>> Live from Bellevue, Washington it's theCUBE covering SmartSheet ENGAGE '18. Brought to you by SmartSheet. >> Welcome back to theCUBE, we are continuing our coverage live from Bellevue, Washington. We're at SmartSheet ENGAGE 2018. I'm with Jeff Frick here. This is the second annual ENGAGE event. Huge, doubled from last year. We've had a great day so far, Jeff, of execs from ShartSheet, customers. We're now excited to welcome an analyst from the 451 Group, Chris Marsh, the Research Director for WorkFresh Productivity and Compliance; welcome to theCUBE! >> Thank you very much. >> So we have, as I was saying, this is the second annual event, some of the stats that Mark Mader, our CEO, shared in the keynote this morning, there are over 1100 companies represented here at the event, a couple thousand people, 20 countries. We've had some very enthusiastic SmartSheet customers, SmartSheeters themselves talking about this tool that's designed for the business user, that's not designed for the citizen developer, people that don't even need to know what API stands for. So talk to us about your role at 451, but then we'll kind of get into project management, program management, and some of the trends and the changes that you're seeing there. >> Sure, yeah, so, so I've had the workforce productivity compliance research practice in 451, so as a team of analysts, we cover, essentially, productivity software, right? So the different tools that members of the workforce are using to get work done. So in addition to work management companies like SmartSheet, we also look at collaboration tools, digital workspaces, we cover the content management landscape, and we cover content creation, asset creation tools as well, so, really the focus for my team is to give perspectives on how the future of work is evolving, but really what those technology and dependings of that are. >> Such a busy space. You've picked a good area to specialize in. So how should people think of it? How should they categorize it, because from the outside looking in, a lot of the tools are very similar, you know, there's some overlap, some not overlap, there's some places where they can work together. Ya know, how should leaders be thinking about approaching this opportunity, 'cos you talk a lot about, you know, that's a great place to find untapped competitive advantage, but it seems to be very, kind of, confusing to the outsider. >> Yeah, it's a super interesting space, and it's probably more interesting than it's ever been. I think for many of us, it was, to be frank, kind of not interesting, right? There's lots of kind of legacy tools that people were struggling to figure out how to do new kinds of work with. >> Beyond email! (chuckles) >> Exactly, yeah, yeah. >> Was there anything beyond email 10 years ago? Yikes! >> Exactly, I mean we as a, I think, a research team find ourselves looking as much of intersections of those five areas that we cover as much as we go deep in them, for the very fact that, you know, it's a space that's going through a lot of innovation, a lot of disruption, and vendors and segments are learning from one another. Then, of course, we have, you know, broad, kind of transversal trends brought by technologies like AI and machine learning. Beginning to have more conversations around things like Block Chain, people beginning to talk about what may be some of the use cases are around AR, VR, and the kind of mixed-reality type technologies. So, you know, lots of innovation, lots of disruption. Um, in terms of what business leaders should be looking for, it obviously depends on what they're trying to do in their workforce. I think one of the big shifts that we're seeing is, um, you know, the sort of decentralization of ownership over more complex types of work to business users, right, whereas, I think, in a lot of companies, traditionally there are centralized teams of process specialists or project management folks, and, you know, tools have kind of mediated the relationship between those centralized, you know, teams and business users; where increasingly those tools are appealing to those business users. So in the panel moderation I did this morning, I showed some statistics around, you know, users of tools like SmartSheet, and it's not the type of people we would have seen using this type of tool four or five years ago. It's leaders were then legal teams, finance teams, HR teams, marketing teams, operations teams-- so that's sort of reflective of a broad shift in productivity software of, you know, virality in terms of how these tools enter businesses, right? Lots of organic adoption and it kind of runs contrary to how a lot of enterprise technology gets sold into enterprises, which is gone a little bit more top down or into specific buying centers. Increasingly, it's going in sort of the grass roots. People are finding new use cases for technology, and it sort of spreads from there, so, yeah, it's a super hot space right now. >> So one of the things we talk about is every place we go, right? Digital transformation and innovation, everybody wants more. And it seems pretty simple to say, but hard to do, that if you get more people more data, the tools to process it, and then the power to do something, that that just can unlock a tremendous amount of untapped innovation and execution and efficiency out of a company. That said, that's easier said sitting here than done. So are you seeing, you know, kind of a continual trend towards, you know, pushing down the data, pushing down the tools, and pushing down the authority to execute decisions? >> Yeah, I think so. And actually, the work management space is a very good example of that, right? So, um, you know, for some companies culturally that's not going to come very easy, because they just culturally may have a more sort of top-down kind of culture. But I think digital transformation for everyone, essentially means more agility, more speed, you know, more quickness in how work is executed and how it's designed. And that almost inevitably means that those closest to the delivery of the work are the ones that actually have the power to design the work in the first place and can, rather than sort of relying on IT for everything and/or central teams somewhere. So, it is a broad shift, but again, it comes, to your point, it comes more easily for some companies and some industries than others. >> And we talked about that with a number of the people from SmartSheet as well as users, that this is a massive cultural shift. I think Mark Mader, the CEO, this morning was telling us a quick anecdote of a 125-year-old oil and gas company, >> Yeah. >> That is, talk about, you know, probably really married to a lot of legacy processes and ways of thinking, not just tools, and how SmartSheet probably started in, you know, one function within the organization, probably, you know, quite low, and it started, to your point before, go viral, and we started, we started to hear a number of stories from PayPal, Sodexo, how this virality that you talk about is really kind of transforming from the bottom up. But that cultural change is essential. >> The cultural change is essential, I mean, in some cases it's just being led by the fact that that's happening anyway, right? Because, you know, gone are the days when IT chooses the tools, provisions them, and, you know, there's an awareness of what's going on in the environment. There are, and it's not just the work management space, we also look at sort of, workflow automation tools. A lot of these tools are, you know, going into a company grass roots, there are then potentially hundreds if not thousands of work processes or workflows that are created on these tools before IT even figures that out, right? Which is not necessarily an ideal scenario, but it's increasingly, you know, one of the patterns that we're seeing in enterprises, so. It's a big cultural shift, but um, there's a certain amount of push and pull here. Some companies that realize that are looking proactively to give effect to it. Other people are going to be pulled, to be frank, to the fact that there are tools that enable new kind of work patterns, new styles to happen, and they almost have to get on board with that, so. So obviously you want to strike a balance, I think, somewhere in between of being the catalyst for those kind of new things to happen whilst making sure there is still the kind of centralized oversight that's required for you to maintain control over your overall technology estate, but also so that you can make sure the technologies are aligning to your strategic goals. So it's a delicate balance. >> And there's these pretty big forces at play here. There's a term that 451 Group has recently coined called a liquid enterprise. >> That's right, yeah. >> Liquid; I think of fluidity, you mentioned agility, we've heard nimbleness today, um, talk to us. What, by definition, is the liquid enterprise, and how are you helping customers to embrace it and maybe not fight the force, because the forces of pull are stronger and better; but what does that mean? >> Yeah, so liquid enterprise, I mean, you've encapsulated it very well, right? So it's all about, you know, when we speak of digital transformation, you almost always end up to about business agility. So in some ways, liquid enterprise is just our way of giving a little bit more flavor to what business agility looks like in the kind of digital age. So our kind of view is that, you know, a lot of the companies that we kind of laud now as those really interesting companies like the AirBnB's and the Uber's, those with kind of, massively scalable infrastructure and then a very simple UI. We think that whole pattern of what the, kind of, digital enterprise will look like is one that's much more able to fluidly marshal it's different resources in a way that allows them to respond much more rapidly to changes in their own market conditions, right? Because one of the things, obviously, that digital is doing is changing user behavior to user requirement. So your ability, as a company, to respond very quickly to that is becoming, you know, a primacy in most companies, and a big part of how we think about the liquid enterprise is the fact that companies will actually be able to change their own organizational structure. Not just what they offer to a market, not just the tools that enable them to do that, but actually, they'll begin to sort of re-tesselate their own organizational design, to enable that to happen. So, you know, we see early indicators of technologies that are beginning to allow companies to think in that way. I think for most companies, liquid enterprise is aspirational right now, but I think, certainly, it's a pattern a lot of companies are trying to tact towards. >> So, I'm just curious, you talk about culture as a competitive advantage. And how much of these tools are culture enablers to make that possible? How much of it are just critical, because if you don't have that culture you're going to lose? How much of it is tied to, kind of, the consumerization of IT, where again, your workforce has an expectation of the way apps work based on their interaction with Amazon and their interaction with Google and those types of things? >> Very much driven by the consumerization of IT trend. I mean, often, increasingly what we see happen in the consumer realm ends up happening in some kind of expression in the enterprise realm sooner or later. So, yeah, that's very much it. One of the other things we talk about in our research is the kind of hierarchy of employee motivation, right? So we kind of have this way of thinking about, you know, what companies need to do and what technologies need to enable to really satisfy that end user experience. I think in the productivity software space, you know, it's probably not hyperbolic to say that most tools really only satisfy end users, right? We have lots of tools, including lots of modern SAAS tools, that actually, you know, may have good usability, but aren't particularly flexible. There sort of better, more scalable versions of a lot of legacy tools. So we see this kind of passage towards tools actually doing things like, you know, decentralizing