Fernando Academia Jr., CDMP, PCM

C&S Cabinets

Full Stack Marketer

Concertina Team

CIIT College of Arts and Technology Inc.

Instructor

Netcore Cloud

Customer Success Manager

TL;DR Digital Marketing

President & CEO

Brand30

Member

BorderBuddy

MoEngage Inc.

Autogrow

Marketing Strategist

Growth Blazers

Full Stack Marketer | Digital Marketing Instructor | Speaker/Trainer

Over the last decade, I’ve worked across FinTech, E-commerce, and SaaS, helping businesses unlock the power of digital marketing and MarTech.

In 2020, I realized that the strategies and successes I’ve helped others achieve could be applied to my own ventures, allowing me to assist even more businesses in my own way.

I took action.

I joined masterminds and business groups, executed campaigns firsthand, and consulted as a marketing strategist and customer success expert. Through these experiences, I’ve built a growing community of professionals eager to learn and apply the strategies I’ve developed.

Now, I’m preparing to launch my newsletter, Future-Forward Marketing, where I’ll be sharing actionable insights that have fueled my success.

My mission: To help you master the complexities of MarTech and digital marketing, turning them into powerful growth engines.

My results:

→ 10+ years of experience driving growth in FinTech, E-commerce, and SaaS
→ Managed multimillion-dollar portfolios, ensuring high retention and growth
→ Educator at CIIT Philippines, empowering the next generation of digital marketers
→ Preparing to launch Future-Forward Marketing, a newsletter packed with actionable insights and strategies

If you’re looking to build a robust, data-driven marketing strategy, I’m here to help.

Last year, I watched an enterprise burn through a massive budget on a platform their organization couldn't digest.

The technology was perfect.
World-class vendor.
Proven at scale.
Executive champion.
Unlimited budget.
External consultants.
Everything textbooks say you need.

Six months later? Dead.

Not because the platform failed. Because the organization couldn't absorb it.

After 15 years implementing marketing technology across Southeast Asia, I've seen this pattern destroy more transformations than any technical failure:

Organizations have an absorption capacity. Exceed it, and everything fails.

Think of your organization as having a digestive system for change. Feed it too much, too fast, and it rejects everything. Even the good stuff.

I learned this lesson repeatedly across enterprises serving millions of customers.

Major platform implementations failed not because the technology was wrong. 

They failed because they required:
- Workflows that didn't exist
- Skills nobody had developed
- Cultural shifts nobody prepared for
- Integration patterns that weren't documented
- Governance models that weren't designed

This painful education led me to develop a MarTech Maturity Framework that measures absorption capacity across four dimensions:

*Integration Debt: How many manual handoffs exist between systems?
*Data Debt: How fragmented is your customer information?
*Process Debt: How many workflows still run on spreadsheets?
*Vendor Debt: How much overlap exists between tools?

The rule is simple: Score below 60% on any dimension, and new technology multiplies problems instead of solving them.

One client scored 85% on technical capability but 35% on process maturity. We spent six months fixing processes before touching technology. Result? 22x ROI improvement using mostly existing tools.

Vendors will never tell you this.
Consultants won't admit it.

But here's reality:
Most organizations can successfully absorb about 30% of what vendors promise.

Not because vendors lie.
Because organizations overestimate their readiness.

You wouldn't run a marathon without training. Yet companies attempt digital transformation without building organizational fitness first.

The solution isn't moving slower. It's building absorption capacity systematically. Strengthen your foundation before adding weight.

Your Absorption Reality Check:
- How many transformation initiatives has your organization "completed" versus actually adopted?
- What percentage of your tech stack features do teams actually use?
- How many platforms solved one problem but created three new ones?

If you're uncomfortable with the answers, you're not alone.

Want to dive deeper? I've just published below a comprehensive analysis combining insights from Oxford Saïd Business School's latest research with real-world implementation patterns across telecommunications, fintech, and digital platforms.

#DigitalTransformation #MarTech #AITransformation #ChangeManagement #OrganizationalChange

Marketing Technology | Building SukiNomics | 15+ Years helping eCommerce/SaaS/FinTech scale with MarTech & Strategy

View newsletter: Future-Forward Marketing

Insights from Saïd Business School, University of Oxford's latest webinar on intelligent systems, validated through 15+ years implementing enterprise 

Open article: From Oxford to Operations: 10 Critical Lessons on Leading AI Transformation That Actually Works by Fernando Academia Jr., CDMP, PCM • 9 min read

From Oxford to Operations: 10 Critical Lessons on Leading AI Transformation That Actually Works

Spent an hour with Ed Bastian online in a session for the CEO Speaker Series organized by the Yale Program on Stakeholder Innovation and Management (Y-SIM) Yale School of Management . 

His 15-year transformation of Delta offers lessons for every martech leader.

The standout stat:

Delta reduced maintenance cancellations 99% over nine years. From 6,000 annual cancellations to 60. That’s operational excellence at scale.

The business result:

Delta now captures 50% of US airline industry profits. Charges a 20% price premium. Maintains 83% on-time performance across 1.7 million flights.

