>> Live from Las Vegas, it's theCUBE. Covering Adobe Summit 2019. Brought to you by Adobe. >> Hello everyone, welcome back to theCUBE's live coverage, here in Las Vegas for Adobe Summit 2019. I'm John Furrier, Jeff Frick my co-host this week. Michael Yung is the CIO of Asia Miles. Welcome to theCUBE, thanks for joining us. >> Great to be here. >> So take a minute before we get into the conversation about machine learning, and all the cool tech. What does Asia Miles do, what's your role there, and stuff they do? >> Asia Miles is the loyalty reward program of the Hong Kong, Cathay Pacific Airways. So, typical airline, but we have the reward program to support our members of Cathay pacific airways. We have over, about 11 million members, and over 700 partners around the world. >> How many members? >> 11 million. >> 11 million? >> Wow. >> That seems like a lot to me. (laughs) >> We are the leading loyalty program in the region, in Asia. In fact we started the program about 20 years ago, so in 1999, so this is our 20th anniversary. >> Wow, congratulations. >> So, similar to any Loyalty program, our members can earn miles by flying, traveling, dining, shopping. Even have your mortgage with our banking partners. At the same time, using the miles, you can redeem rewards. Hotel stays, flight tickets, and even for tablet computers or mobile phones. So you can do all of this. >> So, you did the web 1.0, web 2.0, web 3.0. (laughs) You've lived the journey. >> Paper 1.0. >> So my job is actually leading the digital part of the team. As you know, like loyalty program, you don't have protection lines, you don't have branches, everything is digital. So our web, our mobiles, our engines to support the earnings, and engines to support the reductions are all digital. So basically, we are more like a digital marketing company, we links the partners, their products, their offers, to our members. >> So, important is obviously the data, it's super important. And having connections points, APIs, open systems. Is it open APIs? >> Yes, all of these are technologies in our stack. So, basically our membership profiles are databases. And then with APIs we can do all sorts of modeling, or calculation, or segmentation. And then we push through our marketing offers, or campaigns, to our targeted members. >> That sounds like good architecture. Now what, specifically of Adobe product stack, are you using, for Adobe? >> We used almost the whole suite of Adobe products. We started our baby step about three years ago with Adobe Experience Manager. Basically our contact management systems are website or mobile. And then we extended to campaign to automate our marketing campaigns. And then later on audience manager, target and analytics. So it has evolved. So basically a full stack. >> So you're a big customer of all the products. So one of the big things they're talking about is the data, role of data, and machine learning's coming up a lot. How are you applying machine learning, with all those millions of members, and all the different diverse contact you have, and the different connection points to partners. You have to, kind of have this free flowing operating environment, platform yourself. So how are you using machine learning to either automate away things that you're doing manually, or creating new innovation insights. >> As I mentioned, we have to match the offers from our 700 partners to 11 million members, right. And therefore we build certain technologies, like propensity modeling, that we can tell, say from you miles balance, your life stages, your persona, and your lifetime varial, and then we do, what we call the partner recommendation engine. So the recommendation engine will push certain offers to John, or to Jeff already, based on all your profiles. And that requires some machine learning and modeling as well, from our data scientists. >> I'm curious how the expectation has changed over time in terms of, kind of what your members expect to get out of the application. Because I assume they want more, and more, and more, what was special today is common tomorrow. And how you've been able to continue to adapt and change what you often experience. >> Right, great question. First of all, our members really like to go mobile, so our offers have to be location based. So with your mobile apps, then you can see, okay what are the popular restaurants around me, that I can earn miles easily. Or, if it's a Monday, then you can earn, say double miles if you buy something with retails partners as well. So all this, the partners, and the members expect more. And, secondly, members are smart enough to tell that, oh, your offers is generated by a machine. It's not personalized enough. For example, if I just fly to San Francisco last week, why'd you promote San Francisco flight ticket to me? Or hotel again? >> Right. >> I'm not going to San Francisco again. >> The re-targeting thing is brutal. >> Brutal, yeah. So you have to really base it on the transaction history, and the other features or signals, and then define the next offer. And this is really important. >> And do you help the customers figure, because you just said if you eat out on a Monday, maybe you get double miles because the restaurants are slow. Is that something that you guys have