the ability to create workflows, so that, you know, business users, including non-managerial folks, can actually design work, and how that work actually happens, right? So there's a big element there in terms of motivation in your role, you know, actually making an impact, having that recognized and all of those kinds of things, which is driving a more, sort of, engaged relationship between people and technology, so we only see that continuing. And, the work management space in SmartSheet's very good examples of that. There's lots of conversations you can hear and engage where people are discussing, you know, what they're doing with their tool that they created themselves, some kind of local business team that has redesigned a certain process that is allowed better business value to be created; and they're the ones that are going to take credit for that. I think that trend is only going to accelerate. So again, from an enterprise perspective, embracing that, helping catalyze that, but again, having the ability to have central oversight over that kind of local team-based execution, it is obviously very important. >> What about just kind of the competition from my desktop? You know, what apps are open while I'm working all day, and you know, we all wish if you're driving an app company that it's your app that is on top, but the reality is many, many apps open all the time. So do you see that evolving, do you see that aggregating, do you see a couple of kind of uber apps over the top of these integrations that you'll be doing your primary workplace, or is it just kind of horses for courses depending on the types of things that you do in your day-to-day job? >> Really good question, I mean, I think one of the background trends we've seen, especially with SAAS, is just the growth and the overall enterprise application estate. Right, so just more apps. And obviously catalyzed also by end users having positive experiences in consumer apps, and then being used to choosing the way that they do things, like that, that is transitioning into the enterprise environment, as well, so. I don't envisage that the total number of apps is going to decrease, but very good question as to, you know, whether we get consolidation. Time will tell, but I think, you know, to my point earlier, we spend a lot of time looking at intersections that cross existing segments, because, each segment is really transforming. And you see lots of examples of customers here at ENGAGE using SmartSheet as a displacement tool for other ones that they previously were using. They find the automation of SmartSheet a way to sort of disintermediate other tools that they were using. We're certainly seeing some of that, whether that means the total number of applications decreases, I don't know, because we're still yet to see play out lots of cool, new, innovative technologies that will obviously give rise to new kinds of applications. Question is out as to whether it will mean further apps, but we certainly seeing a changing in the, in the sort of preference for tools based on what new ones we're enabling. >> And I would imagine in very short order, the application of AI and machine learning behind the scenes in all these apps, is also going to change the UI experience dramatically, as more and more and more of the processes are automated on the back-end, there's more kind of smart suggestions as to what to do or completely automated processes. So even the face of the most popular apps today, I would imagine you see significant change with the application of AI and machine learning. >> Yeah, I would think so. One of the, sort of, big trends here, listening to customers and listening to some of the key notes, is, you know, the shift that comes with companies trying to make from low value work to high value work, so all of that kind of granular and manual work we're having to do is so most existing applications; people just want to abstract their way. They don't want to be doing that anymore, they want to be focusing on, um, sort of resource management, team coordination, creative ideation, they want to focus on strategy execution, they want to focus on things like, you know, risks to the business, actions that they need to take, decisions that they need to make, they don't want to be doing the whole, um, who did this, when did they do it, what do I need to do now, they don't want to be sort of manually moving information from applications, they don't want to be doing sort of manual reconciliations of data, and that kind of thing. >> Right. >> So um, heh, so yeah, the kind of low value to high value work is only going to be accelerated by AI and ML, to the point where we're beginning to see much more contextual work. So the ML is the basis on which work can be surfaced contextually to end users. So that is sort of automating the abstraction of that low value work, and that's hugely exciting, because that offers a whole new paradigm for how we interact with applications, what that end user experience is. Imagine, you know, sort of going into your office loading up your computer, opening up an application, and it surfaces to you what you need to focus on that day. >> Right. >> That's where a lot of productivity application vendors are trying to get to. >> That's the dream, right there. >> Not here is the application, you decide where you need to focus, it's the kind of, these are the things you really need to put your time in. I mean, that's pretty exciting. And that's what a lot of the companies would want. >> Well even, a certain CRN company that's got a large tower in San Francisco, why do I have to put the city and the state and the zip code, I mean, we have so far to go, can't I just put the zip code in and it fills in the city and the state, and those little, you know, simple things that take a lot of time and these are the kind of data entry tasks that just drive people bananas, and discount the value, the fundamental value of the tool, because you just get stuck in a data entry mode, or a double entry mode. It's this crazy opportunity that we still have in front of us to make improvements. >> Yeah, I think, huge opportunity, obviously. But it's not quite so easy as that, I think, really it's kind of how I would talk about it. You know, AI and ML will inevitably have a transformative impact on enterprise software; I don't think anybody would dispute that. But it does rely on large data sects, against which you have to train your algorithms and your models, and that takes time for individual companies to build that data sect. They need enough work in there, they need enough people, enough workflows in there, to generate those data sects so that they will actually be useful, right? So, it's going to take a bit of time to play out. But yeah, it's going to be very impactful in the longer term. >> Well Chris, thanks so much for stopping by theCUBE and sharing your insights on this new, emerging term of the liquid enterprise, we appreciate that. >> Pleasure, thanks very much. >> For Jeff Frick, I'm Lisa Martin, you're watching theCUBE live from SmartSheet ENGAGE 2018. Stick around, Jeff and I will be right back with our next guest. (electronic music)

(electronic music) >> Live from Bellevue, Washington, it's theCUBE, covering Smartsheet Engage 18. Brought to you by Smartsheet. >> Welcome back to theCUBE. I'm Lisa Martin with Jeff Frick, and we've been here all day at Smartsheet Engage 2018 in Bellevue, Washington. We have had lots of great conversations, Jeff, with some of the executive team at Smartsheet, some analysts, and now we're excited to welcome a customer of Smartsheet to the show. We've got Latonia Lewis, the senior director of program management at Sodexo. Latonia, it's great to have you on the program. >> Thank you all for having me. >> So, Sodexo, I'm familiar with it as, you know, being in the tech world, and I go to a client's cafe, and I will usually see branding on boxes or maybe on the chef's gear. But this is a much bigger company than I thought, 437,000 employees globally. But, for those who might not know what Sodexo is, give us a little bit of an overview. >> Sure, Sodexo is a global company. Pretty much we focus on providing quality of life services. And you might ask yourself, "What does that mean?" So, Sodexo really recognizes people as being important and feel that, in a company as well as in the environment, that people should be the main focus. And, in doing that, we focus on providing services that enhance the quality of life for people. For us, the people could be our clients, they could be our consumers, or they could be our employees. So, we pretty much center that around the services that we offer. We have our on-site services that focus on facilities management. So that's basically providing a healthy environment for people to work in, or live in, or operate in. It could be across our food services platform where we're providing healthy meals or a healthy way of living. In addition to that, we provide support for rewards and recognition programs. And, in addition to that, we also provide personal and home healthcare services. >> That's far more diverse than I ever thought. >> Yes. >> Yeah, it is diverse, and we operate across a lot of different industries. We support corporate. We support energy, education that includes both schools as well as universities, seniors, and then sports and leisure. >> Wow. >> So what's your area of focus? That's a broad scope of services. Hopefully you're not delivering all of those to every customer in the United States. >> No, no, no, no. >> Okay, good. (laughter) >> I do work in the North America, and I work for the North American service operations organization, and, pretty much, we are the internal organization that provides support across all of our different segments. We're charged with providing synergies and centers of excellence in the servicing that we do, pretty much to try to bring out the best that Sodexo has to offer its customers and its clients, as well as its employees. >> So your customers are the Sodexo folks that are delivering the services to the end customer. Is that accurate? >> That is accurate. We are internally-faced organization, pretty much focused on making sure that we're providing a safe environment for people to work in. We're enhancing our services and our service offerings in facilities management, as well as across our food service platform, and then also focusing on our growth and support. >> So you are, obviously, a Smartsheet user. That's why you're here. I imagine, though, with as cross-functional as the services you deliver are, you have a lot of stakeholders, a lot of projects, a lot of programs to manage. Tell us a little bit about, prior to your Smartsheet implementation, how were you managing projects, programs, collaborating with stakeholders. Tell us about the before scenario. >> Okay, well, pretty much, I joined Sodexo to, basically, stand up a project management office for the North American service operations organization. When I came into the role, did a little bit of analysis, did a little bit of investigation, and pretty much found that people were doing things a myriad of different ways, right? From a project management maturity perspective, there was not a lot of, what I'll call standardized process and procedures, so I was faced with really figuring out how to, basically, get our arms around the work and the projects that we were doing across our service operations organization. So, Smartsheet was being used in-house already. They had used it in the prior year, basically to try to get their arms around the work that was being done, but that ended up being an exhaustive list. So I looked at how we could leverage Smartsheet and how we could use it more effectively to track the initiative or project work we were doing across service operations. So, in doing that, I found a way to be able to harness standardization in the way that we collect data to be able to do the reporting across the portfolio. And started using dashboards, which was something new. And, of course, you know, using digital transformation from a reporting standpoint is something new. It invokes change. So it was driving a lot of