>>Welcome back to the cosmopolitan in Las Vegas. Lisa Martin here at Coupa inspire 2022 with a couple thousand people here. And I got to tell you it's really great to be back in person, done a wheelchair. Join three next, the SVP of product strategy and innovation at Cooper. Donna, welcome to the program. >>Thank you so much. It is great to be here and it's great to be live, but yet >>It is great to be alive. Again. I feel like I'm exhaling for the first time in a long time. >>I know, right. It's just so wonderful. I want >>To talk a little bit about you you've been a Cooper for a long time since it was just a baby startup, a little >>Baby >>Lady that also had a lot of leadership roles, product strategy, marketing, a customer experience, professional services. I also read that you have 12 software patent. I do. I love that. >>I know it's been one of the most amazing things that Coupa, which is this ability to be creative and innovate and then get your item patented. It's wonderful. >>Talk to me about, obviously the last two years have been so interesting, shall we say dynamic challenging? And we were talking before we went live that we haven't. The key bus had been that Coupa inspire, inspire hasn't happened since 2019 and it's almost three years ago. Talk to me about the last 10 years I Cooper and the massive acceleration I'm Rob was saying this morning in the keynote 3.3 trillion under spend under management almost at a trillion a year run rate. Yeah, >>We have huge. The numbers have just started to really become a fly wheel, right? More customers more spend. And really now having this big data repository of $3.3 trillion and the ability to apply AI to that data. But it really has been a journey. Um, when I joined about 11 years ago, now we had this vision, the vision was always a data centric model where we can apply AI to that data and create intelligence. And now we're finally at a volume of data where we can, we can anonymize the data and we can create insights at a level that we just were not able to do 10 years ago. >>One of the things that we've learned, I think fairly recently is that every company has to be a data company regardless of industry. Even I, I, I think about that, like my grocery store has to be a data company. Sure. There's no more, it'd be nice. If we had a data strategy, it would be nice if we actually could glean insights from our data that's table stakes, that's business critical that's differentiating. >>Absolutely. And I think, you know, I think what's really interesting in an enterprise software is that as a SAS provider, although we may host the systems, we don't actually own our customer's data. We need to actually have permission to usage of the data. And that was one of the things that Cooper did very early on, about 10 years ago, where we started working with our customers and really building that permission to use into the contracts themselves. And that has really created now this motion of having data that we can now consume and use where a lot of businesses in enterprise software had not really thought about the notion of permission to use and having data available to them. >>That's the power of the community, right? And that's one of the things that clearly sets Cooper apart from its competition. >>Yes, indeed. We have spent so many years on creating this model of how does the community and how does community.ai help each individual customer become more efficient, save more and also do good for the planet in a way that has just never been able to do, if that company was doing it alone by themselves. >>Speaking of good for the planet, let's talk about ESG, your customer conversations. ESG is broad. >>How >>Are customers approaching the topic of it to bring it in as a strategic initiative? Okay. >>You know, I think this is a really great question. So what happened about a few years ago is our customers sat down with us and we said to ourselves, if we were going to make every dollar more sustainable, more inclusive that we're spending, what would we need to do? What would that be? The places within a spend function that you could improve the outcome of that dollar to be more sustainable and inclusive. And we broke it down into so many different features. And over the last three years, we've developed, delivered over 80 different features now available in our BSM sustainable BSM toolkit that our customers can configure Coupa to impact their ESG goals positively. >>So BSM can be a facilitator of ESG or an accelerator, or >>It's definitely an accelerator. And one of the things we're trying to do is democratize the ability to do good, right? So oftentimes the larger organizations are able to invest people into these problems. Well now smaller and smaller organizations are expected to comply with government regulations. How do these businesses do it? They can do it with technology like Kupa. >>Got it. Okay. One of the things I was looking at in my prep for the event was a recent survey that Cooper did just in February. It's just a couple of months ago, 800 decision makers, >>Um, >>Who have overview or responsibility for the supply chain and businesses with over a thousand employees. And this was global. What are some of the improvements that businesses, what did you find that they want to make with respect to ESG? >>You know, I think there was a really great survey that showed businesses, have the intent they want to do good, but the problem is the act secretion of it. How do they actually make it happen? And technology systems have largely failed them or have only looked at a part of the problem without looking at the whole problem. I can give you an example, please >>Do >>So in the scope three emissions, which is on everyone's mind right now, how are we going to comply with scope three emissions? At first on the surface, it looks like a reporting problem. Oh, I'll just create a report. But the real problem is data related the data itself that these organizations have on what they purchased and who they purchased it from is terrible. And so if your data's bad, your report to the government is going to be terrible, right? So you have to look at the problem holistically solving the data problem before you get to the reporting problem. And that's what Coupa really specializes on. >>And the things I was also looking at in the survey was from an overall theme perspective that the availability and reliability of crucial supply chain data is preventing organizations from operationalizing, their corporate purpose with respect to ESG will Kupa solves that problem. >>Absolutely. >>Talk to me about that. >>Yeah. So let's talk about things like third-party risk management. When you are working in a supply chain, you need to know who your suppliers are, not just your suppliers, but their suppliers as well, tier two, tier three, tier four, or even beyond even. Um, and this is everything from anti-bribery and anti-corruption to InfoSec and GDPR and so many different government regulations on knowing who you're doing business with. And Coupa solves that problem of collecting that data from your third parties and then continually monitoring it and passing it into the different systems within your spend processes in order to make sure that the person that is making a decision, how's the data at their fingertips. >>That's critical. And you know, one of the things we've learned in the last two years is that everybody wants things now, instantaneously in real time, it's no longer, oh, that's great to have that. No, I, as a consumer, I want that in business. I want that every company has to be a data company, but if organizations can't be able to extract insights from that data and make smart decisions on it in real time, they're going to be out of business. >>Absolutely. The ability to be able to process data at the time you're making a decision, the best data possible at that moment is critical in order for these companies, really, it's a, it's an ability for this company to thrive and even survive. >>Absolutely. Nobody's going to want one thing, I think we know nobody's going to want less data slot more slowly as time goes on. It's always going to be more data faster, faster, fastest. >>Absolutely. And that's why this model at Kupa has really been formulated over the last 12 years of how do we collect the data across our customer community? How do we pull it together, normalize it, aggregate it, anonymize it, and create insights that are so powerful. Like what we're just announcing now is our ocean freight pricing >>Index. >>So we've collected all of the data from our customers that are sourcing ocean freight and we're taking that data and we're creating a market index for the pricing of ocean freight. So now within Coupa, you can actually see what's happening the price of ocean freight, and we're going to continue to add more and more services. As more data gets processed to Hooper. >>Talk to me about the customer influence and your role. You talk with customers a lot. It used to be on the road a lot. Obviously that's changed. Hopefully that's coming back, but let's talk about one of the things I always know when I, when I come to inspire, I always know I'm going to see a lot of customer logos. I'm going to feel a lot. And on the cube here from the voice of Coupa's customer, talk to me about some of the influence that your customers have been able to have in the last two years alone. >>Absolutely. So our philosophy at Coupa's, uh, none of us is as smart as all of us. And it really is the DNA of this company, the heart of the company. So when the pandemic hit, we just really said to ourselves, okay, how do we continue that collaboration and now a digital world? And that's what we did. We just pivoted really fast into a digital world, but the same volume, the same collaboration, the same conversations were happening with our customer community. And in the last year alone, we probably had over 400 customers over 90% of the features we delivered had customer input into those features. And the model continues around our customers, collaborating with us via the digital channels and our product owners, really working with them as a co innovation team. And not as, you know, product in a ivory tower somewhere. >>I like the co-innovation kind of team part, but it's really what you're describing is that flywheel that you mentioned a few minutes ago, that's really always been there at Coupa for very, very long time. And it's just getting faster and more efficient. And I would say in a nerdy way more, data-driven >>More data, data, data. I will talk data all day long. It's just wonderful. And even this ocean freight thing, I'll tell everyone 10 years ago, this was the dream to have enough data, to be able to create these types of supply chain insights that are just unparalleled. And now as the data continues to increase the next year's insights and the year after are going to just keep improving because as the data increases, the insights get better and in different categories, different ways. >>So when you're in those customer conversations with customers who maybe prospects, I'll say who aren't yet Coupa customers who ha who say Donna, I've got a, we've got a huge data problem. Where do they start? How do you advise them to be able to overcome that? So they can use the data, glean the insights in real time and be competitive? >>You know, the first thing I always say to our customers or prospective customers is start the journey and have conversations with Coupa as a partner and not as a vendor, the more that we can work together and say, help us understand your technology architecture, help us understand your pain points. Where are the, where are the parts of your business that are critically damaged that need us to prioritize. And then let us have a discussion for you as a company that we can make recommendations you based on other customers that have been like you and have those same pain points and then lay it out from that point of view. But it's, it's hard when it's a very, you know, classic old model of we're procurement and you're a vendor and we're going to silo it because what we see is a >>Lot of, >>Well, this is how we used to do it. So we're only asking you questions around how we used to do it. And now how the rest of the, not about how the rest of the community is doing it. So my advice would really be open up the doors, have a conversation, start as a partner, and then let's figure it out from there. >>Well, one of the things that came across in Rob keynote this morning was about Cooper, about we've got to get rid of the silos. Every organization in every industry cannot operate in a silo. And even, even Barbara Corcoran's keynote when she was talking about some of the best ideas. In fact, I think I saw a tweet from her the other day that said she doesn't think she's ever had a really great idea. They've always come from basically collaborating within a group. So not in a silo. >>Absolutely collaboration is key in everything we do. We, none of us is as smart as all of us. And it truly is a key point in technology. These silos that are happening in business that prevents the risk from properly be operationalized. So for example, the risk team may be aware that there is a supplier that has now gone onto a government watch list. Okay? But the payments team is not aware. So the payments team is still issuing payments to that vendor or new orders are going to that vendor or sourcing events. Coupa brings those silos together and says, instead, we're going to employ what we call suite synergy. And we're going to stop the transactions when the risk is increased, routed to the risk team for review before the money goes out the door. >>And how does I love sweet synergy? How does that resonate? Who are you talking to within customers? Are you talking to the C-suite? How does suite synergy resonate that far up the stack? Because the concept is clear. >>Yeah. It's about the collaboration for more value and protecting the brand. The, what the people we speak to are generally the CFO, the CPO, the chief procurement officer and the CIO. Those are generally, um, who we speak to. But increasingly we see the chief sustainability officer, the chief diversity officer, and especially from a notion of how do I not just report on my data? How do I improve it? How do I impact diversity by helping the person, making a spend decisions, giving them diverse options at the time they're doing that spend decision, instead of just reporting on it, throw it, >>Grow it, act on it, take the insights and actually make smart decisions faster. >>Absolutely. And before the money goes out the door, once the money goes out the door, you cannot influence it to be going to a diverse supplier it's already done. >>Right. So I know we're only on day one here. Last question for you is what are its great turnout? All the people behind us. It's great to hear that buzz of, of a conference environment. Once again, what are some of the things that you've heard today that really excite you about the direction that Cooper's going in? >>I think for me, it all started today. And yesterday, yesterday we are a community advisory boards. We had hundreds of customers that were meeting with us and it was just the sense of co-innovation being alive and well. So many customers today, I sat next to ADM, uh, one of our customers and they're working with us on supply chain collaboration and the next generation of supply chain collaboration. And it was just so wonderful to finally meet the people that we've been working with for so long in a digital world. >>That's right. It's always nice. When you look at badges, I know you put video conferencing for two years. You're >>Taller than I thought >>Exactly. I don't get that. I don't get that. You're taller than other >>Taller. No, I'm pretty >>Sure it's been great. Having you on the program, talking about the strategy, the innovation, the direction coop is going and what you've witnessed, the evolution of it in the last 10 years, we congratulate you on your success. And we just look forward to seeing Kupa, continue to evolve and mature. >>Thank you so much. It was wonderful to sit down with you today. Excellent. >>Good. I enjoyed it too. For Donna wheelchairs. I'm Lisa Martin. You're watching the cubes coverage of Cooper inspire 22 from Las Vegas. Thanks for watching.

>> Narrator: From around the globe, it's theCUBE with digital coverage of PegaWorld iNspire, brought to you by Pegasystems. >> Hi everybody, this is Dave Vellante and welcome to theCUBE's coverage of PegaWorld iNspire 2020. And now that the dust has settled on the event, we wanted to have a little postmortem power panel, and I'm really excited to have three great guests here today. Adrian Swinscoe is a customer service and experience advisor and the best-selling author of a couple of books: "How to Wow" and "Punk CX." Adrian great to see you, thanks for coming on. >> Hey Dave. >> And Shelly Kramer's a principal, analyst, and a founding partner at Futurum Research, CUBE alum. Shelly, good to see you. >> Hi, great to see you too. >> And finally, Don Schuerman who is the CTO of Pegasystems and one of the people that was really highlighting the keynotes. Don, thanks for your time, appreciate you coming on. >> Great to be here. >> Guys, let's start with some of the takeaways from the event, and if you don't mind I'm going to set it up. I had some, I had many many notes. But I'll take a cue from Alan's keynote, where he talked about three things: rethinking the customer engagement, that whole experience, that as a service, I'm going to say that certainly the second part of last decade came to the front and center and we think is going to continue in spades. And then new tech, we heard about that. Don we're going to ask you to chime in on that. Modern software, microservices, we've got machine intelligence now. And then I thought there were some really good customer examples. We heard from Siemens, we heard from the CIO and head of digital at Aflac, the Bank of Australia. So, some really good customer examples. But Shelly, let me start with you. What were your big takeaways of PegaWorld iNspire 2020, the virtual edition? >> You know, what I love is a focus, and we have talked a lot about that here at Futurum Research, but what I love is the thinking that what really is important now is to think about rethinking and kind of tearing things apart. Especially when we're in a time, we're in difficult economic times, and so instead of focusing on rebuilding and relaunching as quickly as possible, I think that now's the time to really focus on reexamining what is it that our customers want? How is it that we can best serve them? And really sort of start from ground zero and examine our thinking. And I think that's really at the heart of digital transformation, and I think that both in this virtual event and in some interviews I was lucky enough to do in advance with some of the Pega senior team, that was really a key focus, is really thinking about how we can re-architect things, how we can do things in ways that are more efficient, that impact people more effectively, that impact the bottom line more effectively. And to me that's really exciting. >> So Adrian, CX is obviously your wheelhouse. A lot of the conversation at PegaWorld iNspire was of course about customer experience, customer service. How do you think the content went? What were some of the highlights for you? And maybe, what would you have liked to hear more of? >> Well I think, thanks Dave, I actually really enjoyed it. I actually kind of thought was, first of all I should say that I've been to a bunch of virtual summits and I thought this was one of the best ones I've done in terms of its pace and its interactivity. I love the fact that Don was bouncing around the screen, kind of showing us around the menu and things. I thought that was great. But the things that I thought really stood out for me was this idea of the context around accelerating digital transformation. And that's very contextual, it's almost being forced upon us. But then this idea of also the center-out thinking and the Process Fabric. Because it really reminded me of, and Don you can maybe correct me if I'm wrong here, is taking a systems-thinking approach to delivering the right outcomes for customers. Because it's always struck me that there's a contradiction at the heart of the rhetoric around customer-centricity where people say they want to do the right things by customers but then they force them down this channel-centric or process-centric way of thinking. And so actually I thought it was really refreshing to hear about this center-out and Process Fabric platform that Pega's building. And I thought it's really exciting because it felt like actually we're going to start to take a more systemic look and take to delivering great service and great experience. So I thought that was really great. Those were my big headlines out of the summit. >> So Don, one of the-- >> Adrian I think-- >> Go ahead, please. >> Yeah, I think the whole idea, you know, and Alan referred to center-out as a business architecture, and I think that's really an important concept because this is really about the intersection of that business goal. How do I truly become customer-centric? And then how do I actually make my technology do it? And it's really important for that to work where you put your business logic in the technology. If you continue to do it in the sort of channel-centric way or really data-centric, system-centric way that historically has been the approach, I don't think you can build a sustainable platform for great customer engagement. So I think that idea of a business architecture that you clued in on a little bit is really central to how we've been thinking about this. >> Let's stay on that for a second. But first of all, I just want to mention, you guys did a good job of not just trying to take a physical event and plug in into virtual. So congratulations on that. The virtual clicker toss, and you know, you were having some fun eating your eggs. I mean that was, that's great. And the Dropkick Murphys couldn't be live, but you guys still leveraged that, so well done. One of the better ones that I've seen. But I want to stay on your point there. Alan talked about some of the mistakes that are made, and one of the questions I have for you guys is, what is the state of customer experience today, and why the divergence between great, and good, and pretty crappy? And Alan talked about, well, people try to impose business process top-down, or they try to infuse logic in the database bottom-up. You really got to do that middle-out. So, Don I want to come back to you. Let's explore that a little bit. What do you really mean by middle-out? Where am I putting the actual business logic? >> Yeah, I think this is important, right. And I think that a lot of time we have experiences as customers. And I had one of these recently with a cable provider, where I spent a bunch of time on their website chatting with a chatbot of some kind, that then flipped me over to a human. When the chatbot flipped me to the human, the human didn't know what I was doing with the chatbot. And that human eventually told me I had to call somebody. So I picked up the phone, I made the phone call. And that person didn't know what I was doing on chat with the human or with the chatbot. So every time there's a customer, I'm restarting. I'm reexplaining where I am. And that to me is a direct result of that kind of channel-centric thinking, where all of my business logic ends up embedded in, "Well hey, we're going to build a cool chatbot. "And now we're going to build a cool chat system. "And by the way, "we're going to keep our contact centers running." But I'm not thinking holistically about the customer experience. And that's why we think this center-out approach is so important, because I want to go below the channel. And I want to think about that customer journey. What's the outcome I'm trying to get to? In the case of my interaction, I was just trying to increase my bandwidth so that I could do events like this, right? What's that outcome that I'm trying to get to and how do I get the customer to that outcome in a way that's as efficient for the business and as easy for the customer as possible regardless of what channel they're on. And I think that's a little bit of a new way of thinking. And again, it means thinking not just about the customer goal, but having an opinion, whether you are a business leader or an IT person, about where that logic belongs in your architecture. >> So, Adrian. Don just described the sort of bot and human experience, which mimics a lot of the human experience that we've all touched in the past. So, but the customer journey that Don talked about isn't necessarily one journey. There's multiple journeys. So what's your take on how organizations can do better with that kind of service. >> Well I think you're absolutely right, Dave. I mean, actually during the summer I was talking, I was listening to Paul Greenberg talk about the future of customer service. And Paul said something that I think was really straightforward but really insightful. He said, "Look, organizations think about customer journeys "but customers don't think about journeys "in the way that organizations do. "They think discontinuously." So it's like, "I'm going to go to channel one, "and then channel three, and then channel four, "and then channel five, and then back to channel two. "And then back to channel five again." And they expect those conversations to be picked up across those different channels. And so I think what we've got to do is develop, as Don said, build an architecture that is, that works around trying to support the different journeys but allows that flexibility and that adaptability for customers to jump around and to have one of those continuous but disconnected conversations. But it's up to us to try and connect them all, to deliver the service and experience that the customers actually want. >> Now Shelly, a lot of the customer experience actually starts with the employees, and employees don't like when the customer is yelling at them saying, "I just answered all those questions. "Why do I have to answer them again?" So you've, at your firm, you guys have written a lot about this, you've thought a lot about it, you have some data I know you shared on theCUBE one time that 80% of employees are disengaged. And so, that affects the customer experience, doesn't it? >> Yeah it does, you know. And I think that when I'm listening to Don's explanation about his cable company, I'm having flashbacks to what feels like hundreds of my own experiences. And you're just thinking, "This does not have to be this complicated!" You know, ten years ago that same thing that Don just described happened with phone calls. You know, you called one person and they passed you off to somebody else, and they passed you off to somebody else, and you were equally as frustrated as a customer. Now what's happening a lot of times is that we're plugging technology in, like a chat bot, that's supposed to make things better but we're not developing a system and processes throughout our organization, and also change management, what do I want to say, programs within the organization and so we're kind of forgetting all of those things. So what's happening is that we're still having customers having those same experiences that are a decade old, and technology is part of the mix. And it really shouldn't be that way. And so, one thing that I really enjoyed, speaking about employees, was listening to Rich Gilbert from Aflac. And he was talking about when you're moving from legacy processes to new ones, you have to plan for and invest in change management. And we talk about this all the time here at Futurum, you know technology alone is never the answer. It's technology plus people. And so you have to invest in people, you have to invest in their training in order to be able to support and manage change and to drive change. And I think one really important part of that equation is also listening to your employees and getting their feedback, and making them part of the process. Because when they are truly on your front lines, dealing with customers, many times dealing with stressed, upset, frustrated customers, you know, they have a lot of insights. And sometimes we don't bring them into those conversations, certainly early enough in the process to help, to let them help guide us in terms of the solutions and the processes that we put in place. I think that's really important. >> Yeah, a lot of-- >> Shelly, I think-- >> If I may, a lot of the frustration with some employees sometimes is those processes change, and they're unknown going into it. We saw that with COVID, Don. And so, your thoughts on this? >> Yeah, I mean, I think the environment employees are working in is changing rapidly. We've got a customer, a large telecommunications company in the UK where their customer service requests are now being handled by about 4,000 employees pulled from their marketing department working distributed because that's the world that we're in. And the thing I was going to say in response to Shelly is, Alan mentioned in his keynote this idea of design thinking. And one of the reasons why I think that's so important is that it's actually about giving the people on the front lines a voice. It's a format for engaging the employees who actually know the day-to-day experiences of the customers, the day-to-day experiences of a customer service agent, and pulling them into the solution. How do we develop the systems, how do we rethink our processing, how does that need to plug into the various channels that we have? And that's why a lot of our focus is not just on the customer service technology, but the underlying low code platform that allows us to build those processes and those chunks of the customer journey. We often refer to them as "microjourneys" that lead to a specific outcome. And if you're using a low code based platform, something that allows anybody to come in and define that process, you can actually pull employees from the front lines and put them directly on your project teams. And all of a sudden you get better engagement but you also get this incredible insight flowing into what you're doing because you're talking to the people who live this day in and day out. >> Well and when you have-- >> So let's stay on this for a second, if we can. Shelly, go ahead please. >> Sure. When you have a chance to talk with those people, to talk with those front line employees who are having an opportunity to work with low code, no code, they get so excited about it and their jobs are completely, the way they think about their jobs and their contribution to the company, and their contribution to the customer, and the customer experience, is just so wonderful to see. And it's such an easy thing to do, so I think that that's really a critical part of the equation as it relates to success with these programs. >> Yeah, staying close to the customer-- >> Can I jump in? >> Yeah, please Adrian. >> Can I jump in on that a little, a second. I think Shelly, you're absolutely right. I think that it's a really simple thing. You talk about engagement. And one of the key parts of engagement, it seems to me, is that, is giving people a voice and making them feel important and feel heard. And so to go and ask for their opinion and to help them get involved and make a difference to the work that they do, the outcomes that their customers receive, and the overall productivity and efficiency, can only have a positive impact. And it's almost like, it feels self-evident that you'd do that but unfortunately it's not very common. >> Right. It does feel self-evident. But we miss on that front a lot. >> So I want to ask, I'm going to come back to, we talked about people process, we'll come back to that. But I want to talk about the tech. You guys announced, the big announcement was the Pega Process Fabric. You talked about that, Don, as a platform for digital platforms. You've got all these cool microservices and dynamic APIs and being able to compose on the fly, so some pretty cool stuff there. I wonder, with the virtual event, you know, with the