>> From the Bellagio Hotel in Las Vegas, it's theCUBE, covering UiPath FORWARD IV, brought to you by UiPath. >> Welcome back to theCUBE, live at the Bellagio in Las Vegas, Lisa Martin, with Dave Vellante, we are with UiPath at FORWARD IV. The next topic of conversation is going to be a good one. And that's because it's automation for good. I've got two guests here joining Dave and me. James Droskoski, strategic account exec at UiPath joins us, and Brian Klochkoff, head of automation at Dentsu. Guys, welcome to the program. >> Yeah, thank you. >> Thanks for having us. >> Yeah. Happy to be here. >> We're going to, we're going to dig into automation for good, which is going to be a really feel good conversation. We're going to get into what you're doing. But Brian, I wanted you to give the audience an overview of Dentsu as an organization. Who are you? What do you guys do? >> Sure. So Dentsu is a large network of advertising agencies. We're about 45,000 people large, $10 billion plus in revenue, going across about 125 markets. So we're a large enterprise advertising media, creative CXM type business. We're really focused on helping to elevate our clients' value when it comes to the value proposition around marketing, advertising, and media. >> So you think about that as a, as a, as a, a business that maybe, you know, it's hard to understand where automation might fit in. On the other hand, it's like a lot of moving parts, a lot of arms and legs. >> Brian: Mm-hmm. So how are you applying automation to the business? >> Sure. So when we first started doing proof of concepts level approaches, we approached things in a traditional, Hey, let's go look at the shared services groups. Why are we having invoice processing delays? Things like that. And we started being a bit more prescriptive and proactive about how we were applying the limited POC budget we had to go after these problems. And we started doing some root cause analysis to understand the interaction between the back office functions and the mid-office functions. And what we uncovered was that we could actually be really good custodians of budget and enable people at the same time by solving for problems at a root cause analysis level. So what I mean by that is maybe an invoice is coming down the pipe, and it's not getting processed because it's missing critical information that could be easily added six processes upstream. So what really helped elevate the conversation that we're having around automation for good and be a catalyst for we're going to talk about a bit later is we just started connecting people from the mid-office to the back office, helping them understand, Hey, if we actually follow a process properly, put the right controls in place with RPA to generate critical data elements on those invoices, Shaler in the back office doesn't have to work the weekends because there's not a pipeline back load of invoices for him to process. So we actually connected those mid-office people with the back office people, and it really drove that human connection to drive the change management within our automation journey. And that's kind of been the crux of what we've wanted to do over the past four years, finding ways to elevate our people's potential by integrating automation and AI into their actual day-to-day work. >> Hmm. So tech for good is a theme that you hear a lot and as a, as a media company, that, that, that kind of, we're not gotcha media, you know, we more want to tell the story of tech athletes, and I think we've done a pretty good job of that over the past decade, but so it goes to tech's under fire constantly, especially big tech. We hear the Facebook hearings today and so forth, but so automation kind of early days, oh, you're going to take away my job. I think generally speaking with the fatigue of Zoom and the perpetual workday, people begin to understand that, Hey, maybe automation is a good thing. But automation for good, what, what is that, James? >> Yeah, well, it's, it's not doing technology for the sake of technology. You know? At the end of the day, when we implement solutions with our customers like Dentsu, it's about, what's the impact, what's the change, what's the benefit? And what's unique about Dentsu is because they've grown through acquisition and there are lots of different companies come together, you have to focus on the people first because there is no one process or one system that we can look and just automate that system or process. So automation for good is about focusing on the people, and how do we take the solutions and the programs and the technologies we have and make an impact so that somebody's day is better. Their, their, their job is better. The process they're doing is easier and they can focus on more of the things that make them different. You know? Specifically as we'll uncover in the conversation, you know, we looked at a program that Dentsu is doing around working with different types of people, as far as people with autism, and what was the impact we could do there? And that's uncovered a journey that we've been together for the last two years around seeing how we can make an impact with those types of folks who might not get the same types of opportunities as everybody else. >> Brian, talk about the, the catalyst for that program at Dentsu a couple years ago. >> Sure. So it goes back to that foundational layer of elevating people's potential. So the testimonial that we had from our own employees around applying automation in meaningful ways to progress their day-to-day came from an employee in the mid-office who said, I didn't go $160,000 in student debt to copy paste stuff from Excel into this proprietary platform that we use for media. And that really resonated with us, as leaders in this space, and with our executive leadership, because there was a gap between what our peoples' skills were and what they were actually doing. They wanted to do Mad Men type stuff. They want it to be the Don Drapers and the Peggy Olsons of our industry. And they were losing that opportunity because we weren't tapping into the skills that they had to drive human centric solutions for our clients. So taking that concept, we looked at the partnerships that we have with our outsourcing providers and Autonomy Works, which we're going to doing a session later tomorrow with the CEO, Dave Friedman, we're going to spend a lot of time talking about how the unique skill sets of that company and those people can actually elevate them to do more tech enabled work, but also enabling our own team to focus on building solutions with the skills that we have by allowing them to use the skills that they have to do the machine learning training of models and things like that, which they really excel at from a detail oriented perspective. And that's not only a feel good story, but it's, it's great for our business because the resources on my immediate team are building product, they're building solutions, and we can rely on an excellent partner in them to help us with the maintenance overhead that we're creating through those solutions. And eventually through automation cloud, driving better outcomes through positive, negative reinforcement within machine