In today’s ‘Day in the Life’, we speak to Bhavesh Unadkat, who is Head of Digital Marketing at Capgemini Invent.
We chat with Bhavesh about his ten years at Capgemini, what keeps him motivated in his role, and the brands that he thinks set the bar for data strategy.
Please describe your job: What do you do?
I am the Head of Digital Marketing for Capgemini Invent. My team and I work with our clients’ marketing teams to ensure they have the right strategy, capabilities and structure in place to thrive in the marketing world.
We support in 4 key areas:
- Setting and shaping their marketing strategy to ensure it is fit for purpose and being executed effectively. We ensure they are aligned to one direction and set of outcomes.
- Ensuring the marketing function is data driven in order to track and measure marketing activity and performance across channels, markets, brands, and customer groups.
- Managing the content explosion – ensuring they win with content by being able to manage, distribute and create standout content given the challenge of content overload and the reducing attention span of customers.
- Effective marketing organisation – ensuring that they have the right structure, skills, partnerships and ways of working to effectively execute their marketing strategy and deliver on their KPIs.
What kind of skills do you need to be effective in your role?
What a question! If I were to sum it up into three key points, it would be the following:
Dealing with ambiguity. It’s often clear our client is facing a challenge, but the root of the problem or underlying issues may not be so obvious. Therefore, being able to employ problem solving methodologies and uncover the root causes is key to providing the resolution.
Being a team player. The power of Capgemini comes from the power of our global experts and teams. To deliver best-in-class results for our clients, we must call upon our experts and work together with our clients to find the best solution to their challenge. Capgemini is a people-first organisation, one of the main reasons for my extensive tenure to date.
Being versatile. Our briefs, clients and their challenges come in many different shapes and sizes; the ability to adapt and shape the right approach, solution and roadmap for our clients is critical.
Tell us about a typical working day…
No day is the same! This is exciting and daunting at the same time. I work on a global client account which means we have teams in all time zones. I have to adapt my day for an early start or late finish (never both on the same day luckily). I usually wake up at 6:30am and will go for a walk first to help focus my mind for the day ahead and get some steps in. I’m online from around 8am and the day will be a mixture of the following activities which bring lots of variety, challenge and excitement:
1. Project calls – These will include reviewing work, planning work, working on proposals, commercials or resource requests. Some of these are internal and some are with the client.
2. Digital marketing development – This usually includes offer development, sales activity, team development or marketing activity.
3. Future brand and structure planning – We are about to announce some exciting news surrounding our new team branding which we are planning and transitioning towards.
What do you love about your job? What sucks?
I love working in a team; the energy people bring and the ideas that are bounced enable fast problem solving. I am fortunate that the Digital Marketing team is made up of great individuals that bring so much varied value. When you combine all of these things, that’s when the magic happens!
What I don’t like about my role is that it can be fairly admin heavy. For example: booking meetings, booking timesheets, travel and submitting expenses. At times it can also feel like we can have too many meetings. I have started the year really reflecting on the duration, frequency and necessity of all my meetings and have adjusted my schedule accordingly. We have a companywide initiative to schedule no meetings before 8am or after 6pm which helps to discipline the working hours. Added to this we have reduced 30-minute meetings to 25 mins and 60 to 50 minutes which means I have couple of hours of time a week extra to focus on other things.
What kind of goals do you have? What are the most useful metrics and KPIs for measuring success?
In consulting we look at a number of different metrics; key ones are customer satisfaction (how customers rate our work, outcomes and value delivered), and employee satisfaction (how satisfied our teams feel about their environment, work, reward and content).
Then there is new logos (the number of new logos we work with in a given period), and also, team growth (the number of people we add to the team). We were lucky enough to double the size of the UK team in 2020 from 12 to 24 and hope to double again in 2021.
What are your favourite tools to help you to get the job done?
I am not one for too many tools. Miro has been amazing for virtual workshopping. Microsoft Teams is what we use for video conferencing and is also great for storing and sharing files. We also have several internal tools and templates that we use for proposals, tracking commercials and for time tracking which are useful.
How did you end up at Capgemini, and where might you go from here?
I spent 10 years in industry working across ecommerce and marketing roles for retailers and start-ups. I had always wanted to work in consulting and but never thought it would be for more than two years because I would miss industry too much. I was also sceptical about going into consulting because I felt that the people may be a little robotic and the environment severely competitive in nature.
However, here I am 10 years after joining and still loving it! I truly feel it is where I belong; the variety of work – working with many clients and with many different internal teams – coupled with our growth and evolution. On top of this, Capgemini is a people-first business; I have stayed as long as I have thanks to the great people and wonderful working environment.
Which brands/experiences have impressed with their use of data?
I may be biased here but one of my clients, Unilever, is phenomenal when it comes to a number of things they do across data and insights. For one, their People Data Centre is an award winning and industry leading insights ecosystem. They have also made considerable progress in their ambition to build meaningful relationships with 1bn global consumers. In collaboration with retailers and data partners, they are using this data to drive engagement, value and exceptional experiences for the consumer through connecting the consumer journey.
Another company that has impressed me by moving from personalised to more precision based personalisation is Spotify. They have evolved their product to include features such has ‘daily drive’: almost like my own personalised radio station of news, songs and podcasts. The best thing is that I am in control so can pause, re-listen or fast forward. I also really like their annual personalised stories (Spotify Wrapped) – instead of an intrusion of data it seems to me a sharing of my story which I appreciate. Spotify are one cool company; their recent announcement that all employees (even post Covid) can work from anywhere makes them even cooler!
Do you have any advice for anybody who wants to work in your field?
If you like variety, dealing with ambiguity, problem solving and working in a team project environment consulting is for you. The boundary between industry, consultancy and agency is blurring and my advice would be to work across all 3 if you can. If you have a desire to work internationally, this can also be achieved through the various global projects we offer. Go on give it a go!
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