Through the Metaverse: A New B2B Sales Strategy

wherever you are wherever you are wherever you are wherever you are welcome welcome to sdks welcome to sgk welcome to sgk's around the world wherever you are and in whatever time zone you're in welcome to sdks around the world welcome to sdks around the world welcome to sdks around the world stage of seja bienvenue car around the world we hope you enjoyed the session we hope you enjoyed the session princess perak was a good assistant we hope you enjoyed the session hello everybody thank you for joining us from all around the world my name's simon cole i'm a business development director at sgk based in london i'm really excited today to be introducing laura and jose who are from uh hexagon and then we're discussing the challenges and trends that they see in business to business marketing in the uh specifically in the mining uh industry now we're always keen to work with our clients and share their love of innovation and trailblazing and with hexagon we have definitely found that partner so if you haven't noticed already we'll also be leading this conversation from the metaverse which we'll be visiting shortly um another channel that we feel will be very influential in the future especially in the b2b space so let's get to it now i'd also like to introduce you to allison from our global marketing team hi guys my name is alison and i'm the marketing and business development coordinator i'm also based in london i'm really excited to have both laura and jose here with us today and so if laura and jose if you could um each give a quick introduction um to the audience that'll be great thank you sure hi my name is laura ferreiras i am the senior director of marketing for hexagons mining division we are one of a host of um industries that hexagon covers across all heavy industries from geospatial to heavy construction and beyond i am based in tucson arizona where i have lived for about eight years i had a global team of marketers that are based in australia canada and the united states at this point and one of those illustrious people on my team that i'm proud to call a colleague and friend is jose sanchez jose hi everybody thank you so much for having us uh simon and alison and yeah like laura mentioned um i'm part of the marketing team here in hexagons mining division as well i am the product marketing manager and uh it's been an amazing uh uh experience uh to work with sgk on this project and and to work with laura um it's it's uh really uh been eye opening for us and how far we can stretch all this so i'm also here based out of tucson with laura and i've been with the company uh for 16 years now so uh really kind of been around for a long time thank you guys it's great to have you both here um it would also be really helpful for our audience to understand just a bit more about hexagon as a business as a whole um as well as the mining industry so i joined hexagon about a year and a half ago and it was extremely interesting for me to find out that hexagon solutions are actually present in 85 of the world's aircraft 75 of the world's smartphones and 75 of the world's automobiles so it's a company that has been built on a lot of acquisitions our technology is focused on sensors software and autonomous solutions and those those solutions actually cover a wide variety of industries so jose and i work in the mining industry the mining division but we have colleagues around the globe 22 000 of them actually that are covering heavy construction geospatial smart cities autonomous positioning i could go on and on with the nine divisions that our company covers just to add to that i think the power of working within that is amazing you know that's one of the things that laura and i have been seeing a lot of over the last two years specifically how much interaction there is between these divisions so even though they're different industries we mix and match we work together and there's so much power behind that for sure thank you and could you maybe go into a little bit more detail of hexagons involvement within the mining industry and and how you are really at the forefront of this space definitely um you know mining is an interesting industry because it has done a lot of uh technological catch up over the last decade it was historically known as sort of an old school you know everything's done by hand miners tend to have that persona given to them that they're you know old prospector types it's changed a lot and what hexagon has done is joined together these companies that look at all sides of the mining industry specifically safety operations planning the whole data flow all of that is being looked at by by combining all these companies together um we started working together and coming up with technology that's really amazing in in itself as technology but also the way it's connected that connectivity between planning and safety planning and operation safety and and the data that flows all of that is being really pushed to the limits with hexagon in the mining industry and that's something we're really proud of because i think it is quite unique yep to add on to that um the the mining mystery as i understand it is that previously the different parts of the mind might have been considered separately as separate parts of the mind whereas what hexagon is doing is creating solutions that cover the full life of the mind so this carries on from what jose was just speaking to but whereas before maybe you'd get data and it would be specific to a certain part of the mind now all those different parts of the mind can be working together in unison where we're learning things along the way that make decision making more easy for different leaders or minors across across the life of the mind so whether that be an exploration or a material movement in drill and blast planning survey and monitoring those different parts of the mind are now talking to each