To deliver for its customers, Botify continues to reinvent how companies perform SEO. From those early days of the manual indexing of websites to the eras of keyword stuffing and anchor links, Botify is changing the landscape of optimization. In this extended conversation of The Transformation Debrief, Chris Hood, Digital Strategist at Google Cloud, hosts Pierre Couzy, Chief Technology Officer at Botify, and Robert Rothschild, Chief Marketing Officer at Botify, to discuss how they are helping drive more traffic and revenue with machine learning and artificial intelligence to reinvent how companies perform SEO.

CNA has a 120-year history of providing property and casualty insurance for U.S. customers. It turned to Google Cloud to modernize its analytics, consolidate data management, and deliver better decision-making tools for agents and executives. In this episode of The Transformation Debrief, Chris Hood, host of Google Cloud's That Digital Show, talks with two CNA executives — Rich Wein, a vice president and actuary, and Santosh Bardwaj, senior vice president for data and analytics — about the company's journey to the cloud and the effects it is having on business operations and the CNA corporate culture.

Baseball is a game that can be enjoyed in a variety of ways. Some fans, like season ticket holders, primarily engage by attending live games at the stadium. For others, the game is ubiquitous on their television, smartphone screens, or tablets throughout summer afternoons and evenings. Some people like getting deep into the massive world of advanced statistics, watching analysts on the web and TV, or reading sports reporters' daily stories. In this episode, Chris Hood is joined by Anil Jain, Managing Director for Media and Entertainment at Google Cloud, and Truman Boyes, Senior Vice President, Technology Infrastructure at Major League Baseball, to take a behind-the-plate look at how data is leveraged to create deeper insights to improve the game and help make baseball consumable by fans in exciting new ways.

Organizations are driving the complete transformation of their business by inventing new ways to accomplish their objectives using the cloud, from making core processes more efficient to improving how they reach and better serve their customers to achieving insights through data that fuel innovation. In today's continuously evolving digital world, it is increasingly critical to adapt to changing consumer demands and market trends as quickly as possible. Whatever your industry's challenge or use case, Google Cloud solutions can help improve efficiency and agility, reduce cost, participate in new business models, and capture new market opportunities. In this episode, Chris Hood sits with Umesh Vemuri, VP of Global Strategic Customers & Industries at Google, to discuss how customers can quickly implement cloud solutions to generate business value.

In this episode, we hear from Amit Zunjarwad, Chief Product Officer at ShareChat and Moj, about India’s home-grown social platforms that have more than 400 million monthly active users. The availability of affordable high-speed internet has encouraged the growth of video consumption in India. With that, ShareChat, India’s leading multilingual social media platform with 180M MAUs, and Moj, India’s biggest short video platform with close to 300M MAUs, have positioned themselves as the leading social media platforms in the country that focus on supporting content creators and consumers across different regions and languages. Amit talks about the creative economy and how content creators can drive social conversations and connect people across different parts of India, in 15 different languages. He also shares his strategy for growth, and plans that include turning ShareChat and Moj into a modern advertising platform through bite-sized content on the go. With concepts like virtual gifting where people can buy and send virtual gifts to content creators already in place, learn how the brand is boosting the Indian ecommerce industry while shaping the next generation of consumers.

The Covid-19 pandemic impacted many businesses, but the airline industry was perhaps one of the most affected. With travel bans that took place almost overnight, travel and transportation companies had to rethink and restrategize their business plans. In this episode, Theo chats with Kenneth Chang, Executive Vice President and Chief Marketing Officer at Korean Air, on how a business of 53 years had to pivot from its traditional ways to navigate the pandemic. Chang takes us through the challenges the airline faced, and how they leveraged technology to support quick decision-making that enabled the business to pivot quickly in turbulent times, taking advantage of the new opportunities presented to them during the pandemic. As a leader with foresight, Chang also shares how he instilled change management from an organizational viewpoint, building trust among employees. Keeping to the company's environmental values, we hear about the airline's green initiative, and how they are bringing in more fuel-efficient planes, steering away from the bigger is better mindset. But one of the most exciting things to look out for in the company's digital transformation journey is in the way they are looking to leverage the large pool of customer data, analyzing them to improve customer service. From building an app that gets employees their meals on time, to one that can help passengers track their luggage in transit, listen in to find out how the airline is innovating as it prepares for the future of travel in this post-pandemic season.

