Enterprise Thought Leadership

Consolidating the MarTech stack was supposed to produce one clear reporting picture. It did not.

Adrianne Haynes-Samuel, digital and technology principal at Modern, argues the tooling is rarely the problem. The data model underneath it is. It goes out of date as service offerings change and CRM fields get edited.

Taryn Breetzke speaks with Adrianne about Halo IQ, the product she heads up. It sits on top of an existing stack, normalises CRM data and maps every interaction on an account. She explains why around half of CMOs distrust the attribution model they already have.

The second half turns to the dark funnel. When buyers research inside AI platforms first, first touch stops being measurable. Adrianne argues for measuring AI references instead.

Four takeaways

1. Attribution assumes consistent data. Change a CRM field and the two year view breaks.

2. Governance comes before tooling. Frameworks produce the attribution model, not the reverse.

3. Lead counts do not answer what boards actually want to discuss.

4. Most AI projects are automation projects. The foundational problems sit underneath.

Timestamps

00:01:45 What led to building Halo IQ

00:02:20 Why plugging tools together made reporting worse

00:03:30 Data redundancy and reporting across an 18 to 24 month journey

00:04:30 Orchestration on top of the stack instead of ripping things out

00:05:50 Mapping the full account journey to defend marketing budget

00:06:45 The gumball machine problem

00:08:30 Fishbone mapping by hand and why it had to be automated

00:11:50 Proving marketing impact at board level

00:12:50 Why CMOs do not trust their own data

00:13:50 Linking spend across long campaign cycles to ROI

00:17:30 Moving the board conversation from leads to growth

00:18:50 Boards reining in marketing and MarTech spend

00:19:50 Foundational process focus rising from 11% to 31%

00:20:50 Holding tech suppliers to KPIs rather than treating them as vendors

00:22:00 Governance frameworks for selecting tech

00:23:50 Sales and marketing sharing attribution instead of claiming credit

00:25:00 Where AI helps and where it is really an automation problem

00:27:40 Freeing up 20% of a day for thinking

00:29:20 The GEO shift and the dark funnel

00:30:20 Measuring AI references instead of first touch

00:32:40 Review platforms and how AI compares you to competitors

00:34:40 Employee and industry influencers as a channel

00:38:20 The one belief B2B marketing leaders should let go of

00:40:30 Where to find Modern and Halo IQ

Notable quotes

"It's really difficult to build a castle on sand if you're not sure what's gonna be happening." Adrianne Haynes-Samuel

"Attribution assumes a fundamental, which is that you're working on consistent data." Adrianne Haynes-Samuel

"It's not the tech, and it's not attribution that's the North Star." Adrianne Haynes-Samuel

Stats and references

• Around 50% of CMOs do not trust the attribution model they have in place. (Adrianne Haynes-Samuel)

• CMOs naming foundational process work as a core focus: around 11% to around 31%. (Adrianne Haynes-Samuel)

• Automating menial tasks can return around 20% of a day for thinking. (Adrianne Haynes-Samuel)

• Ten accounts mapped by hand could take one person a month. (Adrianne Haynes-Samuel)

Connect

Adrianne Haynes-Samuel: https://www.linkedin.com/in/adriannehaynessamuel/

Modern and Halo IQ: https://modernb2b.co

Taryn Breetzke: https://www.linkedin.com/in/tarynbreetzke/ 

TechPros.io: https://www.linkedin.com/company/techpros-io

Follow us on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/enterprise-thought-leadership/

For decades, business software sat still and waited for you to come to it. You pulled the report, built the pivot table, went looking for the number. That's beginning to flip. The system speaks first.

Tim Bond interviews Amir Jirbandey, who leads international marketing at Personio, about what that shift means and where it leads. The conversation moves from a simple proactive nudge ("your team hasn't taken time off in two months") to the harder truth Amir keeps returning to: context, not the model, is the bottleneck. The richest conversations live on WhatsApp and never reach the system.