other and that's providing greater safety and efficiency and sustained sustainability and i think the um hexagons life of mine um experience really sort of is a really good example of the way that we've seen and how the different systems can really talk to each other and it's really helped with hexagons marketing and sales strategy so i think the first things first is that we can sort of dig deep into these marketing strategies um and we can um give a bit of a demo of the hexagon's life of my experience um so if i share my screen now um and then jose laura if you want to talk us through the different elements of the life of my own experience i think that'll be a good starting point the life of mine interactive experience is a project that we have been working on with sgk for over a year now and it's gone through several phases with the objective being to present the life of the mind in a way that is respectful of the of the truth of the mind and of how our customers are actually living and breathing and working within the mind so jose will show you more this has been really his pet project and it's been truly amazing to see it grow great thank you laura yes um like laura just said you know we wanted something that that could show how our technology works together the breadth of our technology which really is all over the mine um so we we tried to capture it this way and sdk has been great at first of all learning all about mining and then um being able to apply it to an interface like this so the life of mine interactive experience is meant to be an exploratory interface where you go in you choose things you look around and you you find out for yourself what what's going on and we um for this iteration of the life of mind we've broken everything out by workflows so typical workflows into mind instead of going into the actual solutions right away how are they connected in these workflows there's exploration planning drill and blast material movement and survey monitoring um we've added as well a way of navigating all of those workflows directly with the sitemap and this is really useful for us because we can go straight into one of the scenes or look at to see what the workflows are actually comprised of i always like to show off these because they're some of my favorite scenes in life of mine interactive experience you know right away with with a quick visual animation the the user is led to understand what this technology does but then we reinforce that with copy we reinforce it with some uh add-ons like these copy uh boxes that can be opened up and read we can play videos from here these videos are easy to change and put in new ones once we've made new ones that have you know new branding or anything like that and then you go to your next scene so once you've finished the scene you can go to your next scene and it walks you through how these are connected so you know acid health is one thing that keeps the trucks healthy well what else do you need you need safety you need that safety bubble around it so this is the type of animation that's typical of explaining a visual animation what what's happening with the technology and and yeah this is it's been extremely powerful at trade shows we are now planning our online launch as well and really hoping that this will drive clients to to explore and to ask questions and to get engaged um you know there's a contact us forum now and we're working all the time on how to integrate it with our other systems so that we can engage with clients that's a quick overview for you guys to sort of understand what this life of mine interactive experience is what i was going to add to to the conversation is around how we are trying to build this in a smart way for the future so as marketers we are always put in front of changes which is great because our company is innovative and there's always new technology and new ways that things are working together and we want to constantly be able to make these updates in a quick and easy way so we have done a lot of work in the background on integrations with some of our content management platforms so that we could have a single source of truth that feeds into our life of mine experience and i think for any of the marketers out there listening they will um definitely feel the pain in that sense and we're trying to make our life of mine experience more seamless and and have it so that our sales teams and our colleagues on the commercial side are able to always have trust in what they're seeing and our customers as well they know that everything is is up to date so this is really you know it's extraordinary and and quite visionary um you know from from the the concept of this all-encompassing as you mentioned um single source of of uh information around the the the collateral and the value propositions and so forth of all of your product sets what led to this kind of train of thought you know where where were you prior to this that led you into to wanting to go down this or or envisioning this this new way of um uh talking about your product suite i think um i i can i can take the first stab at that you know for from my experience being the product marketer um the the our president uh nick hare um had a vision and had that that asked from us as a marketing department um let's reinvent something let's we need something new something modern something engaging um you know we used to rely a lot on a poster that was just one graphic one 2d representation of all our technology and it was just getting too hard to represent to really show what we do with just a static image and he really wanted something that that showed all the connections show the technology but was way more dynamic and this was the first thought that we had was was working with the third party in this case sgk to come up with this this you know a different way of looking at it way more engaging something that actually attracts people not just