>>Yeah. >>Welcome back for our last session of the day how to deliver career making business outcomes with Search and AI. So we're very lucky to be hearing from Canada. Canadian Tire, one of Canada's largest and most successful retailers, have been powered 4.5 1000 employees to maximize the value of data with self service insights. So today we're joining us. We have Yarrow Baturin, who is the manager of Merch analytics and planning to support at Canadian Tire and then also Andrea Frisk, who is the engagement manager manager for thoughts. What s O U R Andrea? Thanks so much for being here. And with >>that, >>I'll pass the mic to you guys. >>Thank you for having us. Um, already, I I think I'll start with an introduction off who I am, what I do. A Canadian entire on what Canadian pair is all about. So, as a manager of Merch analytics at Canadian Tire, I support merchant organization with reporting tools, and then be I platform to enable decision making on a day to day basis. What is? Canadian Tire's Canadian tire is one of the largest retailers in Canada. Um, serving Canadians with a number of lines of business spanning automotive fixing, living, playing and SNG departments. We have a number of banners, including sport check Marks Party City Phl that covers more than 1700 locations. So as an organization, we've got vast variety of different data, whether it's product or loyalty. Now, as the time goes on, the number of asks the number off data points. The complexity of the analysis has been increasing on banned traditional tools. Analytical tools such as Excel Microsoft Access do find job but start hitting their limitations. So we started on the journey of exploring what other B I platforms would be suitable for our needs. And the criteria that we thought about as we started on that journey is to make sure that we enable customization as well as the McCarthy ization of data. What does that mean? That means we wanted to ensure that each one of the end users have ability to create their own versions off the report while having consistency from the data standpoint, we also wanted Thio ensure that they're able to create there at hawks search queries and draw insights based on the desired business needs. As each one of our lines of business as each one of our departments is quite unique in their nature. And this is where thoughts about comes into play. Um, you checked off all the boxes? Um, as current customers, as potential customers, you will discover that this is the tool that allows that at hawks search ability within a matter of seconds and ability to visualize the information and create those curated pin boards for each one of the business units, depending on what the needs are. And now where? I guess well, Andrea will talk a little bit more about how we gained adoption, but the usage was like and how we, uh, implemented the tool successfully in the organization. >>Okay, so I actually used to work for Canadian tire on DSO. During that time, I helped Thio build training and engaging users to sort of really kick start our use cases. Andi, the ongoing process of adopting thought spot through Canadian Tire s 01 of the sort of reasons that we moved into using thought spot was there was a need Thio evolve, um, in order to see the wealth of data that we had coming in. So the existing reporting again. And this is this sort of standard thoughts bought fix is, um, it brings the data toe. Everyone on git makes it more accessible, so you get more out of your data. So we want to provide users with the ability to customize what they could see and personalized three information so that they could get their specific business requirements out of the data rather than relying on the weekly monthly quarterly reporting. That was all usually fairly generic eso without the ability to deep dive in. So this gave the users the agility thio optimize their campaigns, optimize product murder, urgency where products are or where there's maybe supply chain gaps. Andi just really bring this out for trillions of rose to become accessible. Thio the Canadian tire. That's what user base think. That's the slide. >>That's the slight, Um So as Andrea talked about the business use of the particular tool, let's talk a little bit about how we set it up and a wonderful journey of how it's evolved. So we first implemented 5.3 version of that spot on the Falcon server on we've been adding horsepower to it over time. Now mhm. What I want to stress is the importance off the very first, Data said. That goes into the tool toe. Actually engage the users and to gain the adoption and to make sure there is no argument whether the tool is accurate or not. So what we've started with is a key p I marked layer with all the major metrics that we have and all the available permutations and combinations off the dimensions, whether it's a calendar dimension, proud of dimension or, let's say, customer attribute now, as we started with that data set, we wanted to make sure that we're we have the ability to add and the dimensions right. So now, as we're implementing the tool, we're starting to add in more dimension tables to satisfy the needs off our clients if you want to call it that way as they want to evolve their analytics. So we started adding in some of the store attributes we started adding in some of the product attributes on when I refer to a product attributes, let's say, uh, it involves costs and involves prices involved in some of the strategic internal pieces that we're thinking about now as the comprehensive mark contains right now, in our instance, close to five billion records. This is where it becomes the one source of truth for people declaring information against right so as they go in, we also wanted to make sure when they Corey thought spot there, we're really Onley. According one source of data. One source