(upbeat music) >> (Narrator) From around the globe, it's theCUBE. With digital coverage of IBM Think 2021. Brought to you by IBM. >> Hello, welcome back to theCUBE's coverage of IBM Think 2021 virtual. Soon we'll be back in person in real life, but this year again it's a virtual conference. I'm John Furrier, your host of the cube for more cube coverage. We've got a great guest here, Debbie Vavangas, Global Garage Lead for IBM Services. Global Garage, great program. Debbie, great to see you. Thanks for coming on theCUBE. >> Thanks for having me. >> So, we've covered the Garage a lot on theCUBE in the past, and a success, everyone loves the Garage. Things are born in the Garage, entrepreneurship, innovation, has been kind of categorically known for, kind of, the Garage startup. >> Absolutely. >> But also, it's become known for, really, agility, which has been a cloud phenomenon, DevOps. Now we're seeing dev SecOps as a big trend this year with hybrid cloud. So, I've got to ask you, how is Garage doing with the pandemic? Obviously, I can almost imagine people at home kind of disrupted from the office, but maybe more creativity, maybe more energy online? What's going on with the Garage? How has your transformation journey been with COVID? >> Well, John, COVID has been the leveler for us all, right? There isn't a person who hasn't had some challenge or some complexity to And that includes our clients. And I'm incredibly proud to be able to say that IBM Garage, because it is so digitally native, when the COVID pandemic has struck around the world every single one of our Garages was able to switch to being virtual without fail, without a single days lost productivity. And that's hugely beneficial to clients who are on an incredibly time-sensitive journey. And so, we've seen as a result of COVID actually there are a huge acceleration in Garages, for two reasons. So, number one, from a virtualization perspective, actually it's much easier when everybodies together in the same space. So everybody's together virtually in the same space, and we've seen, you know, acceleration in our velocity, in our collaboration, because everybody is really learning how to work in that same space. But two, because of the pandemic, because of the pressure on our client's needs to make decisions fast, know not guess, really be focused on their outcomes, not just doing stuff, the Garage really plays to that objective for them. And so we've seen a huge rise, you know, we've gone from in 2019 to just a few hundred garages, to finishing 2020 with over two and a half thousand garages. And it being embedded across services and with the goal of being the primary way our clients experience it. So COVID has been a big accelerator. >> Sorry, Debbie, can you repeat the numbers again? I just want to capture that, I missed that. >> Sure, sure. >> I did a double take on the numbers. (Debbie laughs) >> So then, we finished 2019 with just under 300 garages, and we finished 2020 with just over two and a half thousand. So, we've had a huge growth, and it isn't just the number of garages, it's the range of garages and what we're serving with our clients, and how we're collaborating with our clients, and the topics we're unpacking that has really broadened. >> Yeah, I mean I covered, and we've reported on the Garage on theCUBE and also on www.siliconangle.com in the past things and through your news coverage, but that's amazing growth. I got to believe the tailwind from COVID and just the energy around it has energized you. I want to get your thoughts on that because, you know, what we've reported on in the past has been about design thinking, human-centered design, all of those beautiful things that come with cloud-scale, right? You know, you're moving faster, you're innovating, and so that's been kind of there. But what you're getting at with this growth is, and with COVID has proven, and again, we've been pointing this out, you're seeing the pattern, it's clear. Companies are either retrenching, okay, which is refactoring, redesigning, doing those things to kind of get ready to come out of COVID with a growth strategy, and you're seeing other companies build net new innovations. So, they're building new capabilities, because COVID's shown them, kind of pulled back the curtain if you will on where the action is. So, this means there's two threads going on. You've got, "Okay, I've got to transform my business, and I got to refactor', or 'Hey, we got net new business models'. These are kind of two different things and not mutually exclusive. What's your comment on that? >> And I think that my comment on it is that is the sweet spot that Garage comes into its own, right? You mentioned lots of things in there. You talked about design thinking, and agility, and, you know, these other buzzwords that are used all the time, and Garage of course is synonymous with those. Of course, Garage uses the best design thinking, and AGILE practices, and all of those things that absolutely call to what we do. DevOps, even through down to DesignOps. You know, we have the whole range depending on what the client objective is. But, I think what is really happening now is that innovation being something separate is no longer how to accelerate your outcomes, and your business outcomes. Regardless of whether that is in refactoring and modernizing your existing estate, or diversifying, creating new ecosystems, new platforms, new offerings. Regardless of what that is, you can't do it separate to your core business. I mean, it's a well known fact, John, right? Like 75% of transformation programs fail to deliver an impact to the business performance, right? And in the same period of time there's been huge cuts in innovation funding, and that's because for the same reason, because they don't deliver the impact to the business performance. And that's why Garage is unique, because it is entirely focused on the outcome, right? We're using user research, through design thinking of course, using agile to deliver it at speed, and all of those other things. But, it's focused on value, on benefits realization and driving to your outcome. And we do that by putting that innovation at the heart of your enterprise in order to drive that transformation, rather than it being something separate. >> Debbie, I saw you gave a talk called 'Innovation is Dead'. Obviously, that's a provocative title, that's an attention-getter. Tell me what you mean by that. Because it seems to be a setup. >> I mean, if the innovation is dead, >> Of course. was it with a question mark? Were you, kind of, trying to highlight that innovation is transformation? >> So, the full title was 'Innovation is dead and transformation is pointless'. And, of course, it's meant to be an eye-catching title so people show up and listen to my pitch rather than somebody else's. But, the reality is I mean it most sincerely, it's back to that stat. 75% of these transformation programs fail to deliver the impact, and I speculate that that is for a few reasons. Because, the idea itself wasn't a good one, or wasn't at the right time. Because, you were unable to understand what the measure of good looked like, and therefore just being able to create that path. And, in order to transform a company, you must transform the individuals within a company. And so that way of working becomes incredibly holistic. And it's those three things, that I think amongst the whole myriad of others, that are the primary reasons why those programs fail. And what Garage does, is it breaks that. By putting innovation at the heart of your enterprise, and by using data-driven value orchestration, that means that we don't guess where the value to be gained is, we know. It's no longer chucking ideas at the wall to see what sticks, it's meaningful research. This is my favorite quote from my dear friend, Courtney Noll, who says, "It's not about searching for the innovation needle in the proverbial haystack, it's using your research in order to de-risk your investment, and drive your innovation to enable your outcomes." And so, if you do innovation without a view to how it's going to yield your business outcomes, I agree, I fundamentally agree that it's pointless. >> Yeah, exactly. And, you know, of course we're on the writing side, we love titles like, 'Innovation is dead, long live innovation'. So, it's classic, you know, to get your attention. >> Exactly, exactly. And of course, what I really mean is that innovation is a separate entity. >> Totally. >> There's no longer relevance for a company to make sure they achieve their business outcomes. >> Well, this is what I wanted to just double-click on that with you on is that you look at transformation. You guys are essentially saying transformation meets innovation with the Garage philosophy, if I get that right. >> Yep >> And it's interesting, and we've experienced this here with theCUBE, we're theCUBE virtual, we're not at IBM Think, there is no physical game day like some of us normally do. >> Well, as you can see, I'm at my house. (Debbie laughs) And so, I was talking to a CEO and I said, "Hey, you guys are doing really, really good. We had to pivot with the cube", and he goes, "You guys did a good pivot yourself". He goes, "No, John, we did not pivot. We actually put our business on hold because of the pandemic. We actually created a line extension, so, technically, we're going to bring that business back when COVID has gone and come back to real life, so it's technically not a pivot, we're not pivoting our business, we've created new functionality." Through the innovations that they were doing. So, this is kind of like, this is the real deal here. Share your thoughts on that. >> To me, it's about people get so focused on the output that they lose track of the outcome, right? And so, be really clear on what you're doing, and why. And the outcomes can be really broad, so instead of saying, "We're all going to implement a new ERP, or build a new mobile app". That's not an outcome, right? What we should be saying is, "What we're trying to achieve is a 10 percent growth in net promoter score in China, right? In this group." Or whatever it is we were trying to achieve, right? Or, "We want to make a 25% reduction in our operating cost base by simplifying our estate". Whatever those outcomes are, that's the starting point, and then driving that to use as the vehicle for what is the right innovation, what is going to deliver