discovered in your analytics, that you're helping your partners to get more pull on their offers, or is that being driven from them? Because you have a lot, you've got a lot more data than an individual restaurant, or some of your other partners. >> But I mean, even in Hong Kong, Monday's a slow day for business. >> Right, right, right, right. >> So it's good to help out the partners a bit, you earn double miles. Or on certain important days, or holidays, you get triple miles by buying something. So it's natural for our partner's, and our member's expectations. >> You have an economy. (laughs) It's like, you've got to have a fiscal policy. >> Well let me tell you all loyalty programs pretty run like this. >> It's really highly data driven, you have reputation, you have influence. >> Exactly. >> It's very important, I'd almost imagine, contextual understanding about what's happening, and having the right data. You mentioned that re-target thing, about San Francisco. I see this all the time on re-target, they don't have the context. I mean that really makes for a really poor personalized experience. Talk about context, having data in context to something. How hard is that? >> Well it's really from data, turned into information, and then actionable insight, it's really hard. So, even we have so many team members doing all this modeling, there are times that we need powerful tools to do proper segmentation and targeting. And that tool's got to be really flexible, and fast responsive to certain context. And with that Adobe products help us a lot. >> What's the biggest to do for you, going next step as you continue to grow. You're digital, all digital. You have Adobe Suite, cloud computing scale, a lot of data context, a lot of usable data. What's next for your business, what's next for you. >> Well, last year we started to test the water to try out blockchain technology. So we have the marketing campaign rules, and packed that in a blockchain smart contract. And this is one of the things that we invested a lot of time and resources into it. We believe in the future marketing campaign has got to be more real time, and you can earn your bonus miles straight away, instead of waiting two, three months until the end of the campaign. So hopefully with the marketing platform, and also newer technology, and better data, we can do better campaigns. >> In terms of skills to deal with the kind of things that you're doing, with future proofing your business with blockchain, love that. Smart contracts going on, peer to peer, immutable, love that value proposition. You get reputation, move that over into currency. >> One of the options. >> Asia coin. (laughs) >> Optimize is one of the options. >> What else is on your mind? KPIs, how do you look at data sets, how do you guys view? >> Measure success. >> How do you measure success? >> Well, I would say first of all, all the stakeholders have got to be happy with the program. I mean, the stakeholders include our members, partners, our shareholders, and our employees. They're important to make sure that the program is successful. And also including the engagement ratio, and our package ratio, where there are a lot of members that usually don't have chances to redeem things, and then they let the miles expire, for example. So helping them maintain a healthy package ratio is also a KPI that we measure carefully. And then, other than that I think all our employees or staff, they let you know, or they need to understand how technology and business mix together. If you're good in business, but not knowing marketing technology, for example. Or if you only understand technology but not the business, for example, it's just not good enough for the future. So the skillset why you have to understand both. >> How are you using technology, especially Adobe, how is Adobe helping you, and then what other things you might be doing, to help internal processes get better? Because one of the things I'm seeing here at this show is, with the platform, as you start to thread the data together and let the data, kind of naturally flow, with machine learning and the different data points, you can start to get some visibility to insights that might not be there. So that's going to cause some internal disruption. People might lose there job, or new jobs emerge, there's always conflict when you're progressing. How do you use technology, and this technology, to keep getting higher functionality, better economics, what's the internal struggles, and gains look like? >> Well, for example, before the days of marketing platform, or Adobe days, you may need to take weeks to prepare a campaign, if not months. Because you need to prepare all the contents, all the lead assignments, and then you push out through all the different channels. But now you can be always on campaign, different dates. And, for the blockchain example, we can actually eliminate the reconciliation and settlement effort. So the back office operation team, they can move along to do something else. To do more campaigns, or to talk to the partners more, to understand their needs. Instead of just number crunching, we do reconciliation. So I think, it's not about with less resources, but with the same resources, how to do more things. >> Right. >> And it's almost continuous improvement on the campaign. >> Yes, continuous, all the time. >> Versus just, you know, let's plan a campaign, run a campaign, measure the campaign. It's just constantly going. >> Prepare, run it, and then measure. Just never ending. >> As an Adobe customer do you like the direction that they're going? >> Yes, yes. All exciting products are in the road map. And we are ready to explore more in the future. >> Michael, thank you for coming on and visiting us. >> Okay, my pleasure. >> We appreciate it. Here inside theCUBE we're taking all the action, here at Adobe summit. Getting the data, sharing it with you out in the open internet. Thanks for watching, I'm John, with Jeff Frick. Stay with us for more coverage from day one after this short break. (upbeat music)

