>> Narrator: Live from Atlanta, Georgia, it's theCUBE, covering Citrix Synergy, Atlanta, 2019. Brought to you by Citrix. >> Hi, welcome back to theCUBE. Lisa Martin here, at Citrix Synergy 2019 in Atlanta, Georgia, with Keith Townsend, and we're pleased to welcome to theCUBE, Kevin Jackson, the founder of GovCloud. Kevin, welcome to theCUBE. >> Thank you very much for the opportunity. >> So this has been an exciting day. Keith and I have been geeking out all day, starting with the keynote this morning. Talking about employee experience is so relevant, theCUBE covers a ton of technology events, we don't often hear about employee experience as a catalyst to digital transformation, but it is. >> No, absolutely. Citrix, the keynote today was just very impressive. Not because of technology, and not that it wasn't impressive, but it was the focus. Today's world has really been focused around digital transformation. What processes in your organization are the right ones? And Citrix has developed and is delivering tools to help organizations understand those processes which should be digitized, and it's really about the employee experience because companies in the commercial world, in the consumer space, have really focused on consumer experience and customer experience. Those that have been successful in doing that have seen their market share grow. Well, this is all about looking at your employee experience. Instead of looking outside, look inside. If you're able to improve your employee experience, you get more efficiency, you get better employees, and you get better products and services. >> So Kevin, talk to us about the importance of examining your processes prior to automating. I was visiting my parents the other day and they're remodeling their home, and I said, you know, I made a joke about how we automate in ITS, I said you know what, you guys are moving much too slow, I'm going to buy you two more saws, so you can go faster. And a lot of times I feel like that's the way we tackle automation and process improvement. What have you seen out in the field, and where should companies start versus where they do start? >> So one of the biggest problems companies have is their history. They have a process that they've done for years, in their eyes it's been very successful, and I'm not saying it wasn't successful, but it was successful in a different era, successful in a different environment. Today's environment moves much faster. It's much broader. It's not regionalized. It's international. So organizations need to understand what their processes are, and which of their old processes can actually be effective in the new environment. Many of them can be, but they need to be tweaked. They need to be updated. They may need to be entirely changed. When those processes were designed, you didn't have customers with smart phones that can access your products and services. We're going from a physical world to a virtual world. So the first thing is to understand which processes need to be digitized. Maybe the saws were a good thing, but maybe they weren't. Maybe they need a level to go faster and to go better, to improve the quality of the output, not necessarily cutting more wood. >> So these changes are subtle. How does Citrix help kind of break down the processes and help you determine? You know, one of the things that we learnt, early cloud. It's not wise to put everything in the cloud up front, it's what makes a difference and moves the ball. David talked a lot this morning about employees want to move the ball forward. How does Citrix help move the ball forward in determining what processes should be automated? >> Yeah, great question. One of the biggest problems with cloud computing is sort of the adoption of the cloud-first policy. People misunderstood that policy and many companies misunderstand the implementation of that today. Cloud-first doesn't mean put everything in the cloud and get rid of all your legacy, it means evaluate cloud first and make a decision as to what data should go in the cloud and what processes should go in the cloud. Any organization of any significant size is still going to need legacy data centers. They still may need managed services, and cloud computing would be part of that hybrid mix. So what Citrix is doing is providing the tools so that you can get the data about the processes and understand which data should go in the cloud, which data should stay in your legacy data center, and which data could be managed by manage service providers. So customers, Citrix customers that actually leverage this intelligent workspace have the required tool to do digital transformation. >> When you're out talking with customers in different industries, public sector, government, where are they in understanding how critical the employee experience is, from recruiting and onboarding, to actually those employees interfacing with their customers? I mean, it's such a critical function. >> Oh, absolutely, and digital transformation is really not about the technology as much as it's about the culture. Organizations that undergo this journey oftentimes forget about the cultural transformation that needs to occur within the organization. And that means training, that means education, and it also means redefining the roles within the organization. Citrix provides many of the tools for helping employees understand their role, redefining their role, educating employees. So all of this is critical to digital transformation. >> And that's not easy to do, as well. I think this morning, and I've heard this recently from a number of events I've covered, is there are five generations active in the workforce today. So you've got my parents, the baby boomers, you've got the generation younger, too, younger than I am, who were born on smart devices, and there's different expectations, there's different levels of technology expertise, so companies like Citrix have to really balance that employee experience across five generations with very different expectations. >> Yeah, absolutely. I was talking to a colleague of mine and he was relaying a story to me when an employee