How CRO is shaping Omnichannel and Personalisation Strategies.

Benni discusses the evolving landscape of CRO (Conversion Rate Optimisation), focusing on omnichannel strategies, marketing automation, and personalisation. He also shares innovative approaches to help businesses navigate the cookieless future.

Below is a quick summary of the topics covered in this podcast blog:

•  The Shift in CRO Focus
•  CRO trends to watch out for
•  Marketing Automation in CRO
•  CRO Evolution Framework: Maximise, Adapt, Evolve
•  Customising CRO strategies
•  Data-Driven CRO Success
•  Adapting to a Cookieless Future
•  Leadership and Innovation in CRO 
•  FAQs with Benni Lucas

Siddhant: Welcome to another episode of the CRO Wizard series by VWO Podcast. In this series, we speak to top CRO leaders in eCommerce, media, subscription, retail, banking, and other industries about CRO strategies and the positive impact they can have on your business.

Siddhant: Hello, listeners and viewers, welcome to another episode of our CRO Wizards podcast. We are thrilled to welcome Benni Lucas to our episode today. Benni is the head of marketing technology at Resolution Digital, an acclaimed full-service digital-first agency in Australia. A B2C, B2B digital strategist, Benni is passionate about data and digital technology, boasting a proven track record of driving business success through strategic digital transformation projects. Join us to gain valuable insights from his extensive experience and expertise in digital marketing. Hi Benni, welcome to the CRO Wizard series by VW Podcast. How are you doing today?

Benni: I'm doing great. Thank you for having me.

Siddhant: Great. Perfect. I've seen your work. I've been through your profile and the work that you've done is really great so far, especially the work that the agency has been doing. I think it's fantastic. We need many more organisations like this that can basically help increase the awareness about CRO, especially in the APAC market. So glad to have you on this podcast.

The Shift in  CRO  Focus
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Benni: Thank you so much. Yeah, we're doing a lot of great work in, in the CRO space and with yourselves at VWO, we're really pushing the boundaries of the expectations from clients and driving results, dwindling budgets in some of the economic headwinds that we're facing. So how do we make the best use of the budgets available to marketing teams and, and it teams, um, and using tools like VWO, it's been, it's been really successful in driving those results.

Siddhant: Great, glad to know that, Benni. So, is there anything interesting you're working on this week?

Benni: It doesn't stop, really. We’ve got a lot of projects happening, which is, is great. I think there was a period where, it was hard to find opportunities. And right now, we're just bustling with, with opportunities, which is fantastic. Looking at big transformational evolution projects. So, there are a lot of good things happening, lots of different technologies that are being talked about and spoken about, and optimisation is a key kind of output from some of those big pieces of work.

CRO trends to watch out for and the importance of  Omnichannel Optimisation  Focus
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Siddhant: Great, great. Perfect. So what are the recent developments or trends in CRO that has caught your attention?

Benni: I think the use of marketing automation specifically in optimisation and the way that we start to think about optimisation with our clients is we're really focusing now on omnichannel optimisation. Historically, our CRO and AB testing efforts have been focused on the web and sometimes app, we're now really focused on the channel.

"We know consumers are interacting with brands in more ways than ever before. Whether it's on websites, apps, email, SMS, or push notifications, omnichannel optimisation is key to delivering impactful strategies."

Where are those areas where we can really intercept and optimise that messaging and that strategy to ensure that we're driving impact for our clients? So, Omnichannel is a big focus. The other thing that we look at is what we use is our evolution framework. 

And when I speak to evolution, a lot of companies think of these big digital transformation projects, and we want to do a digital transformation. But quite often, and quite often, that's not realistic. And the reason why is, it's usually a big endeavour, we're talking about throwing out everything and bringing in everything new a lot of change management required.