that value, and fast, right? Garage delivers three to five times faster than other models and at a reduced delivery cost, and so it's all about that speed. Speed of decision, speed of insight, speed of culture and training, speed of new skills, and speed to outcomes. >> Well, Debbie, you did a great job, love what you're doing, and Garage has got a great model. Congratulations on the growth, love this intersection, or transformation meets innovation because innovation is transformation, and vice versa, this interplay going on there. >> Exactly. >> I think COVID has proven that. Let me dig into a little bit more about the garage, what's going on. How many practitioners do you guys have there now at IBM? You've got growth, are you adding more people in? Obviously, Virtual First, COVID, is there still centers of design? Take us through what's going on at Garage. >> Certainly, so like, I think I mentioned it right up front. Our goal is to make IBM Garage the primary way our clients experience us. We've proven in that it delivers higher value to our clients and they get a really rich and broad set of outcomes. And so, in order for us to deliver on that promise we have to be enabled across IBM to deliver to it, right? So, over the last 18 months or so we've had a whole range of training programs in Enable, we've had a whole badging and certification program, we have all the skills, and the pathways, and the career pathways to find. But Garage is for everybody, right? And so, it isn't about creating a select group that can do this across IBM. This is about making all of services capable. So, in 2020 we trained over 28,000 people, in all the different skills that are needed, from selling, to execution, to QA, to user research, whatever it is. And this year we're launching our Garage Skills Academy, which will take that across all of services and make it easily available. So, you know, we've got hundreds of thousands. >> And talk about the footprint on the global side, because, again, not to bring up global, but global is what is in your title. >> Yep. >> Companies need to be global, because now with virtual workforces you're seeing much more tapped creativity and ability to execute from global teams. How does that impact you? >> Well, so it's global in two perspectives, right? So, number one, we have Garages all around the world, right? It isn't just the market of, you know, our most developed nations in Americas and Europe, it is everywhere, we see it in all emerging markets. From Latin America, through to all parts of eastern Europe, which are really beginning to come into their own. So, we see all these different Garages at different scales and opportunities. So, definitely global from that image. But, what virtualization has also enabled is truly global teams. Because, it's really easy to go, "Oh, I need one of those. Okay, I need a supply chain expert, and I need an AI expert, and I need somebody who's got industry experience in whatever it is." And you can quickly gather them around the virtual table, you know, faster than you can in a physical table. But, we still leverage the global communities with those physical. >> It's an expert network. You have an expert network there at IBM. >> We have a huge network, yeah. And both within IBM, and of course a growing network of ecosystem partners that we continue to work with. >> Well, Debbie, I'm really excited. Congratulations on the growth. I'm looking forward to partnering with you on your ecosystem as that develops. I can almost imagine you must be getting a lot of outside IBM practitioners and experts coming in to collaborate in a social construct. >> Absolutely. >> It's a great program, thanks for sharing. >> My pleasure, it's been great to be here, thank you. >> Okay, IBM's Global Garage Lead, Debbie Vavangas, who's here on theCUBE with IBM Services. A phenomenon, it's a social construct that's helping companies with digital transformation. Intersecting, with innovation. I'm John Furrier, your host. Thanks for watching. (upbeat music)

>> (lively music) >> Narrator: From around the globe it's theCUBE, with digital coverage of IBM Think 2021. Brought to you by IBM. >> Welcome to theCUBE's coverage of IBM Think 2021, the digital event experience. I'm your host, Lisa Martin. I've got an alumni joining me and a brand new guest to the CUBE please welcome Paul Papas, the Global Managing Partner, for IBM Global Business Services, this is transformation services. Paul, welcome back to the virtual CUBE. >> Thanks Lisa great to be here with you today. And Dominique Dubois is here as well. She is the Global Strategy and Offerings Leader in business transformation services or BTS at IBM. Dominique, welcome to the program. >> Thanks Lisa, great to be here. So, we're going to be talking about accelerating business transformation with intelligent workflows. We're going to break through all that, but Paul we're going to start with you. Since we last got together with IBM, a lot has changed so much transformation, so much acceleration of transformation. Talk to me from your perspective, how have you seen the way that businesses running change and what some of the changes in the future are going to be? >> Well, you hit on two key words there Lisa and thanks so much for that question. Two key words that you hit on were change and acceleration. And that's exactly what we see. We were seeing this before the pandemic and if anything, with the pandemic did when things started started kind of spreading around the world late or early last year, around January, February timeframe we saw that word acceleration really take hold. Every one of our clients were looking for new ways to accelerate the change that they had already planned to adapt to this new, this new normal or this new abnormal, depending on how you view it. In fact, we did a study recently, an IBV study that's our Institute of Business Value and found that six out of 10 organizations were accelerating all of their transformation initiatives they had already planned. And that's exactly what we're seeing happening right now in all parts of the world and across all industries. This acceleration to transform. >> So, one of the things that we've talked about for years, Paul, before the pandemic was even a thing, is that there was a lot of perceived technical barriers in terms of like the tech maturity for organizations and employees being opposed to change. People obviously it can be a challenge. They're used to doing things the way they are. But as you just said, in that IBV survey, nearly 60% of businesses say we have to accelerate our transformation due to COVID, probably initially to survive and then thrive. Talk to me about some of those, those barriers that were there a little over a year ago and how businesses 60 plus percent of them have moved those out of the way. >> You know at IBM we've got a 109 year history of being a technology innovation company. And the rate of pace of technical change is always increasing. It's something that we love and that we're comfortable with. But the rate and pace of change is always unsettling. And there's always a human element for change. And the human element is always the rate, the rate setter in terms of the amount of change that you can have in an organization. Our former chairman Ginni Rometty, used to say that growth and comfort cannot co-exist. And it's so true because changing is uncomfortable. It's unsettling. It can be, it can be nerve-racking. It can instill fear and fear can be paralyzing in terms of driving change. And what we also see is there's a disconnect, a lot of times and that IBV study that I was referring to before, we saw results coming back where 78% of executives feel that they have provided the training and enablement to help their employees transform to new required skills and new ways of working but only half of the people surveyed felt the same way. Similarly, we saw a disconnect in terms of companies feeling that they're providing the right level of health and wellness support during the pandemic. And only half of the employees responded back they feel that they're getting that level of support. So, the people change aspect of doing a transformation or adapting to new circumstances is always the most critical component and always the hardest component. And when we talk about helping our clients do that in IBM that's our service as organization. That's the organization that Dominique Dubois is representing here today. I'm responsible for business transformation services within our organization. We help our clients adapt using new technologies, transforming the way they work, but also addressing the people change elements that could be so difficult and hitting them head on so that they can make sure that they can survive and thrive in a meaningful and lasting way in this new world. >> One of the hardest things is that cultural transformation regardless of a pandemic. So, I can't imagine I'd love to get one more thing, Paul from you before we head over to Dominique. IBM is on 109 year old organization. Talk to me about the IBM pledge. This is something that came up last year, huge organization massive changes last year, not just the work from home that the mental concerns and issues that people had. What did IBM do like as a grassroots effort that went viral? >> Yeah, so, it's really great. So, when the pandemic started, we all have to shift it, We all have to shift to working from home. And as you mentioned, IBM's 109 year old company, we have over 300,000 employees working in 170 countries. So, we had to move this entire workforce. It's 370,000 humans to working in a new way that many of which have never done before. And when we started experiencing, the minute we did that, within a few weeks, my team and I were talking Dominique is on my team and we were having conversations where we were feeling really exhausted. Just a few weeks into this and it was because we were constantly on Webex, we were constantly connected and we're all used to working really hard. We travel a lot, we're always with our clients. So, it wasn't that, you have a team that is adapting to like working more hours or longer hours, but this was fundamentally different. And we saw that with schools shutting down and lock downs happening in different of the world the home life balance was getting immediately difficult to impossible to deal with. We have people that are taking care