>> Narrator: From around the globe, it's theCUBE with digital coverage of AWS Public Sector Partner Awards brought to you by Amazon Web Services. Hello everyone, welcome back to theCUBE's Coverage of "AWS Public Sector Partner Awards Program". I'm John Furrier your host of theCUBE here in Palo Alto, California doing the remote interviews, during this pandemic we have our remote crews and getting all the stories and celebrating the award winners and here to feature the most Innovative Connect Deployment. We have Accenture of Canada and the Department of Employment and Social Development of Canada known as ESDC. Guys, congratulations Joel Marchildon, Accenture Canada, managing director and Benoit Long, ESDC of Canada chief transformation officer. Gentlemen, thanks for coming on, and congratulations on the award. >> Thank you. >> Thank you and nice to be here >> So obviously, during this pandemic, a lot of disruption and a lot of business still needs to go on including government services. But the citizens and people need to still do their thing you got a business got to run, and you got to get things going. But the disruptions caused a little bit of how the user experiences are. So this Connect has been interesting. Its been a featured part of what we've been hearing at the Public Sector Summit with Teresa Carlson. You guys, this is a key product. Tell us about the award. What is the solution that is starving and deserving of the award? >> Maybe I'll go first and then pass it over to Benoit. But I think the solution is Amazon Connect based Virtual Contact Center that was stood up fairly quickly, over the course of about four days and really in support of benefit that the Government of Canada was was releasing as part of its economic response to the pandemic. And in the end, its a fully functioning featured contact center solution. Includes an IVR. And, we stood it up for about 1500 to 2000 agents. So that's the the crux of the solution. And maybe Benoit can give a bit of insight as to how it came about so quickly. >> Yeah, we're happy to actually, we were obviously like every other government facing enormous pressures at that time to deliver benefits directly to people who were in true need. The jobs are being lost, our current systems were in trouble because of their age and their archaic nature. And so the challenge was quickly how do we actually support a lot of people really fast. And so it came through immediately that after our initial payments were made under what was called the Canada emergency response benefit that we had to support clients directly and so people turn to the transformation team of all teams. If you wish during a firestorm, to say, well, what could you do? And how could you help. And so we had an established relationship with a number of our system integrators, including Accenture. And we were able to run a competition very rapidly, and Accenture won. And then we deployed in, as Joel said, in a matter of four days, what for us was an exceptional and high quality solution to a significant client problem. And I say that because I think you can imagine how people feel in a pandemic of all things, but with the uncertainty that comes with loss of income, loss of jobs, the question of being able to deal with somebody a real; a human being, as well as to be able to efficiently answer a very simple but straightforward questions rapidly and with high quality, was pretty fundamental for us. So the the people in the groups that we're talking through here we're speaking to millions of people, who were literally being asked to accept the payment rapidly and to be able to connect with us quickly. And without this solution, which was exceptionally well done and of high quality personally as a technology solution, it would not have been possible to even answer any of these queries quickly. >> And well, that's a great point. One of the things that you see with the pandemic, its a disaster in the quote disaster kind of readiness thing. Unforeseen, right. So like other things, you can kind of plan for things, hypothetical, you got scenarios. But this is truly a case where every day counts, every minute counts, because humans are involved. There's no ROI calculation. Its not like, well, what's the payback of our system? The old kind of way to think. This is real results, fast. This is what cloud is all about. This is the promise of cloud, can I stand up something quick, and you did it with a partner, okay. This is like not, like normal. Its like, its like unheard of, right. Four days, with critical infrastructure, critical services that were unforeseen. Take us through what was going on in the war room. As you guys knew this was here. Take us through through what happened. >> So I think I can start. As you can imagine the set of executives that were overseeing the payment process was an exceptional, it was like a bunker, frankly, for about two weeks. We had to suspend the normal operations of the vast majority of our programming. We had to launch brand new payments and benefits systems and programs that nobody has seen before the level of simplicity was maximized in order to deliver the funds quickly. So you can imagine its a Warpath if you wish, because the campaign is really around timing. Timing is fundamental. People are literally losing their jobs, there is no support, there is no funding money for them to be able to buy groceries. So, and the trust that people have in the government is pretty much at risk right there. And there is straightforward but extraordinarily powerful magic moment, if you wish. If you can deliver a solution, then you make a difference for a long time. And so the speed is unheard of on all fronts. When it came to the call center capability and the ability for us to support in a service context, the clients that were desperate to reach us, and we're talking hundreds of thousands of calls a day. We're not talking a few thousand here, ultimately, at some point we were literally getting in overtaken by volumes, call centers, because we had our regular ones still operating. Over a million calls were coming in the day. With the capacity to answer 10s of thousands and so the reality is that the Call Centers that we put up here, very quickly became capable of answering more calls than our regular call centers. And that speaks to the the speed of delivery, the quality of the solution, of course, but the scalability of it. And I have to say maybe unheard of, it may be difficult to replicate the conditions to lead to this are rare. But I have to say that my bosses and most of the government is probably now wondering why we can't do this more often. Why can't we operate with that kind of speed and agility. So I think what you've got is a client in our case, under extreme circumstances, now realizing the new normal will never be the same. That these types of solutions and technology and their scalability, their agility, their speed of deployment, is frankly something we want we want all the time. Now we'd like to be able to do them during normal timeline conditions, but even those will be a fraction of what it used to take. It would have taken us a while I can actually tell you because I was the lead technologist to deploy at scale for the government, Canada, all the call center capabilities under a single software as a service platform. It took us two years to design it two years to procure it, and five years to install it. That's the last experience we have of call center, enterprise scale capabilities. And in this case we went from years, to literally days. >> Well, it takes a crisis sometimes to kind of wire up the simplicity solution that you say, why didn't we do this before? The waterfall meetings getting everyone arguing kind of gets in the way and the old software model, I want to come back to the transformation Benoit a minute, Because I think that's going to be a great success story and some learnings and I want to get your thoughts on that. But I want to go to Joel, because Joel, we've talked to many Accenture executives over the years and most recently, this past 24 months. And the message we've been hearing is, "We're going to be faster. We're not going to be seen as