CRO Evolution Framework: Maximise, Adapt, Evolve

What we look to do is our evolution framework with our clients. And typically, that involves three stages. So, maximise, adapt, evolve. And we look at optimisation and personalisation as part of that. So:

Siddhant: Fair enough. I really like this approach of the focus, especially on omnichannel, right? Because even though there are a lot of CRO teams, in companies, they are trying to increase the conversion rate. But I think that kind of deviates them from their omnichannel approach that they should be following as well. Because you are getting customers from different channels and you need to give equal attention to all these channels to make sure that these channels are also getting a personalised message from your brand and they get the value that you're looking from your website, right?

Benni: Absolutely.

Siddhant: I believe this has to be a strong focus point for all the CRO experts were trying to, optimise.

Benni: Yeah. That's a really good point.

The value of Marketing Automation and finding the right  CRO  tools
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Siddhant: Great. So, Benni, in your current role, how do you leverage marketing optimisation to optimise conversion rates across different client campaigns?

Benni: Yeah, it's a great question. The term marketing automation, in terms of definition and how we would speak to it, is all about streamlining and enhancing that campaign's effectiveness. So, we use marketing automation to really optimise that entire customer journey, thinking about omnichannel again. How do we use marketing automation to drive scale to allow us to do this with quite lean teams and deliver the results that we're hoping to achieve? 

We know that each user, customer, or consumer is unique. And there are so many different data points out there and potential journeys that you could potentially run as part of your testing framework or kind of personalisation. 

But we know that we need to prioritise and focus on those personalised catered moments that best meet those user needs and when it needs to happen. So, marketing automation is really vitally important at each of those stages of optimisation and personalisation, from data analysis and insights and user scoring, profiling, and prioritisation all the way through to like personalised campaigns, tailored content and user journeys. 

"Marketing automation streamlines the customer journey and allows us to scale efforts with lean teams, optimising personalisation at every stage using data analysis, user scoring, and tailored content."

We know that by using marketing automation, there are many efficiencies in both team and process. And we can focus our resources into those really high value, high impact opportunities.

And we use tools like VWO, a really great example, at all different stages, using that automation through data insights. So, maybe it's the heat mapping, some of the forms or funnels or session recordings, goals, surveys, those types of bits, all the way through to pushing and cutting edge around AI-generated hypotheses.

We know we've had clients who are really excited about being able to use AI to come up with ideas on tests and hypotheses to test, using things like the WYSIWYG test builder. How do we move away from using UX/UI resources to really focus on that automation and driving through success without testing, and using things like the SmartStats engine as well. I think using the tools at our disposal to make sure we're driving scales and efficiencies to drive and make sure our resources are spending time on those bigger ticket items where we do need a lot of brain power to really come up with those bigger strategic approaches.

Siddhant: Fair enough. Totally agree. Especially the point that you mentioned wherein every user is different, right? And their expectations are different. So, at least using such tools, you are able to create those cohorts of those users and then make sure you give them that tailored content. For those specific cohorts and not just that when you mentioned features like heat maps, click maps, session recordings, and all of this. So, you'll have to have that quantitative and qualitative analysis done before you deliver that personalised content or before you go ahead and test something for your visitors. 

So, I believe that's a great approach. I believe this has to be a mandatory part of your entire personalisation or testing process. Because, I believe, because CRO is still in nascent stages and a lot of businesses kind of go with this heuristic approach of just trying to change things rather than doing that data-backed analysis, trying to understand the users. And if you have that data-backed understanding, I believe your personalisation camping or your testing camping, the success rate improves significantly in that case.

Benni: Absolutely. Yeah. The way that we speak about this is turning those hunches or I've got a hunch that this is what's the reason for it to making sure that it's data driven. So absolutely agree. The quantum, the call, the magic of those two analysis coming together, but also the business insight, no one knows their business better than the clients, but usually mapping that all together is where you see the success from, from some of these efforts.

Customising  CRO strategies  based on client’s industry and growth stage
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Siddhant: So Benni, you have gained experience working with various client profiles throughout your career from established brands to startups. So how does your approach to CRO differ depending on the client's industry or the stage of growth?