learning. >> And there are specific examples with individuals with autism. Correct? >> Correct. That's right. >> Yeah. >> Add some color to that. What is that all about? >> Yeah. Let me tell you a little story. So when, when they first brought the conversation to me, I was terrified because I, the type of work that they were outsourcing was very repetitive rule-based. And I'm like, this is perfect for automate. This is exactly what we automate. I was terrified that the program we were going to work on together was going to eliminate the program. And so I was, you know, cautiously, you know, approached it. >> How ironic. >> Yeah. I was like, Hey, that sounds like a great idea. And I hung up. I was like, oh, how are we going to, how am I going to figure out this one? But through the conversation, and we just started, you know, brainstorming and putting our heads together. What was interesting is because of the way that automations work, as far as being very structured and repetitive, it lends itself well to workers with autism. It's exactly the way they think. And what we actually found after kind of coming up with the collaborative ideas, hey, wait a second. We were already doing these kind of botathon hackathon type programs with the Dentsu employees, teaching them the skills, how to build automations for themselves. What if we kind of modified it and adjusted it to cater to these types of individuals who learn differently, and we have to approach it differently. And we went through the program, we adjusted everything. And what was incredible to see was they thrived with the ability to learn how to work this way. They built things that made them more productive, that created more capacity. They could do more with less now, work with more customers, do more work for, for their, for their customers because they had this almost assistant that was kind of like them. And it was, it was just so rewarding. You know, we talk about, again, what's automation for good all about? It's about that personal reward. >> Brian: Yeah. >> I mean, for me, you know, we didn't sell any more licenses or it wasn't about the commercial transaction. It was about, you know, catering to the segment of the workforce that, first of all, it was very educate, enlightening to me to see how many folks are out there that are unemployed. And I got to meet these first 15 individuals that couldn't have been more amazing and more smart and more diligent and hardworking. And the numbers are something in the lines of between 50% and 90% unemployed because they just don't get the same opportunities as people without autism. It's kind of the world's set up for us. So to know that we could do this kind of program together to go have an impact in this community, was the reward in and of itself. And, you know, we've since been working together on how we continue to expand that, how do we, you know, take that forward and, and bring that everywhere. Cause that's, the end of the day, I think beyond, you know, revenue, this is the stuff that really matters, especially in an organization at Dentsu that this is important. >> Yeah. And I think building on the missed opportunity piece around 50% to 90% being unemployed, that's a missed opportunity for business as well. So those skills are so niche and they're so necessary for us to thrive within an environment that's moving as rapidly as we are. Because we just can't keep pace with the change of feature sets that are being released coupled with maintaining existing solutions that we've built. So it's in cross enabling people to really complement each other's unique skills and strengths based off of strong, true partnership. So it really became a beautiful three-way partnership between Dentsu, Autonomy Works and UiPath that we continue to evolve as UiPath makes additional releases with emerging tech that we're officially hearing about right now. So we have a ton of different ideas of how we can bring that into the fold. And what resonates with us the most is hearing different perspectives on how to apply that coming from that working group. So just a different way of thinking about things and the diversity of thought really resonates with, Hey, are we actually applying this thing the right way? Should we be thinking about this differently? Because you get a lot of yes people, you know, when we come and talk to people about how to apply this technology. And when you have somebody with a different perspective, it's able to help us figure out what our long-term strategy is actually going to look like, by taking advantage of the resources and partnerships that we already have in place. >> In terms of that strategic vision, how do you think this three-way partnership that you mentioned is going to influence that percentage of those, these individuals who are unemployed? What are you, any predictions on how much you can bring that down with automation? >> I think that depends on Dave's staffing plan. But, but the goal is to grow, right? So I mean this, this is a, a startup out of Chicago that has, you know, a healthy amount of staff. But finding ways to apply those skills in new ways with technology that's emerging, the horizon is your, is your end point. Right? And I think with the advent of low-code no-code machine learning coming into this type of a platform, it's, it's only opportunistic. There's only, there's only things ahead of us to do that. We just have to make sure that we train people properly and give them that opportunity because they're going to run with it with the right leadership and those skills. >> Yeah. What's exciting also is, is, you know, what started as an idea and a conversation that's now turned into a pilot program and a little bit of expansion of the stuff we're working on together, we've taken some of the excitement and spread it beyond that now. So we've got partners like ENY and PWC and Revature that are saying, and Special Eastern and Automatic, who helped in the initial program saying, how can we help? What can we do? How can we broaden this? And how can we go out to the larger community and make a bigger impact? So, you know, I think it's exciting. We know, we can see how fast RPA and these types of technologies are causing change. And we've got to make sure that people don't get left behind. Especially, you know, someone as this important part of a segment of a workforce. If we can equip them with these skills to be relevant to their current employers or future employers, I think it's, it's critical. You know, another like moment for me during this process was I took for granted, you know, what working actually means, right? It creates independence for us, right? So you get a job, you get paid and generate income. You have the independence now to go live on your own, provide for yourself. A lot of these individuals, I learned, are still living with their parents because they can't get employment. They don't have that independence that we take for granted. So I think, again, that's the essence of what automation for good is all about, is, is being able to go make an impact like that, to that community. And it's, you know, we talk about cultures and brands and you know, it's also great to work with an organization