>> Live from Las Vegas, it's theCUBE covering the AWS Accenture Executive Summit. Brought to you by Accenture. >> Welcome back, everyone, to theCUBE's live coverage of the AWS Executive Summit, here at The Venetian. I'm your host, Rebecca Knight. We have three guests for this segment. We have Lawrence Fong, general manager, information technology at Cathay Pacific; Peter Yen, managing director, Hong Kong Accenture; and Massimo Morin, head world wide business development travel at AWS. Thank you so much, gentlemen, for coming on theCUBE. >> Thank you. >> Thank you. >> So we're going to be talking about applying blockchain to a travel rewards program at Cathay Pacific, but I want to start with you, Lawrence. Let's describe the business problem that you were trying to solve. The Asia Miles program is already, sort of a world-class program, very competitive. But it still had it's kinks. So, what were you trying to do to make it better? >> Okay, first of all, Asia Miles is a lifestyle, you know, frequent flyer loyalty program, and almost every year they're running over 460 marketing campaign a year. So, you can imagine how much work they have to do. So, from the customer point of view, they have a pin point of whatever activities of redemption or for award, all these kind of thing. It's going to take a long time for them to get their miles. So, from the customer point of view, this is not really ideal. And on the other hand, at the back office, because we're running so many marketing campaign. So, there's a lot of back office operation and lot of, where people work and all this kind of thing. So, it's also not, I think, a very good operation efficiency. So, from the customer point of view, from the back office point of view, so that's the key pinpoint we want to be solved. >> Right. So, it was tedious to operate for both the customer and for the business itself. So, why was blockchain the technology? That could solve it? >> Well, we study one of the key features, or component of blockchain, it's called 'smart contract'. And we could see the smart contract would be able to help bringing our customer and Asia Miles, and also our merchant together. So, by using blockchain, the miles, the redemption, all this will happen almost in a second. >> So, how did this work, Lawrence? I mean, in terms of getting, working together with Cathay Pacific, how did you work together to create this new program? >> Okay. Effectively, it's a very co-create process. It started with a conversation with Lawrence. We had the idea, so Lawrence was courageous enough to let us try. We did a very short, quick pilot. We proved the concept. Then we went into a very rapid development cycle, as well. And then, within weeks, we get the product done, and then we launch and go to the market. >> So, Peter, is that generally the way it goes, in terms of this co-creative process? I mean, we're hearing so much, that Accenture and AWS have these solutions that they can bring to clients, and then, is it sort of happening in the background or are you on the ground together, sort of dreaming up ways to make this better and make the technology work? >> Well, we used to call this the new way of doing things, but I think now this is the way of doing things, right? Because it is the perfect combination. The client has perfect knowledge about the business, we understand the technology, and we have enablement partners like Amazon. So, we just work together and make it happen. >> So, from Amazon, so we hear blockchain you automatically think Bitcoin. You just do. But this is actually a very different kind of use case for blockchain, and it's one that really is so pertinent. Can you talk a little, Massimo, about other uses cases that you're seeing? >> So, indeed that you are right. Blockchain has been very nebulous, and always associated to Bitcoins, but there are actually some uses cases that are much more relevant, especially in the travel industry where you complex transaction, multi-party, where you are actually going to do transparency and data integrity. For example, we had a proof of concept to to read IATA about a one ID project that allows a travel agency to register themselves with this authority and get the key, and then seamlessly doing transaction with travel providers by identifying themselves through blockchain. That allows them to actually be recognized, and you have a seamless process with the new NDC, new distribution capabilities coming along. That is going to be extremely important. This