They get into Personio's internal AI drive, a month-long programme and hackathon that produced around 400 agents, the 5,000-plus Gong calls loaded into Snowflake and fed into Claude, the account-targeting model that lifted accepted-pipeline odds from the low thirties to around seventy per cent in some territories, and why AI fluency now shapes who Personio hires. They close on performance management, the big-brother tension, and what leaders should do next.

ABOUT THE GUEST

Amir leads international marketing at Personio, covering European territories outside DACH. He has spent around 15 years in B2B tech, predominantly in venture-backed startups through expansion, including Mailjet, Paddle and Treatwell, and was the first commercial hire at AI-voice startup Papercup, acquired in 2025. A computer science graduate, he describes himself as a generalist who puts the pieces of the puzzle together.

Personio is an all-in-one HR platform for people and HR leaders, founded around ten years ago in Munich. It serves the mid-market, typically organisations of 100 to 2,000 employees. The platform was rebuilt from the ground up alongside a rebrand last year.

TIMESTAMPS

[00:00] Cold open: the missing piece in AI for marketing is contextual awareness, not the model[00:02] The startup journey: Mailjet, Paddle, Treatwell and Papercup[00:05] Different pressures: VC-backed startups vs PE-backed and public companies[00:09] AI as a tool: handing teams back 20 to 40% of menial work, the AI-dubbing analogy[00:12] Why context awareness is the real unlock[00:13] Claude Enterprise at Personio: context-aware chats, a personal "CMO" sparring agent, MCP connectors[00:16] The data problem: stale information and the conversations trapped on WhatsApp[00:19] Garbage in, garbage out: why the right data is paramount[00:22] Three differentiators: a ground-up rebuild, deep reporting customisation, and a fast-growing HR function[00:25] The HR tech AI story: reactive and proactive insights[00:28] Performance management: still human-led, deliberately not handed to AI[00:29] The bigger question, and the big-brother tension[00:34] 5,000+ Gong calls into Snowflake, married to cleaned data[00:35] Account propensity rising from around 30 to 35% up to around 70% accepted pipeline in some territories[00:38] The internal AI drive: month-long programme, hackathon, around 400 agents[00:42] AI fluency as a hiring bar

KEY QUOTES

AI is a tool that's going to enable you to do 20, 30, 40% of the more menial work that you do... so that way you can focus your kind of craft on the top end of the spectrum.

— Amir Jirbandey

The component that's missing right now to be able to do that using AI is the contextual awareness.

— Amir Jirbandey

Did you know that your team hasn't taken any time off for the last two months? Here is a nudge to do it.

— Amir Jirbandey

Garbage in, garbage out... having the right data is paramount to be able to get the right insights.

— Amir Jirbandey

If our base layer of our books of business we had 30, 35% chance of turning that to accepted pipeline... in certain territories and certain books of business, that went up to 70%.

— Amir Jirbandey

CONNECT

Amir Jirbandey - https://www.linkedin.com/in/ajirbandey/

Personio - https://www.linkedin.com/company/personio

Tim Bond  -  https://www.linkedin.com/in/tngbond/

TechPros.io - https://www.linkedin.com/company/techpros-io

Right now, Anthropic's most powerful model Mythos Preview is the talk of the enterprise. 200 select organisations have been given access under Project Glasswing, Anthropic's restricted-access programme for vetted critical infrastructure and cybersecurity organisations. Anthropic reported that 50 partners had already used Mythos Preview to find more than 10,000 high or critical severity vulnerabilities.

Tim Bond interviews Radi El Haj, CEO of RS2 a global payment technology company with 35 years of market experience to explore what Mythos-level AI means for a bank's technology stack. The conversation moves quickly from the technical threat to the harder truth: technology change is driven by people change, and the real battle is organisational. They discuss the commercial implications of procrastination, the extraordinary market power Anthropic holds right now (and how a post-IPO world may tighten that grip further), and why European banks currently cannot access Mythos directly. They finish on the build vs buy conversation happening in every boardroom, and what CIOs and CTOs need to be thinking, doing and saying before 2028.