like Dentsu cause they get it, right? Their product is ideas. It's human capital is their, their main ingredient of what they generate value for their customers. And so be able to take that and help people is just, I think what it's all about. >> You're lucky both to be in a business that the incentives are aligned. >> Yeah. >> You're not in businesses that are designed to appropriate data and push ads in front of our face. >> Yeah. >> In a lot of big companies, it's almost like, okay, we got to do this. I don't mean to overstate this, but we have to do this because we're big and we're rich. >> Yeah. >> And so, and if we don't, we're going to get attacked. >> Yeah. Okay. And it's sort of more like a check, check box and to put somebody in charge of it. >> Yep. >> You know, oftentimes a woman or a person of color. And I shouldn't be negative on that. >> Yeah. >> That's fine. That's good to do. But it just seems like there's a nice alignment with automation. AI could be similar because I mean, AI could be used for really bad. Automation. Okay, it maybe takes, the perception is it takes jobs away, but it's a really nice alignment that you can point at a lot of different initiatives. >> Yeah. >> So I think that's really a fortunate dynamic. >> And that's, you know, that's what defines a partnership, right? It's that alignment of long-term interests that, you know, you make the investments now and the sacrifices now to drive that. It's not just commercial. It's not just transactional. >> Dave: Yeah. >> I mean, we were talking about the opportunities for these types of people and for us as a customer and for UiPath. It's it exists within that AI conversation that you were just talking about >> Dave: Yeah. >> Because from a technical perspective, you want to mitigate as much algorithmic bias within your training models. That's what these people are doing. It's helping to train models much more rapidly and effectively and objectively than we could have done otherwise. And that's, having that as part of our extended partnership within our network is going to accelerate the type of work that we want to do within the releases that we're seeing coming out of this conference. Because we don't have to worry about, oh, well, we've got to focus on tax forms and training the models to notice a signature. Because Autonomy Works has us covered there. They're enabling us to do more. We're enabling them to do a little more. And that's, that's the beauty of this intersection between the partners. >> Brian, I presume you talk with prospective customers of UiPath. And I presume also that you probably looked at some of their competitors. If you think about what differentiates this fast moving company, they talked this morning about the cadence of releases. Woo. Very fast. >> Brian: Yeah, it's a lot. >> Why UiPath for Dentsu? >> UiPath has been a tremendous partner for us since about 2017. And we've been able to move on that journey with UiPath. We've been able to help understand the products roadmaps and move at a similar pace as each other. So we're really lucky in that we have the flexibility as an advertising and media company that we're not beholden to internal audits, external audits, and really defined regulatory bodies. So we made a decision, I don't know what, six, seven months ago to collapse six UiPath on-prem instances and migrate to cloud with the sponsorship of our global CTO and our America CTO, just because it was the right thing to do. And because it would enable this type of partnership with external providers. So being able to move at that similar pace from a release cycle, but also from a feature adoption perspective, it's, it just makes the most sense for us. And we have that liberty to go to go do those things as we need to. >> Yeah. So the move to the cloud, you get, you're able to take advantage much faster. >> Yeah. >> Because what did we hear this morning? You release every six months. >> James: Yep. >> Yes. Which is typical for an on-prem. >> James: Yeah. >> And then, but you got to prepare for that. >> James: Yeah. >> I don't know how many N minus ones you support, but it's not infinite. >> James: Yeah. >> You got to move people along, so people have to prep. Whereas now in the cloud, there's the feature. Boom. >> Yeah. >> So being invested in automation for good topic, it's not, it's about automation for good across people in general, within internally to us and externally to us. For our clients, for our employees, and for our partners. The automation cloud enables that to happen much more seamlessly because we don't have the technical debt in place that requires people to VPN into our network and go through the bureaucracy of security, legal, and privacy. Which we've already done by the way, but those conversations bureaucratically still need to happen. With automation cloud, we're able to spin up Autonomy Works employees in real-time and give them the right set of access to go pursue the use cases that they want to, and that we need them to. So that, that technical debt release that we've experienced through the automation cloud is what's enabling us to do this type of good work. >> That makes sense. A bit more, less friction, obviously greater scale. >> Yeah. >> Easier to experiment. >> Yeah. >> Fail fast. >> We went from 12 separate programs to one program in a matter of a couple of months. >> It was wild. >> Yeah. >> And I imagine you're only really scratching the surface here with what you're doing with automation, that really, the horizon is the limit, as you said. Guys, thank you for joining us, talking about automation for good, what you're doing at Dentsu RPA with autistic adults. There's probably so many other great use cases that will come from this. Guys, we appreciate your time. >> Yeah. >> Yeah, thanks for having us. >> Yeah, thank you. >> Thanks, you guys. >> Awesome. >> For Dave Vellante, I'm Lisa Martin coming to you from Vegas UiPath FORWARD IV. (upbeat music plays)

>> Narrator: From the Bellagio hotel in Las Vegas, it's the Cube, covering UiPath Forward IV, brought to you by UiPath. >> Welcome back to the Cube, live at the Bellagio in Las Vegas. Lisa Martin, with Dave Vellante. We are with UiPath at Forward IV. The next topic of conversation is going to be a good one, and that's because it's automation for good. I've got two guests here joining Dave and me, James Droskoski, Strategic Account Exec at UiPath joins us and Brian Khlochkoff, head of automation at Dentsu. Guys, welcome to the program. >> Yeah. Thank you. >> Thanks for having us. >> Yeah. Happy to be here. >> So we're going to, we're going to to dig into automation for good, which is going to be a really feel-good conversation. We're going to get into what you're doing, but Brian, I wanted you to give the audience an overview of Dentsu as an organization. Who are you, what do you guys do? >> Sure. So Dentsu is a large network of advertising agencies. We're about 45,000 people large, 10 billion plus in revenue, going across for 125 markets. So we're a large enterprise advertising media, creative CXM type business. We're really focused on helping to elevate our clients' value when it comes to the value proposition around marketing, advertising, and