Ulta Beauty is now the largest beauty retailer in the United States, carrying more than 25,000 products from 500 established and emerging beauty brands, including Ulta Beauty's own private label. Despite many traditional retailers being faced with fierce competition, razor-thin margins, and declining sales, Ulta Beauty is still setting trends and producing fresh takes on what it means to be a beauty purveyor. Today, the company is trying on new digital offerings and cloud-enabled tools to deliver a vast array of personalized experiences and transform how shoppers buy and discover beauty yet again. On this episode, we continue our transformation series with Prama Bhatt, Ulta Beauty’s chief digital officer, to discuss the work her team is doing, and how they think through different perspectives and lenses to drive innovation.

In this episode, Theo speaks with ex-Googler, Dr. Jiang Hong, Head of TapTap Developer Services, and Founder of LeanCloud, which was acquired by gaming company XD Inc. Dr. Jiang shares his thoughts on the unique gaming market in China, and how XD, as the holding company of Asia’s largest game marketplace TapTap, is looking to help build a better game developer community in the industry. When it comes to the gaming community, understanding what players want in each market is key to growth, and Dr. Jiang discusses what factors support the success of Asian games in overseas markets. He talks about XD TapTap’s vision for global expansion, as well as the misconceptions and the opportunities that lie within the gaming world. Listen in to learn about his personal journey in the entrepreneurial world, the challenges that XD TapTap has overcome in its journey to success, and what he hopes for the future of game development and gaming.

In this episode, Theo and Paris speak with Professor Denpong Soodphakdee, VP of Khon Kaen University (KKU), on KKU’s digital transformation journey. Founded in 1964, KKU is an established university in northeastern Thailand with more than 40,000 students studying in 19 faculties. On a mission to prepare future global citizens to work in a fast evolving world, KKU also aims to be recognized both internationally and regionally as a leading university in research and technology. Prof. Denpong shares the challenges KKU overcame in digitalization, such as implementing training for less technical staff and driving a mindset shift for better adoption. He also talks about the benefits of no-code platforms, and how to get people engaged and excited about developing their own apps. Hear his first hand account about KKU’s first hackathon, the results, and what it takes to help lead the organization towards being a “Smart University” that others in the sector can model.

In this episode, Theo chats with Ash Austin, Practice Lead for Platforms at Bendigo and Adelaide Bank (Bendigo) on simplifying the banking experience for more than 1.9 million customers. As a community-focused bank, Ash shares what it means at Bendigo to put people first, and how Bendigo uses technology as an enabler to support the needs of their customers. He talks about the concept of a service-based model, where products, and skills, from dev-ops to project management, are developed based on the requirements of individual teams. This approach enables the bank to adopt a customer-first mindset. As people’s needs change, particularly since the pandemic, the organization is now exploring the potential of APIs in supporting new business opportunities and building partnerships across different sectors. Tune in to hear about the frictionless experience that sets Bendigo and Adelaide bank apart, and exciting new projects like their mobile-only digital bank, Up, that is set to transform the way people think about banking.

If you’re interested in the world of blockchain and decentralized finance (DeFi), then this episode is definitely not one you want to miss. DeFi has experienced exponential growth over the past few years, capturing the attention of investors globally. But with new opportunities, come new complexities and risks. One of the biggest challenges is distinguishing quality crypto assets from pure hype, particularly for non-institutional Investors. In the hot seat for this episode is Alex Svanevik, the Co-founder and CEO of Nansen, a blockchain analytics platform that enriches on-chain data with millions of wallet labels. Nansen’s mission is to be a driving force in offering crypto investors trusted, high quality data intelligence to enable them to make informed decisions, quickly. Crypto investors use Nansen to discover opportunities, perform due diligence and grow their portfolios with real-time dashboards and alerts. But he’s not the only guest we have on the show. In the co-host seat with Theo is Paris Tran, Territory Account Manager, Digital Native of Google Cloud. Listen in as Alex shares the genesis of Nansen with Theo and Paris, as well as the inner workings of deploying AI algorithms to analyze petabytes of crypto trading data per day, and their vision for the future of DeFi.

