Store owners want to get from out of their e-commerce business. Real conversations happen when building a customer-centric culture is a prime focus. Whether you are a merchant or warehouse distributor, or a manufacturer looking for digital commerce. You should look at your tech partner, either agency or the solution integrator, and make sure they understand the business aspects and the workflow of your industry.
Vatsal Shah offers transformation and growth to organizations and individuals by creating an inner drive. He helps them elevate their brand image, increase revenue and profitability. He founded Pragmatic Consultancy in 2008 to unlock their potential. As a business coach, he championed transformations of 69 IT, Digital Agencies, E-Commerce, and Retail organizations, trained more than 12K people and 184 CEOs. His clients spread across India, China, UK, Africa, Ireland, and the USA
Vatsal and I also discuss Vatsal’s involvement in Meet Magento Events
Transcript:
All right. Welcome to this episode. Today I have Vatsal Shaw. He is a coach, a CEO coach. E-commerce evangelists speaker. I’ve seen him speak in person. He’s a pragmatic at pragmatic consultancy. Sorry. Let’s all. Please introduce yourself. Do it much better than I just did. And maybe tell us one of your passions in life.
Yep. Thank you for having me here at the same time. Yeah. So in a nutshell, if I tell about myself, what I do is I help it companies, digital marketing companies and agencies grow from small to big, say from few million dollars to multi-million dollars or multinational companies. What I work closely with them in terms of strategy, planning, execution, creating organization structures, they’re liberal politicians pricing and.
And as a result, a lot of adult Shopify, big commerce agencies have grown. I also work with various mobile and app development companies available in development companies. So almost all types of ID, sector companies. And I’m fully focused on that. And my passion is when people grow and then they touch more lives and all prosperity at that time, I feel good.
So I’m a teacher at heart and businessmen as. I have a weird combination about education. I studied it masters, then marketing majors, then psychology and communication. So I try to keep on accumulating new knowledge and keep on sharing on different platforms. And yeah, my mission is wherever I am, I should be able to transform lives, whether it is individuals or.
And my individual passion and singing and drawing, bending, and singing as well. So are you going to sing a song for us today? No, because I may be singing in Hindi, but you’re a leg Indian language. Your target audience may not understand that. So we’ll do a follow-up episode with you singing. Oh, we’ll do the intro.
I will sing a song for you and meet with India, because then the audience is. Alright. Perfect. So today I’d like to split up the topics between the store owner and maybe the agency and see maybe there’s I know there’s different perspectives from both all was there’s different perspective there, the third perspective from the developer as well, but maybe you could go into what customer.
The store owners want to get from out of their e-commerce business. Yeah. So it has been my favorite topics since long. We have been reading on internet or maybe listening the dogs from specimens. And I started with the purpose. We might have read a book called Scott McCain, which is what customer really want.
And then a lot of popular conversation happens where customer centric culture is a prime focus. So what I always look at is when any e-commerce. Oh, no. Or you can say merchant or warehouse, distributor, or a manufacturer looking for digital commerce. The space, what they look at is their tech partner, either agency or the essay they understand the business aspects and the workflow of that industry.
They bring subject matter expertise on the table. They help them digitize their workflow instead of. Fixing them around a platform or a tool or technology, which is preferred by them. It is an interesting no six, seven points. I can recall from the court Mac in that customers are looking for a compelling experience and where the it companies or agencies.
Giving the customer service or development service or e-commerce maintenance service. And so on customer look at personalization and personal focus that how I can help their business, how can increase their revenue. How can I increase their order ROS and so on. But most of the agencies focus on tech part, or they are focusing on digital part or UX part all together.
Is there a very rare combination. Most of the essays don’t focus end-to-end servicing of the customers customers want reciprocal loyalty means they want me as a solution architect or business practitioner to suggest what not to do. Instead, I have seen a business analyst or e-commerce solution specialist keep on prospecting.
What next can be sold to the customer. And a customer wants differentiation. If. Same Gordon’s book purple cow. What they want is there as to what has to be remarkable or different. If you look at all different chains of retail store on store, we’ll have component. Similar, but the orchestration of the retail sales is different.
