Patrick Corcoran, Global Head of Marketing and External Relations, Hitachi Digital Services

Welcome to the podcast Above the Cloud: Stories from the Boardroom. In every episode, we interview business leaders who are navigating the complex world of B2B marketing. Whether you're trying to grow revenue, swoop into a new market, or launch new products, we promise you've landed in the right spot. And now, your host, Richard Bird. >> Today, we have a very special guest. We have Patrick Corkran. He is the global head of marketing and external communications for Hadachi Digital Services. Welcome to the show, Patrick.

>> Thanks for having me, Richard. All right. Well, we have a tradition on the show. The first question we ask our guest is, if your company were a bird, what kind of bird would you would Hitachi Digital Services be, Patrick? >> Oh, that's easy. We're going to fly like an eagle. You know, eagles have the best and the longest vision. And when you think about the way that Hitachi globally goes to market, there's always a three-year plan that defines what's important, where the investments are uh from an IT and OT perspective.

And an eagle also has precision. It doesn't try to boil the ocean when it goes after its prey. In this case, obviously customers, right? So, it stays very focused on what we believe to be a strength of ours and a need of the client. um you know and there is a bit of uh of history right behind the behind the eagle uh in terms of its role in the in nature's ecosystem. So for me uh it is definitely an eagle uh that is is a is the right right bird for Hitachi digital services and but Hitachi globally. >> I like it.

Well as a proud American got I appreciate the eagle for sure. Great. Well, um, you know, Hitachi obviously is a massive global brand. Everybody knows the the Hitachi brand, but tell me tell me a little bit about Hitachi Digital Services and what what you guys are up to over there. >> So, Hitachi digital services is really the global systems integration arm of all of Hitachi. So, Hitachi global I mean we most people are used to Hitachi in a BTOC context. televisions, excavators, elevators, air conditionings, right?

Depending upon where you live in the world, your your touch points with Hitachi are very different. Um, now you may have heard of Hitachi Energy, right? The the largest provider for all the transformers that are being built as an example, Hitachi rail all throughout uh Europe and the US, uh, rolling stock, etc. So again, it depends on your touch point of Hitachi and generally in marketing, right? The first touch point is the one that always sticks in your mind uh from a you know impact perspective. Now for our our perspective, Hitachi digital services uh we've been around now for as a brand of Hitachi Digital Services, not as sort of a company that all of a sudden just you know had um x amount of people working all over the world.

But we've been around as a formal brand uh for a little over two years. And uh Hitachi globally likes to ensure that all of its operating units are are branded and positioned the right way for success. So >> uh historically the IT business has been around now for 60 years and obviously that goes through iterations but we are the global SI which means we're competing against all the well-known names the Accentur the Cognizants the Whipros Infosys LTMs DXC's uh hexawares right the tier ones the tier twos all the different companies that provide IT services across multiple industries and playing across different horizontals whether it's enterp enterprise apps, cloud and data, uh, internet of things, that type of work.

And so global organization and, uh, you know, I' I've personally been a part of Hitachi now for four and a half years. So I've seen a lot of, uh, shift and change to make sure that we're following the path of the eagle, if you will. >> That's great. Yeah, that is uh, you have some worthy competitors you rattled out there. >> Oh, yeah. That presents a challenge from a marketing perspective for sure. Huh? >> 100%. You know, whether it's uh you know the question the question you always get as a marketer is what do you do?

Do you buy that ad at JFK when you walk through passport control or do you spend money doing evergreen branding on LinkedIn? And you know the the answer is really it depends, right? Where are you in the market in your own brand maturity evolution and what are you trying to achieve and how do you get to the people that you think will have the most impact in terms of bisdev. So I think from our perspective we like to be very focused on how we do that and so you won't see largecale Hitachi digital services billboards and advertising because context is important and when you're competing against the larger BTOC sort of um nomenclature and historical references >> you want to take advantage of your ability to be very very specific using the digital world.

