AI Reframes Marketing and IT Collaboration at Siemens Healthineers

Jeff Mosier:

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

Linda Brunner:

Thank you, Jeff. So I'm Linda Brunner. I am part of the Siemens Healthineers Organization, actually reporting into our CIO and responsible for brand to demand and purchase from an IT infrastructure enabling perspective.

Jeff Mosier:

So Linda, you have experience with both marketing and IT now. Can you tell me a little bit about the importance of having that connection, being able to have the CMO and the CIO have a strong relationship and have those departments work together closely?

Linda Brunner:

I think as technology continues to be innovative, to drive change, to drive transformation, it is even more relevant and more important for that relationship to be a very close relationship and it needs to be based on trust and it needs to be based on an understanding of business impact and outcomes. And I think that for me has been a super sweet spot because coming from the business side, understanding the business, being able to speak and communicate from a business language perspective has brought the teams way closer together.

Jeff Mosier:

Do you feel like that relationship is evolving? Is it the same now that it would've been say five years ago or something like that?

Linda Brunner:

No, it is evolving. And I think the whole area of AI now coming into it and agents and enterprise platforms having inherent capabilities and yet still looking to innovate for that based on strategic imperatives and also competitive advantage is where we're looking to drive the topic collectively between the business and the IT organization.

Jeff Mosier:

Sure. So where does your organization stand as far as AI maturity in marketing and where do y'all land right now?

Linda Brunner:

So I'm going to say we are at its infancy from my perspective. What we are putting in place, of course, being in the healthcare space, needing to hold ourselves high from a data privacy perspective of patients, even the healthcare providers, and then ensuring safety from a cybersecurity perspective is where we've really put a lot of time and effort into setting the basis for that. Yes, ChatGPT, yes, we're using Windows Copilot. They are within our own instance and securing that and then building on that, some of the first areas will be in the content generation, but using our own internal, our brand assets, the capabilities, also the tonality that we're going out there. What is our overarching business, mission, and vision and tying that in. And then we're putting together an ecosystem that we can build on that has some basic building blocks that as an IT organization, we're providing that infrastructure and then still enabling either a country or a zone to, I would say, fine-tune it, customize it a little bit, but more from an agentic perspective and building on top of that.

Jeff Mosier:

I'm going to say based on everything you're saying, it doesn't sound like you're in your infancy with AI. Y'all are far more advanced than a lot of companies out there. So where do you expect to be in, say, 12 months? How do you see AI and marketing evolving for you guys?

Linda Brunner:

So we're really looking at that continuum. So we're looking to build out the capabilities in the marketing content and campaign planning and orchestration from a global perspective, but on a local level so that the content becomes much more relevant based on the country's go to-market initiatives. And of course, there's aspects, doing business in 75 countries, there's local languages that need to be involved. Everything needs to go through in a review approval and release process, tying that in. So those are the sort of composable architecture that's around that is where we are trying to bring some of that to bear. To answer your question specifically on where we see ourselves over the course of the next 12 months, we're in the process of piloting some of these just to confirm or reconfirm the robustness of our ecosystem and then continuing to look to build out on that. So managing expectations as well as setting the basis to ensure that we can scale is the approach that we are taking over the course of the next, I'm going to say, six, nine, 12, 18 months.

Jeff Mosier:

Yeah. Managing expectations, that has to be really important with something that is so new and evolving so quickly. So how do you address experimentation and being prepared to try out pilot projects that might fail, but then you need to move along to the next thing?

Linda Brunner:

So it's really trying to find that sweet spot. Where do we have ambassadors in the organization that have a change mindset and are ready to try some of these things, realizing that it may not be the 100%? So we're talking about minimal viable products. They don't have all the bells and west cells where, as I said, we're looking at the content generation and really looking to expedite that. We're looking to tie it to the review and approval process, but then we're also looking in the area of a knowledge assistant for our sales organization so that they can access then a lot of this material based on their plans for their next calls because there's nothing in our space that's going to be 100% online from a sales.

Linda Brunner:

Buying groups are key. How do we really bring forth the capabilities of all those resources that we have and all that knowledge that we have so that we can bring it to the fingertips, not only of our marketing colleagues, but then also for our sales organization, our commercial organization. And that ties all the way into our customer service folks who also, in some instances and some different perspectives, have a sales role.

Jeff Mosier:

Where have you seen the biggest value coming from AI and marketing so far?

Linda Brunner:

I'm going to say the fine-tuning of some of the content and putting it more from a relevancy perspective in the words that it's an advantage for the customer. Because coming from a very technical, I'm going to say German centric, innovative, high quality, yet engineering, ensuring that the customer's at the center of that and that we're speaking... And I'm not going into personalization from a one-to-one because there's not a lot of that in our space. All of it is buying group, yet the message can be the same message, but making it relevant to the procurement folks, to the chief operating officer in some of these HCPs and making it relevant to either the radiologists or the clinicians or the laboratorians is where I think the biggest positive impact will be so that we can do more with the same. That's not to replace anyone because it needs to be human centered, but it's to augment.

Jeff Mosier:

So as far as benefits in the future, where do you see AI potentially offering the greatest advantages in the future? How do you see its advantages evolving?