About the guest

Radi El Haj is CEO and principal shareholder of RS2 PLC a global payment technology company operating a single unified platform for card issuing and acquiring. Cloud-native since 2016. Active across Europe, Latin America, Asia Pacific and North America. Regulated in Germany under BaFin. RS2 has been in the market for 35 years across three business lines: licensing, outsourcing, and regulated financial services.

Timestamps

[00:00] Introduction: accelerating AI capability and the security challenge it poses for financial services

[00:05] The problem statement: Mythos identifies vulnerabilities in legacy banking systems in seconds. Mitigation takes weeks or months. That gap is the crisis.

[00:07] Why legacy banking is especially exposed: COBOL code built since 1987, fragmented systems, the same customer held in different identity records across the same institution

[00:09] Who has access to Mythos Preview: US institutions given priority; European banks currently excluded and accessing through third-party consultancies with Anthropic relationships

[00:12] Scale of change needed in the next 12 months: risk decisioning, AML and compliance monitoring, merchant intelligence. Proof of concept becomes production. AI infrastructure becomes a board-level concern.

[00:15] People and process: why organisational structure and ownership clarity determine whether banks survive this or not.

[00:19] Build vs buy vs outsource: what banks must own and what they should never build themselves

[00:21] Orchestration explained: not a product. An architectural posture. How to modernise a tier-one bank without ever telling them to rip and replace.

[00:29] AI at RS2: used across the business, with one deliberate exception: the core source code. Plus the integration case study: 8 FTEs over six months became one developer in three days.

[00:35] What CIOs and boards need to do now: audit your data, build your orchestration blueprint, demand a risk register with named owners. And any AI-driven decision must have a human as the final authority.

Key quotes

"We are talking about a human being fighting against AI." -Radi El Haj

"You cannot own what you are not willing to maintain. Ownership without investment becomes a liability." - Radi El Haj

"Orchestration is not a product. It is an architectural posture to adopt."-Radi El Haj

"Before 2028, institutions can choose. After 2028, they will have no choice. They will be forced to implement what they are mandated to do." - Radi El Haj

"On a board level, you need to demand a risk register with named owners, timelines and financial exposures, not a slide deck." - Radi El Haj

Connect

Radi El Haj https://www.linkedin.com/in/radie/ 

RS2 https://www.linkedin.com/company/rs2plc/

Tim Bond linkedin.com/in/timbond

TechPros.io https://www.linkedin.com/company/techpros-io

By the time a B2B buyer lands on your site, the shortlist is already drawn up. Generative engine optimisation, or GEO, is changing how B2B buyers find and evaluate vendors, often before they ever visit a website. AI engines are quietly deciding which brands they feel safe recommending, and most enterprise marketing teams have no real visibility into where they stand.

In this episode, Taryn Breetzke sits down with Bex Howie, Strategy Director at Gilroy, the agency behind LumusIQ. Bex unpacks why the GEO market jumped to measurement before anyone understood the mechanism, what AI is actually looking for when it builds a shortlist, and why most enterprise content is making brands less visible rather than more.

Four takeaways

1. Confidence, not ranking, decides AI shortlists. That confidence comes from third-party signals and consistent external mentions, not just your website.

2. Volume metrics are giving way to influence metrics. Traffic is down and engagement is up. The visitors who do click through are more qualified because the research now happens inside LLMs.

3. AI rewards new thinking. Generative engines favour original opinions, fresh data and SME-backed analysis. Opposing expert views strengthen visibility.

4. Personal brand is back. LinkedIn algorithm changes and citation-led discovery now push employee-led commentary above corporate posts.

Timestamps

02:45 Why LumusIQ exists

05:21 How AI builds its shortlist of brands

06:17 The zero-click reality check

07:41 SEO and GEO as a budget stack

10:18 Inside the LumusIQ audit

14:13 Trust signals and why AI rewards original thinking

18:25 From audit to activation

21:18 Measuring influence, not traffic

23:12 Common enterprise GEO mistakes

31:50 On-site LLMs and the rise of the "content librarian"

Notable quotes

"We're entering a zero-click era and it's changing the role of the website and search as we know it." Bex Howie.

