>> Data is at the heart of transformation and the change every company needs to succeed, but it takes more than new technology. It's about teams, talent and cultural change. Empowering everyone on the front lines to make decisions all at the speed of digital. The transformation starts with you. It's time to lead the way it's time for Thought leaders. >> Welcome to "Thought Leaders" a digital event brought to you by ThoughtSpot. My name is Dave Vellante. The purpose of this day is to bring industry leaders and experts together to really try and understand the important issues around digital transformation. We have an amazing lineup of speakers and our goal is to provide you with some best practices that you can bring back and apply to your organization. Look, data is plentiful, but insights are not. ThoughtSpot is disrupting analytics by using search and machine intelligence to simplify data analysis and really empower anyone with fast access to relevant data. But in the last 150 days, we've had more questions than answers. Creating an organization that puts data and insights at their core requires not only modern technology, but leadership, a mindset and a culture that people often refer to as data-driven. What does that mean? How can we equip our teams with data and fast access to quality information that can turn insights into action. And today we're going to hear from experienced leaders who are transforming their organizations with data, insights and creating digital first cultures. But before we introduce our speakers, I'm joined today by two of my co-hosts from ThoughtSpot first chief data strategy officer at the ThoughtSpot is Cindi Howson. Cindi is an analytics and BI expert with 20 plus years experience and the author of "Successful Business Intelligence "Unlock the Value of BI & Big Data." Cindi was previously the lead analyst at Gartner for the data and analytics magic quadrant. And early last year, she joined ThoughtSpot to help CDOs and their teams understand how best to leverage analytics and AI for digital transformation. Cindi, great to see you welcome to the show. >> Thank you, Dave. Nice to join you virtually. >> Now our second cohost and friend of the cube is ThoughtSpot CEO Sudheesh Nair Hello, Sudheesh how are you doing today? >> I'm well Dave, it's good to talk to you again. >> It's great to see you thanks so much for being here. Now Sudheesh please share with us why this discussion is so important to your customers and of course, to our audience and what they're going to learn today. (upbeat music) >> Thanks, Dave. I wish you were there to introduce me into every room and that I walk into because you have such an amazing way of doing it. Makes me feel all so good. Look, since we have all been cooped up in our homes, I know that the vendors like us, we have amped up our sort of effort to reach out to you with invites for events like this. So we are getting very more invites for events like this than ever before. So when we started planning for this, we had three clear goals that we wanted to accomplish. And our first one that when you finish this and walk away, we want to make sure that you don't feel like it was a waste of time. We want to make sure that we value your time and this is going to be useful. Number two, we want to put you in touch with industry leaders and thought leaders, generally good people that you want to hang around with long after this event is over. And number three, as we plan through this, we are living through these difficult times. We want an event to be this event, to be more of an uplifting and inspiring event too. Now, the challenge is how do you do that with the team being change agents because change and as much as we romanticize it, it is not one of those uplifting things that everyone wants to do, or like to do. The way I think of it sort of like a, if you've ever done bungee jumping and it's like standing on the edges waiting to make that one more step, all you have to do is take that one step and gravity will do the rest, but that is the hardest step to take. Change requires a lot of courage. And when we are talking about data and analytics, which is already like such a hard topic, not necessarily an uplifting and positive conversation in most businesses, it is somewhat scary. Change becomes all the more difficult. Ultimately change requires courage. Courage to first of all challenge the status quo. People sometimes are afraid to challenge the status quo because they are thinking that maybe I don't have the power to make the change that the company needs. Sometimes they feel like I don't have the skills. Sometimes they may feel that I'm probably not the right person do it. Or sometimes the lack of courage manifest itself as the inability to sort of break the silos that are formed within the organizations, when it comes to data and insights that you talked about. There are people in the company who are going to hog the data because they know how to manage the data, how to inquire and extract. They know how to speak data. They have the skills to do that. But they are not the group of people who have sort of the knowledge, the experience of the business to ask the right questions off the data. So there is the silo of people with the answers, and there is a silo of people with the questions. And there is gap. This sort of silos are standing in the way of making that necessary change that we all know the business needs. And the last change to sort of bring an external force sometimes. It could be a tool. It could be a platform, it could be a person, it could be a process, but sometimes no matter how big the company is or how small the company is, you may need to bring some external stimuli to start the domino of the positive changes that are necessary. The group of people that we are brought in, the four people, including Cindi, that you will hear from today are really good at practically telling you how to make that step, how to step off that edge, how to dress the rope, that you will be safe and you're going to have fun. You will have that exhilarating feeling of jumping, for a bungee jump. All four of them are exceptional, but my honor is to introduce Michelle and she's our first speaker. Michelle, I am very happy after watching her presentation and reading our bio, that there are no country vital worldwide competition for cool patterns, because she will beat all of us because when her children were small, they were probably into Harry Potter and Disney. She was managing a business and leading change there. And then as her kids grew up and got to that age where they like football and NFL, guess what? She's the CIO of NFL. What a cool mom? I am extremely excited to see what she's going to talk about. I've seen the slides, tons of amazing pictures. I'm looking to see the context behind it. I'm very thrilled to make the acquaintance of Michelle and looking forward to her talk next. Welcome Michelle, it's over to you. (upbeat music) >> I'm delighted to be with you all today to talk about thought leadership. And I'm so excited that you asked me to join you because today I get to be a quarterback. I always wanted to be one. And I thought this is about as close as I'm ever going to get. So I want to talk to you about quarterbacking, our digital revolution using insights data. And of course, as you said, leadership, first a little bit about myself, a little background, as I said, I always wanted to play football. And this is something that I wanted to do since I was a child. But when I grew up, girls didn't get to play football. I'm so happy that that's changing and girls are now doing all kinds of things that they didn't get to do before. Just this past weekend on an NFL field, we had a female coach on two sidelines and a female official on the field. I'm a lifelong fan and student of the game of football. I grew up in the South. You can tell from the accent. And in the South football is like a religion and you pick sides. I chose Auburn university working in the athletic department. So I'm Testament to you can start the journey can be long. It took me many, many years to make it into professional sports. I graduated in 1987 and my little brother, well, not actually not so little. He played offensive line for the Alabama Crimson Tide. And for those of you who know SCC football, you know this is a really big rivalry. And when you choose sides, your family is divided. So it's kind of fun for me to always tell the story that my dad knew his kid would make it to the NFL. He just bet on the wrong one. My career has been about bringing people together for memorable moments at some of America's most iconic brands, delivering memories and amazing experiences that delight from Universal Studios, Disney to my current position as CIO of the NFL. In this job I'm very privileged to have the opportunity to work with the team that gets to bring America's game to millions of people around the world. Often I'm asked to talk about how to create amazing experiences for fans, guests, or customers. But today I really wanted to focus on something different and talk to you about being behind the scenes and backstage because behind every event, every game, every awesome moment is execution, precise, repeatable execution. And most of my career has been behind the scenes doing just that assembling teams to execute these plans. And the key way that companies operate at these exceptional levels is making good decisions, the right decisions at the right time and based upon data so that you can translate the data into intelligence and be a data-driven culture. Using data and intelligence is an important way that world-class companies do differentiate themselves. And it's the lifeblood of collaboration and innovation. Teams that are working on delivering these kinds of world casts experiences are often seeking out and leveraging next-generation technologies and finding new ways to work. I've been fortunate to work across three decades of emerging experiences, which each required emerging technologies to execute a little bit first about Disney in the 90s, I was at Disney leading a project called destination Disney, which it's a data project. It was a data project, but it was CRM before CRM was even cool. And then certainly before anything like a data-driven culture was ever brought up, but way back then we were creating a digital backbone that enabled many technologies for the things that you see today, like the magic band, Disney's magical express. My career at Disney began in finance, but Disney was very good about rotating you around. And it was during one of these rotations that I became very passionate about data. I kind of became a pain in the butt to the IT team asking for data more and more data. And I learned that all of that valuable data was locked up in our systems. All of our point of sales systems, our reservation systems, our operation systems. And so I became a shadow IT person in marketing, ultimately leading to moving into IT. And I haven't looked back since. In the early two thousands, I was at universal studios theme park as their CIO preparing for and launching "The Wizarding World of Harry Potter" bringing one of history's most memorable characters to life required many new technologies and a lot of data. Our data and technologies were embedded into the rides and attractions. I mean, how do you really think a wan selects you at a wan shop. As today at the NFL? I am constantly challenged to do leading edge technologies, using things like sensors, AI, machine learning, and all new communication strategies and using data to drive everything from player performance, contracts, to where we build new stadiums and hold events with this year being the most challenging yet rewarding year in my career at the NFL. In the middle of a global pandemic, the way we are executing on our season is leveraging data from contract tracing devices joined with testing data, talk about data, actually enabling your business without it w wouldn't be having a season right now. I'm also on the board of directors of two public companies where data and collaboration are paramount. First RingCentral, it's a cloud based unified communications platform and collaboration with video message and phone all in one solution in the cloud and Quotient technologies whose product is actually data. The tagline at Quotient is the result in knowing I think that's really important because not all of us are data companies where your product is actually data, but we should operate more like your product is data. I'd also like to talk to you about four areas of things to think about as thought leaders in your companies. First just hit on it is change how to be a champion and a driver of change. Second, how do you use data to drive performance for your company and measure performance of your company? Third, how companies now require intense collaboration to operate. And finally, how much of this is accomplished through solid data driven decisions. First let's hit on change. I mean, it's evident today more than ever, that we are in an environment of extreme change. I mean, we've all been at this for years and as technologists we've known it, believed it, lived it and thankfully for the most part, knock on what we were prepared for it. But this year everyone's cheese was moved. All the people in the back rooms, IT, data architects and others were suddenly called to the forefront because a global pandemic has turned out to be the thing that is driving intense change in how people work and analyze their business. On March 13th, we closed our office at the NFL in the middle of preparing for one of our biggest events, our kickoff event, the 2020 draft. We went from planning a large event in Las Vegas under the bright lights, red carpet stage to smaller events in club facilities. And then ultimately to one where everyone coaches GM's prospects and even our commissioner were at home in their basements. And we only had a few weeks to figure it out. I found myself for the first time being in the live broadcast event space, talking about bungee jumping. This is really what it felt like. It was one in which no one felt comfortable because it had not been done before. But leading through this, I stepped up, but it was very scary. It was certainly very risky, but it ended up being all so rewarding when we did it. And as a result of this, some things will change forever. Second, managing performance. I mean, data should inform how you're doing and how to get your company to perform at it's level. Highest level. As an example, the NFL has always measured performance, obviously, and it is one of the purest examples of how performance directly impacts outcome. I mean, you can see performance on the field. You can see points being scored in stats, and you immediately know that impact those with the best stats usually when the games. The NFL has always recorded stats since the beginning of time here at the NFL a little this year is our 101 year and athletes ultimate success as a player has also always been greatly impacted by his stats. But what has changed for us is both how much more we can measure and the immediacy with which it can be measured. And I'm sure in your business it's the same. The amount of data you must have has got to have quadrupled and how fast you need it and how quickly you need to analyze it is so important. And it's very important to break the silos between the keys, to the data and the use of the data. Our next generation stats platform is taking data to a next level. It's powered by Amazon web services. And we gathered this data real-time from sensors that are on players' bodies. We gather it in real time, analyze it, display it online and on broadcast. And of course it's used to prepare week to week in addition to what is a normal coaching plan would be. We can now analyze, visualize route patterns, speed match-ups, et cetera. So much faster than ever before. We're continuing to roll out sensors too that will gather more and more information about a player's performance as it relates to their health and safety. The third trend is really, I think it's a big part of what we're feeling today and that is intense collaboration. And just for sort of historical purposes, it's important to think about for those of you that are IT professionals and developers, more than 10 years ago, agile practices began sweeping companies where small teams would work together rapidly in a very flexible, adaptive, and innovative way. And it proved to be transformational. However, today, of course, that is no longer just small teams, the next big wave of change. And we've seen it through this pandemic is that it's the whole enterprise that must collaborate and be agile. If I look back on my career, when I was at Disney, we owned everything 100%. We made a decision, we implemented it. We were a collaborative culture, but it was much easier to push change because you own the whole decision. If there was buy-in from the top down, you've got the people from the bottom up to do it and you executed. At Universal we were a joint venture. Our attractions and entertainment was licensed. Our hotels were owned and managed by other third parties. So influence and collaboration and how to share across companies became very important. And now here I am at the NFL and even the bigger ecosystem, we have 32 clubs that are all separate businesses. 31 different stadiums that are owned by a variety of people. We have licensees, we have sponsors, we have broadcast partners. So it seems that as my career has evolved, centralized control has gotten less and less and has been replaced by intense collaboration, not only within your own company, but across companies. The ability to work in a collaborative way across businesses and even other companies that has been a big key to my success in my career. I believe this whole vertical integration and big top-down decision-making is going by the wayside in favor of ecosystems that require cooperation yet competition to co-exist. I mean, the NFL is a great example of what we call co-op petition, which is cooperation and competition. We're in competition with each other, but we cooperate to make the company the best it can be. And at the heart of these items really are data driven decisions and culture. Data on its own isn't good enough. You must be able to turn it to insights. Partnerships between technology teams who usually hold the keys to the raw data and business units who have the knowledge to build the right decision models is key. If you're not already involved in this linkage, you should be. Data mining isn't new for sure. The availability of data is quadrupling and it's everywhere. How do you know what to even look at? How do you know where to begin? How do you know what questions to ask it's by using the tools that are available for visualization and analytics and knitting together strategies of the company. So it begins with first of all, making sure you do understand the strategy of the company. So in closing, just to wrap up a bit, many of you joined today, looking for thought leadership on how to be a change agent, a change champion, and how to lead through transformation. Some final thoughts are be brave and drive. Don't do the ride along program. It's very important to drive. Driving can be high risk, but it's also high reward. Embracing the uncertainty of what will happen is how you become brave. Get more and more comfortable with uncertainty, be calm and let data be your map on your journey. Thanks. >> Michelle, tank you so much. So you and I share a love of data and a love of football. You said you want to be the quarterback. I'm more an old line person. (Michelle and Cindi laughing) >> Well, then I can do my job without you. >> Great. And I'm getting the feeling now, Sudheesh is talking about bungee jumping. My vote is when we're past this pandemic, we both take them to the Delaware water gap and we do the cliff jumping. >> That sounds good, I'll watch. >> Yeah, you'll watch, okay. So Michelle, you have so many stakeholders when you're trying to prioritize the different voices. You have the players, you have the owners, you have the league, as you mentioned, the broadcasters, your partners here and football mamas like myself. How do you prioritize when there's so many different stakeholders that you need to satisfy? >> I think balancing across stakeholders starts with, aligning on a mission. And if you spend a lot of time understanding where everyone's coming from, and you can find the common thread that ties them all together, you sort of do get them to naturally prioritize their work. And I think that's very important. So for us, at the NFL and even at Disney, it was our core values and our core purpose, is so well known and when anything challenges that we're able to sort of lay that out. But as a change agent, you have to be very empathetic. And I would say empathy is probably your strongest skill if you're a change agent. And that means listening to every single stakeholder, even when they're yelling at you, even when they're telling you your technology doesn't work and you know that it's user error, or even when someone is just emotional about what's happening to them and that they're not comfortable with it. So I think being empathetic and having a mission and understanding it is sort of how I prioritize and balance. >> Yeah, empathy, a very popular word this year. I can imagine those coaches and owners yelling. So, thank you for your leadership here. So Michelle, I look forward to discussing this more with our other customers and disruptors joining us in a little bit. (upbeat music) So we're going to take a hard pivot now and go from football to Chernobyl. Chernobyl what went wrong? 1986, as the reactors were melting down, they had the data to say, this is going to be catastrophic. And yet the culture said, "no, we're perfect, hide it. "Don't dare tell anyone." Which meant they went ahead and had celebrations in Kiev. Even though that increased the exposure, the additional thousands getting cancer and 20,000 years before the ground around there can even be inhabited again, this is how powerful and detrimental a negative culture, a culture that is unable to confront the brutal facts that hides data. This is what we have to contend with. And this is why I want you to focus on having, fostering a data-driven culture. I don't want you to be a laggard. I want you to be a leader in using data to drive your digital transformation. So I'll talk about culture and technology. Is it really two sides of the same coin, real-world impacts and then some best practices you can use to and innovate your culture. Now, oftentimes I would talk about culture and I talk about technology. And recently a CDO said to me, "Cindi, I actually think this is two sides "of the same coin. "One reflects the other." What do you think? Let me walk you through this. So let's take a laggard. What does the technology look like? Is it based on 1990s BI and reporting largely parametrized reports, on premises data, warehouses, or not even that operational reports at best one enterprise data warehouse, very slow moving and collaboration is only email. What does that culture tell you? Maybe there's a lack of leadership to change, to do the hard work that Sudheesh referred to, or is there also a culture of fear, afraid of failure, resistance to change complacency. And sometimes that complacency it's not because people are lazy. It's because they've been so beaten down every time a new idea is presented. It's like, no we're measured on least cost to serve. So politics and distrust, whether it's between business and IT or individual stakeholders is the norm. So data is hoarded. Let's contrast that with a leader, a data and analytics leader, what is their technology look like? Augmented analytics search and AI driven insights, not on premises, but in the cloud and maybe multiple clouds. And the data is not in one place, but it's in a data Lake and in a data warehouse, a logical data warehouse. The collaboration is being a newer methods, whether it's Slack or teams allowing for that real time decisioning or investigating a particular data point. So what is the culture in the leaders? It's transparent and trust. There is a trust that data will not be used to punish that there is an ability to confront the bad news. It's innovation, valuing innovation in pursuit of the company goals, whether it's the best fan experience and player safety in the NFL or best serving your customers. It's innovative and collaborative. There's none of this. Oh, well, I didn't invent that. I'm not going to look at that. There's still pride of ownership, but it's collaborating to get to a better place faster. And people feel empowered to present new ideas to fail fast, and they're energized knowing that they're using the best technology and innovating at the pace that business requires. So data is democratized. And democratized, not just for power users or analysts, but really at the point of impact what we like to call the new decision-makers or really the frontline workers. So Harvard business review partnered with us to develop this study to say, just how important is this? We've been working at BI and analytics as an industry for more than 20 years. Why is it not at the front lines? Whether it's a doctor, a nurse, a coach, a supply chain manager, a warehouse manager, a financial services advisor. Everyone said that if our 87% said, they would be more successful if frontline workers were empowered with data driven insights, but they recognize they need new technology to be able to do that. It's not about learning hard tools. The sad reality, only 20% of organizations are actually doing this. These are the data-driven leaders. So this is the culture in technology. How did we get here? It's because state-of-the-art keeps changing. So the first-generation BI and analytics platforms were deployed on premises on small datasets, really just taking data out of ERP systems that were also on premises. And state-of-the-art was maybe getting a management report, an operational report. Over time visual-based data discovery vendors disrupted these traditional BI vendors, empowering now analysts to create visualizations with the flexibility on a desktop, sometimes larger data, sometimes coming from a data warehouse. The current state of the art though, Gartner calls it augmented analytics at ThoughtSpot, we call it search and AI driven analytics. And this was pioneered for large scale datasets, whether it's on premises or leveraging the cloud data warehouses. And I think this is an important point. Oftentimes you, the data and analytics leaders will look at these two components separately, but you have to look at the BI and analytics tier in lockstep with your data architectures to really get to the granular insights and to leverage the capabilities of AI. Now, if you've never seen ThoughtSpot, I'll just show you what this looks like. Instead of somebody hard coding, a report it's typing in search keywords and very robust keywords contains rank top bottom, getting to a visual visualization that then can be pinned to an existing Pin board that might also contain insights generated by an AI engine. So it's easy enough for that new decision maker, the business user, the non analyst to create themselves. Modernizing the data and analytics portfolio is hard because the pace of change has accelerated. You use to be able to create an investment place a bet for maybe 10 years, a few years ago, that time horizon was five years, now it's maybe three years and the time to maturity has also accelerated. So you have these different components, the search and AI tier, the data science tier, data preparation and virtualization. But I would also say equally important is the cloud data warehouse and pay attention to how well these analytics tools can unlock the value in these cloud data warehouses. So ThoughtSpot was the first to market with search and AI driven insights. Competitors have followed suit, but be careful if you look at products like power BI or SAP analytics cloud, they might demo well, but do they let you get to all the data without moving it in products like Snowflake, Amazon Redshift, or Azure synapse or Google big query, they do not. They require you to move it into a smaller in memory engine. So it's important how well these new products inter operate. the pace of change, its acceleration Gartner recently predicted that by 2022, 65% of analytical queries will be generated using search or NLP or even AI. And that is roughly three times the prediction they had just a couple years ago. So let's talk about the real world impact of culture. And if you read any of my books or used any of the maturity models out there, whether the Gartner IT score that I worked on, or the data warehousing Institute also has the money surety model. We talk about these five pillars to really become data-driven. As Michelle, I spoke about it's focusing on the business outcomes, leveraging all the data, including new data sources, it's the talent, the people, the technology, and also the processes. And often when I would talk about the people and the talent, I would lump the culture as part of that. But in the last year, as I've traveled the world and done these digital events for Thought leaders, you have told me now culture is absolutely so important. And so we've pulled it out as a separate pillar. And in fact, in polls that we've done in these events, look at how much more important culture is as a barrier to becoming data-driven it's three times as important as any of these other pillars. That's how critical it is. And let's take an example of where you can have great data, but if you don't have the right culture, there's devastating impacts. And I will say, I have been a loyal customer of Wells Fargo for more than 20 years. But look at what happened in the face of negative news with data, it said, "hey, we're not doing good cross selling, "customers do not have both a checking account "and a credit card and a savings account and a mortgage." They opened fake accounts facing billions in fines, change in leadership that even the CEO attributed to a toxic sales culture, and they're trying to fix this. But even recently there's been additional employee backlash saying the culture has not changed. Let's contrast that with some positive examples, Medtronic, a worldwide company in 150 countries around the world. They may not be a household name to you, but if you have a loved one or yourself, you have a pacemaker, spinal implant diabetes, you know this brand. And at the start of COVID when they knew their business would be slowing down, because hospitals would only be able to take care of COVID patients. They took the bold move of making their IP for ventilators publicly available. That is the power of a positive culture. Or Verizon, a major telecom organization looking at late payments of their customers. And even though the U.S federal government said, "well, you can't turn them off. They said, "we'll extend that even beyond "the mandated guidelines." And facing a slow down in the business because of the tough economy, they said, you know what? "We will spend the time up skilling our people, "giving them the time to learn more "about the future of work, the skills and data "and analytics," for 20,000 of their employees, rather than furloughing them. That is the power of a positive culture. So how can you transform your culture to the best in class? I'll give you three suggestions, bring in a change agent, identify the relevance, or I like to call it WIFM and organize for collaboration. So the CDO, whatever your title is, chief analytics officer, chief digital officer, you are the most important change agent. And this is where you will hear that oftentimes a change agent has to come from outside the organization. So this is where, for example, in Europe, you have the CDO of Just Eat a takeout food delivery organization coming from the airline industry or in Australia, National Australian bank, taking a CDO within the same sector from TD bank going to NAB. So these change agents come in disrupt. It's a hard job. As one of you said to me, it often feels like Sisyphus. I make one step forward and I get knocked down again. I get pushed back. It is not for the faint of heart, but it's the most important part of your job. The other thing I'll talk about is WIFM. What is in it for me? And this is really about understanding the motivation, the relevance that data has for everyone on the frontline, as well as those analysts, as well as the executives. So if we're talking about players in the NFL, they want to perform better and they want to stay safe. That is why data matters to them. If we're talking about financial services, this may be a wealth management advisor. Okay we could say commissions, but it's really helping people have their dreams come true, whether it's putting their children through college or being able to retire without having to work multiple jobs still into your 70s or 80s for the teachers, teachers, you ask them about data. They'll say we don't, we don't need that. I care about the student. So if you can use data to help a student perform better, that is WIFM. And sometimes we spend so much time talking the technology, we forget what is the value we're trying to deliver with it. And we forget the impact on the people that it does require change. In fact, the Harvard business review study found that 44% said lack of change management is the biggest barrier to leveraging both new technology, but also being empowered to act on those data-driven insights. The third point organize for collaboration. This does require diversity of thought, but also bringing the technology, the data and the business people together. Now there's not a single one size fits all model for data and analytics. At one point in time, even having a BICC, a BI competency center was considered state-of-the-art. Now for the biggest impact what I recommend is that you have a federated model centralized for economies of scale. That could be the common data, but then in bed, these evangelists, these analysts of the future within every business unit, every functional domain. And as you see this top bar, all models are possible, but the hybrid model has the most impact, the most leaders. So as we look ahead to the months ahead, to the year