transformational type of, you know, activities that were going on, but it did enable us to be able to get a strategic view of the work that was taking place in service operations, which was something that was needed in order to be able to figure out how to best utilize the resources. >> You sound so calm. It must've been a rat's nest when you walked in, between so many offerings across so many types of facilities as a global company with 400,000 people. You're still calm. I can't believe it. You can laugh. It must've been bananas. I mean, where did you start? Where do you start? Is it the data collection? Is it the reporting? I mean, where did you start? >> I think the first thing that we really had to do was, I hate to say it, go back to basics. And we had to figure out what was our roadmap and how we were going to grow from a project management maturity perspective, and then align that growth with how we were going to, basically, identify a tool to use, and how we were going to, basically, scale that tool. So we started out very, very simple. It was like, "Guys, we need to get our arms around "the key initiatives that are helping us move forward and, "basically, that are aligned with our regional priorities "at the time." So we took that approach and, in FY 18, we pretty much focused on, "Let's get the key initiatives into a format "where we can do reporting on "and we can actually create a reporting cadence "that takes place every month "to be able to bring visibility to leadership "about the projects and the work "that was going on to help them "more effectively make decisions." As we looked at the planning for FY 19, I said, "Well, okay. "I spent a lot of time standing this up, "doing a lot of manual work, you know. "It's becoming unbearable, unmanageable." So we looked at Smartsheet control center, and I kind of, like, jumped, shouted, you know, did my little happy dance, but privately. But, then, made a business case to say why I felt that, you know, we strongly needed this to be able to, not only become more effective and stop doing so many things repetitively, but also to help us foster better project management practices through the use of the standardized, what I call project assets or project templates. >> So what were some of the KPIs that you could immediately grab onto, measure, report, to show, you know, the success and why this is such an important project strategically? >> Strategically, I think the first thing was, one, just being able to get our arms around what were the key projects in the portfolio, and then being able to report out to our internal customers, which were the market segments, what was the work that we were jointly doing to help them meet their strategic objectives. So that was, basically, transparency that they did not have before, and we really weren't reporting at that level. So, if I'm a market segment, I can pretty much say, "You're going to have seven projects "that are impacting you, "and here's the status of those projects. "Here's the health of the projects. "Here's where we need your support." So that was what I call phase one. This year, fast forward, we have control center. We have more visibility. We now have dashboards pretty much at the project level, and we can roll up data a lot more dimensionally. I can do it at the project level. I can do it at our S-O professional family level. I, in turn, can now give segments more detailed at their level, and then I can roll it up at a regional level. >> So you've got, you mentioned, sorry, Jeff, you mentioned, you know, reporting. Sounds like starting small with a focus on what are all the initiatives. I imagine leveraging a tool like Smartsheet to then stack, rank, and prioritize those. You talked about visibility, and that's key. We've heard that all day. Everybody needs visibility within organizations. Were you able to give these program, these initiative teams visibility where before they had none? Was this like a dramatic opening of the curtain whereas they've got 100% visibility into all of the core components of these initiatives that they're involved in? >> That's what's happening this year in FY 19. And, to your point, yes, we are opening up the curtains. And the projects teams, which, primarily, a lot of them are actually driven by service operations, but we have to do them in conjunction with our segments who are really responsible for the actual deployment within their different lines. It's opening up the curtains. It's allowing them to have visibility at a very detailed level than they, they haven't had that before, right? We're using standardized project schedules. We're using resource allocation sheets. We're using, what we call CCT, which is change management, communication, and training plans. So bringing that visibility at a much granular level, but at the same time being able to roll it up to the appropriate stakeholder. So I'm excited about FY 19 for what control center is going to provide for us. >> And so what happened when that happens in terms of, I mean, I'm sure the individual project people around a particular project have, probably, pretty good knowledge about what they're working on. But when you open it up to the senior teams, and now they've got this portfolio of projects and now, suddenly, they have this visibility. How did it change the way they look at things? How did it change the way that, suddenly, they make decisions and they allocate additional resources once you, basically, like you said, kind of opened the curtain and showed them what's going on? >> I think, last year when we started out, when I had just started, it was more retroactive type of reporting whereas, as we started in this new year and planning for FY 19, we had more visibility into the projects, what the projects were about, what was their financial benefit, if applicable, as well as their impact in terms of the scope and the number of units that were going to be involved. So, we do a lot of our planning on an annual basis, what we call during our budgeting or planning cycle, and, this year, there was a lot more visibility into the work that's being planned for FY 19 at a much granular level, down to what we call the unit level. So, being able to share that information and have the teams realize that we're able to track that this year, was very surprising. People like the transparency. I think it's driving a lot of collaboration between the service operations and the market segments, so I think people are going to be very happy. If I come back next year, I can really tell you how the fiscal year went and what we really saw with the turnaround in leadership, but I think they're looking forward to it. >> You're giving a talk tomorrow. What's your talk on? Give us a little preview. >> Preview. I'm going to be talking about control center and, actually, the experience with implementing control center, what was the thought process for, basically, implementing control center, how I went about it, doing a little bit visualization with seeing some of the dashboards that have been created, and then just giving some lessons learned on the implementation itself. >> That's always helpful, you know. Especially with a technology like Smartsheet where, often, like, you kind of found it osmotically through your organization. I know people love to hear how did you do this, what worked. I am curious, though. You mentioned FY 19 a couple of times. Has this technology enabled you to get to planning FY 19 faster, more effectively? What's been the impact there? >> I think it's being, it's having more data up front than we had last year, understanding what it's really going to take to implement these initiatives, being able to have an understanding of the resources from a human resources that's required, as well as understanding, "Okay, if we're going to implement "these initiatives, this is what the impact is going to be." Because every project that we work on doesn't necessarily have a financial benefit. Some of the projects are required. We have to do it, and this is why we must participate in on it. I think it's opened up the door for a lot more collaboration between leaderships and understanding, "You know what, guys? "We definitely have to put more prioritization." Because what may be a priority to one segment may not be a priority to the other, and we're working with the segments in being able to do that prioritization, if possible. >> And the configurability of Smartsheet tool enables you to move projects around in terms of priority much faster, much more easily. >> Oh, you can, it's, how shall I say it? It's a very nimble tool. It's a very agile tool. You can move things around. You know, if a project, we may think that it's going to be what we deem to be a traditional project, but after discussions we're like, "No, it's not really a traditional project "in the sense that it has a defined start and end cycle. "It's more of what we've done, "and we're tracking that as a business as usual." We have the flexibility to change that on a dime. We have the flexibility to change what our key KPIs are, and still be able to incorporate that into the reporting. So it's been great having that flexibility. It's been great not having to do and create dashboards manually. Everything is based off of standardized templates and it is wonderful. I mean, literally, I've been able to create the portfolio, delete the portfolio, and re-implement it just because of some changes that we did, and that took less than a couple of days to do. >> And before it used to take how long? >> Oh, I gave way too many personal hours to stand it up, but I had a passion about it because I loved the tool I could see the ease of use with the tool, so I just gave a lot of hours to initially doing it. But now that I'm working with a lot of the project teams, making a lot of progress. And Smartsheet, it's infectious. I mean, I think one of, I was just speaking with one of your counterparts and I was explaining to him about the fact that I just worked with one of our VPs who's been there for over 20 years, and actually taking the way that he was reporting in one system and transferring it into Smartsheet, working with him. And he's able to realize now that he can do a lot more reporting. He can get more KPIs. He's excited. I've, you know, thrown up sample dashboards of how he can track in FY 19. He's got his team on board. They're looking at it, and, every time I turn around, the Smartsheet is now growing. But it's such a success story, because there is that resistance to, sort of, like, changing the way that you do things. >> Especially for an organization as large as Sodexo is. >> Absolutely >> And, I imagine, as historical it is as well, right? >> Absolutely, and to see him embrace the tool and he's like, "I get it. "I love it." His team is off running with it. Those are the types of things that, you know, really, really make me happy. >> It's funny, because you just, you basically answered the question I just wanted to ask you, which is, you know, in the keynote there's a lot of talk about empowering everyone to do their job better. >> Yes. >> And you're a trained professional project manager. It's what you came in for. You know the tools. You're a sophisticated power person in this space. But I'm curious, have you seen, you know, kind of, project management, kind of, capabilities that flows out to the no-code, low-code, everybody with the Smartsheet, kind of, implementation and, kind of, proliferation within the organization? And how has that, you know, kind of, taken what used to be, kind of, a side load, super professional specialty into a broader, you know, kind of, use-case to take advantage of this thing? >> I think the more people see Smartsheet and start to understand its capabilities and that it's not just a project management tool, right. It's a facilitator of project management. So, in the case that I was just talking about, they're tracking a whole process that's really around facilities management. So it's not necessarily tracking your traditional type of project, but he's able to leverage that to save time. The administrative burden that, you know, he used to have to deal with, with reporting in a different system, bringing