visually but also the content that we're providing makes them think about their own experience with their mind their own technology and makes them realize how our solutions can fit into their life of mine what that translates into for our customers is personalization so rather than having a standard data sheet that we would give to everyone in a previous in a previous time in our history now we're able to offer this whether on our website at trade shows offline so people can go to far away mines in the middle of nowhere so to speak and our our teams can be sharing um through a downloadable app version that is being created so what that means again is personalization so not everybody is has the same plan for their minds and the life of mine experiences allows for our customers to walk through at their pace to look at the challenges that are most important to them and what kind of solutions exist today to help them get through these challenges again with the idea being operational efficiencies um safety for the those working in the mine and sustainability and and how do you you know as the industry as a whole for instance you know you talk about personalization and and being able to uh tailor that that message and that engagement on a you know one-to-one basis is is that something that's commonplace in the industry or are you guys kind of leading the way with that um that kind of thought process uh i know your sales cycles are very long um so obviously something to uh to take into account as well yeah yeah i think uh the the big difference here um wanting to use this type of an interface to to you know engage with with our customers when we're going through that sales cycle i think the big difference is that before it was very manual and it took a lot of more resources in the sense that we would have to have people doing demos not as connected right because as soon as you start getting smes involved subject matter experts involved in doing demos they know they're one piece and so the the the receiver would just get a little piece of this a little piece of that and it was harder to show that connectivity um this the the the advantage and what we're really trying to strive for with the life of mine experience is to make sure that they do receive that connectivity they do see how these uh connect and how um the solution is more than just hey we got one piece of software that you can use right now for sure we want to show that but we also want to show that that piece of software connects to fleet management which connects to safety which connects to the the overarching data flow of everything that's happening and and this is um as well you know this tall and these actual strategies is is actually crossing the the boundary between marketing and sales right it's it's top of funnel but also a tool that is multi-use right sales can can deliver such a thing yeah definitely and and you know i i do think it is um on the forefront um you know first of all not i don't think many of our competitors if any are doing such a huge broad um you know encompassing all angles of the mind um but i as well the way we talk to our customers because of that i think we're also on the forefront of the way we present all of all these solutions so yeah the life of mine interactive experience is a great way for marketing and the commercial teams to work more closely because this is a way for our teams on the technical side to really shine and to show their expertise across the life of the mine as opposed to maybe what other vendors may do which is try and sell one piece of hardware one software package with hexagon and with this tool we're putting into the hands of our colleagues and into the hands of our customers a way that they can see from end to end from pit to port where they can make sense of their data and be using it in a way that makes a difference you know from their revenue to their safety you know to saving the world is um so so you guys are you know a very innovative highly uh technological company so is there a pressure then in the in the marketing mix and how you engage with your customer in order to to duplicate that or or um to to help communicate that that overall um you know market leading technology you know aspect i mean does it play a part in the marketing strategy or it's not just the pressure i think it's more of the vision like we were talking about earlier um you know exactly we're technology company we want to make sure that the way we present our technology and solutions is modern engaging um and i think it fit right in there you know this this vision of of the life of mine experience and the way it's it's being fleshed out is perfect for conveying that that level of technology that that we're offering fantastic and of course you know with the creation of all these assets which are in the 3d world that allows you to um to make them multi-use um you know as you've mentioned um earlier in in you know real world experiences on on conference booths as well as the digital ones um and um like for instance we can we can actually take a step into the mine um here and by utilizing um the metaverse so um let's take a quick snap of the fingers and and and and jump into the mind shall we here we are in the base of uh of the low mix pits uh we see a drill rig sitting over there within the metaverse um you guys uh you base this on a uh open pit i believe which is roughly based on a copper mine is that correct yeah we wanted to capture sort of a generic mind that has different phases going at the same time mines can be extremely complex so we wanted to pick something that that represented enough of a space where we could uh highlight technology and of course this is ever evolving because i'm sure as as low mix grows as in our company grows we'll probably have to have new scenes like we're working already on scenes for underground which will be so probably that in the next phase um the underground