of truth. It became apparent over time, obviously, that more metrics are needed. They might not be all set up in that particular mark. And that's when we went on the journey off implementing some of the new worksheets or some of the new data sets particularly focused on the four looking pieces. And uh, that's where it becomes important to say This is how you gain the interest and keep the interests of the public right. So you're not just implementing a number off data sets all at once and then letting the users be you're implementing pieces and stages. You're keeping the interest thio, the tool relevant. You're keeping, um, the needs of the public in mind. Now, as you can imagine on the Falcon server piece, um, adding in the horsepower capacity might become challenging the mawr. Billions of Rosie erratic eso were actually in the middle of transitioning our environment to azure in snowflake so that we can connect it. Thio embrace capability of thoughts cloud. And that's where I'm looking forward to that in 2021 I truly believe this will enable us Thio increase the speed off adoption Increase the speed of getting insights out of the tool and scale with regards Thio new data sets that we're thinking about implementing as we're continuing our thoughts about journey >>Okay, so how we drove adoption Thio 4500 plus users eso When we first started Thio approach our use case with the merchants within Canadian Tire We had meetings with these users with who are used place is gonna be with and sort of found out. What are they searching for, Where they typically looking at what existing reports are available for them. Andi kind of sought out to like, What are those things where you're pulling this on your own or someone else's pulling this data because it's not accessible yet And we really use that as our foundation to determine one what data we needed to initially bring into the system but also to sort of create those launchpad pin boards that had the base information that the users we're gonna need so that we could twofold, make it easy for them, toe adopt into the tool and also quickly start Thio, deactivate or discontinue those reports. And just like these air now only available in thought spot because with the sort of formatting within thought spot around dates, it's really easy to make this year's report last year report etcetera. Just have everything roll over every month or a recorder s. So that was kind of some of the pre work foundation when we originally did it. But really, it's been a lot of training, a lot of training. So we conducted ah, lot of in person training, obviously pre co vid eso. We've started to train the group that we targeted, which was the merchants and all of the like, surrounding support groups. Eso we had planners going in and training as well, so that everyone who was really closely connected to the merchants I had an idea of what thoughts about what was and how to use it and where the reports were, and so we just sort of rolled it out that way, and then it started to fly like wildfire. Eso the merchants start to engage with supply chain to have conversations, or the merchants were engaging with the vendors to sort of have negotiations about pricing. And they're creating these reports and getting the access to the information so quickly, and they're sharing it out that we had other groups just coming to us asking, How do I get into thoughts about how can I get in on DSO on top of those groups, we also sought out other heavy analytics groups such a supply chain where we felt like they could have the same benefits if they on boarded into thought spot with their data as well on Ben. Just continuing to evolve the training roll out. Um, you know, we continued to engage with the users, >>so >>we had a newsletter briefly Thio, sort of just keep informing users of the new data coming in or when we actually upgraded our system. So the here are the new features that you'll start seeing. We did virtual trainings and maintaining an F A Q document with the incoming questions from the users, and then eventually evolved into a self guided learning so that users that were coming to a group, or maybe we've already done a full rollout could come in and have the opportunity to learn how to use thought spot, have examples that were relevant to the business and really get started. Eso then each use case sort of after our initial started to build into a formula of the things that we needed to have. So you need to understand it. Having SMEs ready and having the database Onda worksheets built out sort of became the step by step path to drive adoption. Um, from an implementation timeline, I think they're saying, Took about two months and about half of that waas Kenny entire figuring out how figuring out our security, how to get the data in on, Do we need the time to set up the environment and get on Falcon? So then, after that initial two months, then each use case that we come through. Generally, we've got users trained and SMEs set up within about 2 to 3 weeks after the data is ingested. It's not obviously, once snowflakes set up on the data starts to get into that and the data feeds in, then you're really just looking at the 2 to 3 weeks because the data is easily connected in, >>um, no. All right, let's talk about some of the use cases. So we started with what data we've implemented. Andrea touched upon what Use a training look like what the back curate that piece wants. Now let's talk a little bit about use cases and how we actually leverage thoughts bought together the insights. So the very first one is ultimately the benefit of the tool to the entire organization. Israel Time insights. To reiterate what Andrea said, we first implemented the tool with our buyers. They're the nucleus of any retail organization as they work with everybody within the company