physical event you've got the hallway traffic, you talk to people and you get face-to-face reactions. Were you able to get your kind of real-time reactions to the announcement? What was that like? Share with us please. >> Yeah, so, we got well over 1,000 questions in during the event and a lot of them were either about Process Fabric or comments about it. So I think people are definitely excited about this. And when you strip away all of the buzzwords around microservices and cloud, et cetera, I think what we're really getting at here is that work is going to be increasingly more distributed. We are living proof of that right now, the four of us all coming here from different studios. But work is going to be distributed for a bunch of reasons. Because people are more distributed, because organizations increasingly are building customer journeys that aren't just inside their walls, but are connected to the partners and their ecosystem. I'm a bank but I may, as part of my mortgage process, connect somebody up to a home insurer. And all of a sudden the home buying process goes beyond my four walls. And then finally, as you get all of these employees engaged with building their low code apps and being citizen developers, you want to let the 1,000 flowers to bloom but you also need a way to connect that all back together. And Process Fabric is about putting the technology in place to allow us to take these distributed bits of work that we need to do and weave them together into experiences that are coherent for a customer and easy for an employee to navigate. Because I think it's going to be really really important that we do that. And even as we take our systems and break them up into microservices, well customers don't interact with microservices. Customers interact with journeys, with experiences, with the processes you lay out, and making sure we can connect that up together into something that feels easy for the customer and the employee, and gets them to that result they want quickly, that's what the vision of Process Fabric is all about. >> You know, it strikes me, I'm checking my notes here. You guys talked about a couple of examples. One was, I think you talked about the car as sort of a mobility experience, maybe, you know, it makes me wonder with all this AI and autonomous vehicle stuff going on, at what point is owning and driving your own vehicle really going to be not the norm anymore? But you talked about this totally transformed, sorry to use that word, but experience around autos. And certainly financial services is maybe a little bit more near-term. But I wonder Shelly, Futurum, you know, you guys look ahead, how far can we actually go with AI in this realm? >> Well, I think we can go pretty far and I think it'll happen pretty fast. And I think that we're seeing that already in terms of what happened when we had the Coronavirus COVID-19, and of course we're still navigating through that, is that all of a sudden things that we talked about doing, or thought about doing, or planned doing, you know later on in this year or 2021, we had to do all of those things immediately. And so again, it is kind of like ripping the Bandaid off. And we're finding that AI plays a tremendously important role in relieving the workload on the frontline workers, and being able to integrate empathy into decision making. And you know, I go back to, I remember when you all first rolled out the empathy part of your platform, Don, and just watching a demo on that of how you can slide this empathy meter to be warmer, and see in true dollars and cents over time the impact of treating your customers with more empathy, what that delivers to a company. And I think that AI that continues to build and learn and again, what we're having right now, is we're having this gigantic volume of needs, of conversation, of all these transactions that need to happen at once, and great volumes make for better outcomes as it relates to artificial intelligence and how learning can happen more quickly over time. So I think that it's, we're definitely going to see more use of AI more rapidly than we might've seen it before, and I don't think that's going to slow down, at all. Certainly, I mean there's no reason for it to slow down. The benefits are tremendous. The benefits are tremendous, and let me step back and say, following a conversation with Rob Walker on responsible AI, that's a whole different ball of wax. And I think that's something that Pega has really embraced and planted a flag in. So I think that we'll see great things ahead with AI, and I think that we'll see the Pega team really leading as it relates to ethical AI. And I think that's tremendously important as well. >> Well that's the other side of the coin, you know. I asked how far can we go and I guess you're alluding to how far should we go. But Adrian, we also heard about agility and empathy. I mean, I want an empathic service provider. Are agility and empathy related to customer service, and how so? >> Well, David, I think that's a great question. I think that, you talk about agility and talk about empathy, and I think the thing is, what we probably know from our own experience is that being empathetic is sometimes going to be really hard. And it takes time, and it takes practice to actually get better at it. It's almost like a new habit. Some people are naturally better at it than others. But you know, organizationally, I talk about that we need to almost build, almost like an empathetic musculature at an organizational level if we're going to achieve this. And it can be aided by technology, but we, when we develop new muscles it takes time. And sometimes you go through a bit of pain in doing that. So I think that's where the agility comes in, is that we have to test and learn and try new things, be willing to get things wrong and then correct, and then kind of move on. And then learn from these kind of things. And so I think the agility and empathy, it does go hand in hand and it's something that will drive growth and increasing empathetic interactions as we go forward. But I think it's also, just to build on Shelly's point, I think you're absolutely right that Pega has been leading the way in this sort of dimension, in terms of its T-switch and its empathetic advisor. But now the ethical AI testing or the ethical bias testing adds a dimension to that to make sure it's not just about all horsepower, but being able to make sure that you can steer your car. To use your analogy. >> So AI's coming whether we like it or not. Right, Shelly? Go ahead. >> It is. One real quick real world example here is, you know, okay so we have this time when a lot of consumers are furloughed. Out of work. Stressed about finances. And we have a lot of Pega's customers are in the financial services space. Some of the systems that they've established, they've developed over time, the processes they've developed over time is, "Oh, I'm talking with Shelly Kramer and she has a "blah-blah-blah account here. "And this would be a great time to sell her on "this additional service," or whatever. And when you can, so that was our process yesterday. But when you're working with an empathic mindset and you are also needing to be incredibly agile because of current circumstances and situations, your technology, the platform that you're using, can allow you to go, "Okay I'm dealing "with a really stressed customer. "This is not the best time "to offer any additional services." Instead what we need to ask is this series of questions: "How can we help?" Or, "Here are some options." Or whatever. And I think that it's little tweaks like that that can help you in the customer service realm be more agile, be more empathetic, and really deliver an amazing customer experience as a result. And that's the technology. >> If I could just add to that. Alan mentioned in his keynote a specific example, which is Commonwealth Bank of Australia. And they were able, multiple times this year, once during the Australian wildfires and then again in response to the COVID crisis, to completely shift and turn on a dime how they interacted with their customer, and to move from a prioritization of maybe selling things to a prioritization of responding to a customer need. And maybe offering payment deferrals or assistance to a customer. But back to what we were talking about earlier, that agility only happened because they didn't have the logic for that embedded in all their channels. They had it centralized. They had it in a common brain that allowed them to make that change in one place and instantly propagate it to all of the 18 different channels in which they touch their customer. And so, being able to have agility and that empathy, to my mind, is explicitly tied to that concept of a center-out business architecture that Alan was talking about. >> Oh, absolutely. >> And, you know, this leads to discussion about automation, and again, how far can we go, how far should we go? Don, you've been interviewed many many times, like any tech executive, about the impact of AI on jobs. And, you know, the typical response of course is, "No, we want augmentation." But the reality is, machines have always replaced humans it's just, now it's the first time in terms of cognitive function. So it's a little different for us this time around. But it's clear, as I said, AI is coming whether we like it or not. Automation is very clearly on the top of people's minds. So how do you guys see the evolution of automation, the injection of automation into applications, the ubiquity of automations coming in this next decade? Shelly, let's start with you. >> You know, I was thinking you were going to ask Don that question so I'm just listening and listening. (laughing) >> Okay, well we can go with Don, that's-- >> No I'm happy to answer it. It's fine, it just wasn't what I expected. You know, we are really immersed in the automation space. So I very much see the concerns that people on the front line have, that automation is going to replace them. And the reality of it is, if a job that someone does can be automated, it will be automated. It makes sense. It makes good business sense to do that. And I think that what we are looking at from a business agility standpoint, from a business resilience standpoint, from a business survival standpoint, is really how can we deliver most effectively to serve the needs of our customers. Period. And how we can do that quickly and efficiently and without frustration and in a way that is cost effective. All of those things play into what makes a successful business today, as well as what keeps employees, I'm sorry, as well as what keeps customers served, loyal, staying around. I think that we live in a time where customer loyalty is fleeting. And so I think that smart businesses have to look at how do we deepen the relationships that we have with customers? How can we use automation to do that? And the thing about it, you know, I'll go back to the example that Don gave about his cable company that all of us have lived through. It's just like, "Oh my gosh. "There's got to be a better way." So compare that to, and I'm sure all of us can think of an experience where you had to deal with a customer service situation in some way or another, and it was the most awesome thing ever. And you walked away from it and you just went, "Oh my gosh. I know I was talking to a bot here or there." Or, "I know I was doing this, but that solved my problem. "I can't believe it was so easy! "I can't believe it was so easy! "I can't wait to buy something from this company again!" You know what I'm saying? And that's really, I think, the role that automation can play. Is that it can really help deepen existing relationships with our customers, and help us serve them better. And it can also help our employees do things that are more interesting and that are more relevant to the business. And I think that that's important too. So, yes, jobs will go. Yes, automation will slide into places where we've done things manually and repetitive processes before, but I think that's a good thing. >> So, we've got to end it shortly here but I'll give you guys each a last opportunity to chime in. And Adrian, I want to start with you. I invoked the T-word before, transformation, a kind of tongue-in-cheek joking because I know it's not your favorite word. But it is the industry's favorite word. Thinking ahead for the future, we've talked about AI, we've talked about automation, people, process and tech. What do you see as the future state of customer experience, this mix of human and machine? What do we have to look forward to? >> So I think that, first of all, let me tackle the transformation thing. I mean, I remember talking about this with Duncan Macdonald who is the CIO across at UPC, which is one of Pega's customers, on my podcast there the other week. And he talked about, he's the cosponsor of a three year digital transformation program. But then he appended the description of that by saying it's a transformation program that will never end. That's the thing that I think about, because actually, if you think about what we're talking about here, we're not transforming to anything in particular, you know. It's not like going from here to there. And actually, the thing that I think we need to start thinking about is, rather than transformation we actually need to think about an evolution. And adopting an evolutionary state. And we talked about being responsive. We talked about being adaptable. We talked about being agile. We talk about testing and learning and all these different sort of things, that's evolutionary, right? It's not transformational, it's evolutionary. If you think about Charles Darwin and the theory of the species, that's an evolutionary process. And there's a quote, as you've mentioned I authored this book called "Punk CX," there's a quote that I use in the book which is taken from a Bad Religion song called "No Control" and it's called, "There is no vestige of a beginning, "and no prospect of an end." And that quote comes from a 1788 book by James Hutton, which was one of the first treaties on geology, and what he found through all these studies was actually, the formation of the earth and its continuous formation, there is no vestige of a beginning, no prospect of an end. It's a continuous process. And I think that's what we've got to embrace is that actually change is constant. And as Alan says, you have to build for change and be ready for change. And have the right sort of culture, the right sort of business architecture, the right sort of technology to enable that. Because the world is getting faster and it is getting more competitive. This is probably not the last crisis that we will face. And so, like in most evolutionary things, it wasn't the fittest and the strongest that survived, it was the ones that were most adaptable that survived. And I think that's the kind of thing I want to land on, is actually how, it's the ones that kind of grasp that, grasp that whole concept are the ones that are going to succeed out of this. And, what they will do will be... We can't even imagine what they're going to do right now. >> And, thank you. And Shelly, it's not only responding to, as Adrian was saying, to crisis, but it's also being in a position to very rapidly take advantage of opportunities and that capability is going to be important. You guys are futurists, it's in the name. Your thoughts? >> Well I think that, you know, Adrian's comments were incredibly salient, as always. And I think that-- >> Thank you. >> The thing that this particular crisis that we are navigating through today has in many ways been bad, but in other ways, I think it's been incredibly good. Because it has forced us, in a way that we really haven't had to deal with before, to act quickly, to think quickly, to rethink and to embrace change. Oh, we've got to work from home! Oh, we've got 20 people that need to work from home, we have 20,000 people that need to work from home. What technology do we need? How do we take care of our customers? All of these things we've had to figure out in overdrive. And humans, generally speaking, aren't great at change. But what we are forced to do as a result of this pandemic is change. And rethink everything. And I think that, you know, the point about transformation not being a beginning and an end, we are never, ever, ever done. It is evolutionary and I think that as we look to the future and to one of your comments, we are going faster with more exciting technology solutions out there, with people who are incredibly smart, and so I think that it's exciting and I think that all we are going to see is more and more and more change, and I think it will be a time of great resilience, and we'll see some businesses survive and thrive, and we'll see other businesses not survive. But that's been our norm as well, so I think it's really, I think we have some things to thank this pandemic for. Which is kind of weird, but I also try to be fairly optimistic. But I do, I think we've learned a lot and I think we've seen some really amazing exciting things from businesses who have done this. >> Well thanks for sharing that silver lining, Shelly. And then, Don, I'm going to ask you to bring us to the finish line. And I'm going to close my final question to you, or pose it. You guys had the wrecking ball, and I've certainly observed, when it comes to things like digital transformations, or whatever you want to call it, that there was real complacency, and you showed that cartoon with the wrecking ball saying, "Ehh not in my life, not on my watch. "We're doing fine." Well, this pandemic has clearly changed people's thinking, automation is really top of mind now at executive. So you guys are in a good spot from that standpoint. But your final thoughts, please? >> Yeah, I mean, I want to concur with what Adrian and Shelly said and if I can drop another rock quote in there. This one is from Bob Dylan. And Dylan famously said, "The times they are a changing." But the quote that I keep on my wall is one that he tossed off during an interview where he said, "I accept chaos. "I'm not sure if it accepts me." But I think digital transformation looks a lot less like that butterfly emerging from a cocoon to go off happy to smell the flowers, and looks much more like accepting that we are in a world of constant and unpredictable change. And I think one of the things that the COVID crisis has done is sort of snapped us awake to that world. I was talking to the CIO of a large media company who is one of our customers, and he brought up the fact, you know, like Croom said, "We're all agile now. "I've been talking about five years, "trying to get this company to operate in an agile way, "and all of a sudden we had to do it. "We had no choice, we had to respond, "we had to try new things, we had to fail fast." And my hope is, as we think about what customer engagement and automation and business efficiency looks like in the future, we keep that mindset of trying new things and continuously adapting. Evolving. At the end of the day, our company's brand promise is, "Build for change." And we chose that because we think that that's what organizations, the one thing they can design for. They can design for a future that will continue to change. And if you put the right architecture in place, if you take that center-out mindset, you can support those immediate needs, but set yourself up for a future of continuous change and continuous evolution and adaptation. >> Well guys, I'll quote somebody less famous. Jeff Frick, who said, "The answer to every question "lives somewhere in a CUBE interview." and you guys have given us a lot of answers. I really appreciate your time. I hope that next year at PegaWorld iNspire we can see each other face-to-face and do some live interviews. But really appreciate the insights and all your good work. Thank you. >> Thank you. >> Absolutely. >> And thank you for watching everybody, this is Dave Vellante and our coverage of PegaWorld iNspire 2020. Be right back, right after this short break. (lighthearted music)

>> Announcer: From around the globe, it's theCUBE, with digital coverage of PegaWorld iNspire, brought to you by Pegasystems. >> Hi everybody, welcome back. This is Dave Vellante, and you're watching theCUBE's coverage of PegaWorld iNspire 2020. Kerim Akgonul is here. He's the senior vice president of product at Pega, Pegasystems. Kerim, great to see you. Thanks for coming on. >> Hi Dave. Thanks for having me. Yeah, I mean I wish we were face-to-face at your big show, but this is going to have to do. A little different this year doing the virtual event. You're used to a big stage, big audience, lots of clapping and buzz. How's it been for you, this virtual pivot? >> It's been different, it's definitely been different, especially since the last few years we had it in Vegas, so it was a big Vegas show. Now we're in my living room. Not the same vibe, but nevertheless we have a lot of new products and new stories to tell, new experiences to share with the clients, so we're focusing on those aspects. >> Yeah, I'm excited to get into that, but I mean your whole raison d'être is you guys build for change, and obviously we've been thrown this curve ball, more than a curve ball, knuckle ball. Maybe talk about what you're seeing your customers do in terms of being able to rapidly adapt to this new abnormal. >> Yeah, so we've seen, obviously, across the globe, right, not just with Pega, not with just our clients, we've seen a tremendous amount of change. We've seen change in how we work, how we communicate, how we collaborate, how we get into meetings, and a lot of our clients, of course, had to quickly adjust to these recent changes as well in these last couple of months, and in many cases they had to make technology choices, and we're pretty excited that basically Pega technology has been on that top shelf of technologies that our clients chose to leverage in this time of crisis. They chose to use the technology to better engage across their organizational work that they do. They use the Pega technology to actually digitize how a lot of the work that gets done in their organization. They use it as a COVID-19 response. They use it to engage directly with the consumers, so it's been on, as I said, the top shelf of technologies that they had to leverage to adjust and transform, so it's been very busy, Dave. >> Obviously a lot of companies have been hit, and some industries have been very hard hit in the shutdown, but I want to pick a couple of examples. Let's start with healthcare. I mean they've been hit like no other, front lines. Do you have some examples that you can share, or any example in healthcare, how they pivoted? I mean have they been able to even spend time on anything that's not emergency? Maybe you could share some of your experiences there. >> Absolutely. Actually a lot of the healthcare organizations that we're working with, the front line workers, obviously, the way that they engage has changed quite a bit, but also the people that work in the corporate, in the back office, in the technology, they have changed as well as they had to really respond to the changes in the scale of their operations, changes in how they engage with their customers, with the other organizations that they work with, and how they operated their processes. We did have one of the customers that I talk about, HCA, one of the Pega customers, they basically implemented a Pega solution just in a couple of days, and rolled it out into production just a couple of days to keep track of their employees, the volunteers that basically work with them, to keep track of people who are impacted by COVID-19, and they have about 200,000 people that they need to manage the availability in the schedules, and they decided to use Pega technology to be able to manage that across the enterprise, which has been a great experience for us working with them. >> So Kerim, how would that work? So they're an existing Pega customer, they spun up a new module, they sort of developed it themselves. You guys helped them. Describe how that sort of became real. >> Sure, so we actually have a couple of different examples of these types of applications that went live in the last couple of months, from the healthcare organizations, we had it from some organizations in the telecommunications industry, we had state governments and different public sector companies. It works differently for each one of them, but it all starts with really having somebody, having a clear idea on exactly what they want to actually do. What do they want to keep track of? What do they want to operate? What do they want to be able to actually get done? And having somebody to have that vision and being able to articulate that in the Pega construct to automate it to define the process, to define what they're going to keep track of, to define the journeys of those things that they're going to keep track of, and a lot of the clients that have centers of excellence in their organizations with Pega experts, some of our clients work with our great set of partners who have come up with ideas and brought them into these organizations, and we also get pulled into a couple of these implementations, and like you said, Dave, we always talk about being built for change, and this is a time of crisis. This is a time of change, and Pega's technology is perfectly structured to be able to get things quickly done and up and running, but what it really needed at all times is somebody to actually have the vision and the ability to make a decision and go execute on it. And we know that the people are there. We know the technology is there, and that's how a lot of the results got done. >> Yeah, very fast decisions had to get made. Another example is we've been tracking the telecom space, and the whole work-from-home pivot has really put stress on distributed networks, the traditional corporate networks. Now everybody's at home. We've all experienced this, whether video calls, et cetera. The kids are at home, at school, sometimes gaming, so the internet, it didn't blow up, luckily, but still major change in the telco industry. >> Absolutely. How lucky we are to actually have access to all this technology, to all this internet capacity, and yeah, it's been a big change. Obviously the demand on their business has increased quite a bit in the telecommunications industry. One of our clients that basically had contact centers in other countries where the agents actually didn't have an opportunity to go into the contact center, and they couldn't actually enter the building. They weren't even allowed to be on the streets, out on the streets, so what they did, and while this is happening, right, while basically the agents are not able to go to work, at the same time the volumes are increasing through the roof, right? There's a tremendous amount of urgency and higher levels of volumes of requests coming in from the end customers, the end consumers coming in, right? It's basically a perfect storm of things happening, so what our clients have done is a couple of things. One, they created new sets of processes, and they created an army of volunteers from within the business to be able to respond to customer requests from home, and two, they really completely ramped up the pace of taking processes and making them self-service available on the mobile apps, on the website, on the IVR, because customers, consumers have a sense of urgency. They need an answer. They need something to get done quickly, and they want to be able to avoid waiting on line for four hours, right? We saw that, we saw a lot of the websites that says, "Hey, if you call our contact center," some companies put up these messages, "it's going to be so many hours." So our clients were able to take the processes that they have defined for their contact center agents and actually pushed them to self-service channels like the mobile channel, like the web self-service channel, as well as chat and chat bot channels, to be able to get the answers that the consumers need quickly and get their work done, respond to them quickly while in this time of amazing change. >> Yeah, so that enables scaling. Self-service is critical. Yeah, I want to ask you about digital transformation. It's a theme of PegaWorld iNspire. There's been a lot of talk the last three, four years about digital transformation. Frankly, a lot of lip service. I think it was Satya Nadella said we've accelerated. We've pulled two years of digital transformation into two months, but again, you guys are all about digital and digitizing processes, so kind of I want to know if you can talk about that theme of the show, kind of what it means to you and your client. >> I think it's been amazing. I think, like you said, there's been a lot of talk about it in several years, and there have been lots of initiatives, but I think it was missing the urgency that it needed to be able to get moving and get things done. We have had so many discussions. So many people have talked about what do we need to do, do we need to do it now, can we basically wait? Long meetings and long delays on making decisions to actually move forward, and this just basically changed all that, right? There's no more the question of do we need to go through a digital transformation? Everybody knows it's a yes. We had to do it, no question about it. There's no more question of can we do it. Yep, we know we can do it. Do we have the technology, do we have the people? Yep, got it. All that is in place. Now really the thing that we're seeing people succeed in is the ability to make a decision to move forward, to move forward aggressively, and having now proven that the people and the technology is there, and that they can get done, and it really basically requires decisiveness and leadership. >> Yeah, I think the word you use, 'urgency,' because there was a lot of complacency leading up to this, but the good news was there was also a lot of experimentation going on. So COVID obviously accelerated that urgency. Anna Gleiss from Siemens is an example of somebody who spoke during your keynote. Big industrial exposed with a huge supply chain, which for years some of that's been really opaque, and digitize that, now you get greater transparency. What were the key learnings from her discussion? >> Right, so Anna and the team have done a spectacular job, and like I say, they didn't need a worldwide pandemic to get going, and they basically approached theirs systematically with a great plan, and what they basically were able to do is really do that, another thing that people have done a lot of lip service in the past is IT and business collaboration. They actually executed brilliantly from that perspective where the IT organization, technology organization sort of delivered, on top of the Pega platform delivered a platform to be able to manage all the technical aspects of business applications that all the processes that seems needed, and in different departments and different divisions were able to leverage those assets and be able to quickly get applications up and running, and being able to dramatically increase the speed of innovation while at the same time dramatically reducing the cost of getting these things done and running them. So basically they built that environment where IT provided the technical aspects as a service to business applications so that they can quickly get things done, automate their processes, and deliver tremendous amount of operational efficiency into the organization. >> Now Kerim, of course, is the head of products. I want to get into some of the product discussion, some of the hard news that you have at PegaWorld. This notion of the Pega Process Fabric, I mean the metaphor is very strong. You think about digital, you think about a fabric. But what do we need to know about the Pega Process Fabric? >> Dave, it's a great solution that I believe corporations, especially enterprises, need to be able to make their staff more effective, streamline their work, getting them to a world where they don't have to personally navigate through dozens of different applications just to achieve an outcome, because whenever you basically have a situation where an employee of an enterprise has to jump