information into another system, then creating reporting. Now it's all in one system. He's like, "Latonia, I'm going to use dashboards. "That's how we're going to do our reporting." So he's getting back time. Not only him, but his team is getting back time so they can really focus and go out and do the work where they had the expertise. And that's the beauty of it. It's about people, as you said, being empowered to do what they were hired to do, understanding that you still have a responsibility and are accountable for doing the reporting. But it's giving them that level of empowerment and them seeing that, "You know what, "I can actually design what I need to see "in this application. "It's not Latonia, project management, "or it's not IT, or it's not somebody else. "It's me defining what I need to see in this tool "to get what I need to get out of it to service my clients." >> So I can imagine, as Jeff was saying, you have a lot of experience in program management. Sounds like this is, I don't want to say this is making your job easier, because I think that would be unfair, but it sounds like it's really helping make it much more efficient. >> I would definitely say it's definitely doing that. I think it's helping people, also, understand what project management is all about. You say project management, most people cringe because they think of paper. They think of, "I've go to do this." >> Gantt charts. >> Gantt charts, all of this other stuff. But when you think about it, it's really just a holistic approach to the way that you execute something. And that something could be a standard project, whether it's an IT project. It could be a process that you're rolling out. It could be you planning your wedding or your next family vacation. It's just all about managing work and the execution of work. And I think, once people realize that, they're starting to step back and say, "Oh, it's not as bad as we thought." Which, I'm happy as a project management professional that Smartsheet enables that type of empowerment and it's helping to facilitate that type of knowledge. >> Did you see that quote in the keynote this morning? It was an anonymous user. I'm getting this vibe where, one of the users told Smartsheet that Smartsheet made her the queen of the world. >> Yes. >> I'm getting a vibe here, Latonia. (laughter) >> You could be the anonymous-- >> Potentially. >> No, no. >> I won't put that on you, but that empowerment-- >> Top secret. >> Is impressive what you guys have been able to achieve. We want to thank you so much-- >> Thank you. >> Latonia, for stopping by theCUBE. >> Thank you very much for having me. >> Great luck in your presentation tomorrow. I'm sure a lot of people are going to get a lot of value out of the lessons learned and the best practices that you can offer. >> Thank you very much. >> Thank you. >> Thank you, bye bye. >> For Jeff Frick, I am Lisa Martin. We are live at Smartsheet Engage 2018. Stick around. Jeff and I will be right back with our next guest. (electronic music)

>> Live from Bellevue, Washington, it's theCUBE covering Smartsheet ENGAGE'18, brought to you by Smartsheet. >> Welcome back to theCUBE, we are live at Smartsheet ENGAGE 2018. I am Lisa Martin with Jeff Frick. We're in Bellevue, Washington, and pleased to welcome one of the many customers of Smartsheet to the program, we have the office of the CIO, Jeff Kelly from PayPal. Welcome Jeff, I've got a sandwich of Jeffs here. (laughing) Jeff sandwich, so Jeff, tell us a little bit. Everybody knows PayPal, I was doing some studying over the weekend. 244 million active users, I'm sure that grows by the minute, 200 markets globally served, and you're doing transactions in over 100 currencies. Everybody has been using this for a while now. It's a household term, even my mom knows PayPal, and she can use it. So, tell us about the office of the CIO at PayPal and your role. >> Sure, so my role, specifically I'm a program manager within that office, and my primary responsibility is to make sure that our environment is secure, that it's safe, that it's stable. That way, the other parts of the company, product, can focus on being more strategic. What that really involves is things like hardening our infrastructure, hardening the network, making sure that we can identify all of our assets accurately, so a number of things there just to keep the environment, like I said, stable and secure. >> And, the office of the CIO, I imagine, responsible for communicating regularly with the executive management team, needing to provide visibility? >> Exactly, I mean, our leadership, Brad Strock is the CIO, we work hand-in-hand with the other leaders of the company. But in addition to some of the things I just called out, the CIO, that office is actually responsible for a lot of the enterprise application, so it's basically the software that drives the company, so that's customer, that's our employee facing applications. >> So you're obviously a Smartsheet user which is why you're here and we're grateful for that. Tell us about the pre-Smartsheet era. How were you managing programs and projects? >> I think I've heard this story quite a bit here. So, between spreadsheets, Microsoft Project, Trello, a number of other tools, and we're still in a distributed model, but the good thing is that within the CIO we're able, at this point, in this particular area, right, to come in with a single tool, to serve as a single system of record, to really facilitate bringing the entire portfolio together. So yeah, I'd say before, very distributed, now, it's really consolidated into Smartsheet being our single system, which has really worked well. >> So they showed a video of your case-study during the keynote, and you had a real specific use case, it sounds like, for your initial Smartsheet deployment, which sounds like something that many of us struggle with each and every week, which is to roll up the data to report upstairs. So, I wonder if you can give a little bit of color on what did you have to roll up, what was the scale of effort, and why you decided, this just isn't really working very well-- >> Sure, absolutely, so we set off, around three years ago, we had a three-year program ahead of us, and I'd say at the end of year one, we realized, just, due to the magnitude, the number of people involved, the data involved, and the overall portfolio, we needed a tool to come in and really help us be able to effectively and quickly roll up that information, so that we could present and take that information to our C-suite each week. Yeah, just for effective decision-making, making sure that they're in-tune, they have a line of sight to what's critical, what's not, working on the right things, doing the right thing. So, we considered a number of tools. Again, Microsoft Project, what-not, we landed with Smartsheet, and it was really just word-of-mouth within the company. So we took a look at a handful of tools and really just tried to figure out what fit the bill for what we needed, and a couple of Smartsheet videos on YouTube, we kind of quickly came to the decision, hey, this is certainly a flexible tool, it's easy to ramp, if you know spreadsheets, you pretty much know this, if you're a project manager you know how to build a plan, quite easy. So the ramp time was very minimal. So we made a decision, watched a bunch of YouTube videos, probably spent a month doing that, myself and the team. With the tool being intuitive and those videos, we built a solution basically from the ground up. >> So this is without even having an enga-- this is PayPal, without even having an engagement with an account executive, you were able to find this, like you said, word of mouth, implement this on your own and really enable quite a bit of transformation within the executive team and what they need to see. >> Absolutely, I think, when we look back at the end of year one we made that decision, we realized, hey, we've got some high-price consultants in, and we're probably using half of their time at that point just in relating that data, so you're talking about some heavy dollars that are being spent there, just in administrative-type work. If we can cut that layer out, and go straight to the source, we're saving ourselves a ton, we can redirect those funds to other areas where we actually get some work done. >> So Jeff, how big was the initial deploy, in terms of the team size, because you said you didn't engage Smartsheet directly, you're watching some YouTube videos, and you did see enough there that you wanted to jump in. Did you jump all in from the beginning, did you do kind of a POC, how did you get started, what was kind of the scope? >> Yeah, kind of took a couple demos, straw-man that we just put together on the fly, shared with some of our key stakeholders, you know, "Does this look right? Does it feel right? Are you seeing the information that you think we need?". And the fact that we were able to come up with that so quickly just sold itself, and so yeah vetted it, socialized it a little bit, but it was a pretty easy sell from that point. It was just building it out, and I'd say right from the get go we had already had about 14 programs as part of this portfolio in place at that point in time, so each program having between, I'd say between five and 15 projects within that, so the number of players was quite large, probably about 150 direct players in the program, probably a couple hundred more indirect that want line-of-sight to what we're doing. >> So line-of-sight accountability, how was that embraced by those teams? And we talk a lot about digital transformation, Jeff, at every event, and how cultural transformation is a necessity for that. How have you been able to leverage this tool to kind of evolve that culture within the office of the CIO? >> Yeah, that's a great question. I think, with us being able to cut out that middle-man, when I say middle-man I'm talking PowerPoint slides. If we can get away from that, because a number of things happen there, but predominantly, I mean, you can finger of a PowerPoint slide and all of a sudden, 100 turns to 200 or 1000, something like that, so, hey, if we can just go straight to our system of a record, I mean, each project within this portfolio should have a project plan, they should have a risk and issues tracker, so we really decided, here's the baseline for what we need to have in terms of our data model. If we can have that, then we can produce the dashboards that just read directly from those systems of record, from an accountability perspective, right? That means, there's no tweaking a PowerPoint slide, right, you're reading directly from the project plan, so it is what it is. But, it's reality, and that's what we need to deal with, and we ultimately step in front of the C-suite, right? You need to have, here's where we are, and it needs to be an accurate and timely reflection. I mean, that's another thing, is that timeliness, I mean, this is real-time data that we're talking, so, if something changes 10 minutes before, it's there on the dashboard, we're ready to talk to it. >> Yeah, I don't think there's enough talk about the timeliness, because it is connected directly to the database. It's not something that somebody's reporting on, and so often you get these multiple layers of people extracting data, transcribing it, putting it in to whatever reporting tool they want and just, it just gets further and further from the truth with each passing minute and each passing iteration. >> Absolutely, and we've talked about speed so much here, and so that's obviously a critical factor in decision making, especially, so we want to make sure we have the latest and greatest there. >> So just curious of your experience from a project manager point of view. You're a professional project manager. I'm sure you know all of the big heavy-lifting tools. When you see something like this, which is more of a no-code, kind of low-code, kind of cross platform integration, what type of skills does that open up within the teams, within the data sources, within the ability to do something a lot less, I want to say more nimble, you know, less heavy, than kind of a traditional project