"I don't see this as a split. I see it as a stack." Bex Howie.

"AI loves to learn something new." Bex Howie.

"It's less about ranking and more about confidence. AI is effectively building a shortlist of brands it feels safe recommending." Bex Howie.

The LumusIQ audit

Bex walks through the five-point GEO audit and how each is scored.

1. Generative AI referrals. Are you being cited in responses across ChatGPT, Claude, Gemini and Perplexity?

2. Technical crawlability and rendering. Can generative systems access, interpret and index your content?

3. Search and content health. Are you discoverable for category-level, non-branded, high-intent queries?

4. Accessibility and metadata. Is your site structured for clarity, speed and summarisation?

5. Third-party signals and authority. Do you provide the trust signals AI engines rely on to recommend you?

Stats and references

• Around 30 million American adults claim to have used AI for search, projected to rise to roughly 90 million by 2027 (Bex Howie).

• LumusIQ by Gilroy. Audit and activation programme that improves how brands show up in AI-led discovery. Visit LumusIQ to apply for a GEO audit or try the on-site content librarian: https://www.gilroy.co.uk/lumus-iq

Resources and links

Connect with Bex Howie on LinkedIn

Connect with Taryn Breetzke on LinkedIn

Email: [email protected] 

Do you have burning topics you'd like us to explore on the podcast? Email us at [email protected]

Follow us on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/enterprise-thought-leadership/

TechPros runs research-led thought leadership programmes that surface original thinking from senior B2B leaders. Visit techpros.io to join over 4,000 professionals who have participated in challenge forum roundtables, interviews and industry reports. To sponsor a programme get in touch with Taryn Breetzke

Why can AI reach only 86% accuracy in hospitals and courtrooms, yet language services remain a £6 million to £100 million opportunity? Joshua Gould, founder and CEO of The Big Word, reveals why language is fundamentally a technology problem that requires scaling human expertise, not replacing it. As the language services industry prepares to double by 2032, Gould explains the real disruption: automating your own business before the market forces you to. He discusses how government bodies are outpacing the private sector in adopting language technology, and why the biggest opportunities lie at the intersection of human quality and technological scale.

Guest bio

Joshua Gould is founder and CEO of The Big Word, a multilingual communication technology platform connecting 15,000 linguists across government, healthcare, and legal sectors in the US, UK, and Europe. He scaled the company from £6 million to over £100 million in revenue before securing private equity investment. Gould is recognised for his unconventional leadership approach and focus on building technology infrastructure at the edges of human communication.

Key discussion points

00:02:00 Building The Big Word - the 'get rich slow' philosophy

00:05:00 Processing volume through technology and people

00:07:00 The pivot to government work after the Great Recession

00:10:00 Being a tech company versus a government contractor

00:13:00 How video, audio and AI reshape service delivery

00:17:00 Digital-first workflows and hospital system integration

00:20:00 Virtual interpreting and on-demand video services

00:23:00 Scale at the edges - courts, police and asylum services

00:25:00 Why only 1% of online content is human-translated

00:28:00 The accuracy ceiling - why voice-to-voice interpretation is harder

00:31:00 The 86% accuracy limit in critical settings

00:33:00 Tuning AI for specific use cases and brand differentiation

00:40:00 The Blockbuster moment - disruption in business

00:43:00 Disrupting your own business before someone else does

00:46:00 How unit prices fall but total revenue grows

Resources and links

Connect with Joshua Gould on LinkedIn 

Connect with Tim Bond on LinkedIn 

Visit thebigword

Email Joshua [email protected]

Learn more about TechPros.io 

Upcoming events and roundtables – https://techpros.io/virtual-experiences/

Join the podcast community on LinkedIn – https://www.linkedin.com/company/enterprise-thought-leadership/

Want to teach your team to build their own AI agents?

