>>Now welcome back to the Cube as we continue our coverage here. AWS Reinvent 2022, going out here at the Venetian in Las Vegas. Tens of thousands of attendees. That exhibit Hall is full. Let me tell you, it's been something else. Well, here in the executive summit, sponsored by Accenture. Accenture rather. We're gonna talk about Baptist Health, what's going on with that organization down in South Florida with me. To do that, I have Tony Abro, who's the SVP and Chief Digital and Information Officer. I have Ashley Lane, the managing director of the Accenture Healthcare Practice, and on the far end Poop Kumar, who is the VP and cto Baptist Health Florida won and all. Welcome. Thank you. First off, let's just talk about Baptist Health, the size of your footprint. One and a half million patient visits a year, not a small number. >>That was probably last year's number, but okay. >>Right. But not a small number about your footprint and, and what, I guess the client base basically that you guys are serving in it. >>Absolutely. So we are the largest organization in South Florida system provider and the 11 hospitals soon to be 12, as you said, it's probably about 1.8 million by now. People were, were, were supporting a lot of other units and you know, we're focusing on the four southern counties of South Florida. Okay. >>So got day Broward. Broward, yep. Down that way. Got it. So now let's get to your migration or your cloud transformation. As we're talking about a lot this week, what's been your, I guess, overarching goal, you know, as you worked with Accenture and, and developed a game plan going forward, you know, what was on the front end of that? What was the motivation to say this is the direction we're going to go and this is how we're gonna get there? >>Perfect. So Baptist started a digital transformation initiative before I came about three years ago. The board, the executive steering committee, decided that this is gonna be very important for us to support us, to help our patients and, and consumers. So I was brought in for that digital transformation. And by the way, digital transformation is kind of an umbrella. It's really business transformation with technology, digital technologies. So that's, that's basically where we started in terms of consumer focused and, and, and patient focus. And digital is a big word that really encompasses a lot of things. Cloud is one of, of course. And, you know, AI and ML and all the things that we are here for this, this event, you know, and, and we've started that journey about two years ago. And obviously cloud is very important. AWS is our main cloud provider and clearly in AWS or any club providers is not just the infrastructure they're providing, it's the whole ecosystem that provides us back value into, into our transformation. And then somebody, I think Adam this morning at the keynote said, this is a team sport. So with this big transformation, we need all the help and that we can get to mines and, and, and hands. And that's where Accenture has been invaluable over the last two years. >>Yeah, so as a team sport then depu, you, you've got external stakeholders, otherwise we talked about patience, right? Internal, right. You've, you've got a whole different set of constituents there, basically, but it takes that team, right? You all have to work together. What kind of conversations or what kind of actions, I guess have you had with different departments and what different of sectors of, of the healthcare business as Baptist Health sees it in order to bring them along too, because this is, you know, kind of a shocking turn for them too, right? And how they're gonna be doing business >>Mostly from an end user perspective. This is something that they don't care much about where the infrastructure is hosted or how the services are provided from that perspective. As long as the capabilities function in a better way, they are seemingly not worried about where the hosting is. So what we focus on is in terms of how it's going to be a better experience for, from them, from, from their perspective, right? How is it going to be better responsiveness, availability, or stability overall? So that's been the mode of communication from that perspective. Other than that, from a, from a hosting and service perspective, the clientele doesn't care as much as the infrastructure or the security or the, the technology and digital teams themselves. >>But you know, some of us are resistant to change, right? We're, we're just, we are old dogs. We don't like new tricks and, and change can be a little daunting sometimes. So even though it is about my ease of use and my efficiency and why I can then save my time on so and so forth, if I'm used to doing something a certain way, and that's worked fine for me and here comes Tony and Depo and here comes a, >>They're troublemaker >>And they're stir my pot. Yeah. So, so how do you, the work, you were giving advice maybe to somebody watching this and say, okay, you've got internal, I wouldn't say battles, but discussions to be held. How did you navigate through that? >>Yeah, no, absolutely. And Baptist has been a very well run system, very successful for 60 something odd years. Clearly that conversation did come, why should we change? But you always start with, this is what we think is gonna happen in the future. These are the changes that very likely will happen in the future. One is the consumer expectations are the consumer expectations in terms of their ability