of elderly parents, people that are homeschooling children, other personal life situations that everyone had to navigate in the middle of a pandemic locked at home with different restrictions on when you can go out and get things done. So, we got together as a group and we just started talking about how can we help? How can we help make life just a little bit easier for all of our people? And we started writing down some things that we would, we would commit to doing with each other. How we would address each other. And when that gave birth to was what we call the IBM Work From Home Pledge. And it's a set of principles, all grounded in the belief that, if we act this way, we might just be able to make life just a little bit easier for each other and it's grounded in empathy. And there are parts of the Plex that are pledging to be kind. Recognizing that in this new digital world that we're showing up on camera inside of everyone's home. We're guests in each other's homes. So, let's make sure that we act appropriately as guests at each other's home. So, if children run into the frame during the middle of a meeting or dog started barking during the middle of a meeting, just roll with it. Don't call out attention to it. Don't make people feel self-conscious about it. Pledged the support so your fellow IBM by making time for personal needs. So, if someone has to, do homeschooling in the middle of the day, like Dominique's got triplets she's got to do homeschooling in the middle of the day. Block that time off and we will respect that time on your calendar. And just work around it and just deal with it. There are other things like respecting that camera ready time. As someone who's now been on camera every day it feels like for the last 14 months we want to respect the time that people when they have their cameras off. And not pressure them to put their cameras on saying things like, Hey, I can't see you. There's no reason to add more pressure to everyone's life, if someone's camera's off, it's all for a reason. And then other things like pledging to checking on each other, pledging to set boundaries and tend to our own self-care. So, we published that as a group, we just again and we put it on a Slack channel. So it's kind of our communication method inside the company. It was just intended to be for my organization but it started going viral and tens of thousands of IBM members started taking, started taking the pledge and ultimately caught the attention of our CEO and he loved it, shared it with his leadership team, which I'm a part of. And then also then went on LinkedIn and publicly took the pledge as well. Which then also got more excitement and interaction with other companies as well. So, grassroots effort all grounded in showing empathy and helping to make life just a little bit easier for everyone. >> So important, I'm going to look that up and I'm going to tell you as a person who speaks with many tech companies a week. A lot of businesses could take a lead from that and it gets really important and we are inviting each other into our homes and I see you're a big Broadway fan I'll have to ask you that after we wrap (giggles) Dominique I don't know how you're doing any of this with triplets. I only have two dogs (Dominique laughs) but I'd love to know this sense of urgency, that is everywhere you're living it. Paul talked about it with respect to the acceleration of transformation. How from your lens is IBM and IBM helping customers address the urgency, the need to pivot, the need to accelerate, the need to survive and thrive with respect to digital transformation actually getting it done? >> Right, thanks Lisa, so true our clients are really needing to and ready to move with haste. That that sense of urgency can be felt I think across every country, every market, every industry. And so we're really helping our clients accelerate their digital transformations and we do that through something that we call intelligent workflows. And so workflows in and of themselves are basically how organizations get work done. But intelligent workflows are how we infuse; predictive properties, automation, transparency, agility, end to end across a workflow. So, pulling those processes together so they're not solid anymore and infusing. So, simply put we bring intelligent workflows to our clients and it fundamentally reinvents how they're getting work done from a digital perspective, from a predictive perspective, from a transparency perspective. And I think what really stands apart when we deliver this with our clients in partnership with our clients is how it not only delivers value to the bottom line, to the top line it also actually delivers greater value to their employees, to the customers, to the partner to their broader ecosystem. And intelligent workflows are really made up of three core elements. The first is around better utilizing data. So, aggregating, analyzing, getting deeper insight out of data, and then using that insight not just for employees to make better decisions, but actually to support for emerging technologies to leverage. So we talked about AI, automation, IOT, blockchain, all of these technologies require vast amounts of data. And what we're able to bring both on the internal and external source from a data perspective really underpins what these emerging technologies can do. And then the third area is skills. Our skills that we bring to the table, but also our clients deep, deep expertise, partner expertise, expertise from the ecosystem at large and pulling all of that together, is how we're really able to help our clients accelerate their digital transformations because we're helping them shift, from a set of siloed static processes to an end-to-end workflow. We're helping them make fewer predictions based on the past historical data and actually taking more real-time action with real time insights. So, it really is a fundamental shift and how your work is getting done to really being able to provide that emerging technologies, data, deep skills-based end to end workflow. >> That word fundamental has such gravity. and I know we say data has gravity being fundamental in such an incredibly dynamic time is really challenging but I was looking through some of the notes that you guys provided me with. And in terms of what you just talked about, Dominique versus making a change to a silo, the benefits and making changes to a spectrum of integrated processes the values can be huge. In fact, I was reading that changing a single process like billing, for example might deliver up to 20% improved results. But integrating across multiple processes, like billing, collections, organizations can achieve double that up to 40%. And then there's more taking the intelligent workflow across all lead to cash. This was huge. Clients can get 50 to 70% more value from that. So that just shows that fundamental impact that intelligent workflows can make. >> Right, I mean, it really is when we see it really is about unlocking exponential value. So, when you think about crossing end to end workflow but also, really enhancing what clients are doing and what companies are doing today with those exponential technologies from kind of single use the automation POC here and AI application POC here, actually integrating those technologies together and applying them at scale. When I think intelligent workflows I think acceleration. I think exponential value. But I also really think about at scale. Because it's really the ability to apply these technologies the expertise at scale that allows us to start to unlock a lot of that value. >> So let's go over Paul, in the last few minutes that we have here I want to talk about IBM garage and how this is helping clients to really transform those workflows. Talk to me a little bit about what IBM garage is. I know it's not IBM garage band and I know it's been around since before the pandemic but help us understand what that is and how it's delivering value to customers. >> Well, first I'm going to be the first to invite you to join the IBM garage band, Lisa so we'd love to have you >> I'm in. no musical experience required... >> I like to sing, all right I mean (laughs) We're ready, we're ready for. So, let me talk to you about IBM garage and I do want to key on two words that Dominique was mentioning speed and scale. Because that's what our clients are really looking for when they're doing transformations around intelligent workflows. How can you transform at scale, but do that with speed. And that really becomes the critical issue. As Dominique mentioned, there's a lot of companies that can help you do a proof of concept do something in a few weeks that you can test an idea out and have something that's kind of like a throw away piece of work that maybe proves a point or just proves a point. But even if it does prove the point at that point you'd have to restart a new, to try to get something that you could actually scale either in the production technology environment or scale as a change across an organization. And that's where IBM garage comes in. It's all a way of helping our clients co-create, co-execute and then cooperate, innovating at scale. So, we use methods like design thinking inside of IBM we've trained several hundred thousand people on design thinking methods. We use technologies like neural and other things that help our clients co-create in a dynamic environment. And what's amazing for me is that, the cause of the way we were, we were doing work with clients in a garage with using IBM garage in a garage environment before the pandemic. And one of our clients Frito-Lay of North America, is an example where we've helped them innovate at scale and speed using IBM garage over a long period of time. And when the pandemic hit, we in fact were running 11 garages across 11 different workflow areas for them the pandemic hit and everyone was sent home. So, we all instantly overnight had to work from home together with relay. And what was great is that we were able to quickly adapt the garage method to working in a virtual world. To being able to run that same type of innovation and then use that innovation at scale in a virtual world, we did that overnight. And since that time which happened, that happened back in March of last year throughout the pandemic, we've run over 1500 different garage engagements with all of our clients all around the world in a virtual, in a virtual