So so that's how we we sort of think about that. >> Yeah. great brand, but we just have an enterprise awareness group that we will target and continue to go after for the business that we need. >> Tell us tell us a little bit about your day-to-day work that that you and your marketing team are doing. How big's your team? Um where are you guys are you I assume you're spread out all over the globe. Yeah. So I I've been in I've been fortunate enough to be in this role for now uh six or seven months and I've inherited an absolutely outstanding team that is truly global from Vietnam to India to AMIA to North America and uh a a group of what I like to describe as elite on-site FTEES you know when you have to use technical language uh that works together as we set as the sun rises and the sun sets on all the various objectives we have whether they be regionally or globally and uh some of the some of the colleagues here have been here longer than me you know six seven eight plus years and some of them I would say about a third of them are probably in their first quarter on the new team with us so >> wow >> been able to really build out um a good stellar organization here which is sort of benchmarked on two important areas is brand and revenue, right?

You make it simple, you're able to stay focused, work the process, and and that'll bring us to where we want to be as an organization. So, we're on the on the phone round the clock. We have, you know, on teams around the clock, sometimes uh emailing depending on who wants to send it and who wants to respond. And and I I try my best not to send that many uh emails, but you know, sometimes we just got to be reactive around the world with it. But yeah, I mean it's a truly global team and and a and a really elite bunch of uh marketeteers that we have here.

>> Yeah, that is a that is one of the challenges of being a leader in a global organization because so I didn't realize this uh but you know when you send an email out to somebody being when you're the boss people feel obligated to respond to it and and it might be 3:00 in the morning their time when you're when you're sending it out and it's perfect, you know, business hours during your time. So, I could see where that could cause some false alarms. >> Yeah, it's uh you just have to get used to the rhythm, right?

And you have to, you know, my message to the team has always been there will be times when you're needed and you got to make the call at that point, whether it's a Saturday night or or a Tuesday morning or or a Thursday midday, uh depending on what the request is, you know, how do I re how do I respond to that? So it's always important for us to have agility, you know, built into our response times for for that stuff, especially for internal stakeholders, meaning our clients on the business side, right?

We want to make sure that if we get a request for a logo or we need emergency editing on a video for a board presentation or there's an event that just came around uh that we got invited to last minute, you know, we need to be able to shuffle around and put the chips in the right place to make sure we execute on that because if we can't respond to agility, then the business can't respond to the client's agility requirements and it becomes a you know becomes a domino effect which which we want to avoid at all costs.

Yeah, that I worked for an international company like that and I you know the thing you're always fighting against is that marketing oftentimes is seen as a cost center and uh and it and in in our case we were we actually were cost center and there not we weren't thought of. we were actually cost center and uh you really want to you want to be responsive to your internal clients and uh and all that and it's um uh you know the business we were in it was a oil and gas services company and so there's always emergencies and you know there's always stuff we're having to respond to and so yeah it was you're never really off in that role uh but but it's exciting and I think it's I love working for international companies because you met so many cool you know people from all over the world.

Uh >> yep. >> Yeah, it's been it's been I've been very fortunate from a um so starting in this in this industry you know 13 plus years ago the well let me let me step back the the this industry uh you know really started in two sort of frameworks. You had western heritage companies and you had India heritage companies and you had you had a smaller version of Asia heritage companies like NT data, Fujitsu and obviously Hitachi but the main the bulk of this was happening when India was really the prime location for service delivery and uh you know that was the early change in how outsourcing started to happen in the mid 2000s and so on.

Now at the same time you had companies like EDS and HPE and CSC and IBM some are still here some are not Xerox etc which were considered western heritage because where they were based right >> right >> which is primarily onshore but also leveraging the offshore for cost and speed and so most of the time when you when you thought about it you thought India was the key location and certainly it was I mean it's it's a tremendous tremendous um uh history there in terms of its impact on the IT OT ecosystem, but I had started at a company that was primarily based in central and eastern Europe.