that, a consulting firm, taking our times trying to get a pound of flesh from the client." This is an example of my opinion of a partner working with a problem statement that kind of matches the cloud speed. So you guys have been doing this is not new to Accenture. So take us through how you guys reacted, because one, you got to sync up and get the cadence of what Benoit was trying to do sync up and execute take us through what happened on your side. >> Yeah, I mean, so its an unprecedented way of operating for us as well, frankly. And, we've had to look at, to get this specific solution out the door and respond to an RFP and the commercial requirements that go with that we had to get pretty agile ourselves internally on, how we go through approvals, etc, to make sure that we were there to support Benoit and his team and I think that we saw this as a broader opportunity to really respond to it. To help Canada in a time of need. So I think we had to streamline a lot of our internal processes and make quick decisions that normally even for our organization would have taken, could have taken weeks, right, and we were down to hours and a lot of instances. So it forces us to react and act differently as well. But I mean to Benoit's point I think this is really going to hopefully change the way... It illustrates the art of the possible and hopefully will change how quickly we can look at problems and we reduce deployment timeframes from years to months and months to weeks, etc. For solutions like this. And I think the AWS platform specifically in this case, Benoit touched on a lot of things beat the market scalability, but just as the benefit itself has to be simplified to do this quickly. I think one of the one of the benefits of the solution itself is, its simple to use technologically. I mean, we trained, as I said, I think 1600 agents on how to use the platform over the course of a weekend. And they're not normal agents. These were people who were furloughed from other jobs potentially within the government. So they're not necessarily contact center agents, by training, but they became contact center agents over the course of 48 hours. And I think, from that perspective, that was important as well to have something that people could use to answer those calls that we know that we knew were going to come. >> Benoit this is the transformation dream scenario in the sense of capabilities. I know its under circumstances of the pandemic and you guys did solve a big problem really fast and saved lives and then help people get on with their day. But transformation is about having people closest to the problem, execute. And also the people equation people process technology, as they say, is kind of playing out in real time. This is kind of the playbook. Amazon came in and said, "Hey, you want to stand something up?" You wired it together the solution quickly, you have close to it. Looking back now its almost like, hey, why aren't we doing this before, as you said, and then you had to bring people in, who weren't trained and stood them up and they were delivering the service. This is the playbook to share your thoughts on this because this is what you're you're thinking about all the time, and it actually is playing out in real time. >> Well, I would definitely endorse the idea that its a playbook. Its I would say its an ideal and dream playbook to bid like showing up on a basketball court with all the best players in the entire league playing together magically. It is exactly that. So a lot of things had to happen quickly but also correctly, because you can't pull all these things properly together without that. So I would say the partnership with the private sector here was fundamental. And I have to applaud the work that Accenture did particularly I think, as Canadians we were very proud of the fact that we needed to respond quickly. Everyone was in this our neighbors, we knew people who were without support and Accenture's team, I mean, all the way up and down across the organization was fundamental in and delivering this but also literally putting themselves into these roles and to make sure that we would be able to respond and quickly do so. I think the playbook around the readiness for change, I was shocked into existence. I mean, I won't talk about quantum physics, but clearly some higher level of energy was thrown in quickly, mobilize everybody all at once. Nobody was said he is sitting around saying, I wonder if we have changed management covered off, this was changed readiness at its best. And so I think for me from a learning perspective, apart from just the technology side, which is pretty fundamental, if you don't have ready enough technology to deploy quickly, then the best pay your plans in the world won't work. The reality is that to mobilize an organization going forward into that level of spontaneous driving change, exception, acceptance, and adoption, is really what I would aim for. And so our challenge now will be continuing that kind of progression going forward. And we now found the way and we certainly use the way to work with the private sector in an innovative capacity and innovative ways with brand new solutions that are truly agile and scalable, to be able to pull all of the organization all at once very rapidly and I have to admit that it is going to shift permanently our planning, we had 10 year plans for our big transformations, because some of our programs are the most important in the country in many ways. We support people about 8 million Canadians a month, depending on the benefits payments that we deliver. And they're the most marginal needing and requires our support from seniors, to the unemployed, to job seekers and whatnot. So if you think about that group itself, and to be able to support them clearly with the systems that we have its just unsustainable. But the new technologies are clearly going to show us a way that we had never forecast, and I have to say I had to throw up my 10 year plan. And now I'm working my way down from 10 to nine to eight year plans going forward. And so its exciting and nerve wracking sometimes, but then, obviously as a change leader, our goal is to get there as quickly as possible. So the benefits of all these solutions can make a difference in people's lives. >> What's interesting is that you can shorten that timetable, but also frees you up to be focused on what's contemporary and what's needed at the time to leverage the people and the resources you have. And take advantage of that versus having something that you're sitting on that's needs to be refreshed, you can always be on that bleeding edge. And this just brings up the DevOps kind of mindset, agility, the lean startup, the lean company, this is a team effort between Amazon Accenture and ESDC. Its, pass, shoot, score really fast. So this is the new reality. Any commentary from you guys on this, new pass, shoot, score combination because you got speed, you got agility, you're leaner, which makes you more flexible for being contemporary in solving problems? What's your thoughts? >> Yeah. So my perspective on that is most definitely right. I think what we were able to show in what's coming out of a lot of different responses to the pandemic by government is, perfection isn't the most important thing out of the gate, getting something out there that's going to reassure citizens, that's going to allow them to answer their questions or access benefits quickly, is what's becoming more important, obviously, security and privacy, those things are of the utmost importance as well. But its ability to get stuff out there, quickly, test it, change it, test it again, and just always be iterating on the solution. Like I can say what we put out on April 6, within four days, is the backbone of what's out there still today. But we've added an integrated workforce management solution from NICE, and we added some other ISVs to do outbound dialing from Acquia and things like that. So the solution has grown from that MVP. And I think that's one other thing that's going to be a big takeaway. If you're not going to do anything till you got the final end product out there, then its going to be late. So let's go quickly