to have access to information, get access to care, being control of the process and their, their health and well-being. Everything else that happens in the market. And so you start with the, with that, and that's where clearly there are, there are a lot of signs that point to quite a lot of change in the ecosystem. And therefore, from there, the conversation is how do we now meet that challenge, so to speak, that we all face in, in, in healthcare. >>And then from there, you kind of designed the, a vision of where we want to be in terms of that digital transformation and how do we get there. And then once that is well explained and evangelized, and that's part of our jobs with the help of our colleagues who have, have been doing this with others, then is the, what I call a tell end show. We're gonna say, okay, in this, in this road, we're gonna start with this. It's a small thing and we're gonna show you how it works in terms of, in terms of the process, right? And then as, as you go along and you deliver some things, people understand more, they're on board more and they're ready for for more. So it's iterative from small to larger. >>The proof is always in the place, right? If you can show somebody, so actually I, I obviously we know about Accenture's role, but in terms of almost, almost what Tony was just saying, that you have to show people that it works. How, how do you interface with a client? And when you're talking about these new approaches and you're suggesting changes and, and making these maybe rather dramatic proposals, you know, to how they do things internally, from Accenture's perspective, how do you make it happen? How, how do you bring the client along in this case, batches >>Down? Well, in this case, with Tony and Depu, I mean, they have been on this journey already at another client, right? So they came to Baptist where they had done a similar journey previously. And so it wasn't really about convincing >>Also with Accenture's >>Health, also with Accenture's Health, correct. But it wasn't about telling Tony Dupe, how do we do this? Or anything like that. Cuz they were by far the experts and have, you know, the experience behind it. Well, it's really like, how do we make sure that we're providing the right, right team, the right skills to match, you know, what they wanted to do and their aspirations. So we had brought the, the healthcare knowledge along with the AWS knowledge and the architects and you know, we said that we gotta, you know, let's look at the roadmap and let's make sure that we have the right team and moving at the right pace and, you know, testing everything out and working with all the different vendors in the provider world specifically, there's a lot of different vendors and applications that are, you know, that are provided to them. It's not a lot of custom activity, you know, applications or anything like that. So it was a lot of, you know, working with other third party that we really had to align with them and with Baptist to make sure that, you know, we were moving together at speed. >>Yeah, we've heard about transformation quite a bit. Tony, you brought it up a little bit ago, depu, just, if you had to define transformation in this case, I mean, how big of a, of a, of a change is that? I mean, how, how would you describe it when you say we're gonna transform our, you know, our healthcare business? I mean, I think there are a lot of things that come to my mind, but, but how do you define it and, and when you're, when you're talking to the folks with whom you've got to bring along on this journey? >>So there's the transformation umbrella and compos two or three things. As Tony said, there is this big digital transformation that everybody's talking about. Then there is this technology transformation that powers the digital transformation and business transformation. That's the outcome of the digital transformation. So I think we, we started focusing on all three areas to get the right digital experience for the consumers. We have to transform the way we operate healthcare in its current state or, or in the existing state. It's a lot of manual processes, a lot of antiquated processes, so to speak. So we had to go and reassess some of that and work with the respective business stakeholders to streamline those because in, it's not about putting a digital solution out there with the anti cured processes because the outcome is not what you expect when you do that. So from that perspective, it has been a heavy lifting in terms of how we transform the operations or the processes that facilitates some of the outcomes. >>How do you know it's working >>Well? So I I, to add to what Deep was saying is I think we are fortunate and that, you know, there are a lot of folks inside Baptist who have been wanting this and they're instrumental to this. So this is not a two man plus, you know, show is really a, you know, a, a team sport. Again, that same. So in, in that, that in terms of how do we know it works well when, when we define what we want to do, there is some level of precision along the way. In those iterations, what is it that we want to do next, right? So whatever we introduce, let's say a, a proper fluid check in for a patient into a, for an appointment, we measure that and then we measure the next one, and then we kind of zoom out and we look at the, the journey and say, is this better? >>Is this better for the consumer? Do they like it better? We measure that and it's better for the