ahead an exciting time, because data is helping organizations better navigate a tough economy, lock in the customer loyalty. And I look forward to seeing how you foster that culture that's collaborative with empathy and bring the best of technology, leveraging the cloud, all your data. So thank you for joining us at Thought Leaders. And next I'm pleased to introduce our first change agent, Tom Mazzaferro chief data officer of Western union. And before joining Western union, Tom made his Mark at HSBC and JPMorgan Chase spearheading digital innovation in technology, operations, risk compliance, and retail banking. Tom, thank you so much for joining us today. (upbeat music) >> Very happy to be here and looking forward to talking to all of you today. So as we look to move organizations to a data-driven, capability into the future, there is a lot that needs to be done on the data side, but also how does data connect and enable different business teams and technology teams into the future. As you look across, our data ecosystems and our platforms and how we modernize that to the cloud in the future, it all needs to basically work together, right? To really be able to drive and over the shift from a data standpoint, into the future, that includes being able to have the right information with the right quality of data, at the right time to drive informed business decisions, to drive the business forward. As part of that, we actually have partnered with ThoughtSpot, to actually bring in the technology to help us drive that as part of that partnership. And it's how we've looked to integrate it into our overall business as a whole we've looked at how do we make sure that our business and our professional lives right, are enabled in the same ways as our personal lives. So for example, in your personal lives, when you want to go and find something out, what do you do? You go onto google.com or you go on to Bing we go onto Yahoo and you search for what you want search to find and answer. ThoughtSpot for us as the same thing, but in the business world. So using ThoughtSpot and other AI capability it's allowed us to actually, enable our overall business teams in our company to actually have our information at our fingertips. So rather than having to go and talk to someone or an engineer to go pull information or pull data, we actually can have the end-users or the business executives, right. Search for what they need, what they want at the exact time that action need it to go and drive the business forward. This is truly one of those transformational things that we've put in place. On top of that, we are on the journey to modernize our larger ecosystem as a whole. That includes modernizing our underlying data warehouses, our technology, or our Eloqua environments. And as we move that, we've actually picked two of our cloud providers going to AWS and GCP. We've also adopted Snowflake to really drive and to organize our information and our data then drive these new solutions and capabilities forward. So they portion of us though is culture. So how do we engage with the business teams and bring the IT teams together to really drive these holistic end to end solutions and capabilities to really support the actual business into the future? That's one of the keys here, as we look to modernize and to really enhance our organizations to become data-driven, this is the key. If you can really start to provide answers to business questions before they're even being asked and to predict based upon different economic trends or different trends in your business, what does this is maybe be made and actually provide those answers to the business teams before they're even asking for it, that is really becoming a data-driven organization. And as part of that, it's really then enables the business to act quickly and take advantage of opportunities as they come in based upon, industries based upon markets, based upon products, solutions, or partnerships into the future. These are really some of the keys that become crucial as you move forward, right, into this new age, especially with COVID. With COVID now taking place across the world, right? Many of these markets, many of these digital transformations are accelerating and are changing rapidly to accommodate and to support customers in these very difficult times, as part of that, you need to make sure you have the right underlying foundation ecosystems and solutions to really drive those capabilities and those solutions forward. As we go through this journey, both of my career, but also each of your careers into the future, right? It also needs to evolve, right? Technology has changed so drastically in the last 10 years, and that change is only accelerating. So as part of that, you have to make sure that you stay up to speed, up to date with new technology changes both on the platform standpoint tools, but also what do our customers want? What do our customers need and how do we then service them with our information, with our data, with our platform and with our products and our services to meet those needs and to really support and service those customers into the future. This is all around becoming a more data organization such as how do you use your data to support the current business lines, but how do you actually use your information, your data to actually put a better support your customers, better support your business, better support your employees, your operations teams, and so forth, and really creating that full integration in that ecosystem is really when you start to get large dividends from this investments into the future. But that being said, hope you enjoy the segment on how to become and how to drive it data driven organization. And, looking forward to talking to you again soon. Thank you. >> Tom that was great thanks so much. Now I'm going to have to brag on you for a second as a change agent you've come in disrupted and how long have you been at Western union? >> Only nine months, so just started this year, but, doing some great opportunities and great changes. And we have a lot more to go, but, we're really driving things forward in partnership with our business teams and our colleagues to support those customers going forward. >> Tom, thank you so much. That was wonderful. And now I'm excited to introduce you to Gustavo Canton, a change agent that I've had the pleasure of working with meeting in Europe, and he is a serial change agent, most recently with Schneider electric, but even going back to Sam's clubs, Gustavo welcome. (upbeat music) >> So, hey everyone, my name is Gustavo Canton and thank you so much, Cindi, for the intro, as you mentioned, doing transformations is high effort, high reward situation. I have empowered many transformations and I have led many transformations. And what I can tell you is that it's really hard to predict the future, but if you have a North star and where you're going, the one thing that I want you to take away from this discussion today is that you need to be bold to evolve. And so in today, I'm going to be talking about culture and data, and I'm going to break this down in four areas. How do we get started barriers or opportunities as I see it, the value of AI, and also, how do you communicate, especially now in the workforce of today with so many different generations, you need to make sure that you are communicating in ways that are non-traditional sometimes. And so how do we get started? So I think the answer to that is you have to start for you yourself as a leader and stay tuned. And by that, I mean, you need to understand not only what is happening in your function or your field, but you have to be varying into what is happening in society, socioeconomically speaking wellbeing. The common example is a great example. And for me personally, it's an opportunity because the one core value that I have is well-being, I believe that for human potential, for customers and communities to grow wellbeing should be at the center of every decision. And as somebody mentioned is great to be, stay in tune and have the skillset and the courage. But for me personally, to be honest, to have this courage is not about not being afraid. You're always afraid when you're making big changes when you're swimming upstream, but what gives me the courage is the empathy part. Like I think empathy is a huge component because every time I go into an organization or a function, I try to listen very attentively to the needs of the business and what the leaders are trying to do. What I do it thinking about the mission of how do I make change for the bigger, workforce? for the bigger good. Despite this fact that this might have a perhaps implication on my own self-interest in my career, right? Because you have to have that courage sometimes to make choices that I know we'll see in politically speaking, what are the right thing to do? And you have to push through it. And you have to push through it. So the bottom line for me is that I don't think they're transforming fast enough. And the reality is I speak with a lot of leaders and we have seen stories in the past. And what they show is that if you look at the four main barriers that are basically keeping us behind budget, inability to act cultural issues, politics, and lack of alignment, those are the top four. But the interesting thing is that as Cindi has mentioned, these topics culture is actually gaining, gaining more and more traction. And in 2018, there was a story from HBR and it was about 45%. I believe today it's about 55%, 60% of respondents say that this is the main area that we need to focus on. So again, for all those leaders and all the executives who understand and are aware that we need to transform, commit to the transformation and set a state, deadline to say, "hey, in two years, we're going to make this happen. "What do we need to do to empower and enable "this change engines to make it happen?" You need to make the tough choices. And so to me, when I speak about being bold is about making the right choices now. So I'll give you samples of some of the roadblocks that I went through as I think transformation most recently, as Cindi mentioned in Schneider. There are three main areas, legacy mindset. And what that means is that we've been doing this in a specific way for a long time and here is how we have been successful what was working the past is not going to work now. The opportunity there is that there is a lot of leaders who have a digital mindset and there're up and coming leaders that are not yet fully developed. We need to mentor those leaders and take bets on some of these talent, including young talent. We cannot be thinking in the past and just wait for people, three to five years for them to develop because the world is going to in a way that is super fast. The second area, and this is specifically to implementation of AI is very interesting to me because just example that I have with ThoughtSpot, right, we went to implementation and a lot of the way is the IT team function of the leaders look at technology, they look at it from the prism of the prior all success criteria for the traditional Bi's. And that's not going to work. Again the opportunity here is that you need to really find what successful look like. In my case, I want the user experience of our workforce to be the same as user experience you have at home is a very simple concept. And so we need to think about how do we gain the user experience with this augmented analytics tools and then work backwards to have the right talent processes and technology to enable that. And finally, with COVID a lot of pressuring organizations, and companies to do more with less. And the solution that most leaders I see are taking is to just minimize costs, sometimes in cut budget, we have to do the opposite. We have to actually invest some growth areas, but do it by business question. Don't do it by function. If you actually invest in these kind of solutions, if you actually invest on developing your talent, your leadership to see more digitally, if you actually invest on fixing your data platform, it's not just an incremental cost. It's actually this investment is going to offset all those hidden costs and inefficiencies that you have on your system, because people are doing a lot of work and working very hard, but it's not efficiency, and it's not working in the way that you might want to work. So there is a lot of opportunity there. And you just to put into some perspective, there have studies in the past about, how do we kind of measure the impact of data. And obviously this is going to vary by your organization maturity, is going to, there's going to be a lot of factors. I've been in companies who have very clean, good data to work with. And I think with companies that we have to start basically from scratch. So it all depends on your maturity level, but in this study, what I think is interesting is they try to put attack line or attack price to what is the cost of incomplete data. So in this case, it's about 10 times as much to complete a unit of work when you have data that is flawed as opposed to have perfect data. So let me put that just in perspective, just as an example, right? Imagine you are trying to do something and you have to do 100 things in a project, and each time you do something, it's going to cost you a dollar. So if you have perfect data, the total cost of that project might be $100. But now let's say you have any percent perfect data and 20% flawed data by using this assumption that flawed data is 10 times as costly as perfect data. Your total costs now becomes $280 as opposed to $100. This is just for you to really think about as a CIO CTO, CHRO CEO, are we really paying attention and really closing the gaps that we have on our data infrastructure. If we don't do that, it's hard sometimes to see the snowball effect or to measure the overall impact. But as you can tell the price that goes up very, very quickly. So now, if I were to say, how do I communicate this? Or how do I break through some of these challenges or some of these various, right. I think the key is I am in analytics. I know statistics obviously, and love modeling and data and optimization theory and all that stuff. That's what I came to analytics. But now as a leader and as a change agent, I need to speak about value. And in this case, for example, for Schneider, there was this tagline called free up your energy. So the number one thing that they were asking from the analytics team was actually efficiency, which to me was very interesting. But once I understood that I understood what kind of language to use, how to connect it to the overall strategy and basically how to bring in the, the right leaders, because you need to focus on the leaders that you're going to make the most progress. Again, low effort, high value. You need to make sure you centralize all the data as you can. You need to bring in some kind of augmented analytics solution. And finally you need to make it super simple for the, in this case, I was working with the HR teams in other areas, so they can have access to one portal. They don't have to be confused in looking for 10 different places to find information. I think if you can actually have those four foundational pillars, obviously under the guise of having a data-driven culture, that's when you can actually make the impact. So in our case, it was about three years total transformation, but it was two years for this component of augmented analytics. It took about two years to talk to IT get leadership support, find the budgeting, get everybody on board, make sure the safe criteria was correct. And we call this initiative, the people analytics portal, it was actually launched in July of this year. And we were very excited and the audience was very excited to do this. In this case, we did our pilot in North America for many, many manufacturers. But one thing that is really important is as you bring along your audience on this, you're going from Excel, in some cases or Tableau to other tools like, ThoughtSpot, you need to really explain them what is the difference and how these tools can truly replace, some of the spreadsheets or some of the views that you might have on these other kind of tools. Again, Tableau, I think it's a really good tool. There are other many tools that you might have in your toolkit. But in my case, personally, I feel that you need to have one portal going back to Cindi's point. I really truly enable the end user. And I feel that this is the right solution for us, right? And I will show you some of the findings that we had in the pilot in the last two months. So this was a huge victory, and I will tell you why, because it took a lot of effort for us to get to the station. Like I said, it's been years for us to kind of lay the foundation, get the leadership, and shaping culture so people can understand why you truly need to invest on (indistinct) analytics. And so what I'm showing here is an example of how do we use basically, a tool to capture in video the qualitative findings that we had, plus the quantitative insights that we have. So in this case, our preliminary results based on our ambition for three main metrics, hours saved user experience and adoption. So for hours saved or a mission was to have 10 hours per week per employee save on average user experience, or ambition was 4.5. And adoption, 80%. In just two months, two months and a half of the pilot, we were able to achieve five hours per week per employee savings. Our user experience for 4.3 out of five and adoption of 60%. Really, really amazing work. But again, it takes a lot of collaboration for us to get to the stage from IT, legal, communications, obviously the operations teams and the users in HR safety and other areas that might be, basically stakeholders in this whole process. So just to summarize this kind of effort takes a lot of energy. You are a change agent. You need to have a courage to make the decision and understand that I feel that in this day and age, with all this disruption happening, we don't have a choice. We have to take the risk, right? And in this case, I feel a lot of satisfaction in how we were able to gain all these very source for this organization. And that gave me the confidence to know that the work has been done and we are now in a different stage for the organization. And so for me, it to say, thank you for everybody who has believed, obviously in our vision, everybody who has believe in the word that we were trying to do and to make the life of four workforce or customers or in community better. As you can tell, there is a lot of effort. There is a lot of collaboration that is needed to do something like this. In the end, I feel very satisfied. With the accomplishments of this transformation, and I just want to tell for you, if you are going right now in a moment that you feel that you have to swim upstream what would mentors, what would people in this industry that can help you out and guide you on this kind of a transformation is not easy to do is high effort, but is well worth it. And with that said, I hope you are well, and it's been a pleasure talking to you. Talk to you soon, take care. >> Thank you, Gustavo, that was amazing. All right, let's go to the panel. (air whooshing) >> Okay, now we're going to go into the panel and bring Cindi, Michelle, Tom, and Gustavo back and have an open discussion. And I think we can all agree how valuable it is to hear from practitioners. And I want to thank the panel for sharing their knowledge with the community. And one common challenge that I heard you all talk about was bringing your leadership and your teams along on the journey with you. We talk about this all the time, and it is critical to have support from the top. Why? Because it directs the middle and then it enables bottoms up innovation effects from the cultural transformation that you guys all talked about. It seems like another common theme we heard is that you all prioritize database decision-making in your organizations and you combine two of your most valuable assets to do that and create leverage, employees on the front lines. And of course the data. And as you rightly pointed out, Tom, the pandemic has accelerated the need for really leaning into this. The old saying, if it ain't broke don't fix it. Well COVID is broken everything. And it's great to hear from our experts, how to move forward. So let's get right into it. So Gustavo, let's start with you if I'm an aspiring change agent and let's say I'm a budding data leader. What do I need to start doing? What habits do I need to create for long lasting success? >> I think curiosity is very important. You need to be, like I say, in tune to what is happening, not only in your specific field, like I have a passion for analytics, I can do this for 50 years plus, but I think you need to understand wellbeing other areas across not only a specific business, as you know I come from, Sam's club Walmart, retail, I mean energy management technology. So you have to try to push yourself and basically go out of your comfort zone. I mean, if you are staying in your comfort zone and you want to use lean continuous improvement, that's just going to take you so far. What you have to do is, and that's what I try to do is I try to go into areas, businesses, and transformation that make me stretch and develop as a leader. That's what I'm looking to do so I can help transform the functions organizations and do the change management, change of mindset required for these kinds of efforts. >> Michelle, you're at the intersection of tech and sports and what a great combination, but they're both typically male oriented fields. I mean, we've talked a little bit about how that's changing, but two questions. Tell us how you found your voice and talk about why diversity matters so much more than ever now. >> No, I found my voice really as a young girl, and I think I had such amazing support from men in my life. And I think the support and sponsorship as well as sort of mentorship along the way, I've had amazing male mentors who have helped me understand that my voice is just as important as anyone else's. I mean, I have often heard, and I think it's been written about that a woman has to believe they'll 100% master topic before they'll talk about it where a man can feel much less mastery and go on and on. So I was that way as well. And I learned just by watching and being open, to have my voice. And honestly at times demand a seat at the table, which can be very uncomfortable. And you really do need those types of, support networks within an organization. And diversity of course is important and it has always been. But I think if anything, we're seeing in this country right now is that diversity among all types of categories is front and center. And we're realizing that we don't all think alike. We've always known this, but we're now talking about things that we never really talked about before. And we can't let this moment go unchecked and on, and not change how we operate. So having diverse voices within your company and in the field of tech and sports, I am often the first and only I'm was the first, CIO at the NFL, the first female senior executive. It was fun to be the first, but it's also, very challenging. And my responsibility is to just make sure that, I don't leave anyone behind and make sure that I leave it good for the next generation. >> Well, thank you for that. That is inspiring. And Cindi, you love data and the data's pretty clear that diversity is a good business, but I wonder if you can add your perspectives to this conversation? >> Yeah, so Michelle has a new fan here because she has found her voice. I'm still working on finding mine. And it's interesting because I was raised by my dad, a single dad. So he did teach me how to work in a predominantly male environment, but why I think diversity matters more now than ever before. And this is by gender, by race, by age, by just different ways of working in thinking is because as we automate things with AI, if we do not have diverse teams looking at the data and the models and how they're applied, we risk having bias at scale. So this is why I think I don't care what type of minority you are finding your voice, having a seat at the table and just believing in the impact of your work has never been more important. And as Michelle said more possible. >> Great perspectives, thank you. Tom I want to go to you. I mean, I feel like everybody in our businesses in some way, shape or form become a COVID expert, but what's been the impact of the pandemic on your organization's digital transformation plans? >> We've seen a massive growth actually in a digital business over the last, 12 months, really, even in celebration, right? Once COVID hit, we really saw that in the 200 countries and territories that we operate in today and service our customers, today, that there's been a huge need, right? To send money, to support family, to support, friends and support loved ones across the world. And as part of that we are very, honored to get to support those customers that we, across all the centers today. But as part of that acceleration we need to make sure that we had the right architecture and the right platforms to basically scale, right, to basically support and provide the right kind of security for our customers going forward. So as part of that, we did do some pivots and we did accelerate some of our plans on digital to help support that overall growth coming in and to support our customers going forward, because there were these times during this pandemic, right? This is the most important time. And we need to support those that we love and those that we care about and doing that it's one of those ways is actually by sending money to them, support them financially. And that's where, really our part of that our services come into play that we really support those families. So it was really a great opportunity for us to really support and really bring some of our products to this level and supporting our business going forward. >> Awesome, thank you. Now I want to come back to Gustavo, Tom I'd love for you to chime in too. Did you guys ever think like you were, you were pushing the envelope too much in doing things with data or the technology that was just maybe too bold, maybe you felt like at some point it was failing or you're pushing your people too hard. Can you share that experience and how you got through it? >> Yeah, the way I look at it is, again, whenever I go to an organization, I ask the question, hey, how fast you would like transform. And, based on the agreements from the leadership and the vision that we want to take place, I take decisions. And I collaborate in a specific way now, in the case of COVID, for example, right. It forces us to remove silos and collaborate in a faster way. So to me, it was an opportunity to actually integrate with other areas and drive decisions faster, but make no mistake about it. When you are doing a transformation, you are obviously trying to do things faster than sometimes people are comfortable doing, and you need to be okay with that. Sometimes you need to be okay with tension, or you need to be okay debating points or making repetitive business cases until people connect with the decision because you understand, and you are seeing that, "hey, the CEO is making a one two year, efficiency goal. "The only way for us to really do more with less "is for us to continue this path. "We cannot just stay with the status quo. "We need to find a way to accelerate the transformation." That's the way I see it. >> How about you Tom, we were talking earlier with Sudheesh and Cindi, about that bungee jumping moment. What could you share? >> Yeah, I think you hit upon it, right now, the pace of change with the slowest pace that you see for the rest of your career. So as part of that, right, that's what I tell my team is that you need to be, you need to feel comfortable being uncomfortable. I mean, that we have to be able to basically scale, right, expand and support that the ever-changing needs in the marketplace and industry our customers today, and that pace of change that's happening, right. And what customers are asking for and the competition in the marketplace, it's only going to accelerate. So as part of that, as you look at what, how you're operating today in your current business model, right. Things are only going to get faster. So you have to plan into a line into drive the agile transformation so that you can scale even faster in the future. So as part of that, that's what we're putting in place here, right, is how do we create that underlying framework and foundation that allows the organization to basically continue to scale and evolve into the future? >> Yeah, we're definitely out of our comfort zones, but we're getting comfortable with it. So, Cindi, last question, you've worked with hundreds of organizations, and I got to believe that, some of the advice you gave when you were at Gartner, which is pre COVID, maybe sometimes clients didn't always act on it. They're not on my watch for whatever variety of reasons, but it's being forced on them now. But knowing what you know now that we're all in this isolation economy, how would you say that advice has changed? Has it changed? What's your number one action and recommendation today? >> Yeah, well, first off, Tom just freaked me out. What do you mean? This is the slowest ever even six months ago I was saying the pace of change in data and analytics is frenetic. So, but I think you're right, Tom, the business and the technology together is forcing this change. Now, Dave, to answer your question, I would say the one bit of advice, maybe I was a little more, very aware of the power and politics and how to bring people along in a way that they are comfortable. And now I think it's, you know what you can't get comfortable. In fact, we know that the organizations that were already in the cloud have been able to respond and pivot faster. So if you really want to survive as Tom and Gustavo said, get used to being uncomfortable, the power and politics are going to happen. Break the rules, get used to that and be bold. Do not be afraid to tell somebody they're wrong and they're not moving fast enough. I do think you have to do that with empathy, as Michelle said, and Gustavo, I think that's one of the key words today besides the bungee jumping. So I want to know where's the dish going to go bungee jumping. >> Guys fantastic discussion, really. Thanks again to all the panelists and the guests. It was really a pleasure speaking with you today. Really virtually all of the leaders that I've spoken to in the Cube program. Recently, they tell me that the pandemic is accelerating so many things, whether it's new ways to work, we heard about new security models and obviously the need for cloud. I mean, all of these things are driving true enterprise wide digital transformation, not just, as I said before, lip service. Sometimes we minimize the importance and the challenge of building culture and in making this transformation possible. But when it's done, right, the right culture is going to deliver tremendous results. Yeah, what does that mean getting it right? Everybody's trying to get it right. My biggest takeaway today is it means making data part of the DNA of your organization. And that means making it accessible to the people in your organization that are empowered to make decisions, decisions that can drive new revenue, cut costs, speed access to critical care, whatever the mission is of your organization. Data can create insights and informed decisions that drive value. Okay. Let's bring back Sudheesh and wrap things up. Sudheesh, please bring us home. >> Thank you. Thank you, Dave. Thank you, the Cube team, and thank goes to all of our customers and partners who joined us and thanks to all of you for spending the time with us. I want to do three quick things and then close it off. The first thing is I want to summarize the key takeaways that I had from all four of our distinguished speakers. First, Michelle, I will simply put it. She said it really well. That is be brave and drive. Don't go for a drive along. That is such an important point. Oftentimes, you know that I think that you have to do to make the positive change that you want to see happen but you wait for someone else to do it, not just, why not you? Why don't you be the one making that change happen? That's the thing that I've picked up from Michelle's talk. Cindi talked about finding the importance of finding your voice. Taking that chair, whether it's available or not, and making sure that your ideas, your voices are heard, and if it requires some force, then apply that force. Make sure your ideas are heard. Gustavo talked about the importance of building consensus, not going at things all alone sometimes building the importance of building the quorum. And that is critical because if you want the changes to last, you want to make sure that the organization is fully behind it. Tom, instead of a single takeaway, what I was inspired by is the fact that a company that is 170 years old, 170 years old, 200 companies and 200 countries they're operating in. And they were able to make the change that is necessary through this difficult time. So in a matter of months, if they could do it, anyone could. The second thing I want to do is to leave you with a takeaway that is I would like you to go to topspot.com/nfl because our team has made an app for NFL on Snowflake. I think you will find this interesting now that you are inspired and excited because of Michelle's talk. And the last thing is please go to thoughtspot.com/beyond our global user conference is happening in this December. We would love to have you join us. It's again, virtual, you can join from anywhere. We are expecting anywhere from five to 10,000 people, and we would love to have you join and see what we've been up to since last year. We have a lot of amazing things in store for you, our customers, our partners, our collaborators, they will be coming and sharing. We'll be sharing things that we've have been working to release something that will come out next year. And also some of the crazy ideas our engineers have been cooking up. All of those things will be available for you at the Thought Spot Beyond. Thank you. Thank you so much.