media. >> So you think about that as a, as a, as a, a business that maybe, you know, it's hard to understand where automation might fit in. On the other hand, it's like a lot of moving parts, a lot of arms and legs. >> Brian: Hmmm. So how are you applying automation to the business? >> Sure. So when we first started doing proof of concepts level approaches, we approach things in a traditional, hey, let's go look at the shared services groups. Why are we having invoice processing delays? Things like that. And we started being a bit more prescriptive and proactive about how we were applying the limited POC budget we had to go after these problems. And we started doing some root cause analysis to understand the interaction between the back office functions and the mid office functions. And what we uncovered was that we could actually be really good custodians of budget and enable people at the same time by solving for problems at a root cause analysis level. So what I mean by that is even the invoices coming down the pipe, and it's not getting processed because it's missing critical information that could be easily added six processes upstream. So what really helped elevate the conversation that we're having around automation for good and be a catalyst for what we're going to talk about a bit later is, we just started connecting people from the mid office to the back office, helping them understand, hey, if we actually follow process properly, put the right controls in place with RPA to generate critical data elements on those invoices, Shaler in the back office doesn't have to work the weekends because there's not a pipeline backload of invoices for them to process. So we actually connected those mid office people with the back office people, and it really drove that human connection to drive the change management and then our automation journey. And that's kind of been the crux of what we've wanted to do over the past four years, finding ways to elevate our people's potential by integrating automation and AI into their actual day-to-day work. >> Hmm. So tech for good is a theme that you hear a lot and as a, as a media company, that, that, that kind of, we're not gotcha media, you know, we've more want to tell the story of tech athletes, and I think we've done a pretty good job of that over the past decade, but so it goes, tech's under fire constantly. It was basically big tech. We hear the Facebook hearings today and so forth, but so automation kind of early days, oh, you're going to take away my job. I think generally speaking with the fatigue of Zoom and the perpetual workday, people begin to understand that, hey, maybe automation is a good thing, but automation for good, what, what is that, James? >> Yeah, well, it's, it's not doing technology for the sake of technology. You know, at the end of the day, when we implement solutions with our customers like Dentsu, it's about, what's the impact? What's the change? What's the benefit? And what's unique about Dentsu is, because they've grown through acquisition and there are lots of different companies come together, you have to focus on the people first cause there is no one process or one system that we can look and just automate that system or process. So automation for good is about focusing on the people and how do we take the solutions and the programs and the technologies we have, make an impact so that somebody's day is better. Their, their, their job is better. That process are doing is easier and they can focus on more of the things that make them different. You know, specifically as we, we'll uncover in the conversation, you know, we looked at a program that Dentsu is doing around working with different types of people, as far as people with autism and what was the impact we could do there. And that's uncovered a journey that we've been together for the last two years around seeing we can have, we can make an impact with those types of folks who might not get the same types of opportunities that everybody else. >> Brian, talk about the, the catalyst for that program at Dentsu, couple years ago. >> Sure, so it goes back to that foundational layer of elevating people's potential. So the testimonial that we had from our own employees around applying automation, meaningful ways to progress their day to day came from an employee in the mid office who said, I didn't go $160,000 in student debt to copy paste stuff from Excel into this proprietary platform that we use for media. And that really resonated with us as leaders in this space and with our executive leadership, because there was a gap between what our people's skills were and what they were actually doing. They wanted to do Mad Men type stuff. They wanted to be the Don Draper's and the Peggy Olsen's of our industry. And they were losing that opportunity because we weren't tapping into the skills that they had to drive human-centric solutions for our clients. So taking that concept, we looked at the partnerships that we have with our outsourcing providers and Autonomy Works, which we're going to be doing a session later tomorrow with the CEO, Dave Friedman, we're going to spend a lot of time talking about how the unique skill sets of that company and those people can actually elevate them to do more tech-enabled work, but also enabling our own team to focus on building solutions with the skills that we have by allowing them to use the skills that they have to do the machine-learning training of models and things like that, which they really Excel at from a detail-oriented perspective. And that's not only a feel good story, but it's, it's great for our business because the resources on my immediate team are building product, they're building solutions, and we can rely on an excellent partner in them to help us with the maintenance overhead that we're creating through those solutions. And eventually through automation cloud, driving better outcomes through positive, negative reinforcement within machine learning. >> And there's specific examples with individuals with autism, correct? >> Correct. That's right. >> Add some color to that. What is that all about? >> Yeah. Let me tell you a little story. So when, when they first brought the conversation to me, I was terrified because I, the type of work that they were outsourcing was very repetitive rule-based and I'm like, this is perfect for automate. This is exactly what we automate. I was terrified that the program we were going to work on together was going to eliminate the program. And so I was, you know, cautiously, you know, approached it- (Dave laughs) >> How ironic. (laughing) >> I was like, hey, that sounds like a great idea. And I hung up. I was like, oh, how are we going to, how am I going to figure out this one? But through the conversation, and we just started, you know, brainstorming and putting our heads together. What was interesting is, because of the way that automations work, as far as being very structured and repetitive, it lends itself well to workers with autism. It's exactly the way they think and what we actually found after kind of coming up with the collaborative ideas, hey, wait a second. We were already doing these kind of bodathon, hackathon