management-- >> Sure, I think minimal's a great word to describe it there, because it really, it really is a tool that just is, that you can build from, more of like a grass-roots effort, as opposed to a enterprise, kind of top-down. I'm sure it works well in that use case as well, but, for us, it was something that was able to kind of fill needs that were distributed across the portfolio. Once you start building it up, filling in those gaps, then you realize, hey, we've got kind of an end-to-end tool here that really works well. >> And I'm just curious, interest as other people have engaged with your output, in the organization, in terms of, "Hey, Jeff, can you give us, can you share the PowerPoint links with us?". (mumbling) YouTube links. >> Yeah, I joke because it feels like at this point I'm doing about one demo a week to somebody else in the company, which is a great thing, leveraging best practices, and sharing that information, so, there's certainly a growing user-base within PayPal, of Smartsheet, so I try to keep up with the other teams that are using it so that we are taking our best practices from one another, that we're sharing, and then I think ENGAGE is really helping me connect to those other PayPal users, believe it or not, it's like, there's probably a bit more here than I have back home, so this is great. >> One of the things that was funny that popped up during the keynote this morning, Jeff, was a couple of customer quotes. These were anonymous, but this, what you were saying, kind of, Jeff, it sounds like, and you probably wouldn't say this about yourself so I'll say it for you, is that, this one woman who was a user of Smartsheet in her organization said that Smartsheet made her queen of the world. Sounds like there's some status elevation. But, I'm curious, so you started, you found this organically, yourself, this technology, as Jeff was saying, this is built for business users. You didn't have to have, even though you're in the office of the CIO, you didn't have to have IT's involvement here. But here you are one of the evangelists now for Smartsheet out there, even. Tell us about that engagement, pun intended, that you got with Smartsheet to be able to start, maybe, pay a thumb isn't organically, do you have a sales account exec now, if so are you having conversations with them, are you helping to influence new features and things? >> Sure, I think our admin for Smartsheet at PayPal got tired of me giving them calls, so he said, "Hey, you do know Terren Finstra's your rep, right?". So I reached out to Terren, at this point we've conversed quite a bit and she's brought a number of other kind of ideas and forward thinking to the table that we're considering for next steps, what we can do, but the engagement has been great. They've been very responsive, helped us out when we kind of hit a rock in the road and we need some help, so yeah it's been a great relationship. >> Any way to quantify the benefits, one of the things I was reading on the smartsheet website the other day was some pretty big stats on how they're helping companies save time, which in different ways translates to saving dollars. I think I read the average user of Smartsheet will save about 300 hours per year, that's a lot of time, and the average organization will save over 60,000 hours a year. What's the impact been on the weekly roll-ups that you're able to do, any way to sort of quantify how much that speed has improved? >> Yeah, I mean, if I go back to kind of the original business case, say we're spending probably half the time of two very high-price consultants doing this, I'd say it's way up there, and we were able to save, I'm sure, a couple hundred thousand dollars at least, at the minimum. So, that in itself was a big win. If we look today, kind of where we are and the time that we're able to save using the tool, given the fact that there is that middle layer's just really not there, we don't spend a lot of time on producing content at all. Instead, we can take that time and we can focus it on, okay, where are our trouble areas, where do we need to double down, where do we need to help in making sure that we're actually getting material work done in the areas that we should be rather than just administrative content-- >> Big productivity gains, well Jeff, thank you so much for joining Jeff Frick and I on the cube and sharing what you guys are doing with Smartsheet in the office of the CIO at PayPal. >> Glad to be here, thank you so much. >> Alright, we want to thank you for watching theCUBE. For Jeff and Jeff, I am Lisa Martin, you're watching the cube live from Smartsheet ENGAGE 2018, stick around. This Jeff and I will be right back with our next guest.

>> Live from Bellevue, Washington, it's theCUBE, covering Smartsheet ENGAGE '18. Brought to you by Smartsheet. >> Welcome back to theCUBE's continuing coverage of Smartsheet ENGAGE 2018 from Bellevue, Washington, I'm Lisa Martin, and I'm sitting here with a couple of Smartsheeters. We've got Steven Branstetter, the VP of customer and partner success. And, Mike Andrews, you are the VP of strategic accounts. Guys, welcome! >> Thanks for having us. >> You're Smartsheeters! >> That's right. >> We are. >> I have to say, I was very scared to say that on the air, and I did it twice now, and I'm going to stop, 'cause I didn't mess it up. So, Steven, running customer and partner success. I want to start there, because customer success as a term can mean different things to different companies. Something that I read that you wrote recently was customers' feedback saying, "Guys at Smartsheet, you need to be operating a different playbook for customer success." So, first question: How do you define and deliver customer success at Smartsheet? >> Right, so, first of all, customer success is often looked at as a single department, and it's not. It is a whole company effort. You've talked with our product folks, talking with sales, everyone in the organization is part of that customer success. What they're telling us, what the customers are telling us is customer success primarily is about change management. We're going through a transformation that has a lot to do with your product, not everything to do with your product. But, we need help with that transformation. And, what you saw on the keynote was you saw three folks standing up who said, "I, at my organization, signed up "to do this really hard thing." And, we didn't have a playbook as to how to do that thing. What we try to do as a customer success organization, as a company, is make sure we're standing behind that person. So, when that person comes out and says, I can accomplish that thing, that unsolvable thing for our organization, and I can do that on Smartsheet, we want to make sure that person is successful. And so, sometimes, that's the customer success team. Sometimes, that's the training team. Sometimes, that's our consulting team. Sometimes, it's elements of product helping to come alongside them, showing them what's possible. So, customer success at Smartsheet is holistic. It's not meant to be a single department. This is a company effort, so that when folks do raise that hand and take on that impossible task, that we're with them to make sure they can accomplish that. And, that creates the stories that you heard earlier today. >> And, what Steven's talking about is, during the general session this morning, the CEO, Mark Mader, actually went down to the audience and just randomly asked several, maybe three customers to talk about how Smartsheet is empowering them. And, it was really interesting how articulate they were, being put on the spot. But, how they were able to speak so eloquently to how they are facilitating this transformation. You mentioned change management. That's a hard thing to do. >> It is. When you're looking at an enterprise that has a ton of applications, and, Mike, you know this well, being a sales leader, they're comfortable with certain applications, yet companies grow organically by acquisition, and there's a lot of different tools that some groups are married to. Other groups are, eh, I'm not so sure. To transform digitally, cultural transformation is probably step one. So, how are you seeing, and, this is the second part question to you, Mike. How have you evolved CS in Smartsheet to be facilitators of that change management, not only for customers, but for you guys as well? >> So, one of the things we thought early on was, we tried this new thing, it was called Office Hours, and we did it at one of our largest customers, and it was a huge success. Literally, the first day we do it, 400 people show up on this webcast, and it was fantastic. And so, I talk with Mike, and we talked with organizations saying, we have this new thing, Ii's going to be amazing. The feedback was fantastic. We go to that next organization to roll out the same thing, and four people show up instead of 400. >> Wow. >> And so, one of the things that's been really important for us is understanding not all organizations are the same, especially in the enterprise. That, as we create that playbook, there's certain elements that absolutely resonate at, maybe, our tech customers, that don't resonate at all in the manufacturing space or organizations, and that each of those organizations are different. So, we've built a lot of that playbook with an understanding that different elements of it are going to be applicable at different organizations. And, that's the way we've approached it, which has been really successful, where we know there are elements that have to happen. We know there are elements where we need to have scalable programs. Not everything can be one-on-one. But, at most organizations, there has to be some level of one-on-one connection as well. And, whether that's a big Smartsheet day which we'll run, which folks will fly their own folks into, it's almost like a mini ENGAGE conference at their own organization. Or, whether that's all over the Web. So, we'll go to some customers. We'll show up in person, and there's a big meeting room, there's only four people there. And, they tell us, well, there's actually 200 people watching this. And so, it's figuring out that motion, at least at the enterprise, that's different for every organization. But, as you also know, we have a long tail through our organization as well. So, while we have those really large customers, we also have this long tail where we need to meet those customers at scale. We need to provide programs. So, our Center of Excellence is a good example of that. Our Webinar series is good example of that, where we provide these motions that at a scaled element, so even our smallest customer can take advantage of it. >> Awesome, so, Mike, transitioning over to you. So, I love stats. Geeky, very geeky, but I admit it freely. I was looking at Smartsheet, 75000 customers. Here, you have about 1100 companies represented over 20 countries. You guys have presence in half the Fortune 500, 90% of the Fortune 100, lot of customers, pan industry. Some of the things that they were hearing from you guys, or, rather, you're hearing from them is, we want you to build for scale, as you were talking about, Steven. We want you to teach us how to phish. And, they want you, also, to help them do it right and do it fast. How are you helping customers do it right and do it fast? Can you do both at the same time? >> Absolutely, we're proving that. And, I think, something that's really unique about how we go to market, and really the basis of our ethos as a business, is we're obsessed with keeping the software easy to use. And, as we add functionality to not get it heavy and put friction in place. So, when we think about engaging with the biggest companies in the world, we have the benefit of starting from organic adoption, where individuals and teams are using the software. They're experiencing value, they're sharing. They're collaborating. And what we see happen, the dynamic we see happening is, as individuals share and go to directors or VPs, we start from sort of work execution, project management, task tracking, and the next step is often these line of business solutions, whether MNA or product planning or employee engagement. Literally