Benni: It's a great question. I think typically whenever we start with any client, we do quite rigorous client assessments to really understand and assess the client's industry, but also their stage of growth or stage of evolution to tailor those CRO strategies. So, I mentioned it before, we use an evolution framework. And this is really to look at the maturity of that business in terms of all of the different stages of marketing. 

We are a full-service digital agency. We also do some offline media as well. So, I guess it's understanding the evolution where they are in terms of that evolution. Are they quite early in their journey? Are they quite mature? We use a lot of that to understand what's been done in the past. So typically, quite established brands, they may have done CRO or optimisation in the past. We don't want to come in blind and not have an understanding on what's been done, what worked, what didn't work. We want to ensure that we're picking up from what we know to date. So, getting into the nuts and bolts on any historic data to then identify further opportunities of optimisation and start to refine those testing frameworks, but also processes and enhancing or fine-tuning some of the processes that they have around CRO and optimisation. 

We work in a variety of different capacities with established brands from doing all of their CRO service with tools like BWO. There are some engagements where in-house they have a team, where they want to be able to manage this internally, and where they're just purely to help provide support, provide the processes, provide additional people to their team essentially, to be able to deliver testing and optimisation at scale. Whereas a startup, I mean, this is really exciting and interesting with startups because inherently, certainly a lot of tech startups, innovation and testing is kind of at the core of how startups operate. So, this idea of being agile and rapid testing, it's very similar in the way that we can start to run optimisation tests for these sorts of businesses. So how do we run tests at scale and do kind of these multiple small-scale experiments to identify effective strategies and move quite quickly at then building those foundations for ongoing kind of always-on implementations of those learnings? Industry-specific is a good one as well. So, eCommerce as an example. we can really focus on that purchase funnel. And if we've got the right tracking and data in place, it is one of the easiest ways for us to be able to prove the ROI of doing some of the efforts that we're doing here. There's nothing better than being able to speak to a C-suite or to the board about you're spending X, but your return is Y. 

So being able to link that through and CRO and AB testing in this space, when we have that data, it's very, very powerful. To demonstrate you're spending some time and resource on this, but really the results of their clear as day in terms of how that increases some of the cart value average order value, those sort of things as well. B2B is quite interesting when we think about industry as well. Right. B2B is very much around these qualified leads. So how do we use optimisation techniques to move from first touch to marketing qualified leads, to sales qualified leads, really improve scoring. So, a sales team goes, hey, you know what? This lead is qualified and we're ready to have a sales opportunity there. 

Obviously, the ROI from those can be quite significant as well. But then when we talk about things like SaaS, right, we're talking about subscription-like industries. sometimes it's not necessarily conversion rate optimisation. 

And where we can use optimisation techniques is actually around things like retention and churn. So how do we make sure that through onboarding or churn or retention, we use strategies to help people stay within that subscription. And I'm flipping it on its head in terms of the typical term of CRO and optimisation as a whole, as a broader strategy and focusing on KPIs that aren't necessarily conversion-based.

Siddhant: Got it. So, I strongly also believe in understanding the experience or the history in terms of anyone who has previously done CRO because if you don't understand that history well, you are doing the same mistakes again that were done previously, right? So, it's important to understand what kind of ideas did they run, what were the landing pages that they focused on. what is it that they were trying to improve, what were their success metrics that they were basically focusing on. So, I believe these are very crucial important factors that you really need to deep dive into before starting CRO for any client. Right. 

So that you, you are able to get those winners quickly rather than just doing because there could be clients who would have already tested their low hanging fruits. Right. But again, if you're testing those same things, it's kind of waste of time. Rather you get into more complex tests, functionality based tests, and try to see how that moves the needle. Right. Yeah, so I think it's good to have that understanding. As you said, depending on which stage the client is in, it's always important to understand that history and, implement your ideas based on that history that they already have.