type programs with the Dentsu employees, teaching them the skills, how to build automations for themselves. What if we kind of modified it and adjusted it to cater to these types of individuals who learn differently, we have to approach it differently. And we went through the program, we adjusted everything. And what was incredible to see was they thrived with the ability to learn how to work this way. They built things that made them more productive, that created more capacity. They could do more with less now, work with more customers, do more work for, for their, for their customers because they had this almost assistant that was kind of like them. And it was, it was just so rewarding. You know, we talk about, again, what's automation for good all about? It's about that personal reward. >> Brian: Yeah. I mean, for me, you know, we didn't sell any more licenses or it wasn't about the commercial transaction. It was about, you know, catering to the segment of the workforce that, first of all, it was very educate, enlightening to me to see how many folks are out there that are unemployed. And I got to meet these first 15 individuals that couldn't have been more amazing and more smart and more diligent and hardworking, and that the numbers are something in the lines of between 50% and 90% unemployed because they just don't get the same opportunities as people without autism. It's kind of the world's set up for us. So to know that we could do this kind of program together to go have an impact in this community, was the reward in and of itself. And, you know, we've since been working together on how we continue to expand that, how do we, you know, take that forward and bring that everywhere? Cause that's the end of the day, I think beyond, you know, revenue, this is the stuff that really matters, especially in an organization at Dentsu that, this is important. >> Yeah. And I think building on the missed opportunity piece around 50% to 90% being unemployed, that's a missed opportunity for business as well. So those skills are so niche and they're so necessary for us to thrive within an environment that's moving as rapidly as we are, because we just can't keep pace with the change of feature sets that are being released, coupled with maintaining existing solutions that we've built. So it's in cross enabling people to really compliment each other's unique skills and strengths based off of strong, true partnership. So it really became a beautiful three-way partnership between Dentsu, Autonomy Works and UiPath that we continue to evolve as UiPath makes additional releases with emerging tech that we're officially hearing about right now. So we have a ton of different ideas that we can bring that into the fold. And what resonates with us the most is hearing different perspectives on how to apply that coming from that working group. So just a different way of thinking about things and the diversity of thought really resonates with, hey, are we actually applying this thing the right way? Should we be thinking about this differently? Cause you get a lot of, yes, people, you know, when we come and talk to people about how to apply this technology and when you have somebody with a different perspective, it's able to help us figure out what our long-term strategies are actually going to look like, but taking advantage of the resources and partnerships that we already have in place. >> In terms of that strategic vision, how do you think this three-way partnership that you mentioned is going to influence that percentage of those, these individuals who are unemployed? What are you, any predictions on how much you can bring that down with automation? >> I think that depends on Dave's staffing plan. (James laughs) But, but the goal is to grow, right? So I mean this, this is a, a startup out of Chicago that has, you know, a healthy amount of staff, but finding ways to apply those skills in new ways with technology that's emerging, the horizon is your, is your end point. Right? And I think with the advent of low-code no-code machine-learning, coming into this type of a platform, it's, it's only opportunistic, there's only, there's only things ahead of us to do that. We just have to make sure that we train people properly and give them that opportunity cause they're going to run with it with the right leadership and those skills. >> Yeah. What, what's exciting also is, is, you know, what started as an idea and a conversation that's now turned into a pilot program and a little bit of expansion of the stuff we're working on together, we've taken some of the excitement and spread it beyond that now. So we've got partners like ENY and PWC and Revature that are saying, and Specialisterne and Automattic who helped in the initial program saying, how can we help? What can we do? How can we broaden this and how can we go out to the larger community and make a bigger impact? So, you know, I think it's exciting. We know we can see how fast RPA and these types of technologies are causing change. And we got to make sure that people don't get left behind. Especially, you know, someone as this important part of a segment of a workforce. If we can equip them with these skills to be relevant to their current employers or future employers, I think it's, it's critical. You know, another like, moment for me during this process was, I took for granted, you know, what working actually means, right? It creates independence for us, right? So you get a job, you get paid and generate income. You have the independence now to go live on your own, for, provide for yourself. A lot of these individuals, I learned are still living with their parents because they can't get employment. They don't have that independence that we take for granted. So I think, again, that's the essence of what automation for good is all about is, is being able to go and make an impact like that, to that community. And it's, you know, we talk about cultures and brands and, you know, it's also great to work with an organization like Dentsu cause they get it, right? Their product is ideas. It's human capital is their, their main ingredient of what they generate value for their customers. And so be able to take that and help people is just, I think what it's all about. >> You're lucky both to be in a business that the incentives are aligned. >> Yeah. >> You're not in businesses that are designed to appropriate data and push ads in front of our face or- >> James: Yeah. >> And a lot of big companies, It's almost like, okay, we got to do this. I mean, I don't mean to overstate this, but we have to do this because we're big and we're rich. >> James: Yeah. >> And so, and if we don't, we're going to get attacked. >> James: Yeah. >> Okay, and some of it, I can check, check box and to put somebody in charge of it. >> James: Yep. >> You know, often times a woman or a person of color. And I shouldn't be negative on that. >> James: Yeah. That's fine. That's good to do. But it just seems like there's a nice alignment with automation. >> James: Oh. >> AI could be similar because I mean, yeah. It can be used for really bad. Automation, okay, maybe takes, the perception is that it takes jobs away, but it's a really nice