← The Agile Brand with Greg Kihlström®: Expert Mode Marketing Technology, AI, & CX
The Agile Brand with Greg Kihlström®: Expert Mode Marketing Technology, AI, & CX
#667: The Evolving Role of Visual Data in Construction with Marca Armstrong, Sensera
00:25:22
Loading summary
Transcript49 lines
- [00:00]
Unknown Speaker
Your brand may be staying on top of current trends, but are you agile enough to stay relevant, resilient and successful as customers, competition and the world continues to change at a breakneck pace? I'm thrilled to share the newly revised version of my first book, the Agile Brand. I'm calling it the Agile Brand Revisited. It's been updated to reflect our continually changing world and it provides seven principles that form the backbone of an agile brand, offering detailed insights and actionable steps for incorporating them into your business strategy. This is the book that started it all and I'm excited to share it with you. It's now available in print and digital formats and available everywhere. Learn more by going to the Agile Brand guide website at www.agilebrandguide.com.
- [00:46]
Marca Armstrong
The Agile Brand.
- [00:55]
Greg Kilstrom
Welcome to season seven of the Agile Brand where we discuss the trend, trends and topics marketing leaders need to know. Stay curious, stay agile and join the top enterprise brands and Martech platforms as we explore marketing technology, AI, e commerce, and whatever's next for the Omnichannel customer experience. Together we'll discover what it takes to create an agile brand built for today and tomorrow and built for customers, employees and continued business growth. I'm your host Greg Kilstrom, advising Fortune 1000 brands on martech, AI and marketing operations. The Agile Brand Podcast is brought to you by Tech Systems, an industry leader in full stack technology services, talent services and real world application. For more information, go to teksystems.com to make sure you always get the latest episodes, please hit subscribe on the app you listen to podcasts on and leave us a rating so others can find us as well. Now onto the show. When you think of cameras in construction, do you see them as just security tools or could they be the key to unlocking full job site intelligence? Joining us today is Marka Armstrong, head of marketing and customer success at Sensera, a leader in job site intelligence solutions. Over the past decade, Sincera Systems has transformed how construction teams use visual technologies not just for security, but for improving safety, efficiency and project success.
- [02:19]
Unknown Speaker
Welcome to the show. Marca.
- [02:21]
Marca Armstrong
Good morning, Greg. Thank you. Happy to be here.
- [02:23]
Greg Kilstrom
Yeah, yeah.
- [02:24]
Unknown Speaker
Looking forward to talking about this with you.
- [02:26]
Greg Kilstrom
Before we dive in here, why don't.
- [02:27]
Unknown Speaker
You start by telling us a little bit about your background and your role at Sincera Systems.
- [02:31]
Marca Armstrong
Absolutely. Be happy to do that. So by way of background, I am a career marketer. I started in product management and I've touched just about every adjacent function to marketing throughout my career, so that's been a lot of fun. I've had the opportunity to work in manufacturing in pure SaaS companies, both at a global scale as well as in startups and at Sincera, we serve the construction industry and we provide job site intelligence to general contractors across North America. So it's actually been a really interesting combination of my backgrounds, both from a manufacturing and a SAS perspective because we are ultimately a fully integrated video Solution. It's a SaaS enabled hardware solution that does this. And my role specifically is to position the brand as a trusted advisor to general contractors, helping them deliver, as you articulated, safe, secure and successful job sites and make sure that they have a seamless customer experience in the process.
- [03:34]
Unknown Speaker
Great, great. Well, yeah, let's, let's dive in here and we're going to talk about a few things. I want to start with just the evolving role of visual data in the construction industry, which you work in. And beyond security. A lot of people maybe just think of cameras out there checking for solely for security. But you know, while traditionally they, they might have been seen that way, how has Sincera Systems helped, you know, kind.
- [04:01]
Greg Kilstrom
Of change the hearts and minds about.
- [04:02]
Unknown Speaker
What cameras can do?
