>> Live from Las Vegas. It's theCUBE. Covering Informatica World 2019. Brought to you by Informatica. >> Welcome back everyone to theCUBE's live coverage of Informatica World 2019. I'm your host, Rebecca Knight. We are joined by Sanjeev Vhora. He is the group technology officer and global data business lead at Accenture. Thank you so much for coming on theCUBE. >> Thanks. Thanks for having me here. >> We're hearing so much about AI lead data intelligence, and the other buzz word of course, that we hear so much of, is digital transformation. I'd love to hear your thoughts about data first approach to digital transformation. First of all, what does that mean? >> I think what we are seeing is that, if you... I think we do see that we are getting into a post digital era. Which means that in the last seven years, most bigger companies and businesses have invested in building a better customer engagement. What they did was they created properties, like portals, mobile applications, you name it, to just get better sense and touch their customers better than they were touching earlier. That was a whole investment that went in the last six, seven years. What they feel is that what's next. You do that, but does it really translate into revenue growth? Is it really translating into the experience in a sustained basis? Not one time, but on sustained basis. Every time when you touch a customer, they feel the same passion towards you. They feel that they are still engaged with you, and they want to come again to you for whatever your offering, your services or your goods. They felt that that's not actually happening. The reason why it's not happening is because the underlying data is not complete or comprehensive enough, or not accurate enough, for giving that experience. That realization is seeping up right now. They are asking for ensuring instead of looking at a use-case base approach of solving one problem for one business or one geography, is there a way to do it enterprise-wide? That a (mumbles). Point which is coming out is that they looked at that technology process that's old tradition model of looking at new businesses. Technology people processes and those three. But now they're looking to fourth element, which is foundation-call data. That's what we are calling data-first approach. You have to look at data as well, while looking at reforming your business services, and offers to the client. >> I want to touch on something you said earlier, and that is to make the customer feel passionate about interacting with you. I mean that's such a loaded, and almost romantic word to describe a customer interacting with a company. Why is it that companies are trying invoke passion, and insight passion, inspire passion? >> I think it's a way to differentiate yourself from the competition, so I think that's what in my view the businesses are doing right. Let me give an example to you to make it real, it may address your first question as well to some extent. We are working with a cruise company, one of the largest cruise companies North America based. They obviously are trying to make sure the experience of the customer is much better than had earlier. Which can resinate to a much higher revenue for them obviously, and inquisition of more customers. The friends of friends, friends of customers if you may. They had done a great job creating that digital property, and the transformation of the program. But they also realize that they are now, they realize that they don't really have a sense of who's the customer? Now that's a good question, after all this investment you still don't know who's the customer. That's where they came and talked about can I get a single view of my customer? The reason why they don't have a single view of customer is because they actually don't own all their individual customers. They only own their own individual customers, but they also work with their partners. As you can see Experian and others actually own that same customer. So they are not able to have a sense of that customer, their habits, and their behavior in one single place. They can really provide their accommodations, saying... well guest, if you're going to Italy we can probably help you this summer. >> So yes, exactly that's what I want to know; Is what, if you do have a sense of who your customer is, and that is everything from their basic demographic information, to what they do on Sunday afternoon with their families. What kinds of things then can the cruise company do to make that customer more passionate toward the cruise. >> They can do a lot, but I can tell you another example of another cruise company. Was looking at customer files and they did a fantastic job, and I'm assuming that you may have also experienced yourself. This customer they had covered the single view of customer obviously, but what they did was use a lot of IoT or sensors in their ships. They actually transformed the entire ship. Like the entire ship has been transformed to understand the customer movement, and give that flawless and seamless (mumbles) to customers. Which can help them have a pretty great on their vessels if you may. That's what they, from the day that you order the tickets for this service... From that time onward they actually send you a (mumbles). That tracks you as a person moving into the ship, and they can offer much more seamless services, and also reduces a friction of the operations staff. The staff is not in a hurry and hassle. They're actually able to understand who's actually the customer, what they want, and they are able to provide that service. So that's how they're using that feature of knowing the customer, to better serve them; being a better