alignment that you can point at a lot of different initiatives. >> Yeah. >> So I think that's really a fortune- >> I know that's, that's what defines a partnership, right? It's that alignment of long-term interests that, you know, you make the investments now and the sacrifices now to drive that. It's not just commercial. It's not just transactional. >> Dave: Yeah. >> We were talking about the opportunities for these types of people and for us as a customer and for UiPath, it's, it exists within that AI conversation that you were just talking about. >> Dave: Yeah. >> Because from a technical perspective, you want to mitigate as much algorithmic bias within your training models. That's what these people are doing. It, it's helping to train models much more rapidly and effectively and objectively than we could have done otherwise. And that's, having that as part of our extended partnership within our network is going to accelerate the type of work that we want to do within the releases that we're seeing coming out of this conference because we don't have to worry about oh, well, we got to focus on tax forms and training the models to notice a signature because Autonomy Works has us covered there. They're enabling us to do more. We're enabling them to do a little more. >> Hmmm. And that's, that's the beauty of this intersection between the partners. >> Brian, I presume you talk with prospective customers of UiPaths. And I presume also that you probably looked at some of their competitors. If you think about what differentiates this fast-moving company, they talked this morning about the cadence that releases. Whew, very fast. (laughing) >> Brian: Yeah, that's a lot. >> Why UiPath for Dentsu? >> UiPath has been a tremendous partner for us since about 2017. And we've been able to move on that journey with UiPath. We've been able to help understand the product roadmaps and move at a similar pace as each other. So we're really lucky in that we have the flexibility as an advertising and media company that we're not beholden to internal audits, external audits, and really defined regulatory bodies. So we made a decision, you know, what, six, seven months ago to collapse six UiPath on-prem instances and migrate to cloud with the sponsorship of our global CTO and our Amaris CTO, just because it was the right thing to do. And because it would enable this type of partnership with external providers. So being able to move at that similar pace from a release cycle, but also from a feature adoption perspective, it's, it just makes the most sense for us. And we have that liberty to go to go do those things as we need to. >> Yeah, so the move to the cloud, you get, you're able to take advantage much faster- >> James: Yeah. >> Because what did, what did we hear this morning? You release every six months? >> James: Yep. >> Yes. Which is typical for an on-prem. >> James: Yeah. >> And then, but you got to prepare for that. >> James: Yeah. I don't know how many N minus ones you support, but it's not infinite. >> James: Yeah. >> You got to move people along. So people have to prep, whereas now in the cloud, there's the feature, boom. >> Oh yeah. So being investing automation for good topic, it's not, it's about automation for good across people in general, within internally to us and externally to us, for our clients, for our employees and for our partners. The automation cloud enables that to happen much more seamlessly because we don't have the technical debt in place that requires people to VPN into our network and go through the bureaucracy of security, legal, and privacy, which we've already done by the way, for those conversations, bureaucratically still needs to happen. With automation cloud, we're able to spin up autonomy Works employees in real time and give them the right set of access to go pursue the use cases that they want to, and that we need them to. So that, that technical debt release that we've experienced through the automation cloud is what's enabling us to do this type of good work. >> It makes sense. A bit more, less friction, obviously, greater scale. >> Yeah. >> Easier to experiment. >> Yeah. >> Fail fast. >> We went from 12 separate programs to one program in a matter of a couple of months. >> It was wild. (Brian laughs) >> And I imagine you're only really scratching the surface here with what you're doing with automation. That really the horizon is the limit as you said. Guys, thank you for joining us, talking about automation for good. What you're doing at Dentsu RPA with autistic adults, there's probably so many other great use cases that will come from this. Guys, we appreciate your time. >> Yeah. >> Thanks for having us. Thank you. >> Thanks you guys, awesome. >> For Dave Vellante, I'm Lisa Martin coming to you from Vegas, UiPath forward IV. [light-hearted music plays]

(upbeat music) >> Covering InterConnect 2017, brought to you by IBM. >> Welcome back. We're here live in Las Vegas from Mandalay Bay for the IBM InterConnect 2017, this is Cube's exclusive coverage with SiliconANGLE media. I'm John Furrier, my co-host Dave Vellante here all week. We missed our kickoff this morning on day two and, because the keynotes went long with Ginni Rometty. Great star line up, you had Marc Benioff, the CEO of AT&T, and CEO of H&R Block, which I love their ad with Mad Men's guy in there. Dave let's wrap up day two. Big day, I mean traffic on the digital site, ibmgo.com was off the charts and the site just performed extremely well, excited about that. Also the keynote from the CEO of IBM, Ginni, really kind of brings us themes we've been talking about on theCUBE. I want to get your reaction to that, which is social good is now a purpose that's now becoming a generational theme, and it's not just social good in terms of equality of pay for women, which is great and of course more STEM, it's everything, it's society's global impact but also the tagline is very tight. Enterprise strong, has a Boston strong feeling to it. Enterprise strong, data first, cognitive to the core, pretty much hits their sweet spot. What did you think of her keynote presentation? >> I thought Ginni Rometty nailed it. I've always been a huge fan of hers, I first met her when she was running strategy, and you know the question you used to always get because IBM 19 quarters of straight declining revenue, how long is Ginni going to get? How long is Ginni going to get? You know when is her tenure going to be up? My answer's always been the same. (laughs) Long enough to prove that she was right. And I think, I just love her presentation today, I thought she was on, she was engaging, she's a real pro and she stressed the innovation that IBM is going through. And this was the strategy that she laid out, you know, five, six years ago and it's really coming to fruition and it was always interesting to me that she never spoke at these conferences and she didn't speak at these conferences 'cause the story was not great you know, it was coming together the big data piece or the analyst piece was not formed yet. >> So you think she didn't come to these events because the story wasn't done? >> Yeah, I think she was not-- >> That is not a fact, you believe that. >> No, this is my