54. Innovation Roadmaps with Imteaz Ahamed, Director of Performance Marketing - Nutrition at Reckitt

Imteaz Ahamed, the Director of Performance Marketing - Nutrition at Reckitt, joins E-Commerce with Coffee?! host Nate Svoboda to talk about how to plan for innovation. It’s not something elusive that only comes when someone has a brainwave—instead, it’s baked into your business processes and systems. Imteaz offers memorable anecdotes and tons of personal examples as he walks listeners through evolving market trends and how to stay ahead of them.

Listen to the full interview to learn how to plan for innovation as a small-to-medium business and how technology goes hand-in-hand with the strategy.

What to listen for:

• Imteaz has been at Reckitt for 15 years and in many roles. The interview starts with a look at where he began: sales. Imteaz comments that sales are “definitely a skill you need to master,” be it for entrepreneurs, thought leaders, or anyone else in business. “No matter how great an idea of yours is, if you can’t convince people it’s special,” he explains, “you aren’t going to pay the bills.” Listen to the full interview to learn how Imteaz transitioned from sales to e-commerce at the company.

• When Imteaz and Nate transition into more tech-specific talk, Nate asks what some of the biggest changes are that Imteaz has seen in his years in e-commerce. “Time scales and business cycles,” Imteaz answers. He recalls how it used to be once or twice a year that businesses launched new products. Today, businesses are in constant-churning product cycles of researching market needs, developing new products, and launching them. He explains, “anyone who can justify more frequent changes DOES make more frequent changes.” He advises companies to “adapt to the pace of change that customers now are happy to work with.”

• The interview then turns into some of the key elements (systems, processes, and tools) that small and medium-sized businesses need today to stay innovative in the delivery of their products or services. “It isn’t a digital transformation [anymore],” he says, “it’s just doing business.” While the right tech solutions are part of the puzzle for every business, Imteaz also stresses the importance of the best talent. “That’s the people part of it,” he clarifies. “[You need] someone who understands what you’re doing today and how you’re going to do it in the future.”

• Any business planning to skate the edge of continuous innovation also needs dynamic processes. Processes are always put into place for the right reasons, Imteaz concedes, but over time those processes get old. Every time the business challenge changes (or every 2X growth in staff or 3X growth in revenue, roughly), you have to rewrite all your core processes from scratch.

• The interview turns next to innovations Imteaz has seen in the customer journey. He suggests that the world of loyalty is the greatest shift he’s witnessed. He walks listeners through a personal (and remarkable) example of some of his best airport experiences as a business traveler and member of one airline’s frequent fliers. By the end of his summary of how that one loyalty program works—as much for him as for the airline—you’ll be hard-pressed not to want to join the same flight club.

• Disruptions we should expect on the horizon, Imteaz says, include one that’s already here: the metaverse. He offers a simple explanation of the metaverse and helps paint the picture of what more personal sales models will look like in this space in the near future.

• Ideas to foster innovation can be exciting, but resolute KPIs have to be part of the equation, and that’s where the interview ends. Imteaz concedes, “it comes down to what type of business you are and how long you can keep the customer for.” He promptly gives examples of what kind of growth to aim for. Listen to the full interview for the most surprising example at the very end.

  Get in touch with Imteaz at:

  - Linkedin https://www.linkedin.com/in/imteaza/

  - Instagram https://www.instagram.com/iiimteaz/

  - Website https://imteaz.com/