environment. It's just an incredible way, like I said to help our clients innovate at scale. >> That's fantastic, go ahead Dominique. >> Oh, sorry, was just said it's a great example, we partnered with FlightSafety International, they train pilots. And I think a great example of that speed and scale right is in less than 12 weeks due to the garage methodology and the partnership with FlightSafety, we created with them and launched an adaptive learning solution. So, a platform as well as a complete change to their training workflow such that they had personalized kind of real-time next best training for how they train their pilots for simulators. So, reducing their cycle time but also improving the training that their pilots get, which as people who normally travel, it's really important to us and everyone else. So, just a really good example, less than 12 weeks start to start to finish. >> Right, talk about acceleration. Paul, last question for you, we've got about 30 seconds left I know this is an ecosystem effort of IBM, it's ecosystem partners, it's Alliance partners. How are you helping align right partner with the right customer, the right use case? >> Yeah, it's great. And our CEO Arvind Krishna has really ushered in this era where we are all about the open ecosystem here at IBM and working with our ecosystem partners. In our services business we have partnerships with all the major, all the major technology players. We have a 45 year relationship with SAP. We've done more SAP S 400 implementations than anyone in the world. We've got the longest standing consulting relationship with Salesforce, we've got a unique relationship with Adobe, they're only services and technology partner in the ecosystem. And we just recently won three, procedures Partner Awards, with them and most recently we announced a partnership with Celonis which is an incredible process execution software company, process mining software company that's going to help us transform intelligent workflows in an accelerated way, embedded in our garage environment. So, ecosystem is critical to our success but more importantly, it's critical to our client success. We know that no one alone has the answers and no one alone can help anyone change. So, with this open ecosystem approach that we take and global business services and our business transformation services organization, we're able to make sure that we bring our clients the best of everyone's capabilities. Whether it's our technology, partners, our services IBM's own technology capabilities, all in the mix, all orchestrated in service to our client's needs all with the goal of driving superior business outcomes for them. >> And helping those customers in any industry to accelerate their business transformation with those intelligent workloads and a very dynamic time. This is a topic we could keep talking about unfortunately, we are out of time but thank you both for stopping by and sharing with me what's going on with respect to intelligent workflows. How the incremental exponential value it's helping organizations to deliver and all the work that IBM is doing to enable its customers to be thrivers of tomorrow. We appreciate talking to you >> Paul: Thanks Lisa. >> Dominique: Thank you >> For Paul Papas and Dominique Dubois I'm Lisa Martin. You're watching the CUBE's coverage of IBM Think the digital event experience. (gentle music)

>> Announcer: From around the globe, it's theCUBE, with digital coverage of IBM Think 2021, brought to you by IBM. >> Hey, welcome to theCUBE's coverage of IBM Think, the digital event experience. I'm your host, Lisa Martin, welcoming back to the program one of our CUBE alumn. Dominique Dubois joins me. She's the Global Strategy and Offerings Executive in the Business Transformation Services of IBM. Dominique, it's great to talk to you again. >> Hi Lisa, great to be with you today. >> So we're going to be talking about the theme of this interview. It's going to be the ROI of AI for business. We've been talking about AI emerging technologies for a long time now. We've also seen a massive change in the world. I'd love to talk to you about how organizations are adopting these emerging technologies to really help transform their businesses. And one of the things that you've talked about in the past, is that there's these different elements of AI for business. One of them is trust, right, the second is ease of use, and then there's this importance of data in all of these important emerging technologies that require so much data. How do those elements of AI come together to help IBM's clients be able to deliver the products and services that their customers are depending on? >> Yeah. Thank you, Lisa. So, when we look at AI and AI solutions with our clients, I think how that comes together is in the way in which we don't look at AI, or AI application solution, independently, right. We're looking at it and we're applying it within our customer's operations with respect to the work that it's going to do, with respect to the part of the operations and the workflow and the function that it sits in, right. So the idea around trust and ease of use and the data that can be leveraged in order to kind of create that AI and allow that AI to be self-learning and continue to add value really is fundamental around how we design and how we implement it within the workflow itself. And how we are working with the employees, with the actual humans, that are going to be touching that AI, right, to help them with new skills that are required to work with AI, to help them with what we call the new ways of working, right, 'cause it's that adoption that really is critical to get the use of AI in enterprises at scale. >> That adoption that you just mentioned, that's critical. That can be kind of table stakes. But what we've seen in the last year is that we've all had to pivot, multiple times, and be reactionary, or reactive, to so many things out of our control. I'm curious what you've seen in the last year in terms of the appetite for adoption on the employees front. Are they more willing to go, all right, we've got to change the way we do things, and it's probably going to be, some of these are going to be permanent? >> Yeah. Lisa, we've absolutely seen a huge rise in the adoption, right, or in the openness, the mindset. Let's just call it the mindset, right. It's more of an open mindset around the use of technology, the use of technology that might be AI backed or AI based, and the willingness to, and I will say, the willingness to try is really then what starts that journey of trust, right. And we're seeing that open up in spades. >> That is absolutely critical. It's just the willingness, being open-minded enough to go, all right, we've got to do this, so we've got to think about this. We don't really have any other choices here. Things are changing pretty quickly. So talk to me, in this last year of change, we've seen massive disruptions and some silver linings for sure, but I'd love to know what IBM and the state of Rhode Island have done together in its challenging time. >> Yeah, so, really interesting partnership that we started with the state of Rhode Island. Obviously, I think this year, there's been lots of things. One of them has been speed, so everything that we had to do has been with haste, right, with urgency. And that's no different than what we did with the state of Rhode Island. The governor there, Gina Raimondo, she took very swift action, right, when the pandemic started. And one of the actions she took was to partner with private firms, such as IBM and others, to really help get her economy back open. And that required a lot of things. One of them, as you mentioned, trust, right, was a major part of what the governor there needed with her citizenships, with her citizens, excuse me, in order to be able to open back up the economy, right. And so, a key pillar of her program, and with our partnership, was around the AI-backed solutions that we brought to the state of Rhode Island, so inclusive of contact tracing, inclusive of work that we had provided around AI-based analytics that allowed really the governor to speak to citizens with hard facts quickly, almost real time, right, and start to build that trust, but also competence, and competence was the main, one of the main things that was required during this pandemic time. And so, there were, through this, the AI-based solutions that we provided, which were, there were many pillars, we were able to help Rhode Island not only open their economy, but they were one of the only states that had their schools open in the fall, and as a parent, I always see that as a litmus, if you will, of how our state is doing, right. And so they opened in the fall, and they, as far as I know, have stayed open. And I think part of that was from the AI-based contact tracing, the AI-backed virtual, sorry, AI analytics, the analytics suite around infections and predictions and what we were able to provide the governor in order to make swift decisions and take action. >> That's really impressive. That's one of the challenges I've had living in California, is you (mumbles) you are going to be data-driven than actually be data-driven, but the technology, living in Silicon Valley, the technology is there to be able to facilitate that, yet there was such a disconnect, and I think that's, you bring up the word confidence, and customers need confidence, citizens need confidence, knowing that what we've seen in the last year has shown in a lot of examples that real time isn't a nice-to-have anymore, it's a requirement. I mean, this is clearly life-and-death situations. That's a great example of how a state came to IBM to partner and say, how can we actually leverage emerging technologies like AI to really and truly make real-time data-driven decisions that affect every single person in our state. >> Mm-hmm. Absolutely, absolutely! Really, really, I think, a great example of the public-private partnerships that are really popping up now, more and more so because of that sense of urgency and that need to build greater ecosystems to create better solutions. >> So that's a great example in healthcare, one that our government in public health, and I think everybody, it will resonate with everybody here, but you've also done some really interesting work that I want to talk about with AI-driven insights into supply chain. We've also seen massive