belief. She was not ready to showcase you know, the greatness of IBM and I said about a year ago, I said you watch this whole strategy is coming together. You are going to see a lot more of Ginni Rometty than you've seen in the past. You started to see her on CNBC much more, we saw her at the Women in Tech Conference, at the Grace Hopper Conference, we saw her at World of Watson and now we see her here at InterConnect and she's very good on stage. She's extremely engaging, I thought she was good at World of Watson, I thought she was even better today. And a couple of notable things, took a swipe at both AWS and maybe a little bit at HPE, I'm not so sure that they worry about HPE. Sam Palmisano, before he left on a Wall Street Journal interview, said "I don't worry about HPE, they don't invest in RND. "I worry about Oracle." But nonetheless, she said, it's not just a new way, cloud is not just a new way to deliver IT. Right that's the Amazon you know. >> HP. >> And certainly new way of you style by IT. >> You style by IT. >> Is Meg's line. She also took a swipe at Google basically saying, look we're not taking your data to inform some knowledge draft that we're going to take your IP and give it to the rest of the world. We're going to protect your data, we're going to protect your models. They're really making a strong statement in that regard which I think is really important for CIOs and CDOs and CEOs today. Thoughts? >> I agree. I first of all am a big fan of Ginni, I always kind of question whether she came in, I never put it together like you intuitively around her not seeing the story but you go to all the analyists thing, so I think that's legit I would say that I would buy that argument. Here's what I like. Her soundbite is enterprise strong, data first, cognitive to the core. It's kind of gimmicky, but it hits all their points. Enterprise strong is core in the conversations with customers right now. We see it in theCUBE all the time. Certainly Google Nexus was one event we saw this clearly. Having enterprise readiness is not easy and so that's a really tough code to crack. Oracle and Microsoft have cracked that code. So has IBM of the history. Amazon is getting faster to the Enterprise, some of the things they are doing. Google has no clue on the Enterprise, they're trying to do it their way. So you have kind of different dimensions. So that's the Enterprise, very hard to do, table stakes are different than having pure cloud native all the time 100%, lift and shift, rip and replace, whatever you want to call it. Data First is compelling because they have a core data strategy analytics but I thought it was interesting that they had this notion of you own your own data, which implies you're renting everything else, so if you're renting everything else, infrastructure (laughs) and facilities and reducing the cost of doing business, the only thing you really got is data, highlighted by Blockchain. So Blockchain becomes a critical announcement there. Again, that was the key announcement here at the show is Blockchain. IOT kind of a sub-text to the whole show but it's supported through the Data First. And finally Cognitive to the Core is where the AI is going to kind of be the shiny, silly marketing piece with I am Watson, I'm going to solve all your health problems. Kind of showing the futuristic aspect of that but under the hood there is machine learning, under that is a real analytics algorithms that they're going to integrate across their business whether it's a line of business in verticals, and they're going to cross pollinate data. So I think those three pillars, she is a genius (laughs) in strategy 'cause she can hit all three. What I just said is a chockfull of strategy and a chockfull execution. If they can do that then they will have a great run. >> So I go back to Palmisano's statement before Ginni took over and it was a very candid interview that he gave. And as they say, you look at when he left IBM, it was this next wave was coming like a freight train that was going to completely disrupt IBM's business, so it was, it's been a long turn around and they've done it with sort of tax rates, (laughs) stock buybacks, and all kinds of financial engineering that have held the company's stock price up, (laughs) and cash flow has been very strong and so now I really believe they're in a good position. You know to get critical for just a second, yes there's no growth but look who else isn't growing. HPE's not growing, Oracle's not growing, Tennsco's not growing, Cisco's not growing, Microsoft's not growing. The only two companies really in the cartel that are growing showing any growth really are Intel a little bit and SAP. The rest of the cartel is flat (laughs) to down. >> Well they got to get on new markets and I mean the thing is new market penetration is interesting so Blockchain could be an enabler. I think it's going to be some resistance to Blockchain, my gut tells me that but the innovative entrepreneur side of me says I love Blockchain. I would be all over Blockchain if I was an entrepreneur because that really would change the game on identity and value and all that great stuff. That's a good opportunity to take the data in. >> Well the thing I like is IBM's making bets, big bets, Blockchain, quantum computing, we'll see where that goes, cloud, clearly we could talk about, you know you said it (laughs) InterConnect two or three years ago you know SoftLayer's kind of hosting. True, but Blu makes the investments hoping-- >> SoftLayer's is not all Blu makes. >> That's right, well yeah so but any rate, the two billion dollar bet that they made on SoftLayer has allowed them to go to clients and say we have cloud. Watson, NAI, Analytics, IOT these are big bets which I think are going to pay off. You know, we'll see if quantum pays off in the year term, we'll see about Blockchain, I think a lot of the bets they've been making are going to pay off, Stark, et cetera. >> So let's talk about theCUBE interviews Dave, what got your attention? I'll start while you dig up something good from your notes. I loved Willie Tejada talked about this, they're putting in these clouds journey pieces which is not a best practice it's not a reference architecture but it's actually showing the use cases of people who are taking a cross functional journey of architecture and cloud solutions. I love the quantum computing conversation we had with believe it or not the tape person. And so from the tape whatever it was, GS. >> GS8000. >> GS8000. >> It's a storage engineering team. >> But in terms of key points, modernizing IOT relevance was a theme that popped out at me. It didn't come out directly. You start to see IOT be a proof point of operationalizing data. Let me explain, IOT right now is out there. People are focused on it because it's got real business impact, because it's either facilities, it's industrial or customer connected in some sort. That puts the pressure to operationalize that data, and I think that flushes out all the cloud washing and all the data washing, people who don't have any solutions there. So I think the operationalizing of the data with IOT is going to force people to come out with real solutions. And if you don't, you're gone, so that's, you're dead. The cultural issue is interesting. Trust as now table stakes in the equation of whether it's product trusts, operational trusts, and process trusts. That's something I saw very clearly. And of course I always get excited about DevOps and cloud native, as you know. And some of the stuff we did with data as an asset from the chief data architect. >> A couple I would add from yesterday, Indiegogo who I thought had a great case study, and then Mohammed Farooq, talking about cloud brokering. 