operations in terms of, but this is the interesting thing is it's always a balance of how much you can change. We want to improve the consumer experience, but as deeply said, there's lot to be changed in, in the operations, how much you do at the same time. And that's where we have to do the prioritization. But you know, the, the interesting thing is that a lot of times, especially on the self servicing for consumers, there are a lot of benefits for the operations as well. And that's, that's where we're in, we're in it together and we measure. Yeah, >>Don't gimme too much control though. I don't, I'm gonna leave the hard lifting for you. >>Absolutely, absolutely right. Thank you. >>So, and, and just real quick, Ashley, maybe you can shine some light on this, about the relationship, about, about next steps, about, you know, you, you're on this, this path and things are going well and, and you've got expansion plans, you want, you know, bring in other services, other systems. Where do you want to take 'em in the big picture in terms of capabilities? >>Well, I, I mean, they've been doing a fantastic job just being one of the first to actually say, Hey, we're gonna go and make an investment in the cloud and digital transformation. And so it's really looking at like, what are the next problems that we need to solve, whether it's patient care diagnosis or how we're doing research or, you know, the next kind of realm of, of how we're gonna use data and to improve patient care. So I think it's, you know, we're getting the foundation, the basics and everything kind of laid out right now. And then it's really, it's like what's the next thing and how can we really improve the patient care and the access that they have. >>Well, it sure sounds like you have a winning accommodation, so I I keep the team together. >>Absolutely. >>Teamwork makes the dream >>Work. Absolutely. It is, as you know. So there's a certain amount of, if you look at the healthcare industry as a whole, and not, not just Baptist, Baptist is, you know, fourth for thinking, but entire industry, there's a lot of catching up to do compared to whatever else is doing, whatever else the consumers are expecting of, of an entity, right? But then once we catch up, there's a lot of other things that we were gonna have to move on, innovate for, for problems that we maybe we don't know we have will have right now. So plenty of work to do. Right. >>Which is job security for everybody, right? >>Yes. >>Listen, thanks for sharing the story. Yeah, yeah. Continued success. I wish you that and I appreciate the time and expertise here today. Thank you. Thanks for being with us. Thank you. Thank you. We'll be back with more. You're watching the Cube here. It's the Executive Summit sponsored by Accenture. And the cube, as I love to remind you, is the leader in tech coverage.

(upbeat digital music) >> Announcer: Live, from the Javits Center in New York City, it's theCube, covering Inforum 2017. Brought to you by Infor. >> Welcome to day two of theCube's live coverage of Inforum 2017 here in New York City at the Javits Center. I'm your host, Rebecca Knight, along with my co-hosts, Dave Vellante, and Jim Kobielus, who is the lead analyst at Wikibon for AI. So we're here in day two, fellas. We just heard the keynote. Any thoughts on what your expectations are for today, Jim, and what you're hoping to uncover, or at least get more insight on what we learned already in day one? >> I'd like to have Infor unpack a bit more of the Coleman announcement. I wrote a blog last night that I urge our listeners to check out on wikibon.com. There's a number of unanswered issues in terms of their strategy going forward to incorporate Coleman AI and their technology. You know, I suspect that Infor, like most companies, is working out that strategy as they go along, piece by piece, they've got a good framework then. We have Duncan Angove on right after this segment. Dave and I and you, we'll grill Duncan on that and much more, but that in particular. You know, I mean, AI is great. AI is everybody's secret sauce, now. There's a lot of substance behind what they're doing at Infor that sets them apart from their competitors in the ERP space. I want to go deeper there. >> So, yeah, so I'm looking at the blog right now. But what are the particular questions that you have regarding Coleman, in terms of how it's going to work? >> Yeah, well, first of all, I want to know, do they intend to incorporate Coleman AI in their premises-based software offerings? You know, for, I'm sure the vast majority of their customers want to know when, if ever, they're going to get access to Coleman, number one. Number two is, when are they going to complete the process of incorporating Coleman in their CloudSuite portfolio, which is vast and detailed? And then, really number three, are they going to do all the R&D themselves? I mean, they've got AWS as a major partner. AWS has significant intellectual property in AI. Will they call on others to work with them on co-developing these capabilities? You know, those are, like, the high-level things that I want to get out of today. >> Rebecca: Okay, okay. >> Well, so a couple things. So, I mean, the keynote today was okay. It wasn't, like, mind-blowing. We had customer appreciation, which was great. Alexis, who is from Foot Locker, cube alum was up there, and B of A got customer of the year. I met those guys last night at one of the customer appreciation dinners, so that was kind of cool. They