every function in the business can benefit from the ability to configure the software. And, keep in mind, we've already taken off the table the biggest issue. I've been in enterprise software for 30 years. I've sat with a lot of CIOs who've written seven figure checks. And, when they're honest with me, the biggest thing they worry about is: Is this software going to get used? We take that issue off the table. We turn it on its head. And, that ability to have that basis of adoption, to have raving fans who love using the software, and then the added benefit of being able to go higher in an organization with senior leaders who want transparency. They want speed. They want accountability. That configurability to solve bigger and bigger, more complex, more strategic flows is a huge advantage for us. It's, frankly, what fuels us, sort of our passion around serving our customers, because we get such great feedback. >> That configurability that you mentioned, Mike, kind of seems to be how customer success is set up. To be configurable, sort of modular, to be able to adjust it with the agility that's needed to deliver what these customers are needing. So, sounds like, maybe, land and expand. I know we've got a gentleman from the office of the CIO at PayPal who's going to be on shortly with us, really helping the C-Suite at PayPal, which everyone uses to be able to see things more clearly, have that transparency in terms of managing projects. >> Absolutely. >> So, I know Cisco's a customer as well. So, is it pretty typical to start with a function within marketing, for example, where there's a team that, hey, this is innovative. This is going to integrate with Jira and Slack, and all these things. Is that kind of a common sales conversation? >> Absolutely. We practice the principles of the challenge your sale and challenge your customer. And, one of the key elements of the challenge your customer is this idea of a mobilizer. And, the mobilizer does two things. They drive change, and they build consensus. And, what we find is those individuals who are change agents often times love our software, because they can do things that they wouldn't otherwise, they'd have to depend on a consultant or IT. So, we find those individuals and we work with them, and they coach us up on: what are the priorities, who are the key players?" And, that becomes a common play we run to get higher in the organization. The other thing that's happening now, I'm seeing it, really, over the past year, is organizations are starting to choose to sort of play offense with us. So, we'll continue to have that bottoms-up organic growth. But now, we're seeing VPs of marketing or CMOs, or CFOs or COOs realize, hey, you know what? I love the fact I have this base of users who love the software, and I can do things, I can enable priorities or initiatives that span the organization, get away from side-load apps, and have the kind of visibility and speed that's been unheard of. And, we're starting to see that our customers wanting to play offense with us. >> That speed to value element has just been critical. So, you heard in the stories this morning, we have MOD Pizza. Their first solution, the gentleman probably built that in a day. And, that was just to roll out one store, and then they rolled out eight the next year. And, I'm sure they made some modifications there. And then, they need to go from eight to around 200 in a year. And, they were able to do that very quickly. They were able to take an existing solution and make the modifications, add in one more element, which is control center for us, to make it that much more scalable. So, when you talk about the land and expand motion, it's both within the customer as a whole, but on a solution as well, where we have story after story where someone starts a new initiative. They don't know whether it's going to work out. It works out really well, and that effort they put into the initial solution isn't lost. They don't have to switch over to a different application, because it's now gotten too big, or some element like that. The software and the application is able to grow with their growth as a business, which eliminates a lot of those things that often happens in business, where you have to pause something that's growing to replace a software. >> Right, so, in terms of the feedback loop, you obviously, as you were describing, Steven, the customer success program you're running here is very cross-functional, very collaborative. It's product management. It's marketing, it's sales, it's IT. It's all these groups that need to come together. What is the process like, maybe from both of your perspectives, Steven, starting with you, of getting customer feedback when they're engaging with their customer success manager, for example, and they want a feature that is not quite there yet, How do you take that feedback from the customers, from the field, and start to really prioritize that internally? >> So, let me start. So, one of the things we've introduced this year is, as we've grown the field organization, is we're using our own software, and we've built these territory hubs. So, the account exec, the SC, the CSM, the SSR, the internal team, everyone is on the same page, as it relates to what we're doing in the account. And, we run weekly meetings. We check off on priorities and to-dos. So, you have that visibility by use of our own platform. So, everybody's on the same page. And, that idea of signal that we talk about, that Gina Mark talked about, it starts with that team that is right there with the customer, and then we feed it. Often times, I'll let Steven take the hand off. So, we have that signal. We have the pulse right with the customer with these field teams, and then that gets fed. And, I'll let Steven talk about how we drive it here sort of in Bellevue. >> Yeah, so, there's two elements of getting that signal, and I'm sure there's more, if you think about it. But, one is from the internal team, and one is the feedback from the customer. And, we, not surprisingly, have used the Smartsheet application to do that. But, any time we're getting a customer signal. That could be from our community, that could be coming in from a support ticket, that could be a conversation with a customer success manager, could be from any site. That feedback then goes into a Smartsheet form, and that goes directly to the product management team. And, anyone who has submitted that from a support rep perspective, for example, gets visibility to where that stands in the progress. So, is it something we're looking into? Is it in progress? If there's a date to it, what does that look like? So, we get all that. And then, the other element is we are huge users of Smartsheet internally. And, Mark likes to talk about that he is the biggest user of the mobile application across our whole customer base, and he probably is. But, we absolutely eat our own dog food there, or drink our own champagne. >> I like that one better. >> Probably a better one. And, that motion really helps us understand how to use the application, so Dynamic View, which was launched this week. We're going to be one of the biggest users of that right out of the gate. For the example that I just brought up, what Dynamic View allows us to do is it allows us to provide a view of all of those submissions of request, and the right view to the right company, or the right internal stakeholders, so they know exactly what that status is. So, those are two ways that we get that feedback back into our producting. >> Mike, you said you've been in sales for a long time. How helpful in a sales situation is the fact that you do drink your own champagne? >> Huge, it's huge. >> On Smartsheet, I imagine, a lot of companies don't show that. >> It's a really big deal; anybody who's, really anybody in the company. Anybody's who's touching the customer, When I hire people, the ability to have that confidence and understand how to use and speak from personal experience that fuels passion, it fuels credibility, and it's authentic, which is one of our core values. And then, so much of it is the art of the possible on the whiteboard with the customer. This ability to move from an idea, we've literally mapped out processes, and within 30 minutes, the essay's in there, and we've prototyped a solution. And, not only is it a quality solution, but the customer's blown away by the speed with which we've done it. But, that starts with that deep understanding of the platform and all the functionality, and what you can do with it. >> Right, I'm sure that breeds that authenticity that Gene actually talked about. Well, we're almost out of time, but I want to quickly, Steven, talk about the Partner Success Program. You guys partner with Amazon, Oracle, NetSuite, Salesforce, Slack, Google, I'm probably leaving out a few. Talk to us a little bit about the partner evolution as you compete with some of these partners as well. >> Well, I'm going to switch that a little. So, we have two elements of partners. So, we have those technology partners that you're speaking to. And then, we have the solution provider partners and resellers; that's more in my world. But, what's been really exciting about those folks and, we had a big partner day yesterday, so I'm kind of coming off the high of talking with all these folks. And, one of the things that we hear over and over again is whatever their focus is. So, sometimes, that's a geography focus. Sometimes, that's an industry focus. They tell us how much we're missing already. So, they'll say, if I'm focused on the accounting industry, they'll say, you guys don't even know how great your off the shelf application is in the accounting world. And, what they're so excited about is being able to configure it, being able to build the applications on top of Smartsheet. That then, they can bring to that world, so that, from a scale perspective, we don't have to be experts in accounting. We don't have to be experts in any of those different verticals or in those geographies. We can leverage those partners, their expertise, their relationships, in order to bring that to market in each of those areas. >> Any feedback, I know we're out of time. But, any feedback on some of the announcements that came out today from some of your key partners, besides two thumbs way up? >> They were extremely excited about Dynamic View and seeing what's possible from a new solution perspective. They were just like the rest of the customers. So, when there was the final slide showing all the new features we're bringing, all the phones came out to take pictures. It was a great scene, and they were definitely in that mix. >> Excellent, well, Steven and Mike, thanks so much for stopping by theCUBE and sharing with us how you're transforming, how the customers are able to evolve and transform with your technology. We know you have a lot of meetings to get to, so we'll let you go to that. >> Thank you very much. >> Thank you. >> We want to thank you for watching theCUBE. I'm Lisa Martin live at Smartsheet ENGAGE 2018. Stick around, I'll be right back with my next guest. (techno music)