This week, Theo speaks to Ashish Kumar Singh, CHRO of Meesho and our pioneer HR C-suite on the show. As India’s fastest growing internet commerce platform, Meesho is democratizing e-commerce and bringing innovation online. With the Meesho marketplace supporting small businesses, individual entrepreneurs and everything in between, Ashish touches on their “users-first mantra,” which not only refers to customers, but also Meesho’s own employees. When the pandemic hit, it not only affected demand on Meesho’s platform, but also impacted ways of working. One main area of focus was brought to light - the challenge of achieving work-life balance. As CHRO, Ashish shares unique, first hand insights on how the company leverages technology such as MeeBOT for pulse collection, and to measure the employee experience, looking for areas of improvement. He also covers the importance of ensuring transparent communication and collaboration. From tips on enabling a remote workforce to leveraging tools like Google Meet, listen in as Ashish discusses future-of-work models, the implications of technology on our everyday lives and how Meesho has stayed at the forefront of reimagining new ways of work.

David Lynch, Group CTO from bolttech, joins the show with Jay to talk about how insurtechs of today are emerging from the convergence of technology and insurance. As the world’s largest technology-enabled ecosystem for protection insurance and the most international insurtech, bolttech operates in over 30 markets. The business works collaboratively with 180+ insurance carriers on its platform that need access to technology, advocating the need for insurance companies that implement AI and machine learning, to augment their services to deliver better products and protection outcomes. David also discusses trends such as the shift towards usage-based insurance and the consequent need for the industry to invent new products, with insurtechs fuelling the acceleration of product innovation. At the same time, the fully digital insurance purchase journey is becoming a reality in the embedded insurance or microinsurance areas. He shares insights on finding a balance between supply and demand, as well as achieving growth in the marketplace. From key factors that affect customer acquisition, to new revenue generation opportunities, tune in to find out more about bolttech’s research on what is needed to build a successful, future-ready marketplace.

Zebra Technologies is one of the largest suppliers of barcode printing and scanning devices globally. In 1991, Zebra introduced 2D barcode scanners followed by Radio Frequency Identification (RFID) tracking tags, rugged mobile computers, tablets, and wearable devices for increased inventory and asset visibility. Lately, it's been acquiring companies in software, robotics, AI, data capture, and real-time location systems, all to help it transform from a traditional hardware-centric company to a software solutions organization to realize a vision it calls enterprise asset intelligence (EAI) at the edge. Today, Zebra has customers in manufacturing, retail, healthcare, transportation, logistics, and the public sector, with over 10,000 partners across 100 countries. In today's episode, Chris Hood sits down with Janet Kennedy, Vice President, North America Regions at Google Cloud, and Tom Bianculli, SVP and CTO at Zebra Technologies, to go behind the scenes of this Transformation Debrief conversation to learn how Zebra Technologies has navigated these changes.

In this episode, Theo speaks to Ronak Shah, Head of Data at apna.co. As one of the largest gig economies in the world, India is seeing rising numbers among younger people joining the ecosystem. Driven by digital adoption and new ways of working, Apna saw an opportunity to help bridge the gap between employers and potential candidates. Leveraging data and AI technology, Ronak shares how the company is able to level the playing field for those in the gig economy, and help millions of people achieve their goals. By focussing on what data reveals, Apna is able to apply the learnings to the marketplace, assist in upskilling people and build a community. With over 22 million on the platform in India, Ronak also shares how Apna maintains safety and security not just in terms of data privacy, but also in creating a collaborative and inclusive space for all to learn from one another. Through quizzes and language aptitude tests, Apna helps recruiters identify skill sets easily, for a good match. Listen in as Ronak reveals Apna’s global expansion plans to serve one billion users, and provide even more upskilling on the platform.

Theo is in the interviewer’s chair for this episode as Frank Liu from Zilliz joins the show to talk about how AI and machine learning are making it possible for developers to understand and extract more value from unstructured data such as text, audio, images, video, and more. Traditional databases are great for handling structured data, such as information that can easily be captured and categorized in a table. For example, a book database would have columns for the title and author. This allows the data to be searched, sorted, and filtered according to those values. However, unstructured data isn't so easily managed. Frank explains how vector databases and AI can use algorithms and increased compute power to search unstructured data without relying on just tags and keywords. This has led to Zilliz being a major contributor to two open source projects - Milvus, which stores embedding vectors and feature maps from trained machine learning models, and Towhee, a machine learning platform built on top of Google’s Tensorflow and the Pytorch open source machine learning framework. Tools like these could be used to do a reverse image search to find similar photos, or even music recommendations based on the rhythm or sound of the music instead of being restricted to artist and genre keywords. Frank shares some of the highly specific and interesting use cases Zilliz has seen in fields like network security and pharmaceutical molecular analysis, in their journey to being the one-stop-shop for anyone needing to understand human-generated unstructured data.