and let's adapt from there. >> Benoit, talk about that dynamic because that's about building blocks, on foundational things and then services. Its the cloud model. >> Yeah, I mean, before the pandemic, I had lunch with Mark Schwartz, which I believe you are quite familiar with. And, I spent an hour and a half with him. We were talking and he was so exciting and energized by what the technologies could do. And I was listening to him and I used to be the chief technology officer for the Government of Canada, right. And so I've seen a lot of stuff and I said, Well, that's really exciting. And I'm sure its possible in some other places, and maybe in some other countries where they didn't have infrastructure and legacy. I guess if I see him again soon. I'll have to apologize for not believing him enough. I think the building blocks of Agile the building blocks sprints and MVPs. I mean, they're enough fundamental to the way we're going to solve our biggest Harriers and scariest problems technologically. And then from a business perspective, service candidate itself has 18,000 employees involved in multiple channels, where the work has always been very lethargic, very difficult. Arduous you make change over years, not months, not days, for sure. And so I think that new method is not only a different way of working, its a completely revamped way of assembling solutions. And I think that the concept of engineering is probably going to be closer to what we're going to do. And I have to borrow the Lego metaphor, but the building blocks are going to be assembled. We know in working, I'm saying this in front of Joel, he doesn't know that yet. (all laughing) (indistinct) partners. We're going to be assembling MVP maps of an entire long program and its going to be iterative, it is going to be designed built, it will be agile as much as we can implement it. But more importantly, as much as we can govern it because the government is... We may have changed a lot, but the government is not necessarily caught on to most of these approaches. But the reality is that, that's where we're heading. And I will say, I'll close perhaps on this answer. The biggest reason for doing that apart from we've proved it is the fact that the appetite inside the organization for that level of mobilization, speed and solutioning, and being engaged rapidly, you just can't take that away from an organization once they've tasted that. If you let them down, well, they'll remember and frankly, they do remember now because they want more of this. And its going to be hard. But its a better hard, better challenge, than the one of having to do things over a decade, then to go fast and to kind of iterate quickly through the challenges and the issues and then move on very much to the next one as rapidly as possible. I think the the other comment I would add is most of this was driven by a client need. And that's not inconsequential because it mobilized everybody to a common focus. If it had been just about, well, we need to get people on side and solutions in place just to make our lives better as providers. Yeah, would it work perhaps, but it would have been different than the mobilization that comes when the client is put in the middle. The client is the focus, and then we drive everyone to that solution. >> Shared success and success is contagious. And when you ride the new wave, you're oh, we need a new board, right? So once you get it, it then spreads like wildfire. This is what we've been seeing. And it also translates down to the citizens because again, being contemporary, none of this just look could feel its success and performance. So as people in business start to adopt cloud. It becomes a nice synergy. This is a key! Joe, take us home here on the Accenture. The award winner, you guys did a great job. Final thoughts. >> Yeah, I mean, I think final thoughts would be happy to have had the opportunity to help. And it was a it was a complete team effort and continues to be. Its not a bunch of eccentric technologists in the background doing this. The commitment from everyone to get this in place and to continue to improve it from Benoit team and from other folks across the government has been paramount to the success. So its been a fantastic if world win like experience and look forward to continuing to build on it. And it has been well said, I think one thing that's done is its created demand for speed on some of these larger transformations. So I looking forward to continuing to innovate with with Benoit team. >> Well, congratulations for the most innovative Connect Deployment. And because you guys from Canada, I have to use the Hockey-Reference. You get multiple people working together in a cohesive manner. Its pass, shoot, score every time and its contagious. (Benoit laughs) Gentlemen, thank you very much for your time and congratulations for winning the election. Take care! >> Thanks. >> Take care. >> Okay, this is theCUBE's Coverage "AWS Public Sector Partner Awards" show. I'm John Furrier, host of theCUBE. Thanks for watching. (upbeat music)

>>from the Cube Studios in Palo Alto and Boston connecting with thought leaders all around the world. This is a cube conversation. >>Welcome back to the Cube's coverage of AWS Public Sector Partner Awards program. I'm John Furrow, your host of the Cube here in Palo Alto, California In the remote interviews during this pandemic, we have our remote crews and getting all the stories and celebrating the award winners. And here to feature the most innovative connect deployment. We have a center of Canada and the Department of Employment and Social Development of Canada, known as E S D. C guys. Congratulations, Joel. More Children Censure Canada Managing director and Ben while long sdc of Canada Chief Transformation officer. Gentlemen, thanks for coming on. And congratulations on the award. >>Thank you. >>Thank you. >>So, Ashley, during this pandemic, a lot of disruption and a lot of business still needs to go on, including government services. But the citizens and people need to still do their thing. Business got to run, and you got to get things going. But the disruptions caused a little bit of how the user experiences are. So this connect has been interesting. It's been a featured part of where you've been hearing at the Public Sector summit with Theresa Carlson. You guys, this is a key product. Tell us about the award. What is the solution? That disturbing of deserving reward? >>Maybe I'll get I'll go first and then pass it over to Benoit. But I think the solution is Amazon Connect based Virtual Contact Center that we stood up fairly quickly over the course of about four days and really in support of of benefit that the government of Canada was was releasing as part of its economic response to the pandemic. And in the end that, you know, it's a fully functioning featured contact center solution includes an I V r. And, uh, you know, we stood it up for about 1500 to 2000 agents so that that's the crux of the solution. And maybe Benoit can give a bit of insight as to to how it came about so quickly. >>Yeah, happy to actually wear obviously, like every other government, facing enormous pressures at that time to deliver benefits directly to people who were in true need, the jobs are being lost. Our current systems were in trouble because of their age and barricade cake nature. And so the challenge is was quickly how to actually support a lot of people really fast. And so it came through immediately that after our initial payments were made under what was called Canada Emergency Response Benefit, then we have to support our clients directly. And so people turn to the transformation team of all teams. If you wish during a fire firestorm to say, Well, what could you do and how could you help? And so we had an established relationship with a number of other system integrators, including Accenture, and we were able to run a competition very rapidly. Accenture one. And then we deployed. And as you all said, in a matter of four days, what for us was a new, exceptional on high quality solution to a significant client problem. And I say that because I think you can imagine how people feel in the endemic of all of all