Benni: Yeah, absolutely. A good example that I can give you here is Torrens University. It's an education client of ours. They use VWO as their testing tool. They also have a DXP setup for their website, but to actually implement always-on personalisation is very resource heavy from a dev and UX/UI team. So, what we use there is we use VWO as a way of testing hypotheses, proving that out, and then implementing those successful tests as always-on personalisations within the DXP platform. So that's how we typically use CRO as a way of testing or AB testing to then go, hey, this is really worth doing, it's worth putting the resources behind, and we're seeing much better results off the back of using that kind of handover to an always-on implementation.

Importance of Data Analysis in  CRO 
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"Data collection, data accuracy, and data interpretation are essential. From tracking codes to identifying bottlenecks in user journeys, data is the foundation of successful CRO and A/B testing."

The key is ensuring that we know what conversion rates we need to be tracking and what are some of those other impacts that we need to be aware of. The next step is then ensuring data accuracy. Without that integrity of data, we’re always going to be challenged in terms of what we're coming back to a client with and saying what worked or what didn't work. So first, the implementation of tracking. So, we know that having the right tracking codes and tags, whether that be through server-side or client-side tracking, is imperative. We at Resolution Digital are part of the Omnicom Media Group, so we are part of a much bigger global conglomerate.

And part of that, we've got a specialised business unit called TRKKN, and they are our number one key source of doing anything around analytics and setting up of tracking codes.

And we work very closely with them to make sure that the data we're tracking, we're 100% confident that what we're recording is correct. And it's part of that integrity as well. So how do we validate and clean that data to ensure accuracy? How do we remove any outliers or inconsistencies in the data?

The next step in analysis is then what we would call more of that data interpretation. So, flipping data observations into insights, understanding segmentation, breaking that data into meaningful data or meaningful insights to identify specific segments, and also user journey analysis. So how do we start to map out and visualise that user journey and move that from just data input to something visual for a client to understand where those certain drop-offs occur in, maybe, say, an e-commerce funnel or flow?

With those drop-offs there might be those bottlenecks that we need to then really focus on and target on, and then matching those bottlenecks with our qualitative and quantitative data, making sure we have the right tests to then test against those bottlenecks to try and find out ways that we can improve the challenges that we're seeing there.

I think a real commitment to data-driven optimisation is key here, making sure that the team is meticulous in their approach to capturing, interpreting, and storing data, which is key for any successful CRO or AB testing optimisation program.

Siddhant: Great. I think that's a very detailed explanation of how, the basic analytical process should look like before running any test. And I believe this gives a lot of insights to our listeners who are basically getting into CRO or trying to understand your analysis should be done, how the integrity, the interpretation, the storing, all of that plays a crucial role in terms of doing that homework that you need to do before getting started, right? Absolutely. 

So, I totally link to those aspects that you basically mentioned step by step and I believe it's extremely crucial for each and every CRO expert to make sure that all these pointers are basically well considered before getting into the next steps of running any test on the website.

Benni: Yeah, the homework must be done before getting started. Otherwise, you're going to be doing work , andyou're not going to be confident in the work that you're doing.

Adapting to the cookieless future in  marketing 
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Siddhant: Exactly. Well said. With a growing trend of cookieless marketing, how is Resolution Digital helping its clients adapt their mark tech stack to optimise conversions in this evolving privacy landscape?

Benni: I'm glad you asked because I think it's a really nice conversation from data is talking about that cookie-less future. And we hear about it a lot, right? If anyone who doesn't know, there is obviously a big trend growing around this cookieless future and the evolution of privacy in the way that consumers are able to manage and understand their privacy.

"As we move towards a cookieless future, first-party data collection, CDPs, and server-side tracking will be crucial in adapting Martech stacks for better compliance and optimisation."

I think it's one of the best things that's happening to this industry, although it's getting harder. for us to be able to do some of the techniques and tactics we've been relying on for a long time in digital marketing, to be able to track users throughout their digital journeys is getting harder. But in saying that, it's giving the power back to the people.

It's giving people the opportunity to decide when they want to opt in or consent. It's really, really important. So that impact is there, we've got things like GDPR, we've got CCPA, these are different privacy regulations that are coming through and the browsers as well are making those changes to kind of align and make sure that they are compliant for their users as well.