and as the buyer's eyes, Their responsibility to ensure both the procurement and the sales channel, um, stays afloat at the end of the day, right? So they need information on a regular basis. They needed fast. They needed timely, and they needed in a fashion that they choose to digest it. It right? Not every business is the same. Not every individual is the same. They consume digest, analyze information differently. And that's what that's what allows you to dio whether it's the search, whether it's a customized onboard, please now supply chain unexpected things. As Andrea mentioned Irish work a lot of supply chain. What is the goal of supply chain to receive product and to be able to ship that product to the stores Now, as our organization has been growing and is doing extremely well, we've actually published Q three results recently. Um, the aspect off prioritization at D C level becomes very important, And what drives some of that prioritization is the analysis around what the upcoming sales would be for specific products for specific categories. And that's where again thoughts. But is one of the tools that we've utilized recently to set our prioritization logic from both inbound and outbound us. It's right because it gives you most recent results. It gives you most granular results, depending on the business problem that you're trying to tackle. Now let's chat a little bit about covert 19 response, because this one is an extremely interesting case as a pandemic hit back in March. Um, as you can imagine, the everyday life a Canadian entire became as business unusual is our executives referred to it under business unusual. This speed and the intensity of the insights and the analytics has grown exponentially. And the speed and the intensity of the insights is driven by the fact that we were trying Thio ensure that we have the right selection of products for our Canadian customers because that's ultimately bread and butter off all of the retailers is the customers, right? So thoughts bought allowed us to have early trends off both sales and inventory patterns, where, whether we were stalking out of some of the products in specific stories of provinces, whether we saw some of the upload off different lines of business, depending on the region, ality right as pandemic hit, for example, um, gym's closed restaurants closed. So as Canadian pack carries a wide variety of different lines of business, we actually offer a wide selection of exercise equipment and accessories, cycling products as well as the kitchen appliances and kitchen accessories pieces. Right? So all of those items started growing exponentially and in certain areas more than others. And this is where thoughts about comes into play. A typical analysis on what the region ality of the sales has been over the last couple of days, which is lifetime and pandemic terms, um, could have taken days weeks for analysts to ultimately cobbled together an Excel spreadsheet. Meanwhile, it can take a couple of seconds for 12 Korean tosspot set up a PIN board that can be shared through a wide variety of individuals rather than fording that one Excel spreadsheet that gets manipulated every single time. And then you don't get the right inside. So from again merch supply chain covert response aspect of things. That spot has been one of those blessings and one of those amazing tools to utilize and improve the speed off insights, improved the speed of analytics and improve the speed of decision making that's ultimately impacting, then consumer at the store level. So Andrea talked about 4500 users that we have that number of school. But what I owe the recently like to focus on, uh, Andrew and I laughing because I think the last time we've spoken at a larger forum with the fastball community, I think we had only 500 users. That was in the beginning >>of the year in in February, we were aiming to have like 1000 >>exactly. So mission accomplished. So we've got 4500 employees now. Everybody asked me, Yeah, that's a big number, but how many times do people actually log in on a weekly or daily basis? I'm or interested in that statistic? So lately, um, we've had more than 400 users on the weekly basis. What's what's been cool lately is, uh, the exponential growth off ad hoc ways. So throughout October, we've reached a 75,000 ad hoc ways in our system and about 13,000 PIN board views. So why is that's that's significant? We started off, I would say, in January of 2020 when Andrea refers to it, I think we started off with about 40 45,000 ad hoc worries a month. So again, that was cool. But at the end of the day, we were able to thio double that amount as more people migrate to act hawk searches from PIN board views, and that's that's a tremendous phenomena, because that's what that's about is all about. So I touched upon a little bit about exercise and cycling. So these are our quarterly results for Q two, um, that have showed tremendous growth that we did not plan for, that we were able to achieve with, ultimately the individuals who work throughout the organization, whether it's the merch organization or whether it's the supply chain side of the business. But coming together and utilizing a B I platform by tools such a hot spot, we can see triple digit growth results. Eso What's next for us users at Hawks searches? That's fantastic. I would still like to get to more than 1200 people on the weekly basis. The cool number to me is if all of our lifetime users were you were getting into the tool on a weekly basis. That would be cool. And what's proven to be true is ultimately the only way to achieve it is to keep surprising and delighting them and your surprising and delighting them with the functionality of the tool. With more of the relevant content and ultimately data adding in more data, um, is again possible through ET else, and