>> And so, uh this was what was called nearshore, right? Not offshore, but nearshore. So I had the opportunity to start my entryway into this ecosystem, not by going to India and the Philippines and Mexico, some of the more common locations from the early days, but spending time in places like Ukraine, Romania, Poland, uh obviously, you know, the whole dock region and that part of the world. And then when I finally get to Hitachi where India is a key piece of it, Vietnam is a huge component of it, Portugal is a huge component of our overall service delivery map, I felt like I was behind because I I'm now for the first time visiting these countries.

Although I had already been in delivery centers and innovation labs across Eastern, Central and Eastern Europe, but now I was becoming a part of uh you know the the historic locations if you will where this whole industry sort of was born from. So that that's been really a pleasure to go around and meet people all around the world uh and spend time with my colleagues not only in the team but of course the larger company whether we're doing analyst events or launches of some sort for new offices or hosting clients or just being there and doing internal planning.

In fact I'm on my way to India uh on tomorrow night for uh two events we have in Bangalore and Delhi. So, I feel like I have completed about 90% of the circle when it comes to IT locations. Um, but I I haven't been everywhere yet. But it but it's just it's it's a part of the job that everybody thinks knocks a lot out of you from travel. And there that that happens, right? But even if you had a commute to an office 5 days a week, you still have to you still feel that, you know, that rigor and that breakup.

But being able to um to meet everybody has been uh has been tremendous and just understand the cultures and the the history and you know some people say they've been there for 20 years. I haven't even you know I've been I've been working for 20 years and they've been in a company for that long. So >> it's been been a really really humbling experience. Yeah, that face to face, there's just really no substitute for it when you're trying to learn the culture of a company and and meet the people and um I don't know.

I'm I'm a little old school, so maybe it's just uh you know, just me, but but I really feel like there's there's no substitute for management by roaming the halls. >> Yes, I totally agree. We we we talk about this all the time. You know, there are mornings we wake up and four different countries are represented on a meeting to finish a project and you and even even interviewing candidates, right, or doing one-on- ones with people, it you can't go to lunch, you can't grab a coffee, you know, and you you lose that that human connection.

And there are days that I wonder if we went back like we 50 years ago where everybody worked in the same building on Ace Street. >> Yeah. and everyone was together 5 days a week and you could whiteboard and do these certain Now I'm not saying everyone's remote but our a large part of our team is um and I there are days that I say I wonder would our production level be better on some of these tasks if even once a week we all were in an office together and that's why we're a big believer in you know I would say quarterly meetings meaning you know we try to keep the regional teams together whether I'm going to India, we're bringing people to the UK, we're bringing people to Dallas.

Um, that helps because you get to have some exposure with everybody. But you always wonder, you know, what would it be like 1975 all in the same office, 5 days a week, happy hour on Thursdays, dinner, you know, client dinners on Tuesdays. I haven't experienced that. You know, I've never really had that cubicle life where it's one floor is all you and everybody goes out. I've been remote or traveling since I've really been working quote full-time. So I I don't even know what that experience is like. >> Oh wow.

Yeah, that's interesting because I um uh that that that's how I started out my career is obviously going into the office and then uh and having that office culture and all those things. But uh there's more and more people like you. We were talking about this the other day. Uh some some friends of mines that that are leaders of businesses that um you know there are people who have been in the workplace for 5 years and never check gone to an office. >> Yeah. >> There's a lot of them because the the whole pandemic, right?

And uh and that whole work from home movement. And um we're seeing that a lot of people are are slowly making people come back into the office at least with some sort of hybrid situation. But but for global teams like you guys have that's that's impossible right? I mean uh it would be impossible to do that. >> Yeah. Especially, you know, especially because when you don't have a when you don't have offices every 30 miles like we used to, right? I mean, we all know that. I mean, even irrespective of what COVID did, >> there's always been a consolidation effort of re of real estate, right?

Because people are in traveling roles or they're on site at a client and you start to ask yourself, do I actually need that building anymore? And so when you start to break those up, no matter where people live, their distance now increases from the office. So I live on Long Island and if if we had to go to Manhattan, which would be the next logical location for us to meet, you know, I'm looking at minimum 90 minutes of commuting. And that's only because the Grand Central Line recently opened. But if I had to go to Penn Station and come back to the east side, I mean, you could be looking at two hours.