changes to supply chain, and so many organizations having to figure out, whether they were brick-and-mortar only, changing that, or really leveraging technology to figure out where do we need to be distributing products and services, where do we need to be investing. Talk to me about Bestseller India, and what it is that you guys have done there with intelligent workflows to really help them transform their supply chain. >> Yeah, Bestseller India, really great, hugely successful fashion forward company in India, and that term fashion forward always is mind boggling to me because basically, these are clothing retailers who go from runway to store within a matter of days, couple of weeks, which always is just hugely impressive, right, just what goes into that. And when you think about what happens in a supply chain to be able to do that, the requirements around demand forecasting, what quantities, of what style, what design, to what stores, and you think about the India market, which is notoriously a difficult market, lots of micro-segments, and so very difficult to serve. And then you couple that what's been happening from an environmental sustainability perspective, right. I think every industry has been looking more about how they can be more environmentally sustainable, and the clothing industry is no different. And when, and there is a lot of impact, right, so a stat that really has hit home with me, right: 20% of all the clothes that are made globally goes unsold. That's all a lot of clothing, that's a lot of material, and that's a lot of environmental product that goes into creating it. And so, Bestseller India really took it to heart to become not only more environmentally sustainable, but to help itself and be digitally ready for things like the pandemic that ultimately hit. And they were in a really good position. And we worked with them to create something called Fabric AI. So Fabric AI is India's only, first and only, AI-based platform that drives their supply chain, so it drives not only their decisions on what design should they manufacture, but it also helps to improve the entire workflow of what we call design to store. And the AI-based solution is really revolutionary, right, within India, but I think it's pretty revolutionary globally, right, globally as well. And it delivered really big impact, so, reductions in the cost, right, 15-plus reduction in cost. It helped their top line, so they saw a 5% plus top line, but it also reduced their unsold inventory by 5% and more, right. They're continuing to focus on that environmental sustainability that I think is a really important part of their DNA, right, the Bestseller India's DNA. >> And it's one that so many companies and other industries can learn from. I was reading in that case study on Bestseller India on the IBM website that I think it was 40 liters of water to make a cotton shirt. And to your point about the percentage of clothing that actually goes unsold and ends up in landfills, you see there the opportunity for AI to unlock the visibility that companies in any industry need to determine what is the demand that we should be filling, where should it be distributed, where should we not be distributing things. And so I think it was an interesting kind of impetus that Bestseller India had about one of their retail lines or brands was dropping in revenue, but they had been able to apply this technology to other areas of the business and make a pretty big impact. >> Yeah, absolutely. So they had been been very fortunate to have 11 years of growth, right, in all of their brands. And then one of their brands kind of hit headwinds, but the CIO and head of supply chain at that time really had the foresight to be able to say, you know what, we're hitting a problem, one of our brands, but this really is indicative of a more systemic problem. And that problem was lack of transparency, lack of data-driven, predictive, and automation to be able to drive a more effective and efficient kind of supply chain in the end, so, really had the forethought to dive into that and fix it. >> Yeah. And now talk to me about IBM Garage Band, and how's that, how did that help in this particular case? >> Yeah. So, in order to do this, right, it was, they had no use of AI, no use of automation, at the time that we started this. And so to really not only design and build and execute on Fabric AI, but to actually focus on the adoption, right, of AI within the business, we really needed to bring together the leaders across many lines of businesses, IT and HR, right. And when you think about pulling all of these different units together, we used our IBM Garage approach, which really is, there are many attributes and many facets of the IBM Garage, but I think one of the great results of using our IBM Garage approach is being able to pull from across all those different businesses, all of which may have some different objectives, right, they're coming from a different lens, from a different space, and pulling them together around one focus mission, which for here was Fabric AI. And we were able to actually design and build this in less than six months, which I think is pretty dramatic and pretty incredible from a speed and acceleration perspective. But I think even more so was the adoption, was the way in which we had, through all of it, already been working with the employees 'cause it's really touched almost every part of Bestseller India, so really being able to work with them and all the employees to make sure that they were ready for these new ways of working, that they had the right skills, that they had the right perspective, and that it was going to be adopted. >> That, we, if we unpack that, if we had time, that can be a whole separate conversation because the important, the most important thing about adoption is the cultures of these different business units have to come together. You said you rolled this out in a very short period of time, but you also were taking the focus on the employees. They need to understand the value in it. why they should be adopting it. And changing that culture, that's a whole other separate conversation, but that's an, that's a very interesting and very challenging thing to do. I wish we had more time to talk about that one. >> Yeah. It really is an, that the approach of bringing everyone together, it makes it just very dynamic, which is what's needed when you have all of those different lenses coming together, so, yeah. >> It is, 'cause you get a little bit of thought diversity as well when we're using AI. Well, Dominic, thank you for joining me today. Talked to me about what you guys are doing with many different types of customers, how you're helping them to integrate emerging technologies to really transform their business and their culture. We appreciate your time. >> Well, thank you, Lisa. Thanks >> For Dominique Dubois, I'm Lisa Martin. You're watching theCUBE's coverage of IBM Think, the digital event. (upbeat music)

(lively music) >> From around the globe it's theCUBE, with digital coverage of IBM Think 2021. Brought to you by IBM. >> Welcome to theCUBE's coverage of IBM Think 2021, the digital event experience. I'm your host, Lisa Martin. I've got an alumni joining me and a brand new guest to the CUBE please welcome Paul Papas, the Global Managing Partner, for IBM Global Business Services, this is transformation services. Paul, welcome back to the virtual CUBE. >> Thanks Lisa great to be here with you today. And Dominique Dubois is here as well. She is the Global Strategy and Offerings Leader in business transformation services or BTS at IBM. Dominique, welcome to the program. >> Thanks Lisa, great to be here. So, we're going to be talking about accelerating business transformation with intelligent workflows. We're going to break through all that, but Paul we're going to start with you. Since we last got together with IBM, a lot has changed so much transformation, so much acceleration of transformation. Talk to me from your perspective, how have you seen the way that businesses running change and what some of the changes in the future are going to be? >> Well, you hit on two key words there Lisa and thanks so much for that question. Two key words that you hit on were change and acceleration. And that's exactly what we see. We were seeing this before the pandemic and if anything, with the pandemic did when things started started kind of spreading around the world late or early last year, around January, February timeframe we saw that word acceleration really take hold. Every one of our clients were looking for new ways to accelerate the change that they had already planned to adapt to this new, this new normal or this new abnormal, depending on how you view it. In fact, we did a study recently, an IBV study that's our Institute of Business Value and found that six out of 10 organizations were accelerating all of their transformation initiatives they had already planned. And that's exactly what we're seeing happening right now in all parts of the world and across all industries. This acceleration to transform. >> So, one of the things that we've talked about for years, Paul, before the pandemic was even a thing, is that there was a lot of perceived technical barriers in terms of like the tech maturity for organizations and employees being opposed to change. People obviously it can be a challenge. They're used to doing things the way they are. But as you just said, in that IBV survey, nearly 60% of businesses say we have to accelerate our transformation due to COVID, probably initially to survive and then thrive. Talk to me about some of those, those barriers that were there a little over a year ago and how businesses 60 plus percent of them have moved those out of the way. >> You know at IBM we've got 109 year history of being a technology innovation company. And the rate of pace of technical change is always increasing. It's something that we love and that we're comfortable with. But the rate and pace of change is always unsettling. And there's always a human element for change. And the human element is always the rate, the rate setter in terms of the amount of change that you can have in an organization. Our former chairman Ginni Rometty, used to say that growth and comfort cannot co-exist. And it's so true because changing is uncomfortable. It's unsettling. It can be, it can be nerve-racking. It can instill fear and