all got plaques, or you know, that's nice, little trophies. I heard a lot about design thinking, and they shared some screen shots, essentially, of this new UI, started talking about AI is the new UI. It was very reminiscent of the conversation that we had in May at the ServiceNow Knowledge conference, where they're bringing consumer-like experience to the enterprise. It's always been something that ServiceNow has focused on, and certainly, Charles Phillips and Hook and Loop have been focused on that. The difference is, quite frankly, that ServiceNow showed an actual demo, got a lot of claps as a result. Infor said this is ready to be tested and downloaded, but they didn't show any demo. So that was sort of like, hmm. >> Jim: They haven't shown any demos. >> Rebecca: Yeah. >> Is it really baked out? Steve Lucas was up there. He killed it, very high energy guy. You know, again, another cube alum. He's been in our studio, and he's an awesome dude. >> Jim: He's awesome. >> And I thought he did a really good job. >> From Marketo. >> Talking about, you know, the whole engagement economy, you know, we think it's going a little bit beyond engagement to more action, and systems of an action, I think, is a term you guys use. >> Systems of agency or enablement, yeah. Bringing more of the IoT into it and robotics and so forth, yeah. >> And then DSW was up there. I said yesterday, "I love DSW." I tweeted out that, you know, the CIO had a picture, Ashlee had a picture of DSW, and I said, "Okay, when the girls and I go to DSW, "I break left, they go middle-right, "we meet at the checkout to negotiate "what actually goes home," so that was good. It was kind of fun. And then a lot of talk about digital transformation. Marc Scibelli was talking about that, and IoT and AI and data. So that's sort of, you know, kind of a summary there. As you know, Rebecca, I've been kind of trying to make the math work on the $2-plus billion investment from Koch. >> Rebecca: Yes, this is your-- >> And the messaging that Infor is putting forth is this is a source of new capital for us, but I'm-- >> Rebecca: You're skeptical. >> You know, as a private company, they have the right not to divulge everything, and they're not on a 90-day shot clock. Charles Phillips, I think, said yesterday, "We're on a 10-year shot clock." I said, "Okay." I think what happened is, so I found, I scanned 10-Qs, and I've been doing so for the last couple of days. There is virtually no information about how much, exactly, of the cash went in and what they're doing with it. And so, I suspect, but there are references to Golden Gate Capital and some of the management team taking some money off the table. Cool, that's good. I'm just, it's unclear to me that there's any debt being retired. I think there is none. And it's unclear to me how much cash there is for the business, so the only reference I was able to find, believe it or not, was on Wikipedia, and it says, "Citation still needed," okay? And the number here, and the math works, is $2.68 billion for 66.6% of the company, and a valuation of $10 billion, which Charles Phillips told us off-camera yesterday, it was $10.5 billion. So you can actually make the math work if you take that $10 billion and subtract off the $6 billion in debt. Then the numbers work, and they get five out of 11 board seats, so they've got about 45% or 49%, I think, is the actual number, you know, voting control of the company. So here's the question. What's next? And now, a couple billion for Koch is nothing. It's like the money in my pocket, I mean, it's really-- >> Rebecca: Right, right, right, the empty, yeah, exactly. >> And I suspect what happened is, 'cause it always says "$2 billion plus." So in squinting through this, my guess is, this is a pure guess, we'll try to confirm this, is that what happened is, Koch provided the additional funding to buy Birst recently. That upped their share to 66%, and maybe that's how Koch is going to operate going forward. When they see opportunities to help invest, they're going to do that. Now, one might say, "Well, that's going to further dilute "the existing Infor shareholders," but who cares, as long as the valuation goes up? And that's the new model of private equity. The old model of private equity is suck as much cash out of the company as possible and leave the carcass for somebody else to deal with. The new model of private equity is to invest selectively, use, essentially, what is a zero-interest loan, that $6 billion debt is like free money for Infor, pay down that debt over time with the cashflow of the company, and then raise the valuation of the company, and then at some point, have some kind of public market exit, and everybody's happy and makes a ton of dough. So, I think that's the new private equity play, and I think it's quite brilliant, actually, but there's not a lot of information. So a lot of this, have to be careful, is speculation on my part. >> Right, right. >> Well, the thing is, will the Coleman plan, initiative raise the valuation of the company in the long term if it's, you know, an attrition war in ERP, and they've got SAP, Oracle, Microsoft, all of whom have deep pockets, deeper than Infor, investing heavily in this stuff? Will Coleman be a net-net, just table stays? >> Well, so I think again, there's a couple ways in the tech business, as you guys know, to make money, and one is to invest in R&D and translate that R&D into commercial products. Some companies are really good at that, some