So, some of the adaptions we're seeing to the MarTech stack. we're seeing a massive focus on first-party data as a key thing to be collecting to ensure that when there are these changes of third-party cookies disappearing, we've got some first-party data there to really back that up. So tools such as PRN, big resurgence, but more importantly, things like CDPs. So that customer data platform is a key technology to really unify and leverage first party data. And we're seeing, we're even having conversations with clients around what we call composable CDPs where we're leveraging the data cloud storage that a client may typically use and doing a lot of the unification there and pushing ETL and reverse ETL in and out of that technology to make sure that we can actually utilise some of those first party data segments that we're doing. Another thing to be thinking about, and again, we're tracking our specialised business unit, we're doing a lot of server-side tracking implementation. And that really allows us to bypass some of that reliance on cookies and be able to track events using the server in capturing that.

So, Google Tag Manager (GTM), moving that to a server-side implementation allows us better to collect interactions in this privacy-first or cookieless world. Another thing that we're seeing emerge a lot is consent management platforms, or CMPs, another kind of abbreviation to be aware of. But this is really to allow users to ensure compliancy and build stackable viewables in terms of managing their preferences and consent online.

Another critical part is the privacy sandbox, which is another kind of technology, a way for technology to adapt to this, where we have a privacy-safe area to share first-party data with certain providers, who can then also enrich certain customer databases to do more effective marketing. When we think about first-party data, It's really critical for the listeners today to think about the value exchange they're providing their users. So, when we think of value exchange, typically, you can think of it as a gated white paper on a website, right?

So, the value exchange there is that I'm giving you my first-party data, and the value you're giving me back is that white paper. What is the value exchange that you, as a business or your client, can be given in order to capture first-party data? This is where innovation is critical to think of: What is that value exchange? How do we gamify that first-party data collection? It's hard to know from a future point of view what some of the changes may be in the future, but I'm sure we will continue to see emerging technologies there.

And something that, if a listener wants to know more about some of the changes happening to the privacy world, we do have a privacy guide on our website, Adam, which is around privacy, signal loss, and the future of advertising. It's a downloadable asset to get on our website. So, if that's of interest or you want to reach out, please do reach out as well.

Siddhant: Great. I really like the point when you said the data the value, the value that you need to get because it that value really is what defines the success, right? If you aren't getting that value from the data that you're collecting, that, that is basically the end of it. So, every business in the end either looks for a value or looks for an ROI. 

And that is what as CRO experts, your focus has to be on and the way you have been managing the entire concept of collecting cookies, collecting data, I think that's a good part that you're doing in terms of having a standard procedure in terms of doing everything. Because this is actually a concern for a lot of CRO experts globally in terms of how would they manage things. there's cookieless implementation happening or clients might, or users will have to first accept the cookies because if you are going with that consent-based cookie model wherein users should, only the data will be tracked when somebody accepts the cookies. Ideally, majority of them do not accept the cookies, they just go through the website. And as a CRO expert, it becomes challenging for me because the traffic on a specific campaign and the test drastically reduces because of that. Right?

Absolutely. These are specific challenges that I've noticed as well in terms of going through the cookie list or the consent-based cookie models.

Benni: Yeah, that's good points.

Leveraging attribution models for client  ROI 
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Siddhant: Great. So how does the Resolution Digital leverage attribution models to demonstrate the true impact of CRO initiatives over on overall client ROI?

Benni: Yeah, attribution's gotten harder with some of the changes to the cookieless future and we're seeing having a clear understanding on how we attribute our digital media, but also some of the efforts that we're doing in terms of SEO and CRO and optimisation. It's really important to have a clear view on how that is to be planned and managed in the future. 

Attribution models, for anyone who's not very sure, it's all around assigning value to each of those touch points in that customer journey to really understand its contribution to a conversion or to an output, right? 

So, it's about managing and understanding those different interactions and giving them a weighting. So typically, some common models here. 