is one type. Another type is when you wanted the immutability of the data. For example, when you have planes an you want to see you getting leases, on and off lease, and you want to see all the maintenance that occur there, and you want that that doesn't change. You want to use a trusted system that is transparent, and that is not changeable. And that provide a lot of value. And the third use case that I personally like, is automatic contract. So, when, for example, you have corporate buyers, that buy travel products from a travel provider, like Cathay Pacific, and you wanted that, you buy the ticket. But when is the airline going to get the money? That reconciliation is like, with the frequent flyer miles, you want to be done as soon as possible. Other cases is, is the passengers flying around? If it doesn't fly, well, what happened to the taxes? Taxes should be actually returning back to the customer. So, with automatic contracts, you would be able actually to reconcile that behind the scene. These are use cases that are very valuable in travel industry. >> So, does this immediate reconciliation and this trust, I mean , trust is such an important, thick concept right now. What are you hearing? From both the clients' side and the provider's side. I mean, where are we? >> Yeah, that's true. I think trust is one of the key elements of, you know, doing reconciliation. So, what we are doing now is still within our legal system. So, we trust each other. But, looking forward, I think one of the key areas that blockchain will help a lot, is the entire supply chain. But, when we talk about the supply chain, there's so many stakeholder. So, building a trust, of course, of domestic holder will be a challenge. I think that's something, you know, of course the industry has to put more thought onto it. >> What are we seeing so far? So, this was implemented in April of this year. What has been the return on investments so far? >> It's phenomenal. For those marketing campaign, we're using blockchain. These new capabilities, we had a triple digit growth, in terms of our sales, and also, because we also use kind of a game to gamify the whole thing. So, we create a lot of traction in there, you know? A lot of excitement. So, the number of people and the number of customer engaged in those marketing campaigns also have more than, you know, more than double, you know, growth. >> Peter, what's most exciting to you about this process? >> The most exciting thing is that, as you heard from Lawrence, is indeed generating performance and results. And the process of co-creating a successful solution is a very rewarding experience. >> So, I mean, and then AWS is, in terms of the co-creative process, where does AWS fit into this? >> So, we are their neighbor, and I'm glad that you're able, Cathay Pacific and Accenture, as using AWS for this. So, we have standard templates, blockchain templates that actually take away all the heavy lifting of putting place to platform to found the blockchain. So, actually, the customer and the partner can focus on the business need that they have attend. And this is all open-source, so you can see how it works. And it's so transparent, that we are very glad to enable our customer to do transformative things like this. >> So, the word is out that blockchain is not just for Bitcoin anymore. So, where do we go from here? We're talking about the travel industry, but are the learnings that Cathay Pacific has had and Accenture, in terms of how applicable are they to other industries? And how are you sharing what you've learned in a collaborate, co-creative process? >> Well, all of that, in Asia Miles, now we are taking what we learned from the blockchain, we are going to apply to the cargo industry, and also apply to the airport operation. Particular, the baggage, the consideration baggage between different people, of course they're all the blockchain. >> Great. >> Actually, many clients are now talking about this Cathay Pacific case, and they have very creative ideas, how to borrow the concept and apply to their own business. So, we should see more and more application of this solution. >> And we are seeing acceleration of adoption of cloud technology throughout the travel industry, with airline, and technology providers out there. And I'm very glad that there are taught leadership, for example, from Cathay Pacific, to take this hypothetical use cases and taking the lead on showing how it is done and sharing with the industry. We are looking for those travel leaders that will help the industry to move forward. >> That's true. >> Because it's very challenging industry with very low margin, and any improvement in customer service is going to go a long way. And we are glad to be part of that. >> And is that what it is? I mean, as you said, it sort of seen, even the incremental improvement and how that can be, just, so transformational for a company's bottom line. >> Yep. >> Yes. >> Yep. Absolutely. >> Well, Massimo, Peter, Massimo, Peter, Lawrence, thank you so much for joining us on theCUBE. It's been a really fun conversation. >> Thank you. >> Thank you very much. >> I'm Rebecca Knight. We will have more of theCUBE's live coverage of the AWS Executive Summit coming up in just a little bit. (thrilling music)