>> Hello everyone, and welcome back to our wall-to-wall coverage of the Datacloud summit, this is Dave Vellante, and we're seeing the emergence of a next generation workload in the cloud, more facile access, and governed sharing of data is accelerating time to insights and action. Alright, allow me to introduce our next guest. Aimee Irwin is here, she's the vice president of strategy for Experian, and Matt Glickman is VP of customer product strategy at Snowflake, with an emphasis on financial services, folks, welcome to theCUBE, thanks so much for coming on. >> Thanks Dave, nice to be here. >> Hey so Aimee, obviously 2020's been pretty unique and crazy and challenging time for a lot of people, I don't know why, I've been checking my credit score a lot more for some reason on the app, I love the app, I had to lock it the other day, I locked my credit, somebody tried to do, and it worked, I was so happy, so thank you for that. So, we know Experian, but there's a ton of data behind what you do, I wonder if you could share kind of where you sit in the data space, and how you've seen organizations leverage data up to this point, and really if you could address some of the changes you're seeing as a result of the pandemic, that would be great. >> Sure, sure. Well, as you mentioned, Experian is best known as a credit bureau. I work in our marketing services business unit, and what we do is we really help brands leverage the power of data and technology to make the right marketing decisions, and better understand and connect with consumers. So we offer marketers products around data, identity, activation, measurement, we have a consumer-view data file that's based on offline PII and contains demographic interest, transaction data, and other attributes on about 300 million people in the US. And on the identity side we've always been known for our safe haven, or privacy-friendly matching, that allows marketers to connect their first party data to Experian or other third parties, but in today's world, with the growth in importance of digital advertising, and consumer behavior shifting to digital, Experian also is working to connect that offline data to the digital world, for a complete view of the customer. You mentioned COVID, we actually, we serve many different verticals, and what we're seeing from our clients during COVID is that there's a varying impact of the pandemic. The common theme is that those who have successfully pivoted their businesses to digital are doing much better, as we all know, COVID accelerated very strong trends to digital, both in e-commerce and in media-viewing habits. We work with a lot of retailers, retail is a tale of two cities, with big box and grocery growing, and apparel retail really struggling. We've helped our clients, leveraging our data to better understand the shifts in these consumer behaviors, and better psych-map their customers during this really challenging time. So think about, there's a group of customers that is still staying home, that is sheltered in place, there's a group of customers starting to significantly vary their consumer behavior, but is starting to venture out a little, and then there's a group of customers that's doing largely what they did before, in a somewhat modified fashion, so we're helping our clients segment those customers into groups to try and understand the right messaging and right offers for each of those groups, and we're also helping them with at-risk audiences. So that's more on the financial side, which of your customers are really struggling due to the pandemic, and how do you respond. >> That's awesome, thank you. You know, it's funny, I saw a twitter poll today asking if we measure our screen time, and I said, "oh my, no." So, Matt, let me ask you, you spent a ton of time in financial services, you really kind of cut your teeth there, and it's always been very data-oriented, you're seeing a lot of changes, tell us about how your customers are bringing it together, data, the skills, the people, obviously a big part of the equation, and applications to really put data at the center of the universe, what's new and different that these companies are getting out of the investments in data and skills? >> That's a great question, the acceleration that Aimee mentioned is real. We're seeing, particularly this year, but I think even in the past few years, the reluctance of customers to embrace the cloud is behind us, and now there's this massive acceleration to be able to go faster, and in some ways, the new entrants into this category have an advantage versus the companies that have been in this space, whether it's financial services or beyond, and in a lot of ways, they all are seeing the cloud and services like Snowflake as a way to not only catch up, but leapfrog your competitors, and really deliver a differentiated experience to your customers, to your business, internally or externally. And this past, however long this crisis has been going on, has really only accelerated that, because now there's a new demand to understand your customer better, your business better, with your traditional data sources, and also new, alternative data sources, and also being able to take a pulse. One of the things that we learned, which was an eye-opening experience, was as the crisis unfolded, one of our data partners decided to take the datasets about where the cases were happening from the Johns Hopkins, and World Health Organization, and put that on our platform, and it became a runaway hit. Thousands of our customers overnight were using this data to understand how their business was doing, versus how the crisis was unfolding in real time. And this has been a game-changer, and it's only scratching the surface of what now the world will be able to do when data is really at their fingertips, and you're not hindered by your legacy platforms. >> I wrote about that back in the early days of the pandemic when you guys did that, and talked about some of the changes that you guys enabled, and you know, you're right about cloud, in financial services cloud used to be an evil word, and now it's almost, it's become a mandate. Aimee, I wonder if you could tell us a little bit more about what your customers are having to work through in order to achieve some of these outcomes. I mean, you know, I'm interested in the starting point, I've been talking a lot, and writing a lot, and talking to practitioners about what I call the data life cycle, sometimes people call it the data pipeline, it's a complicated matter, but those customers and companies that can put data at the center and really treat that pipeline as the heart of their organization, if you will, are really succeeding. What are you seeing, and what really is the starting point, there? >> Yes, yeah, that's a good question, and as you mentioned, first party, I mean we start with first party data, right? First