it's possible through pulling that information manually. But it's expensive, expensive not from the sense of monetary value, but it's expensive from the size time, all of those aspects of things So what I'm looking forward to is migrating our platform to azure in snowflake and being able thio scale our insights accordingly. Toe adding more data to Adam or incites more, uh, more individual worksheets and data sets for people to Korea against helps the each one of the individuals learn. Get some of the insights. Helps my team in particular be, well, more well versed in the data that we have existing throughout the organization. Um, and then now Andrea, in touch upon how we scale it further and and how each one of the individuals can become better with this wonderful >>Yeah, soas used a zero mentioned theater hawk searches going up. It's sort of it's a little internal victory because our starting platform had really been thio build the pin boards to replicate what the users were already expecting. So that was sort of how we easily got people in. And then we just cut off the tap Thio, whatever the previous report waas. So it gave them away. Thio get into the tool and understand the information. So now that they're using ad hoc really means they understand the tool. Um, then they they have the data literacy Thio access the information and use it how they need. So that's it's a really cool piece. Um, that worked on for Canadian tire. A very report oriented and heavy organization. So it was a good starting platforms. So seeing those ad hoc searches go up is great. Um, one of the ways that we sort of scaled out of our initial group and I kind of mentioned this earlier I sort of stepped on my own toes here. Um is that once it was a proven success with the merchants and it started to spread through word of mouth and we sought out the analyst teams. Um, we really just kept sort of driving the insights, finding the data and learning more about the pieces of the business. As you would like to think he knows everything about everything. He only knows what he knows. Eso You have to continue to cultivate the internal champions. Um Thio really keep growing the adoption eso find this means that air excited about the possibility of using thought spot and what they can do with it. You need to find those people because they're the ones who are going to be excited to have this rapid access to the information and also to just be able to quickly spend less time telling a user had access it in thought spot. Then they would running the report because euro mentioned we basically hit a curiosity tax, right? You you didn't want to search for things or you didn't want to ask questions of the data because it was so conversed. Um, it was took too much time to get the data. And if you didn't know exactly what you were looking for, it was worse. So, you know, you wouldn't run a query and be like, Oh, that's interesting. Let me let me now run another query of all that information to get more data. Just not. It's not time effective or resource effective. Actually, at the point, eso scaling the adoption is really cultivating those people who are really into it as well. Um, from a personal development perspective, sort of as a user, I mean, one who doesn't like being smartest person in the room on bought spot sort of provides that possibility. Andi, it makes it easier for you to get recognized for delivering results on Dahlia ble insights and sort of driving the business forward. So you know, B b that all star be the Trailblazer with all the answers, and then you can just sort of find out what really like helping the organization realized the power of thought spot on, baby. Make it into a career. >>Amazing. I love love that you've joined us, Andrea. Such a such an amazing create trajectory. No bias that all of my s o heaps of great information there. Thank you both. So much for sharing your story on driving such amazing adoption and the impact that you've been able to make a T organization through. That we've got a couple of minutes remaining. So just enough time for questions. Eso Andrea. Our first questions for you from your experience. What is one thing you would recommend to new thoughts about users? >>Um, yeah, I would say Be curious and creative. Um, there's one phrase that we used a lot in training, which was just mess around in the tool. Um, it's sort of became a catchphrase. It is really true. Just just try and use it. You can't break. It s Oh, just just play around. Try it you're only limitation of what you're gonna find is your own creativity. Um, and the last thing I would say is don't get trapped by trying to replicate things. Is that exactly as they were? B, this is how we've always done it. Isin necessarily The the best move on day isn't necessarily gonna find new insights. Right. So the change forces you thio look at things from a different perspective on defined. Find new value in the data. >>Yeah, absolutely. Sage advice there. Andan another one here for Yaro. So I guess our theme for beyond this year is analytics meets Cloud Open for everyone. So, in your experience, what does What does that mean for you? >>Wonderful question. Yeah. Listen, Angela Okay, so to me, in short, uh, means scale and it means turning Yes. Sorry. No, into a yes. Uh, no, I'm gonna elaborate. Is interest is laughing at me a little bit. That's right. >>I can talk >>Fancy Two. Okay, So scale from the scale perspective Cloud a zai touched upon Throw our conversation on our presentation cloud enables your ability Thio store have more data, have access to more data without necessarily employing a number off PTL developers and going toe a number of security aspect of things in different data sources now turning a no into a yes. What does that mean with more data with more scalability? Um, the analytics possibilities