And the same thing happens when you talk about digital commerce. So I understand that functionalities can be same platform can be the same, but the way it has been delivered has to be different. Whereas I have seen that agencies are busy making excellent at their packages and selling the same thing again and again.
So these are some of the gaps which I keep one finding in the market and I’ve seen the biggest. Exactly do opposite side. And then the Grove as billion dollar company and the rest skip one, struggling and finding new customers, licensed valley, switching the platforms and so on. And and as a result, Merchants struggle in finding the right partner.
So it is not the problem in Asia. It is a problem. I have found everyday because I talked to agency partners in us, UK Australia, Singapore, and India. So I have seen this trouble going on everywhere. And I would say merchants are right now pretty savvy, but still they get confused.
What is right for them. Yeah I I agree with that. So what do you think agencies could do to interpret what the client wants? In my previous stock which I recently delivered at magenta association connect we recently delivered that Magento association connect actual problem statement.
Somebody is trying to solve. And then based on that research is done, right things. So it’s interesting thing I used to teach when there was a curriculum going on in India that help us start digital commerce. And I was affected in there. So I used to teach to the merchants and the business owners as well considered that you are going to the new city.
And if you don’t have enough money on you’re trying on, so you won’t buy a house or an apartment, what you will do as you go on. So that can be Shopify. If you grew up at big and if you are established, then you want a bigger system because you have bigger house like bigger family and you want to scale it bigger.
So then you can look at hosted SAS cloud platform, or you can switch to window. And if further you grow, then you can have only general solution, which is enterprise grid, which can be Adobe commerce or any other no. Solutions, which we see in the Gardner store. So with the need of the client size and scale, if it’s just them, things, it works in a different fashion and it will reduce the cost of ownership. What I’m seeing is merchants struggling in their profit and margin for each thing. And that’s where the number of site opens you find equal ratio. Number of sites gets school. Yeah, I think that’s been an ongoing thing for a long time.
Is the is the sites that go back and forth between either agencies or platforms that’s happened quite a bit. So in the beginning you mentioned some breakdowns that agencies should pay attention about. Maybe we could go over those again. You mentioned UX UI, what are some of those high level things?
If we were to take buckets, the merchant or the agency is offering and they are, and I think the other thing you said is they don’t offer. They don’t often offer all of the different things. They’re just offering one small segment of those broader orphaning offerings. What what are the things that that you mentioned earlier?
Okay. Interestingly, most of the agencies, they do requirement gathering. Then they do solution specification, but they don’t do like the product development companies do. So when you look at the product development companies or digital product development companies, what they run is a design sprint, or discovery sprint.
They go on MVP model. I have not seen e-commerce stores getting developed in. It just design, like you tell us what you want. We will package it, deliver. And then at the end we will support. I believe that business evolved over a period of time. What worked in 2018 may not work in 2020 and will not work in 22.
So it can be in a weaving model. Then we can keep on increasing the scope. Digital commerce where the technology and marketing can work. And then I’m doing Moscow analysis is very interesting stuff. And when I deal with merchants, I knew that mustache would have, could have, and won’t have eaters and I would rather recommend them what not to do then.
So yeah, it is not pro business when it talk about closing the deal. But what I have found is by doing this, I end up winning more. Sure. Yeah. So where then the agency comes in, if the client is asking for something that isn’t measurable or is measurable. So what I mean by that is a lot I think what you’ve said earlier was agencies will just do exactly what the client said.
And then they don’t often go back and measure the success of whatever they’ve been they’ve delivered. Maybe you could talk about some things that would be measurable that an AI would help an agent. Sure. In previous question also, I missed telling it so one is consolidation part second, I’ve seen that agency don’t focus on marketing automation, and it goes in the way of the customer.
So recently I have seen that some of the agency have picked up a conversation where they say client, that we work on value pricing or the amount of orders. Or the increase of the revenue have we will have a share out of it. It is called performance marketing. So that is lighting. New thing. Agencies should look at UI.