party data is critical to understanding consumers. And different verticals, different companies, different brands have varying levels of first party data. So a retailers going to have a lot more first party data, a financial services company, than say, an auto manufacturer. And while many marketers have that first party data, to really have a 360 view of the customer, they need third party data as well, and that's where Experian comes in, we help brands connect those disparate datasets, both first and third party data to better understand consumers, and create a single customer view, which has a number of applications. I think the last stat I heard was that there's about eight devices, on average, per person. I always joke that we're going to have these enormous, and that number's growing, we're going to have these enormous charging stations in our house, and I think we already do, because of all the different devices. And we seamlessly move from device to device, along our customer journey, and, if the brand doesn't understand who we are, it's much harder for the brand to connect with consumers and create a positive customer experience. And we cite that about 95 percent of companies, they are looking to achieve that single customer view, they recognize that they need that, and they've aligned various teams from e-commerce, to marketing, to sales, to at a minimum adjust their first party data, and then connect that data to better understand consumers. So, consumers can interact with a brand through a website, a mobile app, in-store visits, you know, by the phone, TV ads, et cetera, and a brand needs to use all of those touchpoints, often collected by different parts of the organization, and then add in that third party data to really understand the consumers. In terms of specific use cases, there's about three that come to mind. So first there's relevant advertising, and reaching the right customer, there's measurement, so being able to evaluate your advertising efforts, if you see an ad on, if I see an ad on my mobile, and then I buy by visiting a desktop website, understanding, or I get a direct mail piece, understanding that those interactions are all connected to the same person is critical for measurement. And then there's personalization, which includes improved customer experience amongst your own touchpoints with that consumer, personalized marketing communication, and then of course analytics, so those are the use cases we're seeing. >> Great, thank you Aimee. Now Matt, you can't really talk about data without talking about governance and compliance, and I remember back in 2006, when the federal rules of civil procedure went in, it was easy, the lawyers just said, "no, nobody can have access," but that's changed, and one of the things I like about what Snowflake's doing with the data cloud is it's really about democratizing access, but doing so in a way that gives people confidence that they only have access to the right data. So maybe you could talk a little bit about how you're thinking about this topic, what you're doing to help customers navigate, which has traditionally been such a really challenging problem. >> Another great question, this is where I think the major disruption is happening. And what Aimee described, being able to join together first and third party datasets, being able to do this was always a challenge, because data had to be moved around, I had to ship my first party data to the other side, and the third party data had to be shipped to me, and being able to join those datasets together was problematic at best, and now with the focus on privacy and protecting PII, this is something that has to change, and the good news is, with the data cloud, data does not have to move. Data can stay where it belongs, Experian can keep its data, Experian's customers can hold onto their data, yet the data can be joined together on this universal, global platform that we call the data cloud. On top of that, and particularly with the regulations that are coming out that are going to prevent data from being collected on either a mobile device or as cookies on web browsers, new approaches, and we're seeing this a lot in our space, both in financials and media, is to set up these data clean rooms, where both sides can give access to one another, but not have to reveal any PII to do that join. This is going to be huge, now you actually can protect your customers' and your consumers' private identities, but still accomplish that join that Aimee mentioned, to be able to relate the cause and effect of these campaigns, and really understand the signals that these datasets are trying to say about one another, again without having to move data, without having to reveal PII, we're seeing this happening now, this is the next big thing, that we're going to see explode over the months and years to come. >> I totally agree, massive changes coming in public policy in this area, and we only have a few minutes left, and I wonder if for our audience members that are looking for some advice, what's the, Aimee, what's the one thing you'd recommend they start doing differently, or consider putting in place that's going to set them up for success over the next decade? >> Yeah, that's a good question. You know, I think, I always say, first, harness all of your first party data across all touchpoints, get that first party data in one place and working together, second, connect that data with trusted third parties, and Matt suggested some ways to do that, and then third, always put the customer first, speak their language, where and when they want to be reached out to, and use the information you have to really create a better customer experience for your customers. >> Matt, what would you add to that? Bring us home, if you would. >> Applications. The idea that data, your data can now be pulled into your own business applications the same way that Netflix and Spotify are pulled into your consumer and lifestyle applications, again, without data moving, these personalized application experiences is what I encourage everyone to be thinking about from first principles. What would you do in your next app that you're going to build, if you had all your consumers, if the consumers had access to their data in the app, and not having to think about things from scratch, leverage the data cloud, leverage these service providers like Experian, and build the applications of tomorrow. >> I'm super excited when I talk to practitioners like yourselves, about the future of data, guys, thanks so much for coming on theCUBE, it was a really a pleasure having you, and I hope we can continue this conversation in the future. >> Thank you. >> Thanks. >> Alright, thank you for watching, keep it right there, we got great content, and tons of content coming at the Snowflake data cloud summit, this is Dave Vellante for theCUBE, keep it right there.