- [04:04]
Marca Armstrong
Yeah. So I'm excited to have this conversation with you today. I think the thing we have to acknowledge as we dive in is there is so much that is happening on a construction job site and these sites are very complex and as such there's an enormous amount of data that can be captured. The challenge is that contractors face this uphill battle in terms of how do I deliver a job site on time and on budget and leverage this data that's available to them. So from a Sincera perspective, we took a step back and we said how can we help you in the construction industry leverage all of this information that you're gathering and specifically provide you with greater visibility. Right. So you know, interestingly enough when you think about that security historically has been all about capturing the video, like watching the bad guy go, but then not necessarily having the opportunity to do anything about it. And so what Sincera has done now is not just on the security side, but also safety and progress side has said how can we provide the intelligence back to you based on that data so you can actually figure out how do I make sure I don't have shrinkage on my lay down yard? How do I make sure that those bad actors aren't coming across my perimeter and using graffiti or spray paint on the sides of my new built building? So it's really about helping people take that data and take action against it and, or with it to promote this Safety and security on the, on the job sites that they're spending a lot of money and time on managing.
- [05:35]
Unknown Speaker
Yeah, and I mean, to me that seems more like proactive security versus maybe reactive and you know, just kind of the, the more traditional ways of thinking about it. What was the biggest challenge in getting the industry to kind of see beyond that traditional view of security?
- [05:52]
Marca Armstrong
Yeah. So I think it started with asking the customers a lot of questions. Right. So are you, for example, as a project manager, are you spending too much time bouncing from site to site in order to manage your job sites, for example? Right. Are you being able to prioritize managing your dealer network? Are you taking too long to reconcile what's happening on your site? All of these things take a lot of time to understand. And you know, at the same time you're also trying to make sure your site is secure. So it was really a matter of changing the conversation to what, what are your challenges, Mr. Mrs. Project Manager on your site? And how can we help you solve them, not just putting up cameras, but enabling you, like I said earlier, to take action.
- [06:41]
Unknown Speaker
Yeah, yeah. And you know, in, in doing this, I mean, certainly the, the security industry has been around for a while, but you know, there's, there's this opportunity to build a new CA industry, job site intelligence, which takes, you know, goes well beyond, again, kind of that, that reactive view of security. And so, you know, Sincera Systems sounds like is. Is defining this, this industry around job site intelligence. How do you go about educating an industry that may not be accustomed to thinking of cameras as part of their workflow?
- [07:16]
Marca Armstrong
Yeah, So I think it's, again, it's, it's a matter of boiling it down to solving the problems that. And a lot of times think about time as the thing that we all wish we had more of. Right. So it's really a matter of asking the question, how can I give you time back? And so from a camera perspective and their workflow, if I can give you time back and give you intelligence on what's happening on that site so you can go spend your time elsewhere and you don't need guards on a site to actually monitor what's happening on your perimeter, but a camera can do that for you and it can provide actionable insights for you, it's going to be meaningful to people. And the other thing, take an example of, I need to tell my senior leaders within an organization what's happening, what the status is on my site. And guess what? A camera is going to help you do that. It's eyes that you can put on a site that they might not have.
- [08:14]
Unknown Speaker
Yeah, yeah. So kind of to that end, I want to talk a little bit about the value chain of visual intelligence then and the impact on, you know, those stakeholders. You kind of reference that as well. How do some of these different groups, contractors, general contractors, building owners and others, benefit from some of these job site intelligence solutions?
- [08:39]
Marca Armstrong
Yeah, this, this is, as a marketer, this is a great question, right, because now we're talking about the, the buyer Personas and the profile. So you're right in my sweet spot here, Greg. So thank you for that. So if you're a, you're a project manager, you're, you care about delivering your, your project on site or on time and on budget. If you're, or a district manager, you have to manage multiple sites, right? And so you've got to have eyes in multiple places. But being all those different places at once, you can't be in all those trailers at once. And in some cases you're across state borders. So you need to be able to see everything more consistently. A general manager or a president of a, of a general contractor, they care about their reputation. So you might be able to provide, like I said, public links, public URLs, so people can see the progress happening on, you know, like a stadium, for example, that the public cares about a building owner, they care about certificate of occupancy, get me in my building, I want my tenants in there paying rent. And technology or safety officer, they want to make sure whatever technology they're deploying works right. Because their tail's on the line if it doesn't. And they're going to have these screaming project managers in their offices on site. So again, all of these things, you need to understand what's important to these different Personas and make sure that your solution, in the case of, you know, Sincera's solution of providing job site intelligence meets each of their needs. And back to your original question of moving past security. It's not just about security, it's about safety. Right. General, general contractors and building owner operators, they want everybody to go home to their families. So if you have eyes on sites where, where you might not be able to, if you just have people, then you can make sure those people get home safe.