was working an application, right? And he finished the task, went home, came back the next day and all the work was gone, and the employee was saying, "What happened? "I worked hard on it, it took me hours." And the manager said, "Well did you save it?" And he said, "Well what's that?" (laughs) Because if you're born in the cloud you don't press a button to save, it's automatic. This was a millennial that was born with technology and actually didn't understand the concept of having to save something, because it was always in the cloud. This is cultural, and you need to address this culture when you are improving and modifying your business processes. >> So when you're an organization of any size you can look at this employee experience journey and be overwhelmed, and think, wow. You know what, you could hear a story like that and say, "Where do I start to change?" Like my SAP app, you're still going to have to hit save, that's not going to change tomorrow. So where's the starting point? >> Really, the starting point is data. Collecting data, understanding the data, interpreting the data, because then you can make the appropriate decisions within the context of what your organization or industry is doing. Although I do a lot of public sector, most of my work today is in commercial industry, and employees are in an environment that's forever changing, where their context changes from second to second. They're doing one application then doing another application. They're responding to a client or customer, then responding to a colleague, and then immediately responding to the manager. This context switching is normal for computers but it's not normal for people, so this is important as you move forward in the world. >> So what I'm hearing is a term, an SAP coin, X-data, experience data. The idea that you need to collect, as much pressure as we're under to transform digitally, the first step is to collect and analyze the data. One of the questions I put towards another analyst was where is this data coming from? I know the data is because people are doing stuff, and there's a trail somewhere, but where do I go first to start as the indicator to collect this data to analyze? >> Well the old school method of doing that would be a survey, or you would observe a worker. Now the actual act of conducting a survey or observing work changes the work process. All right, so the data that you get from that can also be colored or flawed based upon the observer. Citrix experience, their desktop has artificial intelligence built into it. The worker can actually do their task, unbeknownst to them that they are being observed, that the data is being collected with respect to that process. Don't get scared, this is not George Orwell in 1984, though that's been a while, I guess. It's not Big Brother looking at you. The data is anonymized, right? It's not about you, it's about the task that you're completing. So you now have a tool to collect real data and you can continue to collect that data because processes have a life, they change. So you can monitor that, and update and tweak it. >> And an important outcome of that data collection and analysis is delivery, using it to deliver a personalized experience to the user, regardless of generation, how born in the cloud they were or not. >> Absolutely. And now, you're heading back to that cultural aspect. The digital transformation is really cultural transformation. >> Then another aspect, no, output of that, is that you could correlate this X-data with operational data and see where there's human error. So your processes analysis, you champion process analysis, you can say, okay, where are we making the most mistakes, because we're having a human translate something from one screen to another, while we see where this error rate is coming up and now we can automate or modernize this process to improve the overall not only employee experience but customer experience as well. >> Yeah, absolutely. It's important to understand not just the investment that you're making in any process, but the return you're getting from that process. By collecting data, you can determine if value is being delivered not just to the organization, but to your customers. So this ROI, return on investment, is often not just about money. It's about the value of the employee, and you can actually measure that value. Measure what they're doing, measure the return, and drive better environments, better employees, better outcomes based on the data. >> And that's got to elevate up to the C-suite as a business imperative, to understand that ROI, because those are employees that in many facets are involved and connected with those customers who are paying for products and services. So those employees, whether they're in sales or marketing, or finance, or legal, or a contact center, they're critical touchpoints to your customers. If their experience isn't great and they decide to leave, that customer experience, that's a possible brand reputation challenge. >> No, absolutely. And you touched upon touchpoints, right? In the past, you basically knew how your client was going to interact with you. Dissimilarly, you need to understand how your employee interacts with the organization. They're not going to just be in a cube interacting with the IT every day. They may be at home. They may, in the very near future, not today, they may be interacting with Alexa to get your information, or through Alexa with one of your clients and one of your customers. How do you manage that touchpoint? Well, with tools like Citrix, they are actually giving you the ability to normalize data across multiple channels, across multiple touchpoints, so you can make sure you have the same experience, the preferred experience with your clients and customers as well as with your employees. >> Serious impact. Well, Kevin, thank you so much for joining Keith and me on theCUBE this afternoon. >> It was very enjoyable, thank you. >> Good, our pleasure. >> For Keith Townsend, I'm Lisa Martin. You're watching theCUBE live, day one of our coverage of Citrix Synergy 2019. Thanks for watching. (percussive music)