Get your free AI Opportunity Report (https://cogniscale.com/ai-acceleration-report). This quick survey and consultation maps priority workflows, time saved and ROI from an AI upskilling programme for organisations with teams of six or more. Use promo code PODCAST.

Follow and rate the podcast on Spotify or Apple Podcasts. Got a burning topic or question? Email [email protected] Find out more about TechPros.io: https://techpros.io/ Upcoming events and roundtables: https://techpros.io/virtual-experiences/ Join the podcast community on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/enterprise-thought-leadership/

Calls to action

Enjoyed the discussion? Subscribe to the Enterprise Thought Leadership podcast on Spotify or Apple Podcasts to never miss an episode. Rate and review the show to help other business leaders discover the podcast. Join our growing community of business professionals on LinkedIn and share this episode with your network. Do you have burning topics or questions you'd like us to explore? Email our team at [email protected].

From concept to deployment in weeks, that's the promise Swati Trehan, COO of Ema, brings to enterprise automation. In this episode, Tim Bond explores how Ema manufactures AI employees that automate end-to-end workflows across HR, finance, supply chain, and beyond. Swati explains why the future of enterprise AI isn't about generic agents that claim to do everything. Instead, it's about specialists: skill-based AI workers that teams can govern in one place. The conversation covers Ema's competitive advantage, pre-built agents trained to excel at specific tasks paired with Ema Fusion, a proprietary mixture-of-experts model that optimises for accuracy, cost, and latency simultaneously. What emerges is not a story about job losses but about white space: the capacity freed by automation that savvy leaders are reinvesting in innovation, strategy, and employee experience.

Guest bio

Swati Trehan is COO of Ema, an enterprise AI platform that builds AI employees for large-scale automation. She brings 20+ years of product and operations leadership from Google and Shopify, where she led strategy and built large-scale systems. Swati has lived and worked across multiple countries and is based in London. At Ema, she oversees operations and customer success as the company scales automation across Fortune 500 clients globally.

Timestamps

00:02:00 Swati's background

00:05:00 Product-service positioning

00:07:00 No-code platform for enterprise

00:10:00 Prior authorisation use case

00:13:00 Workflow building without transcripts

00:16:00 Ema's three core capabilities

00:20:00 Cost and accuracy optimisation

00:22:00 HR operations transformation

00:24:00 Back-office and proposal writing

00:26:00 Proposal interface and workflow

00:29:00 Big Blue logistics case study

00:30:00 Workforce concerns and change

00:32:00 HR team involvement

00:33:00 From efficiency to upskilling

00:37:00 Technology and job creation

00:38:00 Employment optimism

00:40:00 Revenue per employee

Resources and links

Connect with Swati Trehan on LinkedIn – https://www.linkedin.com/in/swatitrehan/

Connect with Tim Bond on LinkedIn – https://www.linkedin.com/in/tngbond/

Visit Ema – https://Ema.ai

Email Swati – [email protected]

Learn more about TechPros.io – https://techpros.io/

Upcoming events and roundtables – https://techpros.io/virtual-experiences/

Join the podcast community on LinkedIn – https://www.linkedin.com/company/enterprise-thought-leadership/

Want to teach your team to build their own AI agents?

Get your free AI Opportunity Report (https://cogniscale.com/ai-acceleration-report). This quick survey and consultation maps priority workflows, time saved and ROI from an AI upskilling programme for organisations with teams of six or more. Use promo code PODCAST.

Enjoyed the discussion? Subscribe to the Enterprise Thought Leadership podcast on Spotify or Apple Podcasts to never miss an episode. Rate and review the show to help other business leaders discover the podcast. Join our growing community of business professionals on LinkedIn and share this episode with your network. Do you have burning topics or questions you'd like us to explore? Email our team at ⁠[email protected]⁠.

Find out more about TechPros.io: https://techpros.io/

Join the podcast community on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/enterprise-thought-leadership/

Tim Bond returns to the conversation with Mark Edwards, author of the white paper The Human Engine: Navigating the Fifth Revolution, to explore a question that will define how organisations succeed in the coming years: can creativity be taught?