mine so that's a very different environment than here so yeah just trying to capture all of it in one setting and and um you know new technologies uh such as the metaverse and so forth um would allow you to to potentially communicate some of the value propositions in more of uh uh more allowing the the prospect to to actually experience those um things in a digital world um you know in the way you communicate them yeah you know one of the things that happened over the last two years because we were doing so much zoom calling and um you know remote uh uh conversations um it really i think brought forward the importance of being able to have a space um you know virtual reality or or a 3d space where we can showcase things and and i think it opened up a many doors um and this looks like one of those those interfaces that we would love to keep using um because from anywhere in the world you can join somebody and have them you know give them a tour of what you're looking at for for any type of mining situation that's great and then that plays into the question around so so obviously the digital channel is extremely important even with it with a you know a costly investment purchase on on um you know with a long sales cycle that the digital channel plays a um a role within that marketing strategy yeah digital marketing i mean the digital channel to me there are so many digital channels so um when you know sitting where i'm sitting there's you know digital advertising there's email there's our website there's the life of mine interactive experience there i mean i'm i'm leaving things out right now social media there's so many digital channels that we're focused on and similarly uh to the ones that i just listed the life of mine interactive experience that we've developed with with sgk enables us to understand what's resonating with our customers and what is resonating less so that enables us to understand what's making the industry tick what's important to the industry where they are putting their efforts on an individual level and so that allows us to be that more personalized in the way that we communicate and the way that we build our products and our solutions because at the end of the day of course this is for our customers everything that we do and so this enables us digital allows us to listen more and to understand more and to be closer with um the industry that we care so much about and and that that speaks truth of um you know the fact that uh you guys are connecting all of your um you know all of all of your your marketing efforts and your sales efforts into as you mentioned before like single sources of truth so there's an understanding of all of those touch points so our marketing allows for us to benefit from what the digital world brings to us today marketing 30 years ago is different than marketing is today and marketing in 30 years from now presumably will be very different than what we're doing today but what what i love about the digital space is that behind the scenes different things are working creating data similarly to what we give to our customers allowing that data to work for them and allowing that data to speak to each other and make for a more efficient mine similarly the digital space for marketers allows for us to connect the dots on the marketing side again with the goal being to be personalized and to really help individuals and customers and businesses out there to make smart decisions we think um jose laura thank you so much for your time today um it's been thoroughly insightful um it's been great to to see um you know this this vision that you guys have and how um you're implementing it um with the you know the within the challenge of um you know typical kind of b2b challenges on sales cycles and and uh engaging people um you know across that entire spectrum thank you lauren thank you jose for sharing your insights on the hexagon life of mine experience i'm excited to share um and continue the conversation with simon um as we now talk about the metaverse and particularly the benefits of the metaverse and how b2b um companies can leverage the metaphors as a sales and strategy thank you allison the um yeah so um you know what we learned from uh how um jose and and laura and the pecsican team are um you know looking to to recreate and engage with their customers through you know various digital technologies it naturally pass a a way once you've created this three-dimensional world all of these 3d assets to look at other ways in which you can utilize them which naturally progresses into things like potentially ar and vr and so forth what we see specifically with those um existing technologies they tend to be into a one-to-one uh relationship so they're very very closed um you know you've got you've got a helmet maybe with a visor on for or you're looking through an ipad or a camera lens or something for a vr related um uh technology or i mean sorry for an ai related technology with a vr related technology you're fully enclosed with it with a helmet and so forth so it's a very isolated um experience when we start to move into the metabolism specifically from a b2b standpoint this is a one-to-many relationship um that it offers you so so um you know one person presenting one person um selling um to a group of people um or or just a singular individual so it's definitely a slight shift in the way that um we want to look at that and then just because it's in the metaverse we use the the phraseology metaverse does not necessarily mean um it's public which is the case for instance and that we see here with with mexican mine um in here that this is a closed environment it's a very secure environment and only those that um invite you to participate can can enter this uh this particular um part of the demanding thank you simon um so we've already seen a lot of talk about the metaphase but it's largely been focused on b2c companies so for the likes of experimental