fear can be paralyzing in terms of driving change. And what we also see is there's a disconnect, a lot of times and that IBV study that I was referring to before, we saw results coming back where 78% of executives feel that they have provided the training and enablement to help their employees transform to new required skills and new ways of working but only half of the people surveyed felt the same way. Similarly, we saw a disconnect in terms of companies feeling that they're providing the right level of health and wellness support during the pandemic. And only half of the employees responded back they feel that they're getting that level of support. So, the people change aspect of may doing a transformation or adapting to new circumstances is always the most critical component and always the hardest component. And when we talk about helping our clients do that in IBM that's our service as organization. That's the organization that Dominique Dubois are representing here today. I'm responsible for business transformation services within our organization. We help our clients adapt using new technologies, transforming the way they work, but also addressing the people change elements that could be so difficult and hitting them head on so that they can make sure that they can survive and thrive in a meaningful and lasting way in this new world. >> One of the hardest things is that cultural transformation regardless of a pandemic. So, I can't imagine I'd love to get one more thing, Paul from you before we head over to Dominique. IBM is on 109 year old organization. Talk to me about the IBM pledge. This is something that came up last year, huge organization massive changes last year, not just the work from home that the mental concerns and issues that people had. What did IBM do like as a grassroots effort that went viral? >> Yeah, so, it's really great. So, when the pandemic started, we all have to shift it, We all have to shift to working from home. And as you mentioned, IBM's 109 year old company, we have over 300,000 employees working in 170 countries. So, we had to move this entire workforce. It's 370,000 humans to working in a new way that many of which have never done before. And when we started experiencing, the minute we did that, within a few weeks, my team and I were talking Dominique is on my team and we were having conversations where we were feeling really exhausted. Just a few weeks into this and it was because we were constantly on Webex, we were constantly connected and we're all used to working really hard. We travel a lot, we're always with our clients. So, it wasn't that, you have a team that is adapting to like working more hours or longer hours, but this was fundamentally different. And we saw that with schools shutting down and lock downs happening in different of the world the home life balance was getting immediately difficult to impossible to deal with. We have people that are taking care of elderly parents, people that are homeschooling children, other personal life situations that everyone had to navigate in the middle of a pandemic locked at home with different restrictions on when you can go out and get things done. So, we got together as a group and we just started talking about how can we help? How can we help make life just a little bit easier for all of our people? And we started writing down some things that we would, we would commit to doing with each other. How we would address each other. And when that gave birth to was what we call the IBM Work From Home Pledge. And it's a set of principles, all grounded in the belief that, if we act this way, we might just be able to make life just a little bit easier for each other and it's grounded in empathy. And there are parts of the Plex that are pledging to be kind. Recognizing that in this new digital world that we're showing up on camera inside of everyone's home. We're guests in each other's homes. So, let's make sure that we act appropriately as guests at each other's home. So, if children run into the frame during the middle of a meeting or dog started barking during the middle of a meeting, just roll with it. Don't call out attention to it. Don't make people feel self-conscious about it. Pledged the support so your fellow IBM by making time for personal needs. So, if someone has to, do homeschooling in the middle of the day, like Dominique's got triplets she's got to do homeschooling in the middle of the day. Block that time off and we will respect that time on your calendar. And just work around it and just deal with it. There are other things like respecting that camera ready time. As someone who's now been on camera every day it feels like for the last 14 months we want to respect the time that people when they have their cameras off. And not pressure them to put their cameras on saying things like, Hey, I can't see you. There's no reason to add more pressure to everyone's life, if someone's camera's off, it's all for a reason. And then other things like pledging to checking on each other, pledging to set boundaries and tend to our own self-care. So, we published that as a group, we just again and we put it on a Slack channel. So it's kind of our communication method inside the company. It was just intended to be for my organization but it started going viral and tens of thousands of IBM members started taking, started taking the pledge and ultimately caught the attention of our CEO and he loved it, shared it with his leadership team, which I'm a part of. And then also then went on LinkedIn and publicly took the pledge as well. Which then also got more excitement and interaction with other companies as well. So, grassroots effort all grounded in showing empathy and helping to make life just a little bit easier for everyone. >> So important, I'm going to look that up and I'm going to tell you as a person who speaks with many tech companies a week. A lot of businesses could take a lead from that and it gets really important and we are inviting each other into our homes and I see you're a big Broadway fan I'll have to ask you that after we wrap (giggles) Dominique I don't know how you're doing any of this with triplets. I only have two dogs (Dominique laughs) but I'd love to know this sense of urgency, that is everywhere you're living it. Paul talked about it with respect to the acceleration of transformation. How from your lens is IBM and IBM helping customers address the urgency, the need to pivot, the need to accelerate, the need to survive and thrive with respect to digital transformation actually getting it done? >> Right, thanks Lisa, so true our clients are really needing to and ready to move with haste. That that sense of urgency can be felt I think across every country, every market, every industry. And so we're really helping our clients accelerate their digital transformations and we do that through something that we call intelligent workflows. And so workflows in and of themselves are basically how organizations get work done. But intelligent workflows are how we infuse; predictive properties, automation, transparency, agility, end to end across a workflow. So, pulling those processes together so they're not solid anymore and infusing. So, simply put we bring intelligent workflows to our clients and it fundamentally reinvents how they're getting work done from a digital perspective, from a predictive perspective, from a transparency perspective. And I think what really stands apart when we deliver this with our clients in partnership with our clients is how it not only delivers value to the bottom line, to the top line it also actually delivers greater value to their employees, to the customers, to the partner to their broader ecosystem. And intelligent workflows are really made up of three core elements. The first is around better utilizing data. So, aggregating, analyzing, getting deeper insight out of data, and then using that insight not just for employees to make better decisions, but actually to support for emerging technologies to leverage. So we talked about AI, automation, IOT, blockchain, all of these technologies require vast amounts of data. And what we're able to bring both on the internal and external source from a data perspective really underpins what these emerging technologies can do. And then the third area is skills. Our skills that we bring to the table, but also our clients deep, deep expertise, partner expertise, expertise from the ecosystem at large and pulling all of that together, is how we're really able to help our clients accelerate their digital transformations because we're helping them shift, from a set of siloed static processes to an end-to-end workflow. We're helping them make fewer predictions based on the past historical data and actually taking more real-time action with real time insights. So, it really is a fundamental shift and how your work is getting done to really being able to provide that emerging technologies, data, deep skills-based end to end workflow. >> That word fundamental has such gravity. and I know we say data has gravity being fundamental in such an incredibly dynamic time is really challenging but I was looking through some of the notes that you guys provided me with. And in terms of what you just talked about, Dominique versus making a change to a silo, the benefits and making changes to a spectrum of integrated processes the values can be huge. In fact, I was reading that changing a single process like billing, for example might deliver up to 20% improved results. But integrating across multiple processes, like billing, collections, organizations can achieve double that up to 40%. And then there's more taking the intelligent workflow across all lead to cash. This was huge. Clients can get 50 to 70% more value from that. So that just shows that fundamental impact that intelligent workflows can make. >> Right, I mean, it really is when we see it really is about unlocking exponential value. So, when you think about crossing end to end workflow but also, really enhancing what clients are doing and what companies are doing today with those exponential technologies from kind of single use the automation POC here and AI application POC here, actually integrating those technologies together and applying them at scale. When I think intelligent workflows I think acceleration. I think exponential value. But I also really think about at scale. Because it's really