things. But with the uncertainty that comes with the loss of income, loss of jobs, the question of being able to deal with somebody really a human being, as well as to be able to be efficiently answer a very simple but straightforward questions rapidly and with high quality, with pretty fundamental for us. So the people in the groups that were talking through here are talking, speaking to millions of people who were literally being asked to to accept the pavement rapidly and to be able to connect with us quickly. And without this solution, which was exceptionally well done and deployed and of high quality personally, just a technology, uh, solution. I would not have been possible to even answer any of these queries quickly. >>And while that's a great 0.1 of the things that you see with the pandemic it's a disaster in the quote disaster kind of readiness thing. Unforeseen, right? So, like other things, you can kind of plan for things that hypothetical. You've got scenarios, but this >>is >>truly a case where every day counts. Every minute counts because humans are involved is no our ROI calculation. It's not like it's not like, Well, what's the payback of our system? The old kind of way to think this is really results fast. This is what cloud is all about. This is the promise of cloud. Can I stand up something quick and you did it with a partner. Okay, this is, like, not, like, normal again. It's like it's, you know, it's like, unheard of, right? Four days with critical infrastructure, critical services that were unforeseen. Take us through what was going on in the war room, as you guys knew this was here. Take us through the through what happened. Yeah, >>So I think I can start a Z. You can imagine the set of executives that we're seeing a payment process. Uh, was an exceptional. It was like a bunker. Frankly, for about two weeks, we had to suspend the normal operations off the vast majority of our programming. We had to launch brand new payments and benefits systems and programs that nobody had seen before. The level of simplicity was maximized to delivered the funds quickly. So you could imagine it's a warpath if you wish, because the campaign is really around. A timing. Timing is fundamental. People are are literally losing their jobs. There is no support. There's no funding money for them to be able to buy groceries. So on the trust that people have in the government, Ai's pretty much at risk right there and then in a very straightforward but extraordinarily powerful magic moment. If you wish. If you can deliver a solution, then you make a difference for a long time. And so the speed unheard off on old friends when he came to the call center capability and the ability for us to support and service context the clients that were desperate to reach us on. We're talking hundreds of thousands of calls, right? We're not talking a few 1000 year. Ultimately, at some point we were literally getting in our over over, taken by volumes, call centers. But we had a regular one still operating over a 1,000,000 calls for coming in today with the capacity to answer, um, you know, tens of thousands. And so the reality is that the counselor that we put up here very quickly became capable of answering more calls than our regular costumes. And that speaks to the speed of delivery, the quality of the solution, of course, but the scalability of it and I have to say, maybe unheard of, it may be difficult to replicate. The conditions to lead to this are rare, but I have to say that my bosses and most of the government is probably now wondering why we can't do this more often, like we can't operate with that kind of speed and agility. So I think what you've got is a client in our case, under extreme circumstances. Now, realizing the new normal will never be the same, that these types of solutions and technology. And then there's scalability. There's agility there, the speed of deployment. It's frankly, something we want. We want all the time. Now we'd like to be able to do it under your whole timeline conditions. But even those will be a fraction of what it used to take. It would have taken us well, actually, I can actually tell you because I was the lead, Ah, technologists to deploy at scale for the government. Canada all the call center capabilities under a single software as a service platform. It took us two years to design it two years to procure it and five years to install it. That's the last experience. We have a call center enterprise scale capabilities, and in this case, we went from years to literally days. >>Well, you know, it takes a crisis sometimes to kind of wire up the simplicity solution that you say. Why didn't we do this before? You know, the waterfall meetings, Getting everyone arguing gets kind of gets in the way of the old the old software model. I want to come back to the transformation been wanna minute, cause I think that's gonna be a great success story and some learnings, and I want to get your thoughts on that. But I want to go to Joel because Joel, we've talked to many Accenture executives over the years and most recently this past 24 months. And the message we've been hearing is we're going to be faster. We're not going to be seen as that. You know, a consulting firm taking our times. Try and get a pound of flesh from the client. This is an example. In my opinion of a partner working with a problem statement that kind of matches the cloud speed. So you guys have been doing this. This is not new to a censure. So take us through how you guys reacted because one you got to sync up and get the cadence of what, Ben? What I was trying to do sync up and execute. Take us through what happened on your side. >>Yeah, I mean, so it's It's Ah, it's an unprecedented way of operating for us as well, frankly, and, um and, uh and, you know, we've had to look at to get this specific solution at the door and respond to an RFP and the commercial requirements that go with that way. Had Teoh get pretty agile ourselves internally on on how we go through approvals, etcetera, to make sure that that we were there to support Ben Wan is team. And I think you know that we saw this is a broader opportunity to really respond to it, to help Canada in a time of need. So So I think we, you know, we had to streamline a lot of our internal processes that make quick decisions that normally even for our organization, would have taken, um, could it could have taken weeks, right? And we were down to hours in a lot of instances. So it helps. It forces us to react and act differently as well. But I mean, to Benoit's point, I think this is really going to to hopefully change the way it illustrates the art of the possible and hopefully will change How, How quick We can look at problems and and we reduced deployment timeframes from from years to months and months to weeks, etcetera for solutions like this. Um, and I think that the AWS platform specifically in this case but what touched on a lot of things to beat the market scale ability But just as the benefit itself was, you know has to be simplified to do this quickly. I think one of the one of the benefits of the solution itself is it's simple to use technologically. I mean, we know least retrained. As I said, I think 1600 agents on how to use the platform over the course of a weekend on and and were able, and they're not normal agents. These were people who are firm from other jobs, potentially within the government. So they're not necessarily contact center agents by training. But they became contact center agents over the course of 48 hours, and I think from that perspective, you know, that was important as well have something that people could could use. The answer those calls that we know that when you were gonna come so >>Ben what this is. This is the transformation dream scenario in the sense of capabilities. I know it's under circumstances of the pandemic, and you guys didn't solve a big, big problem really fast and saved lives and help people get on with their day. But transformations about having people closest to the problem execute and the the also the people equation people process technology, as they say, is kind of playing out in real time. This >>is >>the this is kind of