become infinite throughout my career at Canadian Tire. Other organizations, if you don't necessarily have access thio data or you do not have the necessary granularity, you always tell individuals No, it's not possible. I'm not able to deliver that result. And quite often that becomes the norm, saying no becomes the norm. And I think what we're all striving towards here on this call Aziz part the conference is turning that no one say yes on then making a yes a new, uh, standard a new form. Um, as we have more access to the data, more access to the insights. So that would be my answer. >>Love it. Amazing. Well, that kind of brings in into this session. So thank you, everyone for joining us today on did wrap up this dream. Don't miss the upcoming product roadmap eso We'll be sticking around to speak thio some of the speakers you heard earlier today and I'll make the experts round table, and you can absolutely continue the conversation with this life. Q. On Q and A So you've got an opportunity here to ask questions that maybe keep you up at night. Perhaps, but yet stay tuned for the meat. The experts secrets to scaling analytics adoption after the product roadmap session. Thanks everyone. And thank you again for joining us. Guys. Appreciate it. >>Thank you. Thanks. Thanks.

>>Yeah, yeah. >>Welcome back, everyone. And let's get ready for session number two, which is all around picking the right use cases. We're going to take a look at how to make the most of your data driven journey through the lens of some instructive customer examples. So today we're joined by thought squads David Copay, who is a director of business value consulting like Daniel, who's a customer success manager and then engagement manager. Andrea Frisk, who not so long ago was actually a product manager. Canadian Tire, who are one of our customers. And she was responsible for the thoughts. What implementation? So we figured Who better to get involved? But yeah, let's Let's take it away, David. >>Thanks, Gina. Welcome, everybody. And Andrea Blake looking forward to this session with you. A zoo. We all know preparation early is key to success on Duin. Any project having the right team on sponsorship Thio, build and deploy. Ah, use case is critical being focused on three outcome that you have in mind both the business deliverables and then also the success criteria of how you're going to manage, uh, manage and define success. When you get there, Eyes really critical to to set you up in the right direction initially. So, Andrea, as as we mentioned, uh, you came from an organization that quite several use cases on thoughts about. So maybe you can talk us through some of those preparation steps that, yeah, that you went through and and share some insights on how folks can come prepare appropriately. >>Eso having the right team members makes such a difference. Executive support really helped the Canadian tire adoption spread. It gave the project presence and clout in leadership meetings and helped to drive change from the top down. We had clear goals and success criteria from our executive that we used to shape the go forward plan with training and frame the initial use case roadmap. One of the other key benefits over executive sponsor was that the reporting team for our initial use case rolled up by underhand. So there was a very clear directive for a rapid phase out of the old tools once thought Spot supported the same data story. And this is key because as you start to roll through use cases, you wanna realize the value. And if you're still executing the old the same time as the new. That's not gonna happen. As we expanded into areas where we were unfamiliar with the data in business utilization, we relied on the data experts and and users to inform what success would look like in the new use cases. We learned early on that those who got volunteer old and helping didn't always become the champions. That would help you drive value from the use case. Using the thoughts about it meant tables. We started to seek out users who are consistently logging in after an initial training, indicating their curiosity and appetite to learn more. We also looked for activities outside of just pin board views toe identify users that had the potential to build and guide new users as subject matter experts, not just in a data but in thought spot. This helps us find the right people to cultivate who were already excited about the potential of thought spot and could help us champion a use case. >>That's really helpful, great, great insight for someone who's been there and done that. Blake is as a customer success manager. Obviously, you approach many of the same situations, anything you'd like to add that >>I still along with the right team. My first question with any use cases. Why Why are we doing this? You've gathered all this data and now we want to use it. But But what for? When you get that initial response on Why this use case? Don't stop there. Keep asking Why keep digging? Keep digging. Keep digging. So what you're essentially trying to get at is what does the decision is that we will be made or potentially be made because of this use case. For example, let's say that we're looking at an expenses use case. What will be done with the insides gathered with this use case? Are those insights going? Thio change the expense approval process Now, Once you have that, why defined now it becomes a lot easier to define the success criteria. Success criteria they use. Face can sometimes be difficult to truly defined. But when you understand why it becomes much easier, so now you can document that success criteria. And the hard part at that point is to actually track that success over time, track the success of the use case, which is something that is easily miss but It's something that is incredibly useful to the overall