In this episode, Jay and Theo are joined by Pak Kusumo Martanto, CEO & Co-Founder of Blibli, who shares how the business is constantly adapting and staying agile to ensure excellent e-commerce experiences for millions in Indonesia. Pak Kusumo discusses how the pandemic was a wake-up call for many, with the needs of customers constantly changing. Keeping in mind that the digital economy saw a 50% increase globally over the past two years, and insights that are unique to Indonesia, for example being a gadget centric-culture, Blibli saw an opportunity for service fulfilment and helping partners with digital infrastructure. By leveraging technology and big data, Blibli was able to build a single customer view to guide their omni-channel strategy. In doing so, the business was able to introduce features that help improve the daily lives of people in Indonesia, swiftly and securely. From “Click-and-collect” at the closest store available, to their “Cinta Bumi” and “Buy-now-Pay-Later” programs, people and technology have been at the centre of every innovation, be it online or offline. Pak Kusumo also shares how Blibli places emphasis on digital security to ensure that customers’ data remain safe from cyber threats. By having a deep understanding of customers and their motivations, Blibli is able to ensure a seamless end-to-end experience across the retail value chain, right up to last mile delivery.

Faced with changing customer behaviors and demands, tightening margins, and increasing threat from digital competitors, financial services institutions (FSIs) will need to meet customers where they are, open up their services, and establish new ways to monetize their products. Doing so will also enable them to build a better profile of their customers, and deliver more personalized user experiences and fast, convenient banking and payment services. Cloud technology plays a big role in this shift toward digital FSIs. In Asia, bank branches now account for just 12% to 21% of monthly transactions in the region, with customers turning to digital channels for routine transactions such as peer-to-peer transfers and bill payments, according to McKinsey&Company. Overall customer engagement has climbed from an average 12.7 to 14.9 transactions a month in Asia's developed markets, and from 6 to 8.1 in emerging markets. In today's episode, Chris Hood chats with Paul Rohan and Aser Blanco to learn why embedding financial services into digital experiences can generate new revenue.

Enterprises across the globe are struggling to innovate because their data and applications are siloed, disconnected, and not easily accessible. Today, Google Cloud is announcing the general availability of Apigee Integration, a solution that helps enterprises easily connect their existing data and applications and surface them as easily accessible APIs that can power new experiences. Data and applications are enablers of digital experiences. However, for many enterprises across the world, data and applications are siloed, buried inside various on-premises and cloud servers, and cannot be easily accessed by internal developers or partners. This challenge slows down efforts of digital transformation by extending development timelines from weeks to months. Integration and API management solutions address this challenge by enabling developers to seamlessly connect their data and applications, and surface them as easily consumable APIs. In this episode, Chris Hood sits down with Scott Haaland and Andrew Pickelsimer to better understand how an API-first approach to integration can help deliver on consumer expectations and generate business value.

Enterprises across the globe are seeing surging demand for digital experiences from their customers, employees, and partners. For many of these enterprises, hundreds of business applications are hosted in private or public clouds that interact with their users (customers, partners, and employees) spread across geographies, channels (web, mobile, APIs, VPNs, and cloud services), and time zones. As a consequence of this surge in demand, enterprises are also experiencing increased pressure to fortify their technical infrastructure against cyber attacks. The number of reported cyber attacks on U.S. companies rose 69% in 2020 from the previous year, according to the Federal Bureau of Investigation. Web and API attacks cannot be prevented but can be mitigated—a recent study showed that 55% of organizations experience a DDoS attack at least every month. While many enterprises are accelerating digital transformation to build omnichannel experiences, they need to keep security and privacy top of mind across all of these channels. This goal can only be supported by implementing a robust security architecture and organizational policy enforcement model that enables enterprises to prevent, detect, and react to newer threats, in near-real time. While it is easy to say, implementation of such a system can be extremely challenging. In this episode, Chris Hood is joined by Sai Saran Vaidyanathan and Sachin Kalra to break down the benefits and best practices for securing APIs for safer application development in the cloud.