The fifth revolution—driven by artificial intelligence—is upon us, but it brings with it more than just technological change. Mark explains why most people and organisations are caught in what he calls "zombie loops": patterns of activity that consume energy and time without driving meaningful progress. He discusses why fear of AI persists despite its benefits, how to escape repetitive cycles, and why human amplification—not automation for its own sake—is the real opportunity ahead.

This conversation challenges conventional thinking about who is and isn't creative, exposes the dangers of cognitive overload and distracted attention, and reveals what genuinely high-performing organisations look like when they prioritise imagination and human connection alongside technology.

Key topics covered:

The fifth revolution and why it differs from previous technological shifts Fear of AI and how media narratives shape our perception of technology Zombie loops: getting trapped in activity that doesn't drive growth Competitive space and strategic positioning in a crowded market Creativity as a skill anyone can develop, not an innate talent Why automation has often failed and why amplification matters Human amplification: putting people in positions where they can do their best thinking Building cognitively ergonomic workspaces for real performance The role of ethics in technological change Why attention and focused thinking are more valuable than ever

Timestamps:

00:00:00 Introduction and why we're revisiting this topic

00:01:00 Welcome and episode overview

00:02:00 Mark's background in technology and M&A

00:03:00 What is the fifth revolution?

00:05:00 Understanding fear of AI and the media narrative

00:06:00 The psychological roots of fear and tribalism

00:08:00 Cognitive overload and the zombie loop

00:09:00 What zombie loops are and why they matter

00:14:00 Competitive space and strategic positioning

00:17:00 How new sectors become saturated

00:19:00 Accelerated pace of change and adaptation

00:22:00 Automation versus human amplification

00:23:00 Why previous automation initiatives fell short

00:26:00 The importance of creativity in a changing world

00:28:00 Challenging the myth that creativity is only for creative people

00:30:00 Teaching people to think creatively

00:31:00 The responsibility of leaders in enabling creativity

00:33:00 Ethics and why technology purpose matters

00:37:00 Attention spans and focused thinking

00:39:00 Building cognitively ergonomic workspaces

00:41:00 Practical steps for leaders in the next years

00:44:00 It takes a town: Mark's community project

00:47:00 How to connect with Mark

Want to learn more?

Mark Edwards' whitepaper – The Human Engine: Navigating the Fifth Revolution

Connect with Mark Edwards on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/markledwards/

Connect with Tim Bond: https://www.linkedin.com/in/tngbond/

If you like our podcast, please do follow us and rate each episode. Do you have burning topics or questions you'd like us to explore on the podcast? Email our team at [email protected]

Find out more about TechPros.io: https://techpros.io/

Upcoming Events and Roundtables: https://techpros.io/virtual-experiences/

Join our budding podcast community on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/enterprise-thought-leadership/

Tim Bond explores Mark Edwards' white paper on the cognitive age and the shift from an industrial mindset to a new era of human-machine collaboration. This conversation uncovers what Edwards calls the liminal hour moment, a threshold point in human history where we face two fundamentally different futures. The episode traces the evolution of technological revolutions from mechanisation through to artificial intelligence, examining why our education system has left us unprepared for cognitive work, and why the answer to technological change is amplification rather than automation. Through frameworks like lighthouse versus radar, zombie loops, and the symbiosis between human judgment and machine calculation, this discussion addresses real anxiety about the future of work whilst arguing that the future is something we shape, not something that happens to us.