And then you start to say to yourself, 4 hours a day, 20 hours a week of commuting, is that really a good use of time when you're on this 24 by7 sort of clock to make or 24 by five, I should say, trying to be productive for your clients and for your business. And I I just don't believe that. So, >> and you also have to consider offshore resources. You know, you're going to want them to work a little bit later in the day to make sure that there's a line oversight. You don't want to have this sort of, you know, he checks in.

It's not like a a hospital shift where the day shift comes in, the night shift comes in. You need to have a collaborative a sort of band of when you when you need everybody to be together for this reason because we aren't together in person, at least remotely. So, I'm not a big fan of wasting time on commuting, right? >> That New York commute is brutal, too. Oh my god. Just to go, you know, two miles down the same street could take you an hour. I know I if I leave early enough I can get there in an hour.

If I when I go into the city I often drive because it's easier to make phone calls and you know it's a little more you're not wait you're not dependent upon schedules with trains and everything but to get in the tunnel and out of the tunnel sometimes takes as long as it does to go 15 miles between Queens and uh Suffach County. So >> yeah, >> you know, I'm I'm with you on that. I'm I'm sort of jealous of Dallas places like Dallas and Houston where you know it's like oh how far is that? Well, everything's about 15 minutes away.

>> Yeah, Houston uh we got a little worse traffic in than Dallas I think in ours. I break everything into 30 minute or an hour long. That's a >> that's why I always break it apart. Uh, you know, here, but it's a pretty big area. So, you can >> can really u you can go a lot of miles unlike uh in in New York area, right? It might be a two-hour trip, but you only go eight miles or whatever. >> You can pick up a lot of ground out there. Yeah. >> Oh, man. Well, um, so you mentioned a little bit about the early days working, uh, doing near shoring and, uh, for European companies.

Uh, is that where it all started for you? >> Yeah. Interesting how I got here. Um, I was originally going to undergrad to become a teacher >> and um I went to a teaching basically a teaching un which is now a university St. Joseph's out here in New York. It was primarily a teaching school. I had a I had a job at home. Uh I did not uh you know it was a commuting school so I didn't I didn't go away. I wanted to coach football in high school and since I had just graduated I stayed on with them. uh he brought me on as I guess one would consider it a graduate assistant and I had gone through almost you know I would say three years out of the four of getting ready to teach and I started to get introduced to sort of global affairs and international relations and this was you know this is still during you know this is 2003 2004 2005 so there was a lot happening in terms of international affairs post 911 and we all remember Iraq and Afghanistan and the different things that the the Bush administration specifically was doing and I was growing up in in a college world where you start to learn the full picture of everything that happens >> and you start to learn about different philosophical ways of thinking about things etc etc.

So, I felt like if I went into high school and I taught history the same way for 30 years, that I would I would be bored. And I felt like I was I was putting together debates, everything from, you know, big issues to local issues. We were putting together panels, leveraging professors, you know, I was trying to get beyond how to teach. And so, I decided then first I graduated in 2008. We all know what happened in 2008. So, all these public, you know, jobs, everything fell apart. So I went to graduate school and I got a I I got a masters in international relations.

So my my thinking was still I want to get into policy. I want to get into think tank world research. How do I be an analyst? Like that type of that type of stuff. And uh I had started my doctorate at Catholic University. And you know, you just look at the end of that road and you say, "Is this worth it? Where am I going to be?" You know, >> and I think I think by then my my I sort of plateaued saying, "All right, I have a masters. I've got two years at Catholic. I can I can I understand global affairs. I should start being focused on looking at a job." So, I got a I got a role at the public affairs council when I was in DC.

The public affairs council was set up by Eisenhower for basically a one of the associations like every brand has an association, realtor association, automakers association, right? But this was focused on government relations professionals, >> the people that were essentially managing lobbying efforts for large organizations. And and this firm was, you know, we would do everything from how much are you spending on this, how many people do you have, how many events are you having, you know, who are your target audience in terms of this congressman or that senator, whatever it might be.

