Almost 100 customers, partners and influencers participated in Riversand Connections 18, our first Europe-wide community event.

Among hundreds of events I attended or helped creat in almost 20 years in the data driven market, this was the most important to me. Why? Here are my top 4 learnings:

Digital transformation drives new higher values

Measuring KPIs and business outcomes will always be important. But I learned two new aspects of the higher impact of Riversand: 

In context if a MDM project kickoff a person mentioned that she had a health situation which needs certain medication and it’s not released in market due to the time it takes to get the product released to distributors and consumers . If they reduce the time to market they can impact people’s life and evens save some. She personally had a very emotional goal tied to this project success. I heard about wet eyes in the room when she mentioned this. 

Another one: Carrefour is selling a milk where the price is defined by the consumer. By consumers who want to pay a fair price to ensure that farmers get a fair share of the value for their work. The brand C’est qui le patron makes this product selling at 0,99€ while usual market price would be 0,65€, but consumers see new sustainable value in it.

Great customer base who is keen to learn from each other 

Aside from a record Q3, Riversand has a great customer base across European counties and industries. This week we learned from Johan Ekegren (Orkla, Norway) that almost half of their revenue depends on the Riversand platform and it is growing.

Lars Beeckmann Head of International Marketing at tesa (Germany) explained that they put people first and human centered design to understand and optimize processes of product introduction. Sébastien Royon from Saint Gobain (France) shared his best practices of how to manage huge complexity in building materials and global MDM rollouts, based on quick measurable wins.

Many people came to me with nice feedback on the Riversand Community, such as:

Jasmin Quellmann, International PIM Manager at Beiersdorf said „I am really enjoying the deep learning from peers and their best practices.“

Phil Carelin from Kingfisher stated “It was a very well run, informative and engaging session.” 

Riversand has great partners across Europe

Within one year we have onboarded more implementation partners across all key regions in Europe. I was happy to see dedicated MDM experts from companies such as Avensia, Advellence, Comma Group, TCS, Infosys, PwC, Infosys, Parsionate and Yellowground to attend, along with complementary solutions such as Productsup, Inbetween, Loadbee and Priint Group. Watch out for new announcements to come shortly.

Disruption in the digital business era requires new tech

A common theme which was discussed was that if you want to win in the world of tomorrow, and you focus on disruptive business models, this also requires a new approach in data management. New ways of user experience, data processing and data storage are the new normal. Also cloud is not longer just an option, it is the new standard.

Conclusion

Values are probably the most important human factors which bring and tie us together. Being part of such a community where respect, appreciation, commitment and passion are essential, just feels fantastic.