We talked to first touch, last touch, linear, there's time decay and position-based models, and they are kind of some of the typical ones. What we've built at Resolution Digital is a proprietary model that we use for attribution with our clients, which we call the ROI Optimiser. 

Essentially, we use a couple of different statistical algorithms to best understand some inputs and outputs to then better weigh over a seasonal period and over a time period on how effective certain tactics in a marketing landscape are in driving real business results. 

So, there's more information that we can speak to on this at another time, but making sure you are clear on the way that you're attributing is very important to then understand ROI on the work that you're doing. But I think equally as important is being able to tell the story and be able to report on that story to the business on the work that's being done and being able to visualise that attribution model, visualise the output of that work is also as important. 

We know that some people in the C-suite or senior leadership positions aren't into the nuts and bolts of the data. How do we bring that back to a very easy to understand, um, a story or narrative for the business to then understand, hey, this is worth investing in and we should continue or even increase our investment in this space.

Siddhant: Very true. Very true. Again, understanding these attributions gets us back to the value that you're getting. And for leadership, they do not have enough time to get into all these nuances. Either they would want to understand what worked and what did not work. 

So you will have to learn those things from each and every test that you run and present those learnings as to what can be grouped on the website. And, that storytelling, as you said, the right word, it is a lot about storytelling and showcasing what are those learnings that you are able to get from every campaign that you run, right?

Benni: Yeah, absolutely.

Leadership and Innovation in  CRO 
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Siddhant: Great. So beyond technical expertise, what personal qualities or skills do you consider most valuable for success in a leadership role?

Benni: Yeah, it's a good question. I think technical is quite often what we hear a lot these days. So, bringing some of those non-technical skills are really important, something that I really value in pushing the team to focus on. I think probably first one is really making sure that, as part of leadership, you've got that visionary thinking, that strategic vision in terms of setting clear strategic ideas in terms of where we want to grow, but also inspiring other people in your team to follow that. 

And when I speak to leadership qualities, it's not just myself as a leader in my team, but how do I empower every person in the team, no matter how junior they are, to really focus on their own leadership qualities, to manage upwards and make sure that people understand that, hey, I'm a voice and I'm important here as well. Communication, I think, are skills that in a post-COVID-19 world, in a post-pandemic world, I mean, the future of work is here, right? We are remote working. We're working in different parts of the world. Like it's no longer a, hey, this person's in the office and I'm going to go tap them on the shoulder. 

So, I think communication is key, ensuring that not everyone is in a meeting if it's not required and that not everyone is in that decision-making if it's not required. So how do we ensure the right communication is being made with the right people? But the same is true when saying that: How do we make sure people are informed as needed? With the amount of detail that they need to be informed of. Another one that's probably quite important to me is around specifically emotional intelligence. 

We are working in a very high-pressure industry. We are doing a lot of work. There's a lot of stress. How do we ensure that mental health and empathy and understanding is critical at being thoughts of when we talk to our teams and we start to lead our teams? We know that not everyone has the best day all the time. There's things going on outside of work that impact people. How do we make sure we've got the right room to be there to assist and support those people during that time? But also how do we ensure that people are doing that for other people as well? It’s really important to me and within this organisation as well. Adaptability, how do we make sure that we're open to change and we can adapt to any new challenges or things coming our way? I guess problem solving and having that critical thinking lens, also non-technical, how do we jump in a room and really push the boundaries? 

And I think that leads itself into probably the last and one of the more important ones for the team I sit in within Resolution Digital, and that's innovation. So, how do we make sure we're not just doing things for the sake of doing things? How do we push the boundary and think outside the box? This one is really important to me that we're continually being curious in the way that we do work, in the ways that we answer certain challenges, and really drive that innovation within the business, within the team, and within yourself as well.

Continuous learning and staying updated in the field

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Siddhant: Great. I believe this gives a lot of insights to our aspiring leaders who are basically looking forward to getting into that leadership position, especially the soft skills that you mentioned that is required, not just the technical skills, but the other soft skills that you mentioned that play a crucial role in becoming a successful leader. So how do you stay up to date on the latest trends and best practices in the field to ensure you're delivering the best results for your clients?