companies aren't so good at that. The other way to make money is to do acquisitions and tuck-ins, and many, many companies have built value doing that, certainly Oracle, certainly IBM has, EMC back in the day, with its VMware acquisition, hit probably the biggest home run ever, and Infor has done a very good job of M&A, and I think, clearly, has raised the value of the company. And the other way is to resell technologies and generate cash and keep your costs low. I think a software company like Infor has the opportunity to innovate, to do tuck-in acquisitions, and to drive software marginal economics, so I think, on paper, that's all good, if, to answer your question, they can differentiate. And their differentiation is the way in which they're embedding AI into their deep, vertical, last-mile approach, and that is unique in the software business. Now, the other big question you have is beautiful UIs, and it sounds really great and looks really great, well, when you talk to the customers, they say, "Yeah, it's a little tough to implement sometimes," so it's still ERP, and ERP is complicated, alright? So, you know, it's not like Infor is shielded from some of the complexities of Oracle and SAP. It might look prettier, they might be moving a little faster in certain areas, they might, they clearly have some differentiation. At the end of the day, it's still complicated enterprise software. >> Right, exactly, and we heard that over and over again from the people, from Infor themselves, and also from customers, is that it isn't seamless. It's complicated, it involves a lot of change management initiatives, people have to be on board, and that's not always easy. >> Well, and that's why I'm encouraged, that to see some of the larger SIs, you know, you see Grant Thornton, Capgemini, I think Accenture's here, Deloitte-- >> Rebecca: We're having Capgemini later on the program. >> Deloitte's coming on as well. And so, those guys, even though I always joke they love to eat at the trough and do big, complex things, but, this is maybe not as lucrative as some of the other businesses, but it's clearly a company with momentum, and some tailwind that, in the context of digital transformations and AI, the big SIs and some of the smaller SIs, you know, like Avaap, that we had on yesterday, can do pretty well and actually help companies and customers add value. >> And with a fellow like Charles Phillips at the helm, I mean, he is just an impressive person who, as you have pointed out multiple times, is a real visionary when it comes to this stuff. >> Yeah, except when he's shooting hoops. He's not impressive on the hoop court, no. >> No? Oh! (laughing) >> I tweeted out last night, "He's got Obama's physique, "but not his hoop game." >> Oh! (laughing) >> So don't hate me for saying that, Charles. But yes, I think he's, first of all, he's a software industry guru. I think he, you know, single-handedly changed, I shouldn't say that, single-handedly, but he catalyzed the major change in the software business when Oracle went on its acquisition spree, and he architected that whole thing. It was interesting to hear his comments yesterday about what he sees. He said, "You'll see a lot more tech industry "CEOs running non-tech-industry companies "because they're all becoming SAS companies." >> If they have been so invested in understanding the vertical, they really get it. You can see someone who worked on a retail vertical here going in and being the CEO of Target or Walmart or something. >> Yes, I thought that was a pretty interesting comment from somebody who's got some chops in that business, and again, very impressive, I mean, the acquisitions that this company has done and continues to do. You and I both like the Birst acquisition. It's modern-day BI, it's not sort of just viz, and I don't mean to deposition Clik and Tableau, they've done a great job, you know, but it's not, it doesn't solve all your enterprise-grade, BI sort of problems. And, you know, you talk to the Cognos customer base, as great of an acquisition as that was for IBM, that is a big, chewy, heavy lift that IBM is trying to inject Watson and Watson Analytics. I mean, you know, you used to work at IBM, Jim. And they're doing a pretty good job of that, improving the UI, but it's still big, chunky, Cognos BI. Build cubes, wait for results. >> Yeah. So in many ways, the Birst acquisition for Infor and their portfolio is a bit like the thematics that IBM's been putting out on HTAP, you know, injecting analytics into transactional processing to make them more agile, and so forth. What I like about the Birst acquisition, vis-a-vis Coleman and where Infor is going, is that the Birst acquisition gives them a really good team, the people who really know analytics and how to drive it into transactional environments such as this. They've got, I mean, ostensibly, a deep fund of capital to fund the Coleman development going forward. Plus, they've got a really strong plan. I think there's potential strong differentiators for Infor, far more comprehensive in their plan to incorporate AI across their portfolio than SAP or Oracle or Microsoft have put out there in public, so I think they're in a good position for growth and innovation. >> Well, we have a lot of great guests coming up today. As you said, Duncan Angove is going to be on, up next. So, I'm Rebecca Knight, for Dave Vellante and Jim Kobielus, we will have more from Inforum just after this. (digital music) (pensive electronic music)