>> Narrator: Live from Washington, D.C., it's theCUBE covering Boomi World 19. Brought to you by Boomi. >> Welcome back to theCUBE, the leader in live tech coverage. I'm Lisa Martin, John Furrier is my co-host, and we are at Boomi World 2019 in Washington, D.C. Very pleased to be joined by the founder of Boomi and the co-founder and CEO of Guru, Rick Nucci. Hey, Rick. >> Hello. >> Lisa: Welcome to theCUBE. >> Thanks for having me, this is very cool setup. >> Lisa: Yeah, isn't it?! >> Rick: Yeah. >> So this is a founder of Boomi. It's pretty cool to have a celebrity on our stage. >> Rick: I'm not a celebrity. (laughs) >> (laughs) Talk to us about all that back in the day back in Philadelphia when you had this idea for what now has become a company that has 9,000+ customers in 80+ countries. >> Yeah, I'm beyond proud of this team and just how well they have done and made this business into what it is today. Yeah, way back in 2007, we were really looking at the integration market, and back then, cloud was really an unknown future. It was creeping up the Hype Cycle of the Gartner. Hype Cycle's my favorite thing they do. A lot of people were dismissing it as a fad, and we were early adopters of cloud internally at Boomi. We were early users of Salesforce and NetSuite and just thought and made a bet and a lot of this stuff is luck as any founder will tell you, any honest founder will tell you. And recognize that, hey, if the world were to move to cloud, how would you actually think about the integration problem? Because it would be very different than how you would think about it in the on-prem days when you have everything in your own data center behind your own four walls. In this world, everything's different. Security's a huge deal, the way data moves and has to mediate between firewalls is a big deal. And none of these products are built like this and so, really wanted as a team, and I remember these early conversations and had the willingness to take a big bet and swing for the fences and what I mean by that is really build a product from the ground up in this new paradigm, new cloud, and take a bet and say, hey, if cloud does take off, this will be awesome for Boomi. If not, well, we'll be in the line of all the other startups that have come and gone. And I think we ended up in a good spot. >> Yeah, that's a great point, Rick, about the founders being honest. And a lot of it is hard work, but having a vision and making multiple bets and big bets. I remember, when EC2 came out, it was a startup dream, too, by the way. You could just purchase a data center. But it wasn't fully complete, it was actually growing very fast. More services were coming on, they were web services, so that was API-based concepts back then. When was the crossover point for you guys going, "okay, we got this, the bets are coming in. "We're going to double down, we're going to double down on this." What were some of those moments where you started to get visibility that was a good bet? And what did you do? >> Yeah, what it really was was the rise of SaaS, very specifically, and the rise of business applications that were being re-architected in the cloud. And everybody knew about Salesforce, but there weren't a lot of other things back then. And there was NetSuite and a handful of others, but then, you started to see additional business units start to build cloud, and you had, in the HR space, with success factors in Taleo and marketing automation space with Eloqua and Marketo. CRM space, we all know that story, e-commerce space procurement, and you start to see these best-of-breed products rise up which is amazing, but as that was happening, it was proliferating the integration problem. And so what became really clear to us, I think, as we were going through this and finding product market fit for Boomi, again, back in 2007, 2008, that was the pattern that emerged, like hey, every time someone buys one of these products, they are going to have to integrate 'cause you're talking about employee data, customer data. You have to integrate this with your other systems and that was going to create an opportunity for us and that was where we were like, okay, I think we're onto something. >> You know, to date, we've been doing theCUBE for 10 years. We made a big bet that people, authentic conversation would be a good bet, turns out it worked. We love it, things going great, but now, we're living in a world now that's getting more complex and I want to get your thoughts that Dave Vellante, myself, Stu who have been talking about how clouds changed and we were goofing on the Web 2.0 metaphor by saying, Cloud 1.0, Cloud 2.0. But I want to get your thoughts on how you might see this because, if you say Cloud 1.0 was Amazon, compute storage, AtScale, cloud NATO, all started there. Pretty straightforward if you're going to be born in the cloud, then you could work with some things there, but to bring multicloud and for enterprises to adopt with this integration challenge, Cloud 2.0 unveils some new things like, for instance, network management now is observability. Configuration management is now automation (chuckles). So you start to see things emerge differently in this Cloud 2.0 operating model. How do you see Cloud 2.0? Do you believe that, one, there's a Cloud 2.0 the way I said it, and if so, what is your version of what Cloud 2.0 would look like? >> Yeah, I think, yes, definitely think things are changing and the way that I think about it is that we're continuing to unbundle, and what I mean by unbundle is we're continuing to proliferate... Buyers are willing to buy and, therefore, we're continuing to proliferate relatively narrower and narrower and deeper and deeper capabilities and functionalities. And one big driver of that is AI, specifically, machine learning, and not the hypey stuff, but the real stuff. It's funny, man, when you compare, right now, AI, and what I was just talking about, it's the same thing all over again. It's Hype Cycle crawling up the thing, okay. But now, I think the recipe for good AI products that really do solve problems is that they're very intentionally narrow and they're very deep because they're gathering good training data and they're built to solve a very specific problem. So I think-- >> Like domain expertise, domain-specific-- >> Exactly, industry expertise, domain expertise, use case. If you're gathering training data about a knowledge worker, the data you'll gather is very different if you're a salesperson or an HR professional or an engineer. And I think the AI companies that are getting it right, are really dialed in and focused on that, so as a result, you see this proliferation of things that might be layered on top of big platforms like CRM's and technologies like Slack, which is creating a place for all this to come together, but you're seeing this unbundling where you're getting more and more kind of almost microservices, not quite, but very fine-tuned, specific things coming together. >> So machine learning, I totally agree with you, it's definitely hype, but the hardcore machine learning has a math side to it and a cognition side, cognitive learning thing. But, also, data is a common thread here. I mentioned domain-specific. >> Rick: All about the data. >> So, if data's super important, you want domain expertise which I agree with, but also there's now a horizontal scalability with observation data. The more data you have, the better at machine learning. It may or may not, depending on what the context is, so you have contextual data, this is a (chuckles) hard thing. What's your view on this because this is where people maybe get caught around the axis of machine learning hype and not nearly narrowing on what their data thinking is. >> Rick: 100%. >> What's your--? >> 100%, I think people will tend to fall in the trap of focusing on the algorithms that they're building and not recognizing that, without the data, the algorithms are useless. Right? >> Lisa: Right. >> And that it's really about how, as a ML problem that you're trying to tackle. Are you gathering data that's good, high-quality, scalable, accurate, protected, and safe? Because now, for different reasons, but again, just like when we were moving to cloud, security and privacy are utmost important because, for any AI to do its job well, it has to gather a lot of data out of the enterprise and store it and train off of that. >> It's interesting a lot of the cloud play. I mean sales was just a unicorn right out of the gate and they were a pioneer, that's what it is. They were cloud before cloud was cloud as we know it today. But you see a lot of things like the marketing automation cloud platform. It's a marketing cloud, I got a sales cloud. Almost seem too monolithic and you see people trying to unbundle that. I think you're right. Or break it apart 'cause the data is stuck in this full-stack model because, if you agree with your sets, horizontal scalability and vertical integration is the architecture. Technically, that's half-stack. (chuckles) >> Yes, yes. >> John: So half-stack developers are evaluable now. >> Totally, and yes, I like that term. The other problem that I think you're getting at is tendency isolation of that data. A lot of things were built with that in mind, meaning that the best AI you're going to build is only going to be what you can derive from one customer's set of data. Whereas, now, people are designing things intentionally such that the more customers that are using the thing, the better and smarter it gets. And so, to your point about monolithic, I think the opportunity that the next wave of startups have is that they can design in that world and that just means that their technology will get better faster 'cause it'll be able to learn from more data and-- >> This hasn't been changing a lot in cloud. I want to get your thoughts because you guys at Boomi here are on a single-tenant instance model because the collective intelligence of the data benefits everybody as more people come in. That's a beautiful fly, we'll feel a lot like Amazon model to me. But the old days, multi-tenancy was the holy grail. Maybe that came from the telcos or whatever, hosting world. What's your view on single-tenant instance on a SaaS business versus, say, multiten... There's trade-offs and pros and cons. What's your opinion, where do you lean on this one? >> Yeah, I mean we, both Boomi and Guru, so two eras worth or whatever. You have to have some level of tenancy isolation for some level of what you do. And, at Boomi, what we did is we separated the sensitive, private data. Boomi has customers processing payroll through its product, so very, very sensitive stuff absolutely has to be protected and isolated per tenant, and Boomi and Guru is signing up for that, and the clauses that we sign to are security agreements. But what you can decouple from that is more of the metadata or the attributes about that data and that customer, so Boomi, you're referring to, launched way back when Boomi Suggest which basically learned. As all the people were building data maps, connecting different things together, Boomi could learn from all that and go, oh, you're trying to do this. Well, these however many other customers, let me suggest how these maps are drawn, and Guru, we're following a very similar pattern, so Guru, we store knowledge which also tends to be IP for a company and so, yes, we absolutely adhere to the fact that only a handful of our employees can ever see that stuff, and that's 'cause they're in devops, and they needed to keep things running, but all the tenants are protected from one another. No one could ever leak to another one. But there are things about organization and structure and tagging and learnings you can get that are not that sensitive stuff that does make the product better from an AI perspective the more people that use it. And so, I don't know that I'm giving you one or another, but I think it does come down to how you intentionally design your data to it. >> John: Decoupling is the critical piece. >> Absolutely. >> This is the cloud architecture. Decouple, use API's to connect highly cohesive elements, and the platform can be cohesive if shared. >> Absolutely, and you can still get all the benefits of scalability and elastic growth and, yeah, 100%. >> Along that uncoupling line, tell us a little bit briefly about what Guru is and then I want to talk about some of the use cases. I know I'm a big Slack user; you probably are too, John. Talk to us about what you're doing there, but just give our folks a sense of what Guru is and all that good stuff. >> Sure, I mean Guru's, in some ways, like Boomi, rethinking a very old problem, in this case, it's knowledge management. That's a concept we've talked about for a long time and I think, these days, it has really become something that does impact a company's ability to scale and grow reliably, so very specifically, what we do is we bring the knowledge that employees need to do their job to them when they need it. So imagine if you're a customer support agent and you're supporting Spotify, you're an employee of Spotify. And I write in and I want to know about the new Hulu partnership. As an agent, you use Guru to look up and give me that answer and you don't have to go to a portal, you don't have to go to some other place to do that. Guru's sitting there right next to your ticket or your chat as you're having it in real time, saying, hey, there's asking about Hulu. This is the important things you want to know and talk about. And then the other half of that is, we make sure that that doesn't go still. The classic problem with knowledge products is the information, when you're talking about something like product knowledge, changes all the time. And the world we live in is moving faster and faster and faster, so we used to ship product once a year, once every two years. Now we ship product every month, sometimes couple times a month. >> Can you get a Guru bot for our journalism and our Cube hosts? We can be real time. >> Hey! >> I would be happy to do that. >> That'd be great! >> (laughs) Guru journalist. >> Actually, you're able to set it right in there where your ears are-- >> Lisa: I'll take it. >> Just prompting you, exactly. So, and then you asked about Slack, that's a really great partner for us. They were an early investor in the company. They're a customer, but together, if you think about where a lot of knowledge exchange happens in Slack, it's, hey, I need to know something. I think I can go slack John 'cause I think he'll know the answer. He knows about this. And you're like the 87th person who's asked me that same thing over again. Well, with Guru being integrated into Slack, you can just say, "Guru, give them the answer." And you don't have to repeat yourself. And that expert fatigue problem is a real thing. >> John: That's a huge issue. >> Absolutely. >> And, as your company grows and more and more people are, oh, poor John's getting buried for being the expert, one of the reasons he got you there. Now he's getting burned out and buried from it. And so we seek to solve that problem and then, post-Guru, a company will scale faster, they'll onboard their employees faster, they'll launch products better, 'cause everyone will know what to talk about-- >> It's like a frequently asked questions operating system. >> Rick: Exactly. >> At a moment's notice. >> Technology, right? And making it living 'cause all those FAQ's change all the time. >> And that's the important part too is keeping it relevant, 24 by 7. >> Rick: Absolutely. >> Which is difficult. >> Contextual data analysis is really hard. What's the secret sauce? >> The secret sauce is that we live where you work. The secret sauce is that we focus very specifically on specific workflows like that customer support agent and so, by knowing what you're doing and what ticket you're working on and what chat you're having with a customer, Guru can be anticipatory over time and start to say, "hey, you probably "want to talk to him about this," and bring that answer to you. It's because we live where you work. And that was frankly accidental in a lot of ways. We were trying to solve the problem of knowledge living where you work, and then what we realized is, wow, there's a lot of interesting stuff that we can learn and give back to the customer about what problems they're solving and when they're using Guru and why, and that only makes the product better. So that's really, I think, the thing that, if you ask our typical customers, really gets them excited. They'll say, hey, because of Guru, I feel more confident when I'm on the phone, that I'm always going to give the right answer. >> That's awesome. >> I love hearing customers talk about or even have business leaders talk about some of the accidental discoveries or capabilities, but just how, over time, more and more and more value gets unlocked if you can actually, really extract value from that data. Last question, Rick, I need to know what's in a name? The name Boomi, the name Guru? >> Yes, well, I'll start with the less exciting answer which I always get asked about, which is Boomi, which is a Hindi word that means "earth" or "from the earth". And, sometimes, if you're ordering at the Indian restaurant, you'll see B-H-O-M-I and that might be the vegetables on the menu. That name came from an early employee of the company. I wish I could say that it had a connection to business (laughs). It really doesn't, it just was like, it looks cool, and people tend to remember the name. And honestly, there have been so many moments in the early, early days where we were like, should we change the name, it doesn't really. And we're like you know what? People tend to, it sticks with them, it's kind of exciting, and we kept it. Guru, on the flip side, one of our early employees came up with that name too, and I think she was listening to me talk about what we were doing and she's like, oh, that thing is like a guru to you. And so the brand promise is that you feel like a guru in your area of expertise within a company and that our product plays a relatively small role in you having that, feeling confident about that expertise. >> I love that, awesome. Rick, thank you so much for joining John and me on theCUBE today, we appreciate it. >> Thank you. >> John: Thanks. >> For John Furrier, I'm Lisa Martin. You're watching theCUBE from Boomi World 2019. Thanks for watching. (upbeat electronic music)

(upbeat music) >> From our studios in the heart of Silicon Valley, Palo Alto, California, this is a CUBE conversation. >> Hello everyone, welcome to Palo Altos Cube Studios for CUBE Conversation. I'm John Furrier, co-host of theCUBE. We're with Kevin Ackroyd, CEO of Cision, CUBE Alumni. He's been on before. Building one of the most compelling companies that's disrupting and changing the game in Comms, advertising, PR, with Cloud technologies. Kevin, great to see you again, thanks for coming in. >> Likewise John, It's really good to be back. >> So, we haven't chatted in two years. You've been busy. Our last conversation was the beginning of 2017. Cision's done a lot of interesting things. You've got a lot of M and A under your belt. You're putting this portfolio together with Cloud technologies. Really been interesting. I really got to say I think you cracked the code on I think a new reality, a new economic reality. Also new capabilities for comms folks. Congratulations. >> Thank you, it's been a fun ride. >> So give us the update. So two years since we talked, how many deals, companies have you bought? What's the headcount, what's the revenue? Give us an update. >> In the four years, 12 acquisitions, seven of which have happened since I've been here. Up to 4,500 employees in over 40 countries. Customer count has grown to over 50,000 customers globally. Revenue's kind of gone from 500s to just shy of 800 million. A lot of leadership changes, and as you just mentioned, pretty seismic change, finally. We've certainly been the catalyst and the cattle prod for that seismic change around tech, data, measurement and analytics finally becoming mature and adopted inside this line of business like the Chief Communication Officer, the earn media folks. To say that they were not tech savvy a few years ago would be an understatement. So, a lot's been going on. >> Yeah, and certainly the trend is your friend, in my opinion, for you. But I think the reality is not yet upon people's general mindset. It's coming quickly, so if you look at some of the big trends out there. Look at fake news, look at Facebook, look at the Google effect. Elizabeth Warren wants to break up Big Tech, Amazon. Cloud computing, in that time period that you were, prior to just going to Cision, you had Oracle Cloud, done a lot of great things on the Marketing Cloud side. But the timing of Cloud computing, the timing of how media has changed. There's not many journalists anymore. We had Andy Cunningham, a legendary industry veteran, formerly of Cunningham Communications. He did the PR for Steve Jobs. You said, there's no more journalists, a few left, but you got to tell your story direct to the consumer. >> You do. >> This is now a new marketing phenomenon. This is a tailwind for you at Cision because you guys, although put these cubbies together, have a unique vision around bringing brand value advertising at PR economics. >> Yeah, that's a good way to put it. >> Tell us the vision of Cision and specifically the shift that's happening. Why are you guys important? What wave are you riding? >> So, there's a couple shifts, John. You and I have talked about this in previous programs There's this shift of the line of business, having to work in a whole bunch of non-integrated point solutions. The CFO used to live in 17 different applications from 17 vendors. That's all squished together. Now I buy from one Cloud platform, right, from Oracle or SAP. Same thing happened in Human Capital Management. 22 things squished into the Cloud, one from Workday, right. Same thing happened, you had 25 different things for sales and service. That all squished together, into one CRM in the Cloud, I buy from Salesforce, right. And our last rodeo, the early part of this stack, it was me and Adobe battling it out for the right to go squish the entire the LUMAscape into a marketing cloud, right, so there could be one ring to rule them all for the CMO. So, it happens in every single category. It just hasn't had over here, happened on the earned media side and the Chief Communications Officer. So, bringing the tech stack so that now we are for the CCO what Adobe is for the CMO what Salesforce is for the CRO, Workday is for the CHRO. That has to happen. You can't do, you can't manage it this way without sophisticated tech, without automation, without integration, you can't do it. The second thing that had to happen, especially in marketing and advertising, they all figured out how to get revenue credit. Advertising was a slow single-digit CAGR industry for 50 years. And then something happened. After 5% CAGR for 50 years, and then something happened over the next 10 years. Digital paid went from like 15 billion to 150 billion. And what happened is that old, I know half my advertising is wasted on this one half. That went bye-bye. Now I know immediately, down to the page, down the ad unit, down to this, exactly what worked, right. When I was able to put Pixels on ads, John, you'd go to that page, Pixel would go on you, It would follow you around If you ended up putting something in the e-commerce shop that ad got credit. I'm not saying that's right, I'm just saying that's how the entire-- >> But that's how the infrastructure would let you, allowed you, it enabled you to do that. Then again, paid advertising, paid search, paid advertising, that thing has created massive value in here. >> Massive value. But my buyer, right, so the person that does the little ad on the most regional tech page got credit. My buyer that got Bob Evans, the Cloud King, to write an article about why Microsoft is going to beat AWS, he's a credible third party influencer, writing objectively. That article's worth triple platinum and has more credibility than 20,000 Microsoft sales reps. We've never, until Cision, well let's Pixel that, let's go figure out how many of those are the target audience. Let's ride that all the way down to the lead form that's right. Basically it's super simple. Nobody's ever tracked the press releases, the articles or any of the earned media content, the way people have tracked banner ads or e-commerce emails. Therefore this line of business never get revenue credit. It stayed over here in the OpEx pile where things like commerce and advertising got dumped onto the revenue pile. Well, you saw the crazy investment shift. So, that's really the more important one, is Comms is finally getting quantified ROI and business's attribution like their commerce and advertising peers for the first time ever in 2018 via what Cision's rolled out. That's the exciting piece. >> I think, I mean, I guess what I hear you saying is that for the first time, the PR actually can be measured, similar to how advertising >> You got it. >> Couldn't be measured then be measured. Now PR or communications can be measured. >> They get measured the same way. And then one other thing. That ad, that press release, down to the business event. This one had $2 million dollars of ad spend, this one had no ad spend. When it goes to convert, in CRM or it goes to convert on a website, this one came from banner ad, this one came from credible third party content. Guess which one, not only had zero ad spend instead of $2 million in ad spend. Guess which one from which source actually converts better. It's the guy that chose to read credible third-party article. He's going to convert in the marketing system way better that somebody who just clicked on the ad. >> Well certainly, I'm biased-- >> So all the way down the funnel, we're talking about real financial impact based on capturing earned media ID, which is pretty exciting. >> Well, I think the more exciting thing is that you're basically taking a value that is unfunded quote by the advertising firm, has no budget basically, or thin budgets, trying to hit an organic, credible outlet which is converting in progression to a buyer, an outcome. That progression is now tracked. But let's just talk about the economics because you're talking about $2 million in spend, it could be $20 million. The ratio between ad spend and conversion to this new element you mentioned is different. You're essentially talking about the big mega trend, which is organic content. Meaning connecting to sources. >> That's right. >> That flow. Of course, we believe and we, at the Cube, everyone's been seeing that with our business. Let's talk about that dynamic because this is not a funded operationalized piece yet, so we've been seeing, in the industry, PR and comms becoming more powerful. So, the Chief Communication Officer isn't just rolling out press releases, although they have to do that to communicate. You've got medium posts now, you've got multiple channels. A lot