initiative. >>Right measure. Measure the outcomes. You can't manage what you what? You can't what you don't measure right? As the old adage goes, and you know it's part of the business consulting team. That's really where we come in. Is helping customers really fundamentally define? How are we going to measure a success? Aziz. We move forward. Andi, I think you know, I think we've alluded to this a little bit in terms of that sort of ongoing nature of This is, you know, after the title of the session, eyes choosing the right news cases in the plural right? So it's very important to remember that this is not a single point in time event that happens once. This is a constant framework or process, because most organizations will find that there's many use cases, potentially dozens of use cases that thoughts what could be used for, and clearly you can't move forward with all of them. At the same time, eso. Another thing that our team helps customers walk through is what's the impact, the potential value, other particular use case. You know, you, Blake, you mentioned some of those outcomes, is it? Changing the expense processes it around? Reducing customer churn is an increasing speed toe insight and speak the market on defining those measurable outcomes that define the vertical axis here. The strategic importance off that use case. Um, but that's not the only dimension that you're gonna look at the East to deploy factors into that you could have the most valuable use case ever. But if it's going to take you to three years to get it implemented for various reasons, you're not really gonna start with that one, right? So the combination of east to deploy, aligned with the strategic importance or business value really gives you that road map of where to focus to prioritize on use cases. Eso again, Andrea, you've been through this, um, in your prior time at Canadian time. Maybe you can share some thoughts on how you approach that. >>Yeah. So our initial use case was a great launching platform because the merchandizing team had a huge amount across full engagement. So once we had the merchants on board, we started to plan or use case roadmap looking for other areas, and departments were thought spot had already started to spread by word of mouth and we where we felt there was a high strategic importance. As we started to scope these areas, the ease of deployment started to get more complicated. We struggled to get the right people engaged and didn't always have the top down support for resources in the new use case area. We wanted to maintain momentum with the adoption, but it was starting to feel like we were stalling out on the freeway. Then the strategic marketing team reached out and was really excited about getting into thought spot. This was an underserved team where when it came to data, they always had someone else running it for them, and they'd have to request reports and get the information in. Um, and our initial roadmap focused on the biggest impact areas where we could get the most users, and this team was not on the radar. But when we started to engage with them, we realized that this was gonna be an easy deployment. We already had the data and thought spot to support their needs, and it turned into such a great win because as a marketing team, they were so thrilled to have thought spot and to get the data when they needed it and wanted it. They continued to spread the word and let everyone know. But it also gave the project team a quick win to put some gas in the tank and keep us moving. So you want to plan your use case trajectory, but you also need to be willing to adapt to keep the momentum going. >>Yeah, no, that's a That's a really great point. So So Blake is a customer success manager. I'm sure you lived through some integration of this all the time. So any anything you wanted to add that >>Yes. So to Andrew's point, continuous delivery is key for technical folks out there were talking and agile methodology mindset versus a waterfall. So to show value, there's many different factors that air at play. You need to look at the overall business initiatives. We need to look at financial considerations. We need to look at different career objectives and also resource limitations. So when you start thinking about all those different factors, this becomes a mixture of art and science. So, for example, at the beginning of a project when thought spot is has just been purchased or whatever tool has just been purchased. You want to show immediate value to justify that purchase. So in order to show immediate value, you might want to look at a project or a use case that is tightly aligned to a business objective. Therefore, it shows value, and it has data that is ready to go without many different transformations. But as you move forward, you have to come up with a plan that is going to mix together these difficult use cases with the easier use cases and high business values cases versus the lower. So in order to do that, my most successful customers are evaluating those different business factors and putting those into place with an overall use case development plan. >>Really good feedback. That's great. Thank you. Thanks, Blake. Um, I think s a little bit of a reality check here. Right. So I think we all recognize that any technology implementation, um, is gonna have her bumps in the road. It's not gonna be smooth sailing all along the way. You know, we talk about people, process and technology. The technology wrote wrote roadblocks can be infrastructure related there could be some of the data quality issues that you're alluding to there. Like Onda, people in process fall into the sort of the cultural, uh, cultural cultural side of it. Blake, maybe you can spend a couple minutes going through. What? What if some of those bigger roadblocks that people may face