the playbook, you know? Amazon came in said, Hey, you want to stand something up? You wired it together. The solution quickly. You're close to it. Looking back now, it's almost like, Hey, why aren't we doing this before? As you said and then you had to bring people in who weren't trained and stood them up and they were delivering the service. This >>is >>the playbook to share your thoughts on this, because this is what you're you're thinking about all the time and it actually playing out in real time. >>Well, I would definitely endorsed the idea that it's a playbook. It's I would say it's an ideal and dream playbook timidly showing up on the basketball court with all the best players in the entire league playing together magically, it is exactly that. So a lot of things have to happen quickly, but also, um, correctly because you know, you can't pull these things properly together without that. So I would say the partnership with the private sector here was fundamental, and I have to applaud the work that Accenture did particularly, I think, as Canadians, we're very proud of the fact that we needed to respond quickly. Everyone was in this, our neighbors, we knew people who were without support and Accenture's team, I mean, all the way up and down across the organization was fundamental and delivering this, but also literally putting themselves into, uh, these roles and to make sure that we would be able to respond quickly to do so. I think the playbook around the readiness for change I was shocked into existence every night. I won't talk about quantum physics, but clearly some some high level of energy was thrown in very quickly, mobilized everybody all at once. Nobody was said. He's sitting around saying, I wonder if we have change management covered off, you know this was changed readiness at its best. And so I think for me from a learning perspective, apart from just the technology side, which is pretty fundamental if you don't have ready enough technology to deploy quickly than the best paid plans in the world won't work. The reality is that to mobilize an organization going for it into that level of of spontaneous driving, change, exception, acceptance and adoption is really what I would aim for. And so our challenge now we'll be continuing that kind of progression going forward, and we now found the way. We certainly use the way to work with private sector in an innovative capacity in the new, innovative ways with brand new solutions that are truly agile and and and scalable to be able to pull all of the organization. All that one's very rapidly, and I have to admit that it is going to shift permanently our planning. We had 10 year plans for our big transformation, so some of our programs are the most important in the country. In many ways. We support people about eight million Canadians a month and on the benefits payments that we deliver, and they're the most marginal needed meeting and and requires our support from senior study, unemployed jobseekers and whatnot. So if you think about that group itself and to be able to support them clearly with the systems that we have is just unsustainable. But the new technologies are clearly going to show us the way that we had never for forecast. And I have to say I had to throw up, like in your plan. And now I'm working my way down from 10 denying date your plants going forward. And so it's exciting and nerve wracking sometimes, but then obviously has a change leader. Our goal is to get there as quickly as possible, so the benefit of all of these solutions could make a difference in people's lives. >>What's interesting is that you can shorten that timetable but also frees you up to be focused on what's contemporary and what's needed at the time. So leverage the people on the resource is You have and take advantage of that versus having something that you're sitting on that need to be refreshed. You can always be on that bleeding edge, and this brings up the Dev ops kind of mindset agility. The lean startup glean company. You know this is a team effort between Amazon and center and SDC. It's pass, shoot, score really fast. So this isn't the new, the new reality. Any commentary from you guys on this, you know, new pass shoot score combination. Because you got speed, you got agility. You're leaner, which makes you more flexible for being contemporary and solving problems. What's your thoughts? >>So my perspective on that is most definitely right. I think what we what we were able to show and what's. You know, what's coming out of a lot of different responses to the pandemic by government is, um, you know, perfection isn't the most important thing out of the gate. Getting something out there that's going to reassure citizens that's gonna allow them to answer their questions or access benefits quickly is what's becoming more important. Obviously, security and privacy. Those things are of the utmost importance as well. But it's ability to get stuff out there, quickly, test it, change it, tested again and and just always be iterating on the solutions. Like I can say what we put out on April 6th within four days is the backbone of what's out there still today. But we've added, you know, we added an integrated workforce management solution from Nice, and we added some other eyes views to do outbound dialing from acquisition, things like that. So the solution has grown from that M v p. And I think that's one other thing that that's going to be a big takeaways if you're not gonna do anything. So you got the final and product out there, then it's going to be here, right? So let's go quickly and let's adapt from there. >>Then we'll talk about that dynamic cause that's about building blocks, fund foundational things and then services. It's the cloud model. >>Yeah, I mean, before the pandemic, I had lunch with Mark Schwarz, which I believe you're quite familiar with, and, you know, I spent an hour and 1/2 with it. We were talking, and he was so exciting and and energized by what the technologies could do. And I was listening to him, and I used to be the chief technology officer for the government can right? And so I've seen a lot of stuff and I said, Well, that's really exciting, and I'm sure it's possible in some other places. And maybe it's some other countries where you know they didn't have infrastructure and legacy. I guess if I see him again soon, I'll have to. I apologize for not believing him enough, I think the building blocks of edge of the building, blocks of sprints and MVP's I mean they're not fundamental to the way we're gonna. So our biggest, various and scariest problems, technologically and then from a business perspective, Service candidate itself has 18,000 employees involved in multiple channels where the work has always been very lethargic, very difficult, arduous. You make change over years, not months, not days for sure. And so I think that that new method is not only a different way of working, it's a completely re HVAC way of assembly solutions, and I think the concept of engineering is probably going to be closer to what we're going to do on. And I have to borrow the Lego metaphor, but the building blocks are gonna be assembled. We now and working. I'm saying this in front of goal. He doesn't know that you should practice partners. We're gonna be assembling MPP maps of an entire long program, and it's gonna be iterative. It is gonna be designed, built. It will be agile as much as we can implement it. But more importantly, and punches weaken govern. It is, you know, the government is we may have changed. A lot of the government is not necessarily can count on to Most of these things approaches, But the reality is that that's where we're heading. And I will say, Oh, close. Perhaps on this on this answer. The biggest reason for doing that apart from we've proved it is the fact that the appetite inside the organization for that level of globalization, speed solution ing and being engaged rapidly you just can't take that away from an organization. Must be a piece of that. Uh, if you let them down, well, they'll remember. And frankly, they do remember now, cause they want more and it's gonna be hard. But it's a better heart. Ah, a better challenge that