through six, 10, 12 different applications just to be able to get something done for the customer, there's a tremendous amount of efficiency that's lost, there's a tremendous amount of training that's required to be able to actually get people to be able to manage all these, working across all these applications, and of course it's very easy to make mistakes. And whenever you have an environment that's built out like that, it inevitably gets exposed to the customers, and they basically, their experiences realize that there's a lot of jumping around. The Process Fabric is around bringing an experience to the users that is basically a single experience, even though work is coming from many different applications in the organization, right? You talk to any enterprise in anywhere in the world, and you basically name any enterprise software company, and they'll tell you, "Yeah, we got that." They have it. >> Yeah. >> They have Microsoft, they have Salesforce, they have ServiceNow, they have Pega, they have it, and users, employees have to juggle through all of these systems to be able to actually get their work done. The job of Process Fabric is to actually bring all these tasks, bring all this work that the workers, and then on behalf of the customers, have to get done, and weave them together into a single experience so that they don't have to jump around. There's much more efficiency. Get work done fast, and the organization then also has control around how the work is prioritized across different systems. How the work is managed through how it gets assigned, how to handle key customers and be able to see all the work that we're doing on behalf of them across all the different systems, and be able to actually bring a home all of these efforts and provide that experience to the user. >> So Kerim, what's the secret sauce there? Is it a combination of using APIs to those applications, and machine intelligence, and machine learning? >> There's a little bit of many things. The key is, one, we basically come with standard connectivity to standard enterprise solutions. We come prepackaged with connectivity to Pega environments within the organizations, as we have many customers that have deployed dozens of different Pega applications. We come with a standard open API approach to be able to provide connectivity, and then we use our decisioning capabilities and process capabilities to manage the prioritization, to be able to manage the routing and the experience for the end users. >> Okay, and the prioritization is something that's determined by business rules, is that correct? Or how does that all work? >> Absolutely. Absolutely, so the idea is to be able to leverage the business rules capabilities of the Pega platform to be able to handle the prioritization and the routing and sort of collating things together that are associated with the same work streams and for the same customers. >> When Alan Trefler started Pega it was right around the time I started in the industry and AI was the hot buzzword, and it took a while to get here, but it feels pretty real right now. How do you look at machine intelligence and the role that it plays? You've used the term real realtime AI. >> Right. >> What do you mean by that, and what's so special about your AI? >> Well, our realtime AI is real, so that's one of the main specialties, but look, there's a lot basically technology out there. There's a lot of great technology out there with great use cases that can look at historical sets of data and be able to actually generate predictive models from them, and those are great. Those are very, very valuable. But we believe that especially when we're directly engaging with customers, that is not enough. That you need actually realtime, real realtime AI. Let me give you an example. If you are basically running some predictive models against a set of customer data, say basically in January and February and using them in March, you will not get the right results that are basically for each individual customer, because things have changed dramatically between February and March. You couldn't make decisions about a customer based on what happened in their activity in January based on what's today. One of our telecom... One of our, I'm sorry, banking clients, for example, used their customer data in the UK, NatWest, used their customer data and identified people that work for the National Health Services and provided realtime programs that are specifically tailored for them, right, so that's basically being able to actually leverage the power of AI and be able to change how you engage with customers. They looked at customer data who might be at financial risk due to the crisis and actually changed programs and payment programs for them, because things have changed dramatically in the timeframe. Our AI leverages predictive models based on historical data, which is great, but actually also adds on top of it the ability to evaluate realtime data based on the real context of the end customer at this point in time, at this point on their experience on the website, on the IVR, on the mobile app, and be able to determine the best way to engage with that customer at that moment in time, and be able to deliver that one-to-one personalized experience. And this has been basically one of the major capabilities of Pega technology. That's how we differentiate in the marketplace in our ability to actually drive the AI capabilities in realtime interactions. >> Wonder if I could ask you about one of the trends in the marketplace, and you're seeing it in the equity markets, these private equity robotic process automation. People, I think, sometimes misunderstand you, and I've said, I've reported a number of times that RPA's just a small part of what you guys do, but at the same time you're seeing a lot of energy in the marketplace, money, billions of dollars, billions, yeah, have poured in. How do you look at RPA? Where does it fit in the Pega platform? >> Yeah, so RPA's absolutely a part of the overall journey. We look at things from an end-to-end automation perspective, essentially we need to do something for a customer, on behalf of a customer, to get an outcome delivered to a customer, and there's a process associated with it. And this process is frequently going to touch through a bunch of different systems. And some of these systems it's going to touch are old. They've been around for a very, very long time. They're a pain point for a lot of organizations. What RPA does really well is it basically lets you put a robotic process, essentially, a process that runs on the desktop and to be able to sort of execute that process inside that old system automatically. And that saves time and saves money, and there's basically a clear ROI associated with it, but it doesn't eliminate that old technology. It just puts, essentially, a veneer in front of it so that the end user doesn't have to key into some old application. It just does it on their behalf. We think that's a part of an end-to-end process automation, and as you go through different steps you might have to execute these robotic process automations, but it's not digital transformation. You're not really transforming it, right? You are basically eliminating that pain point for time being, and it will become a problem maybe for the next person that has to deal with it. We believe that robotic process automation is a great way to automate stuff, but each one of those elements need to go through that transformation as a part of the modernization, digital transformation journey. >> So it's that systems view that you would stress, and obviously you've always taken a systems view. You've got a platform that is an end-to-end platform. That's really what you mean by the end-to-end is that systems view, correct? >> Well, what we mean, really, by end-to-end is a customer comes in and they have a need, and we basically get them what they come in here for, and whatever is in between, whatever processes, and systems, and integrations, and technologies that sit in between, that's sort of the second part of the story. The main important part is work that needs to get done, we get the work done. And we will do anything in between. We'll do integrations, we'll do routing, we will do automation, we'll do business rules, we'll do AI, we'll do robotic process automation, anything that is necessary to basically drive that outcome, drive efficiency, faster response times, and better customer experience. >> Okay, so those are the key metrics. You just answered that other question. Last question, then, is we've got uncertain times. We've talked the gamut of digital transformation, but what advice would you give to customers given this uncertainty? How should they be best prepared? >> I think it's most important, really, to pay attention to the end consumers, and look at it from a perspective of empathy. What is the end consumer worried about right now? What is difficult for them? What is it that they need from your organization given their current circumstances, and make sure the experience that your corporation provides to them is the right experience. This is, I think, a time for a lot of corporations to build some incredible loyalty with their end customers, with the consumers. This is an amazing opportunity to basically have great engagement and to be able to have people realize that yeah, they were there for me. It was a good experience, it was an easy experience, it was a seamless experience, and I would mostly emphasize on that empathy factor. Make sure that we understand what's going through, what's happening in their lives, what they need, and when they engage with the corporation make sure that we provide a seamless experience to them. >> I think that's a great point. We're not going back to the customer experiences of the 2010s. We're entering a new decade, and Kerim, thanks so much for your insights and coming on theCUBE to share them. >> My pleasure, thanks for having me. >> You're welcome, and thank you for watching, everybody. You're watching theCUBE's coverage of PegaWorld iNspire 2020. Be right back right after this short break. (smooth music)

(upbeat music) >> Narrator: From around the globe, it's theCUBE with digital coverage of PegaWorld Inspire brought to you by Pegasystems. Everybody welcome back to PegaWorld Inspired 2020 this is theCUBE and I'm Dave Vellante, we're here with Adam Field who is the head of innovation and experience at Pegasystems. Adam thanks for coming on, how are you doing man? >> It's my pleasure Dave, I'm doing well how are you? >> Good thank you, I'm excited we're talking innovation, we're talking to innovation hub but to start with your role I love the title, what do you do? Give us the background story. >> Yeah I get that question quite a bit so, I've been with Pega a little over 15 years now and I've held many roles, but currently as head of innovation and experience we have a team I like to call them Creative Misfits, if you will, we sort of bridge that gap between technology and creative, we do research on emerging tech and try to understand how our clients might use it, how it's going to change the future of work, that's the innovation side, on the experience side, we do things like for these PegaWorld events, we match we where art meets tech and we build these experiential things that people come and see at our events, we build all the demos and all the production that you see on the main stage, so we kind of touch a lot of different things around the future of where technology is going. >> Well, I can see, obviously you're innovative, you've got the awesome set up there, the great mic and sound, (laughing) fantastic you look good So and now you've been involved in previous PegaWorld both from behind the scenes and out front speaking obviously this is completely different, how did you prep differently for PegaWorld 2020 virtual versus what you normally do? >> Yeah right so this will be my well 16th I guess PegaWorld and obviously this one stands out as the most different normally we'd be in Boston today, we would have been, you know, working on our stage production and on a floor that's 170,000 square feet big with dozens of booths and hundreds of demos, and obviously this was completely different, but as far as prep goes, I remember the day we learned that early March, this was going virtual and after a few moments of sadness, the team really came together, and I remember the first thing we talked about is we're not going to take a three day event and try to put it all online. Let's--we know people's time is valuable, let's figure out how to take just what's important and get it out to people so that they're inspired to move forward and engage with Pega, so I think that's really been the biggest change in how we've prepped. >> Well, I think that's a great point because obviously theCUBE has been very much involved in these virtual events and. >> Right. >> People send out the note, hey we've made the tough decision to go virtual that's easy decision you really had no choice. >> That's right. >> The tough decision is what do you want to preserve from the physical and understanding that you can't just pop physical into virtual and you got to create a whole new content program, I think Robert Scoble wrote a post on, if you saw it he talks about, hey you better go out and hire Beyonce, oh you can't afford to be for Beyonce? well you better make your content interesting. So to me Adam, that's the tough part, help us understand how you thought that through and what the outcome actually is. >> Yeah, that's right. We didn't have Beyonce, but we did have the Dropkick Murphys, so that was pretty cool and they did a concert for us, so that's been great. But again a lot of people talk about all this free time that they have and I know I have two young kids who are schooling at home now, a job that's busier than it's ever been. I've tried to join a lot of these virtual events and frankly I have gotten overwhelmed, so we took two days and we boiled it down in a two and a half hours, and what we decided to do is we looked at all the areas which we go to market and how people design and deliver their apps, and some of the tech like Pega cloud that they use. And we went to our, I went to my extended team and I said, normally you have 75 booths, we're going to boil that down to 25, let's work together to figure that out. Normally your demos might be 20 minutes when someone walks up, we want to make them seven. But I think the biggest thing that we did, we said what we don't want to lose is that interactivity, and so we had online dozens of Pega experts we could ask questions live, Alan was online doing answering questions live. We made sure that we included live components, our host, Don Sherman was live from his house. We didn't just pre-record everything because then, why would anyone come join when they could just go watch it, 30 minutes later on your YouTube channel? >> See that's innovation to me is having that combination of live. Obviously, you've got to do some stuff a prerecorded, but having a live component adds a dimension, it's challenging, but that's pushing the envelope and I love it. The other thing is, Adam is roles. The roles are different in a virtual event, are they? You're not doing site inspections Like you said, you're not dealing with 170,000 square feet. How did you guys rethink the roles for virtual? >> Yeah so, there were some teams whose world was completely upended. You know, when this all went virtual, the people that do exactly what you were just talking about, dealing with hotels and vendors and things like that, and I got to tell you, one of the most events called PegaWorld Inspire and not to sound too cheesy about it, but one of the things that was really inspiring was to see how everyone stepped up and said, truly, how can I help? And what was really neat about it is we saw different skill sets come out of people that, maybe they hadn't had the opportunity to flex before where they might've worked on one thing that was no longer needed because of the change in the format, and they jumped into become copywriters or liaisons between cause now we have new vendors in this tech world that we didn't have that we turned around in just a matter of weeks. We had people like on my team who normally last year, build this massive physical exhibit containing mirrors and lights, that became video producers, to produce some of these live videos that we did. And one of the things was really impressive, you asked earlier about how did we prep differently and what changed? We looked in the marketplace for different tech and how to bring our CEO and our host and our head of product and everyone together live in split screen, and when you're a big studio you know, and you have that equipment ready to go, that's easy, but when you're just getting average people in their homes and you want to put all that together, we're finding some of the tech in the marketplace just wasn't there. My team built some new video chat technologies that they actually use to produce this in real time, so that was really impressive to me how we turn that around and really innovated not only the things that everyone sees, but all the stuff behind the scenes to. >> See again I think this is what's amazing to me is as I learned more and more about Pega interview Alan earlier. >> Sure. >> Pega is all about being able to adapt to these changes. So a lot of the processes we are using in virtual events, they're unknown. In normally software right through the history of software is okay, here's how the software works. Figure out how to fit your process into it, very rigid. >> That's right. >> Today you know, the last three months with this lockdown in this coronavirus have been completely unknown, and so that's sort of one of the hallmarks of your company, isn't it? >> That's right and we've had the tagline Build For Change for really long time, and I will tell you, I remember in that first meeting again, when we learned this was going virtual and someone stood up and they said, guys we're about to live our tagline. And people really do believe in that, 'cause we go to our clients every single day and say, change is what's going to make you special changes is what's going to make you different, now's your opportunity, seize that change and run with it. And so we said, look, we can't change the world right now, we know we got to go virtual, all we can do is change the type of event that we do, we're not going to do the standard event that we think every one else is going to do, let's do it differently and today was a pretty good example, I think we achieved that. >> I think a couple of things from a challenge standpoint, you mentioned the chat, how do you get people to engage? You had to sort of invent something. >> Yeah. >> And then really think it through for virtual. And I think the other is tech people come to these events, they want to touch the tech. And so you've got you know the innovation hub, it's where people get to play with the technology. You got to take us through how you thought through that and. >> Right. >> What the outcome is. >> Yeah, so that is the toughest part, and I got to tell you, you know all of this being said, I'm looking forward to someday being able to get back and meeting my clients in person, and I'm the type, when I see you on the floor of the innovation hub, I run by a booth and high five you for all the great weeks of hard work, you know? And I love to see people's faces, they see the demos and that's tough not being able to see them smile and get that moment of wow. But what was interesting was it really helped us hone our messages. I think we really realized when I went to everybody and said you don't have 20 minutes, you have seven minutes, here's a template, to follow, to be able to tell your story better, and people started thinking in that mode of storytelling, and what was interesting was lot of people came back to me and said, actually you know what? I can tell that story in a much more crisp way and really show people what they need to see in a in a much faster timeframe. And what it really allowed us to do was find those bits that we thought were most important, find those demos that we think are most important and just, you know bubble those up. One of the things we also did too, we took the opportunity to say you know what, we're going to be online, I watch my kids. My kids are avid gamers whether I like it or not, and they. >> Yeah. >> Watch these Twitch streams, and we thought well, we should be able to do that with even corporate software. So we had these live build sessions where we took some of our developers and I said you're going to be put on the hot seat for 15 minutes on script and we're going to let people just guide and direct you. And they were a little nervous at first, but they went off great, and it was a new format we had never tried before. So if we keep doing these types of different things and we just embrace the moment that we're in I think people will really really come to it and get some value out of it. >> I mean that's awesome, you've got to keep your audience engaged, and so you do lose, you don't have a captive audience, so you lose some time in terms of how much you can you know? how much Kool-Aid injection you can give him. I mean take 20 minutes down to seven minutes. But so you do lose some of that, but what do you gain with virtual? >> Well, I think one of the things that you obviously gain is you can be more widespread, so yeah, you know this event reached tens of thousands of people in dozens of countries. I did an event first week of April, so you can imagine you know, we had two weeks to turn on and I was supposed to be in London and Amsterdam presenting in soccer stadiums. And instead we made that a one hour virtual event and we thought, well, we're just going to get people from the London market and from the Netherlands market, and it turned out, we got people from all over the world to join. So one of the benefits to this is the reach, so we're able to reach a lot more people. I'd say one of the other just things that we realized after tours we're creating a lot of content, we filmed all of this as we were rehearsing, and we're going to put it up online later, so now we have all this great content that anyone can use and go view later, so that was sort of you know, unexpected outcome as well. >> Right yeah, you lose the airline miles, but you gain. (laughing) as I want to going to say you gian the post. >> I don't mind not traveling as well. >> Yeah I here you but, but you do gain that post and I think with physical events, people always at the end of it, it's like, I've never given birth, but I've witnessed that many times. but people feel like, okay, I got to just chill out now for a couple of weeks, and then when they come back, now they're swamped, they've got to catch up. And I think people are realizing, wow, there's a real opportunity maximize the post event here, post nurturing peep streaming out content and continue that engagement, that is a plus of these virtual event. >> Oh, for sure, and you know we started early on deciding how are we going to do, what are we going to do is follow ups you know? That European event that I talked about once again instead of taking all these different markets and trying to replicate it, we did one one hour event. But then because we were in the early days of COVID and some of our clients weren't able to get recorded and speak, we did subsequent webinars in the weeks following them, and the attendance was fantastic. So it allowed us to plan ahead and you know, have a lot of followup activities that we're starting to launch right now as soon as the event ended. >> How do you feel about the outcome for Pega? Do you think it was better, worse, the same or just different? >> I'm going to go with different you know, like I said I get energy I love being up on stage in front of 5,000 people, I love meeting my clients in person, I love the energy of being with my colleagues, but you know it is what it is, We had to do it, and I think what we really embraced it, so I'll say it's just a different way of doing things, but you know I do look forward to the day that I'm able to go meet my clients again and get back on stage and produce some really great things and once again being able to physically see our attendees go oh, when they actually see the software in person, that's the most rewarding thing for me. >> It's going to be interesting as we come out of this I mean, very clearly things are going to be different probably going to have hybrid for some time. Maybe even indefinitely but I'm interested in some of the learnings, some of the things that you think will be permanent, some of the advice. And one of the things I always say to people is don't start with what software are we going to use in there? Your software platform, think about the experience that you want to work backwards from there but what are other advice would you give for given your experiences? >> Right. >> You're so right about that point, I remember interviewing a lot of vendors that we were going to use to bring this online and we were telling them what we wanted to do, and some of them said no one's ever asked about that before we can't do that, so you're a hundred percent right about that. The advice I will say, and the thing I do worry about a little bit is, at first people were a little bit more accepting if maybe the video quality wasn't as good, or you know the content was like any old webinar. As months ago on expectations are going to be higher, people are going to have attended a lot of these things so you're going to have to keep upping the game. And I think the advice I would give is try to take what's great about an in person event and put it online but don't try to replicate the event and put it online. And some of the best things about in person events are just the live nature of it, take the risks, do some live stuff. People will really appreciate that, you'll get a lot of credit for that. The interactivity is what's important about a live event, so as best you can, figure out how to make sure there's some interactivity. Now in the early days I think it's going to be some live Q and A as we move on, it'll be real private rooms with experts that you're able to have one-on-one chats and go through and bounce around and be able to talk to people you know, just like you would accept, between two cameras instead of in person. So I think everyone is months go on. they just going to have to up their game. I think that's great advice, you're absolutely right up your game, up your brand, get a good camera, get good sound, and it's going to just, help your personal brand and your company's brand. Adam. >> We learned what it was like to try to ship microphone and camera equipment around the world (laughing) overnight so we're experts at that, if you you've got any questions. >> Well, I mean what a difference it made, so Adam, thanks so much for coming on theCUBE and sharing your experiences. You guys, have one of the best that we've seen at the Virtual Event Platform so congratulations on that and really appreciate your contribution (mumbles). >> Thanks it's my pleasure, great to talk to you today (mumbles). All right, keep it right there buddy, this is theCUBES coverage of PegaWorld Inspire 2020 the virtual event, will be right back after a short break. (upbeat music)