on that, um, technical side on how they could both prepare for them and then address them as they come along? >>Yeah. So the most intimidating part of any business intelligence or analytics initiative is that it's going to put the data directly into the hands of the business users. And this is especially true with ocelot. So why this is intimidating is because it's going toe, lay bare and expose any data issues that exist. So this is going to lead to the most common objective that I hear to starting. Any new use case or any FBI initiative overall, which is our data isn't ready. And essentially that is fear of failure. So when data isn't ready and companies aren't ready to start these projects, what happens is to get around those data issues. There's a lot of patchwork that's happening, you know, this patchwork is necessary just to keep the wheels in motion just to keep things going. So what I mean by the patchwork is extracting the data from a source doing some manual manipulation, doing some manipulation directly within the within the database in order to satisfy those business users request. So this keeps things going, but it's not addressing the key issues that are in place now. While it's intimidating to start these initiatives, the beauty of starting these B I initiatives is it's going to force your company to address and fix these issues. And this, to me, is somewhere where thoughts what is a gigantic benefit? It's not something that we talk about necessarily or market, but thought Spot is really good at helping fix these data issues. And I say this for two reasons. One his data quality. So, with thoughts about you can run, searches directly against your most granular level data and find where those data issues exist, and now, especially with embrace, you're running it directly against the source. So thats what is going to really help you figure out those data quality issues. So as you develop a use case, we can uncover those data quality issues and address them accordingly. And second is data governance. So especially again with embrace and our cloud, our cloud structure is you are going to be bringing Companies are going to be bringing data sources from all over the place all into one source and into one logical view. And so traditionally, the problem with that is that your data and source a might be the theoretically the same data and source B. But the numbers are different. And so you have different versions of the truth. So what thoughts about helps you do is when you bring those sources together. Now you're gonna identify those issues, and now you're gonna be forced to address them. You're gonna be forced to address naming convention issues, business logic issues, which business logic translates to the technical logic toe transform that data and then also security and access. Who was actually able to see this data across these different data sources. So overall, the biggest objective eye here is our data isn't ready. But I challenge that. And I say that by taking on this initiative with thought spot, you were going to be directly addressing that issue and thoughts. What's going to help you fix it? >>Yeah, that's Ah, I'd love that observation that, you know, data quality issues. They're not gonna go away by themselves. And if thoughts, thoughts what could be part of the solution, then even better. So that's a That's a really great observation. Eso Andrea, looking at the sort of the cultural side of things the people in process, Um, what are some of the challenges that you've seen there that folks in the audience could that could learn from? >>Yeah. So think about the last time you learned a new system or tool. How long did it take you to get adjusted and get the performance you wanted from it? Maybe you hit the ground running, but maybe you still feel like you're not quite getting the most out of it. Everyone deals with change differently, and sometimes we get stuck in the change curve and never fully adapt. Companies air no different. Ah, lot of the roadblocks you may face are not only from individual struggling to get on board, but can be the result of an organizational culture that may not be used to change or managing it. Their external impacts on how we accept change such as Was there a clear message about the upcoming changes and impacts? Was there a communication channel for questions and concerns? Did individuals feel like their input was sought after and valued? Where there are multiple mediums, toe learn from was their time to learn? Organizational change is hard. And if there isn't a culture that allocates time and resources to training, then realizing success is gonna be an uphill battle. It will be harder to move people forward if they don't have the time to get comfortable and feel acclimated to the new way of doing things. Without the training and change support from the organization, you'll end up running the old and the new simultaneously, which we talked about not in our live supporting users, in both eyes going to negate that value. There were times at Canadian Tire where we really struggled to get key stakeholders engaged or to get leadership by it on the time of the resources that we're gonna be needed and committed Thio to make a use case successful. So gauging where people and the organization are in the change curve is the first step in moving them along the path towards acceptance and integration. So you'll wanna have an action plan to address the concerns and resistance and a way to solicit and channel feedback. >>Yeah, that's Zo great feedback. And I particularly like what you talked about sort of the old and the new because, you know, we've talked about success and measurement on value quite a bit in this session, and ultimately that's that's the goal, right? Is to live a Value s o. This is a framework that we found really