the ability to apply these technologies the expertise at scale that allows us to start to unlock a lot of that value. >> So let's go over Paul, in the last few minutes that we have here I want to talk about IBM garage and how this is helping clients to really transform those workflows. Talk to me a little bit about what IBM garage is. I know it's not IBM garage band and I know it's been around since before the pandemic but help us understand what that is and how it's delivering value to customers. >> Well, first I'm going to be the first to invite you to join the IBM garage band, Lisa so we'd love to have you >> I'm in. no musical experience required... >> I like to sing, all right I mean (laughs) We're ready, we're ready for. So, let me talk to you about IBM garage and I do want to key on two words that Dominique was mentioning speed and scale. Because that's what our clients are really looking for when they're doing transformations around intelligent workflows. How can you transform at scale, but do that with speed. And that really becomes the critical issue. As Dominique mentioned, there's a lot of companies that can help you do a proof of concept do something in a few weeks that you can test an idea out and have something that's kind of like a throw away piece of work that maybe proves a point or just proves a point. But even if it does prove the point at that point you'd have to restart a new, to try to get something that you could actually scale either in the production technology environment or scale as a change across an organization. And that's where IBM garage comes in. It's all a way of helping our clients co-create, co-execute and then cooperate, innovating at scale. So, we use methods like design thinking inside of IBM we've trained several hundred thousand people on design thinking methods. We use technologies like neural and other things that help our clients co-create in a dynamic environment. And what's amazing for me is that, the cause of the way we were, we were doing work with clients in a garage with using IBM garage in a garage environment before the pandemic. And one of our clients Frito-Lay of North America, is an example where we've helped them innovate at scale and speed using IBM garage over a long period of time. And when the pandemic hit, we in fact were running 11 garages across 11 different workflow areas for them the pandemic hit and everyone was sent home. So, we all instantly overnight had to work from home together with relay. And what was great is that we were able to quickly adapt the garage method to working in a virtual world. To being able to run that same type of innovation and then use that innovation at scale in a virtual world, we did that overnight. And since that time which happened, that happened back in March of last year throughout the pandemic, we've run over 1500 different garage engagements with all of our clients all around the world in a virtual, in a virtual environment. It's just an incredible way, like I said to help our clients innovate at scale. >> That's fantastic, go ahead Dominique. >> Oh, sorry, was just said it's a great example, we partnered with FlightSafety International, they train pilots. And I think a great example of that speed and scale right is in less than 12 weeks due to the garage methodology and the partnership with FlightSafety, we created with them and launched an adaptive learning solution. So, a platform as well as a complete change to their training workflow such that they had personalized kind of real-time next best training for how they train their pilots for simulators. So, reducing their cycle time but also improving the training that their pilots get, which as people who normally travel, it's really important to us and everyone else. So, just a really good example, less than 12 weeks start to start to finish. >> Right, talk about acceleration. Paul, last question for you, we've got about 30 seconds left I know this is an ecosystem effort of IBM, it's ecosystem partners, it's Alliance partners. How are you helping align right partner with the right customer, the right use case? >> Yeah, it's great. And our CEO Arvind Krishna has really ushered in this era where we are all about the open ecosystem here at IBM and working with our ecosystem partners. In our services business we have partnerships with all the major, all the major technology players. We have a 45 year relationship with SAP. We've done more SAP S 400 implementations than anyone in the world. We've got the longest standing consulting relationship with Salesforce, we've got a unique relationship with Adobe, they're only services and technology partner in the ecosystem. And we just recently won three, procedures Partner Awards, with them and most recently we announced a partnership with Celonis which is an incredible process execution software company, process mining software company that's going to help us transform intelligent workflows in an accelerated way, embedded in our garage environment. So, ecosystem is critical to our success but more importantly, it's critical to our client success. We know that no one alone has the answers and no one alone can help anyone change. So, with this open ecosystem approach that we take and global business services and our business transformation services organization, we're able to make sure that we bring our clients the best of everyone's capabilities. Whether it's our technology, partners, our services IBM's own technology capabilities, all in the mix, all orchestrated in service to our client's needs all with the goal of driving superior business outcomes for them. >> And helping those customers in any industry to accelerate their business transformation with those intelligent workloads and a very dynamic time. This is a topic we could keep talking about unfortunately, we are out of time but thank you both for stopping by and sharing with me what's going on with respect to intelligent workflows. How the incremental exponential value it's helping organizations to deliver and all the work that IBM is doing to enable its customers to be thrivers of tomorrow. We appreciate talking to you >> Thanks Lisa. >> Thank you >> For Paul Papas and Dominique Dubois I'm Lisa Martin. You're watching the CUBE's coverage of IBM Think the digital event experience. (gentle music)

>> Live from San Francisco, it's theCUBE. Covering IBM Think 2019. Brought to you by IBM. >> Welcome back to Moscone North, this is IBM Think 2019. You're watching theCUBE, I'm Stu Miniman, and we're going to dig into a segment talking about the cognitive enterprise. And helping me through that, I have one returning guest and one new guest to theCUBE, so furthest away from me, the returning guest is Jesus Mantas, who is the managing partner strategy for the digital platforms and innovation in the IBM Global business services. Jesus, welcome back. >> Thank you >> A little bit of a mouthful on the title. And Mani Dasgupta, CMO of the same group, the IBM Global business services. Thanks so much both for joining us. Alright, so cognitive enterprise. We're going to play a little game here first. Buzzword Bingo here, you know, can we talk about, what cognitive is, where you can't say AI, ML, platform, or enterprise in there. So do we start with the CMO first? >> Sure, I can go. Cognitive enterprise, those are two bing bing right there. What's your core competitive advantage, is what I would say. As a company, do you know why you exist? And once you get to that, how do you then take it to your clients, in a way that would help you grow, and sustain growth in the future. That truly is the future of a smart business, what we call the cognitive enterprise. >> So, Jesus, data is something we talk about a lot, at all the shows, we hear all the tropes about it's the new oil, the rocket fuel that are going to drive companies. You've got strategy and innovation in your title, I'd love you to build off as to where this cognitive enterprise fits in to those big trends of AI that we were talking about. Jinny was just on the keynote stage, talking about Watson, talking about all those pieces, so where does that fit with some of these megawaves that we're talking about. >> I think it's the way that we define this new, smarter organizations that use data to the fullest extent. And I think the way that we define it is, one is this reuse of data, your own data, the external data, and the way you aggregate it, the way that you apply AI or other things to use that. But the technology itself is a means to an end, it's not the end, so these organizations change the way the work flows, and they also train people to make sure that they understand how to operate in a world where they have more information and they can make better decisions with that data that they could before. All of that is what we are labeling. It's more than digital, it's more than AI. It is this concept of a cognitive enterprise. It's a smarter way to do what a company does. >> Okay, I'd love if you could give us a little bit of a compare, contrast. You know, the wave of big data was, there's massive amounts of data, we're going to allow the business practitioner, to be able to leverage that data. Was a great goal, unfortunately when we did research, at least half the time it wasn't really panning out there. Doesn't mean we didn't learn good things, and there weren't lots of great tools and business value generated out there. So, give us, you know, what's the same and what's different, as to this new wave. >> This is how do you make that data work for you, really. It is about, when you talk of data, you think of data that's out there, but 80% of the data today, is owned by you. And by you, I mean a business, right, you own your customers' data, you know your customer better than anybody else. So what do you really do with it? And we are at an inflection point right now, where these technologies that you just talked about, be it blockchain, be it internet of things, be it AI. You can truly bring the power of these technologies, to start making sense of that data that you own, and use it to create, what we call, your competitive advantage, your business platform. So, think about it, I can break it down. Would you just be a retailer of clothes? Or, would you be a fashion expert? And which one would have long-term success for you? Or if you think of a completely different industry, would you be an insurance provider, you sell