One thing that was surprising and inconvenient at the same time was the risk of becoming too rigid with the data. The pre-selecting data identifiers was useful for the initial use cases, but as we got more mature with our use cases, it could become more restrictive because the business might later decide to introduce more data attributes or feeds. That means more dynamic segmentation requirement. Segment didn't have that good capability to be more dynamic with the inclusion or exclusion of data feeds. Segment can be improved by centralizing the features that it has. I understand that it has gone through acquisitions, such as Twilio and Segment still operates as a separate system. If they can integrate the Twilio aspect of communication with Segment system itself, it will save our time when it comes to the infrastructure setup because we had to reach out to DevOps to have the right setup connected to our Twilio communications. It actually would save time for the clients of Twilio Segment to make sure that the systems are well integrated. It would also be good to have a good understanding of the inherent constraints because we remember that WhatsApp communications were not applicable for certain countries. That could be a part of the knowledge transfer in the onboarding discussions itself, so as to avoid any surprises in the downstream conversations. More support from WhatsApp conversations could be helpful. It could be possible that some countries don't allow multiple numbers. If we can have multiple numbers for the communications, that would be helpful to reach out to our target client base. For the technical challenge, we can have more flexibility on the data feeds that Segment can incorporate from the client database because the data needs can change for any corporate, whether it be small, medium business, or large enterprise. If we can retrofit the data irrespective of some data fields being empty, that would be really helpful. It would also be good to have two or more data feeds input because it's difficult to get the data infrastructure done on the client side. It's better to have a customization of the data irrespective of the sources it came from. That would be really helpful for the data manipulation activities inherent to the segmentation. The advice that I will give to anyone who is looking at Segment as a potential partner is to make sure that you have your problem statement ready. Ask the difficult questions to Segment about how the data will be used from a storage perspective and from a processing perspective. Are there any challenges inherent in their data which might not be understood by Segment system? Have the questions ready about the data infrastructure because the data is key to getting the right processing and the accurate processing of the data from Segment.