Benni: Yeah, it's a great question. I think continuous learning is very important. And I think this idea that your organisation or someone's going to come along and spoon feed you continuous learning is not the reality. And this is where you have to, as yourself, take that on and be someone who's ready to self-learn a lot of that new learning for yourself. And I think we're in a situation where there's more information at our fingertips than ever. So, there's no shortage of learning, right? There's a lot of content out there. 

There's a lot of videos. There's a lot of podcasts like we're on today for someone to really pick up and start to learn around whatever they decide to learn or whether that's improving their specialised skills or broadening out their skills. I guess some of the methods that I would use and ways that I continually learn staying up to date with industry publications and blogs. So, how do I set aside time every day, every morning to make sure I'm up to date on What's happening in the industry? What are the changes? What are the new technology advancements in VWO, for example? How do you stay up to date with that and make sure you're very diligent and setting time aside to do that? 

I think you'll find the more you do that, the better conversations that you may have then with clients, with team members, with senior staff within your organisation. To be informed is powerful and dangerous. So, make sure you stay informed so you can have those conversations. I think another key element of that information at your fingertips is webinars and online courses. We can now certify ourselves without going through a university degree, but actually doing these online courses. So how do you prove to your organisation you're certified in certain technologies? There are LinkedIn learning courses. 

There's so many opportunities there to be across that. And similar with webinars, making sure you're understanding client success stories or agency success stories on working with clients and understanding what's worked and what didn't. I think another one that's probably another one that's kind of post-COVID and post-pandemic is like networking and conferences. So how do you go and be in person at conferences and events and start to build your network and go up and talk to people. And the amount of times I've spoken to someone at a networking event, and then months later, years later, I then bumped into them in another walk of life. 

And I'm working with these people and they might become your boss or you might be managing them. It's not a massive industry. And there's ways that making sure you're building your network, not just on LinkedIn, not just online, but building your network in person, it's vital and critical to making sure you're building up that kind of continual learning and understanding the latest trends in the industry. 

I think yourself, you as yourself needs to have a commitment to excellence if you want to continue to learn and be a leader in this space. And that commitment is to say, I'm going to set aside time to improve myself every day. I know that in my team on a Friday, we have a booking, a block booking where we have no client calls and it is devoted to continuous self-learning. 

And I've seen some of the output and replays of this where the teams have gone ahead and done some self-learning and then come back to explain to the team what are some of the things that they learn. And it's kind of this idea of we're all learning together. And it really does help make sure that you've got the experts on your team ready to deliver against any of the client challenges.

Siddhant: So, it basically gets started with learning. So, you should take that first step and then get into all the different sources that you might have to collect data, be it online, offline, conferences, webinars, podcasts, YouTube, because as I said, Information is on our fingertips now. Before the dot-com outburst, we did not have all these access to all these information. 

But in the last two decades, we have been able to get that innovation wherein every single thing that we need is just a screen away, right? So, it has only made things easier in terms of learning, right? So totally agree to that.

Self-care and relaxation practices in a fast-paced industry

▶️ 00:39:04

Siddhant: Benni, on a lighter note, any plans for self-care or relaxation after today's recording?

Benni: Look, I think we're going to go do some physical exercise. I think that's something I need to do after a busy day. So, we'll go to the gym today, probably try and get out and do a walk. I think it is raining outside. I haven't been outside a whole lot today. So, last I checked, it was raining. So, we're a bit limited in some of the things that we can do. But I think making sure you're switching off. This is what I try to do. Make sure I switch off at the same time every day and disconnect work from home life. So important. Um, so I think, yeah, today we'll go to the gym and then we'll probably just sit on the couch and get stuck into some of the new TV shows that are coming out.

Siddhant: Fair enough.

Benni: Yeah.

Rapid fire questions with  Benni Lucas 
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