UX is already people have been doing, but I would say interaction design can be the next thing where they can look at ideal customer profile, which is ICP of merchants clients. And then based on that, they can create custom customer flows and personalization. These are the costly things. So all merchants can not afford.
I understand that, but the people were in terms of the enterprise who can go for it, they should look at it. And it didn’t say you should start looking at it for similar concept, but it does smaller scale. They can give to all the plans. Yeah. Yeah. And I think you would agree that a agency should offer it and let the client say no, rather than never say anything about.
Certainly. Yes. So w when you offer something, at least you are leaving a customer empower and they have rights to choose. So when customer feel empowered they love it. And instead of dictating, this is not right, this is possible. This is not possible. If we give choices to the customer where you made a differentiation between types of agencies.
So maybe you could explain or tell us the difference between an e-commerce agency and an it company. I think a lot of times those two things get blurred. Yeah. I have seen this overlapping conversations out there. I have seen the. Agencies have different type burners. Their primary focuses on UX design and they outsource the development.
Second IRC in a digital marketing and branding agency, but they have small development arm and then outsource development. Third is tech focused company, which is working on as a platform essay or implementation partner. And they don’t have to do marketing house. So this all three of them claim themselves.
And it was just very confusing to the market. And there are pure-play ID players in this. Menu also, you will find e-commerce development is one of the option. So I can see this four distinct types and then all claim that they can build an e-commerce store. So what they mean, maybe The right components.
They may degrade the jacket and put it live. But th that is where not the business begins. It is, I would say 20% of the nearest 80 is missing. Which is around the business and the workflows and marketing and so on. It’s a different way of looking at it. I have seen ID companies, how they build up in a different way.
What they look at is we will make one thing and sell multiple things. So there is a product approach. There are agencies which work like a B2C B2B approach. What I mean by that is there so end clients or they sell dedicated resources. And I think companies are more focused on selling resources, staff, augmentation, teams, selling, they are offering manpower to the other it companies, agencies, or to the end customers.
And so that is one of the VR selling. Services and gaining money, which is most commonly found in it. Companies or product development companies, unlike agencies. And then what agencies look at is how we can create a masterpiece, how we can win a project or a brand or a kitchen where we do value pricing.
And we may do less number of projects, but we will have be more. So these are the two different tracks that I’ve seen. People get confused between to try and both the things together and switching between two and so on. So don’t you think though, that in that to be in it, to be an e-commerce agency, you have to be an it company and not necessarily I asked an e-commerce or digital commerce agency.
Not an ID company, but they know how to do orchestration of all these components available. They do have programmers and developers, but Derek, their center is not technology or product. Their center is commerce. So now you look at the big four consulting firms. They do amazingly big implementations, but their core focus is commerce or retail tech, or digital transformation of retail chains, not a particular platform or technology.
They use technology to deliver. Oh, that would be the with, okay. So are you making the differentiating around platform rather than technology or rather than the skill set of the particular developer? Because it sounds like an e-commerce agency. If they’re only on Adobe commerce then they’re focusing on that and they can’t offer something.
I’m not saying they can not offer something else. I, you can see that most of the Adobe partners have started offering multiple platforms now, except couple of still they’re still low Adobe only, but rest of the people that have. No suggesting different platforms. What I’m seeing is their core concentration, even while department gathering and suggesting to the customer is revolving around the product platform or the technology.
It’s not that our own commerce. When you put commerce into the center where you start reading. What is the customer’s product? What is their differentiation? How we can create a story around pans products, and then you start building no canvasing their customer’s journey, and then fit commerce technology in that.
So it can be then in store catalog can be variable. It gets, so it brings the only channel solution. So what. So it’s what is the first priority technology first or commerce first? Yeah. Okay. I get it. So I think that a lot of the, a lot of the agencies that have been Magento only are focusing on making sure the client fits into Magento.
And what you’re saying is figure out what the customer needs first and then find the best solution for them. Okay. And then wherever the right components are fitting. Components and technology in the clients need. So it can be Magento. It can shop if it can be front end with Hiva or it can be used to a friend or it can be anything else.
