Interview: Zuzanna Onderko, The Media Trader

Welcome to the new interview series launched by Creative Intelligence where we try to understand and gain insight into how businesses today actually manage transformation and the transition in achieving that.  

My name is Nathan Relevy and I am the MD and Founder of Creative Intelligence and I have been in tech, systems, processes and transformation for over 20 years. 

Today we are speaking with Zuzanna Onderko of The Media Trader.

If you’d like your business to be featured please connect with me here: https://www.dhirubhai.net/in/nathan-relevy-36555419/

Nathan: Many thanks for agreeing to be interviewed. So first of all, if I can just ask you briefly to describe your business. What does your business do?

Zuzanna: We are The Media Trader, an international B2B company that provides solutions for the media buying market. What drives us is a strong belief that this market needs a change, because it cannot work anymore in the same way as it did for the last 20 years.

We have a strong team of experienced traders who know this market by heart and observe daily the crucial problems that can plunge even the biggest players. For example – a few years ago, one of the biggest marketing giants collapsed because they didn't implement modern solutions to control their spending: what they were buying, and what they were selling to who.

Having these insights, we are proposing a modern, automated solution that will address the problems we have found.

We are offering a PaaS that features a fully automated invoicing system, AI-based predictions and live negotiation tools. You can think of it as a Wikipedia of media, where one can easily search through tagged publishers’ database to understand which one will be the best fit for the order. However, on our platform you can also directly buy what you liked – it’s a bit like Amazon, with its ease to purchase with just a few clicks.

What is important as a B2B tool, our system is integrated with all the biggest invoicing providers like Sage, Salesforce and Xero.

Nathan: Okay, that's fantastic. So I'd like to ask you, within your organisation what challenges you face in transforming your business, both in terms of distributed teams, as well as in general. Because for you to better support your clients and your marketplace, you need to perhaps transform internally. So what challenges do you face in achieving that?

Zuzanna: I would mention two big challenges that I observe not only in our company, but also when talking to colleagues from different businesses.

First one is expanding the team. Everyone will tell you how difficult it is to find the right people. And by right, you must remember that it doesn’t only mean smart or experienced. You can find someone very smart, who won’t be the right fit! For example, they may have expected something different from the way the work is done, and they would quickly leave. Or, they may be smart and have a lot of knowledge, but they struggle with their efficiency in a start-up environment, that is completely different than corporate.

The second big challenge, that we are very focused on right now, is the “know-your-client” rule.

You can have plenty of great ideas on how to make a perfect tool, but if you're not doing constant feedback, and if you're not testing it with a small batch of users first, you may go very far from reality. You always need to remember what your client needs, and you need to know the client very well.

I think that is a huge challenge to balance between building a modern, cutting-edge solution and implementing it in a way that will make our users want to work on it, which is not just making a pleasant-looking UI.

 For example, if you're developing a web application, and you may think that it must work perfectly on Chrome, and no one is using Internet Explorer anymore. Unfortunately, this is not the case, and plenty of people and our clients are using IE because sometimes they simply cannot install another browser on a corporate computer. And if you won't remember about that, you may develop something that will have features that just don't work on IE because of the software limitations. And the app may be great on Chrome, but no one cares about this because the crucial users are still going to use it on IE.

We are strongly focusing on getting to know our clients and we have recently released a small proof of concept that we're testing with one of them, that gave us a lot of insight on what they need and how they work, what kind of mistakes they can make, and all those things.

Nathan: Okay. So what successes would you say that you've had so far that you're able to build upon?

Zuzanna: As I mentioned before, releasing our POC was an important milestone for us, because even with such a limited tool we saw that it will provide us and our clients a huge relief with the processes we have. We have proven, that indeed there's a need in the market for solutions like that.  And you can only imagine how helpful it will be when we will implement all the features we have in the roadmap. This is a very motivating moment, to see something you have created being used and helping the business.

Zuzanna: And another part of our success is that we have a very strong sales team that is actively introducing our products among core players in the market. And many of them have already confirmed their interest in using it.

Nathan: Okay. And are you encountering much resistance in the marketplace with clients, or are you finding that they're embracing the transformation, the change that you have to offer?

Zuzanna: Of course we do encounter some resistance, but it's something we really, really expect. In our market, many people who are working in this field have been doing things in the same way for 20 years, and we expect them to say, "Well but it's working, so why would I change it?" Especially the operations teams - the media buyers, because they don't necessarily see the big picture and importance of digitalisation and control. That’s why we are focusing on understanding what they are coping with daily and how to build something that would help them too. It’s easier to convince the managers because they already know they need better reports and spending tracking, but we do remember about everyone in the hierarchy, and we are trying to provide something for everyone. We are holding a lot of talks and presentations with clients where we listen to their problems and build solutions that will address them.

Nathan: Okay. So is your approach to transformation, would you say, continuous or fixed? In other words, do you see the transformation as a project with a clear start and end? Or do you feel that transformation is a constantly evolving thing, and you have a continuous review of transformations that are underway, or that need to take place?

Zuzanna: We believe it's a continuous process. I like to think of it in an Agile way with its short sprints of addressing certain problems, and then coming back to the backlog, taking another problem, planning another short sprint, and again, and again… I would never think a transformation is a process that ends somewhere - there's always something that we can improve, something that we can change for the better because the world around us is always changing and the new problems, new ideas would arise. If you will stop and think you’ve done it all, you are already falling behind. And recently we are being painfully reminded that there are things you cannot predict, like the health crisis we are experiencing now.

Nathan: Okay, thank you. So what opportunities do you feel lie ahead, both in terms of business or technology? Where do you see this could go?

Zuzanna: Our primary goal is always to automate as many processes as possible, and to reduce the error rate and headcount. But there are different tools to make this happen. But we do see a lot of potential in using Artificial Intelligence in that, and we gather now data to build neural networks that will, for example, suggest different solutions for different clients based on their previous choices. A recommendation engine, if you prefer.

Zuzanna: And this is just one of the ideas of how to implement AI in our platform. There's plenty of things we can do there. But before you can write any network, you need to have a robust database of good quality data first. So it's a thing in a very close future because we need to gather this data to learn neural networks on - you cannot build a model without any data. And then the more data you have, the better results you will get. So for us, the future lies in AI.

Nathan: Okay, thank you. And if I may, one final question, how would you describe the reaction of your clients to the services that you provide, and especially when they start using the services? For example, are they amazed at what can be achieved with the technology, and does it make them want more, and more, and more? Or are they approaching it with fear and trepidation? How would you characterise their reaction?

Zuzanna: It much depends on the client I think, because we approached some clients, and I wouldn't say that there's always a big excitement, but it's not the great fear either. I think it's in between because people do see a potential in it. They are usually open but reserved.

Zuzanna: I think it's all about the way you will explain to the client how it is going to help them. For example, we had a recurring problem in one of the processes that were acknowledged by our client too. After we have built the tool to address it, we told them: Look, if you’re going to use this with us, the problems we had in the past won't affect us anymore. Of course, everyone needs time to get used to the new tool, but in the end, if they see the reason and future benefit, they will trust us and cooperate.

Nathan: Okay. Well, thank you very much, Zuzanna. I appreciate your time.

Zuzanna: No worries. It was great speaking to you.

Thanks for reading. If you know a business leader transforming, we’d love to interview them, please tag them in if so. If you’d like your business to be featured please direct message me on LinkedIn here: https://www.dhirubhai.net/in/nathan-relevy-36555419/