engagement with them. Plus also eases the operational friction in their own staff. >> So the customer wins because they feel the company gets them, and knows them, and understands them; and then the company wins because they're able to make more money off that customer, because they already have predicted what that customer wants and needs at every moment. >> And they can do more with less. They can do more with less staff, less resources. >> So one of that we are also talking a lot about here on theCUBE it's the tenth anniversary of theCUBE. So we've had a lot of these conversations, is how data is becoming a C-suite discussion, and there's this growing need to appoint a chief data officer to drive data strategy. What do you see as the evolving role of the CDO, at your company; and then also at the companies that you work with? >> We see this is a very significant step in the future. There are a lot of predictions from (mumbles) An analyst saying that there will be more and more roles, like three-fourth of the companies would have a CDO (mumbles). But I think our point is likely, you know, to augment that point I think what we believe is that, we do believe in respective of who actually owns (mumbles) That a chief data officer or a CI, or a CO. They definitely need a person at the C-suite, not below C-suite. To have that discussion at the table, and show that their data strategy is attached to their business strategy, and that's not true in many cases right now. So the data is (mumbles) which is two levels down in (mumbles), and that's why it's not getting that attention as a corporate asset as a (mumbles) asset from where you can actually extract value that you're looking at right. That's what we see; so we see a very broadened role, we see who so is in that role, we think there are a few qualities that person needs to have. The first one the person has to have a seat at the table. The second, is that person should be able to understand business quite well. (mumbles) He or she should have an insider business innovation, and if the person is tech savy it's good to have, but it's not must to have. We do believe that person should be able to prepare a strategy, and the governance of data across his or her peers. So they know that what value they are able to get from that data, and how they can share it across their functions. That's where the value comes in. Plus, beyond that the last point would be making sure whatever they do, they do responsibly. Do they actually make things work; whether it's using A.I., whether it's using any machine learning or anything else they have. They make sure that it's responsible data, and make it secure for themselves, for their enterprise, and for their customer. >> Well that is certainly a theme that we're hearing a lot about at Infomatica world. Tell me about the relationship between Accenture and Informatica. >> It's quite good, it's been good for years. We have been working together for years. The last two years, or two in a half years I think it has really taken a different shape within the new companies, and that's largely because we have really gone into a strategic discussion with the companies, and seeing what is the future. I think one thing that they are doing very well with their leadership. Anil himself is CEO; and Amit, and Tracy, and everybody else. And with our leadership is that we do believe that we are on the surface of un-tapping the value, one. Second thing is I don't think that used cases will draw the benefit which large organizations are looking at. It has to be something done at enterprise level. So think about like I think there another talk in the morning about enterprise data catalog. Amit was talking about, You need that. You need that to not do one used case for one particular business, for one particular country, or one particular customer segment. We need to do that for entire businesses across the enterprise. That can only happen if you have a sense of data, and you know how to do it effectively at scale. That's what I think that people are looking. Companies are going to be looking at the solution base, and I think it's the right timing for having the discussion. >> And there are going to be learnings that you can derive from financial services, and apply to retail, and healthcare, and all sorts of (mumble). Is that what you're finding here at Informatica World? Are you having those in conversations to learn the best practices? >> Oh yeah, I think we have our customers here; Accenture, as we have our customers here. we're presenting in different session. We had (mumbles) present today morning at eleven a.m. about how master data management can actually help you drive a better strategy on transforming your operations system like ESPE. That was never talked earlier, two years back nobody talked about saying how can MDM help you have a better transformation of your ESPE systems. Well that's where we are going. We are saying that, okay you have a trandiction systems, but you also need a system of right governance. Because all of your data, customer data or other data maybe sitting in ESPE or maybe sitting in sales force. How would you connect the dots? You need something to connect that dot so you have a single source of truth, and make sure that you know your customer, or vendor, or location, or everything else in the right fashion. >> Know your customer. So another thing I want to ask you about is the skills gap. I know that workforce of the future is something that you've worked passionately on. Passion keeps coming up in our conversation. (laughs amusingly) At Accenture. Tell us your story first in terms how you came to terms with this skill gap, and what you did at