the one of having to do things over a decade, then to go fast and to kind of iterating quickly through the challenges and the issues and then move on very much to the next one as rapidly as possible. I think the other company, I would add is most of this was driven by a client need, and that's not inconsequential because it mobilized everybody to comment focused. If you have been just about, well, you know, we need to get people on side and solutions in place just to make our lives better, it providers. Yeah, it would have worked, perhaps, but it would have been different than the mobilisation It comes when the client is put in the middle, the client is the focus, and then we drive. Everyone's with that solution, >>you know, shared success and success is contagious. And when you ride the new way to oh, we need a new board, right? So once you get it, it then spreads like wildfire. This is what we've been seeing. And it also translates down to the citizens because again, being contemporary, none of us just looked could feel it's success in performance. So, as you know, people in business start to adopt cloud. It becomes a nice, nice, nice synergy. This is key. I'll take a year on a center. Um, the award winner. You guys did a great job. Final thoughts. >>Yeah. I mean, I think final thoughts would be happy to have the opportunity that help. And it was a It was a complete team effort and continues to be, um, it's not. It's not a bunch of Accenture technologists in the background in this, you know the commitment from everyone to get this in place. And can you continue to improvement from Benoit's team and from other folks across the government has been, uh, has been paramount to the success. So, um um, it's been a fantastic if world win like experience and, uh, look forward to continuing to build on it. And it has been said, I think one thing this is done is it's created demand for speed on some of these larger transformations. So I'm looking forward to continuing to innovate with with Ben wanting. >>Well, congratulations. The most innovative connect deployment. And because you guys from Canada, I have to use the hockey reference. You get multiple people working together in a cohesive manner. It's pass, shoot, score every time. And you know it's contagious. Thank you very much for your time. And congratulations for winning the >>West. Thanks. Thank you. Okay, this is the >>Cube's coverage of AWS Public Sector Partner Award show. I'm John Furrier, host of the Cube. Thanks for watching. Yeah, Yeah, yeah, yeah.

>>from the Cube Studios in Palo Alto and Boston connecting with thought leaders all around the world. This is a cube conversation. >>Welcome back to the Cube's coverage of AWS Public Sector Partner Awards program. I'm John Furrow, your host of the Cube here in Palo Alto, California In the remote interviews during this pandemic, we have our remote crews and getting all the stories and celebrating the award winners. And here to feature the most innovative connect deployment. We have a center of Canada and the Department of Employment and Social Development of Canada, known as E S D. C guys. Congratulations, Joel. More Children Censure Canada Managing director and Ben while long sdc of Canada Chief Transformation officer. Gentlemen, thanks for coming on. And congratulations on the award. >>Thank you. >>Thank you. >>So, Ashley, during this pandemic, a lot of disruption and a lot of business still needs to go on, including government services. But the citizens and people need to still do their thing. Business got to run, and you got to get things going. But the disruptions caused a little bit of how the user experiences are. So this connect has been interesting. It's been a featured part of what we've been hearing at the public sector summit with Theresa Carlson. You guys, this is a key product. Tell us about the award. What is the solution? That disturbing of deserving reward? >>Maybe I'll get I'll go first and then pass it over to Benoit. But I think the solution is Amazon. Connect a spiritual contact center that we stood up fairly quickly over the course of about four days and really in support of of benefit that the government of Canada was was releasing as part of its economic response to the pandemic. And in the end that, you know, it's a fully functioning featured contact center solution includes an ai VR and, uh, you know, we stood it up for 1500 to 2000 agents so that that's the crux of the solution. And maybe Benoit can give a bit of insight as to to how it came about so quickly. >>Yeah, I'd be happy to actually wear obviously, like every other government, facing enormous pressures at that time to deliver benefits directly to people who were in true need, the jobs are being lost. Our current systems were in trouble because of their age in the arcade cake Nature. And so the challenge is was quickly how to actually support a lot of people really fast. And so it came through immediately that after our initial payments were made under what was called Canada Emergency Response Benefit, then we have to support our clients directly. And so people turn to the transformation team of all teams. If you wish during a fire firestorm to say, Well, what could you do and how could you help? And so we had an established relationship with a number of other system integrators, including Accenture, and we were able to run a competition very rapidly. Accenture one. And then we deployed in, as you all said, in a matter of four days, what for us was a new, exceptional on high quality solution to a significant client problem. And I say that because I think you can imagine how people feel in that endemic of all of all things. But with the uncertainty that comes with the loss of income, loss of jobs, the question of being able to deal with somebody really a human being, as well as to be able to be efficiently answer a very simple but straightforward questions rapidly and with high quality, with pretty fundamental for us. So the people in the groups that were talking through here are talking, speaking to millions of people who were literally being asked to to accept the pavement rapidly and to be able to connect with us quickly. And without this solution, which was exceptionally well done and deployed and of high quality personally, just a technology, uh, solution. I would not have been possible to even answer any of these queries quickly. >>And while that's a great 0.1 of the things that you see with the pandemic it's a disaster in the quote disaster kind of readiness thing. Unforeseen, right? So, like other things, you can kind of plan for things that hypothetical. You've got scenarios, but this >>is >>truly a case where every day counts. Every minute counts because humans are involved is no our ROI calculation. It's not like it's not like, Well, what's the payback of our system? The old kind of way to think this is really results fast. This is what cloud is all about. This is the promise of cloud. Can I stand up something quick and you did it with a partner. Okay, this is, like, not, like, normal again. It's like it's, you know, it's like, unheard of right? Four days with critical infrastructure, critical services that were unforeseen. Take us through what was going on in the war room, as you guys knew this was here. Take us through the through what happened. Yeah, >>So I think I can start a Z. You can imagine the set of executives that we're seeing a payment process. Uh, was an exceptional. It was like a bunker. Frankly, for about two weeks, we had to suspend the normal operations off the vast majority of our programming. We had to launch brand new payments and benefits systems and programs that nobody had seen before. The level of simplicity was maximized to delivered the funds quickly. So you could imagine it's a warpath if you wish, because the campaign is really around. A timing. Timing is fundamental. People are are literally losing their jobs. There is no support. There's no funding money for them to be able to buy groceries. So on the trust that people have in the government, Ai's pretty much at risk right there and then, in a very straightforward but extraordinarily powerful magic moment. If you wish. If you can