helpful visit. Value Team is defining those success criteria really actually falls into two categories on the right hand side. Better decisions. Um, that's ultimately what you're looking to drive with thoughts about right. You're looking to get newer inside faster to be able to drive action and outcomes based on decisions that do. Maybe we're using your gut for previously on the words under that heading. They're going to change by organizations. So you know, those don't get too caught up on those, but it's really around defining, you know, one. Are those better decisions that you're looking to drive, Who what's the persona is gonna be making them one of their actually looking to accomplish when inside. So they're looking to get one of what are the actions they're going to take on those insights? And then how do we measure Thean pact of those actions that then provides us with the the foundation of a business case in our I, um, in parallel to that, it's important to remember that this use case is not just operating in a vacuum, right? Every organization has a Siri's off strategic transformational initiatives move to the cloud democratized data, etcetera. And to the extent that you can tie particular use cases into those key strategic initiatives, really elevates the importance off that use case outside of its own unique business case. In our calculation on Bazzaz several purposes, right, it raises the visibility project. It raises the visibility of the person championing project on. Do you know reality here is that every idea organization has tons of projects have taken invest in, but the ones they're gonna be more likely to invest in other ones that are tied to those strategic initiatives. So it increases the likelihood of getting the support and funding that you need to drive this forward um, that's really around defining the success success criteria upfront. Um, and >>what >>we find is a lot of organizations do that pretty well, and they've got a solid, really solid business case to move forward. But then over time, they kind of forget about that on. Do you know, a year down the line two years down the line, Maybe even, you know, three months, six months down the line. Maybe people have rotated through the business. People have come and gone, and you almost forget the benefit that you're driving, right? And so it's really important to not do that and keep an eye on and track Onda, look back and analyze and realize the value that use cases have driven on. Obviously, the structure of that and what you measure is gonna very significantly by escape. But it's really important there Thio to make sure that you're counting your success and measuring your success. Um, Andrea, I don't any any thoughts on that from from your past experience. >>Yeah, um, success will be different For each use case, 1 may be focused on reducing the time to insights in a fast competitive market, while another may be driven by a need to increase data fluency to reduce risk. The weighting of each of these criterias will shift and and the value perception should as well. Um, but one thing that we don't want to forget is to share your personal successes. So be proud of the work that you've done in the value it's created. Um, if you're a user who has taken advantage of thought spot and managed to grab a competitive edge by having faster in depth access to data, share that in your business reviews. If you're managing the adoption at your company, share your use case winds and user adoption stories. Your customer success team is here to help you articulate the value and leverage the great work being done in and because of thought spot. >>Yeah, long story short here. This benefits everybody. This is something that's easily overlooked and something that it ZZ not to do this to track adoption to define the r o I, but it benefits those benefits. Start spot benefits of customers. Everybody wins. When we do this, >>that's Ah, that's a great point. So, um, so if we talk about you know, as we wrap the session up. You know what can what can folks in the audience dio right now to start making some of this stuff happened? You know, you're Blake again, coming back to you in customer success. How have you and your role help customers take that next step and start executing on some of the things that we've talked about? >>Yeah. So to start off with, I would just say for each use case as much as possible, define the why and to find the success criteria. Just start off with those two, those two elements and over time that that process we'll get more and more refined and our goal within the CSCE or within within thoughts. But overall, not just the C s order is to enable all of our all of our customers to be able to do all these things on their own. And to be a successful, it's possible to be able to pick the right use cases to be able to execute those right use cases as effectively as possible. So we are here to help with that. CS is here to help with that. Your account executives here to help with that, we have use case workshops. We have our professional services team that can get in and help develop use cases. So lots of options available in goal. We all mutually benefit when we try to track towards thes best possible use cases. >>All right, that we're here to help. That's Ah, that's a great way. Thio, wrap up the session there. Thanks, Blake. For all of your thoughts and Andrea to hope everyone in the audience got some valuable insights here on how to choose the right news case and be successful with thoughts about, um, with that being, I'll hand it back over to you. >>Amazing. That was an awesome session. Thank you so much, guys. So our third session is up next, and we're going to be going Global s. Oh, hang on tight as we explore best practices from the extended ecosystem of cloud based analytics. >>Yeah,