74: Pratik Desai: A time traveler’s guide to martech and personalization

What’s up folks, today we have a super fun conversation with Pratik Desai, Founder and Chief Architect at 1to1.
Pratik’s a Rocket Scientist turned Martech personalization expert He’s armed with a bachelor’s from Rutgers in Aerospace and Mechanical Engineering He got his start at Accenture in Technology Consulting and later J&J in consumer apps as a digital product manager He later took a deep dive into Martech when he became Lead product manager at PVH focused on Salesforce Marketing products This led him to spend 3 years at Salesforce where he worked his way up to Personalization Practice Lead (Head of Delivery Services for Personalization) Most recently, Pratik started his own agency called 1to1 to focus on personalization strategy and implementation  He also runs a weekly AI Discussion Group to help folks keep up with the fast changing landscape of Curation and Generative AI He’s a well traveled, trivia loving full stack developer
Pratik, pumped to chat with you today, thanks for your time!
From Aerospace and Sci-fi to martech and personalization Pratik, you have a degree in Aerospace and Mechanical Engineering as well as your pilot license, is this all a backup plan for AI takeover and you naturally shift to space exploration and interplanetary marketing? 😆
Pratik’s answer:  Aerospace industry wasn’t as mainstream when I graduated and the lucrative Aerospace jobs were in defense. I struggled to see myself going down that route and… Accenture does a damn good job of recruiting engineers out of Rutgers Luck is taking the opportunities as they present themselves….which really just set the tone for my career for the next 10 years The pilot's license came after! After a few years of working in technology, I started to miss the thrills of aviation and decided to get a private pilot's license. The feeling of freedom you get when you start traveling is exponentially increased when you actually fly yourself there! 
What does aerospace and martech have in common? In preparation to transition to my next question we asked ChatGPT what martech and aerospace have in common, it said. 
Data-driven decision making: In both cases, the ability to collect, analyze, and make decisions based on data is critical. Technological advancements and innovation, specifically use of simulation and modeling tools: Both fields need to stay at the cutting edge of technology to be effective.  Problem-solving and customer-centric approach: Both fields involve solving complex problems while keeping the user in mind.  Integration: Whether it’s engines, avionics, control systems or landing gear or if it’s CRMs, CMSs, CDPs and MAPs… Both aerospace and martech involve the integration of multiple systems and components.
Which one would you pick?
Pratik’s answer:  Studying engineering definitely sets you up for success in so many different industries. The problem-solving coupled with the data-centric decision making puts you on a path that really helps you excel But the biggest parallel to getting things right would be integrations. In Aerospace Engineering, there are SO many systems that have to work together and if they don’t, the outcomes could be catastrophic.  I can’t tell you the amount of MarTech implementations that I’ve been apart of where integrations don’t get enough love, for various reasons: The source or destination system is owned by a team that wasn’t informed of the transformation The IT team has conflicting priorities ETL transfers are easier, so we’ll start there - and it just never becomes priority to make things real-time Etc  
Science fic