of places to put the story. So the Chief Communication Officer really is the Chief Storyteller Officer, Not necessarily the CMO. >> Emphatically. >> The Martech Stack kind of tracking. So talk about that dynamic. How is the Chief Communication Officer role change or changing? Why is that important and what should people be thinking about, if they are a Chief Communication Officer? >> You know, it's interesting. There's a, I'm just going to call it an actual contradiction on this front. When you and I were getting out of our undergrad, 7 out of 10 times that CCO, the Chief Communication Officer, worked for the CEO and 30% of time other. Yet the role was materially narrow. The role has exploded. You just said it pretty eloquently. This role has really exploded and widened its aperture. Right now though 7 out of 10 of them actually do work for the CMO, which is a pretty interesting contradiction. And only 30% of them work for the CEO. Despite the fact that from an organizational stand point, that kind of counter intuitive org move has been made. It doesn't really matter because, so much of what you just said too, you was in marketing's purview or around brand or around reputation or around telling the story or around even owning the key assets. Key assets isn't that beautiful Budweiser frog commercial they played on Super Bowl anymore. The key assets are what's getting done over in the communications, in part. So, from a storytelling standpoint, from an ownership of the narrative, from a, not just a product or a service or promotion, but the whole company, the whole brand reputation, the goodwill, all of that is comms. Therefore you're seeing comms take the widest amount of real estate around the boardroom table than they've ever had. Despite the fact that they don't sit in the chair as much. I mentioned that just because I find it very interesting. Comms has never been more empowered, never had a wider aperture. >> But budget wise, they're not really that loaded up with funding. >> And to my earlier point, it's because they couldn't show. Super strategic. Showing ROI. >> So, showing ROI is critical. >> Not the quality of clippings. >> It was the Maslow of Hierarchy of Needs if you can just show me that I put a quarter in and I got a dollar out. Like the ads and the e-commerce folks do. It simply drives the drives me. >> So take us through some of those analytics because people who know about comms, the old school comms people who are doing this, they should really be thinking about what their operation is because, can I get an article in the Wall Street Journal? Can Silicon Angle write about us? I've got to get more clippings. That tend to be the thing. Did we get the press release out on time? They're not really tied into some of the key marketing mix pieces. They tend to be kind of a narrow scope. Those metrics were pretty clear. What are the new metrics? What's the new operational playbook.? >> Yeah, we call those Vanity Metrics. I cared about theoretical reach. Hey, Yahoo tells me I reached 222 billion people, so I plug in 222 billion people. I reached more people than there are on the planet with this PR campaign. I needed to get to the basic stuff like how many people did I actually reach, number one. But they don't, they do theoretical reach. They work in things like sentiment. Well, I'm going to come up with, 100 reporters wrote about me. I'm going to come up with, how many of them I thought were positive, negative, neutral. Sentiment analysis, they measure number of reporters or hits versus their competitors and say, Proctor and Gamble rolled out this diaper product, how did I do this five days? How much did Proctor and Gamble diapers get written about versus Craft diapers versus Unilever's. Share a voice. Not irrelevant metrics. But not metrics the CEO and the CFO are going to invest in. >> Conversion to brand or sales, those kind of things? >> They never just never existed. Those never existed. Now when we can introduce the same exact metrics that the commerce and the ad folks do and say, I can tell you exactly how many people. I can tell you exactly who they were, demographic, firmographic, lifestyle, you name it. I can tell you who the audience is you're reaching. I can tell you exactly what they do. When those kind of people read those kind of articles or those kind of people read those kind of press releases, they go to these destinations, they take these behaviors. And because I can track that all the way down to whatever that success metric is, which could be a lead form if I'm B2B for pipe. It could be a e-commerce store from B2C. It could be a rating or review or a user generation content gourd. It could be a sign up and register, if I'm trying to get database names. Whatever the business metric is. That's what the commerce and the ad people do all day every day. That's why they are more funded than ever. The fact that press releases, articles, tweets, blogs, the fact that the earned media stuff has never been able to do those things is why they just continue to suffer and have had a real lack of investment prices going on for the last 20 year. >> Talk about the trend around-- >> It's simple stuff. >> I know, if you improve the ROI, you get more budget. >> It really is that simple. >> That's been the challenge. I think PR is certainly becoming, comms is becoming more powerful. People know I talk about it all the time. I think comms is the new CMO I think command and control and organic content work together in the organic. We've seen it first hand in our business. But, it's an issue of tech savviness and also vision. A lot of people just are uncomfortable shifting to the new realities. >> That's for sure. >> What are some of the people tech savvy look at when they look at say revamping comms platform or strategy versus say old school? >> I'll give you two answers on that, John. Here is one thing that is good for us, that 7 out of 10 to the CCOs work for the CMO. Because when I was in this seat starting to light that fire under the CMO for the first time, which was not that long ago, and they were not tech savvy, and they were not sophisticated. They didn't know how to do this stuff either. That was a good 10 year journey to get the CMO from not sophisticated to very sophisticated. Now they're one of the more sophisticated lines of business in the world. But that was a slog. >> So are we going to see a Comms Stack? Like Martech, ComTech. >> ComTech is the decision communication Cloud, is ComTech. So we did it. We've built the Cloud stack. Again like I said, just like Adobe has the tech stack for marketing, Cision has the tech stack for comms, and we've replicated that. But because the CCO works for the CMO and the CMO's already been through this. Been through this with Ad Techs, been through this with MarTech, been through this with eCommerce, been through this with Web. You know, I've got a three or four year sophistication path this time just because >> The learnings are there >> The company's already done it everywhere else. The boss has already done it everywhere else. >> So the learnings are there from the MarTech so it's a pretty easy leap to take? >> That's exactly right. >> It's just-- >> How CommTech works is shocking. Incredibly similar to how MarTech and AdTech work. A lot of it is the same technology, just being applied different. >> That's good news >> So, the adoption curve for us is a fantastic thing. It's a really good thing for us that 70% of them work for CMOs because the CMO is the most impatient person on the planet, to get this over because the CMO is sick of doing customer journeys or omni channel across just paid and owned. They recognize that the most influential thing to influence you, it's not their emails, it's not their push notifications, It's not their ads. It's recognizing which credible third-party content you read, getting them into that, so that they're influencing you. >> It's kind of like Google PageRank in the old days. This source is more relevant than that one, give it more weight. >> And now all of a sudden if I have my Cision ID, I can plug in the more weight stuff under your profile. I want to let him go across paid and owned too, I materially improve the performance of the paid and owned because I'm putting in the really important signal versus what's sitting over there in the DMP or the CDP, which is kind of garbage. That's really important. >> I really think. >> I thinks you've got a home run here. I think you've really cracked the code on this. I think you are absolutely right on the money with comms and CommsTech. I see it all the time. In my years of experiences, it's so obvious. Then again, the tailwind is that they've been through the MarTech. The question I have for you is cultural shift. That's a big one. So, I'm out evangelizing all the time about the CUBE Cloud and some of the things we're doing. I run into the deer in the headlights on one side, what do you mean? And then people like, I believe, I totally understand. The believers and the non believers. What's the cultural shift? Because some chief comms op, they're very savvy, progressive, we've got to make the shift. How do they get the ship to turn? What are some of the cultural challenges? >> And boy is that right. I felt the same thing, getting more doing it with the CMO. A lot of people kept their head in the sand until they got obsoleted. They didn't know. Could they not see the train coming? They didn't want to see the train coming. Now you go look at the top 100 CMOs in the world today. Pretty different bunch than who those top 100 CMOs were 10 years ago. Really different bunch. History's repeating itself over here too. You've got the extremely innovative CCOs that are driving that change and transformation. You've got the deer in the headlight, okay, I know I need to do this, but I'm not sure how, and you do have your typical, you know, nope, I've got my do not disturb sign and police tape over my office. I won't even let you in my door. I don't want to hear about it. You've got all flavors. The good news is we are well past the half point where the innovators are starting actually to deploy and show results, the deer in the headlights are starting to innovate, and these folks are at least opening up the door and taking down some tape. >> Is there pressure on the agency side now? A lot of agencies charge a lot of monthly billings for these clients, the old school thing. Some are trying to be progressive and do more services. Have you seen, with the Cision Cloud and things that you're doing, that you're enabling, those agencies seem to be more productive? >> Yes. >> Are the client's putting pressure on those agencies so they see more value? Talk about the agency dynamic. >> That's also a virtuous cycle too, right? That cycle goes from, it's a Bell Curve. At the beginning of the bell curve, customers have no clue about the communications. They go to their agencies for advice. So, you have to educate the agencies on how to say nice things about you. By the time you're at the Bell Curve, the client's know about the tech or they've adopted the tech, and the agencies realize, oh, I can monetize the hell out of this. They need strategy and services and content and creative and campaign. This is yet another good old fashioned >> High gross profit. >> A buck for the tech means six bucks for me as the service agency. At the bottom, over here, I'll never forget this when we did our modern marketing experiences, Erik, the CMO of Clorox said, hey, to all you agencies out there, now that we're mature, you know, we choose our our agency based on their fluency around our tech stack. So it goes that violently and therefore, the agencies really do need to try to get fluent. The ones that do, really reap rewards because there is a blatant amount of need as the line of business customer tries to get from here to here. And the agency is the is the very first place that that customer is going to go to. >> So, basically the agency-- >> The customer has first right of refusal to go provide these services and monetize them. >> So, the agency has to keep up. >> They certainly do. >> Because, if the game gets changed by speed, it's accelerated >> If they keep up, yup. >> Value is created. If they don't have their running shoes on, they're out. >> If they keep up and they stay fluent, then they're going to be great. The last thing back in the things. We've kind of hit this. This is one of those magic points I've been talking about for 20 years. When the CFO or the CEO or the CMO walk down to the CCOs office and say, where are we on this, 'cause it's out in the wild now, there are over 1200 big brands doing this measurement, Cision ID, CommsTech stuff. It's getting written about by good old fashioned media. Customer says, wow, I couldn't do this for 50 years, now I am, and look what I just did to my Comms program. That gets read. The world's the same place as it always has been. You and I read that. We go down to our comms department and say, wow, I didn't know that was possible, where are we on this? So the Where Are We On This wave is coming to communications, which is an accelerant. >> It's an accountability-- >> Now it's accountability, and therefore, the urgency to get fluent and changed. So now they're hiring up quantums and operations and statisticians and database people just like the marketers did. The anatomy of a communications department is starting to like half science half art, just like happened in marketing. Whereas before that, it was 95% art and 5% science. But it's getting to be 50/50. >> Do you have any competition? >> We have, just like always. >> You guys pretty much have PR Newswire, a lot of big elements there. >> We do. >> You've got a good foothold. >> This is just an example. Even though Marketo is part of Adobe, giant. And Eloqua is part of Oracle, giant and Pardot is part of Salesforce. You've got three goliaths in marketing automation. Hubspot's still sticking around. PeerPlay, marketing Automation. You can just picture it. CRM giants, Microsoft and Salesforce have eaten the world Zendesk's still kicking around. It's a little PeerPlay. That equivalent exists. I have nobody that's even one fifth as big as I am, or as global or complete. But I do have some small, point specific solution providers. They're still hanging out there. >> The thing is, one, first you're a great leader. You've seen the moving on the marking tech side. You've got waves of experience under your belt. But I think what's interesting is that like the Web 1.0, having websites and webpages, Web 2.0 and social networks. That was about the first generation. Serve information, create Affiliate programs, all kind of coded tracking. You mentioned all that. I over-simplified it, but you get the idea. Now, every company needs a new capability. They need to stand up media infra structure. What does that mean? They're going to throw a podcast, they're going to take their content, put them into multiple channels. That's a comms function. Now comms is becoming the new CMO-like capability in this earned channel. So, your Cloud becomes that provisioning entity for companies to stand up capabilities without waiting. Is that the vision? >> You've nailed it. And that is one of the key reasons why you have to have a tech stack. That's a spot on one, another one. Early in my career, the 20 influences that mattered, they were all newspaper reporters or TV folks. There was only 20 of them. I had a Rolodex. so I could take each one of them out for a three Martini lunch, they'd write something good about me. >> Wish is was that easy now. >> Now, you have thousands of influencers across 52 channels, and they change in real time, and they're global in nature. It's another example of where, well, if you don't automate that with tech and by the way. >> You're left behind. >> If you send out digital content they talk back to you in real time. You have to actually not only do influencer identification, outreach and curation, you've got to do real time engagement. >> There's no agility. >> There's none. >> Zero agility. >> None, exactly. >> There's no like Dev Ops mindset in there at all. >> Then the speed with which, it's no longer okay for comms to call the agency and say, give me a ClipBook, I've got to get it to my CEO by Friday. That whole start the ClipBook on Tuesday, I've got to have the ClipBook, the physical ClipBook on the CEO as an example. Nope, if I'm not basically streaming my senior executives in real time, curated and analyzed as to what's important and what it means, I can't do that without a tech stack. >> Well, Andy Cunningham was on the Cube. >> This whole thing has been forced to get modernized by cloud technology and transformation >> Andy Cunningham, a legend in the comms business who did all Steve Jobs comms, legend. She basically said on The Cube, it's not about waiting for the clips to create the ClipBook, create your own ClipBook and get it out there. Then evaluate and engage. This is the new command and control with digital assets. >> Now, it's become the real-time, curated feed that never stops. It sure as hell better not. Because comms is in trouble if it does. >> Well this is a great topic. But let's have you in this, I can go deep on this. I think this is a really important shift, and you guys are the only ones that are on it at this level. I don't think the Salesforce and the Adobe yet, I don't think they're nimble enough to go after this wave. I think they're stuck on their wave and they're making a lot of money. >> You know John, paid media and owned media. The Google Marketing Cloud, that SAP Marketing Cloud, Adobe, Oracle, Salesforce Marketing Clouds. They don't do anything in earned. Nothing. This is one of the reasons I jumped because I knew this needed to happen. But, you know, they're also chasing much bigger pots of money. Marketing and Advertising is still a lot more money. We're working on it to grow the pie for comms. But, bottom line is, they're chasing the big markets as I was at Oracle. And they're still pretty much in a violent arms race against each other. Salesforce is still way more focused on what Adobe's doing. >> You're just on a different wave. >> So, we're just over here doing this, building a billion dollar cloud leader, that is mission critical to everyone of their customers. They're going to end up being some pretty import partners to us, because they've been too focused on the big arms race against each other, in paid and owned and have not had the luxury to even go here. >> Well I think this wave that you're on is going to be really big. I think they don't see it, in my opinion, or can't get there. With the right surfboard, to use a surfing analogy, there's going to be a big wave. Thanks for sharing your insights. >> Absolutely. >> While you're here, get the plug in for Cision. What's going on, what's next? What's the big momentum? Get the plug in for the company. What are you guys still going to do? >> Plugin for the company. The company has acquired a couple of companies in January. You might see, one of which is Falcon. Basically Falcon is one of the big four in the land of Hootsuite, Sprinklr, Spredfast. Cloud companies do this. Adobe has Creative Cloud, Document Cloud, Parking Cloud. Salesforce has Sales Cloud, Service Cloud, Marketing Cloud. Cision has just become a multi cloud company. We now have the Cision Social Cloud and the Cision Communications Cloud. And we're going to go grab a couple hundred million dollars of stuff away from Sprinklr, Hootsuite and collapse social into this. Most of social is earned as well. So, look for a wing spread, into another adjacent market. I think that's number one. Then look for publishing of the data. That's probably going to be the most exciting thing because we just talked about, again our metrics and capabilities you can buy But, little teaser. If we can say, in two months here's the average click through on a Google ad, YouTube ad, a banner ad, I'll show it to you on a Blog, a press release, an article. Apples to apples. Here is the conversion rate. If I can start becoming almost like an eMarketer or publisher on what happens when people read earned, there's going to be some unbelievable stats and they're going to be incredibly telling, and it's going to drive where are we on that. So this is going to be the year. >> It's a new digital advertising format. It's a new format. >> That's exactly right. >> It's a new digital advertising format. >> And its one when the CEO understands that he or she can have it for earned now, the way he's had it for marketing and advertising, that little conversation walking down the hall. In thousands of companies where the CCO or the VP of PR looks up and the CEO is going where are we on that? That's the year that that can flip switches, which I'm excited about. >> Every silo function is now horizontally connected with data, now measured, fully instrumented. The value will be there and whoever can bring the value gets the budget. That's the new model. Kevin Ackroyd, CEO of Cision, changing the game in the shift around the Chief Communications Officer and how that is becoming more tech savvy. Really disrupting the business by measuring earned media. A big wave that's coming. Of course, it's early, but it's going to be a big one. Kevin, thanks for coming on. >> My pleasure, John, thank you. >> So, CUBE conversation here in Palo Alto Thanks for watching. >> Thanks John. (upbeat music)

(upbeat music) >> Narrator: Live, from Las Vegas, it's the CUBE. Covering Oracle Modern Customer Experience 2017. Brought to you by Oracle. >> Welcome back everyone, we are here live in Las Vegas for the CUBE's special coverage of Oracle's ModernCX, Modern Customer Experience, this is the Cube, I'm John Furrier, my cohost Peter Burris. Our next guest is Tony Nadalin. Tony Nadalin is the global vice president of the Global Consulting at Oracle for the marketing cloud. Welcome to the CUBE. >> Well, thank you. Thank you for having me. >> So you've got to implement this stuff, and we've heard a lot of AI magic and there's a lot of meat on the bone there. People are talking about there's a lot of real things happening. Certainly, Oracle's acquired some great technologies over the years, integrated it all together. The proof is in the pudding. When you roll it out, the results have to speak for themselves. >> Tony: Yes, absolutely. >> So share with us some of those activities. What's the score board look like? What's the results? >> I think what's really important, and Lewis spoke about this yesterday, it's people and product. The customers are buying visions. They're looking at creating and changing the customer experience. They're not just buying a piece of technology. They're buying a transformation. I think what's really important and what we do a lot in services, in all services, not just Oracle Marketing Cloud Services, but just healthy services, is when customers are implementing, they're not just implementing technology, they're not just plumbing the pipes. They are putting in changes. They're looking at the people, the process, the technology. We have a really good relationship with our customers and our partners and we're constantly looking at the complete set of services, the complete suite. From what I call transformational services, where we come in and try to understand what are you trying to change? How are you trying to change your customer experience? As a marketer, owning not only what you do, and how all the different channels are working together across all the different products that they are. They purchase Eloqua, Responsys, BlueKai, Maxymiser, et cetera. >> So you're laying it all out, it's like you're sitting in a room, now I'm oversimplifying it, but it's not just rolling out stuff. You've got planning. >> Tony: You've got to plan it. >> Put the pieces together. >> You do, and it's a readiness. It's a readiness of the organization, you think about it, you've got within a marketing organization, you've got many teams coming together that have to be united around the brand, the consistency, how they're engaging with customers. But also, not only across like an acquisition team, or loyalty or an upsell and cross sell team, how does that, as we were looking at the products key notes, how does that then extend into the services engagement? How does it extend into the sales engagement? How are we making sure that everyone is using the same messaging, the same branding, leveraging each other? It's a real transformation at a people, process and technology level. So that when you're then implementing, you're implementing changes. And so we've got some great services and great partners that make sure that when the customers are going through that transformation, they're sort of going it fully readied. And our role, from a services perspective, is to ensure then, sort of define the transformation, define the strategy, like plan the plan, and then go execute the plan. And then putting in the plumbing, getting everyone readied. The analogy I used, I'm sure you've got kids, right? When we have toddlers, and you build the kid's first bikes. Your goal is to build that bike, put the training wheels on the bike, and ultimately sort of stand behind your child to a point that when you let them go, they're not going to graze their knees. Then from an ongoing basis, continue to stand behind them, then get ready to take the training wheels off. Then training wheels come off. Maybe at one point they may become BMX champions, right? But you're sort of behind them through the whole-- >> John: There's progression. >> Progression, exactly. >> With my kids, it's simply man to man, then zone defense. (laughter) >> But it's progression, right? A lot of customers, we have not only the onboarding and implementation services, but these ongoing services that are so key. Because obviously it's important to ensure that your customers are realizing. When I think of our services and the journey, there's the discovery, the transformation, and the strategy. That's like the discovery. But you've then got the realization. And then the optimization and the realization to me is that you're realizing that initial step. You're realizing the technology and you're realizing people and process. You're getting people stood up. Skills, people, organizations, technology, data. You're realizing it all so they can then take the next step. >> Alright, so what's the playbook? A lot of times, in my mind's eye, I can envision in a white board room, board room, laying it all out, putting the puzzle pieces together, and then rolling out implementation plan. But the world is going agile, not waterfall anymore, so it's a combination of battle mode, but also architectural thinking. So not just fashion, real architectural, foundational. >> Peter: Design thinking. >> Tony: Exactly, architectural. >> John: Design thinking. What's the playbook? What's the current state of the art in the current-- >> Well we have obviously product consultants, architects, solution consultants, content creators. It's the whole spectrum of where the customer needs to focus on. And