insurance products, or would you be a risk management expert? That decision to be who you want to be, is really at the heart of the cognitive enterprise, and what we are proposing to the clients here. >> Alright, help frame for us your group, where that fits in. IBM sells hardware, software, has a huge services organization. What are the deliverables and the services and products involved in your group? >> Sure, we are the services organization of IBM, and one of the core reasons why we exist is to help our clients solve their toughest business problems. And so, if you think about it, you think about it as different puzzle pieces, but they don't quite always fit together. We exist to sharpen the edges, to sometimes round the edges, make it customized, make it right for you, so that at the end of the day, you're able to deliver results for your customers and be closer to them than ever before. >> The balance we look at in this multi-cloud world, it'd be nice if you have a little bit more standardization, but of course we know when we talk with businesses, every company is different and is challenging. So, where are the architectural engagements? What are the design criteria? Where is some of the hard work your group gets involved in? >> Yeah, I think we've been spending a lot of work and a lot of time on understanding how to get clients, most clients have done a lot of experimentation. But they rarely figured out how to get that experimentation into real production, at scale, with impact. So that's where we've spent a lot of the time. Fundamentally it has to do with, not only understanding Agile as a method, but being able to combine that with taking that journey all the way through to production, actually integrating with compliance requirements that, if you're in a regulated industry, you have to do, and do that in a way that doesn't become a digital island. I think what we have learned is, when companies see this big divide between, that's the legacy world and that's the new world you can never put those two together. So we came up with this concept of IBM Garage, which is the way in which our team, the services side, can actually bring it all together, and it gets massively enhanced and improved, with technology like containers, like Kubernetes, because now you can actually open up architectures, without reinventing them, and connect them with new technology, and do that synchronously. So you can basically be modernizing your legacy, you can be creating new innovation, in the form of new platforms, but you can do it at the same time, and as you do that through cycles, you also change the skillsets that you have in your company, because if you don't change that skillset, you're always going to have a problem scaling. That's what we do, that's what we help the clients do. >> Yeah, skillsets are so critical. Something we've been hearing over and over is, that whole digital transformation, this isn't some 18 to 24 month going to deploy some software, bring in a lot of consultants, they go and do it, hopefully it works and then they walk away. We're talking about much faster time frames, usually agile methodology, talk about skillset-changing. How do we help customers move fast and accelerate, because that's really the faster, faster, faster, it's just one of those driving things we hear. >> I was talking to one of the clients this morning, and what she said is, it's so helpful to have a framework, just to know where to start, and also to know, sometimes it's there in their mind, but they want to see it in front of them, how to break a problem down into smaller components, so that you can get to value faster, so we have actually a seven-step process, of the cognitive enterprise. So we start with, what is your core platform? In fact, Jesus coined this term, he calls it the digital Darwinism. Do you want to talk about the digital Darwinism, Jesus? >> Yeah, I think it reflects very well this urgency. In the analog world when most businesses are based on how clients choose you based on proximity, based on convenience, based on brand, based on trust, based on price. Even if you're not great at it, you have enough friction in an analog world, that the clients will keep coming. All of us and more of our things that we do every day, are in our phone, and they are digitally accessible, all of that friction disappears, and what happens then is, the people that are very good at something becomes, everybody goes to them, and the people that are not the best. I call it, they either thrive or they die very quickly. So in the digital world, being really good at something is a lot more important than in the analog world. You can survive being average in the analog world. Once you get to the digital world, it's transparent. Everyone will know, you're the best, you're not the best, and nobody would pick you if you're not the best, so it's really important to reconfigure yourself, and understand the trust and your brand, understand how digitally you translate what you are, and then make sure that your clients will keep choosing you in a digital world as much as they were choosing you in an analog world. >> I tell you, that resonates really well with me. The old line you used to hear is, if you want to get something done, give it to someone who's really busy, because they will usually figure out a way to do it. I spent a handful of years in my career doing operations, and what I did when I was in operations, when I talked to people in IT, is tell me next quarter and next year, do you think you're going to have more or less work more data to deal with, more thing thing, and of course the answer is, we all know that pace of change is the only thing that's constant in this industry. So, if I don't figure out how I automate, change, or get rid of the stuff that I'm not good at, we're just going to continue to be buried. Are there commonalities that you see, as success factors or how do you help measure, what are some key KPIs that customers walk out of, when they go through an engagement like this? >> Yeah, just carrying on from where Jesus left off, the second step is very close to what you were just saying. It's about the data and how you're using that data. So some of the key success factors would be, what is the output of it, and it's not in the proof of concept phase anymore. It is real-time, it is big, people are doing it at a grand scale. I think, Jesus, maybe we take it through the seven steps, and then the key success criteria comes right at you, right after that. So after you do the workflow, after you do the data for internal competitive advantage, we go to the next step, which is all about workflows. You want to talk a bit about that? >> Yeah, I think one of the advantages that artificial intelligence brings to companies is, the fact that you can now, I mean as a human, there is only so much data that you can ingest. There is a limit, and most businesses try to optimize what that is and how you make decisions. But, artificial intelligence becomes this aid that will read and summarize things for you. So now you can take into account, into workflows, massive amounts of information, to optimize, or even not having to do things you had to do before, at a scale that, as a human you cannot do. This idea of inserting AI into workflows is the real idea. I think we talk a lot about AI as a technology, but that's just a means to an end. The end is a workflow that is embedded with blockchain, with AI, with IOT, and then people that are trained to engage with those workflows, so you actually change the output. And I think that's the big idea, that step of, it is workflow that is embedded with AI, it's not just about the technology, it's the combination of the main industry, and the technology that actually creates that >> And where does it sit, right? Where does it sit? Your tech choices, the architecture choices are also important. And we joked about this, like if you really like Netflix, and you're watching something and something is coming up after three seconds, how does it know what you really like? But it does, but think about this. This wouldn't be possible on a 1950s television set. So you've got to think about what's your tech platform of choice, how do you upgrade that, and what's the architecture look like? >> I want to give you both the final word. Lots of users here at the show. What are you most excited about? Give us an insight on some of the conversations you've been having already. >> Amazing conversations so far. The really aha-moment was, people really like to share within their peer set, so this morning I was at the business exchange, and people were having conversations, but just to bounce it off someone, who is facing the same issues that you do, across different industries, was a really aha-moment, and we have the IBM Garage actually right behind us on the other side of Moscone. We set it up so that clients can come in, and unpack their problems, and we helped them think it through, used design thinking, help them think it through. We are hoping in the next couple of days, we get lots of brilliant ideas, come from the sessions like that, and really putting the customer at the core of what you want to do. >> It's a recurring theme of all the client conversations, this idea of, they all want the speed and agility of a startup at the strength and scale of an enterprise. That's what they're asking us, as the services organization of IBM, to do is, help us not just experiment, that was good before, not good enough now. Help us do that with agility, with new technologies, but we want it to mean something at scale, globally implement it, create an impact. And I think again, the way in which hybrid multi-cloud can play into that, the way in which IBM Garage can combine the legacy world with the new world and moving people into new platforms is a really exciting method and approach that is resonating a lot with clients. >> Really appreciate you both sharing updates and absolutely as you painted a picture, just as in 1950 we didn't have the tools to run Netflix, now in 2019, we have the tools for customers to be able to help build the cognitive enterprise and not only test but get into real-world deployment at a speed that was really unheralded before today. Thanks so much for joining. We'll be back with more coverage here from IBM Think 2019. I'm Stu Miniman, and thanks for watching theCUBE. (upbeat techno music)