beers and experiential shopping that type of thing but how really can b2b companies really benefit from the metaverse and what types of things are we seeing um that they can really help leverage so i think the first thing that we need to do when we're talking about the metaverse is get over the image that we all have mostly from the media of a bunch of genders running around in some sort of communal space causing that you know the final cause and all kinds of habits if we start to think about you know if we go back 10 15 uh maybe in 20 years and start to look at it from um sentence structure that if you added the word cyberspace instead of metaverse it would be exactly the same thing so we're we're innovating and taking our first early steps into cyberspace or the metaverse and seeing how this technology can can be used as i mentioned it doesn't offer the opportunity for a one-to-many um experience and that's the key word in this so in b2b specifically we as sales people have got in the habit of presenting our products and services of any propositions to potential customers in many different forms it can be you know very it could be printed material can be powerpoints it can be uh information on conference booths and so forth we present what we're selling in order to to create that sale with the metaverse actually that allows for us to to fundamentally shift the way that we think about that because we can now allow our prospects and our customers to experience what we're saying experience the value proposition experience the the value and the benefits of those particular products in a very different way so it does require us to uh to to shift our thinking around that away from presenting and into uh experiencing so you know start thinking about you know how would we best communicate the the value of our products and services in an experiential form yeah that's really helpful thanks simon it's a huge shift isn't it from this whole experiential to presentation um particularly for b2b um companies are there any additional technologies that b2b um companies can also use um i know that the likes of sort of digital twinning um is something that's really trending could you tell us a bit more about that so i think um the the digital twinning is a tremendous technology and it does allow us to um open up um again the experiential side um quite dramatically so when you start looking at digital twinning which is essentially utilizing real-time data points within um you know your product or service or whether your product or service lives or the way that you make um products and services it allows you to recreate them in a digital environment bmw for instance have done this they have one of their assembly plants in germany um digital twinned in the metaverse and their own private metaverse where they can bring um you know customers and and and various um uh kind of vips and so forth into this digital environment and they can see in real time exactly what's happening on one of their uh assembly plants um you know problems speeds you name it it's duplicated in real time um using um digital twin technology in in their own metaverse um so you know how that might be relevant to you it allows you to one demonstrate your product and service if for instance um your product or service is utilized in a dangerous environment um right now uh you know alison we're standing in you know not on the edge of the top of a copper mine um something that we would not be allowed to do in real life obviously for health and safety but you know hexagon in this particular instance does not own the mine and this is this particular one that it was modeled over they're not a mining company they're technology companies so getting their customers access to somebody else's mind is obviously not an option likewise if you're in medical medical technologies or medical instrumentation and so forth you know having access to to patients inside operating rooms and so forth very difficult the same could be said for um if um elements of your your um your products and services are extremely confidential um whereas bringing them into their working environment would be um you know giving out restrictive information so by recreating all of the important parts of that um using digital twinning technology it can be real time it can be pre-recorded and so forth you can conveniently leave out the key parts that you don't want to share from a confidentiality standpoint so it really is looking at things from a slightly different perspective um and understanding okay we have this technology we have this ability to now allow our customers to experience it what can we show them what what journey can we take them on to demonstrate that value that's brilliant thank you simon and i think it's been really interesting to hear a bit more about the benefits of the metaverse um and it's been a real teaser for future insights and so really excited to share that simon um we'll also be continuing to share um these metaverse insights um so yeah thanks again simon and we look forward to hearing more um yeah if you'd like to just uh wrap up the session that would be great uh thanks uh yeah absolutely and looking forward to exploring um as this technology involves you know what opportunities um it does allow us to do as you can see quite clearly from the uh a couple of days that have gone by since we shot the uh the hexagon part of this allison and i have grown some legs so yeah the the platforms are updating itself and changed in in a matter of a couple of days so this this world is constantly improving constantly um allowing more functionality so let's start digging into that and see what uh what exciting opportunities we can uh we can unveil yeah well look forward to seeing you again simon maybe in the mess of us maybe in the office who knows sounds good thanks everyone [Music] you

2022-06-26 16:44

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