(upbeat music) >> Producer: From around the globe, it's the CUBE with digital coverage of PegaWorld Inspire. Brought to you by Pegasystems. >> Hello, everybody. This is Dave Volante. Welcome back to our coverage of PegaWorld Inspire 2020. This is the preview show, and you're watching the CUBE. Stephanie lewis is here. She's the Senior Director of Community and developer relations or a programs actually at at Pega. Stephanie, good to see you. >> Thank you so much for having me Dave. I'm very happy to be here today. >> Yeah, so you know, let's get into it. I infer from your role that obviously all about community, which is critical developers are all about community, but talk a little bit more about kind of how you spend your time. >> Sure. So I am really excited about my role. I've been here for a year and a half, and I transitioned from the product world. So I really understand what developers need and how they use the product, and if we had just but developers don't know how to use them that it's kind of pointless. So I am truly passionate about ensuring that every individual understands how to use the product, and feels inspired to use the product and then also gives back to the community and builds a better ecosystem helping everyone around them to build better software. >> So product knowledge obviously crucial in this role. But developers they want access to the tools that they want to be productive. So tell us more about what you're finding that developers need. >> Let's say just in time, type of situation. So I'm going to plug my own agenda here as well, in addition to PegaWorld, but we're launching a brand new >> Great. >> Pega menu, which is where our developers get enabled and we are supporting them just in time. So we have the curated learning paths because picking your journey and your career path is critical, like where do you want to go? What credentials do you want to have? What job do you want to have? That's absolutely important. But when you're on the job, and you have a question, how do I do this? Or when do I use this? That's absolutely just as important, and I want to ensure that everybody can easily do that when they need it. >> So PegaWorld big show we had Alan on recently, we're talking about I mean, I just thought I said to him, you're going to miss that during your keynote, because he's such a great speaker, but you're also involved in the keynote. You're going to be interviewing Kerim, who's the head of products, and you guys going to be digging into that, obviously with your product background, but set that up for us, what should we expect? >> Sure. So there's a couple of different sessions that I want to highlight. One is Kerim is one of the biggest highlights in addition to Alan with the keynotes at the in person PegaWorld and we're going to continue that in the virtual aspect. So he's going to have his own standalone keynote, highlighting the product capabilities that people need to be aware of as they're enhancing their own digital transformation, and right now we're in a disrupted world. So he's going to talk about how our three key things of our products can really help companies not only adjust to the current environment if future proof. So he'll talk about those themes. He'll bring a customer on stage to talk about how they have used those, and then I'll also give a demo of the latest capabilities. That's just the beginning, and then at the end, I will be able to come on and put him on the hot seat. So ask him about the product roadmaps. I'm going to take questions from the community to be like, hey, Kerim, the community's asking about this, what do you think? And then we'll take questions live, that he'll have to answer at live during that session as well. >> And of course, you know, the thing about PegaWorld is it's got a lot of customer content in there. So I assume you're going to have some customers, some clients interacting as well. >> That's true. Yeah. So not only in the keynotes, when we bring customers on to talk about their stories and put the, you know, theoretical products capabilities to life with how they've used those. But then we also have, we've taken the tech pavilion, which is kind of where you go around and you see the different product capabilities. So we will have customers that are part of that as well as part of what are the breakouts where they will be telling their story, and talk about taking digital transformation and turn their business around. >> Love it. Product talk, architecture, roadmap, you know, showing off a little bit of the future. That's fantastic. So talk to me, like I'm a developer. Why should I go to this event? What's in it for me? >> So I think it's always important to understand the trends, right? As a developer, if you just take what someone tells you is a requirement, and you just go code that, then you're not a true engineer, or an innovator, right? It's not, it's in the problems that you're solving. So I think that is something to take to heart and that is something that you'll truly receive by coming to PegaWorld and hearing the end to end story. In addition to that, this tech pavilion that we've turned into the Innovation Hub is more than just looking at recorded demos, you'll be able to participate with product experts live coding and ask them questions. So you'll see them build an application, or build a chat bot or utilize a feature and ask them questions. To witch style, you are asked to participate, and then take that back to your job the next day, and utilize those new capabilities and the innovation that we're able to show you with this new virtual event. >> So Stephen, I got to ask you, you mentioned requirements, Docs, and a lot has changed there, right? I mean, it used to be, you'd have these big tomes and you'd hand down, you know, the edict from the business, talk about how that whole dynamic has changed. >> It has changed quite a bit with the Pega platform and the technology that we have across our products, because it's not just a like you said, it's the edict that you hand down and the developers just implement don't ask the why, and then don't get the opportunity to think about how to better that. So all of this is done now within the technology itself. So nothing is lost, and as you start to iterate on, why are you doing this? How is this good for the customer? What performance improvements? Or what are you trying to automate? And better all those questions are answered and then can be put right in there and allows developers to put their own innovation into the why, and the how, and the what, which I feel like will end up as a better result for the end customer and their end to end experience. >> So maybe this is a sign of progress, would be something to be optimistic about. Because six weeks ago, we did we started with COVID. That's all we talked about. Now we're going to end with COVID. I wanted to ask you about the whole work from home and remote workers. You know, developers are collaborative. They do a lot of whiteboarding. So how have you seen developers sort of responding to this pandemic and what kind of things are they doing to actually maintain that productivity and that collaborative spirit? >> So I've seen a couple of things there. One is utilizing some of the frameworks that we've put out for like the starter of some of the COVID tracking apps, we've put some of those out on our marketplace. So businesses, we've had several businesses use those and go live really quickly to just help respond to the pandemic, and operate and track the safety of their employees, and developers then have taken that in addition to what they need to do to progress their career. So they've used that then they've used our academy to continue their enablement as well as the collaboration. So we've got a great forum, a very active forum, where people are able to post questions and answer them and stay connected in this virtual environment. We've increased webinars, we just launched a virtual hackathon that's focused around doing good. So it's not just about hackathon to prove your skills and win the prizes, but we remind all the folks on how in the world respond to the situation. So we're trying to intertwine all of it because I think I truly believe that every person not only wants to progress their own career, but also give back and do good, and if you combine those two together, that's how you achieve the optimal results. >> Stephanie how about new developers coming into the Pega? you community platform? What's that experience like? Can you update us on that? >> Yeah, I'm glad you asked. Because we just launched some very new like I'm new to Pega, what do I need to do? So we've got the curated courses, which we're going to call missions around those, but we also have a trial. So if you just want to figure out and get your feet where you're not quite sure what this Pega thing is, sign up for the trial, and then we have guided tours. So it shows you what the different capabilities are and really guide you through that experience, and then if you are experienced, you can skip those tours and like, No, I know and I don't. I just want to dive in. But for those new people, we have those curated tours. So you're able to orient yourself and be more comfortable before you start to play around. >> But how functional is that? I mean, is it a lot of the trials are neutered, or you know, can I get the full picture? How does that work? >> Absolutely. I think that's a really good point is that we don't handicap anyone. Like there's no limited functionality. If you want the trial, you want to figure out app studio and have that guided experience, you can do that. If you want to unlock all of it, just go wild and play with all of it. You can do it as limited 30 days. You want to renew it, go ahead. But we don't restrict any of that because we want you to get access to the capability so that you can do your job better and that you learn the true power of the technology. >> Well, we're excited for PegaWorld 2020 it's on June 2 starts at 9 am East Coast time. So just google it and go sign up. This automation economy, it's going to kick in, in a big way already has actually but it's going to accelerate in this post COVID era. Stephanie thanks so much for coming to the CUBE and give us a preview of PegaWorld Inspire 2020. >> Thank you, and I hope to see you there. >> All right, you will, and thanks for watching everybody, and we'll see you at PegaWorld Inspire 2020. This is Dave Volante for the CUBE. We'll see you next time. (upbeat music)

>> Announcer: Live, from Las Vegas, it's theCUBE, covering ServiceNow Knowledge 2018, brought to you by ServiceNow. >> Welcome back to theCUBE's live coverage of ServiceNow Knowledge 18, live from Las Vegas. I'm your host, Rebecca Knight, along with my co-host, Dave Vellante. We're joined by Michael Hubbard, who is the VP Inspire program at ServiceNow. Thanks so much for coming on theCUBE. >> Happy to be back here, and for another year of this session. >> Always a pleasure to have you on. So, I want you to just refresh for our viewers, what the Inspire program is, who are you, what do you do? >> Perfect. So, as the name connotates, our job is to inspire the future of work. So as you are all learning about ServiceNow's new vision and purpose, to really make the world of work work better for people. We're finding that subset of 1% of folks that have a bold idea, a vision and a passion, for massive digital transformation, and a leader with both the power and the vision and span of control to say: if you'll partner with me, let's go get something done, in a 90-day sort of sprint, that has measurable business outcomes, mapped to a tactical approach, mapped to an inspirational sort of experience where digitization, digital transformation, it becomes real, because by the end of this process, you've got an example of it on your phone, in your environment, exciting your stakeholders and your employees. >> I wonder if we could talk about the past of work. There was a major, y'know, swing in the last 10-15 years of remote workers, the world flattening, and the emphasis was on giving people the tools, whether it was video, or good conferencing calling, etc, so that they could collaborate. And then you kind of saw the pendulum swing, there were a couple of companies, very high profile, certainly Yahoo, IBM, where they try to create the bee-hive effect, to really foster more collaboration. What are your thoughts on that pendulum swing, y'know, centralization, de-centralization, and what does the future of work look like, to your customers? >> So the pleasure of my job is that I live in this conversation, all week, every week, with some of the most transformative business and IT leaders in the global 2000. Your examples, Dave, they hit upon sort of tools that tried to catalyze a different way of working. We gave somebody chat, or we gave somebody the ability to work from home because they had internet connected to their house, and they had a phone line, and what else do you need, maybe a webcam. But these tools didn't fundamentally change the flow of work through the enterprise, right, and so I think the future of work, in terms of comparing it to the attempts of the past, it's a more fundamental shift that says, people process technology, governance, culture, purpose, all have to evolve, and I think there's finally enough hunger to do the hard work, not of throwing a new tool at an employee, or throwing a new policy at a user group, but changing all those other elements, those systemic elements, because overall productivity per employee has not changed. Overall satisfaction with your experience, and the pleasure of being at work, is not getting better fast enough, and you compare it to what we've enjoyed as consumers, in our personal life, and the contrast has gotten so stark that there's finally that passion among business leaders to say: enough's enough, it's time to stop buying point solutions, and start looking at the holistic change that's going to improve revenue per employee, improve my retention rates of my top talent, attract millennial and post-millennial talent, and are looking for partners that will take that holistic view of a platform, that'll work with those tools, but will knit it all together for a big outcome. >> So it sounds great, can you tell us, give us some examples of some success stories? >> Absolutely, so we work, we're very selective, we're an investment in some of our most ambitious customers, we work with about 1% of those. So, for example, Accenture has been a great partner for us, and go to market-serving customers, but I'm speaking about their CIO organization, folks like Tom Breezy and Andrew Wilson, who lead experience transformation, lead employee centricity, and lead the IT work, working with them on making leave of absence easier, because women in the workforce, and getting them back into the workforce after a pregnancy or a troubled pregnancy, that immediately yields benefits to their most tangible source of revenue, which is billable credible resources to serve their clients. So if we can help them with the generational women issues, that will really help their customers, their investors, and their top-line. So that's the type of work we do with Accenture, Virgin Trains is another great example. Virgin Trains were doing work, of course in good old ITSM, good old make IT better, but outside of IT, how can we make your experience on the platform better, in terms of empowering the people for Virgin Trains working the platform, working the train car, to have the right answer for you when you have a problem, to empower them with better knowledge, better workflow, so that they're able to ask the enterprise for help, and then action the answer for you as the employee. Allianz Life is another example, huge insurance company, and they're facing what many financial services firms are facing, which is that balance between agile business and the need for governance and compliance. So we worked with Steve, their chief compliance officer, to change the way that they manage the underwriting and approval of new policies, so it both allows them to make the business move faster and reduce the costs to underwrite and manage and comply to federal regulations. Doesn't have that much to do with IT, but the foundation of a platform that changes how work flows through enterprise across different stakeholders, and across many tools, and Dave, as you said, "mediums," that's what it's all about. >> So many companies that we talk to really dance around the automation issue, and you heard John Donahoe this morning saying look, we're all about automating workflows, so we have to take this head on. What are the conversations like amongst the Inspire customers, with regards to automation, machines replacing humans, etc, could we explore that a little bit? >> Yes, so as you'll hear more and more from ServiceNow, and as we're seeing within our Inspire customer base, there's two sort of threads that we tend to pull on. One thread is we try to find those opportunities for technology and automation to be in service of people, versus the inverse of suddenly now we're all just supporting the tech, and we're trying to just eke out a little piece of value to still add as people inside of a tech revolution, we're turning that around, and we think we can get the noise out the way of the people, by having the technology to serve them, workflow's a great example, alert's a great example, machine learning to solve the easy, repeatable problems is a great example, and that will free up the humans to do the things that make us human, that are more evolved, that are more advanced, that require empathy, etc. So that's one thread we pull on a lot within Inspire, is finding those human moments, cause moments really matter, and then empowering and transforming the ability for that person to serve their fellow employees or their customers. The second thread we pull on is we really push back on the idea, whether it's automation or any other sort technology buzz word trend, push back on the idea of incremental improvement. So if you have a process that's five days, we're not going to talk about how we can get it to four and a half, we're going to talk about why we can't get it to zero, And for regulatory reasons, that human element of needing empathy and interaction and building rapport, there might be reasons it creeps back up to a day, but let's start with that zero-based budgeting approach that says "five days, start with what if we "tried to get it to zero?" And that changes the frame of the conversation on automation from being about maybe attacking a certain percentage of people or time and trying to take a little cost out, to resetting the purpose of how that process supports an outcome in an enterprise. >> I want to ask you about that tension between the human-centered, the empathetic approach, versus the business, the business processes, the business that needs to get done. What are some of the challenges that your customers have faced, that you sort of see as the biggest pain points to implementing some of the changes that you want to see changed? >> So the hardest the thing to create for us, as an advisory team with the customer, is urgency. So what we have to find first is urgency, that today is not good enough. Change is a mandate, it's a requirement, there's no if, there's just a how, right, and that's why we focus on just 1%, because not everyone's ready for that type of a commitment to change. Once you have the urgency, you have to have vision, so we work with a lot of great customers, but we will never know your business the way you do, we'll never know your customers the way you do, so you have to bring your half of that vision. We'll spark ideas about what other people are doing and what's possible, and you've got to bring that back to a relevant outcome for your business. And different companies have different cultures, with different purpose statements, and some will resonate with taking out costs, some will resonate with empowering their employees, some will be all about, let's say in the healthcare space, we've done work with VITAS hospice care. If you think about hospice, of course it's not about just the nurse, of course it's not about just the patient, it's actually about coordinating the family, because it's the family that often needs the most support and interaction in that process, and so you really have to understand, you can push through the tension if you get to a meaningful purpose statement around what makes that company's existence necessary, and why people choose to work there, and that's really the start of every Inspire engagement, is getting that alignment. >> Michael, one of the drivers of digital transformation is fear, fear of missing out, "FOMA", but also fear of getting disrupted. Ginni Rometty at a conference, at the Think conference recently, used the term "incumbent disruptors." I would think that resonates with a lot of your customers, we want to be the disruptors, not get disrupted, some defense, yes, but we also want to go on offense. What are your thoughts on your customers' ability to be incumbent disruptors, and what role does ServiceNow play in that? >> Great question, and two thoughts to the answer. One is: ServiceNow lives in that intersection too, because we're getting big enough now that we start to worry about the upstarts, perhaps, in our own market space, as we look at customers who have been with us for years, have rolled us out broadly, suddenly we're the incumbent. So we are, in our own world, are thinking about making sure we are a disruptive incumbent, and continue to drive that value for our customers, but to take it back to our customers instead of ourselves. The key there is that tension, to use the word you used earlier, of those- let's take FinTech in financial services. FinTech startups, they're all trying to race to create a market disruption, create a wedge in a marketplace, of a consistent use case with a group of consistent business problems they're solving, while all the incumbents have all the capital, access to markets, access to cultures, brand credibility in the world, and they just don't know if they're going to have enough time to move their giant battleship before this little swift boat sweeps around them and takes a flanking position. So it's a very real challenge, and where we tend to focus is with those big companies, as a catalyst, bringing our whatever's in the water of Silicon Valley out to New York, or to London, or wherever, and helping them get a little of that swift boat style into what is really a big aircraft carrier group that they're trying to turn. >> Financial services is a really interesting case study, because it really, that industry has not yet been disrupted in a big way, even though like you said, there's a lot of FinTech swift boats trying to go after 'em. Do you think traditional incumbent financial services firms will lose control of payment systems, or do you think they will respond? >> Well we have an interesting member of our company, our CEO who, of course, has some history with PayPal, so that'd be great question for Mr Donahoe. I think it's too early to tell, but I also don't think it'll be a binary answer. What we're seeing when we work with some of these large companies is a very different fear or challenge around disruption in emerging markets versus established markets. So in established markets, they probably are going to get the time to reinvent themselves, because of the amount of momentum they have with customers, the amount of stickiness they have with customers. I mean the simplest truth that I've found in whether you win or lose a disruption battle with a customer is how hard it is for that customer to give up their relationship with you. It's the same in divorce, it's the same in changing airlines it's the same in changing credit cards. You've got all your points in one place. So in these established markets I think they're going to have the time to really succeed, but in emerging markets, that's where the battleground is really sitting. >> Yeah and financial service firms have always done a pretty good job of getting on to that next wave. >> We'll have to ask John Donahoe. >> We will, we will, and he's coming up soon, so... But thank you so much for coming on theCUBE again, it's always a pleasure to talk to you Michael. >> Yeah, fantastic to see you both, and it's just exciting to see this show continue to grow, and to have new customers, not just CIOs, but chief people officers, heads of talent, joining the conversation around the future of work. >> Dave: Awesome, thanks Michael! >> Thank you. >> Well thanks to you for joining our conversation. >> Michael: You bet. >> I'm Rebecca Knight, for Dave Vellante, we will have more from ServiceNow Knowledge 18, coming up just after this. (light techno music)

>> From theCUBE Studios in Palo Alto in Boston, bringing you data driven insights from theCUBE and ETR. This is Breaking Analysis with Dave Vellante. >> After a two-year epic run in tech, 2022 has been an epically bad year. Through yesterday, The NASDAQ composite is down 30%. The S$P 500 is off 21%. And the Dow Jones Industrial average 16% down. And the poor holders at Bitcoin have had to endure a nearly 60% decline year to date. But judging by the attendance and enthusiasm, in major in-person tech events this spring. You'd never know that tech was in the tank. Moreover, walking around the streets of Las Vegas, where most tech conferences are held these days. One can't help but notice that the good folks of Main Street, don't seem the least bit concerned that the economy is headed for a recession. Hello, and welcome to this weeks Wiki Bond Cube Insights powered by ETR. In this Breaking Analysis we'll share our main takeaways from the first half of 2022. And talk about the outlook for tech going forward, and why despite some pretty concerning headwinds we remain sanguine about tech generally, but especially enterprise tech. Look, here's the bumper sticker on why many folks are really bearish at the moment. Of course, inflation is high, other than last year, the previous inflation high this century was in July of 2008, it was 5.6%. Inflation has proven to be very, very hard to tame. You got gas at $7 dollars a gallon. Energy prices they're not going to suddenly drop. Interest rates are climbing, which will eventually damage housing. Going to have that ripple effect, no doubt. We're seeing layoffs at companies like Tesla and the crypto names are also trimming staff. Workers, however are still in short supply. So wages are going up. Companies in retail are really struggling with the right inventory, and they can't even accurately guide on their earnings. We've seen a version of this movie before. Now, as it pertains to tech, Crawford Del Prete, who's the CEO of IDC explained this on theCUBE this very week. And I thought he did a really good job. He said the following, >> Matt, you have a great statistic that 80% of companies used COVID as their point to pivot into digital transformation. And to invest in a different way. And so what we saw now is that tech is now where I think companies need to focus. They need to invest in tech. They need to make people more productive with tech and it played out in the numbers. Now so this year what's fascinating is we're looking at two vastly different markets. We got gasoline at $7 a gallon. We've got that affecting food prices. Interesting fun fact recently it now costs over $1,000 to fill an 18 wheeler. All right, based on, I mean, this just kind of can't continue. So you think about it. >> Don't put the boat in the water. >> Yeah, yeah, yeah. Good luck if ya, yeah exactly. So a family has kind of this bag of money, and that bag of money goes up by maybe three, 4% every year, depending upon earnings. So that is sort of sloshing around. So if food and fuel and rent is taking up more, gadgets and consumer tech are not, you're going to use that iPhone a little longer. You're going to use that Android phone a little longer. You're going to use that TV a little longer. So consumer tech is getting crushed, really it's very, very, and you saw it immediately in ad spending. You've seen it in Meta, you've seen it in Facebook. Consumer tech is doing very, very, it is tough. Enterprise tech, we haven't been in the office for two and a half years. We haven't upgraded whether that be campus wifi, whether that be servers, whether that be commercial PCs as much as we would have. So enterprise tech, we're seeing double digit order rates. We're seeing strong, strong demand. We have combined that with a component shortage, and you're seeing some enterprise companies with a quarter of backlog, I mean that's really unheard of. >> And higher prices, which also profit. >> And therefore that drives up the prices. >> And this is a theme that we've heard this year at major tech events, they've really come roaring back. Last year, theCUBE had a huge presence at AWS Reinvent. The first Reinvent since 2019, it was really well attended. Now this was before the effects of the omicron variant, before they were really well understood. And in the first quarter of 2022, things were pretty quiet as far as tech events go But theCUBE'a been really busy this spring and early into the summer. We did 12 physical events as we're showing here in the slide. Coupa, did Women in Data Science at Stanford, Coupa Inspire was in Las Vegas. Now these are both smaller events, but they were well attended and beat expectations. San Francisco Summit, the AWS San Francisco Summit was a bit off, frankly 'cause of the COVID concerns. They were on the rise, then we hit Dell Tech World which was packed, it had probably around 7,000 attendees. Now Dockercon was virtual, but we decided to include it here because it was a huge global event with watch parties and many, many tens of thousands of people attending. Now the Red Hat Summit was really interesting. The choice that Red Hat made this year. It was purposefully scaled down and turned into a smaller VIP event in Boston at the Western, a couple thousand people only. It was very intimate with a much larger virtual presence. VeeamON was very well attended, not as large as previous VeeamON events, but again beat expectations. KubeCon and Cloud Native Con was really successful in Spain, Valencia, Spain. PagerDuty Summit was again a smaller intimate event in San Francisco. And then MongoDB World was at the new Javits Center and really well attended over the three day period. There were lots of developers there, lots of business people, lots of ecosystem partners. And then the Snowflake summit in Las Vegas, it was the most vibrant from the standpoint of the ecosystem with nearly 10,000 attendees. And I'll come back to that in a moment. Amazon re:Mars is the Amazon AI robotic event, it's smaller but very, very cool, a lot of innovation. And just last week we were at HPE Discover. They had around 8,000 people attending which was really good. Now I've been to over a dozen HPE or HPE Discover events, within Europe and the United States over the past decade. And this was by far the most vibrant, lot of action. HPE had a little spring in its step because the company's much more focused now but people was really well attended and people were excited to be there, not only to be back at physical events, but also to hear about some of the new innovations that are coming and HPE has a long way to go in terms of building out that ecosystem, but it's starting to form. So we saw that last week. So tech events are back, but they are smaller. And of course now a virtual overlay, they're hybrid. And just to give you some context, theCUBE did, as I said 12 physical events in the first half of 2022. Just to compare that in 2019, through June of that year we had done 35 physical events. Yeah, 35. And what's perhaps more interesting is we had our largest first half ever in our 12 year history because we're doing so much hybrid and virtual to compliment the physical. So that's the new format is CUBE plus digital or sometimes just digital but that's really what's happening in our business. So I think it's a reflection of what's happening in the broader tech community. So everyone's still trying to figure that out but it's clear that events are back and there's no replacing face to face. Or as I like to say, belly to belly, because deals are done at physical events. All these events we've been to, the sales people are so excited. They're saying we're closing business. Pipelines coming out of these events are much stronger, than they are out of the virtual events but the post virtual event continues to deliver that long tail effect. So that's not going to go away. The bottom line is hybrid is the new model. Okay let's look at some of the big themes that we've taken away from the first half of 2022. Now of course, this is all happening under the umbrella of digital transformation. I'm not going to talk about that too much, you've had plenty of DX Kool-Aid injected into your veins over the last 27 months. But one of the first observations I'll share is that the so-called big data ecosystem that was forming during the hoop and around, the hadoop infrastructure days and years. then remember it dispersed, right when the cloud came in and kind of you know, not wiped out but definitely dampened the hadoop enthusiasm for on-prem, the ecosystem dispersed, but now it's reforming. There are large pockets that are obviously seen in the various clouds. And we definitely see a ecosystem forming around MongoDB and the open source community gathering in the data bricks ecosystem. But the most notable momentum is within the Snowflake ecosystem. Snowflake is moving fast to win the day in the data ecosystem. They're providing a single platform that's bringing different data types together. Live data from systems of record, systems of engagement together with so-called systems of insight. These are converging and while others notably, Oracle are architecting for this new reality, Snowflake is leading with the ecosystem momentum and a new stack is emerging that comprises cloud infrastructure at the bottom layer. Data PaaS layer for app dev and is enabling an ecosystem of partners to build data products and data services that can be monetized. That's the key, that's the top of the stack. So let's dig into that further in a moment but you're seeing machine intelligence and data being driven into applications and the data and application stacks they're coming together to support the acceleration of physical into digital. It's happening right before our eyes in every industry. We're also seeing the evolution of cloud. It started with the SaaS-ification of the enterprise where organizations realized that they didn't have to run their own software on-prem and it made sense to move to SaaS for CRM or HR, certainly email and collaboration and certain parts of ERP and early IS was really about getting out of the data center infrastructure management business called that cloud 1.0, and then 2.0 was really about changing the operating model. And now we're seeing that operating model spill into on-prem workloads finally. We're talking about here about initiatives like HPE's Green Lake, which we heard a lot about last week at Discover and Dell's Apex, which we heard about in May, in Las Vegas. John Furrier had a really interesting observation that basically this is HPE's and Dell's version of outposts. And I found that interesting because outpost was kind of a wake up call in 2018 and a shot across the bow at the legacy enterprise infrastructure players. And they initially responded with these flexible financial schemes, but finally we're seeing real platforms emerge. Again, we saw this at Discover and at Dell Tech World, early implementations of the cloud operating model on-prem. I mean, honestly, you're seeing things like consoles and billing, similar to AWS circa 2014, but players like Dell and HPE they have a distinct advantage with respect to their customer bases, their service organizations, their very large portfolios, especially in the case of Dell and the fact that they have more mature stacks and knowhow to run mission critical enterprise applications on-prem. So John's comment was quite interesting that these firms are basically building their own version of outposts. Outposts obviously came into their wheelhouse and now they've finally responded. And this is setting up cloud 3.0 or Supercloud, as we like to call it, an abstraction layer, that sits above the clouds that serves as a unifying experience across a continuum of on-prem across clouds, whether it's AWS, Azure, or Google. And out to both the near and far edge, near edge being a Lowes or a Home Depot, but far edge could be space. And that edge again is fragmented. You've got the examples like the retail stores at the near edge. Outer space maybe is the far edge and IOT devices is perhaps the tiny edge. No one really knows how the tiny edge is going to play out but it's pretty clear that it's not going to comprise traditional X86 systems with a cool name