Linda Brunner:

I'm going to say, I mean, we're looking at all different aspects of it. We're looking at a tender generation when we're going to the commercial organization, we're looking at voice capabilities, even to make it more interactive and more relevant from a customer service perspective. Being able to connect and do voice recognition of the customer and understand what it is that they have in their facilities and what may be some. So tying some of the AI that we're building into the products themselves, but then be able to answer some of that. I think that's where the magic is going to happen. Customers will still be at the center. They will still have personal touchpoints with us because it's very relevant to them, and yet we'll be able to provide them more at their fingertips because we have more available at our fingertips.

Jeff Mosier:

What barriers are out there that could hold you back from achieving that? Are there speed bumps in the road that you're looking at right now?

Linda Brunner:

Change management is a huge piece of that. And moving an organization that is highly matrixed, that is complex, a portfolio that is super complex, and a sale that is super complex. And moving that together, I think is where we're trying to understand how quickly we can scale, how much of it needs to come top down, how much it will come from bottom up. How do we ensure that we bring our employees along with that because there will be some change. My role will not look the same. I know that already in 12 to 18 months from now. Do I know what it will look like? No, yet I need to be ready. So we're often speaking about some of these sort of unicorns that you're looking for. People that have a foot and an understanding of the business, understand enough about the technology and yet are not afraid of it, yet will embrace it in order for us to get to that next step.

Linda Brunner:

And so upskilling our organization, bringing folks along, doing some reverse mentoring of those that are coming right out of school that are way more digital savvy than a lot of the folks that of course have years of experience and that knowledge we want to capture and showing everyone the value that's in it for all of us or for each of us on an individual basis, as well as as an organization and pushing through from fear to courage. And I know there's a lot of buzzwords in there, but that's in essence what needs to happen.

Jeff Mosier:

So let's go to risk. You mentioned earlier that's obviously something you'll have to be careful about, companies in the medical field, financial services, governments, all those types of industries or organizations, that's really important. How do you approach responsible AI in dealing with some of those potential risks and what are the biggest risk? Is it just the personal data that could be coming through your systems or what are some other risk issues that you have to be careful about?

Linda Brunner:

I think I mentioned some of it already, and you just alluded to a lot of it, but the data privacy, there is an expectation from healthcare providers that we are going to hold ourselves to that highest standard. And there have been reports in the news with cybersecurity attacks where it comes in and it can bring an entire system down. Understanding that on an individual employee basis and ensuring that we are doing our utmost to make sure that our customers continue to run. Because at the end, there are patients that are potentially impacted. I think those are the big things. And then to also ensure the ethics of the utilization of it. And while everyone is excited around it, you don't want to stifle that innovation, yet you want to provide the guardrails around it so that it is safe, both from an employee perspective, that we're not leaking any sort of data that people aren't even thinking about as they use some of these internal tools or external tools and to ensure that they are testing and practicing inside the safety of our infrastructure.

Jeff Mosier:

How do you think about having that evolve as it goes forward, as more AI use cases come in? It seems like those kind of responsible AI practices are going to have to evolve with it because there's going to be so many more opportunities, but also so many more risk coming in at the same time.

Linda Brunner:

Yeah. I think that's a fine balance and I don't have all the answers to that yet. And as an organization, we don't have all the answers to it. We want to enable the organization to a point where it's more of a citizen development approach to it. And so the basic building blocks, prompting, how are we going to approach that? How much training is going to be available and not only training so you can check a box that they've taken this, but then on the job learning and trial by error. And I think that's another potential risk. How many people are going to go with us and how many folks where the fear is going to not purposefully, but push them back into, "This is what I know and I'm not going to try that."

Linda Brunner:

So it's that fine line. And I think the aspect of change management, anytime that we roll out any projects or programs, yes, it's always mentioned. I think in the case of this, for this paradigm shift, as large as it's going to be, it needs to be at the forefront of that and to meet people where they currently are and to take them with us. I think that's a nut to be cracked and we don't have the crackers for it yet.

Jeff Mosier:

But you do know what the issues are and you know how to address it. And if you know what the problem is, that's the first step towards solving it, if you understand it.

Linda Brunner:

And I think the other piece is everyone, including myself, is comfortable with the way that we've always done things. And what digitalization, what automation, what AI will bring to the table is how robust are those processes? How robust do they need to be? And where can we then show positive business impact and outcome as quickly as possible so that it becomes more tangible for more people in the organization and that comfort level increases.

Jeff Mosier:

That's fantastic. That's all the questions I have. Is there any other issues related to AI and marketing that you would like to address? Things that I didn't cover or things that you think are particularly important for people to know?

Linda Brunner:

Yeah. I just think, and it may be very biased and selfish, having been on the business side, always being in the marketing domain and now being on the IT side, this is a tremendous opportunity. People need to embrace it and yet they need to approach it really from this sort of human centered, augmented. And I know there's a lot out there where people are talking about autonomy and autonomous AI. It's not going to happen without the people piece of it, at least not in the healthcare space.

Jeff Mosier:

Okay, fantastic. Thank you so much.

Linda Brunner:

All right.

Jeff Mosier:

This is fantastic.