- [10:24]
Unknown Speaker
Yeah, yeah. And to that end, you know, it's, it's not just the traditional, you know, we probably all have that view of like the security camera, you know, kind of footage or whatever that we've seen on TV or whatever. But, you know, it goes well beyond that, you know, time lapse documentation, project tracking, even, you know, marketing project success. Can you talk a little bit about, you know, what are some of the most innovative ways that you've seen customers use Sincere's technology?
- [10:51]
Marca Armstrong
So we remain focused on the construction industry and there are some general contractors that have protocols built into each of their job sites. And this is going to sound silly, but a certain general contractor we work with needs to make sure that all of their Porta Johns have eyes on them because there was a lot of issues that they were experiencing with graffiti as an example. So in that particular case, it was just monitoring that they needed to make sure there weren't any bad act floating around after hours or congregating during lunch. Right. So there's one. But what that means is every single job site needs a camera on it so that people can make sure that people are safe and the facilities are clean. That's an example. In construction. While we remain focused on construction, the municipal governments have some interesting use cases. Ballot boxes, for example, during election season need to be monitored 24,7. So we have cameras on a number of ballot box operations throughout counties in Colorado. We also have cameras in the parks and rec industry monitoring actually traffic flow for parking in some of the state parks. But it actually ended up that there was a natural disaster of a forest fire and those cameras were being used to help get people out of the distressed area during that time.
- [12:14]
Unknown Speaker
Wow. Wow. Yeah, definitely a diverse set of use cases and I'm sure there are many.
- [12:20]
Greg Kilstrom
More to come as well.
- [12:21]
Marca Armstrong
There are many more, but let's leave that goes there.
- [12:24]
Unknown Speaker
Want to learn more and join the discussion about marketing and AI. Attend a premier conference dedicated to marketing and AI. That's Mayakon, the Marketing Artificial Intelligence Conference from October 14 through 16 in Cleveland, Ohio. Meakon brings together the brightest minds and leading voices in AI. Don't miss this opportunity to connect with a dynamic community of experts, visionaries and enthusiasts. The Agile brand is proud to be the lead media sponsor of this important event. Register today@MarketingAIInstitute.com that's MarketingAI Institute.com and use the code AGILE150 for $150 off your registration fee. I can't wait to see you there.
- [13:17]
So I want to talk a little bit more, you know, get talk about marketing. Right. So and, and, and your role and marketing high tech in a, you know, let's face a rather traditional industry. So you know, construction certainly in some areas maybe adopts things more quickly but you know, generally slow to adopt New technologies. What's been your strategy in marketing some of these high tech solutions that you're offering to a traditional space?
- [13:45]
Marca Armstrong
Absolutely. Again, another favorite question. So you're hitting on all of my little sweet spots. So I think for any marketer and any member of a go to market team, the key is to know your customer. Right? So know thy customer. And I mentioned earlier, if I can give my customer time back, that's going to be huge. And then that way you have a solution that people are going to trust. Because as an example, I can make sure that you've got an extra hour in your day and you don't have to travel back and forth from place to place. But folks want proof and education that it works. So learning about what's happening in the market, whether it's a podcast like this one or talking to customers, I find it really helpful to have customer advisory councils and boards to bring your early adopters together so they can tell you why they love your product and then you can use them to go tell other people. I think that's one of the keys is finding those advocates when you're looking to change and adopt technology in a new, in a new industry that you haven't necessarily sold to before.
- [14:48]
Unknown Speaker
Yeah, yeah, and I know you shared a couple things there, but, you know, what advice would you have, you know, somebody listening that is maybe not in the exact same industry, but you know, trying to market in, you know, the high tech in a, in a more traditional industry or maybe an industry that's slow to adopt technologies just in general, you know, what, what, what would be some of your first pieces of advice to them?
