AI Drives Scalable Marketing Efficiency at Xerox Corporation

Jeff Mosier:

Hi, I'm Jeff Mosier. I'm the marketing content lead for the Infosys Knowledge Institute.

Lynn Bautista:

Hi, I'm Lynn Bautista. I work at Xerox Corporation. I'm the VP for portfolio marketing.

Jeff Mosier:

You guys are probably pretty advanced, but where do y'all stand in your AI maturity right now in marketing specifically?

Lynn Bautista:

Yeah, we are. We started our AI history internally about three years ago. Specifically in a marketing perspective, we have an AI council overall for the organization, but we did start our AI sub-workstream as it relates to marketing about three years ago. I would say we're at a point now where we're in adoption and we do have some tools that we're using. We've done a lot of evaluation of those tools and looking at what are some of the quick wins, what are some of the small investments that we can make that would give us a strong return as it relates to ROI. And so we're continuing to evaluate tools. So we are in adoption, and we continue to look at ways that we can incorporate and use AI in the company.

Jeff Mosier:

How do you approach experimenting with AI to figure out what works? You mentioned trying different tools, seeing what works, figuring out some quick wins. What's your philosophy for how to experiment?

Lynn Bautista:

Sure. So we have an AI council in the marketing team that is a group of about 12 people from different areas within the marketing organization, whether it's content management, portfolio marketing, market intelligence. We also have some folks that are from sales that can give us inputs as it relates to marketing tools that we would need.

And we do our searches within the external organizations. And what we do is we get trials, a lot of trials for AI tools. And then we have a matrix system where we're really looking at how would we target those tools? How would we classify them as a quick win? What would be the potential ROI that we would see? How much of an investment would it make? And we have a matrix that helps us classify those tools. And then really look at what are the biggest pain points that we have as an organization in marketing and how those tools can solve for that. Really looking at efficiencies, productivity gains, and just really allow the employee to work more efficiently through the use of AI tools.

Jeff Mosier:

How difficult is it for you to figure out the ROI on some of these tools and figure out whether they are effective and worth the effort? Are you pretty confident in being able to determine the metrics that are best used for these?

Lynn Bautista:

So I think it's a work in progress. We have noticed some gains. So I'll give you an example. It's not a tool that we have internally. It's something that we use through our media agency, but it helps with efficiencies. It's called Pencil. So it's an AI tool that allows demand gen campaigns for optimization once they're in place. And what we've noticed is we've noticed some gains in regards to what used to take a couple of weeks for optimization can now be done in real time. So we've had some gain there. Yeah.

Jeff Mosier:

If you thought back to about three years ago when you started on this process, where did you think you would be three years later, and how different is that now? Did you expect to be further along? Are you more advanced than you thought you would be?

Lynn Bautista:

I think I thought that maybe we'd be a little bit further along. But to be quite honest, with the tools that we have in place, I'm really surprised at how we're utilizing all of it. We utilize it in many different ways. We utilize it for content creation, where we're using a lot of OpenAI and we have command GPTs that really help us in many different areas.

So if you look at the evaluation of the tools that we did at the time, I thought that maybe we would've invested more in those tools. But quite frankly, we've done a lot with the use of OpenAI and just a couple of tools that we've been able to invest in. So for example, we have ChatGPTs that help with brand review. We have one that really focuses around client centricity, which is at the forefront of what we do with any asset that we produce, focusing on the customer pain point and really how we can solve for that. And we've been able to do that through the use of command GPTs with OpenAI.

We're also looking at legal, legal terminologies or those buzzwords that won't make legal comfortable when we create something in a content. We have those GPTs that can check for that as well. We have some GPTs that help around our sustainability missions also. So I feel like we're quite advanced with the limited tools that we do have today.

Jeff Mosier:

So what do you think are the greatest benefits you've gotten so far from AI? Where do you see the biggest boost?

Lynn Bautista:

So definitely it would be productivity gains, efficiencies, time that we've saved more than anything. And just it allows us to scale in regards to having more content that we need. We also have a GPT that helps us understand what is the content that's being used the most. And that helps us how to plan and continue to expand more in regards to that content and produce more of those assets, which would give us more benefits. So we have been able to look at that in a data perspective also.

Jeff Mosier:

Sounds like it creates a great cycle where you're creating better content faster, allowing you to analyze it, and then funnel that back around to the content creation to keep improving.

Lynn Bautista:

Exactly.

Jeff Mosier:

Where do you think the benefits are going to be coming from next in the future if we're looking a year from now, or even two or three years from now? Do you think it's still going to be efficiency and productivity, or do you think there's other areas where it's actually going to help marketing?

Lynn Bautista:

I definitely think that it's efficiencies and productivity. Cost savings, of course. You invest in the tools, and you'll get your returns on those tools. We're looking at potentially using tools for translations now, to continue help with copywriting, for example. That's where I think we would look into for the next two to three years is copywriting, translations, and data more than anything.

Jeff Mosier:

So what about data? What do you think AI's going to do most for you with data?

Lynn Bautista:

Just yesterday, I was in a session where we talked about the challenges that different organizations have when they have so much data. It's dirty data, they call it. I think that what we need to do is, what my company is focused on now, is what do we do with all that data that we have? So it's more around getting those AI tools that are going to help us really get down to the personalization as it relates to marketing, utilizing that data. So that's why that point is so important to us.