Three principles stood out:

1️⃣First, long-term investment beats short-term optimization. Delta spent years building operational reliability before investors saw returns. Bastian faced pressure to buy back stock instead of investing in infrastructure. He stayed the course. #Martech maturity follows the same path. You can’t skip foundational work.

2️⃣Second, people centricity as business strategy. Delta’s profit sharing gives employees 10% of first $2.5 billion in profits, 20% beyond that. Last year’s payout hit $1.4 billion. This isn’t altruism. It’s alignment. When your teams win first, shareholders win bigger.

3️⃣Third, technology amplifies people, doesn’t replace them. Bastian discussed #AI in maintenance operations. Delta digitized millions of records to help technicians make better decisions. The goal is smarter work, not fewer workers. Your martech stack should do the same.

The most powerful quote: “I obsess on what my people need so they can obsess on taking care of customers.”

That’s the model.

Operational excellence creates customer loyalty. #Customer loyalty drives pricing power. Pricing power funds more investment in your teams.

For martech leaders, the parallel is clear.

- Fix your data foundation.
- Align your teams around shared metrics.
- Use #technology to enhance human judgment. - - Measure what matters.

The companies that win aren’t the ones with the most tools. They’re the ones with the best fundamentals.​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​

#LeadInspireTransform

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Enterprise tools do not fail because of bad technology. Hear me out…

I’ve seen dozens of enterprise tool implementations fail or fall way behind schedule.

Same pattern every time.

Marketing buys a CDP. IT refuses to integrate it. Analytics team never gets access. Finace never brought in to understand brand & longterm ROI.

Years later, the platform sits unused while everyone blames each other.

The real problem was simpler.

Nobody wanted to collaborate.

#Digitaltransformations require co-ownership. The tools do not care about your org chart.

They require integrated data flows, unified governance, and cross-functional decision-making.

When you purchase an enterprise tool, you are not buying software. You are buying an org-wide commitment to work differently.

That means:

#Marketing must explain business outcomes in technical terms IT understands.

IT must translate infrastructure constraints into business impact.

Analytics must make data actionable for both teams.

Finance must understand ROI beyond immediate cost reduction.

Every successful implementation I have seen had one thing in common. Teams who treated the tool as a shared asset requiring shared accountability.

Every failure had people who wanted results without collaboration.

You cannot #lead transformation initiatives alone. Not because you lack the skills. But because enterprise tools touch multiple systems, multiple teams, and multiple workflows.

The question is not whether you can drive the project. The question is whether you can get everyone to own the outcome together.

#Stakeholdermanagement is not politics.

It is the actual work of making technology deliver business value.

The expectations of executive leadership are shifting. In #digitaltransformation, the C-suite can no longer lead through decks, dashboards, and delegation alone.

I saw this firsthand during a week-long executive program at UCD Smurfit in Dublin. We analyzed why GE Digital failed while Airbnb succeeded. We visited Pinterest, HubSpot, and Google.

One pattern emerged across every case: the gap between technology capability and organizational capability. That gap closes only when executives get close to the work.

The Magazine Luiza transformation in Brazil shows what this looks like.

When Frederico Trajano became CEO in 2016, he faced a choice. Follow the Silicon Valley playbook of burning cash for growth, or find another way.

He chose neither separation nor delegation. He personally incubated a technology unit of 55 engineers, eventually growing to 850. He housed them in a secluded corner of headquarters with one instruction: build digital tools for both online and offline businesses with total focus on the end user.

The result was a 7,900% stock price increase over four years. The company transformed from a traditional retailer into a tech company.

The Thinkers50 Transformation Playbook captures the key insight. If a technology unit is left to fend for itself inside a larger organization, it will get rejected.

It needs to be separated and incubated by the CSuite, who should give it opportunities to get initial credibility through small wins.

This is why executive sponsorship is the connective tissue in digital transformation.

Harvard Business School research calls this the “use of self.” Leaders model future behaviors early in the process. They visibly tackle new challenges outside their comfort zone. This serves as a template for others to follow.

In #MarTech, the same principle applies. You cannot lead a CDP implementation from a quarterly business review. You cannot transform customer experience through filtered reports.

HubSpot  CEO Yamini Rangan  recently shared what works instead:

Do gemba walks. Sit with your team. Watch how the work happens. See where the friction is.

Triangulate feedback. Listen directly to customers, partners, and employees.

Experiment with #AI yourself. Write prompts. Share what you learn. You cannot #lead transformation if you are not learning the tools shaping it.

Communicate relentlessly. Share what is known, what is unknown, and how decisions are made.

As Rangan puts it, the best C-suite leaders today lead by doing. They provide clear direction and then protect the space for teams to execute.

Sources: 
- Thales Teixeira, Leandro Guissoni, and Frederico Trajano, An Unlikely Case of Successful Digital Transformation, The Transformation Playbook, Brightline Initiative/Thinkers50.
- Ryan L. Raffaelli, Leading Organizational Change, Harvard Business School Core Curriculum, 2017.
- UCD Michael Smurfit Graduate Business School Digital Transformation Executive Program, Dublin, 2025.

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