>> Live, from Bellevue, Washington, it's theCUBE. Covering Smartsheet Engage 18. Brought to you by Smartsheet. >> Welcome back to theCUBE's continuing coverage of Smartsheet Engage 2018, I am Lisa Martin with Jeff Frick in Bellevue, Washington, our first time here. Second annual Smartsheet Engage and we're very please to be joined, welcoming back to theCUBE, Mark Mader, the CEO of Smartsheet. Mark, it's great to have you on the program. >> Thank you, good to be with you. >> Great job on the keynote. >> Thank you, appreciate it. >> So, you can see the buzz behind us, we just got out of the keynote, where, you guys kicked it up, there was a coupla things Jeff and I were talking about that were unique, that I haven't seen very much of at all, in all the keynotes that we go to. One, you started off with an explorer who had a very empowering, enlightening message, all about communication. And then, something that you did that I thought was really cool, that I don't think I've ever seen, is you actually, during your keynote, went into the audience, where you have about 2000 customers here, representing 1100 companies, across 20 countries, and just ad-libbed, hey guys, tell me about your company, how is Smartsheet empowering you, and as you said, that was all natural. >> I think part of it making it real for somebody, is giving you somebody that's relatable. So, we started off the conversation, as you said, with Ed Viesturs, arguably the most famous accomplished climber in the world, today, and he talked about the importance of communication and preparation, and teamwork, and clear decision making, in a context that was spectacularly visual, right, this mountain and those climbing shots, so, people relate to that, and then when you introduces those conducts in the business setting, it's like, oh, yeah, this applies to me, it applies to all of us. So, the notion of getting into the crowd, in a non-rehearsed way, is to really get people comfortable with, hey, I can share something, I can share an experience, and there's no one right answer, it's my experience. >> And that's why you're here, as you said in your keynote, and we know this as well, if companies aren't designing technology for the users, what's the point? >> Yeah, you're right and, one of the things I tried to highlight was, when you say for the user, it's not just for the user, the end user, like developed by a few people, spread to everybody, but it's empowering each and every person to say, hey I want to do something more transformational. I want to manage, automate, scale it, I don't want to be given that solution by someone, I want to do it. And there are hundreds of millions of people, who have the appetite and the interest, and the need for it. So, that's what we're trying to sell into. >> You know, Mark, we got to, so many shows, right, and everyone's chasing innovation. How do we get more innovative? Especially big companies, right? And you did show two really interesting messages, one, was your kind of core message, empowering everyone to improve, how they work, so, like you said, not just the top level decision makers, not down in the developer weave, but everybody up and down this stack. And then you shared a statement covey quote, really talking about how do people, keep 'em engaged and the way people are engaged is that they feel they're empowered to do something for their clients and their customers. So it's such an importannt piece and I think it's easy to talk about, harder to execute, but what is the answer to innovation? Giving more people the data, the tools and the power to take all that and do something for their customers, and thereby unlock all this tremendous value that you already have in your four doors. >> Absolutely, and I think the point of unlocking, so we have, you have 100% of your workforce. If you empower only 4.3% of them, for instance, the developers in your group, you're leaving so much opportunity on the table. And again, you don't get that unlock or that innovative spirit by just using something. You have to live with it, you have to work with it, you have to wrestle with it, And through that, innovation occurs. Ideas get generated. So, if you can get that ideation happening at the midpoint of your company, not the top 5%, huge opportunity. >> I think you were even quoted in the press release, maybe around the IPO that happened a few months ago, congratulations, >> Thank you. >> In saying that, maybe naysayers in the beginning, when you were a company of six, as you were talking about in your keynote, people thought, you're going to build this on a spreadsheet construct? And you said, but four hundred to five hundred million people know that construct. >> Right, right So you're going into an audience if knowledge workers, of which there's a massive percentage, designing something for lines of business, IT, finance, marketing, sales, who actually need to work with that, we're not talking about API's and developer and code speak, you're building this for a very large percentage of the population. >> We are, and I think when we talk about serving a large population, it's tempting to say, well, they can't handle much, let's go with the most common denominator. Let's give them something super, super simple. The problem is, with simple, you don't always get value. So how do you combine relevance and comfort and understanding, with capability. And the product's changed a lot since the early days, it's no longer just a grid, we have dashboards, we have forms, we have card view, we have all these elements that are now being brought forward, but one thing that we've always respected from the beginning is, don't throw away what somebody understands, and is comfortable with. That doesn't necessarily mean that it's the best, but they know it. And people are very nervous about just jettisoning the things they know, so like, embrace it. And then, what we had talked about earlier, was, how do you really listen to that customer's signal, and say okay, I'm comfortable, I like this, but I want more. And that ability to respond to that request, I think has really helped define who Smartsheet is today. You know, 12 years later. >> The other piece you talked on is kind of sideways off of that, is people have systems already in place, they have tools that they use every day. Right, there's this competition for the top layer of the desktop, but the reality is that we have many, many applications that we have to interact with every day. You guys are really taking a coopation approach with all these existing, >> Absolutely >> where it fits, where it's working, to your point, they're already using it and make it work. Integrate with. Don't try to rip and replace all these other systems that're in there. >> Yeah, and I think, you know you come across so many people in life, who want everything. I need total, complete, presence. And you're really discounting what people appreciate. And I think when you take the view of, I'm going to listen to my client, I'm going to listen to what they love and understand, and I'm going to let them articulate how they want it to work, we are in a very diverse, multi-app world today. If you actually march in somewhere and say, yeah all those decisions you made, those were the wrong decisions, you should trust me on everything, you'll be walked out of the building in about 4.2 seconds. So, we're really living that philosophy, and I think in great partnerships with Google, Microsoft and Slack, and Tableau, and others, we're actually able to demonstrate that. >> Yeah, and then to take it from the concept to reality, a great demo, I'm sure you didn't have this planned a couple of weeks ago, was, you talked about the state of North Carolina, and the preparation and the response to Hurricane Florence, and that they were very quickly able to build a super informative dashboard, to let everybody know who needed to know, what they needed to know. >> Correct. >> And how long did that take to put together? Amazing. >> That was under 24 hours. >> 24 hours? >> And the difference here is the difference between building or developing something, and configuring something. So, the difference there is when you actually build something from scratch, we have bare dirt, we need to put a foundation, we need to build a house, we need to shingle it, we need to insulate, that takes you a long time. So how about, we go to a house that exists, let's change the colors of the blinds, let's put in a certain sofa, let's furnish it. And the configuration element, versus construction, that gives people velocity. Now, what they also want is, they want to actually put their own texture to it, they want to make it their own, so the Department of Transportation dashboard that they produced for FEMA and the Coast Guard and the state governor's office, it didn't look like anybody else's dashboard. It was tailored, but it was so quick to build. And the great thing there was, so many people who accessed that site for information on on runway status and power and fuel, they could focus on the citizens as opposed to what the heck is going on, on the ground. >> Right. >> That provides a lot of purpose to our team, when we see our product used that way. >> You talked about speed just a minute ago, and speed, obviously, every enterprise of whatever size, needs to move and quite a bit quickly, to gain competitive advantage, to increase revenues, et cetera, you guys have some really very eye-catching statistics. That you're enabling customers to achieve. I read, enabling an average business leader to save 300 hours a year, 60,000 hours a year saved across on average organization. That's a big impact. How is speed a factor there? >> Yeah, I think speed I look at in a couple dimensions, One is, is it time saved, but there's also an element which is speed of experimentation So we go into an initiative, we say we have this amazing idea and we're going to have all these returns, we think. (chuckling) Well, not all the bets you place actually makes it. Or actually yields, so if you can empower a team to more quickly experiment, configure, try things, see what works and then double down behind those, if you can run five times as many plays as your competitor, you have five times as many chances to find that next winner. And so when we talk about speed, it's again, velocity of decision making, saving time, but also, organizationally, how can you unlock those possibilities? >> Part of that also is enabling cultural change. Which is not easy, it's essential for digital transformation, we talk about that at every event, and it's true, but how do you put that in action? You and I were chatting off camera about one of your customers that is an 125 year old oil and gas company. How do you enable them to kind of absorb and digest a culture of experimentation so that they can really move their business forward as quickly as they need to? >> Well, I think there's a great quote that one of my mentors early gave me. And it was, "All hat, no cattle." And the "All hat, no cattle" refers to the person who talks about how big their ranch is and how big their... Where's your herd? So you can talk a lot, but you have to demonstrate it. So when they go in, and there was another gentleman who talked about this idea of transforming their implementations across 300 project managers, and the quote was, we're going to get you up and running in two to three weeks, and he goes, "Never. No chance." Now, he ended up working with us, and we proved it to him and when you get a win like that, and you can demonstrate speed and impact, those things carry a lot of weight in organizations, but you have to show evidence. And when you talk about why we're landing and expanding in some of the world's largest brands, it's not because we're just talkin' a big game, it's because you're able to demonstrate those wins, and those lead to further growth. >> Right. And then you topped it off with a bit about the catalysts. But even more, I liked the concept of the point guard. Good point guards make everybody else on the team better. They do a little bit on their own, they hit a couple key shots, but they make everybody else better. And you're seeing that in terms of the expansion, and just in the way your go to market is, you don't come in usually as a big enterprise sale, I don't think, you come in small, you come in a group level, and then let the catalyst let those point guards, built successful in their own team, and then branch it out to a broader audience. >> Yeah, and I'm a big believer, and I don't think people can be classified into catalysts and non-catalysts. That's a very sort of blunt force approach. I view it as, you've catalysts, you've catalysts that haven't been unlocked, and then you have people that aren't catalysts. But very often that point guard, is going to activate the power forward, the center and holy smokes, where did that come from? And what we see is, when we see this growth happening in companies, those players around that point guard, get lit, get sparked, and once they're sparked, it's on. And then we see that growth happen for a long, long time. >> We saw some of that quotes, quotes >> We did. (all speaking at once) >> Queen of the world? >> Queen of the world. That's a big statement. >> That's