I think-- >> John: So you assemble them based upon the engagement. >> Based upon the engagement and understanding, like what are the customer's strengths? Where are they now? Where are they trying to get to? There's some customers, you know, we have a whole range of services, and we have a whole range of customers. So there are some customers who are like, "We have our own teams today, "we want to augment our teams with your teams, "we want to have hybrid models." Or, "We have our own teams today, but not only have you got great people, but you've got great processes." So like, look at Maxymiser as an example. A lot of our Maxymiser customers, not only use our platform, but they use our people. They're not just buying our people, they're buying a sort of agile, Kanban, JavaScript development practices that are a different level of software development. It's not just the people that can code, it's the development practices. So it's that whole operational services where we bring to the table just a different degree of operational excellence. But we're also to go in to our customers that have their own teams and provide them also consulting perspective around how they can also sharpen their edge. If they want to sort of keep, you know. So whole spectrum of services. >> So let me see if I can throw something out there, in kind of like the center, the central thesis of what you do and how it's changed from what we used to do. Especially a company like Oracle, which has been a technology company at the vanguard of a lot of things. It used to be that customers had an idea of what they wanted to implement. They wanted to implement an accounting system. The processes are relatively known. What was unknown was the technology. How do, what do I buy? How do I configure? How do I set it up? How do I train? How do I make the software run? How do I fix? So it was known process, unknown technology. As a consequence, technology companies could largely say, yeah, that value is intrinsic to the product. So you buy the product, you've got it now. But as we move more towards a service world, as we move more toward engaging the customer world where the process is unknown, and the technology, like the cloud, becomes increasingly known. Now we're focused on more of an unknown process, known technology, and the value is in, does the customer actually use it. >> I think the value is actually in does the customer get value. I think there's a, I've managed customer success organizations and customer service organizations, and the one thing I see in SAS, is usage doesn't always equate to value. So I think as a services organization, it's important to understand the roadmap to value. Because a lot of times, I would say in commodity software, sort of the use of it by default in itself was enough. That you were moving to a software platform. I think SAS customers, especially marketers, are looking for transformation. They're looking for a transformation and a change in value. A change in value in the conversation they're having with the customer. A change in acquisition, loyalty, retention, a change in being relevant. As Joseph was saying this morning, being relevant with the customer, and that value is more than just implementing some technology. >> So it's focusing on ensuring that the customer is getting value utility out of whatever they purchase. >> Tony: Correct. >> Not just that they got what they purchased. So as we move into a world where we're embedding technology more and more complex, it's two things happen. One is, you have to become more familiar of the actual utilization. And what does it mean, and I think marketing cog helps that. What is marketing, how does it work? And second one, the historical norm has been, yeah, we're going to spend months and years building something, deploying something, but now we're trying to do it faster, and we can. So how is your organization starting to evolve its metrics? Is it focused on speed? Is it focused on, obviously value delivered, utilization. What are some of the things that you are guiding your people to focus on? >> Well I think, I very much take a outside-in view. So to me, if I look at why a customer is buying, and what do they want. Obviously most customers want fast time to value, as reduced effort, obviously, and little surprises. I think having a plan and being able to execute your plan. And this whole, as we were talking like one-to-many versus one-to-one. >> And timing too, no surprises and they want to execute. >> And time to value, right? And speed. And I think as we were talking, similar to as a marketer is trying to engage any customer and sort of going from that one-to-many to that one-to-you, what's important now for any organization, a services organization, any company, is to understand what does your business look like? Because why you bought from Oracle, whether you be in a certain vertical or a certain space, or a certain maturity as a customer, it's important that we have the play books, and we do, that say that if you're a customer of this size, of these products in this vertical, then we have the blueprints for success. They may not be absolutely perfect, but they're directional, that we can sort of put you on the fast path. That we've seen the potholes before, we've seen the bumps, we understand the nuances of your data, your systems, your people, your regulations. So that we can actually, we have a plan. And it's a plan that's relevant to you. It's not a generic plan. And I think that's the biggest thing where good companies show up then deliver solutions that they're not learning 100%. There's always going to be nuances and areas of gray that you work through, where the customer's just as much as vendors as they transform. We're not just swapping like for like, but when you transform, there's changes that occur on the customer side. There's new awarenesses of I didn't realize we did that. I didn't realize I want to change doing that. And I've actually changed maybe my whole thought. >> What's the change coming from this event? If you look at the show here, ModernCX, some really good directional positioning. The trajectory of where this is going, I believe is on a great path. Certainly directionally relevant, 100%. Some stuff will maybe shift in the marketplace. But for the most part, I'm really happy to see Oracle go down this road. But there's an impact factor to the customers, and the communities, and that's going to come to you, right? So what are you taking away from the show that's important for customers to understand as Oracle brings in adaptive intelligence? As more tightly coupled, highly cohesive elements come together? >> I think to me, it's transformation. Customers really do understand what are they trying to achieve as they transform? Not just by a piece of technology, but come into it understanding, okay, what are we trying to transform? And have we got like all change management? All transformational management? Have I got the right buy-in across the organization? As a marketer, if I'm trying to transform the organization, have I got the right stakeholders in the room with me? Am I trying to influence the right conversations? You look at the conversation yesterday with Netflix. The discussion, or Time-Warner, sorry. Around their transformation around data. That wasn't a single entity determining that. That was a company driven strategy. A company driven transformation. And I think to really change the customer experience, and control the brand of that across all touchpoints of the company, it requires transformation and it requires being realistic around also how long that journey takes. Depending on the complexity and size of the company. It requires investment of people, of energy, or resources and really understanding where is your customer today? Where is your competition? And to Mark's point, it's like the market is being won here, you're having to compete against your competition, you're having to be better than them, you're having to understand your competition just as much as you understand yourself, so you're leapfrogging. Because just as much as you're going after your competitors customers, your customers are coming up for your customers, right, your competitors are coming up for your customers. I think transformation and understanding how to engage the right services leaders, be it Oracle or any of our partners, to really transform your business is to me the biggest take away. The technology then, be it Chatbox or AI, I mean they augment, they help, they're going to be channels, but I think transformation is key. >> It's really not the technology, it's really what you're doing it with, at the end of the day. Tony, thanks for coming on the CUBE. We really appreciate it, and again, when the rubber hits the road, as Peter was saying earlier, it's going to be what happens with the product technologies for the outcomes. >> Tony: Absolutely. >> Thanks for sharing your insights here on the CUBE. Sharing the data, bringing it to you. I'm John Furrier with the CUBE with Peter Burris, more live coverage for the Mandalay Bay in Las Vegas from Oracle's ModernCX after this short break. (upbeat music) >> Narrator: Robert Herjavec >> Interviewer: People obviously know you from Shark Tank. But the Herjavec Group has been really laser focused on cyber security.

>> Announcer: Live, from Las Vegas. It's theCUBE! Covering Oracle Modern Customer Experience 2017. Brought to you by Oracle. >> Okay, welcome back, everyone. We are here live, in Las Vegas, the Mandalay Bay Convention Center, this is SiliconANGLE Media's theCUBE, our flagship program where we go out to the events and extract the signal from the noise. I'm John Furrier with my co-host, Peter Burris, Head of Research at siliconANGLE and wikibon.com. Our next guest is Jennifer Renaud, who's the CMO/Global Marketing Lead for Oracle Marketing Cloud. She's the brains behind this show, underneath Laura Ipsen, who was on yesterday, General Manager, SVP. Great to see you, Jennifer. >> Thanks, it's great to see you. >> John: Thanks for coming on, I know you're super busy, thanks for spending the time to come on theCUBE. >> Thank you for having me, I'm really happy to be here. >> So we talked last year. You guys were new. Laura popped into the position, took over the helm at Oracle Marketing Cloud, you joined the team. It's been quite a transformation over the past year. A lot of great feedback on the show. I mean, the Markies was like the Golden Globes, was glammed up, and people screaming, you mentioned. And then now, the conversations in the hallways, certainly great feedback on the sessions, and people in there saying, "Hey, I'm getting great, qualified people walk through, having great conversations." What happened? Between last year and this year. Give us some insight into what was the big shift. >> The big shift? Well, we've had a big shift in our team. You know, during that time period. (both laughing) Which is really interesting. >> And as manifest by the show, a big shift in direction. >> Yeah, a big shift in direction. You know, two things I think, seriously, there was a big shift in the team, overall, you know, my marketing team, we've made a lot of changes, we're relooking at how we do the work that we do. Really looking at the stories that we tell. You know, there's been a lot of change in that, as well. And then, how we tell our stories together with the rest of our CX team. That's been really important. I spend a lot of time with the rest of my CX peers, you know, that are here also. >> It's interesting, we've been following Oracle, this is our eighth year covering Oracle as Oracle proper, and two years covering Marketing Cloud, with theCUBE, and it was interesting, we were observing that how you guys got here, or there, last year, a lot of great acquisitions and integrated pretty well. But the question was, man, if you can just put all this together. Which you guys were kind of smiling, smirking, but you were doing that, so you have now this cohesive story and platform. You still have pillars of solutions, but, yet integrated under one customer experience. Give us some insight into where that is, and what's next, and how that's going. >> So, the connection with the entire customer experience cloud? >> John: Yeah. >> You know, we've been sharing that message for a while. You know, across Oracle. And I think you probably heard it the first time at Open World, which is where I met you, this last year, and we made some announcements then, but we are continuing to drive that total experience, you know, for our customers to engage with their customers. And, you know, I think probably the best way to look at that, and we were just talking about this a few minutes ago, you know, when I was thinking back in marketing 25 years ago. I've been reminiscing a lot lately. And I was looking back at re-reading the one-to-one future. And at that time, they were really saying, you know, the great thing you can do is engage with a customer in a way where you're a learning organization. So every touchpoint has the right reaction. I might call it, maybe, the physics of marketing. You know, we're going to have the energy that goes with this, so, you know, if I talk to you, if my last engagement with you is a services conversation, then the next marketing message better be in reaction to the last services conversation. And I think now with the ability for us to connect everything that we do in customer experience, and be able to connect our data, and be able to connect our interactions, our transactions, we have the ability to have a really great experience for our customers as result of having this connection. >> And the Marketing Cloud has gotten some good props, too. But I want to ask you about the CMO summit that you guys had in parallel here at the Mandalay Bay, we didn't get a chance to cover it, we were busy doing interviews all day yesterday, but we heard some good feedback. Mark Hurd came in and laid down some, like, "We have all this technology, why are we getting a 1% conversion improvement?" Or, I mean, all that tech. So it makes you rethink about CMO roles. And I want to ask you specifically, what was the conversation like when marketers were trying to think of progressive ways to get modern? What were some of the conversations around where they turn things upside down, what are some of the conversations that the CMOs were having, and saying, look, we know the future's the certain direction, directionally correct data, what do I got to do? >> Yeah, well, it's interesting, we talked a lot about data. We talked a lot about hiring people who can govern data, integrate data, manage data. Several of the companies said, you know, we're in merger and acquisition all the time, and it's a huge issue for us, because a whole new data set comes in. And it may have the same customer touchpoints. You know, the same customers. And now we have to figure out how to match the IDs. And so they said it's a huge challenge for them, you know, to be able to merge all of that. >> It's a great marketing opportunity for you to go to startups saying, hey, if you want to get by the big company, and they're on Oracle, make sure you're on Oracle! >> Jennifer: Make sure to call us. >> But that's a good point. >> Peter: Extends the ecosystem. >> Jennifer: Yeah, exactly. >> But that, the whole system of record, this brings up the integration challenges of moving fast and integrating in data. >> Right, and one of the things that came out of that, which was fascinating, is, the question was asked, is IT doing that, or is business doing it? And, without fail, almost all the marketers said, we own this now. This is our thing. You know, it's the customer touchpoint, business has to own it. >> What percentage of that is ownership by the marketing folks? Because I would say that I see a similar pattern where the digital end-to-end life cycle, from beginning to moment of truth is owned by the marketer. >> Yeah, well, it's happening more and more all the time, of course. >> John: 50/50? 60/40? 70/30? >> I mean, in reality? >> Yeah, reality. Middle America, middle of the world, not Silicon Valley. >> Let's see, in reality, it's maybe 50/50, maybe. I mean, I think we have a long way to go. >> John: Well had the commerce folks on earlier, saying that, 'cause we interviewed her, two years ago at Open World, 50% now are on the cloud vs. on-prem. >> Jennifer: Right. >> On commerce cloud. That's pretty significant. >> Oh yeah, big move. But I think as far as, you know, going back to the question on managing the data, how many people, how this is happening, and who owns it yet? I think there's probably still tension across all the businesses on who owns it and how you do that. If you could drop that tension and say we really do want that customer experience, we are going to focus on the customer. >> But are seeing that, and it's an interesting point, are people battling for control of the process, or are people battling for the control of the data, or both? 'Cause there's a difference. >> I think they are controlling the data. I don't think they're controlling the process, and it would be really great if they got to just obsessing about the customer instead. 'Cause if you did that, then the question of process or owning the data would go away. 'Cause you would do what was right for your business. >> So how has that relationship been between, the crucial relationship between sales and marketing starting to evolve? 'Cause in many respects, marketing used to be in service to sales, especially in the B2B universe, and now what we've heard today, and what we agree with, is marketing needs to be put in service to the customer. You need to do valuable things for the customer, otherwise you're not going to get any business, and you're not going to get any data back. So how is the marketing/sales relationship evolving as both of you try to focus on the customer? >> Well, you know it's interesting. Of course I'm doing that in my own role. Not just watching what's happening with my customers, but in my own role, my relationship is evolving with our salespeople. And, you know, relooking at what happens with the lead? And when we get a lead, what kinds of customers are we doing this with, and how do we want to engage with our customers? And we're completely changing how we've been doing this. I think, in the past, and I think it's really easy for customers to follow the numbers. >> What changes are you guys making right now that you can talk about that would be notable business practice wise that has been based upon data? >> So right now, just reducing our numbers of leads. Making sure that they are the right ones, and match the sales models we have. >> You're still taking a lot of inquiries you're more than happy to have pour in. But you're doing a better job of qualifying. >> We have a lot of demand. Making sure the demand becomes the right lead and opportunity, I think is the most important piece of this. You know, it's interesting language. We call it MQL, a lead score lead that comes out of Eloqua. And, to me, that's not really a qualified lead. I feel like there needs to be human interaction for it to be qualified. So I think it's interesting that the industry, over time, has started calling it an MQL. To me, it's an ML. >> Is the funnel changing now? 'Cause now we also observed and had conversations here on theCUBE where, if there's now super omnichannels, not just omnichannel, but like, every channel's open. There's been a flattening of channels. So you can have anything could be a channel. The entry point to the cloud for you guys could be Marketing Cloud, it could be commerce, it could be something else. Either way, the market is involved. So there's so many channels out there, so what does that do for the funnel? Because, if you're using third party data, which you guys have announced here, with the first party data, that's a compelling, game-changing shift in thinking. So the vertical funnel to your point of, you know, what's at the top. >> There's no such thing as a vertical funnel anymore. I mean, it just doesn't exist that way. Really, if you think about how we are engaging with customers, or consumers, you know, all the time. We talk about the omnichannel world, just like you just said, you can't look at it and say, "I'm going to go out and target someone" and wait for that to come in. People are searching all the time. They're picking up their phone. We just released that CMO Club whitepaper today, you know, talking about mobility. I was laughing, because we said people look at their phones 150 times a day, and I thought, seriously, I do it 150 times an hour. I can't even imagine. >> You're the first CMO that I've ever met that has agreed with me on this one. You're awesome. All right, so the funnel is sideways, it's all over the place, it's everywhere. That brings up the data question. And I think I know where you're going with this, so I'm going to try to see if I can lead you on there. So if that premise is there, which I agree is true, 'cause we have a lot of data that we're putting out there. That's our engagement data with siliconANGLE and all of our assets. The question is, it's the data. So, if the funnel was built for a certain reason, to track things, but that's to get the data, now the data's everywhere, so this brings the question up: how do you find the right data? So is the data available? 'Cause you mentioned the customers are talking, they're doing things. >> Data's available. We have it all over, we just have to make sure we're aggregating it in the right way. So, you know, for us, we're using our DMP, we're connecting it to our third party data, which I think is a great way to do this. You can know more about your customers. In some cases, maybe more than they might know about themselves. We're learning a lot about them as a result. And I think, with that, as we talked about earlier, I want more data. I don't want less data. I want more data. I want to know more about-- >> That's counterintuitive to what most people think about it. >> Exactly, I think it's very counterintuitive. I'm really excited about IOT for that reason. I would love to be marketing to people in space and time. I want to know where you are and what you're doing so that the conversation and the dialogue I'm having with you is exactly relevant to what's happening at that moment. >> You might be an outlier, maybe, but because you work for Oracle, you got a big net. You walk on the tightrope, but you got a net called Oracle. A lot of marketers might not have that support. So you're data-driven, you want more data, bring on the data is what you're saying. >> Yeah. >> Which is good, 'cause you can make sense of it. How does a company get to that position where they would have the courage and confidence to say "bring it on, bring on the data"? What would they-- >> Find the right partnerships. I mean, you can get that data, you have your own first party data, you can get second party data with other groups. There's no reason why you can't go in and say, hey I want to partner with another business on this. Companies have loyalty programs. You can go and share, you know, anonymized data with another group like that and learn more about your potential customer base. There are ways to get at this. >> And you guys are opening up the data cloud to them. Is this a true statement? Oracle customers can get access to the data cloud? Which is all the data that you guys are providing, third party data? >> They can purchase the data. >> John: Well, they can subscribe to it. >> Yeah, they get it with purchasing DMP as well. Yeah, they can subscribe to the data. Yeah, any customer can get access to it. >> I have two questions about what you've said thus far. One was, I heard you say, I want to make sure I heard it, that it's an ML, it's not an MQL until it touches a person. Because that, at a conference where everybody's talking about AI and everyone's talking about automation, that is counterintuitive. Totally agree with you, but want to hear what you mean by that. >> Okay, so we'll distinguish what I think AI will do versus what happens when a lead comes out from Eloqua that's lead scored. So, when a lead is lead scored, you know, it's still human interaction right now that says how do I come up with a lead score? You know, so my team, we spend a lot of time, like, which metric should we be using to make sure we figure out, is truly a lead that should come out of Eloqua at this point. We spend a lot of time, and then we run the data, and we look at it and figure out what's going to be the right mix. >> So you're, in many respects, training Eloqua. Just in a very labor-intensive way. >> Jennifer: Yes, it is a labor-intensive way. >> John: That's a human-curated algorithm. >> It is a human-curated algorithm, yes, and we talk to all of our global teams, we look at absolutely every way we should do this, and then we start testing it and making sure that we get the right leads that are coming out of this. At the right rate. That matches the number of people that we have that can serve the leads, as well. Too many doesn't help us if I don't have enough salespeople. Too few doesn't help me if my salespeople are sitting there not doing anything. >> So the readiness is the knob you're turning. So that the flow of leads are popping out in capacity to fulfill them. >> Exactly, exactly. It's an interesting mix. You know, we've been doing the model that says more is better, more is better, more is better. And after while you say, you know, how are this many people going to service this x many times leads that come out of this? But lead scoring is still based on my less than perfect -- >> Peter: Discretionary observation on what this actually means. >> Jennifer: What this actually means, exactly. >> That's great, that's great-- >> So I still need a human to pick up the phone and call the person and say, you know, are you actually a perspective customer? Are you a student, or are you, you know. >> So you're using some of the inside to then validate and use your judgment, it can be very quick, and very simple, but it's a central feature of the whole process, and it's the ultimate data. It's the ultimate first person data. Did you talk to someone, are they there? That's great. Second question-- >> John: I'm not sure I agree-- >> Now we can go to the AI, I think, which is the other part of that question, which is the predictive analytics that's coming out of this now. So now we have predictive analytics are coming out of this, that are looking at this and saying, hey we can look at this a little differently and do a little more listening and see how people are really engaging. Do we have different search patterns? We're saying, do we see search patterns inside of a company that might say there really is a buying activity happening here? So, great way to look at it from a B2B perspective. Now that begins to change what's happening with the lead. >> So it sets priorities on who they should be calling. Do you still anticipate that that customer's going to get a phone call? >> Jennifer: