
Karen Dosanjh: Now if I had come in as a new person and just said, “This is the change. This change has to happen.” It would have been a complete failure. I think understanding all of those nuances, also even cultural differences across a company that’s global.
Lisa Martin: Yeah. Definitely cultural differences, yeah.
Karen Dosanjh: Understanding all of that, and treating everybody’s voice, giving them the dignity of expressing their concerns, and listening, and addressing them. I understood the power of engagement.
Lisa Martin: Yeah.
Karen Dosanjh: We were then successful. But to be very honest with you, it could have completely gone the other way. People, from all aspects, did what was expected of them. So that the day of announcement and the press release goes out, everything was changed over seamlessly to OSI Digital because we had that whole company behind this mission. I have personally seen the charts of the revenue going up since 2018.
Lisa Martin: Wow.
Karen Dosanjh: Because it definitely opened doors for us to customers, to be able to explain, “We’re not just this stodgy, traditional consulting company. We are going to help you realize your digital transformation goals. That’s what we do, that’s who we are.” It was really exciting to be a part of that with OSI. It’s an ever-evolving brand, even today.
Lisa Martin: Sure. Yes.
Karen Dosanjh: We’ve been able to adapt it based on what the market is doing, so it’s very exciting.
Lisa Martin: It’s a great example of marketing as a change agent. Probably one of the best examples I’ve heard in a very long time. Because to your point, it could have gone the other way. You brought up the cultural piece. That’s huge. Even from a brand perspective, what OSI Digital helps customers do, digitally transform. Even that isn’t successful without the culture coming along with it. You talked about OSI being 30-years-old. I think Amazon just celebrated it’s 30th birthday, which I can’t even believe. But when your history, you have all this information behind you, it’s harder to pivot. But it sounds like you did this in a six-month timeframe. What was the customer reaction? Because when they come to you going, “Help, we have to digitize,” especially COVID was a catalyst for that. What was the customer reaction to, “Oh, I get it now?” Because it sounds to me like that’s a differentiation piece for OSI.
Karen Dosanjh: It is. A lot of the feedback came to me informally through sales rep, through the executives saying, “Hey, this shift change that we’ve had with our brand is making the doors open more quickly for us. We’re getting in more quickly.” Because of course, customers come on your website, and they want to get to who is this company, who are we dealing with? If they see something that doesn’t look like an innovative, modern technology company, why are they going to want to do business with you?
Lisa Martin: Right.
Karen Dosanjh: Another thing that I did that was different was really, I mentioned our people and our expertise is our business, is the brand. It’s bringing more of the OSI people to the forefront and featuring them.
Lisa Martin: Yeah.
Karen Dosanjh: And featuring their expertise so that customers see that. They want to do business with us because they like us, and they trust us.
Lisa Martin: Yeah.
Karen Dosanjh: That was missing in the OSI Consulting brand. Bringing the human aspect to a technology company is really important. I did that through profiling employees and continue to do that. Then also, it shows the breadth of our team, the depth. The feedback from our customers was incredibly positive. Like I said, our revenues align with the name change and a lot of the efforts that we’ve done with marketing. It’s no coincidence that that bar chart has gone up since 2018. And also, I put it back and I give that credit to, again, the power and the depth of the team and the people that we hire. We build long term relationships with our partners, and we build long term relationships with our customers. It’s incredible.
Lisa Martin: It’s absolutely incredible. It is essential for organizations to differentiate themselves and do well. I think the whole theme of this show is really how marketing is a change agent, leveraging people, leveraging technologies, emerging technologies, processes, and ultimately ensuring that the employee experience and the customer experience, which are like this, are really healthy and solid. It sounds like you’ve done a great job at OSI Digital, Karen. Thank you so much for being on the program, sharing the OSI story, and how marketing is really pivotal to the success of the organization, its customers. And how it really empowers change across even historied organizations. We really appreciate your insights and your time.
Karen Dosanjh: Thank you so much for having me. It’s my pleasure.
Lisa Martin: All right. Mine, too. We want to thank you for watching this latest episode of Marketing: Art and Science. Reminding you that the next one is coming out in two weeks, so we’ll see you then. For Karen Dosanjh, I’m Lisa Martin. Thanks for watching, everyone.
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Unlocking the Power of AI in Marketing at Boomi
Crowdstrike Harnesses the Power of Generative AI to Transform Customer & Marketing Team Experiences
The Tech CEO’s Perspectives on Marketing
Author Information
Lisa Martin is a technology correspondent and former NASA scientist who has made a significant impact in the tech industry. After earning a masters in cell and molecular biology, she worked on high-profile NASA projects that flew in space before further exploring her artistic side as a tech storyteller. As a respected marketer and broadcaster, she's interviewed industry giants and thought leaders like Michael Dell, Pat Gelsinger, Suze Orman and Deepak Chopra, as she has a talent for making complex technical concepts accessible to both insiders and laypeople. With her unique blend of science, marketing, and broadcasting experience, Lisa provides insightful analysis on the latest tech trends and innovations. Today, she's a prominent figure in the tech media landscape, appearing on platforms like "The Watch List" and iHeartRadio, sharing her expertise and passion for science and technology with a wide audience.