And uh I I really really enjoyed my role and uh having not you know I think I got I I was fortunate that I had a bit of a research background. So that was what let um uh Adam was his name bring me on board and I stayed there for about a year in this sort of research analyst role and you you wonder you're still thinking how does that get you to marketing right so you think about analysts right and that was on my mind >> so every 3 months I was applying to jobs I wanted to get back to New York and I was going back and interviewing and interviewing >> and uh you know at that point in your life just having a consulting gig and a bunch of education you'll take any job you can get.

So, I did a I did a a stunt with a a mortgage broker for a while in Manhattan, and then I finally landed, I guess, what you can call my first full-time gig at a company called the International um Institute for Learning, >> which was essentially a uh project management lean six sigma ITIL firm that sold that to chief learning officers and CIOS. I'm starting to kind of get into this IT world a little bit and I got on as a senior client partner. In fact, I landed my biggest deal in an elevator because one of the one of the makeup manufacturers, I'll let you assume you know who I'm talking about, was on the floor above us and I hear them chatting about, oh, we need some more Lean Six Sigma training.

Do you know anybody? And I'm like, whoa. So I I I sprinted down to my office, got a catalog, ran right back up, and I said, "We met in the elevator." You know, long story short, now >> the hustle. >> Yeah. In that in that whole, you know, the year that I spent there, about two months into that, and this was a this was actually I was commuting into New York for the first year, uh, they had a this was before remote work even meant anything back in 2012. So I'm kind of, you know, saying, "All right, I have this global international background.

you know, it's it's somewhat relevant to this because it makes me I'm good at researching and presenting. So, now I need to figure out how do I leverage this in sales? And the head of marketing there said to me, you know, you have a lot of ideas. Uh why don't you help us build up this practice for ITIL, ITIL, which is a a framework for IT professionals, and do a podcast. So, here I am. Wow, I've never done that before. So I guy Jeff Sensson and unfortunately the podcast is down. I guess you know when people changed they they were removing some of their content.

>> Uh and so I said wow I kind of like this stuff kind of planning how do I get this go to market thing going to sell this more. Now at the end of the day I was still the sales guy but this was kind of a side job they had given me. So we go to a gardener event and again I have no idea at that point who Gartner is what they do what what's an industry analyst. I just know what an analyst background is. And we're out there and we're trying to sell and people are saying, "I need project management. You're collecting business cards, you're scanning badges, you're doing whatever you need to do." And so we felt pretty good in terms of our couple days on the show floor.

And now we're at a hotel with one of my um colleagues who I sat next to who was a he was a um unfortunately 2008 hurt him too. He was an investment banker and now he but he was a great sale. >> So he came into into this company. He's been there a couple years before. So, I was kind of looking up to him, right? He was a New York guy. Couple years on me and and uh you know, he was helping me shift this. So, uh I I'm go I got to go network. I can't just sit here and talk to you. We got to go find some more business.

So, I I meet I meet uh this individual at uh at the bar and we start chatting and uh she's telling me about this company called Luxoft. Again, >> IT world. I'm still not there yet, right? and I'm on the other it >> but she's telling me that she's looking to hire someone to do analyst relations >> and I and I it just it just clicked. I said that sounds like something I can do. I have this background in research. I I've been applying to be an analyst from you know through hedge funds all the way to think tanks.

This sounds like something I might be good at and having a sales background if it's if I need to talk to a lot of people I could you know fake it till I make it right. >> Yeah. So uh you know uh this she was in charge of investor relations at that time. Now the company uh had not yet got had not gone public but I needed to come up with a reason to speak to this woman once a month just to stay in touch because I really want this job. Right now this is around 2012 early 2013. So I would email her once a month and she had an office in New York and we would always meet and talk and I think she was always kind of testing me is this the right guy and you know she never asked me to find who Gartner is and who Gartner's competitors and Forester and IDC you know I think she was just trying to make sure I was a you know someone who could fit this role and long story short even though it's a bit of an irony as I keep going here I wake up in July of 2013 to an email from her saying here's the YouTube link This is why it took so long.