Yes, yeah. >> Okay great, second question-- >> Hold on, I'm going to push back on that side. One little caveat I have. I agree with your statement, in the all-digital world, the users are self-serving, so you can imagine a scenario where there's no human involvement at all. I'm flying around the web, I'm surfing, I'm discovering, and I'm a person, and I'm into some marketplace, and I'm buying, I'm buying. No human touched me at all. I'm a qualified lead, but I get link-baited, or I get tracked into a discovery pattern that is completely digital. There's no human involvement in that. >> In a B2B sense, though, it's setting up the contract so someone can buy off a contract, for example. So the buying activity may be set up. >> John: Oh, you're talking about B2B? >> Yeah, B2B, always. >> Yeah, and B2C I think it's a totally different scenario. >> When was the last time you got a call from somebody at Amazon? >> John: Never. >> Yeah. So second question, and I think this a great point, it ties back to the conversation we had earlier about partners. The partner often is the weakest chain. Weakest link in the chain. In a world where digital is both informing the customer about what's good and what's bad, but also you're sharing data. You run the risk that that partner defines the quality of the entire chain. So you've got to start sharing more data, you got to start sharing. How is the role of data impacting and influencing the activity of bringing on, nurturing, measuring, ultimately managing, partnerships? >> I think you guys talked to Doug Kennedy yesterday. >> John: He's a pro. >> Yeah, he's fantastic. From a marketing standpoint, in the same way, we are going to continue to share with our partners. So if we're looking at the numbers of partners that we engage with. Could they be the weakest link? I would probably challenge you on that, I think our partners can be our strongest link in what we're doing, and are probably closer to our customers than we are, in marketing, by a long shot. So I count on my partners to bridge that gap that way, absolutely, but will we share data so we can absolutely have a better relationship, from a selling perspective? Yeah. >> First let me qualify, that when you have multiple partnerships involved, and typically a solution, a complex solution like the Marketing Cloud, what we're talking about, is going to have multiple partnerships involved. You may have three phenomenal partnerships, and one good partnership. But that one good partner could have an enormous influence over the three very good partners. That's what I mean. So the second thing is, what I'm talking about is, does Oracle compete, or does Oracle utilize its willingness to use data, especially through tooling like Marketing Cloud, and the customer experience cloud, as a way of making Oracle more attractive to partners? >> Yes, absolutely. We would absolutely want to do that. We haven't been doing a lot of it, but we are moving forward that way, absolutely. We want to have that engagement. Absolutely, we want to have that engagement with our partners. I think, especially in marketing, we don't want them to just buy technology. I mean, they need to buy the really great creativity that comes with our partners, as well. And so we have to share as much data as possible to create that great experience for our customers, through our partnerships. >> Jennifer, I want to thank you for coming on theCUBE. Appreciate you coming on, sharing the insight into your role as CMO from Oracle Marketing Cloud. Appreciate it. Just share what's up for next year. Will there be another, bigger Markies? What's on the agenda for in between this event and next year, what's the plans between event windows? What do you got going on, what's the plan? >> Okay, so, when the 12th annual Markies happens next year, roughly about this time. I think it's almost the same week. Which will be fantastic. In the meantime, we're going to do a lot of storytelling. You will hear a lot about the Markies nominees and Markies winners. We have some incredible stories to tell, it gives us a great opportunity, actually, to talk about the people. You know, for us, the heroes, that created all of these great stories for us. The technology. And how they were using the technology to really make all of this happen, and the partners that they were using. >> Yeah, Doug rolled out his new strategy to the partners, he's been seven weeks on the job, back to Oracle from Oracle in the old days. So he's a pro. >> Jennifer: Yeah, oh yeah, he's great. I worked with him at Microsoft. >> And integrating into the Oracle cloud, still part of the plan? >> Jennifer: Yes. >> Cool. >> Just staying connected with the rest of Oracle, absolutely, we are Oracle. >> We will keep track of the stories with you guys. So we'll be tracking them. >> We'll be telling them with you, all year. >> We'll be documenting them. Jennifer, thank you so much for coming on theCUBE. Congratulations on the very successful event. >> Thank you very much. >> We're looking forward to hearing the data stories that you're using, and expanding on that next time. It's theCUBE live here at Las Vegas, at Mandalay Bay, for Oracle Modern CX show, #modernCX, this is theCUBE, I'm John Furrier with Peter Burris, more after this short break.

>> Announcer: Live from Las Vegas, it's theCUBE, covering Oracle Modern Customer Experience 2017, brought to you by Oracle. (techno music) >> Okay, welcome back, we're live here at the Mandalay Bay, this is theCUBE's coverage of Oracle's Modern Customer Experience event, I'm John Furrier with SiliconANGLE and my co-host Peter Burris, Chief Researcher at Wikibon.com, and our next guest is Nick Edouard, who's the President CM of LookBookHQ, welcome to theCUBE. >> Thank you very much-- >> I was talking hockey, so I'm all distracted, I'm ruined, I'm disappointed, good to see you, before we get into it, it's all intelligent content, some of the things that are going on on this platform. But take a minute to talk about what your company does so we have some context. >> Yeah, absolutely. Well, we're a marketing technology company based in Toronto. We are a very big part of the Oracle Marketing App Cloud. And we kind of pick out where Oracle basically leaves off, where the Marketing Cloud stops. So a lot of what happens in the Marketing Cloud is focused on generating moments of attention and orchestrating that kind of buyer's journey. We're what happens in the destination side of the click. So we focus on the intelligent use of content. How do we deliver content? We think of every moment of attention as core to a marketer, that that really is their currency, the attention. We need to actually think that marketers, B2B marketers in particular, need to think a lot more like B2C, to think more like publishers. They're obsessed with attention. We shouldn't be satisfied with clicks or form fills. We need to actually be capitalizing on those moments of attention to make sure that if Bob is really my whitepaper, then I need to know that he's actually reading it. How do I then move him to the next best content asset, or give him a choice of content assets in session? So in essence what we do, what our company does, and we help companies like Thomson Reuters and ADP, in fact ADP is speaking on about half this afternoon, Polycom, Quintiles, whole host of big Eloqua customers. What we do is to help them take their content use model from something that looks and feels like Blockbuster, one size fits all, I don't know if actually Bob watched the video that he walked out of the shop with or the DVD, rather. And hence, why Blockbuster is RIP. And we take that and make it far more like Netflix. We make it far more on demand. >> Instrumented. >> Yeah, it's very much like-- >> This is interesting, the attention to impact is interesting, and you know, attention is essentially aided awareness, which is the Holy Grail in marketing, right? I mean, getting people to have some aid to a final destination or transaction of some sort. Am I getting that right? >> Yeah, very much so. I mean in the B2B side, obviously a marketer's job is to generate high quality marketing qualified leads and the real emphasis is on the Q, qualified. But companies like SiriusDecisions report that 94% of marketing qualified leads don't close. And that's a damning statistic for a B2B marketer. And our whole hypothesis is, and we're proving this to our customers is the reason why that happens is they're not qualified. Bob might have clicked on an e-mail, he might have filled in a form, et cetera, but did he read the content? We need to get an MQL to engage with five, seven, ten pieces of content to become a high quality MQL. And if we're only doing that one piece of content every engagement, that's really hard to do. No wonder our sales stat was this low. >> Well, we also need to understand that there's a progression people go through as they learn. It's not just that we want them to click on nine pieces of content-- >> Absolutely. >> As much as we want to see a pattern. So they've read this content and there was a suggestion made or an option provided and they then took the option, which is an even stronger suggestion that they've absorbed it, they've internalized it, and they're now part of a journey. So how does, I really like the idea that we're on the delivery side of the click, so you're, you know, we got all the stuff that's happening on the presenting things, the options, and then you're ensuring that when they click, whatever is being delivered is the highest quality-- >> Yeah. >> In terms of driving that customer forward in the journey, have I got that right? >> Yeah, absolutely. So if we take, if you take something which Eloqua's done a fantastic job, for example, of teaching their community of their customers about lead nurture and the typical nurture track looks and feels something like six emails over six weeks advertising content offer A, then content offer B, content offer C. And typically they're scheduled 10:00 a.m on a Thursday. Now this would be great, if we could get Bob and the other 12,000 people that we sent the email to to click on every single one of those emails. And the reality is, if I've got low, single-digit clickthrough rate, it's not going to happen. So what we do instead is, well, if they're engaging with A, why don't we give them B in the same session? While they're here, while we've done the hard work in getting their attention. And to your point, Peter, we're tracking that, and then we can start to make some really intelligent decisions going forward, as to, oh it worked, this is what resonated with Bob. This content asset's actually performed well. So we have two basic approaches to this. One is we let the marketer curate that experience, decide what A, B, C is et cetera. Or we actually use machine learning to auto-generate. If Bob arrives at A, what should B, C, and D et cetera be? So to that, it's very much like Netflix, where we kind of base our algorithm, it looks and feels very similar to Netflix's content discovery. That's great for anonymous or net new prospects in the top of your funnel, once you've figured out what they're actually interested in, then you can actually-- >> How does it work for you guys? Do you require registration, because content in these days has two flavors, free and gated. So there's always that dilemma, how much is free, you want some flow, tension, and then you go on conversion, gated, maybe premium content, how do you guys view that, is that part of or independent of what you do? >> No, it's a big part of what we do. And, one of the things, one of the capabilities that we have in our application is actually the ability to serve forms based on time and behavior. So, if they've engaged with three content assets, then maybe I actually want them to give me some more information or put up a hand. So we can make the form time-based, you can let them try before you buy, as it were, or you can hard gate it. We use Eloqua Forms in our application, so all that information flows as normal, as the work flows all get triggered, et cetera. It's very much up to the marketer how they want to use it, but one of the things, what we increasingly see amongst our customers, is the most successful do try to take the forms out of the way. Once we've got, once they are a member of our known database, how much more information do we really need them to volunteer, particularly with our ability to augment that contact record with other sources of data. Asking the marketer, I'm sorry, asking the prospect for it isn't always the most sensible thing to do. >> It's the free versus registration, but it's also new kinds of content. One of the things I like to say is software is content. Trying software, for example, is content. Or presenting an interactive experience that has a software element associated with it is a crucial part of gaging where people are. Are you able to start embedding your tooling directly into some of these more interactive elements and choose options within that interaction, or is it more options on static content? >> It could be both. So we are fundamentally content diagnostic. The best way to think about what we do is really as a very smart wrapper that goes around the content and then that can be embedded or it could be shared however you want, it could be used as a destination in its own right. So, sure if you want to kick something off with some former interactive content, absolutely. We also pull all different types of content together. So if your content is distributed or you want to use third party content, reviews, an expert in the space that's writing about something, and you pull that in and use that as a jumping off point. And what's really interesting is frequently it is the sequence of content that's the most interesting thing, not the behavior or engagement of a single asset. >> Right, and so part of the experience that sort of marketing is developing here translates into other disciplines within the business, for example, service. Come into respects, one of the things that you're presumably testing is is the prospect learning the right stuff that actually makes them more qualified. Well the same thing could be said for service, self-service. Is the person going through the right sequencing? Are you also seeing a demand for this kind of a product over on the service side and does that tie marketing back together? >> That's a great question. And one of the things that when we kind of officially launched our company in the application, three or four years ago now, we focused very much upon demand generation. Like we knew the problem that were helping themselves, but there are a handful of our customers, Cisco being one, actually, where actually at the moment, all they do is use us on the customer marketing side of things. How do I drive adoption, how do I drive cross-sell and upsell? I mean, all this is, we've got to remember that attention's what we're looking for and the way that we achieve that is using content as our primary asset as a marketer. The channels are important, the creative is important, but these really are content offers. Bob doesn't buy because he clicks on an email, Bob buys because he reads the stuff and watches the things. >> Peter: But it's attention and competence. >> Yeah. >> Right, so it's, Sy Syms used to say, I think it was Sy Syms, used to say that an informed customer is the best customer. You want a competent customer. >> Nick: Yeah. >> In many respects, the process of moving from the marketing qualified an MQL to an SQL it is, is that customer competent enough to actually engage with a sales person or somebody else to do something. >> That is spot on. So what we're seeing across our customer base is improvement in conversion rates from MQL to SAL for example. So McAfee, Intel Security, now McAfee again, they've seen a three times increase in the MQL to SAL conversion rates. Rockwell Automation has actually made a 300x return on their investment in us in nine months by passing higher qualified leads to the sales team. I think they generated $250 million in additional net-- >> Peter: Rockwell? >> Rockwell, yeah. ADP, that's doing our customer case study this afternoon, a 3x increase in marketing influence opportunities, and a 6x increase in closed won marketing opportunities. So more, but to your point here, better qualified. We know that these people are actually read our stuff, therefore the conversation is easier. They are actually generally qualified. Carrier's been proving that out by actually 2.4 times faster through the funnel to MQL, and then their ACP is 2.3 times higher. Why? Because they're not getting the pushback in the sale cycle because the prospect has self-educated and they see the value now. >> Nick, I want to get your thoughts on something that's involved in our, we're in a independent media company and we don't really have any ads on our site at all, but we have a sponsorship model, we have data. But it's interesting, I'm reading an Ad Age article right now that says for the first time ever, digital has surpassed TV. I mean, I can remember-- >> Wow. back in the days, it's always this little slice and it's getting bigger and bigger. But for the first time, desktop and mobile ad revenue surpasses TV for the first time, 22% upswing from the previous year. So, digital ads, some are calling it native advertisement, whatever the hell that means, is a key part of the attention cycle. So the role that a marketer needs to take with channels as important, and a lot of content marketers are failing these days that we talk to because they're not being authentic with their message and the users can smell-- >> Right. >> You know, non-relevant content. Some are clever and make it link-baitish and some are actually really super smart and actually do authentic content. But, so that's kind of progression. That's an evolution in the industry, but from a data standpoint, there are platforms out there, like SiliconANGLE and others, that have an opportunity for impression and attention in real time. How does your system, how does your clients, and how do people deal with that? Is there a way, is there mechanisms? >> So we have two large publisher customers that run multiple different properties and have very large communities they're looking to monetize and they're all part of the Oracle Marketing Cloud, they use their tech stat, and we're helping them in two ways. Firstly, kind of from an advertising thing, like high value added, advertising solutions, for want of a better description. How do I help to monetize my community, not just pass to HP, if they're the advertiser, here's a list of names of people that filled in the form. Here's actually people that are engaging with your content. And it's a mix of our editorial and your content to tell a story. And then one of the things that we're starting to explore for them is actually far more on the native side of things, actually being embedded as... >> John: An asset? >> Essentially, as a native ad in its own right, which can kind of get launched. That's something which I'm keen to explore further. And at the heart of it is, it's probably an even bigger problem on the ad tech side that it is on the martech side, but people like Gary Vaynerchuk are starting to ask the ad tech industry, we need a dose of common sense here, was the marketing consumed? And that's something which I am fascinated with, we're starting to see that we can actually identify by channels. This channel might, well this particular display provide the SP may have generated, you say, oh I don't know, 1,000 clicks in the last 30 days. Did it do anything? Did my-- >> A lot of times valuable. >> Exactly. >> You know at the end of the day, to sustain attention, you have to be valuable. I think John, we're talking really about a continuum from impression to attention to competence. We want to work with competent buyers because it cuts down the time that we spend on it, it reduces the risk that we're wasting our time, and quite frankly, it's a lot easier to work with someone who's really engaged and wants to succeed with whatever we're offering. >> It's also, he mentioned the publisher angle, I was thinking also from the customer angle, because I'm a customer and a marketer, I'm going to be looking for mechanisms to go to. The publisher wants better monetization of their communities, so have you seen any patterns in the business that could be a use case for helping customers operationalize, and we had great success with our business in the sense of saying, hey, we're engaging users, so that's good, you should join in with us at the right time not, you know, try to do it six hours too late, right, it's like being late to the party, right. So that real time piece is really super important. >> For sure. We've actually just changed the way that we're integrating with Eloqua to speed that up. So now we've actually moved to using web hooks as part of the integration and using their map form processing capabilities. Because it's faster, it's more extensive, it's more scalable. It means we can get very rich in content engagement data into someone's hands faster and better. And, I think, what is it? 50% of people buy from the first person that shows up, so being able to do that is critically important. >> Member-based communities are getting a lot of trends, traction these days. Some call, you know, subscribers, buyer walls, but member-based. >> So something we're starting to look at is how do we actually start to auto-generate the content experience, yeah, around kind of key accounts or topics, et cetera. >> Fascinating conversation, Nick, appreciate it, coming on. >> Nick: My pleasure. >> LookBookHQ, check 'em out, doing intelligent content, scaling content, looking at data, congratulations on your success, look forward to following up with you on some of the native advertising solutions that we, me need, that you need and congratulations, Oracle's certainly taking advantage of it. >> See you next time. Cheers. >> Thanks for coming out. Be back with more live coverage, I'm John Furrier, Peter Burris after this short break. (techno music)

>> Announcer: Live from Las Vegas, it's the Cube! Covering Oracle Modern Customer Experience 2017. Brought to you by Oracle. (light, upbeat music) >> Hey, welcome back everyone. We're here live in Las Vegas at the Mandalay Bay. This is the Cube. Silicon Angle's flagship program, where we go out to the events and extract the noise. I'm John Furrier with my co-host Peter Burris, Head of Research at Silicon Angle, Wikibon.com. And our next guest is Steve Krauss, Group Vice President of Product Management for Oracle Marketing Cloud. Great to see you again, welcome back to the cube. >> Thank you John. >> So a lot of great announcements today. I want to just jump into it. First of all, you've got a great job. You've got the product side. You've been busy this year, so congratulations. Some announcements I want to get your reaction to that we saw today. The Adaptive Intelligence, love that. I love how it speaks to the data in motion, real time needs of applications. >> Peter: 150 milliseconds >> 150 milliseconds boot shot. We got that on the queue, so it's on the record. It's going to be good, it's going to be good. And also the chat bot thing, which big fan of chat bots as an illustration of what's coming. Not so much as chat bots by themselves, but it does speak to the new user interactions, the new interfaces, new ways to notify and inform as part of that experience. This is some heavy tech, so I want, the first question is AI. Everyone seems to be washing thereselves. Oh, we've got A.I. >> Yeah, Yeah. >> Well that's just predictive analytics, that's been done before. >> Steve: M-Hmm. But Augmented Intelligence or Artificial Intelligence and Neural Networks have been around for a while. What are you guys doing specifically on the product side? Because this is super exciting announcements, to make Adaptive Intelligence work, what's the key tech? >> Steve: Yeah, Well there's a couple things. In fact, I think often when people talk about AI, they want to go immediately to the algorithms and think that somehow that is the only secret sauce. And the reality is, you know, like a lot of things in the world of computing, you put bad data into one of these things and you get bad results out. You put good data, you get good results. You put better data, that's when things start getting really interesting. And so one of the neat things about the marketing version of Adaptive Intelligence is called Adaptive Intelligence Offers, is that it has the ability to not just take the data that the marketer has, but it can reach into something called the Oracle Data Cloud and get additional data to drive better signal into the AI algorithms to make them run better. So we're bringing a data advantage to the table, and then probably as you've heard from the AI apps people, there's already a heritage at Oracle for building these real time decisioning systems. And so you've got these algorithms that are real time, that can adapt every click, update themselves, make the models go better. If you've tracked data mining for a long time, data mining contests, honestly the winner in second place is usually a very small margin. We think really that data piece is going to be the thing that's going to be the biggest differentiator. Because there's a lot of smart people with really great adaptive algorithms. So we're bringing both to the table. >> John: Okay, data or algorithms, there's always been the chicken in the egg syndrome. >> Yeah. >> Is it algorithms or the data, data or algorithms? A lot of people are voting in the crowd, that conversation we're involved in, data trumps algorithms. >> Steve: I would vote that way as well. I think there's far greater variance in what you can do with data if you collect it in a smart way. And in the case of Oracle, we've assembled this massive data cloud. It's not something someone else can casually do. The reality is with a lot of the algorithms, Google's open sourcing a lot of tents are slow, and so we'll see. I mean, it's not like we are chumps with the algorithms. We take that stuff very seriously, but the data itself just make everything more better. >> John: But the right tool for the right job is the same premise, you articulate for algorithms. Pick your tool, pick your algorithm, but if you don't have the data, you're SOL anyway. >> Peter: As you've mentioned John, the algorithms have been around a long time. What's new is that we now have so many more data sources, so we have data for the first time. >> John: And massive compute. >> And now we have massive compute that can be set up easily, so we actually do something with it. I want to point out, I want to test ya on this, we had Jack Berkowitz on honorly which is the source the 150 millisecond. Jack noted that Oracle aspires to be able to have the right answer anywhere in the world inside 150 milliseconds. Which is an amazing, amazing vision, and for most people who think of the cloud, they think of data flying all over the place. >> Steve: Yeah. For