deliver a solution, then you make a difference for a long time. And so the speed unheard off on old friends when he came to the call center capability and the ability for us to support and service context the clients that were desperate to reach us on. We're talking hundreds of thousands of calls, right? We're not talking a few 1000 year. Ultimately, at some point we were literally getting in our over over, taken by volumes, call centers, but we had a regular one still operating over a 1,000,000 calls for coming in today. Uh, with the capacity to answer, um, you know, tens of thousands. And so the reality is that the counselor that we put up here very quickly became capable of answering more calls than our regular costumes. And that speaks to the speed of delivery, the quality of the solution, of course, but the scalability of it and I have to say, maybe unheard of, it may be difficult to replicate. The conditions to lead to this are rare, but I have to say that my bosses and most of the government is probably now wondering why we can't do this more often like we can't operate with that kind of speed and agility. So I think what you've got is a client in our case, under extreme circumstances. Now, realizing the new normal will never be the same, that these types of solutions and technology. And then there's scalability. There's agility there, the speed of deployment. It's frankly, something we want. We want all the time. Now we'd like to be able to do it under your whole timeline conditions. But even those will be a fraction of what it used to take. It would have taken us well, actually, I can actually tell you because I was the lead. Ah, technologist, to deploy at scale for the government, Canada, all the call center capabilities under a single software as a service platform. It took us two years to design it. Two years to procure it and five years to install it. That's the last experience. We have a call center enterprise scale capabilities, and in this case, we went from years to literally days. >>Well, you know, it takes a crisis sometimes to kind of wire up the simplicity solution that you say. Why didn't we do this before? You know the waterfall meetings, Getting everyone arguing gets kind of gets in the way of the old, the old software model. I want to come back to the transformation been wanna minute, cause I think that's going to be a great success story and some learnings, and I want to get your thoughts on that. But I want to go to Joel because Joel we've talked to many Accenture executives over the years and most recently this past 24 months, And the message we've been hearing is we're going to be faster. We're not going to be seen as that. You know, a consulting firm taking our times. Try and get a pound of flesh from the client. This is an example, in my opinion of a partner working with the problem statement that kind of matches the cloud speed. So you guys have been doing this. This is not new to a censure. So take us through how you guys reacted because one you got to sync up and get the cadence of what? Ben? What I was trying to do, sync up and execute. Take us through what happened on your side. >>Yeah. I mean, so it's It's Ah, It's an unprecedented way of operating for us as well, frankly, and, um and, uh and, you know, we've had to look at to get this specific solution at the door and respond to an RFP and the commercial requirements that go with that way. Had Teoh get pretty agile ourselves internally on on how we go through approvals, etcetera, to make sure that that we were there to support Ben Wan is team. And I think you know that we saw this is a broader opportunity to really respond to it, to help Canada in a time of need. So So I think we, you know, we had to streamline a lot of our internal processes and make quick decisions that normally, even for our organization, would have taken, um, could it could have taken weeks, right? And we were down to hours in a lot of instances. So it helps. It forces us to react and act differently as well. But I mean, to Benoit's point, I think this is really going to to hopefully change the way it illustrates the art of the possible and hopefully will change how, How quickly we can look at problems and and we reduce deployment timeframes from from years to months and months to weeks, etcetera for solutions like this. Um, and I think that the AWS platform specifically in this case but what touched on a lot of things to beat the market scale ability But just as the benefit itself was, you know has to be simplified to do this quickly. I think one of the one of the benefits of the solution itself is it's simple to use technologically. I mean, we know least retrained. As I said, I think 1600 agents on how to use the platform over the course of a weekend on and and were able, and they're not normal agents. These were people who are firm from other jobs, potentially within the government. So they're not necessarily contact center agents by training. But they became contact center agents over the course of 48 hours that I think from that perspective, you know, that was important as well have something that people could could use. The answer those calls that you know that when you're gonna come So, >>Ben, what this is This is the transformation dream scenario in the sense of capabilities. I know it's under circumstances of the pandemic, and you guys didn't solve a big, big problem really fast and saved lives and help people get on with their day. But transformations about having people closest to the problem execute and the the also the people equation. People process technology, as they say, is kind of playing out in real time. This >>is >>the this is kind of the playbook, you know, Amazon came in said, Hey, you want to stand something up? You wired it together. The solution quickly. You're close to it. Looking back now, it's almost like, Hey, why aren't we doing this before? As you said and then you had to bring people in who weren't trained and stood them up and they were delivering the service. This >>is >>the playbook to share your thoughts on this, because this is what you're you're thinking about all the time and it actually playing out in real time. >>Well, I would definitely endorsed the idea that it's a playbook. It's I would say it's an ideal and dream playbook to build like showing up on the basketball court with all the best players in the entire league playing together magically, it is exactly that. So a lot of things have to happen quickly, but also correctly because you know you can't pull these things properly together without that. So I would say the partnership with the private sector here was fundamental. And I have to applaud the work that Accenture did particularly, I think, as Canadians, we're very proud of the fact that we needed to respond quickly. Everyone was in this, our neighbors, we knew people who were without support and Accenture's team, I mean all the way up and down across the organization was fundamental in and delivering this, but also literally putting themselves into, uh, these roles and to make sure that we would be able to respond quickly, do so. I think the playbook around the readiness for change. I was shocked into existence every night. I won't talk about quantum physics, but clearly some some high level of energy was thrown in very quickly, mobilized everybody all at once. Nobody was said. He's sitting around saying, I wonder if we have change management covered off, you know this was changed readiness at its best. And so I think for me from a learning perspective, apart from just the technology side, which is pretty fundamental if you don't have ready enough technology to deploy quickly than the best plans in the world won't work. The reality is that to mobilize an organization going forward into that level of of spontaneous driving, change, exception, acceptance and adoption is really what I would ain't for. And so our challenge Now we'll be continuing that kind of progression going forward, and we now found a way. And we certainly use the way to work with private sector in an innovative capacity and in innovative ways with brand new solutions that are truly agile and and scalable to be able to pull all