tossed out to the edge. Rather, it's likely going to require a new low cost, low power, high performance architecture, most likely RM based that will enable things like realtime AI inferencing at that edge. Now we've talked about this a lot on Breaking Analysis, so I'm not going to double click on it. But suffice to say that it's very possible that new innovations are going to emerge from the tiny edge that could really disrupt the enterprise in terms of price performance. Okay, two other quick observations. One is that data protection is becoming a much closer cohort to the security stack where data immutability and air gaps and fast recovery are increasingly becoming a fundamental component of the security strategy to combat ransomware and recover from other potential hacks or disasters. And I got to say from our observation, Veeam is leading the pack here. It's now claiming the number one revenue spot in a statistical dead heat with the Dell's data protection business. That's according to Veeam, according to IDC. And so that space continues to be of interest. And finally, Broadcom's acquisition of Dell. It's going to have ripple effects throughout the enterprise technology business. And there of course, there are a lot of questions that remain, but the one other thing that John Furrier and I were discussing last night John looked at me and said, "Dave imagine if VMware runs better on Broadcom components and OEMs that use Broadcom run VMware better, maybe Broadcom doesn't even have to raise prices on on VMware licenses. Maybe they'll just raise prices on the OEMs and let them raise prices to the end customer." Interesting thought, I think because Broadcom is so P&L focused that it's probably not going to be the prevailing model but we'll see what happens to some of the strategic projects rather like Monterey and Capitola and Thunder. We've talked a lot about project Monterey, the others we'll see if they can make the cut. That's one of the big concerns because it's how OEMs like the ones that are building their versions of outposts are going to compete with the cloud vendors, namely AWS in the future. I want to come back to the comment on the data stack for a moment that we were talking about earlier, we talked about how the big data ecosystem that was once coalescing around hadoop dispersed. Well, the data value chain is reforming and we think it looks something like this picture, where cloud infrastructure lives at the bottom. We've said many times the cloud is expanding and evolving. And if companies like Dell and HPE can truly build a super cloud infrastructure experience then they will be in a position to capture more of the data value. If not, then it's going to go to the cloud players. And there's a live data layer that is increasingly being converged into platforms that not only simplify the movement in ELTing of data but also allow organizations to compress the time to value. Now there's a layer above that, we sometimes call it the super PaaS layer if you will, that must comprise open source tooling, partners are going to write applications and leverage platform APIs and build data products and services that can be monetized at the top of the stack. So when you observe the battle for the data future it's unlikely that any one company is going to be able to do this all on their own, which is why I often joke that the 2020s version of a sweaty Steve Bomber running around the stage, screaming, developers, developers developers, and getting the whole audience into it is now about ecosystem ecosystem ecosystem. Because when you need to fill gaps and accelerate features and provide optionality a list of capabilities on the left hand side of this chart, that's going to come from a variety of different companies and places, we're talking about catalogs and AI tools and data science capabilities, data quality, governance tools and it should be of no surprise to followers of Breaking Analysis that on the right hand side of this chart we're including the four principles of data mesh, which of course were popularized by Zhamak Dehghani. So decentralized data ownership, data as products, self-serve platform and automated or computational governance. Now whether this vision becomes a reality via a proprietary platform like Snowflake or somehow is replicated by an open source remains to be seen but history generally shows that a defacto standard for more complex problems like this is often going to emerge prior to an open source alternative. And that would be where I would place my bets. Although even that proprietary platform has to include open source optionality. But it's not a winner take all market. It's plenty of room for multiple players and ecosystem innovators, but winner will definitely take more in my opinion. Okay, let's close with some ETR data that looks at some of those major platform plays who talk a lot about digital transformation and world changing impactful missions. And they have the resources really to compete. This is an XY graphic. It's a view that we often show, it's got net score on the vertical access. That's a measure of spending momentum, and overlap or presence in the ETR survey. That red, that's the horizontal access. The red dotted line at 40% indicates that the platform is among the highest in terms of spending velocity. Which is why I always point out how impressive that makes AWS and Azure because not only are they large on the horizontal axis, the spending momentum on those two platforms rivals even that of Snowflake which continues to lead all on the vertical access. Now, while Google has momentum, given its goals and resources, it's well behind the two leaders. We've added Service Now and Salesforce, two platform names that have become the next great software companies. Joining likes of Oracle, which we show here and SAP not shown along with IBM, you can see them on this chart. We've also plotted MongoDB, which we think has real momentum as a company generally but also with Atlas, it's managed cloud database as a service specifically and Red Hat with trying to become the standard for app dev in Kubernetes environments, which is the hottest trend right now in application development and application modernization. Everybody's doing something with Kubernetes and of course, Red Hat with OpenShift wants to make that a better experience than do it yourself. The DYI brings a lot more complexity. And finally, we've got HPE and Dell both of which we've talked about pretty extensively here and VMware and Cisco. Now Cisco is executing on its portfolio strategy. It's got a lot of diverse components to its company. And it's coming at the cloud of course from a networking and security perspective. And that's their position of strength. And VMware is a staple of the enterprise. Yes, there's some uncertainty with regards to the Broadcom acquisition, but one thing is clear vSphere isn't going anywhere. It's entrenched and will continue to run lots of IT for years to come because it's the best platform on the planet. Now, of course, these are just some of the players in the mix. We expect that numerous non-traditional technology companies this is important to emerge as new cloud players. We've put a lot of emphasis on the data ecosystem because to us that's really going to be the main spring of digital, i.e., a digital company is a data company and that means an ecosystem of data partners that can advance outcomes like better healthcare, faster drug discovery, less fraud, cleaner energy, autonomous vehicles that are safer, smarter, more efficient grids and factories, better government and virtually endless litany of societal improvements that can be addressed. And these companies will be building innovations on top of cloud platforms creating their own super clouds, if you will. And they'll come from non-traditional places, industries, finance that take their data, their software, their tooling bring them to their customers and run them on various clouds. Okay, that's it for today. Thanks to Alex Myerson, who is on production and does the podcast for Breaking Analysis, Kristin Martin and Cheryl Knight, they help get the word out. And Rob Hoofe is our editor and chief over at Silicon Angle who helps edit our posts. Remember all these episodes are available as podcasts wherever you listen. All you got to do is search Breaking Analysis podcast. I publish each week on wikibon.com and siliconangle.com. You can email me directly at david.vellante@siliconangle.com or DM me at dvellante, or comment on my LinkedIn posts. And please do check out etr.ai for the best survey data in the enterprise tech business. This is Dave Vellante for theCUBE's Insights powered by ETR. Thanks for watching be well. And we'll see you next time on Breaking Analysis. (upbeat music)

(upbeat music) >> Welcome back to theCUBE everyone Lisa Martin here. On the ground in Las Vegas at COUPA INSPIRE 2022. This is our second day of coverage here. There's been about 2,400 to 2,500 folks at the event. This year people are ready to come back. I've been happy to talk with lots Coupa folks, their partners, their customers and I've got both a customer and a partner here with me. Heidi Banks joins us, the Senior director of Global Procurement at Jabil. Heidi it's great to have you on the program. >> Thank you for having me give. >> Give the audience an overview of Jabil and what you guys do. >> So Jabil is a $30 billion manufacturing solutions partner that provides contract manufacturing services for 450 of the world's largest and most premier brands around the globe. Most people don't know our name but we're the wonderful face behind the name. >> Well you guys had, I was looking at some stats, over 260,000 employees across 100 locations. Very customer centric you guys are, as is Coupa, this good obviously synergy there but you had some objectives from a global procurement perspective. What were those? What were some of the challenges that you wanted to solve? >> So about seven years ago, Jabil went on a journey to identify what challenges we had out in the indirect procurement space. Being such a large global company, we had no idea what we were spending on indirect at the of time. After a little bit of digging, we found out that we had over 2 billion in spend that was untapped from a category management perspective. And so we knew that we needed to grow as a company and PaaS technology as a foundation, as our goal and our mission in the company is to be the most technologically advanced manufacturer solutions partner for our customers. >> Was there any sort of one thing or a compelling event seven years ago that caused you guys to go, "We need to be really getting our hands around this indirect spend?" >> So we started off by bringing in category managers and they were doing amazing job delivering savings in our contracts, but we had no way to deliver that out to the company. And the company being so big in so many different jurisdictions in countries around the world, you could negotiate the best contract in the world, but if you couldn't communicate it out to your users then it was a challenge to really capture that savings and make sure we were delivering bottom line savings to the company. >> And you guys are, we're talking about three different SAP ERP systems so a lot of technology in the environment. What were some of the core technology requirements that Jabil had when it came looking for a business plan management solution? >> Yeah, so we were looking for something that was very user friendly. Of course, Coupa takes that box very well. Also something that could drive governance and policy controls again challenging being such a global organization and making sure that things were going according to our policy into our global category managers to be sourced and negotiated for the company. We looked for one that was end to end from a business spend management platform perspective. We wanted something that was integrated and could cover three ERP systems from one pane of glass across the company. So we could get great analytics without having to search in so many different places. >> That is so key. I was talking with Rob, I was talking with Raja and they were all talking about how those silos still exist and how they're helping organizations like Jabil break those down and give them that single pane of glass, as you mentioned, to be able to see, to get that visibility into indirect spend, for example. Talk to me about the solutions that you implemented from Coupa. >> So we started off with Coupa's procure to pay system. Really our focus was to get off of our old system as quickly as we could and get everyone managing on the same policy controls approval flows. We then also had analytics, so we had Coupa AIC and brought in analytics and in the last year and a half I've also deployed strategic and tactical sourcing through Coupa as well, and spend guard from a audit control and compliance perspective. >> So then that the phrase "sweet synergy" that actually probably means a lot to you Coupa was talking about that during the keynote this morning. Your Jabil is living that sweet synergy kind of experience through Coupa >> That's right. As we source in Coupa and we can see, are there different behaviors that we need to look into maybe suppliers that are bidding at the last minute and winning or less than that desirable number of suppliers coming in or duplicate invoices and being able to really look through that and see spend patterns that we would never otherwise uncover is highly important to us from a compliance standpoint, we've gotten a great value out of that solution. >> And in terms of value, one of the things I know that was important to you when you were looking for the right technology partner, was you wanted to involve other folks within the organization across IT, other lines of business. Talk to me about how important that was to bring in that cross-functional team to help make the right decision. >> Yeah, that was one of the most critical things that we did. We needed to make sure, especially being an SAP shop right, we needed to make sure that we were standing back and really being impartial in our decision and driving a non-biased decision in that RFP process. And so we got our executives together, talked to them about the value drivers and the ROI that we could do if we had all of the right support from the right departments, so that we could avoid resistance as we tried to deploy in such a rapid way. So we brought IT, legal, users together, procurement and in advance did a balanced scorecard approach to say these were the important factors that we had whether it was IT infrastructure, whether it was capabilities to make sure that when we came out of that decision and we picked a solution, we could all look at each other and have a handshake and say it was the right decision for us as a company, and so no departments had push back at that point because of that approach that we took. >> An objective approach that you took. >> That's right. >> Let's talk about some of the outcomes look at, actually let's not, let's talk about your deployment first, 'cause you guys started with probably your most challenging sites whereas other folks might go. Let's start with the low hanging fruit and kind of work our way up. Jabil said, "Nope, we're going to flip the script on that." >> That's right. So we, we went with what we call an east to west strategy. We are heavily concentrated in our Asia markets and so we were also wanted to deliver our ROI as quickly as possible and get our spend into the system as quickly as possible. So we we went live with 12 sites, 11 mega sites in China and our corporate headquarters in St. Petersburg in order to get that spend in as quickly as possible and get our ROI delivered. So we started in China and the US then in our second phase deployed the rest of Asia and then the US and North America and then over to Europe. So we went regional from a time zone perspective but also just I say, go bold. I hear a lot of people that start small and then grow but if you want to deliver that ROI and get your money out of that system as soon as possible go big or go home. >> I like that go big, go home. It's like Mick Ebeling was talking about this morning from not impossible labs commit and then figure it out. >> That's right. >> That's right. >> You know what? That's actually brilliant advice because it's probably the opposite that a lot of us want to be we want to be able to figure this out and then go, okay we can do that. And he said no >> Yeah >> To the opposite. >> To the opposite >> Did you have to get buy-in from those cross-functional folks to say we want to start with our most challenging sites first, was that a team decision? >> That was a decision that we did just basically to get that ROI delivered. And we also had a really strong team that still partners with our Coupa admins today that were really invested in getting onto a solution where they can automate and drive control and compliance. And so not only do we involve the team in the solution selection, but also in the global design. So we brought different cross-functional departments together into one location together, we made all of our decisions on how we were going to configure Coupa So that way again all of our divisions and departments had buy-in to how we were going to move forward and then we went from there. >> Well then, and in that case everybody feels like they have a stake >> That's right >> In the issue they have a vested interest >> That's right. >> Which is critical for these types of large projects to be successful. >> That's right. So they were involved in the RFP process so they knew why we were doing it and they were then involved and the design and how we were going to set it up so that they knew that they had a vested interest in how it was going to perform in the end. And then of course there were things that we had to tweak. So we needed to have a design committee that we could come back to and make changes as we needed to, make changes throughout the projects. You don't always get every single decision right. The first time, but you need to be nimble and make changes first and get consensus across the company. >> Right. Talk to me about some of the outcomes I know I've seen a lot of stats in your case study and I always love those numbers always jump out at me. Talk to me about some of those metrics based business outcomes that Jabil is achieving so far. >> Yeah. So in the last four years we've had a heavy focus on catalog. So actually in the last few months, we've gone from 20 to 30% by using Coupa analytics and drilling really into the details and putting really great category strategies in order to drive more catalog penetration. We've got great stats around electronic invoicing especially in certain countries where people think it's not possible. >> Right. >> There's a great change management story we have for what we've achieved in our Asian markets around electronic invoicing and from an ROI perspective, we were able to deliver 3X our ROI by the end of year two which we projected would take three years to do and 7X by year four. So we had a very conservative and achievable ROI that got the buy-in and then we were able to accelerate it by being aggressive, but also with a great solution it was easy to then get that done. >> Can you talk a little bit about the change management that you were able to achieve in the Asian market change management is the difficult thing to do. People are resistant to change, one of the things we've learned in the last two years is sometimes the change comes in there's nothing you can do about it but how did you affect that change management within that culture in the Asian market? >> Yeah. So with the executive buy-in that we had because they knew that there was high potential for us to deliver an ROI. We had executive sponsorship that helped us get through some of those barriers. So if we decided not to bring certain users into the system, for example and there was pushback that they needed to have access we had executive messaging as to why from a policy governance and control standpoint we couldn't break that. So we used our executives' voice and their support to do that. But also we brought in a great system that was user are friendly and so we didn't get a lot of resistance in, in that sense. So they actually embraced the change compared to the solution we had in place before. So by making the right selection from a user centric company we also didn't get as much resistance there as well. >> That's nice the path of least resistance is good especially if you're not exactly sure if you're going to find it, but verifying that and getting that ROI is is probably a big, a big win. Talk to me a little bit about you guys liked Coupa so much you had such, you mentioned 3X ROI within, you said the first year? >> With after year two >> After year two >> Yeah. >> 3X ROI, you liked it so much you decided to become a Coupa partner. Talk to me about that. What does that mean? What are you guys doing as partner? >> Yeah, so this is a super exiting thing for us to adventure into. So we pride ourselves on our theme as built for practitioners by practitioners. We've run the system every single day. We've been running it for years. So my team members are deep in the knowledge and capabilities of Coupa it's functionality, how to manage it every day, how to get the most you out of it and we want to share that knowledge with other Coupa customers to get the most value out of their system as well. So whether that's optimization and helping them get more out of their system or whether it's roadmap or assessments in our perspective, or even doing net new implementations we're excited to venture into that area of services with Coupa as a partner. >> Or have you guys started doing that yet? >> Today is our first Coupa inspire as a partner, which is exciting. And we literally just got started in the last few months. So we are working on getting our first customer here hopefully very shortly and have had a lot of of really great conversations with customers at the show so far. >> That's one of the great things that Coupa took the risk to bring us all together because there's they have a phenomenal community of which you guys have been a part now you said I believe about seven years, but there's nothing that replaces the connections that you make in the community that is grown from doing events like this. I imagine that you've gotten to talk with a lot of prospect >> Yes. >> Prospective customers who, what, how did you do this? This seems like an impossible feat that you've gotten to share with them. This is doable, here's how we did it. >> That's right. So fortunately I've been at previous inspires as well. So I've gotten to talk to people that I haven't seen in a couple of years, which is always exciting. I've been able to talk to customers that I've done, referrals for with Coupa before that are now Coupa customers and we get to talk about that and also those perspective customers and helping them know that it is doable, it is achievable you can get consensus in a decentralized company where all the sites if you have lots, lots of sites and countries have their own autonomy, you can do it. You can do it fast. You can do it effective if you take the right approach. And so it's exciting to get here and share that opportunity and our adventure and our journey with Coupa and the journey is only just beginning. >> Right, what are some of the things that you are excited about in terms of the innovations that they've announced at the event? I know Coupa is very much symbiotic with its customers that the community very much generates a lot of the direction in which the technology goes. But what are some of the things that you've heard announced that you thought, yes, they're going they continue to go in the right direction. >> Yeah. So there's some actual foundational capabilities around things like payment agreements and group carts and things that actually we've contributed through either customer cabs or VP sessions with design, just doing collaboration together but I'm also excited to see some of their price benchmarking that they're doing so that we can know how well are we doing and from our pricing standpoint and also where they're going supply chain I'm excited to see where they're going with that. Being a big supply chain company ourselves, we're hoping that all turns out to be something that we can innovate with Coupa on and hopefully have in the future as well. >> Well, as they said, Rob said it to me just an hour ago, they're tip of the iceberg but what its seems that you've become Heidi yourself and Jabil is really kind of an influencer within the Coupa community. We appreciate you coming by theCUBE, sharing with us what you've accomplished and how you're expanding your Coupa partnership into helping other companies. >> Great. Thank you again for having me today. >> My pleasure. >> All right. >> For Heidi Banks, I'm Lisa Martin and you're watching theCUBE's coverage of COUPA INSPIRE 2022 from Las Vegas. Stick around my next guest joins me momentarily. (upbeat music)

(upbeat music) >> Hey guys and girls. Welcome back to theCUBE's coverage of Coupa Inspire 2022, from the Cosmopolitan, in bustling Las Vegas. Lisa Martin here, and as I mentioned, day two of our coverage and fresh from the main stage, Raja Hammoud joins me, the Executive Vice President of products at Coupa. Raja, welcome back to theCUBE and happy 10th anniversary at Coupa. >> Oh, thank you, thank you, thank you, and welcome back to Inspire. >> Thank you. It's so great- >> We're so happy you're here. >> It's great to be here. So you're just about coming up on your 10 anniversary with Coupa. You showed some great photos of your time there but you've seen, you've lived the evolution that is this rocket ship that's Coupa. >> Raja: It's been incredible journey. I really couldn't believe at first it's been 10. This is the longest I've ever been anywhere. And I honestly feel more refreshed and excited than even when I joined back in the day 10 years ago. And so much has changed, but also so much has not. >> Lisa: Yeah. >> The size of course. We were like 60 people when I joined, the product development team was one person in, in a product, roughly 12 engineers, and fast forward to the scale that's today, it's phenomenal difference. But what has not changed is the, the core values, how, the hustle, how people love working with each other, how we support customers, how we keep stepping up our game how we believe none of us is as smart as all of us, and the community keeps getting stronger and stronger. It's been, it's been really exciting journey. >> The theme of none of us is as smarter as all of us, I'm not sure if I got that right, but the idea is you feel that when you're talking to Coupa partners, I've had the opportunity to talk with Coupa partners and customers and Coupa folks that, that is not just a value statement, people are living that. >> Raja: Yeah. It's, it's everywhere. In the, in the company walls, outside the company walls, you often see product people in different organizations where, they start living in an ivory tower, they think they know everything, I mean, back to what we were discussing earlier about Barbara, when she talked about, get out of your doors, right? A lot of people can tend to do that. We always, from the beginning, believed in the best ideas are out there and you collaborate with each other. And I truly, truly believe that the success that we have achieved today to our community is in a large, large part, because we believed in that. So like on Monday, we hosted, I can't keep track of the number now, so, so many in-parallel Community Advisory Board meetings, and just talking to the products managers and everybody is buzzing with new ideas. And when we go back, there's so much new innovation that has just been co-created here in this conference, and this keeps going on and on and on. >> Lisa: Yeah. I like how you call it, the Community Advisory Board. I'm still used to hearing CAB as Customer Advisory Board, but what Coupa has built, especially with the launch of the Moonshot, the, the community AI, is, is just that. >> Yes. >> It's a very collaborative community. One of the things that's around here, hashtags everywhere, but #United by the Power of Spend. >> Yes. >> What does that mean to you as the EVP of products, and what do you think that means to the community? >> When I think... What we are doing, we're building this platform that is powering all these businesses out there. And the reality of it is you can only, only do so much when you try to do things alone. When we are doing things together, we are way more successful, we are more profitable, we are more sustainable, we are more efficient. And community.ai from a technology standpoint, is making that happen, because what we are doing is taking AI, applying it to all this 3.3 trillion in data, and then bringing back prescriptions that we give back to each and every customer so that everybody can see where they are, how they up their games, and we connect them with other people like them. Now, people love coming to conferences like this, but even in conferences like this, if you think about it, the people you're going to meet, it's, some people are going to do matchmaking but you are also losing an opportunities of meeting the maximum number of people who've done exactly the thing that you did. But when you have the ability to look at all of that data and you can match make people. So we did that already with, for sourcing professionals. So if you are somebody who source a certain category, we can tell somebody else has done something like this in this geography and we offer you to connect to each other. >> Lisa: Wow. >> So this is incredibly powerful way where we are really uniting the whole community by spend, making everybody truly stronger together. >> Lisa: Matchmaker in, in a sense. >> It is matchmaking. >> But it's, but it's- >> It's Spend matchmaking. >> Spend matchmaking, but it's also the opportunity to unite professionals across sourcing, procurement- >> Raja: Yes. >> ... finance, treasury. >> Raja: Yes. >> To your point, and, and Rob said this in his keynote, and he said it here on theCUBE, you know, we've got to break down these silos. >> Raja: Yes. >> People and companies functioning in silos are not going to be successful. >> Raja: Yes. This has been one of the, probably one of the things that we were talking earlier, what has changed, what hasn't. This is one of the fundamental things that has never changed since I've joined. The vision has been very clear. The execution on it, of how we drive successful business spend management program is by breaking down the silos and this idea of sweet synergy, where in product, you start building these capabilities that helps these professionals in the different organizations to actually connect on the touch points, where, where things really matter. >> Lisa: Sweet synergy, was that thing from a concept perspective, did that come from the community, in terms of Coupa going, this is actually what's happening, this synergy across the BSM suite? >> Yes. So in the very beginning, it was early idea. I would say in the first two Inspires that we did, we hadn't given it actually the name itself, and we used to call it unified capabilities, and it started with the first silos we broke down. The first silos we broke down were procurement and AP. And they didn't even used to talk in the same room or even want to care about each other. So we started building so many capabilities that brought these teams together and little by little the community started to feel that and see the value of that. And then the community started to ask us to go break down more silos. So in the beginning, I would say the, the vision before I even joined, the company was on that trajectory. And the early customers saw that and they championed it and then they drove us to do more. So they came to us and said could you please do what you did here in contract? Could you please do what you did here in sourcing? And I was in a meeting last week, a leadership meeting, and one question was asked to leaders in the services team about what are they hearing