you guys, Jack said something very interesting, and I want to, as a proof point, Jack said, "Yeah but sometimes you don't have to move the data." >> Steve: Yes. >> And one of the advantages that you guys have, I think, which is what I want to test you on, is that by having a relatively complete, installed set of capabilities, you have that primary person data-first person data, and there is an advantage to not having to move it. Could you just articulate that a little bit? What does that... >> John: Is that true? >> First of all, is that true, and what kind of possibilities does that open up for Oracle and Oracle customers if it is true? >> Steve: Well yeah, I think you are onto something. Oracle obviously has the long heritage of having many enterprises and government's data in Oracle systems already in the first place. And those investments have been made. And so when you start talking about, "Let's add to that, let's add applications like Adaptive Intelligence offers." Well instead of saying we have to do these massive data transfers it may well be the case at this point that that data is resident an Oracle data center in the first place, and of course Oracle owns its own data centers. These are all world wide, so there's a bunch of advantages to the Oracle scale here. And one of them is that we don't have to move the mountain. Right? The mountain is already in the Oracle database, and we can go and put these services next to it that allow an ease of integration. And John, we were talking about this before we started here. It matters to make this stuff work fast when its a year long project to see if maybe its going to fly. That's no longer a reasonable thing, and so agility matters. Having the data where you already need it is great. >> John: Well and also the trend is system of record database and mountains of corpuses of stuff that you can tap into which you are pointing out, but also, I believe that the winner of all this will use a term that's used in the cloud industry: Standing Up Apps. >> Steve: Uh-huh. And I think that one of the things that's very clear to me if you look at the SAS marketplace where it's, and I think Mark Hurd said this, "There is no past, it's a SAS." So, in infrastructure, so and you kind of see in the separation, you have to have stuff done in weeks-apps. And I mean literally, not months, weeks. >> Steve: Yeah. >> And I would argue that minutes become it. So with that as a backdrop, how do you look at microservices? Because now, if look at, out of the move the data, so I might want to compose something and send it somewhere else, and move an app to the edge of the network or have a retail lab or do something in email. So now I can compose an app from data here and then move it so that brings up orchestration, microservices, and some of these cloud native concepts. How do you guys deal with that? >> Steve: Yeah, well let me give you the marketing part of this in terms of the Oracle Marketing Cloud. Because there are so many parts of Oracle, they have their own versions. For us, one of the big things we want is to have this concept called Orchestration that says if I'm a marketer, I should be able to reach my customer wherever he or she welcomes my messaging. These days, it no longer is just email. These are people who getting mobile messaging, they're potentially interacting with things like chat bots, it's become very fragmented. And so what Oracle wants to do is provide these Orchestration systems that allow apps plug in some that we build, but others that third parties build. So that as this complexity increases and there's more ways you can communicate, we can keep up with this in an agile way either ourselves or with others who do this really well. So that's one of the theories. >> John: It's the marketing cloud plus it's broader Oracle suite-cloud suite. >> Steve: Beautiful, yes. It's the Oracle Cloud suite which includes Oracle CX. It also includes something that we call the Oracle Marketing App Cloud, which is this third party ecosystem. Because we're Oracle, we have a lot of customers, we have hundreds of companies that say, "Yeah, I would love my stuff to get in the hands of Oracle's customer base." The way I'm going to do it is I'm going to make a turn key integration. So that when they buy it from me, they can just request turn it on for Oracle, and it will, again as you said, "Don't make it weeks, make it minutes." It's minutes when the integration is already done. >> So software business Larry Ellison, founder of Oracle, still around one of the legends of the industry. Larry, if you're watching, you're still hanging around, taking names and kicking butt. Started off with shrink wrap software, then download on the internet, then you SAS, now you have SAS plus coming on. Which is smarter apps, smarter customer experience. So it begs the question on this next journey for customers, it's going to be really cloud all the way right. >> Steve: Yeah. >> So you're going to have to have this cloud component, you guys have a strategy there. Isn't Oracle moving away from, a smarter CX's data by the way, so Oracle's no longer a software company. You're a data company. >> Steve: M-hmm. >> Data is eating the world. Yeah no, software is eating the world, which Marc Andreessen wrote, now data is eating software. >> Steve: Uh-huh. How do you view that because some people say that software is never going to go away. But data is becoming much more of a front burner issue, vis-a-vis just like software was in software development. >> Steve: Sure, well I think some of this is just semantics as where software leave off and data begin. But a great example is the thing you talked about earlier, Adaptive Intelligence, where part of the power of this, what makes it different from what you can get elsewhere is that it comes with data included that is different data then is available from anyone else. And so, in fact, you know Oracle, when it made the big investment in the data cloud, people I think thought, "What are you doing, you just set up a vending machine for data? Is that what Oracle's going to be about?". And the answer there is no. I mean there is a good data business, but where it gets profound is when that strategic asset, all that data, all of the sudden enables new products like Adaptive Intelligence Offers to be fundamentally different than came before. >> John: It's an enabling technology. >> It can be absolutely, yes. >> John: Data is enabling. It brings to life apps and then offers new apps opportunities. That's what you said. >> Steve: Yes, and marking data very much is the fuel for the marketing engine. So you get richer fuel, you will get richer results. >> John: Alright, so we're getting down the weeds here, so bottom line, let's up level it up for the person that's watching and saying, "Hey, I got the message." >> Steve: Yeah. >> "Data is super important." >> Steve: Yeah. Bottom line, what is happening this week here in Modern CX that's important for the person that has to scratch their head, isn't inside the ropes in the industry? What's going off of their world? What should they be thinking about? How should they be planning their life moving forward in this new modern era of marketing? >> Steve: Yeah, so I think the big things announced this week definitely involves things like a new level of being able to do recommendations of offers and products using the Oracle Data Cloud. It involves conversational user interfaces such as the new chat bot's platform. And in the case of the marketing cloud, we've got a series of products that have come out that allow a greater degree of self service for both marketers as well as their stakeholders like sales people. So how does the sales person get the output of a marketing automation system? Sales people aren't necessarily known for assiduously going and looking for marketing assets. We've got some new things around, for example, content portals. We've got some new things around features that let people be more autonomous in getting their own work done rather than needing to go to some other system somewhere. >> John: Awesome. And the customer we had on this morning from Royal Philips, really was the head of CRM. So customer relationship management is not a new concept obviously, you guys have a big chunk of business there in the software side of it. But customer relationship management, that is marketing cloud now >> Steve: M-Hmm. >> and customer experiences. So you're starting to see that really go to the next level. What's the big take away for the person at home? Watching in their businesses as they go on their journeys. How should they be thinking about the customer relationship? >> Peter: Well, that's a big question. I think for a CRM oriented person who maybe started out in something like database marketing, where you had a list, and you somehow try to learn about people on the list, that world has gotten a lot bigger now. Where it used to be you learned about someone once they became your customer. These days, though various advertising technologies, you can learn about people you don't yet know, but you know of their existence. And you can start creating that relationship, hoping to draw them in maybe with ads to the point where they do self identify. So there's this whole front end to CRM that is showing up in ad tech with things like DMP's-Data Management Platforms, that solve the same problem, but do it in these whole other realms. >> John: And new channels. Adaptive Intelligence, I think, is an awesome position. Love that Adaptive Intelligence Apps, Apps being stood up on a platform. You guys have it. >> Steve: Yes. >> Where's the next level? Take us through, you run the product rode map. You know, share with the folks, what's on the road maps? What should they be expecting more from Oracle, where are you going to be doubling down, where's the work you filling the white spaces, and what should they expect of the next year? >> Steve: Sure. Well, at least in my key note this morning which again focused on marketing, we had four themes. One was intelligence, we already talked about that one quite a bit. Another is mobile, and that's not just mobile like chat bots, but it's actually mobilizing the experience of our customers' customers for the marketing. So example of this, we have a product called the Eloqua which lots of email can be sent. They have a new email designer that inherently builds responsively designed emails. So those are the ones you open up on your phone that look good, you open on the desktop they look good. That's how it all should work. Unfortunately, it's not for a lot of folks today. So just having that be part of the tooling, big deal. So that's the mobile part. We talked a bit about self service, that's theme number three. And the fourth theme is actually a bit of a sleeper, it's about taking another pass through some of the core technologies we already have that people use the most, and being able to find... >> John: Like what? >> Maximizer a test and targeting a personalization tool. Used by a lot of our customers, the fundamental thing you do inside maximizer is you live in a campaign designer. And it allows you to adjust various parts of a webpage for testing, targeting, and personalization. We've got an entirely new way to do that that's based on an analysis of what do people do when they use this and how can we shave off some number of clicks per session? How can we make it less error prone when people are deciding what to do? How can we make more performant? You talked about 150 milliseconds, how about if we just eliminate the save button altogether so that anything you do automatically saves in the background. You don't have to reload anything. That kind of stuff comes from watching people use the product and realizing, wow, they're in there all day long. If we can just make all of those things a little better, over a course of a year, that's huge. >> John: So basically, we're looking at the core jewels and the platform and making it simpler, reducing the steps to do things, just end up being more efficient in some of the proven tools. >> Steve: Exactly, and in the speech this morning, we said, "Hey look, we don't talk about this enough." >> John: That's not a sleeper that's good. >> The tendency is to come out here, and we all want to talk about everything that's new like AI and the people who are our actual customers. They're seeing pearls rain from the sky when all of the sudden something that took them 12 minutes to do at a time now takes eight, and they do that 2000 times a year. >> John: I always say it's a great business model by, you know, making things simpler, reducing the time to do things and steps >> Steve: Yeah >> and making things intuitive and easy to use. Which it sounds like you're doing, but now let's talk about the glamor side of it. Because I think AI and chat bots speaks to the future, what other glam do you see happening out there right now? Obviously, AI is hot right now. >> Steve: Yeah, I think the other glam at this point is a little more speculative at least as it applies to my area with marketing like Augmented Reality, Virtual Reality, and so on. There's also internet of things. Certainly that world is changing. There are more devices of various types that can talk to the network. We've got a customer, you may be familiar with it, a sleep number bed company, the ones that have the bed where you can pick your number. That's actually a connected device, and so there's some interesting things that can be done there with careful discretion about what data you're collecting. But when we started thinking about, incidentally, so many things that in the past used to be a inert objects are generating data. That can feed into various applications whether it's marketing or other areas. >> John: And more data's coming in, it's just not stopping. >> And it's great for Oracle because if Oracle is good at anything it's good at dealing with very large scale data. That's been the business for a long time, and the trend won't change. There will continue to be larger and larger scale data. >> Steve, final point, what's the theme of the show this year besides the messaging that you have? What do you seeing that's happening here that's evolving? What's the top story here? >> Steve: Well, you know we did a customer advisory board meeting here for the marketing cloud, and I think if I were going to ask the customers what their top story is, I think their top story is they themselves want to continue becoming more customer centric. Everybody talks about it. Well of course, we should be that way. But so many companies grew up doing things like focusing on the thing we're selling, they're being offer centric. And so organizationally changing, using the technologies like we have so they can create the kinds of experiences, we call them the connected customer experience that they themselves want to have. It's a bit challenge, and so their permissions are to say transform ourselves to be from the tech down to the organizational incentives, truly customer centric. >> John: Steve Krauss, Group Vice President of Product Management Oracle Marketing Cloud. Great to see you. Thanks for sharing the insight of the real road map and all the exciting stuff happening here and your clean up this morning, congratulations. I'm John Furrier and Peter Burris. More live coverage coming up here at the Mandalay Bay in Las Vegas with the Cube after this short break. (live upbeat music)

>> Announcer: Live, from Las Vegas. It's theCUBE. Covering Oracle Modern Customer Experience 2017. Brought to you by Oracle. >> Okay. Welcome back. And we're live here in Las Vegas at the Mandalay Bay Convention Center. This is SiliconANGLE's theCUBE. This is our flagship program where we go out to the events and extract the signal from noise. I'm John Furrier, the co-founder of SiliconANGLE, with Peter Burris, head of research at SiliconANGLE's wikibon.com team. Our next guest is Marta Federici, who's with Royal Philips, who, head of CRM. So CRM, Customer Relationship Management. The old way to do things, now transitioning to modern customer experience. Welcome to theCUBE. You look fabulous. >> Thank you. >> John: Thanks for joining us. >> Thank you for inviting me, pleasure to be here. >> Great to have you on. Because you know, one of the things that we're really focused on with our research that Peter's doing, is the practitioners. How they're thinking about executing the customer experience. And on our reporting side, we're seeing huge reports that these platforms are providing great value. But at the edge, the customers' expectations are higher than the value that the platforms are delivering. >> Marta: Yeah. >> We're seeing with fake news, we're seeing it all over the place. People want authentic experiences, relevant to them. This is the whole purpose. >> Marta: Yeah, yeah. Exactly. >> It's the people factor. >> Marta: Yeah. (laughs) >> That's what you're going to be on stage tomorrow morning. >> Tomorrow morning at 9 a.m. Yeah, indeed. So, I would say to be authentic, to be genuine toward your customers, you always need to be relevant to them, you need to listen, you need to learn. You need to know what they need. You need to be ahead of what can they possibly do. You need to start. You need to focus on the insides. You have to really connect all the dots. I think one of the biggest challenges that we have as a company, but I think can be a shared challenge with many other companies across the globe, is that sometimes you not always have the opportunity to break the silence within a large organization. And work really horizontally. And this is something that we really strive to do. Especially when we have specific projects, or innovation-related project, innovation-driven technology project as well. So we try to build a multifunctional team that really can work hand-in-hand, together, to deliver the higher ROI, the better results, the best customer engagement. And be always relevant when it's needed for our customers, for our consumers, and even for our patients, by the way. >> So let's talk about your team then, and how your team fits within Royal Philips. Describe how you've constituted it, how you've put it together, and how it connects into some of the other functions necessary to drive customer experience. >> Yeah, so by the way, I'm very proud of my team, I would say as a start. We, I mean, I build this team in the past three years. And my team is composed in a particular way. I have a portion of the team that is focusing on business-to-consumer CRM, a portion of the team on business-to-business CRM, and then I have, I would say, two layers in between. One is about CRM technology that spans across both domains. And one is about insights. I would say all of them work together. And I really like the fact that, also, the business-to-consumer and the business-to-business team, they can enrich each other. Sharing challenges and really learning from one another. When I think about my, I would say, my product owner, actually we work very, very closely through his team, with the IT department on one end. Because also we own. >> This is the technology person. >> Exactly. The technology side of the story, I would say. Because we own, for example, the market information tooling, Eloqua, that we leverage for any additional campaign management activity on both B2C and B2B. As well as the identity system, et cetera. And, on the other hand, through the insight team, we also work very, very much closely together with enterprise information management teams. So any team who works with databases, with reporting, with advanced analytics, and predictive analytics. So through them and through the more business side of my team, we can build quite nice stories for our experts. >> So you got a B2B practice, a B2C practice, supported by technology and analytics. >> Technology and insights. Exactly, exactly. That's the structure of the team. >> How did you build the team? I mean, talk a little bit about, we talked about the customer journey and CRM and related technologies needing to intercept and serve customers as they seek their solutions and the value propositions that they want to build. How did this play out at Philips? How did it, where did it start, how did it evolve over time to get to where you are? And obviously at some point and time we're going to ask ya, "And where do you think it's going to go?" >> (laughs) Sure. >> But how has it gotten to where it is? >> Sure. I would say, when I started, I had a white, a blank page, a totally blank page. And I started hiring some experts in key areas. Actually, the first expert I hired, where on the technology side. Because we were supposed to, to deploy Eloqua first, for the first time, on a global level. So that was the first piece of the puzzle, together with the insights team, and also with some key expert in terms of B2C and B2B business domains. So then I started realizing, Okay, but this structure needs to make some sense. They need support, they need help. We enable as a, I would say, CRM, a corporate team, any countries across the globe, and any businesses, B2C or B2B. So we deal with a lot of stakeholders. We have multiple stakeholders, and we run and manage multiple projects at the same time. So let's say I started then figure it out, Okay, what are the talents that I need on a business perspective to really make sure that we design the right journeys, that we build the right campaigns, that we can interpret the data properly? So piece by piece I started really filling out all the boxes that I had in my mind. And now, I think this organization is really working. So the team is very motivated, very committed, very passionate. And in the past month, actually also recently, we deliver quite some best practices. So yeah, award-winning best practices. >> Marta, talk about the learnings. You're in a transformation, and CRM certainly is important as you move and transform into the modern era of relationship management with customers. What is the learnings that you have taken away that you can share with folks that are either on a different part of the journey path than you are, or just anything that you would like to share, that would be helpful. >> Yeah, yeah. So when I think about, also what Laura Ipsen, for example, talked about this morning, the marketing heroes. I think, technology is very-- >> Now, Laura Ipsen is the, runs all the modern marketing products that you're holding. >> Yes, exactly. >> She's the head honcho. She's the head honcho, as they say. (laughs) >> SVP of Oracle Marketing Cloud. So when I listen to her, this morning, she was talking about those marketing evils. Also, while talking to Time Warner CMO, and I think in order to start, and to succeed in any transformation, any additional transformation that you want to carry forward with, you really need the right talents, with the right attitudes, with the right skills, with the right mindset, by the way. And I think on one end technology can really help you, can really be a game-changer, a key enabler, but without the right people on your company's side, and also on your vendor's side, that work together with you on a daily basis, you can not achieve great results. >> And what about the partners? You know, Oracle obviously has a good team. We've been following them now for multiple years. It's our eighth year covering Oracle. We've seen the transformation within Oracle. But also they have partners too. I mean, do you interface with them? And what's your advice for folks that are trying to sort their partnership component out with the vendor? >> Yeah, let's say one particularity of my team and what we do everyday, is that we work daily with Oracle and we also like to embrace any other partners that they suggest us to work with. For example, in a recent campaign we beat a huge Black Friday best practice for our North American market and we also scale it globally, achieving great results, and we partnered up on one end with Oracle. Strategic services, expert services, but also with Return Path. Which is one of their, also, I would say, preferred partners. To make of this campaign something really, really good and to ensure a very good broadcasting performance. On the other hand, we also partnered with some of their additional partners that can be related to some apps specifically or some talents that they have internally. And no matter if it's about consultancy, strategy, technical expert. So, yeah, we're pretty much open, very open-minded. And very, I would say we embrace any inputs, any good inputs. Also because, on one end, what is important for us is to share the challenge that we have with our vendors, with our partners, and of course asking for help. But at the same time, we like to onboard them. To make them understood about what's the real challenge. How do we feel about it? We need to have a common sense of purpose. If we really want to, I mean, to take a project to the next level and make it a success. >> So you implement these tools, and put these relationships in place, the productivity and the effectiveness of marketing goes up. >> Marta: Yep. >> How is, therefore, the role of marketing starting to change within Philips as a basis of these new competencies and these new capabilities that, presumably, the rest of the organization finds valuable? >> Let's say, Philips has a great mission. So, we-- >> And one that's transforming, has gone through a lot of change over the last few years. >> Marta: Exactly. >> Pretty successfully, you might add. >> Exactly, exactly. We are a health technology company. We employ 70,000 people across the globe, across a hundred countries. Our mission is to improve people life. Through meaningful innovation that matters to our consumers and to our customers. So I would say this is a huge challenge. We say that we would like to improve three billions people life by 2025. It's a huge mission. And how are we going to do that? Through innovation, through one-on-one customer relationships. So, and this is where, I mean, we also recently, we started focusing more and more on our customer, we started being truly obsessed. No matter if we talk about consumers on B2C domain, or if we talk about customer. So customer obsession is really at the core of any of our marketing activity right now. And it will be even more. By the way, in the past six-to-nine months, we also had the opportunity to have CRM, as well as our, I would say, shop capabilities, becoming core marketing capabilities. Of course this come with a lot of pressure, a lot of, I would say, attention, also-- >> Some sleepless nights. >> Exactly, exactly. But it is quite exciting. And we also would like to continue to invest on our connected proposition. So we also build products, which are connected to apps, and what's the best way to engage? CRM. So what's the best tactics, or strategy, or how can we build a consistent and long-lasting engagement that delivers the higher results and the higher ROI? So that's, I mean, CRM can be really a game-changer there. >> So Philips is quite legendary. And perhaps because of it's