- [15:10]
Marca Armstrong
I'd start with patience as a virtue. Right. People aren't gonna, people aren't gonna adopt it just because you say it's cool. And I think for, you know, all of us who are comfortable with technology, it's easy to go tinker and play. However you have to, you have to provide them proof and you have to be very clear about what your product does and does not do. So and meet them where they are in the conversation. And I'll use the example of Sincera. We are a solar powered, wirelessly enabled solution for job site intelligence. Now that's a lot of words. And if those, any of those words scare you, what you have to do is say, listen, we're solar powered, which means you don't have to trench wires around what could be acres of job site, for example. So we're going to save you time and money in doing that. Wirelessly enabled means you don't have to worry about relationships with carriers to try and connect and be able to share your data because we handle all those contracts and make that easy for you. Everything is stored in the cloud so you don't have to worry about how much data or storage space that you have unless you want to store it locally. So break it down into things that are meaningful. And I often use the phone example, right. And we all have cell phones, we all have data plans, we all just expect it to work. And so somebody said to me once, oh well, back to your question. This industry is slow to adopt. And I said, but they all have cell phones, right? So if they all have cell phones, it's no different. So bring the conversation back to where people can understand it and in their everyday lives and then it becomes easier. And then again, like I said earlier, find those early adopters who can become your storytellers and then your journey becomes a lot easier.
- [16:56]
Unknown Speaker
Yeah, yeah, that makes sense.
- [16:58]
Greg Kilstrom
Yeah.
- [16:58]
Unknown Speaker
And I mean, I guess to that point, you know, they're, it's not necessarily that they're slow adopters, things new, it's just some of the technologies that are being introduced, you know, to your, to your example there. Bringing it to a device that they're already using doesn't make it some net new and scary is probably the wrong word but you know, some, some net new thing that they have to like learn how to use or something like that.
- [17:23]
Marca Armstrong
So yeah, 100%. 100%.
- [17:25]
Unknown Speaker
So you know, let's talk a little bit about, you know, what's, what's coming, you know, future of job site intelligence. Where do you see future of construction technology heading and what's next for Sincera Systems there?
- [17:39]
Marca Armstrong
Yeah, so I think one of the biggest things that's happening in the construction industry is just the aging out of boomers and Gen Xers and the upcoming Gen Z into the market. We know that there is a labor shortage in construction. In order for the construction industry to be successful going forward, this is our conjecture at Sincera Construction is going to need to adopt technology and make it such that this Gen Z, these digital natives, they don't know any different. I've got two of them at home. They expect technology to work and they expect their job to be tech enabled. So I think understanding that and back to the conversation we were just having, making sure that that technology is there and it's being adopted and it can help attract this new workforce that are coming out of school or are, you know, just out of school and looking for new Jobs, they, they, you know, it used to be if I don't work for Google then I don't have a cool job. Right. So we need to current construction into the cool, like the coolness right. Of what you're doing. And I think from an engineering perspective and what have you, there's a lot going on on the front end of the business but you also got to get people into the day to day part of the business. So I think that's, that's really, really important to get these digital natives. I think if you can get this younger generation in. Sincera believes that from a job site intelligent perspective, the use of AI to see more of your data faster and help people do their jobs quicker. I mean again I said I had two Gen Zs at home. They're really impatient. If they can't get their information quickly, they move on. Right. So I think, you know, we're all talking about AI and how AI is going to help change industries. You got to make sure again it's meaningful. So from a visual capture perspective, which is what Sincera does to provide that job site intelligence, how can I see more faster and then make those decisions and then move on to the next thing, the next project, the next building, whatever it might be.
- [19:34]
Unknown Speaker
Yeah, yeah. And I love that you brought up AI, but also the strategic use of it, right. You know, it's not, it's not just slapping AI on something because it's the trend or whatever. It's intelligent use of AI, Right, Correct.
- [19:50]
Marca Armstrong
Well and I think, you know, I mean AI is everywhere, right? It, it I, AI the you. The use of the term AI reminds me of probably 15, 20 years ago. We were all saying solutions like it's a solution for this and a solution for that. Right. And it got to the point as marketers it's like well what are we really talking about here?
- [20:08]
Unknown Speaker
Right?