empowerment, right there. >> It is empowerment. >> And the one where, I tweeted this, one of the quotes, I won't share this product name, but it can actually seem smart, she can help reduce work place anxiety. >> Anxiety! >> Which everybody needs. So, it's been six months since the IPO, you have doubled your attendance in your second year only, at Engage, up here in Bellevue, Washington, What are some of the exciting things that you anounced this morning, that have been fueled by the momentum of the IPO has as I imagine, ignited? >> Yeah, couple big things, is we, at every tech conference, you're going to hear about new capabilities. Here are the new bells and whistles and features and capabilities we have. But what we're hearing from customers, they also want us to frame those capabilites and things that are consumable. So, not everybody wants to configure or build as we talked about earlier today, they say I have a need, it's specific to this area, and do you have something for me. More turnkey, like that gentleman I said, two to three weeks to turn and sold him my implementation team. So those are being referred to as accelerators. So we announced a few new accelerators today in the sales realm, in terms of being able to better manage engagement plans with prospects and clients and on sophisticated deals it's a very common thing. And the other piece that I think is really important is, not just talking about business users, which is a huge focus for us, but also how do we better support IT and their needs to regulate, control, have visibility and to how Smartsheet is used. So, those were a couple of highlights, and then the ability to give people more controls over how they share their data. There've been some issues in the news recently, where people have shared too broadly, they've said that's the issue, so we're hearing from our customers, give us some more fine gated controls and confidence over how our corporate information is shared with others. Well, Mark Mader, I wish we had more time, but we thank you so much for stopping by theCUBE, and chatting with Jeff and me. >> Great to see you. >> Great momentum, we look forward to a number of your execs and customers and analysts on the program tonight. >> Great, thank you. >> Thank you, good to see you. >> Thanks, Mark, good to see you again. >> We just want to thank you for watching theCUBE, I'm Lisa Martin with Jeff Frick live from Smartsheet Engage 2018. Stick around, Jeff and I will be right back with our next guest. (techno music)

>> Live from Bellevue, Washington. It's theCUBE, covering Smartsheet Engage '18. Brought to you by Smartsheet. >> Hi, welcome to theCUBE. We are live at Smartsheet Engage 2018. Our first time here, I'm Lisa Martin with Jeff Frick. Jeff, it's great to be paired back up with you again. >> Yeah, it's been a little while, great to see you, Lisa. >> It has, you too. So this is the second annual Smartsheet Engage. There's about a couple thousand people here. Double last year and they shared. We just got in from the keynote and they shared some interesting things. First of all, they IPOed just about four or five months ago. I think April 2018. They have presence in 190 countries. They have 75,000 customers. They've got users in half the Fortune 500. 90% of the Fortune 100. And a lot of momentum. What are some of the things that you're excited to learn about Smartsheet today? >> You know, I think it's kind of an interesting story. There's so many components of a lot of different work applications and we go to so many shows. We hear about a new way to work from IBM. One of my favorite lines of the year was actually from Google Cloud where you want to empower people to actually be, as you wrote it down, make judgements instead of drudgery. And these guys are all about that, but it's a little bit confusing 'cause they integrate with a lot of the other type of applications that people interact with at work. The big mentions of the Microsoft Suite, of 365, of Slack and some of those other tools. So what Smartsheet's tryin' to do is really roll those all up under kind of a unified view, parts of project management, parts of task management, a lot of pieces to really add that top level management. So I think it's a little bit of an interesting message. It's a lot of bits and pieces. We're used to that with theCUBE. We have three brands, so I kind of get it. So I'm lookin' forward to learning more about really how they kind of parse that out. >> I am as well 'cause you mention a number of other solutions who they both compete with, Microsoft Teams, JIRA under Atlassian. They also partner with them. And I'm curios to see an example and we've got three customers of theirs on the show today, Jeff. I'm interested to see that in action. If I am at an enterprise, and I am running a marketing project and I want to use Smartsheets, but I also need Slack for messaging, email for communication. I've got maybe another team I'm collaborating with that's using a different workflow automation platform. How does it actually work together? One of the interesting things, when CEO Mark Mader who's our first guest today, was with you in the studio in Palo Alto just a couple months ago, he was talking about the genesis of Smartsheet. And I also saw him say this in a press release when their IPO occurred back in April and said a lot of people, critics, in the very beginning 12 years ago said, you guys are nuts to go base this new technology, this new SaaS platform off of a spreadsheet model. But something interesting that he said is that, that's a construct that 400-500 million people understand. So this is another interesting element to me is that this is technology that's not, you don't have to know how to code or even what an API is. This is for the business users, the lines of business, IT, marketing, engineering, the facilities management. So it's really, it's got a broad spectrum of use cases that I'm also interested in hearing about today. >> It's funny on the worksheet as kind of a construct because we hear that all the time. Especially at all of our big data shows, right? Worksheets in Excel is still used by a lot of people for a significant amount of work. So people are familiar with it and they know how it works. I think they'll have to change that a little bit as they grow a little bit beyond that. Still a lot of conversation about rows and it sounded very spreadsheet centric in the keynote. And I think that'll evolve, but I think what's the most important thing, what I'm excited about, I say this time and time again. We go to so many shows, right? Everyone is struggling to find innovation. To me the answer is, one of the answers is kind of simple. You get more people, more access to more data with more tools to manipulate that data. And then most importantly, the power to do something about it. This was all about empowerment, empowerment, empowerment. Letting people, give 'em the information and then let them actually do something with it. That is so significant and it's kind of interesting. They had a Stephen Covey quote up on their as well that's kind of a similar thing. Taking it to the next step which is that's how you keep people happy, that's how you keep people engaged. Again, less drudgery, more judgment. Let them feel like they can actually make a difference versus just pushin' buttons and movin' paper along. >> Yeah, another theme that we heard a lot on the keynote this morning, Jeff, is about collaboration. And it really seems to me to be this message of symbiotic collaboration. They, Gene Farrell, who's going to be on the show with Jeff and I just in a few minutes or so, talked about, hey, customers we've heard you. You want more, and he actually got the crowd to chant, we want more, it was great. But when he was starting to talk about some of the new enhancements to the features. And yes, you're right, they're still talking about some, I don't want to say antiquated row structures and things like that, there were a number of times where the audience today broke into applause. So, not only are they delivering this SaaS platform to facilitate collaboration between teams at small organizations to big enterprises, they are also collaborating with their customers to continually innovate and improve their product. And I thought, something that I've never seen and we see a lot of keynotes, is that their CEO, Mark Mader, actually went into the audience during his session this morning and asked customers to stand up and talk about how Smartsheet is empowering them. And there were at least three different customers that stood up-- >> Right. >> and quite articulately spoke about how mostly qualitatively, but how their businesses or their team or their productivity is being improved. So this bidirectional collaboration, I thought was very palpable this morning. >> Right, which again I think is one of the huge benefits of the SaaS business model that is way underreported, not by us, we talk about it all the time. Is that if you have a recurring revenue model with your customer it forces you to be engaged. It forces you to deliver value. It forces you to innovate on an ongoing basis. It's not a ship and dump and then release. We'll come back in a year for our 15% maintenance. It's a very different way to go. Other really interesting things, they talked about recent events, Hurricane Florence in North Carolina. Happened to be a customer there able to aggregate and pull together a lot of information into these dashboards and that's something we hear about all the time. We'll hear about it more in the PayPal example. It was referenced in the keynote which is when you have to pull that data together for your weekly executive briefing, this promise of all these dashboards has always been there. Smartsheets is a little bit different because they want to be the primary way, but they want to integrate with all these other applications and other SaaS applications as well, so that you can create that user specific dashboard for the objective and you don't have to reassemble all that data every week for your weekly to roll up to the C-Suite. >> Yeah, and one of the things, speaking of customers, they had over 50 customers speaking at the event this week which is a lot. I was very impressed by that. >> Yeah, out of 2,000 registrants that's a big percentage. >> That is a big number. I think also some of the stats that Mark Mader showed were 1,100 companies are represented here from 20 countries. In fact, I also saw online that nearly a third of their revenue comes from outside the US and they actually don't have much presence outside the US at all. Outside of Converse.AI that they acquired based in Edinburgh, back in I think January of this year. But in terms of customers, the voice of the customer and that customer collaboration, we're also going to be talking to a gentleman who runs their customer success and partner success program. As you mentioned, the SaaS model being different, this isn't just check in every year and dial up the increase in subscription costs. So I'm curious what their new playbook is for customer success that they are developing and implementing or executing, that going to be their word, right? >> Right, right. >> Execution. Based on this new model and how customers want to be engaging with vendors. Ultimately they want things as simple as possible, so I'm curious to hear about how that customer success playbook here might be a differentiator against Atlassian, JIRA, Microsoft Team, and some of the other competitors. And also, how does it facilitate this breadth of collaboration? How does it enable them to collaborate with sales force and Amazon and Microsoft and Slack, for example? A lot of interesting points here and I'm hoping today what we're able to do is help put that together and sort of integrate this message. >> Should be a good day, looking forward to it. >> I think so. >> Our first time here. >> It is our first time. So stick around, Jeff and I are going to be live all day. We are again in Bellevue, Washington at the second annual Smartsheet Engage 2018. I'm Lisa Martin with Jeff Frick. Stick around, we're going to be right back with the CEO in just a minute. (high tech music)