Dutch heritage, 'cause the Dutch had to engage a lot of people from a lot of different backgrounds and a lot of places to make their businesses great. And Philips is quite legendary at being responsive to and responsible, responsive to and responsible to a lot of different people on a global basis. How are some of those cultural values being amplified inside Philips as you bring more of this customer obsession to bear? >> Yeah. Yeah. So let's say, Philips is at quarter in the Netherlands. And in the Netherlands, I would say, Dutch people are always ready to listen. You need to always find a sort of consensus before you can move forward with any strategy, or with any project or program. You always listen also to any inputs. Because you want to really make sure that your idea, on one hand, is agreed, on the other hand, is re-analyzed into the least of the details. So what we do is is really try to understand all perspectives, because any point of view can enrich an initial idea that you have. And I would say our business is also so diverse. If you look at all the business units that we have, and sometimes can be difficult to understand Philips as a whole, but in the end every single of our business units really incorporate together to the greater goal of innovation that matters in improving people lives. So you will find this through any of our stories, any of the products that we deliver, that we build, also together with our customers. So I would say, Philips is, has many, but also, can be also be just one at same time. >> It's transforming, as GE says, you know, they went to bed an industrial company one night and woke up a software analytics company. >> Marta: (laughs) Yeah. >> That's really what's happening. >> Exactly. And, you know what, we are also focusing on delivering services and delivering information. Because what we also strive to do, is to work within the health continuum from prevention, to diagnosis, to care, also home care. And this is what we are really aiming to do, at this stage, also, establishing a connection in between a consumer that can also be a patient on the other side, and delivering the right information to the hospital to take care of them. So in this health continuum story it's really a game-changer, I think, within, I would say, a health tech industry. >> And having the data is critical. Marta, final question for you. Take a minute to share what's exciting here at this event. Why is the modern customer experience show this year so important? There's a big buzz around this platform. There's a big buzz about the early days we're in with modern customer experience being thought differently with AI and seeing this beginning trajectory. What should people get excited about? What's the most important thing in your mind? >> I think the first thing I noticed while coming here, okay, first of all, this year the event is a new vibe. I think this event is even more inspiring than the past edition that I have been to. And I think the fact that they renamed also the event into Modern Customer Experience instead of Modern Marketing Event is really a signal that something is changing. Also on Oracle side. And this is what I notice at the first sight and in the end, when yesterday, during Mark Hurd, I would say, keynote, opening keynote, he mentioned the artificial intelligence, I was pretty pleased to see this focus through their, I would say, app environment. Where if you looked at the services that this app is going to be linked to, you won't see the marketing cloud anymore. You see the CX. So it's all about the CX in the end. And this is, in the end, the core. >> They're bringing it together. >> Marta: Yeah, they're bringing it together. >> Well, the technology is the marketing cloud, the outcome is the CX. >> Marta: Yeah. Exactly. So and I think they are going to focus more and more on that. Also, I mean, technology-wise it doesn't make sense to have silos anymore. >> Yeah, what does this mean for you? How does, when you see that, what's the impact to your world? >> I can be only happy. Because we are always challenged to look at the CX, to start with the CX, to produce an even more announced one. So if I look at the opportunity this can bring to us, I can only be very, very positive. Also the focus on AI is truly important. The focus on data, also this morning, Laura Ipsen was talking a lot about the importance of insight and data and how this is going to be a game-changer. And also this morning with Mark Hurd at breakfast, he mentioned data is the new currency. No way. We were also discussing a bit, Okay, third party data, who are the biggest player? And he said, of course, Facebook and Google. (laughs) Of course. But still, the value that every company should build along is owning his own data. Every company should really care to build an extremely good database to start with. Because anyone can have access to third-party data, but this is, can be just an easy escape, easy or fast. >> So you feel-- >> It's first-person data that's going to determine your differentiation. >> Marta: That is the game-changer, for sure. >> And you're excited by the, by Mark Hurd's comments this morning at breakfast. >> Definitely. (laughs) >> He's been on theCUBE, oddly enough. >> Which means he's now excited too. (laughter) >> Mark, if you're watching, we need you back on theCUBE, he's good. He gets the marketplace, he understands the pulse. But he's also a data-driven guy. >> Yeah, pretty much. >> You know, he's old school like us, but Marta, thank you so much for coming on theCUBE. Marta Federici, Head of CRM. Thank you so much, for sharing your perspective and insight and data with us. >> Thank you, thank you. >> This is theCUBE, I'm John with Peter Burris. We'll be back with more from Oracle Modern Customer Experience after this short break. (electronic music)

>> Announcer: Live from Las Vegas, it's theCUBE, covering Oracle Modern Customer Experience 2017, brought to you by Oracle. >> Okay, welcome back, everyone. We're live here at the Mandalay Bay Convention Center for the Oracle Modern Customer Experience conference. This is theCUBE's special coverage. I'm John Furrier, joined with my co-host, Peter Burris, head of research at Wikibon.com. Our next guest is Roland Smart, Vice President of Social and Community at Oracle and also the author of The Agile Marketer book, which we'll get into in a minute. He'll hold it up so you can make sure, it's also available on audio books, you can hold it up, go ahead. The Agile Marketer: Turning Customer Experiences into Your Competitive Advantage. Roland, welcome to theCUBE, good to see you. >> Thanks so much for the invite. >> Great to have that book there because it sets the table for what we want to talk about which is we love cloud, we've been loving dev-ops since the cloud hit the scene years and years ago, but now that it's gone mainstream, it's going into marketing, you're seeing marketing cloud, it really opens up this notion of agile and changing things, modern platforms, the replatforming. We heard Mark Heard on the keynote, we've heard through our interviews. There's a replatforming going on in the enterprise across the board, and so it's super exciting. I know that you're also doing some cool stuff, modernization inside Oracle, employing Oracle cloud for Oracle, it's pretty comprehensive, so let's start there. What's your role at Oracle? It's kind broad, social and community, which is cutting edge and being operationalized in real time. What are you working on? >> Yeah, so, I've worn a couple different hats in my tenure at Oracle. I've been with the company for about four years. I was one of those marketers who came into the company through an acquisition of a social technology company, and so, I ended up landing in the corporate marketing group. I've, as I said, done a couple different things. I've led the Oracle Technology Network for a while, I was involved in establishing and upgrading our corporate social programs, but right now, I'm really focused on some modernization initiatives, and those are very connected to our inbound marketing practice. That means taking some of these amazing solutions that are part of the Oracle marketing cloud and implementing them for the corporate marketing group. The ones that are really core to my focus are, because it's an inbound marketing focus it's Compendium, which is our content publishing platform. Of course, we also integrate that with Eloqua for subscription and there are other adjacent technologies that we're going to use to improve the service, things like Maximizer, which will allow us to iterate and do testing and improve the service over time. And of course, integrating into all the other major parts of the corporate marketing stack, which includes a DMP and a customer experience database and all the rest. >> So, here at the show, you're seeing marketing cloud being broader defined because it's the customer on a digital life cycle, no analog, I mean, from inception to the moment of truth the experience is digital. It changes things a bit. What is your observation that you could point to as you look at these changes that're going on, tweaks here and radical changes there, what's the big shift, what's the digital value in that digital journey of a customer when it comes to marketing? I mean, it seems that marketing's involved in all touch points. >> It is, I mean, I think, sorry, I think you're talking a little bit about the fact that digital transformation is kind of dominating the marketer's consciousness at the moment. We're very, very focused on really transitioning the experiences that we deliver and to engage with customers and to a digital environment, and that means that there's two side of that. Of course, there's the technology side, but there's also the practices side. I think that a lot of the conversation to date has really been dominated by just an incredible proliferation of marketing technology, the Martech stack, right, is growing at an incredible pace. One of the things that I see, for example-- >> Peter: It's almost daunting, it's huge. >> Rolad: It is. >> It's growing and churning. >> And there's still much more proliferation in the Martech space than there is consolidation even with companies like Oracle acquiring just an incredible number of companies in a relatively short period of time. We've built this amazing stack, but still, there's a lot of venture dollars that are still chasing unmet needs. There are niches that aren't being met, and that says something about the overall maturity of the marketing stack, right. We're still fairly early days in that process, and the technology, what's interesting is that the technology piece in some ways is actually easier than the process change and the culture change that is associated with actually trying to be, develop a strong competency when it comes to these digital channels. I think there's an agile transformation that needs to take place as the digital transformation takes place, and that is really focused on that cultural change and the way that we work, so that we can get the most value out of these digital channels. One of the things that I would just add about an agile transformation, though, is that I think it is a little bit broader than just digital transformation in the sense that you can apply agile to analog channels as well, it's more of an approach or a philosophy, a way of working that happens to be the best practice when it comes to digital platforms, 'cause agile came out of the software development world. Agile's not new, agile really started over 15 years ago when the Agile Manifesto was written by some very, very smart software developers. In the last 15 years, it's become the dominant approach to software development, but beyond that, product management has adopted it, and it's a big part of what has led to the empowerment of product management leaders, I think, is the most influential leader at the most influential, or innovative companies in the world, right. I think marketers have an opportunity to take a page from that book as, of course, marketers are managing more software than ever before. And as we transition to a world in which we're moving away from this campaign-oriented mindset where there's a campaign that has a beginning, a middle, and an end, and more towards a product, a program-oriented mindset where there's an ongoing service. >> It's an always-on environment. >> It's an always-on environment where we need to continually iterate and evolve that experience. >> And I think that is the key, I mean, your book you held up called The Agile Marketer, it really does make sense, and I truly believe this, and people who know me, I always rant on this, but I believe that agile and these principles that are well-founded in practice, certainly on the software development side, are moving into data and apps, and ultimately, content and marketing and all the stuff that's in the platform because it's the same trajectory, it's the same concepts. You're doing things that require speed, there's a user component, app component, there's technology involved, so there's a lot of moving parts with it, but it's all threading together. Is that what the book is touching on? Talk about the book. >> Yeah, it is. I mean, so we touched on some of the reasons why marketers are coming to agile. One of them is kind of a no-brainer, we're managing more software than ever before. I don't think anybody's going to argue about that. I think there are some second order things, though, that you touched on with your comments there that are worth calling out. Marketers, well first off, agile is really an approach or a philosophy, which is predicated on this idea that we're working in contexts where it's very difficult to predict the future. There's a lot of uncertainty, there's a lot of disruption, so the traditional methods that we've used, waterfall which is really, waterfall is based on our ability to predict the future. Create a perfect strategy that's going to unfold over a period of time, but I would challenge you to talk to any marketer here and ask them what marketing plan that they've developed that survived implementation more than three months. Marketers are working in this environment with this tremendous amount of change, so. >> Well, Peter and I were talking about the intro, about the role of data, and I'll give you a case in point is that when, to be agile and to be fast and be, I won't say command and control, but to use that metaphor is, the CEO or business leader, or even someone in the trenches, a hero, an innovator, says, "Wow, there's an opportunity to move the needle," innovate or whatever they see, 'cause some data insight, surfaces insight, and they go, "Wow, that changes everything. "Deploy X, Y, and Z," or "Tweak this." >> Let's do something small, validate if we're heading in the right direction quickly, and then, if we get a signal that says, hey, there's something that's working here, we'll invest more and iterate, and it really removes waste from the process of developing marketing programs. >> This is the thing, I think you're on to something with this, and this is what we talk about in the cloud wards. In cloud, we hear things like standing up servers, Horizontally scalable. In marketing it's stand up that campaign now, which you might have an hour notice. Imagine rolling up and standing up a multi-geography campaign in an hour. >> Roland: Right. >> That should be doable. >> Absolutely, and I think, so, going back to some of the second order things, one of the things that marketers are challenged to do is if we want to stand up a campaign, it's not just that the marketer's world is changing more quickly, right. Product management adopted agile because their world is moving very quickly, so if you have a situation where product management is deploying something on a monthly basis or even on a daily basis, marketing needs to work at that same pace. And so, agile can be a collaboration layer where because they speak the same language and share a similar process, they can stay in sync. When you do that, you can deliver experiences that kind of blur the boundary between what I would call traditional marketing and what we think of as product. This is a really interesting space, and I would say one of the most fun spaces where I've ever had the opportunity to work is when you can blur that boundary. And so, having agile means not just that we can deploy our own programs quickly and test them quickly and validate that we're heading in the right direction, but it means that we can do that in close collaboration with our product management peers. And really, that's where you get to incredible value. >> One of the reasons why it's diffused into product management as aggressively as it has is because increasingly the products are being rendered as services that have significant digital components to them. You mentioned the idea of philosophy, and it's kind of an interesting case to show how the agile philosophy has hopped from software development into products, it's now into marketing. My observation, I want to test this with you and see if you have anything to add is that the agile philosophy is founded on three core principles. One is that you have to be empirical. Two is that you have to be iterative. And three is that you have to be opportunistic. And you can add others, like you got to be people focused, and you got to recognize time-bound, et cetera, and all those types of things, but as you look at marketing, is marketing starting to adopt that notion of you got to be empirical, you got to be iterative, and you got to be opportunistic? You can't, you know, hold onto your babies, so to speak. Is that kind of what's at the base of some of this new philosophical changes, or are you seeing some other things as well? >> Yeah, I mean, I think you've definitely touched on some of the drivers. I think that there are, something that I would recommend people who, marketers who are interested in agile should check out a document called The Agile Marketing Manifesto, which interprets The Agile Manifesto for marketers, and like The Agile Manifesto, it has a set of values and a set of underlying principles. The three things that you called out relate pretty tightly to some of the values that are baked into The Agile Manifesto and The Agile Marketing Manifesto. I think one of the central ideas is that because we can't predict the future, we need to do, or we're operating in sort of a chaotic domain where we're in this domain with this unknown unknowns. We don't really know how people are going to react, we can't predict that well, and so, we need to get into this different modality or mindset where we say, you know what, instead of trying to build a perfect strategy, we're just going to do lots of small things. We're going to test things, we're going to validate that we're heading in the right direction or not. >> Peter: Test empirical. >> Yeah, that's all about the testing and validation with empirical data. >> Peter: The iterative. >> Yep, and then, you just keep iterating on that and zeroing in on product market fit or the value that the program-- >> Or the option seems best, which is the opportunistic, and there are others as well, but are marketers having a hard time doing that, or in your experience, do they start? >> It's a pretty significant, yeah, it's a very significant change. Most marketers are, grew up with or started their career with waterfall, and waterfall is still very dominant. If you were to look, for example, what is the, what in the context of, or in the parlance of crossing the chasm, where are we with agile marketing? >> I think we've crossed that. >> I think we're at a place where we see early adopters who are out there really proving value but the pragmatists in the marketplace, the people who adopt something because they're getting on the bandwagon, because their peer are doing it, it's not there yet. It's on their radar, but it's not there yet. What I see happening is that there's, we're just at the beginning of starting an ecosystem that is going to support taking agile more mainstream. What I mean is if you look at, for example, the biggest management consulting firms, the McKinseys, the Bains, they are now building out agile transformation practices that are coupled to their digital transformation practice that already exists and has existed for a while. If you look at the company's out there that do certification and training, folks who will come into your organization and train you on Scrum or Kanban, the two most popular agile methods, they have traditionally been focused on engineers and product managers. They are now starting to build offerings for business-oriented folks. We're starting to see agile sessions and tracks at conferences like this one. Obviously, people like me are writing books, and there are more books coming to market, so these are the signals that marketers, this is getting on marketers' radar and that they're transitioning. I think where you see the most traction for agile, there are certain silos within the marketing function where you see more traction with it. >> Peter: Social being a big one. >> Social being a big one. >> Because the data's available. >> Marketing automation being a really big one, 'cause fundamentally, it's about testing and validation, and these programs are always running, so you're constantly evaluating the performance of messages that you're sending out, and tweaking them and optimizing them. Solutions like the ones, we have a solution in the Oracle marketing cloud called Maximizer, which is just, it is fundamentally an enabler, an enabling technology to allow a marketer to be agile. We can do things in the context of our publishing platform where we can show multi-variant, we can run multi-variant tasks and show them to users and quickly validate what's working and what's not, and so, that's a very different way of working than I think marketers have traditionally adopted. We talked already about the fact that just bringing in the technology is actually, I think, easier than trying to drive the cultural change. The cultural change is really, really hard, and we're still at the beginning of that process, I think. >> And your final thoughts, I want to get to the final question here on this evolution, the progress bar, if you will, crossing the chasm. This is a sea change, so I think a lot of people, we live in the bubble in Silicon Valley, but middle of the industry, middle of America, they're still doing waterfall, which they need, in my opinion, need to move to agile, but because of the benefits of having a platform and enabling technologies and products, 'cause apps is where the action is, we agree. What is your big takeaway from this year in terms of this show and the impact of this platform, this enabling concept that you guys are pushing for? What's the most important thing folks should understand about agile, social, platform, modern customer experience? >> We talked a minute ago about the Martech ecosystem, and the fact that overall the ecosystem is still, there's immaturity for the overall ecosystem, but within that ecosystem there are some very mature solutions, and I think that particularly for enterprises that are using those more mature solutions, they are now transitioning from this period where they've been very focused on building that technology stack, and they're starting to think about how do we more dramatically make changes to the way that we work so that we can develop a stronger competency in digital, and I think that this connects to, if you were to ask me, connecting this back to modern marketing, at what point can a company sort of say, okay, we meaningfully positioned ourselves. >> We're modern, we're modernized. >> What is modern? >> What is modern, and so, >> That's a great question. >> from my perspective, I would connect it back to the role that the CMO plays or the marketing organization plays within the larger company. We talked a little bit about the fact that the product management leader has really been empowered over a long period of time in large part because they've adopted agile, and they're working in a different way. They are serving as the steward of innovation. The marketer has this aspiration to really serve as the steward of customer experience. Now today, we're at a place where most marketers, we're really in the best position to measure and understand the customer experience, but we have limited influence when it comes to changing those touch points. A lot of those touch points aren't under our direct purview. So, we need to get that influence. One way to get that influence is to share the process of the people who have control over those things, that means when we, again, we have agile, we can share process with project management, we can influence those touch points more, that is when the marketer can step up and truly serve as the steward of customer experience, that's when I would say that we've sort of reached the status of modern era. >> A modern era. I think you're on to something. I think the checkbox immediately is are you agile. That's a quick acid test, yes or no. I think that's so fundamental, but I think the user experience is really key, and you've seen the platforms become the enabler where the apps are just coming out, it's a tsunami of apps, and that's an okay thing, but the platform has to be stable. I think that's just an evolution of the role of software, from shrink wrap, from downloading on the internet, to web 2.0 to mobile to platform. >> I'd step back even one level before that, John, and say are you empirical? At the end of the day, is your culture ready to make changes based on what the data says? Because then it says you're going to go out and get the data, you're going to use the data, then you can-- >> And the data has to be good, data has to be legit. >> It has to be good. >> And not dirty. >> 'Cause if you are, then you can have that, we talked about this earlier, then you can have that conversation with the leader and empower the leader to actually lead change. >> Data orientation, customer orientation is a really, those are both critical values that are baked into agile. >> Absolutely. You have to test your organization on whether or not they're really able to do those things. If they are, then a lot of the other stuff that you're talking about falls, starts falling a little bit more naturally into place. >> Well, Roland, we need to follow up, certainly, back in Palo Alto in our studio. This has been really, I think, an important conversation that's worthy of more dialogue, what is a modern organization in this new era of computing where the expectations of the customers and the users and the consumers are at an all-time high? You're seeing the demand and the need for a platform that's truly enabling innovation and value. Certainly great conversation, thanks for joining us on theCUBE today. Sharing the insight as we stay agile, modern here on theCUBE. I'm John Furrier with Peter Burris. Be right back with more after this short break. (electronic keyboard music)