Timestamps

00:00:00 Introduction and the question that sparked this episode

00:01:00 Five workshop participants express anxiety about the future

00:02:00 The paradox: job data shows employment growing despite AI adoption

00:03:00 Jobs are bundles of tasks, tasks become redundant, not jobs

00:04:00 Introducing Mark Edwards' white paper, The Human Engine

00:05:00 The liminal hour: waking at 4 AM and seeing two futures

00:06:00 A threshold moment between two eras: industrial age to cognitive age

00:07:00 Drift and zombie loops: the cost of cognitive overload

00:08:00 Why we're trapped in cycles of activity without insight

00:09:00 Education for an industrial era, applied to a cognitive age

00:10:00 The biological reality of cognitive load and decision-making

00:11:00 The five technological revolutions and the pattern

00:12:00 The lighthouse versus radar analogy: shifting from focus to context

00:13:00 Automation versus amplification: the critical reframe

00:14:00 Convergence: the fusion of separate AI modalities

00:15:00 Concrete examples: doctors, city planners, and the mesh in action

00:16:00 Technology must adapt to humans, not vice versa

00:17:00 The human engine framework: cleaning the cognitive lens

00:18:00 Cognitive ergonomics and aircraft cockpit design principles

00:19:00 Clarity by design and human-first structures

00:20:00 Machines compute, humans imagine

00:21:00 Capability versus authority: what machines can and cannot decide

00:22:00 The Einstein rule: 55 minutes on the problem, five on the solution

00:23:00 Moral revolution and the choice between drift and design

Guest bio

Mark Edwards brings three decades of experience in software company mergers and acquisitions. As founder of Boss Equity (established 1999), he has worked with thousands of software companies across document management, workflow automation and enterprise solutions. His pattern-matching across hundreds of exits reveals why most software businesses fail to escape mediocrity. Mark combines his early creative background in photography with deep commercial expertise to help founders understand strategic positioning and market dynamics. Connect with Mark on LinkedIn.

Resources and links mentioned

Tim Bond on LinkedIn

Mark Edwards on LinkedIn

Access Mark Edwards' whitepaper – The Human Engine: Navigating the Fifth Revolution 

Want to teach your team to build their own AI agents that act like teammates, boosting productivity, quality and job satisfaction? Get your FREE AI Opportunity Report (for listeners with teams of six or more), a quick team survey and consultation that maps priority workflows, time saved and ROI from an AI upskilling programme. Visit Cogniscale.com and enter promo code PODCAST.

Follow and rate the podcast on Spotify or Apple Podcasts. Got a burning topic or question? Email [email protected] Find out more about TechPros.io: https://techpros.io/ Upcoming events and roundtables: https://techpros.io/virtual-experiences/ Join the podcast community on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/enterprise-thought-leadership/

Marie Wilcox, VP of Marketing at Binalyze, has built a marketing engine powered by AI agents—what she calls Nova Bots—that has fundamentally changed her go-to-market motion. Moving from a traditional SDR model to agentic workflows trained on intent data and personalised content, she has achieved MQL-to-SQL conversion rates of 18–20%, improved lead quality significantly, and accelerated sales cycles. But here's the critical insight: the technology only works if the foundation is solid. 

"Without good training, without good product knowledge, you just end up with rubbish," Marie says.

In this episode, she walks through the practical implementation, the role of tools like HubSpot, Clay, n8n, and custom GPTs, and why the future of marketing demands prompt engineering and GTM engineering skills. The conversation challenges the myth that AI replaces people—instead, it augments expertise when deployed thoughtfully.

Timestamps

00:00:00 - AI as enhancement, not replacement.

00:03:00 - Finalize and the problem it solves.

00:05:00 - How forensic data automation works.

00:08:00 - Enterprise and MSP customer base.

00:09:00 - Marketing mix: thought leadership, events, inbound, outbound.

00:10:00 - Replacing SDRs with AI agents.

00:11:00 - Nova Bots: personalisation at scale using Clay and N8N.

00:13:00 - Building custom GPTs for consistent messaging.

00:16:00 - How sophisticated workflows simplify outbound.

00:18:00 - Intercom and website chat automation.

00:20:00 - Results: conversion rates and ROI.

00:21:00 - MQL to SQL conversion improvement to 18-20%.

00:23:00 - AI training, hallucination risks, and human oversight.

00:25:00 - Company-wide AI Day and N8N learning.

00:28:00 - AI as a resource, not a replacement.

00:30:00 - The future of marketing skills.