It backend can be anything. It can be, anything can be anything. So it’s not necessarily that it only one product can be fitted. Yeah. You can have one product as a base and then you can revolve components around it, but the focus should be commerce, not the product we are. Got it. Oh as we move through this, then how can agencies become more agile when they’re making these decisions for on the behalf of clients?
Oh, it is a interesting phase. We are passing through. Now since last couple of years, we can see that there are different layers of solutions on the label. So the VA said different platforms available that our platform, which is economical, that our platform, which is for the mid range.
And there are platforms, which is expensive. Now, when you. I consider that if I’m an agency owner, what I have to do is I have to be agile in strategic decision making to sustain and grow. What I need to look at is my imbalance, what analysis I’m supposed to do. But at the same time, nowadays is a question on installed capacity.
So we build a one listing, can Google G nine metrics. It says capacity building of the company. Now all the agencies are supposed to be. Check a skill they have, they’re supposed to build new capacities. Earlier they were doing one of the tech work. Now they’re talking about composable commerce.
They need to learn or unlearn rather different ways of doing and calling and practicing e-commerce development. People who are front end developers, maybe. Be in need or maybe a different kind of rented would be in a need. So a lot of new things are coming up. So if I will be an agency on I would have forecast there’s interns on 1819, that what would be the next instead of being like, I would have been a late adopter of different front end platform.
Maybe she’ll get in Contentful, goes to a friend, a lot of many other things. And then we’ll look at how different vacuums forms can help me deliver what client. Second. What I have seen is agencies who have been settled records all or two and a half decades old, 15 decade, Allie, 1.5, which has been a seasoned player who have been gold platinum partners, adapting new change and embracing Jane needs.
Lot of evaluation with them, which leads a redesign of the process, recharging in no motivating people inside to learn new things and learn what they’re already good at or the best. And reshape the organizing structure. Earlier you had only one type of people. Now you have multiple type of people, a leader who used to be a king, maybe now he’s one of the manager.
So a lot of structure restructure happens. And then so this leads to a jail management. And if you go to any businesses, They teach different ways of managing business, but they I would say new terminology should be taught nowadays. It’s just got a general management because businesses are specifically it businesses becoming now a giant, it started project management.
Now it is business management. It also getting a day because everything new coming in new conversations are, I know their social commerce is going to play a big role because three platforms will be more now different ways of payment methods are. A lot of things have changed. So I would say the people who used to be great may not be a fit into the market sooner.
It would be survival of the test. I would say that, yeah. That’s a really good way to put it this, since things are moving, they’re moving exponentially quicker. It seems like you have to be agile when you, when it comes to your management process, just like you have to be agile when it comes to your delivery process of your technology.
You mentioned a composable commerce. I know that composable commerce and content and commerce are a big thing right now. Maybe you could explain what your thought is around composable commerce and how it fits into today’s. I think you are the better person than me do. Explain where this composable of commerce here with masters.
And I claim to remaster in commerce space, but I would say composable gives a lot of freedom of expression to the developer, or maybe an agency also to the customer where I have Liberty to choose what all I want and I can. No set up things together, which works in the favor of my business.
So earlier I would say it was made to order. Now it is assembled to order. So if I say in a simpler word, what is composable? Commerce is assembled to order depending on the client need, we assemble right components and deliver to this plant. And it, it breaks the boundary of one particular platform’s dominance.
It becomes open to everyone. We shared the pie and the pie is bigger than this word, compostable commerce is heading towards. And how do you feel content in commerce fits in with that? Last year in the UK happened to talk about content driven commerce. I always believe that we don’t buy products.
There was a popular tweet because of my session with Guidewire. I said that people don’t buy a product, people buy stories. So you don’t buy apple phone or for 100 back, you buy a story which is around math. Similarly, you don’t buy anything like the, I think you are using. Right now.
Yeah. Yeah. So you’re it because somebody might have you on a great story about it, and then you happen to buy that. So people don’t buy products, people buy stories around it. Look at the community into inclusive Magento community. It is a spirit and the story which holds us together. So it’s always that it’s, they want a product.