- [20:09]
Marca Armstrong
And so it's what, what at the time solution it was, we were aggregating things together. It wasn't just a piece of hardware or a piece of software or a service, this whole package that made a solution. So now think of that solution and now you're adding AI on top of that, which really gives you a way to leverage that solution faster, stronger, deeper, wider. Right. Just because you've got the language models that are enabling you to do it, don't get caught up as AI is a separate thing. I think we've, we've fallen into that trap early on and you know, a lot of people got stuck on the AI highway and, and aren't here anymore. So we're being very prescriptive about how we're using it.
- [20:49]
Unknown Speaker
Yeah, I love how you characterize that. That's great. Well, thanks for all your insights, Marca. One last question for you before we wrap up. I'd like to ask this to everybody. What do you do to stay agile in your role and how do you find a way to do it consistently?
- [21:04]
Marca Armstrong
So definitely difficult, especially when you're in a fast paced startup. But I guess I'll answer that in two segments. There's the marketing elements, right? As a marketer, how do I stay agile? And I I have broad network of colleagues across industries and forums, some of which I think you and I cross paths with, like the CMO Huddles forum where I'm able to reach out to people and how are you doing it in this industry? Or how are you doing it in that industry? And just support my B2B marketing colleagues across the board. And you know, that's something I try take a couple hours out of every month to participate in. And I also have a local group here in Denver that I work with. So that's from a marketing perspective and then from an industry perspective. I spent a lot of time listening to calls. Customer experience is part of my purview. So I hear the calls on the back end from the customers who maybe aren't having the greatest experience. Right. It's easy to listen to the ones on the front end where you're selling, selling, selling. Like that's fun and easy, but you got to get into the nitty gritty icky stuff too. So doing that, attending events where I can both virtually and in person and you know, joining podcasts like this one.
- [22:15]
Unknown Speaker
Yeah, love it. Well, again I'd like to thank Marka.
- [22:17]
Greg Kilstrom
Armstrong, head of marketing and customer success at Sincera Systems.
- [22:21]
Unknown Speaker
You can learn more about Marka and Syncera Systems by following the links in the show notes.
- [22:27]
Greg Kilstrom
Thanks again for listening to the Agile Brand brought to you by Tech Systems. If you enjoyed the show, please take a minute to subscribe and leave us a rating so that others can find the show as well. You can access more episodes of the show@theagile brand.com that's theagile brand.com and contact me. If you're interested in consulting or advisory services or are looking for a speaker for your next event, go to www.gregkillstrom.com that's G R E G K I H L S t r o m.com the Agile brand is produced by Missing Link, a Latina owned strategy driven, creatively fueled production co op. From ideation to creation, they craft human connections through intelligent, engaging and informative content. Until next time, stay curious and stay agile.
- [23:20]
Marca Armstrong
The Agile Brand.
- [23:25]
Unknown Speaker
Ever heard of Farm to table? How about Farm to Home? That's how Costa Farms plant business works with over 1500 plant varieties grown over 5200 acres. They're not just a company, they're your plant partners who've been perfecting their craft for 60 years. They deliver beautiful, high quality, easy to care for plants. They even offer virtual plant consultations and an insider club. For rare plant access. Check out www.costafarms.com today and enter code worthknowing Costa Farms 15 for a 15% discount on your first purchase. You can also purchase this unique plant brand at Lowe's, Walmart, Amazon and Home depot. Go to www.costacostafarms.com today.
- [24:21]
Greg Kilstrom
Before we continue, I wanted to share a key strategic resource that a majority of the Fortune 500 are already aware of. Finding the best technology, business and talent solutions is not easy. With business demands and competitive pressures mounting, you need to be able to design, deploy, and optimize your technology to provide leading customer experiences while driving business growth. Those of you that have been listening to this show for a while know that this podcast is brought to you by Tech Systems, a global provider of technology, business and talent solutions for more than 80% of the Fortune 500. TechSystems accelerates business transformation for their customers. Whether you're looking to maximize your technology roi, drive business growth, or elevate customer experiences, Tech Systems enables enterprises to capitalize on change. Learn more@techsystems.com that's T E K systems.com now let's get back to the show.