about, from the customers, about a particular area. And it was music to our ears when we heard the customers are asking for more synergy, right? So, they even have the name for it and they're asking for more and more, and we have built hundreds of these already, but the reality is there is so much opportunity. >> Lisa: Right. >> The world is siloed, no technology has attempted to do that. And I think that's what's a exciting is to go and forge new grounds and do something very special to unite everyone together. >> You guys talked about the waves. Rob talked about the waves yesterday. You talked about it again this morning. And when I think of Inspired community, as that third wave, I see it on both sides. I see the Inspired community that is the Coupa community, but also what you just talked about, that flywheel of that sort of symbiotic relationship that you guys have with your customers as Coupa in and of itself being in a community inspired by the community that it has built. >> Raja: Yes, it's, it's very, very, it's a circular effect. Like it, we inspire one another, and we strengthen one another, and it's, it's just a beautiful, beautiful thing. One of the special things that we are starting to do is we want to take the whole product experience itself, to be a complete community experience. So anywhere you are going to Coupa, when it makes sense, of course, you are not only looking at your data, you are getting connected with people for that particular thing. So we've done that already for 15 different product areas and we're constantly doing more and more and more and more. You can imagine one day we can, where we can start within the product pages themselves, where we host community experts to talk via video and connect with others. So you bring that whole community experience alive in a product in enterprise software, which has not been done. >> Kind of like creating your own influencer network. >> Yes, yes, yes. And give people their voice and, and, and it becomes exciting. It is very different when you're just working on your own and driving goals, and you have no idea how good that can pass on the world. And then when right then and there, you get to learn that some people have hit that, some people have achieved these goals, you just get excited, "I want to hit that goal too. Who are these people? Connect me with these leaders. Let's have a conversation. How did they do it?" And they start creating best practices together. We even have started places where they collaborate on actual documents and templates, and they put them in the community exchange as a way for people to share with others, even taking templates from the product putting them back into a community exchange. So it is sharing, being enabled on the platform, platform itself. >> Lisa: How did you guys function during the pandemic, the last two years when we couldn't get together? >> Raja: Yeah. >> I know that your customers are really the lifeblood of Coupa and vice versa. >> Raja: Yes. >> But talk to me about some of the things that Coupa did with its customers, you know, by video conferencing, for example, that really helped the evolution and some of the innovations that you announced this morning. >> When we first... when the pandemic first hit I think like we all didn't believe what, what is going on. And there was this, I would call it a beautiful period in a way, despite how horrific that was, and that period was where everyone rose to the occasion, everybody wanted to help one another. Across Coupa everywhere, we started having documents of how can step up and help our customers, help our communities. We started to look at how we get PPE, and get it in the hands of our customers. We have access to suppliers. We started looking at helping suppliers with digital payments to speed things up. So, so many things we started doing as a community to just help each other. And then as we got to the next level, then we started, of course, starting to do things over, over zoom. And the big surprise, was we were incredibly productive. If anything, we were worried about people feeling burnt out. >> Yeah. >> Because they were just in it, completely in it. And it created a lot of new avenues for us because often you go and do these meetings in person. Now you could have a user experience session with a customer very easily, they're available more often than they used to. >> Lisa: Right. >> So we did not miss a beat with the community. We moved into virtual caps. We had the advantage of having them recorded as well, where we could have the global development teams learn and see exactly what the, what the customers are are co-creating together. And our goal lives accelerated, because a lot of these implementations, they used to happen in person, so schedules, they actually got accelerated- >> Lisa: Right. >> ...through that. Now of course, there is nothing that matches to this. You can do it, you can do a lot, but a ton of the collaboration comes from real life dialogue and kind of conversation. So it's that balance between the two that I think will be great. >> Lisa: What are some of the things that you've heard the last few days? You mentioned the Partners Summit and, and the Community Advisory Boards on Monday, yesterday, everything kicked off today. What are some of the things that you've heard in your meetings that really inspire you on say the next 10 years at Coupa? >> Raja: By far, by far, by far, it's a validation of, that what we are doing is, we're absolutely on target with it, and that, we just can do so much more. The silos are massive and there are so so many opportunities that you hear in every different areas that we could be doing this, we could be doing this together. So we can break down more and more silos. And using community.ai is just the tip of the iceberg of what we are, what we are doing. Yes, we created tens and tens of capabilities, helping, helping the community with all of that, but data drives everything. And when you look at that, every single process in every single silo can be informed by the power of data within your own company, and then even better, data across. And, and to the point where we're talking about concepts that customers are really excited about, even thinking about this community, they're customers of each other. And when you are a customer of each other what are the different ways as a community, you can help one another more. So we're talking about community netting as new types of concepts. >> Lisa: Talk to me a little about that. You mentioned the community netting this morning but I didn't quite... Help me understand. >> Raja: It is very simple terms is if, if we are buying from each other and we have to do money movements every time I have to pay you, I have to incur fees and likewise, but since we are part of this community we can manage that relationship. So we just pay the Delta, we net it out. So it, it saves reconciliation times it saves money movement. And these are tip of the icebergs of these very cool things that we're doing together. >> Wow. That's fantastic. Last question for you, as you talk with prospects who are in the early stages, or, or still determining, do we go through like a supply chain digital transformation? I mean, I think of companies that probably haven't now or need to get on the bandwagon. >> Raja: Yeah. >> What are some of the things that you advise to those customers to be able to do what Mick Ebeling talked about this morning and that is, commit and then figure it out? >> Raja: Yes. The number one thing is just make sure you don't do the analysis paralysis. There are just so many opportunities so many opportunities start with a project, get going, and it creates incredible momentum, and then you can move on from one to another, to another, to another, instead of trying to just go for a year or two, trying to look at how the world has changed in that process. And so often you could see that projects pay for themselves within the first month of go life. You do that, you'll create another one. And it's not like you are coming in to do something so new nobody has done. Hundreds and hundreds and thousands as a matter of fact, of other community members have done that. It is proven. So get started with those and then continue. Other things I will be talking to them about is to make sure that they understand the way we work is all about partnerships spread. Often people who haven't worked with us in the enterprise software, they're used to working with vendors. We are not that. We never were that. Like the number one, if we're not going to be real partners, honest, transparent and work with each other, we don't waste each other's time. >> Lisa: Well, Raja, it's been great having you on the program. I've really enjoyed your keynote this morning. Congratulations on your 10 years at Coupa. >> Raja: Thank you. >> I'm excited to see what the next 10 years brings for you. We appreciate your insites and everything that Coupa is doing in partnership with its customers is very evident in an event like this. >> Raja: Thank you. And thank you for coming and covering us as well. We really appreciate it. >> Lisa: It's our pleasure to be here. >> Thank you. >> For Raja Hammoud, I'm Lisa Martin. You're watching theCUBE's coverage, day two of Coupa Inspire 2022, from Las Vegas. (upbeat music)

(upbeat music) >> Welcome back to the CUBE's Coverage of Coupa Inspire 2022 at the Cosmopolitan in bustling Las Vegas. I'm Lisa Martin, and very pleased to be welcoming back. One of our CUBE alumni, the chairman and CEO of Coupa, the man himself Rob Bernshteyn, Rob great to have you back on the program. >> Great to be with you again. >> It's great to be in person. >> Sure. >> I applaud Coupa for taking the risk and getting all the people here. People are absolutely ready for this. And if there's a company that brings the energy it's Coupa. >> Well, thank you for saying that, we're definitely feeling it. You're right, we took a bit of a risk when we opened up registration that was before COVID, omicron hit. We didn't know what would happen, but we just had such an overwhelming onslaught of registrations and people wanted to be here. And in the last two days of interaction with folks it's just been like a huge reunion after three years of kind of being in home and away. >> Absolutely a huge reunion. One that was, I just felt so normal walking into your keynote yesterday. And of course, I always look for numbers because I know you're going to have numbers. 3.3 trillion, spend under management. You're almost at a trillion, a year run rate, that's huge. The growth of Cuopa, just up into the right. >> It is and it's really in thanks to our customer community. I mean, there are just incredible champions here. Courageous folks that are pushing for change inside their of companies. And we're honored to be the technology platform that drives a lot of that change. A more and more spend driven through the system that spend being optimized going to the right channels. Companies are saving money and it's given them more fuel to pursue their own missions and visions and everything that their companies seek to do. >> I just had a conversation with a customer about an hour ago and he was talking about everything was paper-based, manual, no visibility, and I've talked to other customers and I think I've got Jabil on this afternoon who had like 6 billion in indirect spend. They couldn't see. And with Cuopa, the blinders are off. And there's that visibility, the BSM community is really helping organization glean value, drive profitability. Talk to me about from your perspective how the BSM community has grown to be able to deliver, as you say, value as a service. >> Look what's happening is that the customers we have, we have over 2,500 customers around the world. Every one of these customers, they have their own missions. They have their own visions, they're pursuing their goals, but in order to do that, they need energy. They need gas in their tank, right? And with every dollar we save them, with every method we allow them to become more efficient in the way that they work, the way that they have visibility, the way that they collaborate one another, the way that they think about fulfillment of demand through supply chain design, or sourcing activities, contract negotiations, procurement, sourcing, treasury the way they manage that cash. It's unlocking that firepower. It's given them more gas in the tank and that's incredibly rewarding for me and my colleagues and everyone here because our mission is the amplification of all of their missions on a daily basis, really. >> Right, that amplification that acceleration the AI and Coupa. I got to see you about, about a year and a half ago. We were a few months into the pandemic but I'm just curious what some of the customer conversations are that you've had given the challenges with the supply chain that's on the lips of every politician and pretty much everybody. What are some of the things that Coopa has really helped customers to mitigate? >> Well, first of all, the simplest things were when everyone went home they couldn't do those paper based processes anymore. So they leverage our platform much more, right? I mean, they couldn't write paper checks for example and go in the office and do that. And that's just a simple example, order things or or get goods and services to their folks that are now working from home, for example. But then they're also faced with the acute issue of supply chain needs and the agility of their supply chain. So we help them figure out different ways to transport the goods and services they need, different freighting routes in real time through our AI capabilities. So, I mean, those are just some of the examples but we really think of our value proposition as almost like a Swiss army knife. And what happened during COVID is, you know we went out into the jungle and you didn't know which of those tools you would've needed but we tried to be right there with our customer to give them, you know, the knife, the match, the scissors, the, you know the fishing line, whatever was needed at that point in time to help them survive and thrive. And that's really how we see ourselves is you know, a true partner to our customers. >> Yeah, a true enabler. Well, I was looking at your FY22 numbers growth in new business in excess of 60% percent record annual revenue, 725, be up for up 34% subscription revenue up. Coupa up into the right. >> Well, it is, and what we're trying to be very thoughtful with this business. We're trying not to grow so fast that suddenly we leave our customers behind. We really try to take it one customer at a time, but the beauty of this growth, this measured and thoughtful growth is that this, we have an incredible renewal rate. I mean, our customers stay with us and they add more and more capabilities. And that drives an incredible cash flow situation for our business. And that makes us as Coupa very resilient. That's why we love being so transparent with our customers. Here's our growth, here's our margins, here's our cash flow. Here's how we're investing into R&D and innovation. Here's the M&A that we're doing to bring you a greater set of value propositions. And I love that transparency. It's one of the beauties of being a public company everything's out there and everyone can see and decide whether they want to be a customer, be an investor, be a colleague. It's a wonderful thing. >> Talk about the power of the community. Community AI launched in FY22. You showed some numbers and just the power of all of that anonymized, aggregated data to be analyzed. What is that? How has that really driven the evolution of Coupa in the last 13 years you've been at the helm? >> Well, we set our sites on doing this as far back as 13 years ago. I know you interviewed Donna recently and she was sharing with you that we set up our contracts with the customers in a way where we could take their anonymized sanitized data, aggregate it, and see if we can glean insights from it that could be used to the benefit of each individual customer. Really break the silos of traditional enterprise software. You know, where you do one deployment at a time and you live in your own little silo in your own little world. Now we're pushing, you know, a myriad of prescriptions out to each of our customers. They can see the best ways in real time to avoid supplier risk for example, make sure that the goods and services they buy they get on time at the right price points, make sure that the suppliers that they're working with support their diverse needs, their minority own supplier needs. All of the transparency that comes with seeing trillions of dollars in data in real time and gleaning insights from it. And we're just scratching the surface in this area. We're absolutely just scratch and service. We've pushed out this platform to our customers and now they're coming back to us and saying, wow, could I glean this sign insight from the community? What if we can get access to that information? And we're encoding that for them and pushing that information and those applications out to them. So this is going to be an exciting couple of months and quarters and years to take this concept of community AI to a completely different level. And I think it's not only new for Coupa, but I really see it as something completely new for the enterprise software industry where the opportunity to break silos is really upon us. >> It's critical, but a lot of communities are very transactional episodic, Coupa isn't like that. >> Well, you know that there's no shortcut to that. That has taken 13 years. And I think that begins with the O in Coupa which is the openness, the openness, the transparency the authenticity in which we, with which we engage with our customers. They understand how we work. They have access to all of our other customers. They can interface with them and interact with them within their own industry, within their own company size, whether they're the largest companies in the world, or you know, upper mid-market or mid-market customers whether they're subscribing to our treasury applications or our supply chain or procurement applications. And by having access to this community in real time and a community that's grounded in that trust and authenticity, you know, only great things happen. Only great things happen. >> The trust in a authenticity is critical. It's easy to say, you can trust us. We're authentic. It's a whole other thing to actually feel it and believe it and see it. And you get that sense here from your keynote. Barbara Corcoran was fantastic. Inspiring, I loved how she said she'd probably never had an original good idea herself that always gets them from others. And I thought that's Coupa to me, that's the spirit of community, the spirit of collaboration. All of those Cs to me embody what Coupa is. >> Exactly, exactly. None of us is as smart as all of us. That's what it is. No doubt. >> It's true that power of that community is. And I think I read in Fast Company just really recently that you described the community AI as a moonshot. And I thought, where is he going to go from here? (laughing) >> Well, it's continuing to build on this concept. It's really continuing to build on this concept of breaking these siloed data stores, aggregating them and distilling insights from them in ways that we ourselves as Coupa, as our R&D team or Raj and our product team we don't know all the different ways the customers will want to use this power of community. But we know we have a very scalable underlying platform that operates in virtually every language and virtually every currency that will be there to support their evolving needs. As we continue our, you know, what we hope to be lifelong relationship with our customers. >> I was talking to one of your customers. I think it was Jabil recently, and we're having them on the program today. And they actually said they were an SAP ERP shop. They could have gone the SAP route and chose Coupa. And one of the main reasons was because Coupa was going to be able to evolve with them, but allow them to help Coupa evolve. And I get that sense from a lot of your customers that we have the opportunity to influence the direction that the technology goes. Because we are here in the back office now moving to the front. >> Rob: That's right. >> In a day to day, really figuring out what if it did this? What if it did that? Now it does all of these things because the community gets to be that influential >> That's right. And we also, the beauty is we're able to help them. Our customers unlock the value of their investments into core ERP platforms, whether it be SAP or Oracle a host of other ERPs, we help them get strategic leverage from those applications. And we're building this company very much on the shoulders of early, you know, enterprise software companies like themselves. So it's really a beautiful, you know relationship with our customers, but also a way to, to give them more and more leverage >> That's critical. Especially as every company these days it has to be a data company, but they have to be able to see the data, glean insights act on it, make pivots. It's one of the words that we probably use so often in the last two years is pivot, but I think without these companies having a data strategy from a competitive perspective, their toast. >> I think so I think it's really tough. You know, I frame it very simply. We spent many, many years in the industrial revolution. We're worried about, you know, physical labor, moving parts. We entered into the information revolution with the advent you know, the internet and now I think we're really in what I would call the knowledge revolution it's, as you said, it's not only the data, but gleaning valuable insights from that massive growing data store and delivering them at the point of need so that people can take advantage of that insight and that knowledge. And, you know, we're proud to be on the forefront of that as a growing, you know, technology company, a cloud based what we call values as a service company. >> Value as service, right. You mentioned in your keynote, you were talking about the the struggles of being a parent during the pandemic and trying to get your kids to watch some of the classics. I know it was right there with you, Superman, Rocky, was it Planes, Trains & Automobiles, that's another one, and I thought you mentioned, you know my kids had about three minutes of attention span. I thought in the business world, people have three seconds. The real time, get me what I need in the point of time when they need it. Is critical for every business in every industry because the consumer is so, our demands are just higher and higher. >> That's right. That's right. And you know, the U in Coupa stands for user centricity and the logic there was simply, if the machine could do the majority of the work there should be less and less stress upon the end user the user themselves, as I say, deliver exactly what they need at the point of need to them on the screen or on their phone or wherever it is so that they could keep business moving forward as efficiently thoughtfully and optimally as possible. And you know we take the responsibility as a value of service company, you know very seriously try to make sure that we optimize the time spent of the sort of the man machine, woman machine interaction then less and less is on the, on the man or woman, and much much more is on the, you know the platform that we continue to develop. >> One of the things I read that you said in the press release I think it was yesterday's, chief financial officers, chief information officers, CEOs, they need to be chief transformation officers. That's a hard thing to do, especially for, I can imagine organizations like I had Casey's General Store on, this is a company that was founded in the fifties. How are you seeing that manifest into reality when you're talking with those CFOs and CEOs, are they really becoming those chief transformation officers? >> Well, they're all aspiring to it and we're, in my view proudly helping them move as quickly as possible toward that end, to have companies that are highly agile, that can respond to shift and consumer demands, consumer needs, shifting supply chain, you know, challenges, shifting financial scenarios out in the marketplace given the volatility of the stock market. So if we could offer that agility and resiliency and that additional stool of digital transformation for CEOs, CFOs and CIOs, and, you know we're doing something special out there. >> So Rob, last question for you. What does tomorrow look like for Coupa? What are we going to see and feel next year? Any crystal ball insight you can share with me? >> You know, I don't know. One of the things about us is we're not we're a little bit of a boring company. It's one quarter after the next week. >> I saw the dancing video that is not boring. (Rob laughing) >> But you know, it's been what, 52 quarters of going at it, one quarter at a time, one customer at a time one interaction at a time, one line of code at a time, you know, one QA assurance at a time, one support ticket at a time just moving forward moving forward, moving forward. And before, you know, it, you turn around, you look around and we began as you know, know a couple of handfuls of people with a desire to inspire an industry is starting to take shape. And we feel like, you know, we're not just getting started, but we're certainly in the early innings of I think creating a very special company and more importantly, a very special community around the company that we're forming. I would say a very special community. Rob, great to have you on the program, congrats on doing the event in person, getting all of these people that are so ready to see you guys and to be able to interact with Coupa and its partner ecosystem, getting us all together. One of my favorite events, we appreciate you stopping by on the CUBE. >> Thank You. Thanks for having me again. >> All right. For Rob Bernshteyn, I'm Lisa Martin. You're watching the CUBE's coverage of day two Coupa Inspire 2022 from Las Vegas. Stick around. My next guest will join me shortly. (lighthearted music)

(upbeat music) >> Good afternoon from Las Vegas. Lisa Martin, at The Cosmopolitan, here on day two of theCUBE's coverage of Coupa Inspire 2022. I'm excited to be joined by one of Coupa's many successful customers, Jaime Robles joins me, the chief procurement officer at Casey's General Stores. You're going to be talking about building a technology hub with source-to-pay and interconnecting ecosystem platforms. Welcome, Jaime. >> Thank you, Lisa. It's a pleasure to be here today in this week, hearing about Coupa and all the fabulous things that we can do around technology. >> Coupa is amazing, and in terms of their innovation, I don't know if you had a chance to see the Keynote this morning, but the slides that Raja showed with just the arrow going up and to the right. Talk to us a little bit about Casey's General Stores. This is the U.S's fourth largest convenience store retailer. But just for the audience who may not know, give us a background. >> So, just a little bit about Casey's. So, Casey's is, as you said, one of the largest convenience store chains out there. We got more than 2,500 locations in 16 states in the Midwest in the U.S. And just out of curiosity, we are the fifth largest pizza company as well. >> Lisa: Is that right? >> We make a great pizza and our guests love it. So, we are in three businesses. We are in convenience store, we are in fuel, and also we are in the food business, because we got a kitchen inside every single store that we got out there. So, for us it's been a fabulous journey with procurement, because we came to the company, joined the company two years ago in the middle of pandemic, and the whole idea was to build the procurement function from the ground up. Casey's didn't have a formal procurement function. So, pretty much, all the spend was done by the functions, by themselves, but no formal process, no technology, no platforms, nothing; very old school. And we came here to build a foundation and build, as I call it, a procurement tech house. >> A procurement tech house. So, talk to me, so I know that Casey's dates back to 1959, and what you described sounds like a lot of paper-based, manual processes; technology really wasn't in the mix. Is that what attracted you to take the role going, "I want to bring technology and build this powerhouse"? >> Yes, that was amazing. So, over my career, I've been doing this for several companies, such as in the past, in Phillips, G, and recently, with Walmart. And then, what attracted me for this opportunity was, well, everything is paper. Everything is manual. There's nothing digital in this company. There's no team, there's no sourcing, no process, no policies. It's like building everything from the ground up. So, it was very attractive. It's huge opportunities for the company, and we were going through this massive transformation to digitize the company all across the operations. So, procurement wasn't the core of those strategies for the CEO of the company, and that's what the opportunity lies. He was like, "How do we move from manual transactions to all this digital world?" and where, now everything is frictionless, that we move from 80%, 85%, that it was all manual. Now we are plus 65%, everything is digital now in the company, and just within one year of moving all over. So, the savings, the cost, the, the leakage, all the waste on the processes that we have, is just amazing, after one year. >> Sounds like the company had a cloud, a digitization strategy, brought you on board to help make that a reality for procurement. So, the appetite was there at Casey's from a cultural perspective, it wasn't battling uphill to get folks to go, "Let go of the paper. Let's go to Coupa." >> Yeah, that's the truth. So, it was the whole digital transformation for the company, not only on the procurement, spend side, but all the process in the company. So, as COVID hit our stores and the whole world, right? So, we had to move into more digital ordering, into more digital transaction, into more how my guests can interact with my stores without going to the stores, how they can order from the app, how they can get their food directly to their house, and all this stuff. And procurement was right there, hand to hand, as part of those strategies from the very beginning. And we were, I will say, very lucky to be on time to make all those digital transformations for the company, so when the COVID really hit, we were ready and prepared to take over. >> That's good, being ready and prepared. Oh my gosh. But some of the few people I've talked to. Talk to me about the core technology requirements that you had for the right BSM solution, and why Coupa ticked all those boxes. >> Yeah. So for us, it was one of the most important ones is as I said, bring the digital across the whole source to pay. Another big element for us, it was, how do we bring transparency into the process? How do we bring transparency on how much we pay, how do we spend our money, Which areas, which categories? We built a model in cases that are called, it's a self-service model. And this self service model is, I put the technology in its core, which is Coupa, and I give my users and my internal stakeholders all the power to take those decisions. So, now they can see how much they spend in different categories, with different suppliers, for the preferred vendors, what type of contracts do we have? And how do we manage that spend, versus the budget, as well? They have all that ability to take those decisions, and they don't need a procurement team. As I like to call, in my couple of speaker notes during this week, we like to make procurement invisible. We are in the back, they don't see us. And they got all the power to use the technology out there to do the job for us. >> Transparent, but empowered at the same time. >> Exactly, exactly. That's what we want, moving forward for this company. And I believe that is the vision that we got in the procurement 2.0. >> Procurement 2.0. Talk to me about some of the solutions that you implemented. You talked about source-to-pay, but give us