And then when you talk about expiration of. Nowadays generation Zed is coming in. The next set of buyers are doing this enzyme. They are patient, they are digital, they’re tech savvy. They read about brands and then the juice products, which connects to their values, which is a girlfriend which builds loyalty and trust.
There are some of the key points we can find in McKinsey article, how their behavior prints, and then looking at that continuum and commerce will be the key. When you talk about DTC brands that are more towards advanced story and content, their philosophy, why they read it and so on. So it is going to be a interesting part.
I know that you mentioned earlier around growing your e-commerce business, what do you think it takes to sustain and continually grow an agency in this e-commerce world? Recently. Oh CNS not only e-commerce development, but marketing of store using marketing technologies arrow, maybe automation.
And then there can be a huge gap when. Need of skilled manpower of which we need as a merchant automat, no manufacturer to run my e-commerce store. If agencies start focusing on giving that service, which is called e-commerce process, outsourcing EPO which is called manage e-commerce stores.
So some of the people I have seen some companies have started this. Since one and a half year are doing there, get catching wildfire. What it does is this allow merchants or manufacture to focus on the core business and rest of the grunt work, which they need to manage the store also done by the agency.
Maybe a subcontracted partner agencies have, but that can be new addition to grow it and see business second, I would say no, client is small, maybe a new birding literacy brands can be a unicorn and coming two, three years. So it is a scale look at how they can start small and then grow along with the.
And working on performance marketing alone or the client or e-commerce tool can be an amazing thing. And the way I recommended we should look at Jeannine metrics, which is called installed capacity. So what kind of team competition? I have skilled metrics I have inside the company, how to keep on checking and updating it to stay into the market.
Yeah, I think you you mentioned something interesting there about about no client is too small and oftentimes you do get a big client that has a small idea that wants to grow it. So that’s a great way to look at it. Hey they, this is a really big client, but they want to do something that’s as a test.
And there’s all kinds of tools out there too, to test their ideas. And you as an agency or as an agency has to be willing to take up that test and move forward with that with that client. And it could be a small client and the agency believes is them or could be a big client that has a small idea that the agency believes in.
I think both are very valid. You mentioned Meet Magento a few times and I’d like to go into Meet Magento’s now. You attended all the Meet Magento India. I had been doing most Saul. Yeah, I turned it all and I have taken a role play in four, not one, not in one because I worked my top was not selected by you.
I would say that this kidding, but yeah, in the in the first episode of Magento, I here I was. Then in the third one, I was a anchor and speaker and hopefully contributing this year as well. And then not only in making much of the India, I have been contributing to split, went into Singapore, Indonesia, UK, wherever I get an opportunity.
Recently I contributed to Magento association connect. Yeah, I know Magento community because I started my gender with Magento when the first meter release was there. I still didn’t call it Dave and I was, I used to do a job and my CEO gave me a big printout of what into architecture and then the data structure and.
What the hell how this can be possible. I’m talking to them eight, nine. And since then I have been, then I left my ID job. And then at that time I used to be e-commerce product manager. And then later on, I started my consulting career and help a lot of e-commerce agency grown using Magento. So the idea has been fantastic journey.
And personally, I love orange. And now I’m forced to love many more colors, like green, blue, and so on. So let’s just say, we’ve been talking a lot about agencies as an agency. Why would an agency want to attend any Meet Magento? Yeah. There are a lot of things. One. People don’t generally spend time on reading or entrepreneurs are busy managing things, which is coming up in their daily routine.
So consider that if I want to have a quick review of what’s new into the mix. Good a bit Magento, you will find world’s finest speakers talking about the new trends. What is coming next? And then know you can quickly learn and whatever you feel interesting. You can go back and explore. Second you meet like-minded people.
And have a drink with them. Third it’s fun to be with the community. It’s a different you have talk to like-minded people. You talk about your case studies and you learn from each other’s experience and exposure. That’s the reason you should read and go into Meet Magentos. Personally, I have been to imagine as well, four times.
So it’s altogether different vibes when you meet in person nowadays it’s drier because. We are on zoom and then delivering session on hoopin. But yeah, but all who below, but when it goes back normal, I think it’s. Interesting conversation happens when we meet. Yeah. And I think some of those conversations happen in person and different conversations happen in person.