And there they are ringing the bell at the stock exchange. >> Oh, wow. >> You got taking the company public and and now I said, "All right, this has got to be the time." Now, remember couple months ago, I land this big account. Um, you know, we're we're cranking eight, you know, pilots and everybody's happy. And and I said to Jeff, who I worked with, I said, "What do you think?" He goes, "You're taking that job if you get it." So, um, you know, I I did one more sort of more formal interview. I had to pitch a piece of their business.

So, she knew that I knew what I'm talking I was talking about. And, um, she goes to, uh, Moscow cuz at that point, the company, you know, had a lot of delivery out of Russia. Um, and they get approval. She says, "All right, sounds like he knows what he's doing. Bring him on." So, August, September comes around. So, I did a year at at at the project management company. And uh and then I started and I got there and the office was right across from Penn Station and I said, "Man, this is this is where I'm at." So I had to very quickly without AI get up to date on who is Luxoft competing with, what do they mean when they say enterprise uh custom software development?

What does Nearshore mean? Right? Like I had to really fake it for a while until I got going. And then, you know, long I just everything fell into place. And so when I when I look back and I say I couldn't figure out that what I wanted to do until I started to talk to people about what they were looking for in people to work for them, right? Because a lot of times you're whiteboarding by yourself. Yeah, you could talk to the career counselor, but at the end of the day, until you start to talk to people about different jobs and roles, that's how you say, "Oh, that sounds interesting.

that's something I could do. And so if you know we weren't at that event and she wasn't at the bar at that time and I was getting bored and we started to just network with everybody and I had enough tenacity to email her once a month and Jeff tells me take the job, you know, this this sounds like a great company. It just went public because again he's come he's telling me from a sell side they just went public. You got to go there. That's a great time the company, right? And I'm like, "Oh, okay." You know, and then 6 months in, she said, "You want to take over PR?" And I said, "Yeah, I could do that." You know, not never having written a press release before.

At least there were ones published before that I could copy the mop. >> Put me in, coach. >> Then, you know, long story short, I had that that company Luxoff was the American dream. I I still get um I still get very, you know, emotional about talking about my experience there because I, you know, you walk in having very little experience with an organization that was growing 20% year-over-year and to end up in the head of marketing role six years later, you know, I mean, that that was such an experience.

And then we got acquired by DXC, large IT provider. And uh I'll never forget when the boss called me at uh at that point said, "Hey, I need you in Virginia on Saturday." I said, "It's time." And so that happened. And uh >> you know, then I had a chance to get a big tier one logo on my resume. I took a job within DXC because you can't have two heads of marketing, right? So I took the advisor relations role >> and uh which is a very niche function, but we're, you know, we're a small group of people. And then and then uh did that for two years.

We had a little bit of changeover, new CEO, COVID was basically that whole thing. >> Yeah. >> And then uh Hitachi came calling through one of the consultancies that >> that a lot of the IT providers work with and uh and I interviewed and it was probably the you know 30 days of of of summertime where I said uh this sounds like a really interesting opportunity. But to your first question about Hitachi, I had no idea that they were doing what they were doing, you know, and I remember when I interviewed uh he, you know, one of the interviews said to me, "It's going to take you a while to get your head around this, you know, level of innovation." And um couldn't ask for uh couldn't ask for anything more.

So So that's how it went. >> Wow. What a ride. You know, it's just it's crazy how things work. you know, you would uh you wouldn't have it sounds like a movie, you know, just what are the odds that you would be, you know, sitting next to that lady at the bar and have that have that conversation with her and then and and you know, kudos to your tenacity for staying on her and keeping up with those relationships. People don't people aren't great at that. She probably was thinking like this is the guy I want to be you know building relationships with the analyst like he's good he stays on it he's well spoken you know whatever whatever was going through her mind at that point I guess you know you you said you've been on this in this job for a few years now what do you what's one thing you know now that you wish you had known on day one >> it's a good question um I I well So, I would answer it in two ways.