of the organization. All that one's very rapidly, and I have to admit that it is going to shift permanently our planning. We had 10 year plans for our big transformation, so some of our programs are the most important in the country. In many ways. We support people about eight million Canadians a month and on the benefits payments that we deliver, and they're the most marginal needed meeting and and requires our support from senior studio, unemployed jobseekers and whatnot. So if you think about that group itself and to be able to support them clearly with their systems that we have is just unsustainable. But the new technologies are clearly going to show us the way that we had never for forecast. And I have to say I had to throw up, like in your plan. And now I'm working my way down from 10 denying date your plants going forward. And so it's exciting and nerve wracking sometimes. But then, obviously, as a change leader, our goal is to get there as quickly as possible, so the benefit of all of these solutions could make a difference in people's lives. >>What's interesting is that you can shorten that timetable but also frees you up to be focused on what's contemporary and what's needed at the time. So leverage the people on the resource is You have and take advantage of that versus having something that you're sitting on that need to be refreshed. You can always be on that bleeding edge, and this brings up the Dev ops kind of mindset agility. The lean startup glean company. You know this is a team effort between Amazon and center and SDC. It's pass, shoot, score really fast. So this isn't the new, the new reality. Any commentary from you guys on this, you know, new pass shoot score combination. Because you got speed, you got agility. You're leaner, which makes you more flexible for being contemporary and solving problems. What's your thoughts? >>Yeah, So my perspective on that is most definitely right. I think what we what we were able to show and what's. You know, what's coming out of a lot of different responses to the pandemic by government is, um, you know, perfection isn't the most important thing out of the gate. Getting something out there that's going to reassure citizens that's going to allow them to answer their questions or access benefits quickly is what's becoming more important. Obviously, security and privacy. Those things are of the utmost importance as well. But it's ability to get stuff in there, quickly, test it, change it tested again and just always be iterating on the solutions. Like I can say what we put out on April 6th within four days is the backbone of what's out there still today. But we've added, you know, we added an integrated workforce management solution from Nice, and we added some other eyes views to do outbound dialing from acquisition, things like that. So the solution has grown from that M v p. And I think that's one other thing that that's going to be a big takeaways if you're not gonna do anything. So you got the final and product out there, then it's going to be here, right? So let's go quickly and let's adapt from there. >>Then we'll talk about that dynamic cause that's about building blocks, fund foundational things and then services. It's the cloud model. >>Yeah, I mean, before the pandemic, I had lunch with Mark Schwarz, which I believe you're quite familiar with, and, you know, I spent an hour and 1/2 with it. We were talking, and he was so exciting and and energized by what the technologies could do. And I was listening to him, and I used to be the chief technology officer for the government. Can't right. And so I've seen a lot of stuff and I said, Well, that's really exciting, and I'm sure it's possible in some other places. And maybe it's some other countries where you know they didn't have infrastructure and legacy. I guess if I see him again soon, I'll have to. I apologize for not believing him enough, I think the building blocks of agile, the building blocks of sprints and MVP's I mean, they're not fundamental to the way we're going to solve our biggest various and scariest problems technologically and then from a business perspective. Service candidate itself has 18,000 employees involved in multiple channels, where the work has always been very lethargic, very difficult, arduous. You make change over years, not months, not days for sure. And so I think that that new method is not only a different way of working, it's a completely revamped way of assembly solutions, and I think the concept of engineering is probably going to be closer to what we're going to do. Um, and I have to borrow the Lego metaphor, but the building blocks are gonna be assembled. We now and working. I'm saying this in front of goal. He doesn't know that you should practice partners. We're gonna be assembling MPP maps of an entire long program, and it's gonna be iterative. It is gonna be designed, built. It will be agile as much as we can implement it. But more importantly, and punches weaken govern. It is, you know, the government is we may have changed. A lot of the government is not necessarily can count on to Most of these things approaches. But the reality is that that's where we're headed. And I will say, Oh, close. Perhaps on this on this answer. The biggest reason for doing that apart from we've proved it is the fact that the appetite inside the organization for that level of globalization, speed solution ing and being engaged rapidly you just can't take that away from an organization. Must be a piece of that. Uh, if you let them down, well, they don't remember. And frankly, they do remember now, cause they want more and it's gonna be hard. But it's a better heart. Ah, a better challenge that the one of having to do things over a decade, then to go fast and to kind of iterating quickly through the challenges and the issues and then move on very much to the next one as rapidly as possible. I think The other company, I would add, is most of this was driven by a client need, and that's not inconsequential because it mobilized everybody to comment focused. It could have been just about well, you know, we need to get people on side and solutions in place just to make our lives better. It is his providers. Yeah, it would have worked, perhaps, but it would have been different than the mobilisation It comes when the client is put in the middle. The client is the focus. And then we drive. Everyone's with that, >>you know, shared success and and successes contagious. And when you ride the new way to oh, we need a new board, right? So once you get it, it then spreads like wildfire. This is what we've been seeing. And it also translates down to the citizens because again, being contemporary numbers just look and feel. It's success in performance. So, as you know, people in business start to adopt cloud. It becomes a nice, nice, nice synergy. This is key. I'll take a year on a center. Um, the award winner. You guys did a great job. Final thoughts. >>Yeah. I mean, I think final thoughts would be happy to have the opportunity that help. And it was a It was a complete team effort and continues to be, um, it's not. It's not a bunch of Accenture technologists in the background in this, you know the commitment from everyone to get this in place. And can you continue to improvement from Benoit's team and from other folks across the government has been has been paramount to the success. So, um um, it's been a fantastic world win like experience and, uh, look forward to continuing to build on it. And it has been said, I think one thing this is done is it's created demand for speed on some of these larger transformations. So I'm looking forward to continuing to innovate with with Ben wanting. >>Well, congratulations. The most innovative connect deployment. And because you guys from Canada, I have to use the hockey reference. You get multiple people working together in a cohesive manner. It's pass, shoot, score every time. And you know it's contagious. Thank you very much for your time. And congratulations for winning the West. Thanks. Okay, this is the Cube's coverage of AWS Public Sector Partner Award show. I'm John Furrier, host of the Cube. Thanks for watching. Yeah, Yeah, >>yeah, yeah, yeah