And you feel more enabled or more empowered, I think on both sides to have more conversations and things come up that wouldn’t normally come up. It would never come up if you didn’t attend. And I think it’s harder on zoom too, to have those open conversations. What about why would a developer Juan and with tandem Meet Magento event?
Okay. So I would say they have numbers. Life is pretty boring sorry, developers. I love you, but yeah, that’s how it is. You love computer and poor more than the people around many may not agree to it, but yeah, I have seen that you’re focused on. What is to be delivered as a tech park. So if you want to revive your human feeling go and meet your friends at windows.
And then actually in the way you’ve learned from each other, feel jealous that somebody knows more than me. And then you go back and put up more hustle and learn what it does also have certification coupons going on. So you’ll go and attempt your exam. They get a day off, maybe paid from your boss and then go and attend video.
I’ve seen that developers can learn a lot of things. They’re focused towards that, but there, they can also attend business tracks, or you can say margin tracks to see how commerce at the play. I always seen that funny part, that developers and then the lead in tech technical. I don’t know why that I’m not interested in business tracks.
Actually what they are making is actually empowering the business. So they should look at that also as a perspective consider that if they want to become a freelancer agency owner, they should attend business track to understand how this business. Yeah. I you bring up a great point about developers on how the developers should have a bigger, a broader view of the solution that they’re doing when they’re doing their coding.
A lot of developers fall into that trap of, Hey, I’ve been given this task, I’m going to do this task without asking any questions, attending those business tracks, lets you have a chance to learn the bigger picture of what you’re trying to accomplish. I want to key on one point you said, why would a boss let their employee attend?
And so my question is why should a boss give their employee time to attend a Meet Magento event? If I would be a boss, I would let my all employees go and sponsor tickets and then I will see them go and see the world, how it goes. Why? Because when they go there, they see the tracks, they look at different parts of where people coming from.
Different part of world, some from America, some from Germany, Europe, maybe Singapore, Austria. In the place where you are, and then they learn how to, how they communicate, how they behave body language, they learn soft skills. They also explore presentation skills. I will not, some of the team members, I would push them to talk as well.
I would push my developers to deliver a talk as well. There is a different exposure to develop a person’s personality. And then yeah. It is always good that there is a trend as well, that other, we know many business agency owners come there for shopping, you know what I’m talking about so that they take away into those developers that is part of life and part of business.
But at the same time if I’m having a great culture, if I’m paying well, I should not worry about my developers going here and there. But then I would put them as a brand ambassadors as a. And from what my brand have a snowball effect, bring many more people like you into our company and let’s throw together that can also be a talk I can deliver as a boss too much.
Yeah. I think you brought up a great point about that, that it is a two way street that your people are out there to recruit other people. And it is a, it is an open forum and giving them the opportunity to learn more about what’s out there in real life and talking to other other people in their same industry.
You learn a lot from that. And I know in the past I’ve learned a lot just from attending, talking to other agency owners you learn their experiences. Certainly there’s going to be some filtering around that, but you do learn about how they’re experiencing their customers now. And we did, we earlier, we talked about how maybe clients jump between platforms.
Clients definitely jumped between agencies. As you start to be great, big talk to bigger agencies, you’ll learn this big clients been with this agency and this agency, and they they seem to change their mind every two years or every year sometimes. I wanna, I want to key on one more point that you made too about about speaking at events like this and how these smaller events and actually Meet Magento is not a small event.
It’s been quite large. But it’s not as it’s not as, I don’t know how to come. It wouldn’t be compared to say Adobe summit there. There’s not the same budget. Let’s just say that the why would, what is the PR what would, let me try to phrase this question correctly? Why would a person want to speak at an event like that?
Okay. So it’s an interesting question. Many people ask me you are not going there to sell your service or promote your CEO coaching course. You are not an agency. You are not a developer. You are not part of Magento. You’re not running a Magento farm, or you are not running WordPress from why you keep on talking there.