kind of an idea if you double click on that, and then we'll kind of unpack ` what you talked about on your sessions. >> Yeah, pretty much, for Coupa, we implemented the whole source to pay. So, from sourcing, procurement, invoicing and payment. So, we implement all that at the core of the Coupa. I believe in an ecosystem of procurement technologies that are interconnected with Coupa, to interact for other needs, like contract lifecycle management, tail spend management, TNE, and some others that we're going after. Like, now for us, is going after supplier data hub, which for us is very important also to get it right. And that procurement ecosystem of different technologies connected is going to give us the ability to move faster, to be more lean and to have better data and technology accessible for the team that is in charge of procurement, to operate under that environment. >> You mentioned a few minutes ago that, when the pandemic hit, Casey's was ready, from a digital perspective. I imagine that was a huge advantage, going into such unknown times that we're still kind of in. >> Well, when I say ready, it's like, we were ready to go, and we were on the fly, implementing everything, and what the pandemic did is to accelerate all this. So, as many companies did, we were already in the process of going this direction, and when the pandemic start hitting, we accelerate everything, and we made it happen. So, we went live in three, four months, and a year later, we were completely live since we joined the company, and we were start seeing all this paying coming to ours. So, 18 months later, we are pretty much hitting best in class levels in terms of transactional, operational, tactical, savings, visibility, spend, transparency, risk management. Now we're going to take it to the next level of the maturity. It's like, how do we go for ESG? How do we go for supplier diversity? How do we manage risk management? Right? And all those things. >> You had a couple of presentations here at Inspire, talk to me about those, and some of the top takeaways that the audience gleaned from you. >> Yeah, one of the most important ones yesterday was about how to build a procurement organization from the ground up, or how to go through a digital transformation in procurement. That is something that has been on the topic on the procurement community for years now. Everybody talks about procurement transformation, et cetera. And I just showed to them, my journey in the companies that I've been doing this for the last two decades, across the world, in many different countries, and the things that work and the and the things that doesn't work, really. And how they need to build, for the future of procurement, a technology procurement house on the core. And that's how you operate day to day. And for us, organization was Coupa. And then on top of that, you need to build a procurement ops model, right? How you want to operate your procurement operating model. So, it's centralized, decentralized, a hybrid model. And it all depends about the type of company, the type of industry you are, how material is your organization, et cetera. And another big, big element in all your strategy is, how you're going to serve your customers, right? What type of service model do you have in place? If you're going to be like a full service mode, or you going to be in a strategic direction, or you going to be a self-service mode. And pretty much, what we have chosen as the best way to move forward in the future is, let's put the technology in the middle. Let's give the support our users need, but let them be self-service, and let's make our job invisible in the back, where we have all these sourcing events, all these beautiful negotiations, all these great deals, contracts, et cetera. So, by the time they use the technology, they know where to buy, how to buy, what's the right level, how to make it happen, and they don't need us. They can do it by their own. >> And they've got that visibility, that before, it sounds like they didn't have it at all. >> Exactly, so now we know how much we spend, where do we spend, and where are the opportunities? Where are some gaps that we can go after, as well? And I think one of the most important aspects in these transformations that many of my colleagues are going through is, then you have a model that you can repeat year over year and evolve with the company, so it's agile and it's flexible. Because companies keep evolving. You buy business, you sell business, you acquire, you expand, you grow, and how that model is going to shape around. So, by the time you're done, it's not obsolete again. So, technology is going to keep evolving with your model, and that for me, is the key part in all this. >> Do you feel like, this is a marketing term; future-proof, and it always is one of those things that, well what does that actually really mean? Do you feel though that, what you've put in place is future-proof? That it's going to be able to grow and scale as the company changes? >> Jaime: Totally, totally. Because as I said before, we put the technology on the core. And for us, having that technology on the core, and plugging different technologies around that and sourcing around that with our amazing sourcing team, is going to evolve whatever the company needs. If we expand into different regions, we're ready. If we expand into different business types, we're ready. I believe what we need to keep evolving, as well, is, there will be new emerging technologies. There's going to be way more AI. There's going to be way more machine learning. There's going to be more predictive analytic sourcing stuff. How do we keep pulling those technologies into our platforms to keep giving us that advantage and that edge to the market? I think we have the model, and I think it's one of the most advanced procurement functions that I've seen in the industries around. >> And it sounds like you designed and deployed it really quickly, >> We did. >> especially during a global crisis. >> Yeah, we are disruptors by nature. We love change. We love speed. And that is, I will say my procurement brand. We make it happen and we make it fast. That's how we do it. We keep momentum. >> That's incredibly important. I mean, one of the things that we've learned, many things the last two years, a couple things. Access to realtime data is no longer a "nice to have." It's absolutely business critical. The patience of many people, including myself, was quite thin, the last two years. But also, every company has to be a data company. Casey's has to be a data company. If I have the ability to order from my app, or order things, I want them to know when I'm here for, what I ordered before; make my visit personalized, efficient, easy. So, that data strategy, having that data at the core, is nowadays, you have to have it. >> It is essential. We're building a data hub for the company, completely showing us all that information. As you can imagine, being in those three business, on the food industry, on the retail convenience store, and in the fuel, so data for us is our living breath every single day. And not only having the data now, it's like, what type of decisions we're taking with all this data? And how fast we are adapting to all that, in pricing, in cost, in margin and availability and inventory and logistics and transportation, and in your whole supply chain. So, that is extremely important for us. Not only having the data, but what kind of decisions we're taking with the data, and everything starts with the transparency right? Whenever you see it, you act. >> You should be able to act, but to your point, you have to have that visibility. You have to be able to see it and act on it. Talk to me about what it's like being a Coupa customer. I know how I've been to many Inspires, and I always love seeing all the customer success stories everywhere across industries. What's it like being a Coupa customer, in terms of having the ability to influence, say, the roadmap? Is that something that you're able to work on in partnership with Raj's team? >> Yeah, that's great. So, Coupa has been a great company to work with, and I know them for some years now, and not only they been able to support our vision of what we're trying to build, but at the same time they're taking many of our feedback to make Coupa better, in many of the different models. Listen, Coupa's not perfect, right? And I don't think any tool out there is going to be perfect. But being in so many different industries and with so many opportunities in different areas, they've been able to take our feedback and make those improvements for ourselves. We have so many conversations with the Coupa product development team when we were going through a transformation, asking them for things that we thought it was very valuable to have on the tool, that was in our, in our eyes, no brainer, and they were very, very fast to react and make the change. And we are, I think, one of the most lousy customers, guilty as charged about that, but we just wanted to make it better because it's a benefit of the whole community. Everything that we've been talking this week about community AI, it's amazing. All the things that we're sharing during this week, all the ideas that we are getting about things that we can do. That's amazing. That's the value. >> It's huge value. And that's that sort of flywheel of the community and the power and the insights. Last question for you. If you talk to peers, or when you talk to peers who are maybe starting their procurement digitization journey, what advice do you give them? >> Don't take a no as an answer. Make it happen. Own it. Own it. I think you need to have a vision. You need to put in strategy in place. You need to build a business case. You need to earn your seat at the table at the C-suite. But you need to own it. You cannot let the IT, function, finance community too long, and decide how you want to operate and how you want to move your function as procurement, or build how you operate. You need to own it, and you need to build a business case and you need to make it happen. You need to, yeah. To struggle with that. But if you are a hustler, as we are in cases, we are disruptors. And if you don't disrupt, it's not going to happen. >> I completely agree. Own it, make it happen. Jaime, great to have you on the program. >> Jaime: Thanks so much. >> Thanks for hearing what Casey's is doing, how you're really leading the charge, and how you owned it and made it happen. That's awesome. >> Thank you, Lisa. Thank you for being here. >> Thanks. For Jaime Robles, I'm Lisa Martin, you're watching theCUBE's coverage day two, Coupa Inspire 22, from Las Vegas. Join me with my next guest, coming up shortly. (lighthearted upbeat music)

(bright music) >> Hey everyone. Welcome back to the cubes coverage of Coupa Inspire 2022. This is day two. We've been on the ground in Las Vegas at the cosmopolitan, Lisa Martin here with Kyle Rogers. Great to be talking with Coupa customers, partners all the good stuff. Kyle, you are the partner finance effectiveness at Clearsulting. - Yes. >> Welcome to the program. >> Thank you. Thank you. I'm super happy to be here. And we're really excited to be a partner with Coupa. >> Talk to me a little bit about Clearsulting, so the audience gets an understanding of what you guys are doing. >> Perfect. So I'll introduce myself first. I'm Kyle Rogers, as you mentioned, I'm a partner at the firm. A leader finds affecting this practice and we focus on a few things. So first is like general finds and accounting operating model work. The second is a lot of global based services, shared services work. So helping clients think about where their talent should sit and how those global workflows should work. And then what's really important to this week is, we've got a deep capability and procure to pay. And at a Clearsulting, we work with our clients to drive thoughtful and complex solutions for procurement and finance executives using digital as a key enabler in that. And we've got a number of practices. So we focus on finds effectiveness, which I lead. We've got enterprise performance management, risk advisory record report, and treasury. >> One of the things that is the spirit of Coupa is collaboration, the community. How does clear salty, how do you collaborate with your clients? >> Yeah, it's a great question because we think collaboration is so core to being successful in driving good outcomes. So the ways we collaborate with our clients are first, we bring deep expertise around, procure to pay functional subject matter of experts. And we compliment that with our innovation center which is a team that's focused on really staying on the forefront of digital and technical solutions and making sure we bring them together to give robust and powerful outcomes for our clients. And then lastly, and really importantly, we meet our clients where they are. They're all at different stages in their I maturity. They've got different goals and objectives. Some might be trying to have a focused really niche outcome whereas others might be transformational in nature. So we make sure that we right size our solutions to really get them where they're trying to go. >> When you're talking with customers that are maybe in the infancy of digitizing procure to pay for example, what are some of the concerns that they have? I mean, I guess these days if you're not digital, you're not very competitive. >> Right. Digital is so important to what they do. Not only to reduce costs and take in efficiencies out of the business but also when you think about, the importance of decision support, right? So tightening the cycle time between business activity and making sense of it using technology as core and fundamental to being successful. >> What are some of the trends that you're seeing in procurement especially anything top of mind the last two years? >> Yeah, so what we love about Clearsulting is we've got a broad base of clients. And when we meet and work with each of them they all have their different needs and goals. And we've been able to see some through lines across each that have started to emerge. And we've really seen three trends emerge. So the first is, there's a a big focus on operational efficiency. So moving towards a touchless world, taking cost out of the business and really moving towards exception based, system driven processes and more towards insight generation decisions important alike. And then the second is there's a real increased focus on getting total visibility into your spend management, right? So understanding who your suppliers are, what you're buying from them, how much you're spending and really understanding are they giving you the value that you thought you were going to get when you onboarded them. And that's really come to the floor through a lot of the supply chain volatility, a lot of the volatility around pricing, especially when you think look at things like commodities and just getting real your arms around what, what you're spending on. And then lastly, there's a new and diverse set of talent in the workforce today, right? And the last 10 to 20 years we've seen digitally native talent graduate into the workforce. And what their hopes and desires and needs are in the workplace are very different than the generation before them. So just giving them tools and digital technologies that will attract them but also retain them when they're here. - Right. - Yeah. And then also when you think about some of the shifts towards a more remote, remote, or hybrid model, having tools and capabilities that allow you to do that and Coupa is a great example. >> Right. Well, you talked about, different generations and the younger generations. I think there's four or five generations that are in the workforce today. >> Wow. - And so when you think of, you talked about the remoteness hybrid environment that we're still living in how everything has changed so dramatically in the last couple of years. - Yeah. >> That being touchless, contactless, paperless really became essential for so many businesses. How do you guys, what do you define as touchless? How is it different than say paperless? Is it just another the way of saying or does it actually mean something different? >> It's a little, it's different and it's not truly touchless because you still need to have, the human as part of the process, right? But when we say touchless, it's identifying those points of where is it rules based? Where can we use business logic to drive some system based decision and taking the robot out of the human as some say, and really having the humans spend their time on how can I use this information to support the business, get insights out of it and focus my time on work that's meaningful and powerful. >> Well work that's meaningful and powerful to them that will make them want to stay at their jobs but also work that allows them to be able to focus on more strategic projects for the business let the other stuff be touchless and automated where it can be. >> Right. - So that their focus is on more business critical activities or initiatives. >> Absolutely. Absolutely. So when you think about things like supporting sourcing on making sure that they've got their strategic suppliers set up and their spending with the right suppliers. That is so much more valuable obvious to your time than reconciling invoice to goods receipt, right? >> You mentioned insights and visibility and visibility. I was just talking with a Coupa customer that had uncovered two billion dollars in indirect spend that they couldn't see before Coupa. And I just can't help, but think how many businesses in every industry are out there with billions in indirect spend that they literally can't see. If you can't see it, you can't be able to make the right decisions on it. Talk to me about enabling that visibility as a key outcome for your clients. >> Right, and I think that to your point it's not just that what we also see is there's not great duplicate detection. So a lot of times our customers or clients are paying their suppliers more than once for the same inventory. So getting their view on exactly what they're spending, what's paid, what's not paid, how is it impacting our supply chain? How is that balancing up against our revenue forecast? To make sure that we've got inventory moving through our supply chain at the right time. The visibility there is fundamental to being successful in the current day marketplace. >> Talk to me about now, some of your experiences working directly with Coupa clients. What are some of the things that you've been able to enable? Any stories stick out in your mind is this really articulates the value that we bring with to Coupa. >> Absolutely. So we worked with, we just wrapped up a project and the client was using some legacy ERPs. They had gone through a period of pretty significant MNA. So they have a pretty technology landscape and they wanted to find a procure to pay solution that met all of their requirements. And Coupa was the perfect fit. We helped walk them through the process and move towards a point where every single invoice had to get manually entered. Every single invoice had to get manually matched. >> Oh, wow. - Yeah. Two, to leveraging a lot of capabilities Coupa has around EDI and DCR and the supplier portal to automate a lot of that and then streamline a lot of the matching. And on the back end, just getting visibility into who you're spending your money with. As you mentioned you said two billion dollars of an indirect spend that they had no idea where that was going. That is very common >> Common? - Common. - Is it? I mean, not that amount, but the fact that you don't have, pure visible end to end spend is very common. >> Are you seeing any trends towards that, maybe changing, considering what we've all been through in the last two years when suddenly everybody went home and you couldn't get to those paper invoices or those paper POs, do you see more businesses going," help us out, we've got to digitize. We don't have a choice." >> Yes, absolutely. Absolutely. So it's moving suppliers onto more digital invoice submission methods whether it be the portal whether it be digital PDF sending in through common inboxes. And then moving it away from invoices not going to the manufacturing plants anymore. We've got that going to a central location. If it needs to be physical, you've got one place that houses it versus many desperate ones. >> Well, and Coupa talked a lot about that, the last couple days about essentially getting rid of the silos. - Yes. I was talking with Rob earlier today. Raja Hammoud was here as well. And talking about, there's still a lot of silos out there, that our organizations are operating under which limits their visibility and limits their potential, I think, to be competitive. >> Right. And I think what we find is procurement is historically, has been a very siloed organization. Because that's been the back of what a lot of businesses grow on as either R and D or procurement buyers. And they don't want to have a lot of control in their space. So making sure that they can have the flexibility to buy real time, maybe use a lot of institutional knowledge to overcome some process or system gaps. So there can be some challenges moving them into centralized model, but when you think about the broader business case on rationalizing your supplier base and making sure that you're getting most favorable terms with your suppliers. And then also having control over when cash goes out the door, who goes out the door too, far outweighs some of the other benefits associated with having it decentralized. >> These days, businesses in any industry don't have time to wait for tribal knowledge to be able to help determine the next direction. We are also used to everything on demand that the real time access to the data, the insights where are where's the money going? Who are we contracting with? That real time is no longer a nice thing to have for organizations. It's a requirement. >> Right. And, I think one big shift we've seen is, a lot of companies used to be organized functionally. So meaning you had finance operating a silo procurement operate in silo, IT operating a silo but that's really been flipped on its head. And then that now they're organized around end in processes. So when you look at procure to pay, you're touching a diverse set of stakeholders from sourcing, procurement, IT, treasury, legal, finance, and so on. So tribal knowledge doesn't work anymore. You have to have tight handoffs, you have to have tight orchestration and you need to have stakeholders aligned. >> How do you help customers navigate that? Because one of the things that can be challenging is, especially for maybe more historied organizations that are used to and very comfortable in their swim lanes and their silos. How do you help them from a change management perspective, be able to connect all those pieces together so that ultimately everybody's job is, able to deliver more value to the business? >> Right. So one of the things that we at Clearsulting are really good at is we understand the language of each of those stakeholder groups. So we can talk to finance, we can talk to procurement, we can talk to sourcing and IT and we understand what makes them tick, and what their objectives are and how they think. So when we work with our clients, we really make sure that we have that through line around. What's the common story here, the common message that's going to resonate with everyone because it's really important to have your stakeholders engaged and on board to have successful outcomes with Coupa or any sort of p to p transformation. >> I want to talk about talent for a second. You mentioned that a minute ago and we're all living through the great resignation. >> Yes. - I'm sure you have friends. I do too. That decided to make changes during the last couple of years. The opportunities are there, but it's important for companies to be able to retain talent. But, and part of that to your point earlier was especially for the younger generations you need to be able to have the technology and the capabilities to enable that generation to want to stay and grow within an organization. >> Right. And I think Coupa has really driven value to our client's talent strategies in a couple ways, chiefly, it's moving the robot out of a human, which I mentioned a little bit about earlier. So a lot of the activities that are repetitive, rule based, that historically we've thrown people out, to try and get it done. Now, the system can handle that. As long as you've got your processes designed accordingly, it can accommodate a lot of those exceptions. And the work that people are supporting after that is more meaningful, right? It's understanding, okay, what's valuable to the business? How can I help support decisions to do that? And what can we do around continuous improvement to continue to maximize what we're doing? And then secondly, around the great resignation, the remote or hybrid model is a key recruit recruitment mechanism. - Yes. And using Coupa, which is a SaaS solution. And one that can be orchestrated and designed globally, allows for more flexible models both from remote to in person but also allows for global flexibility, right? And global workflows. >> Global flexibility, global workflows, but also that global collaboration that I think we've we all need to have. And that's really what Coupa thrives on that community. That's really, I always say it's very symbiotic. >> Yeah, absolutely. Absolutely. And Coupa being an integrated solution that as we mentioned, is end to end source to pay, allows for seamless intergration across each of your communities and each parts of your business, because then you can look at things globally as opposed to some of the siloed and more regional views that they had before. >> Right. What are some of the, the last question for you. What are some of the things that are exciting to you about what you've heard at the event the last couple of days, some of the future direction of Clearsulting. What's on your plate? >> The session yesterday morning around collaboration was really powerful to us. Because we find the collaboration with our clients is a big change agent to driving value. And then thinking about your supplier network as an ecosystem to collaborate on, is a big takeaway from us this weekend. And it's been really powerful to see everyone working together and finding creative solutions that meet everyone's needs in a global workforce. >> Yep. I agree. Kyle, thank you for joining me on the program this afternoon talking about Clearsulting, your partnership with Coupa and how you're helping those customers go touch us. We appreciate your insights. >> Thank you, Lisa, it's a pleasure to be here. >> All right. Well, Kyle Rogers, I'm Lisa Martin. You're watching the Cube's coverage of Coupa inspire day two, coming at you from Las Vegas. (gentle music)

>>Hey guys, and gals. Welcome back to Las Vegas. Lisa Martin here at Coupa inspire 2022 with about 2,500 folks. Very excited to be back in person. I can assure you that is the vibe that is here to be. You joins me next to the managing director at KPMG Toby. It's great to have you on the program. >>Thanks. It's great to be here. >>Isn't it great to be back? I know it feels so normal. We were talking before we went live, that it feels normal. >>It does. It does. And it feels great. And after a great kickoff with, uh, with Rob >>Fantastic, Rob Bernstein has, and Barbara Corcoran, Rob has probably the highest energy of a CEO that I've ever gotten to work with. So you always know you're in for a good high energy conversation. Then Barbara Corcoran coming in, Jon Taffer with bar rescue is it's a, been a great morning so far. So you let's talk about you, you specialize in digital transformation within the procurement and the contract management spaces. Talk to me a little bit about that. >>Yeah, absolutely. You know, I, uh, I love helping folks to re-imagine their, uh, operating models to solve today's challenges. And there are so many challenges coming out in this post COVID world, um, that many of our clients are dealing with. And, and I'm never short on phone calls and, you know, uh, from, from my clients reaching out for help, um, to really figure out how to retool, um, and, and, and really help themselves to transform, to be able to address the, the, the changes to come. >>I heard a really smart description of the last two years today, compressed transformation. We've been talking about digital transformation for years, and then we've also been talking about it's acceleration during the COVID era, but the compressed transformation, I thought that's probably something that's here to stay. Nobody's going to want access to older, less data slower. >>Yep. >>They're just not >>A hundred percent. What >>Are some of the trends that you've observed in your role in the last couple of years? >>Yeah, I, I absolutely believe that folks that took advantage of that digital transformation pre pandemic have actually been able to fare much better than those that have held off on those investments. Um, for whatever reasons, you know, there are always different priorities, but those that have actually gotten that journey started, um, pre pandemic have definitely fared, uh, for, well, I think the trends that I'm seeing today, the CPO's challenge, um, and there are many challenges, um, but you know, the, you know, coming out of the, uh, post COVID era, you are now recovering and ramping up production as a result, your buying activities increasing, right. Um, and, and other ways other than increasing, um, activity. There's also the changing of requirements. So, you know, the folks in the front office are looking at new technologies to innovate new products and services, and that's going to change what the, the mix of the skills and resources that you need in the back office. >>Um, in addition to that, um, there are other requirements like ESG. And so as you're thinking about retooling and being able to, um, buy more sustainably or drive diversity, um, with the spend that you have, that's also changing the skill mix that you have. And I think on top of speak, uh, on top of that, um, the skills and the talent, we are dealing with the, a unfortunate situation that many companies are with the, uh, you know, the great resignation where the talent is, has as quickly exited the workforce. Um, and, uh, and, and with the demand increasing and changing, that puts everyone in a tough spot. And so those are really the big challenges that I've seen with the clients. Most recently, as we're coming out of COVID >>Of your customer conversations, escalated up the C-suite you talk, you mentioned the chief procurement officer. If we think of every company, these days has to be a data company to be successful. If they're not, they're probably not going to be around. Are you noticing that from a supply chain perspective within procurement and contract management, is that escalating the C-suite to be much more of a C-suite or board level initiative? >>Absolutely. Absolutely. I think what folks have realized in many of their, even the earlier digital transformation efforts, it was very geared around automating and streamlining transactions and processes, not so much putting data at the core. Yes, you would get intelligence out of that, but we hadn't architected your entire organization around data and good quality data and what is needed, um, to be able to actually translate that data to meaningful insights, to make the decisions or drive, um, visibility within to your, into your supply chain. Um, so when you think about things that are, um, such as ESG, where you really need to know, um, your tier one, tier two tier three suppliers, and all the impacts that that has, um, in order to drive to those, um, ESG objectives that you're telling your investors, you're telling your customers, and you're telling your, um, your employees about it's very important. You have to be centered around data and be able to be able to see their entire supply chain. And if you weren't, if you weren't architected to do so, doing it as an afterthought is very costly because you've already made those investments >>Very