00:33:00 - The evolving landscape of AI tools.

00:34:00 - Final advice for marketers embracing AI.

Guest bio

Marie Wilcox is Vice President of Marketing at Binalyze, a next-generation automated investigation and response platform for cybersecurity teams. With 20 years of B2B marketing experience across cybersecurity, data analytics, and SaaS, she has worked with enterprises including BAE Systems, Siemens, and McLaren Applied, as well as high-growth scale-ups. Marie is a Fellow of the Chartered Institute of Marketing, chairs the CIM Southeast Region, and sits on the board of the Chartered Institute of Information Security. She pioneered two Gartner market categories: Continuous Controls Monitoring and Cloud Investigation Response Automation.

Resources and links mentioned

Marie Wilcox on LinkedIn 

Tim Bond on LinkedIn 

Binalyze

HubSpot

Clay 

n8n

Intercom

Want to teach your team to build their own AI agents that act like teammates, boosting productivity, quality and job satisfaction? Get your FREE AI Opportunity Report (for listeners with teams of six or more), a quick team survey and consultation that maps priority workflows, time saved and ROI from an AI upskilling programme. Visit Cogniscale.com and enter promo code PODCAST.

Follow and rate the podcast on Spotify or Apple Podcasts.

Got a burning topic or question? Email [email protected]

Find out more about TechPros.io

Upcoming events and roundtables: https://techpros.io/virtual-experiences/

Join the podcast community on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/enterprise-thought-leadership/

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"Efficiency truly is a race to the bottom. If everybody has a hundred times the same capability, it no longer becomes a differentiator." Nikki Barua, CEO and co-founder of FlipWork.

Tim Bond speaks with Nikki Barua, CEO and co-founder of FlipWork, about why companies are pouring money into AI technology but leaving their people behind. Nikki calls this the "exponential divide", the growing gap between the speed of AI and the speed at which people are adapting. With 25 years helping Fortune 500 companies navigate technology disruption, she argues that efficiency gains alone are a race to the bottom. The real opportunity lies in what organisations do with the capacity AI creates, and that starts with preparing people, not just installing tools.

Guest bio

Nikki Barua is CEO and co-founder of FlipWork. A serial entrepreneur and bestselling author, she has spent 25 years driving business change at Fortune 500 companies, with early career roles at EY, Compuware and Sapient. Her work has been featured in CNBC, Bloomberg, Fortune and Forbes.

Timestamps 

00:00:00 Introduction and Nikki's career background 

00:03:00 What is FlipWork and its mission 

00:04:00 The people squared concept and human-machine collaboration 

00:06:00 Why efficiency is a race to the bottom 

00:07:00 The future of AI in areas like leadership judgement and context 

00:08:00 Why the quality of human input determines AI output quality 

00:09:00 Same-day delivery analogy: when AI efficiency becomes table stakes 

00:10:00 The real differentiator: imagination and creativity 

00:11:00 How the best companies improve every step of their value chain 

00:14:00 What to do with greater collective capacity 

00:15:00 A word from our sponsor, CogniScale 

00:16:00 FlipWork's grassroots approach using 90-day sprints 

00:19:00 Why AI training alone does not change businesses 

00:20:00 Who should lead AI adoption and the COO's role 

00:22:00 FlipWork's proprietary diagnostic and agentic velocity assessment 

00:24:00 Success breeds more success: building momentum across teams 

00:25:00 The 36-point diagnostic survey 

00:27:00 Phase one: human augmentation vs fully automated workflows 

00:28:00 Priming: preparing individuals and teams for the agentic future 

00:29:00 Blank slate thinking: designing from the future state back 

00:31:00 Why this is good for careers, not just companies 

00:32:00 FlipWork's go-to-market: Fortune 500 clients and big four partnerships 

00:34:00 Proprietary methodology and partner licensing

Resources and links 

Nikki Barua on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/nikkibarua/ 

Tim Bond on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/tngbond/ 

FlipWork: https://www.flipwork.ai

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