Accenture to remedy it. >> So this is four years back, and we were looking at our tech strategy, and our strategy to (mumbles) our business going forward, or where do we invest? And we are a people centric company so we are 470,000 people, that's a lot of people. In my role, one of the thing in my role is to make sure that I look at all the investment we do on our people. As CDO of our technology business, I need to make sure that we are investing in the right places. So this came to me saying that okay, will we be relevant as 470,000 people ten years from now? That's the question right? Because of A.I., because machine in our name, because people plus machine. What happens to our work force? So that's what I was trying to solve. Instead he's saying, what do we do next, and that was the whole point about workforce of the future. We will work more closely with the machines, and how will that happen. So what skills we will need as humans to work with machines, and everything else. What's going to happen in terms of automation going forward. And plus new talent which is required for the future. So we worked hard on this we built a strategy on what we need, then we did a very simple thing, we actually went to a high speed excursion, and agile sprints. We get it the few of principles actually. I can say a couple of them to use to resinate. One is the principle saying there's only (mumbles) available in the market. So don't spend creating stuff, but spend learning stuff. The second thing the chains of (mumbles) are a vision of our people vision, employee vision. It used to be saying, That you need to preform and grow. Something like that, if you preform high in our company, you'll grow faster. We changed the saying to learn and grow. So we said learning is more fundamental because performance will become automatic when you learn more. What we did was we changed. We worked really hard on the cultural aspect. And one of the things (mumbles) used to always say in the past ten years back, you used to learn a day in a month. Well that may not be enough today. Just because (mumbles) and the change of technology is much faster. It's 10x speed. So you can learn at 10x level, that doesn't mean you need to be learning at deep level for ten things, that's going to be hard for humans to do that. But you can use some help. That's what we do a 2 pronged approach. One is what we call a (mumble) training. Which means we make you more aware of everything that's happening in the world, and we give you a chance to support people-- >> I mean how do you do that, I mean that's a tall order. >> So what I did was we went to the market, and we looked at a lot of platforms. Okay you need technology to do everything. You get it right. You will be sitting here talking (mumbles). Using right technologies, right? Maybe show that our what we're talking is for (mumbles) people to watch us right. But the same thing there when we were looking at all the platforms. I looked at all things and I felt everything was great. (mumbles) It was not something which is exponential So I had to build a platform off it all, so I spent 6 months writing a whole platform. It was a really smart team, and all the logic I used was build a platform which treats or ploy a human in the center of your (mumbles) design. So we made a very personalized platform, where it helps a person to get there, and attracts you to come back. So it's very user friendly, or a very exponential platform. We call it Accenture Future Talent Platform. We deployed it across our entire businesses, we have 70+ number of people who are already being certified to their platform. They feel goof that they've gone to the next stage of their career. And now we are actually using the same platform for our clients. So we are giving them platforms so clients can use that effectively. >> From what I am hearing from you, it's about having technology skills, know how, and expertise. But also having this mindset of learning, and a hungry for learning, and wanting to know more. How do you make sure that, that culture is cultivated in the right way? >> We did some of the campaigns, so a very simple principle that we use is that like you do a marketing campaign to attract a customer. Whether he is selling a (mumbles), or selling a cruise experience, or vacation, or whatever. Use a similar principles for our own employers, and use it as learning campaigns. So marketing campaigns are learning campaigns. So one of the campaigns that we ran was, How important was it for you to be learning fit? So just like we always measure ourselves on health everyday, instead you measure yourself in learning. So our app was actually given to everybody, so you can see whether you are learning enough or not. We're in the culture of seeing how I'm doing against my own goals, but how am I doing against Rebecca's goal. >> Gameafying it, making it a little more fun. Making it a little competition. >> We also did (mumbles) as well, Because we felt that people look at their own models and say, well this person is very sexist, why would I want to be that person. That's a normal human. That's what people see so we made sure that our leaders do what they are saying. And they can buckle it down, they should start learning faster itself, from top management perspective. So people see them learning, they would say, I want to be like him. So that means I need to have the same behavior as this person. >> No, those are critical people in companies. Well, Sanjeev thank you so much for coming on theCUBE. It's been a pleasure having you. >> Same here, it was nice talking to you. >> I'm Rebecca Knight. You are watching theCUBE Informatica World 2019. (funky techno music)