“Personalization, privacy and budget efficiency are massively driving data-driven marketing”

"Personalization, privacy and budget efficiency are massively driving data-driven marketing"

In an interview with the COMPUTER world, Siegfried Stepke, owner and Managing Director of e-dialog, describes what we can take with us from 2021 for the future, explains how the corona crisis and new work are affecting us and outlines the most important IT trends for the coming year. […]

In your opinion, how will the corona crisis affect the IT industry, companies and our society in the coming year?
Lockdowns and new work are sustainably driving digitalization forward. We only have to pay attention to the psychological burdens of this in the microcosm and solve them, and in the macrocosm we have to make sure that our economy cannot be kept alive in the long run by replacement payments.

What were your professional and personal highlights in 2021?
We are still on a significant growth course. Personalization, privacy and budget efficiency are driving data-driven marketing massively. By switching to one hundred percent remote work, we were able to recruit many experts outside of Austria for us.

Which topics do you think should be at the top of the agenda of IT managers in the coming year and why or which IT topics will play a particularly important role in 2022?
Above all, the establishment of a CDP (Customer Data Platform) dissolves the customer data silos and also promises to continue to be able to address customers in a targeted and personalized manner on all channels in the coming post-cookie era. In addition, data clean rooms are offered by various platforms for the GDPR-compliant enrichment of the data. The fact that raw data is used here in real time and machine learning not only provides insights, but also activates them is actually not new.

“Legally, we are all still violating any workplace regulations. Unfortunately, the legislator has not yet presented a forward-looking regulation, but because of the current situation, no one is asking anyway.“

Siegfried Stepke

The last two years have been marked by the pandemic and accelerated digitization and brought us hybrid working models. After the pandemic, the next – bigger – crisis, the climate crisis, has to be dealt with. How do you think companies need to change in terms of sustainability? What concrete measures are you/is your company planning for 2022 and beyond?
As a partner and user of the Google Cloud Platform, we benefit from the immense investments and innovations that have already been achieved here in terms of climate neutrality. The omission of many business trips (near and far) is also a consistently positive development. And let’s hope that more and more electricity will be generated more ecologically.

How well is your company or how well are Austrian companies generally positioned for new work – i.e. distributed teams, home office, hybrid working models, etc.?
Surprisingly, technically not so bad. Legally, we are all still violating any workplace regulations. Unfortunately, the legislator has not yet presented a forward-looking regulation, but because of the current situation, no one is asking anyway. From an organizational and cultural point of view, lessons will soon have to be learned from the exceptional situation, which will then also consider regular operations and re-evaluate social, psychological and communicative aspects.

Do you think that the tense situation regarding the shortage of IT specialists will improve in the coming years? What can be done in this area?
If I were not an optimist, the experience of distance learning in the last 18 months would make me pessimistic. The market will be looking for skilled workers, if necessary in even more globalized foreign countries thanks to remote work.

This article is part of a series of interviews for which the COMPUTER WORLD interviewed around 50 top managers from the IT industry. You can read more interviews in the next few weeks on computerwelt.at.

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