60% of IBM's business is still services. Services is very very important. And I think that when I look at IBM's big challenge, to me, John, it's when you take that deep industry expertise that they have that competes with Accenture and ENY and Deloitte and PWC. Can you take that deep industry expertise and codify it in software and transform into a more software-oriented company? That's what IBM's doing, trying to do anyway, and challenging. To me it's all about differentiation. IBM has a substantially differentiated cloud strategy that allows them not to have to go head to head with Amazon, even though Amazon is a huge factor. And the last thing I want to say is, it's what IBM calls the clients. It's the customers. They have a logo slide, they bring up the CEOs of these companies, and it's very very impressive, almost in the same way that Amazon does at its conferences. They bring up great customers. IBM brings in the C-Suite. They're hugging Ginni. You know, it was a hug fest today. Betty up on stage. It was a pretty impressive lineup of partners and customers. >> I didn't know AT&T and IBM were that close. That was a surprise for me. And seeing the CEO of AT&T up there really tees it out. And I think AT&T's interesting, and Mobile World Congress, one of the things that we covered at that event was the over the top Telco guys got to get their act together, and that's clear that 5G and wireless over the top is going to power the sensors everywhere. So the IOT on cars, for instance, and life, is going to be a great opportunity for, but Telco has to finally get a business model. So it's interesting to see his view of digital services from a Telco standpoint. The question I have for AT&T is, are they going to be dumped pipes or are they actually going to move up the stand and add value? Interesting to see who's the master in that relationship. IBM with cognitive, or AT&T with the pipes. >> And, you know, you're in Silicon Valley so you hear all the talk from the Silicon Valley elites. "Oh well, Apple and Amazon "and Google and Facebook, "much better AI than Watson." I don't know, maybe. But IBM's messaging-- >> Yes. >> Okay, so yes, fine. But IBM's messaging and positioning in the enterprise to apply their deep industry knowledge and bring services to bear and solve real problems, and protect the data and protect the models. That is so differentiable, and that is a winning strategy. >> Yeah but Dave, everyone who's doing-- >> Despite the technical. >> Anyone who's doing serious AI attempts, first of all, this whole bastardized definition. It's really machine learning that's driving it and data. Anyone who's doing any serious direction to AI is using machine learning and writing their own code. They're doing it on their own before they go to Watson. So Watson is not super baked when it comes to AI. So what I would say is, Watson has libraries and things that could augment traditional custom-built AI as a kernel. Our 13-year-old guest Tanmay was on. He's doing his own customizing, then bring it to Watson. So I don't see Watson being a mutually exclusive, Watson or nothing else. Watson right now has a lot of things that adds to the value but it's not the Holy Grail for all things AI, in my opinion. The innovation's going to come from the outside and meet up with Watson. That to me is the formula. >> Going back to Mohammed Farooq yesterday, he made the statement, roughly, don't quote me on these numbers, I'll quote myself, for every dollar spent on technology, 10 dollars are going to be spent on services. That's a huge opportunity for IBM, and that's where they're going to make Watson work. >> If I'm IBM and Watson team, and I'm an executive there and engineering lead, I'm like, look it, what I would do is target the fusion aspect of connecting with their customers data. And I think that's what they're kind of teasing out. I don't know if they're completely saying that, but I want to bring my own machine learning to the table, or my own custom stuff, 'cause it's my solution. If Watson can connect with that and handshake with the data, then you got the governance problem solved. So I think Seth, the CDO, is kind of connecting the dots there, and I think that's still unknown, but that's the direction that I see. >> And services, it remains critical because of the complexity of IBM's portfolio, but complexity has always been the friend of services. But at the same time, IBM's going to transform its services business and become more software-like, and that is the winning formula. At the end of the day, from a financial perspective, to me it's cash flow, cash flow, cash flow. And this company is still a cash flow cow. >> So the other thing that surprised me, and this is something we can kind of end the segment on is, IBM just reorganized. So that's been reported. The games, people shift it a little bit, but it's still the same game. They kind of consolidated the messaging a little bit, but I think the proof point is that the traffic for on the digital side, for this show, is 2X World of Watson. The lines to get into keynotes yesterday and today were massive. So there's more interest in InterConnect than World of Watson. >> Well we just did. >> Amazing, isn't it? >> Well then that was a huge show, so what that means is, this is hitting an interest point. Cloud and data coming together. And again, I said it on the intro yesterday. IOT is the forcing function. That to me is bringing the big data world. We just had Strata Hadoop and R event at BigDataSV. That's not Hadoop anymore, it's data and cloud coming together. And that's going to be hitting IOT and this cognitive piece. So I think certainly it's going to accelerate at IBM. >> And IBM's bringing some outside talent. Look at Harry Green who came from Thomas Cook, Michelle Peluso. Marketing chops. They sort of shuffled the deck with some of their larger businesses. Put Arvind Krishna in charge. Brought in David Kenny from the Weather Company. Moved Bob Picciano to the cognitive systems business. So as you say, shuffle things around. Still a lot of the same players, but sometimes the organization-- >> By the way, we forgot to talk about Don Tapscott who came on, my favorite of the day. >> Another highlight. >> Blockchain Revolution, but we interviewed him. Check out his book, Blockchain can be great. Tomorrow we got a big lineup as well. We're going to have some great interviews all day, going right up to 5:30 tomorrow for day three coverage. This is theCUBE, here at the Mandalay Bay for IBM InterConnect 2017. I'm John Furrier and Dave Vellante. Stay with us, join us tomorrow, Wednesday, for our third day of exclusive coverage of IBM InterConnect 2017, thanks for watching.