So I say there are a lot of tech, people are there and a lot of agency owners have. If I have some idea and if I can get a platform to share, it’s amazing to get. And then I would say a lot of. URI or I would say followers, or you can say fans, I have earned in my life of who appreciate what I talk is thanks to Meet Magento.
A lot of people in those, I have spoken even in word games and also in university forums, but meet Melinda has given me helped me a lot of respect in the country where I’m living. And it has actually made me a better personally. And that’s the reason I should go and talk there. It actually, when I’m supposed to prepare for a talk, I’m supposed to do background work, study research.
It also helped me improve my intellect as well. So it’s amazing to. Yeah. Yeah. So I would just key in on to couple of those points, that number one, it gives you an opportunity to learn how it is in front of other people. And it helps you to collect your thoughts and put them into a format that helps you to communicate to others.
And you will get direct feedback from others and how your presentation went good or bad. I know that we’ve been talking about giving some coaching. If there’s younger people that would like to present we could help them give them some coaching on how and I’m sure that you would also be good at giving some coaching to younger people or maybe people that are not so experienced in public speaking.
I would also say that since this is virtual, it is a lot easier to do a presentation to people because you don’t, maybe you don’t see them out there in person. And there’s not that extra pressure. There’s some pressure still, but you don’t see them there in person. So there’s a lot of opportunities and I think the biggest one is just that.
In preparing you end up learning so much about what you’re presenting that in that presentation all that time, it takes to put it together. You end up learning 10 times more than you could possibly have known before you started that presentation. I would add one point there considered that what all knowledge I hear.
If I can summarize that knowledge in 20 minutes. Think about how well I will be making my pitches to the customer. So it helps me create framework that how I can compress my conversations still, it can be crisp and effective, so it helps in business development as well. So where’s the train. All right. I promise I have one last question about meat Magento.
Why would the merchant want to attend a Meet Magento? Oh, it’s interesting. At one particular place, merchant can see what all kinds of technology he or she needs is available. All the boots are there at the same time. He or she can validate different vendors standing there. Third, they can validate whether that vendor is good or bad, because you will always find people who can give feedback about them for they can learn new things fifth, they can also meet a product company, employees, like they meet one another.
You will always find people from Adobe. You’ll always find people from.digital. So we’re actually a platform or a product. So you can go and talk. You can get. It started on the live meeting. People were from payment gateway or processor like PayPal. People is always there. So you’ll find there’s a merchant.
I can find quick solutions so I can have quite answers to my questions, which I have been thinking in my office. I can just go for a few hours and get those answers. All right. So you brought up one more question. I apologize for not, I’m going to have another question. One. The last question about me, Magento prompts.
Why would one of these eight, what would one of these tech companies sponsor? I Meet Magento event. So there are multiple reasons. One, you get promoted locally, so you be attractive to the new employees. That is one of the biggest advantage tech or is get when they promoted me Magento.
Second, if the merchant’s footfalls are there, you catch that merchant as well, and a third, any type of brand promotion happening, you should have an opportunity to do it. Why? Because unless you are visible on earth, how people will notice you and how you get Get more leads or the mileage. So I would say attending events and sponsoring events is one of the channels of generating leads or getting visibility.
So people should spend money there. Yeah. Excellent. All right, so let’s just switch to the Magento association for a little bit, as we close things out. That’s not, yeah, we won’t get into anything contentious, but I know that. Suddenly because of because of some people they’ve made some noise in our community and it started with the hoof a theme, and now it’s culminated in this may major open source community Alliance that has put some of us would look at it.
Some people would look at it as some division and others would look at it as it’s coming together. So I feel as though that it’s helped us to come together better because really this open letter that. Has prompted Adobe to wake up the Magento association to wake up and suddenly we’re all talking. What is your view on that?
So when people are sleeping here to make noise, to wake them up, there’s the first answer sake. Sorry. You can say that openly, but yeah, that’s there. And second, I am also part of modern day association committee ISO a committee called diversity and. And you might have a red a blog coming out from from the chosen ones who is going to take a head Magento open source.