Jeff Mosier:

What's holding you back on AI? What are the barriers that keep you from maybe doing some of the things you would like to do with AI?

Lynn Bautista:

So data security is probably top of mind for any company as a barrier. And what we've seen in our company is that we're pretty far advanced when it comes to that. Our IT department really does evaluate a lot of the tools and really looking at security risks overall. So we do have a policy in place. We have a lot of governance around AI.

Some of the barriers that I would see, as in any company, would be maybe budget constraints. One thing that I think that we do have advantage of is that potentially other organizations may struggle in is that, since we're a little bit more advanced in our journey as it relates to AI, getting buy-in is not a challenge for us. Which I think is great because our CEO is very much involved in AI and what our AI journey is internally. So I think we're at an advantage from that perspective. It's just maybe not having enough budget.

Jeff Mosier:

Do you hear much from people about concerns that AI will cost them their job, or maybe make some of their responsibilities irrelevant?

Lynn Bautista:

So that's a really interesting question, and it's one that I actually love to answer. So if you look at the journey that we've been through, not only within Xerox, but in general around AI, three or four years ago, everyone had the fear, oh, AI is going to take away my job. I'm no longer needed. And that myth, I think that has changed so much because what AI really does is it empowers you to work better.

When you think about what can I do, I would actually want to be at an organization that gives me the tools to work better, to work more efficient. And when you think about scaling, and you don't have advanced headcounts in some cases, AI gives you the power to do more with the same amount of time. So you're actually becoming more efficient as an employee. So that myth about AI taking away the job, I don't think that no longer exists. And if you think about it this way, if you don't use AI, you could be without a job.

Jeff Mosier:

Yes.

Lynn Bautista:

But if you do use AI, you're more likely to become more efficient, more productive, and well-rounded through the tools that are provided to you.

Jeff Mosier:

That brings up the question of, to be able to use these tools and use AI effectively, you need training. You need to learn new things. So how do you all approach up-skilling, re-skilling, all of these ways that we have to adapt to an AI first world?

Lynn Bautista:

So one of the things that we've done within the organization through the marketing AI council and through the AI council overall for the corporation is we've done governance training already. We've done AI training, how to use that training, how to utilize AI best practices. We have also, in the marketing organization, we do what we're calling them brown bag sessions, where we're having just open webinars and we are teaching our organization on how to better use AI, what type of tools we have available to them, what are some of the prompts that they could be utilizing, how can they utilize this tool to their benefit?

So we are doing that very frequently, and it's been helping a lot. So we do a lot of PowerPoint presentations and just a lot of sharing of best practices. When we have a tool that we're investing in that's an external tool, we'll have that provider also provide training to the employees.

Jeff Mosier:

What would you like to do with AI that you can't do right now, whether it's either because of budget or because of staff or the technology's just not there yet?

Lynn Bautista:

I would love to see just an automatic input of a piece of collateral, a branded piece of collateral. We have that today, but we have just some specific prompts. I think I would love to see a piece of collateral from A to Z of a specific campaign, for example. And just AI goes in and does everything from A to Z for us. And all we have to do is go back and check and make sure that it's aligned with potentially what the strategy is related to that offering, if that makes sense.

Jeff Mosier:

It does. And that also brings up a question, as you add more AI in, how are you adjusting processes? Because in something like that, if you were to have AI create an entire campaign, you need people in there at different steps to make sure it's not going astray. So how have you adjusted processes to account for some of the speed and scale that you're able to accomplish with AI?

Lynn Bautista:

I don't think we're at a point yet where we have to adjust processes per se. What it does do with a lot of these custom GPTs that we have, and looking at client centricity, looking at brands, looking at legalities, that is all managed through our content team. So they're reviewing those different areas currently. It's not so much of a process change. It's more of probably not spending as much time as they were reviewing that particular step within the process, if that makes sense.

When it's related to my futuristic look of having that whole campaign, I think the process remains the same. I think what we would like to do, or what I would like to see in the future, is personalization that goes behind that campaign as well. I'm sending up something to Joe Smith, right? Do I know what Joe Smith likes? Do I know what he's focused on? And how can I put that sentiment into it to go the extra layer and make it additionally personalized? So I think that's the additional step that I would love to see in the future as well.

Jeff Mosier:

That makes sense. Is there anything that you've tried with AI that hasn't worked out that it's been a disappointment for you?

Lynn Bautista:

We've looked at translation, and we haven't found that one tool yet that we really love. That's why it's still on the list, and that's something that I feel that we'll solve for in the future.

Jeff Mosier:

So it sounds like you have a lot of different AI tools. Have you had any issues with bringing those all together holistically and having to deal with one tool doing one thing, another tool doing another thing, and all that stuff? Is there a way to bring all of that together? Kind of like you mentioned with the whole idea of being able to create an entire campaign, are there any issues with bringing those tools together and making sure that they function well together, or is it just individual hand-offs?

Lynn Bautista:

It's been individual hands-offs right now. I think in the future, as we continue to build our AI practice and we look at the different tools that we have, that's when we start integrating together.

Jeff Mosier:

Thank you so much. It's been-

Lynn Bautista:

Thank you.

Jeff Mosier:

... a real pleasure. This is a lot of fun.

Lynn Bautista:

It was a pleasure. Thank you.