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After digitalisation and digital transformation, data is the new hero on the playing field. A logical step when it comes to evolving towards an optimal customer experience. Companies are therefore looking for various different data profiles. In addition, agencies and consultancy firms are attaching greater importance to this in their current approach and services.

As a result, buzzwords are often bandied about and certain terms are misused or taken out of context. Translating data into practical business value is not always straightforward. At The Reference, we therefore use the term 'data consultant' as we place the emphasis on the broader picture and offer more concrete guidance according to the needs of our clients.

Our Senior Data Consultant Roel Peters and Data Consultant Senne Vermassen clarify a few things below.

Last week we celebrated 25 years The Reference. Zaal Lux in Ghent was transformed into our own, personal playground. Both clients and employees, casually called 'Reffers', were warmly welcomed to our 25th anniversary.

The Reference started at the end of 1993, early 1994 in a small living room. Over the next years The Reference grew and laid the basis for today’s success. Born in the '90s, our theme was quickly chosen. 

Prior to the celebration, we asked each guest to fill in a questionnaire, the starting point for a fun '90s revival. This data was then processed by our data team. They detected each guest's favorite '90s music and assigned them into one of five music vibes: Teen pop, Hip-Hop and R&B, Techno and Euro Dance, Brit Pop and Grunge. 

Natural Language Processing is a subfield of artificial intelligence and computer science, that concerns itself with a computers understanding of the human language. In recent years, many of its derived applications have been implemented in our everyday lives. I tell my car to call Peter, ask Shazam about that catchy song and, maybe soon, demand my computer to produce a Shakespeare-like sonnet to sway my girlfriend of her feet. These are some really cool applications, but if your company is not in the tech sector, is there business value in it for you?

We're chatting with Mathieu Dhondt who explains how to build a strong roadmap where customer and business value blend perfectly together

There are only a few yearly events that are able to provide an interesting as well as varied line-up. Combine this approach with a great location, excellent speakers and a fast evolving customer experience platform and you get the Sitecore User Group Conference!

Year by year this event draws in more and more developers, marketers and Sitecore partners to help streamline implementations, share insights and product developments and exchange information.

In line with our approach to have all things Sitecore top of mind, The Reference sent out its experts to attend this 2-days conference in the heart of the London business center.

Read below to see what we learned and experienced!

"Big data is not actually about the data. The revolution is not that there’s more data available. The revolution is that we know what to do with it now. That’s really the amazing thing." It's a quote from Gary King, political scientist and head of the Institute for Quantitative Social Science. In full honesty, we tend to overuse it in presentations and conversations regarding the buzzwordization of the field of data science. However, it is the best representation of how we think about data at The Reference.

The Reference has had a Growth Coach since the beginning of 2019.
‘A what?’ you may ask. The Growth Coach is a senior consultant who coaches enthusiastic young marketeers, helping them to take their digital marketing skills to the next strategic level. Compare it to a ‘turbo’ button you can push to make these enthusiastic marketeers have a valuable impact on your business even faster.

Birgit De Vries is our first Growth Coach, who set up the project with Birger Schrevens. The two of them are ideally placed to explain exactly how the whole thing works. 

It seems that artificial intelligence is not so different from the concept of Magic, as described by J.K.Rowling in her books about Harry Potter, and that both developers AND users of AI could benefit from a basic education in Hogwarts School for Witchcraft and Wizardry.

A client of ours asked us to help create a roadmap for a B2B customer service portal for one of their North American business units. They got stuck deciding on what to include in the portal and what to launch with first.

Our intense collaboration involved many of the client's stakeholders. It resulted in a roadmap where customer and business value blended perfectly together.

These are the 7 steps we took to maximize the customer portal value for our client and for their customers.

A couple of weeks ago, we hosted a lunch session on an often used theory in service design called "jobs-to-be-done". Sarie Robijt, Service Designer at The Reference, gave an in-depth talk and started off big, stating to her audience that:

You do not want to attend this event