So DNI committee actually played a good role in choosing who can be the next stars betters. I would say it was intended, it was spending, but this noise helped them do it faster. So sometimes I believe people perform better and faster in pressure and that actually have happened and I go the same then does help us merge together instead of splitting into two.
So I think now it can be a better roadmap we can see, and I hopefully See that open source survive grew and try because a, I would say whatever market share Magento has, the majority of it is open source. The Adobe commerce. So if it thinks then there will be a vacuum in the middle layer of open source e-commerce systems.
Yeah. And I think all these things are coming together now to show the importance of where the community fits in. And Adobe’s also acknowledging that the open source product has a great hold on. What the commercial product does and that they can’t simply ignore it and continue on with plans without talking to anybody.
I wouldn’t say Adobe cannot do it. The reason is open source clients. Are there potential prospects to convert into the pain? Licensed claims anybody who’s on opensource would likely to if they grow likely to buy at a promise. Actually for them, it was a lead generation platform. Instead of putting it on back burner, they should look at how they can tell.
Yeah, no, I agree that this has been the, this has been the question since 2010, since the enterprise platform came out, is how do you, is it a competitor or is it a lead generation or a One league below, like in, in cricket you have a premier league, right? You have a a great big league and then you have the leagues that are at, and everybody promotes the top.
So clients, the clients should, their aspiration of a client should be driving to the top and having this premier platform that you’re going to be on a Gobi needs to look at that open source as the, as. Driving place that helps people to move to the top. And I think in the past there’s been hundreds of thousands of users on the open source platform and they need to make sure that they’re.
Attending to those users because of bad experience and open source, and essentially means that they’re not going to go to that commerce platform because why would they even had a good experience. So from the Magento association point of view, then w I think there’s only 2000 members and I think there’s a hundreds and hundreds of thousands of developers that are in the Magento community.
How can we get more people to join Magento associates? They have created a committee which is commit a community building, or you can say it, it adds more registration to the Muslim association, but I believe that it’s not marketed, but if it is communicated it will work. Just for example, if you go on LinkedIn and you search Magento.
And you just select Southeast Asia countries like India, Pakistan, Sri Lanka, Bangladesh, and Singapore. LinkedIn search ends at 50 to get results. And then it’s dot.dot. You will find more than 50 to give people if you just stand that those many. Now you think about all different continents, Africa, USA.
Russia, Australia, New Zealand and so on. So this can be, this has to be, I would say 20 X or 30 X community and registered on Magento association platforms. I think it. It needs marketing. It needs a declared hash. And then we’ll look here looking at people registering here. And I think it’s not promoted by.
Yeah. And I am on the I am on the membership committee. We don’t have any control over marketing. I think it has been suggested a few times that we do marketing as well. But what I believe is when solutions are not working, then the fork works, so sometimes you need to make new. No.
Then it starts working ultimately the benefit of Melinda community association unless you get more membership, how we can monetize or how we can grow big or how we can pass on more benefits. So it’s needed it as it has to be marketed, but then you always find great influencers in particular country.
They are not even leveraging those influencers to gain more membership. Yeah. And I think one thing that I just thought of that it seems like a no brainer is when we do a Meet Magento event, we should ask if those people would also like to join the Magento association, there has to be some way of opting people into the Magento association.
If they sign up for Meet Magento event, I think those two pieces are disconnected at the time. Yep. So if those data was pulled into the Magento association membership, it will create a magic. So I would say by default opt-in can be a choice that if you registered to Meet Magento, you are attempting for free the part of Magento’s position as well.
Excellent. We’ve solved everything. Thank you so much. We have used up our time and I, we had talked about going for 30 minutes and we’re coming up to an hour. So I think I I think we have to we have to wrap things up now, but I appreciate your time. I know that earlier I asked you if you could give me a shameless plug, so why don’t you go ahead and give me a shameless plug about anything.
Perfect. Lots of Shaw. The CEO is this right. CEO of pragmatic consultant. So when they get all right, yo coach. Perfect. Okay. It was great speaking to you today. I appreciate your time. A lot of first time we dogged in this land. The log of first time we talked about this lent the log of first time we talked, taught this length, the law of first time we talked with this lent.
Thank you very much.