costly. And also, I mean, from a business perspective, I think, you know, we, we talk so often Toby and you probably do as well about it, business alignment. It's one of those, it's like digital transformation. It's almost a buzzword if you will, but it's critical because I'm seeing a lot of data and research from, from folks like Gardner that are showing that massive percentages of businesses believe that the technology is really the driver and the fuel of the business going forward. So no longer can it and lines of business be separated. >>Yeah, I, I totally agree. I actually think that when I mentioned about new skills, if you think about the next generation and the new operating models, um, uh, you know, the, the, the new folks coming out of college have to have that skill set because process and technology are, are, are completely linked. Um, and I think that the organizations, the future and the sick, the most successful ones will know how to actually be more human centric and be able to harness the data through the technologies. So I'll actually allow you and I to do what we do best, right, which is collaborate and negotiate deals work on our relationship versus focused on the technology or entering data into forms and all the administrative components that, uh, many of my clients are plagued with today, >>Collaboration, I think has maybe become even more important in the last two years that we've been so limited about how to collaborate. Thankfully, we have a lot of technologies to do that, but when I think of Coupa collaboration, community are two words that jump out. Talk to me a little bit about from an, a partnership perspective alignment there with the collaborative spirit at KPMG. >>Yeah, absolutely. Um, you know, for, for us, uh, I recently just presented on a very similar topic that nothing great in business is done by a single person. And it takes partners to be able to drive the innovation needed to solve the new challenges of tomorrow. And, and I see our relationship with that. You know, they offer a platform, they offer a method to get access to the data and simplify it in a way for our clients so that they can focus on the relationships and driving the collaboration with their suppliers. And, and I think that that's, that's the thought leadership, uh, in partnership with, uh, with them that we'd like to bring to the table. >>Speaking of alignment between KPMG and Qubit. Talk to me a little bit about ESG as, as sort of a new initiative within KPMG. Talk to me a little bit about that. And what's some of the high level objectives are >>Absolutely. Um, I wouldn't say that it's, it's, it's new. I think it's always been there and there's always been a focus, but I think the recent events and with the regulatory environment changing as well, and as with consumers, consumer behavior, driving and investor community driving towards, um, uh, ESG, I think that is quickly changing how companies are prioritizing that within the Mo amongst everything else that they have. And as a result, I think the CPO's role in that equation is ever so important when it comes to delivering and operationalizing ESG. >>I imagine it, the CPS role must be a lot more strategic these >>Days >>Because they really have to be kind of a transformation change agent. >>Yeah. And actually in most cases, the CPO is perfect for that because that's been their role, um, in, uh, in, in, uh, in many cases before. Um, and I think, yeah, this is just yet another dimension that they didn't have to attack and, and incorporate into the, uh, into the process of selecting the right partner or the right supplier within their, um, within the, uh, with, with who they want to onboard for, for the company. >>Got it. Okay. Let's talk about advice now for companies that are either in the early stages of the supply chain transformation really digitizing, how do they get started? Is it too late for some? >>No, I don't think it's ever too late. I don't think, I, I think, um, I don't think it's too late, you know, and especially with the very big focus on digital and tech these days, sometimes being the late, being late to the game allows folks to actually work out the kinks for, you know, the bleeding edge technologies. And so that makes it even less risky for them to adopt in, in many cases. Um, that's, that's, uh, that, that's what we've seen, but, you know, I think the advice is get educated, uh, really just understand as much as you can around what other people are doing. Are there other, um, uh, peer group, uh, companies like yours, you know, like themselves that are actually going through the transformation or have gone before and just kind of understand what were the drivers of that strategy and what were the outcomes that you can learn from them, get help from externals. >>Um, and whether they be technology partners, consultants, and actually hiring new skills and bringing in new perspectives to help you to own and drive that strategy important. This is super important and you can't outsource these things, right. This needs to come from within, especially when you think about things as purposeful and impactful as ESG. Um, those, those cannot be outsourced. Um, and I think those would be the, uh, the kind of the two key things. Um, but I always also say, um, take an outward in approach, as you're thinking about your new strategy, focus on what your employees are saying about, you know, your supply chain and how easy it is to actually understand and, and work within your supply chain. Talk to your suppliers, talk to your internal business partners, to really reflect and understand how do you make this process as easy as possible for them to comply with. >>I think one of the things I was reading, uh, in preparation for coming here is that some, some survey, a survey that that Cooper did of about 800 decision makers. And one of the things that was overwhelming as a theme is that a lot of organizations don't feel that they have the right data visibility to drive an ESG strategic initiative. So what Coupa does providing that visibility and the ability to collaborate and share across the community is, seems to be something that's going to be a business critical must have going forward. >>Yeah, a hundred percent, you know, many, uh, many of our clients operate under, you know, uh, not under like mandates or compliance, driven, um, kind of policies in the commercial world, many cases you have to influence the buying behavior. And so you can't do that without data. I'd like to think in this day and age presented with the right supplier options with them at the right point in time, you're able to influence and drive the spend to diverse candidates, sustainable options, you know, and there's, you know, not just savings, not just the lowest cost option, but there's so many other things to consider in this day and age. And I think that's where it's so important to be able to have a platform like Hoopa, to be able to gather that data acquire external sources of data, such as ESG related data and make that to, um, to, to all parties, um, and be that source of truth so that you can drive the >>Here's some truth. And also even something that was talked about this morning during the keynote is accountability. And have you heard Jon Taffer from bar rescue talking this morning, but he was talking about an 120 bar rescues. He goes, I've never met one person that has admitted from day one of the four days. They shoot that I'm responsible for the reason that my business is not successful. He goes, everybody has an excuse. There's no accountability until you really force someone to take probably that hard look in the mirror that they don't want to take, but that accountability within organizations within an overall business is critical. >>Yeah, I think, uh, I absolutely believe that went away to solve that is providing the data and making it available. And, um, and really once again, I think it goes back to driving that behavior that you want. And I think it starts with, uh, with, with leadership and I think the accountability, accountability of leadership, and to be able to drive that type of culture within your organization. Um, but absolutely you need data to be able to do that and, and be able to monitor that as well, you know, as a leader to make sure that that accountability is appropriately distributed. >>Right. But one of the things, I mean, I think patients has been in short supply the last two years have been, we've learned that. I think also that another thing we've learned is that access to real-time data is no longer, oh, then that would be great. It's you've got to have that for your business to be differentiated because the, you know, if we think about the consumer side, the consumers are so vocal on things like social media, if the experience isn't tailored, personalized and instantaneous, We have a very short Rob talked about the very short attention span that his kids have. I'm like three minutes. We don't even have that in business or on the consumer side. I don't think. >>Yeah, I, yeah, I see that in my kids and what he said today was, was spot on. Um, so, you know, when I think about my career and where I'm at, and he said the same thing, I mean, our kids are coming into the, there'll be in procurement organizations very soon, sooner than, you know, then, then I like to admit. Um, and as a result, I think that, um, we talked a bit about talent shortage and the challenge with keeping talent. And I think that what you had just expressed is very important is that that experience for the employee, but you come into a workforce and they expect you to have these quick turnarounds, but you've, you offered them tools that require spreadsheets and old archaic systems to be able to solve today's challenges. I think that you're not going to be able to retain your talent right along. Right. >>That's a great point. That's an absolutely fantastic point. Last question for you before we wrap here is so the changes that organizations need to make with respect to being prepared for ESG reporting requirements that are coming down the pike, obviously being, having a data strategy has got to be one of us. >>Yeah, absolutely. I think, um, I think we, many procurement organizations were really geared around savings and a very compliance, driven manner. And when you think about ESG, I think you gotta be very data-driven. Um, and so that should be a priority focus of how do you retool yourself to be able to acquire mass amounts of data, figuring out where you need to go, um, to get that data, whether they be third parties, whether they be directly from the supplier, um, and be able to aggregate it and provide the insight into those reporting standards that are required. Um, and then to be able to actually measure progress along those sustainability or diversity goals that it might be established at, at, at the leadership level. So I think it's coming down the pike. It's a matter of time. I think it's, I think it's, uh, you know, it's something that I've been waiting for to see. Um, and it's interesting to see how, uh, how quickly that it's, it's come down. Um, but I think with the regulatory compliance coming down, um, this is going to be moving very quick and people need to get ready. >>That's good. They need to be ready. Excellent to be thank you for joining me on the program today, talking about what you were doing at KPMG, what it's doing with Kupa and how organizations really should be thinking about and approaching supply chain, digital transformation. We appreciate your insights. >>Yeah, absolutely. Thank you so much. All >>Right. For Toby, you I'm Lisa Martin. You're watching the cube in Las Vegas at Cooper inspire 2022 stick around. My next guest will join me shortly.

(soft bright music) (logo swooshing) (crowd murmuring) >> Hey everyone, welcome to Las Vegas! Lisa Martin here on the ground with theCUBE about Coupa Inspire 2022. And can you hear the buzz behind me? It is so great to be in person. Nick Banich joins me, the Chief Revenue Officer and Global Partnership Manager for the Coupa Alliance at Miebach Consulting. Nick, it's great to have you on the program. >> Thanks for having me, Lisa. First time here at Inspire and it's exciting. >> Is it exciting? It's great to see this room packed. >> It is! It feels, like, the pandemic is finally- >> It does. >> Maybe behind us. >> Right, fingers crossed. (Nick chuckles) So talk to us a little bit about Miebach Consulting and a little bit about the Coupa Partnership, so the audience gets that understanding of what you guys do. >> Yeah, guess, we're kind of new to the Coupa ecosystem. You could say, we came as part of the acquisition of LLamasoft. So Miebach is a supply chain focus, advisory, consultancy, engineering firm. So we have three different business lines. Supply chain strategy, where we do things like supply chain design and the Coupa platform, planning, inventory, engineering, automation studies, and distribution centers, with the labor crunch that we're facing right now. As well as we have a digital transformation group that works on getting the decision-making as a supply chain industry into the digital realm and away from Microsoft Excel. >> Let's talk about the digitization of the supply chain. You know, one of the things that we've seen in the last couple of years is this massive acceleration to digital because businesses in every industry had no choice. But where are, what are the current trends from a digital supply chain perspective? >> You know, I think the, kind of the integration of the compression of the decision-making cycle has really gotten companies to not look at strategic decisions then operational decisions and tactical decisions in execution. That all has to be compressed now with the volatility we've all been exposed to. I mean, basically, for the past 20 years, we took the supply chain and turned it into a Swiss watch. It was very long, very well orchestrated. But with the volatility, with labor issues, with the land war in Europe, this volatility and change is requiring companies to be much more adaptive. And they've had to compress that decision cycle down and the Coupa platform, certainly, from a supply chain standpoint, absolutely helps infuse that process to shorten time from question to answer and allow you to address strategic and tactical topics in parallel to one another and not kind of waterfall down over the decision making product. >> That's important, 'cause these days, there is no time for waterfalls. So let's unpack the Coupa supply chain design platform. Talk to me about it, what it does and how it is helping that acceleration? >> Yeah, so it's incredibly powerful. And what it allows you to do is create that digital representation. We can take a three dimensional world and put it into a two dimensional linear program. And within the same platform we can optimize strategically and take a look at end to end type of supply chain decisions, nearshoring, onshoring, supplier diversification, and risk aspects. We can look at it more operationally. We're actually looking at which manufacturing plans should make what? What distribution centers should serve what customers? How do I segment my products? How do I segment my customers? Then within the same modules, you can use and go to your inventory optimization, not only optimize inventory, but also simulate it, which gives you phenomenal power in a world where there is so much uncertainty. You can apply risk in those questions of what if, so you're ready. So that way, when the thing happens, you're not that scrambling to have analysts crunch Excel files to see what do you do to normalize inventory levels or normalize your supplier base. You're able to be more proactive with the predictive and prescriptive analytics that the full suite provides for you. >> That is essential. If that's one of the lessons we've learned in the last couple of years, not if, but when. >> Nick: Yes. >> Talk to me about customers that are using the platform. What are some of the, using it well. What are some of the things that they have in common? >> You know, I think the organizations that are implementing it well, look for it. They view it as a real platform. You know, historically, supply chain design, network optimization, was seen as a tool, and companies implement it as a tool. You purchase licenses, you assign a couple of people to work on it from your analytical department and you just went with it. This is a very powerful platform to completely revolutionize how you make decisions within your supply chain. And you need to approach it the same way you approach a new warehouse management system, a new planning platform, a new labor management system, the change management aspects, the organizational aspects, the education of stakeholders on what is this, demystifying it. So it's not a black box and everybody knows what it can and should do and how best to utilize it. So those organizations that view it as more than a distribution network tool, "Hey, where do I put my new warehouse? Hey, this lease is coming up in Central Europe. It's coming up in Ohio. Do I extend the lease? Do I need to move?" That's, like, a level zero maturity on our maturity graph. The very mature companies are using it and infusing it both strategically, operational, technically, and are using it for distribution decisions, transportation decisions around mode selection, production footprint decisions. You have the capability to have a digital twin. And by having, the other thing companies struggle with is, they just build one model. >> Uh-hmm. >> I start out, I buy the product. You know, I get it built in, I move everything to the cloud and then I do a distribution solve for the U.S. And then the European group says, "Hey, that was great. That was insightful. Can we do the same thing in Europe?" And you take that model and then you add Europe into it. And then the production group says, "Hey, you know, we're thinking about changing some of our make-buy decisions. Can you model what the effect would be on total cost if we did do some nearshoring?" And all of a sudden, you turn your one model that you had built for a specific purpose into this Christmas tree where everybody's hanging their ornaments. And what you really need to do is having a modeling strategy. What type, you should have a volume, a portfolio of models you can pull from and say, "Hey, here's our strategic end to end model. Hey, here's our tactical Asian production models. Hey, here's our total landed cost for top 15% of our customers." And having that set of models, so you have right models, the right questions. >> Uh-hmm. >> That's what the companies that are really scaling this and really excelling. And you'll notice a pattern. The companies that are excelling that have the Coupa platform, typically, you'll find them on list, like, Gartner's Top 25 and things along those lines. Because it is a very powerful platform when you unlock the art of the possible with it. >> Sounds, like, those are companies that are very innovative. But where does the company, that maybe isn't there yet? How do they start? 'Cause it sounds, like, there's a tremendous wealth of potential and opportunities that the technology can deliver. Do they have to start with executive buy-in? What do you see as kind of, like, some of those early steps? >> This is a change management exercise from the very beginning. So creating that sense of urgency, creating your powerful coalition. You have to start with that. If you view this as, "Hey, we're going to have a tool, we're going to use this once, and then our supply chain's fixed for the next 10 years." I mean, I think most leaders are realizing that those days are long gone. That supply chain design has to be a continual topic at the top levels. You know, supply chain is on the lips of every politician and every (chuckles) board member right now. So this is a wonderful moment for those supply chain leaders that have wanted to infuse a greater level of digital decision-making. This is the perfect opportunity. You can get buy-in, like, you never had before. Your CFO is probably analyzing labor inflation, fuel inflation rates, disruptions on supply base, and you're probably having to deal with more pressure out of the CFO and its department than you ever had to in the past. We see it with our clients. The pressure is on with those leaders. And this allows you to very quickly be much more holistic in that decision-making. You're not relying on how good was the analyst, that made this Excel file that told you to open up this plan, move this distribution center, serve this customer base in this way. It's not based on how that data looks and how good that analyst was, you're infusing an entire practice into your organization. >> That's critical, because every company these days is a data company. If they're not, they're not going to be around. It's about the ability to have visibility extract the value from the data to make those data-driven decisions, because we don't have time. We heard a lot about that from a real-time perspective and the keynote this morning that's table stakes run any organization. >> Yeah, and with the move of the platform to the cloud, as part of the Coupa ecosystem, with the DDM, with the rapid model builder, and all those things that come along with it, it will significantly squash the amount out of time you have from question to answer. Because the first time you do this, it probably takes four months. And of that four months to ask that question, and get an answer, build your model, you know, replicate the 3D world in that 2D environment. Over half of that time is spent on cleaning data, building the baseline model, aligning with finance, they peanut butter spread certain aspects of cost onto the onto SKUs and really getting correct cost allocations for A, B, and C SKUs. You spend half your time just playing around with your data to get the model to work right now. Once you add that model, next time, question and answer infinitely quicker. But you have to have a good data strategy. You have to have the right data architecture. If you don't have that specific to supply chain, leaders really need to get on that. Because what we see a lot of times is organizations will have an enterprise data strategy. >> Uh-hmm. >> And they're going to build a data warehouse or a data lake, you know, whatever, I'm a consultant, so I'm also guilty of the buzz words. But, we kind of call it the supply chain data plan. You don't need to wait for the whole enterprise to get ready to have all of your data sorted out in a single instance, homogenize. Start collecting that supply chain data, have a data strategy around it. So that way, you can start replicating these things then you can feed it back into the enterprise data strategy. But you have to get your data right. It's the old adage garbage in garbage out. >> Right. >> It's still true to this day. No matter how powerful the analytical tools are, we're infusing machine learning, artificial intelligence into some of the solves in the platform. But if you don't have that good data, you're going to struggle. So that's a key piece to it, getting that executive buy-in and having that right data strategy will set you on a much smoother path to success than if you don't do those things. >> Right, the data strategy is critical. If not, one of the biggest competitive differentiators these days. Where is the chief data officer, the chief digital officer, the chief information officer, in these conversations that Miebach is having with customers? >> Too often, not at the forefront enough. >> Lisa: Really? >> Those clients that have that group, have that organization, and they have influencing power, those programs go much quicker, much simpler. The rate of adoption, the scalability of the program. All of a sudden, you're not thinking about, "What am I going to do with one or two analysts interacting with the product?" You're now developing apps. You have your planners interfacing with it. You have capacity managers interacting with the digital model. Those that don't have that, do have much more impetus, because it's always the adage of, "Oh, IT, what do we do? And our data's a mess. We have this data program and our IT resources are super constrained." So you have to bring those people to the table. You have to have them part of the conversation, 'cause they can be an incredible enabler if you bring them and get them bought in. >> That's a great point of those enablers. And especially, given the fact that nobody has extra time to waste here. This is a, everything is so fast moving. You mentioned supply chain being on the lips of every politician. Everybody's lips, everybody's expecting some delivery that is delayed for whatever reason. >> I mean, 12 years ago when I started with the firm, and people, "Oh, what does the firm do?" I'm like, "Oh we're a global supply chain consultancy." And they're like, "What?" >> Yeah. (laughs) >> You know, now everybody knows. And they're like, "Oh, yeah!" It's amazing that the revolution, I mean, the pandemic has been incredibly unfortunate with all the hardships and deaths and everything and still dealing with hotspots and things. I think it did bring supply chain, supply chain was struggling for a while to get a seat at the table. Organizations started having chief supply chain officers. You know, that was a new thing not that long ago. This has brought table stakes to the supply chain organization. My challenge back to us is what do we do with this now? >> Right. >> For years, as an industry, we've asked to be at the table, we're here now, spotlight's on us. It's time for us to deliver. Things like the Coupa platform are an incredible enabler of that. But you got to get it right when you roll it out. >> The spotlight's on you, but there's also a skill shortage. Talk to me about that. I just saw you do a big sigh. How can Miebach and Coupa with this platform help to mitigate some of the supply chain skills gap that organizations in every industry are facing? >> You know, it really comes down to the human element and when people talk a lot about sustainability, they talk about environmental conditions. There's a human sustainability topic we have to cover. Nobody likes being assigned to be a data analyst on a transformational project. And you're crunching Excel spreadsheets and running it sequel coding. No, no, that's not an enjoyable fulfilling task for many people. >> Lisa: No. >> There are special people that it is, and God bless (chuckles) them. So with things, like, the apps, with things, like, building out, so that way, we can take the people that you do have and have them making decisions, driving discussions around the insights the platform's giving versus just crunching numbers and building models. This is where you're going to have a much higher retainment. People are going to be excited about the job. They're going to have fun at the job because you do see a turnover of organizations that don't get the data strategy right, that people don't like being in a supply chain center of excellence in perpetuity. Again, there are certain people that are, but a lot of times, once the people get this analytical insight to how strategically the design of the company is set up, business units will grab them and give them a significant role. And then you're continually churning and replacing your COE talent. So having a talent strategy for your COE and having a strategy of how you're going to leverage, you know, we're in a world where my first grader's are learning coding, right? Like, you need to have a data strategy. So that way, that becomes your people strategy as well. And too many times, people think, "Hey, I buy the platform. I need a project strategy. What are the projects we're going to do?" And not often enough, do they talk about the people element of it to really make this work. And it absolutely has to be part of the discussion as you're setting up your center of excellence, it's people, it's processes and it's technology. >> Absolutely! >> You got to bring those three together or you real struggle a bit. >> You do. And then change management is not an easy thing to do for anybody. But one of the things you talked about, this is the pandemic as an accelerator of getting the supply chain folks to the table, being able to accelerate, getting data into the hands of people that can actually take in clean insights and make decisions based on that. So if you look into a crystal ball, what's the future of supply chain design? Where is it going? >> I believe we're going to see a lot more of movement towards applications and infusing of artificial intelligence and machine learning. It's there. It's ready to go. What a lot of companies are lacking and it goes back to what we already talked about is the data piece of it. I mean, we have been developing algorithms in a machine learning environment for three, four years now. It goes back to garbage in, and garbage out. So I think it's going to be a big element of supply chain talent, securing that, figuring out with robotic product process automation and things like that. How do you take non-value added work so you can take the talent you do have and give them more fulfilling work? I think companies are going to need to have data strategies and all that unlocks applications and things. So you can democratize, right? You have this digital twin in the cloud. How many people within the organization cross-functionally have questions about the supply chain? >> Right. >> What if this happens? What if that happens? Hey, if we do this, what does it effect upstream downstream? >> Right. >> So once you build that cloud, develop the applications that allow the entire enterprise to interface with this digital representation to play around and see what the effect is to then make better, more informed, more holistic decisions, drive more conversational, cross functionally amongst leaders, and even below the top leadership level. I think this is really where we're going to go and the companies that don't just survive, but thrive in this new normal, whatever that's going to be, is going to be the companies that get that right. >> They have to embrace that. There's no doubt. >> Nick: Have to embrace it. >> Nick, it's been great having you on the program, talking about supply chain, what's going on there, the accelerators, but also the opportunities. Thank you so much for sharing your insights. >> I appreciate the opportunity. So it's been a great conversation. I look forward to the rest of the event! >> I agree. For Nick Banich, I'm Lisa Martin on the ground in Las Vegas at Coupa Inspire 2022. Stick around, I'll be back with my next guest shortly. (bright music)

(upbeat music) >> Hey everyone. Welcome back to theCUBE's coverage of Coupa Inspire 2022. We are in Las Vegas at the beautiful Cosmopolitan hotel. I'm your host, Lisa Martin. Brian McKillips joins me next, a managing director at Accenture. Brian, it's great to have you on the program. >> Thanks for having me, I'm glad to be here. >> So you have an interesting, you lead a lot of stuff at Accenture and I want to read this off, so I get it right. You lead the intelligent platform services strategy and the industry and functions platform group. Talk to me about those responsibilities. >> Yeah, so the intelligent platform services is the place in the business where we have kind of our large software partners, SAP, Oracle, Microsoft, Workday, Salesforce and Adobe. And we kind of think of ourselves as kind of the engine that powers industry and functional solutions, right? And the way Accenture's gone to market over the last couple of years has been kind of bringing together our breadth of experience all the way from strategy, all the way through operations and these big technology transformations are at the core of that. So that's what we do in intelligent platform services. And we recently launched this what we call the industry and functions platforms group because we realized there's a lot of strategic partners that are critical for us to be have a strong practice around, COUPA being one of them, you know in the supply chain and sourcing and procurement space so that we could create a home to be able to deliver these solutions globally and at scale. So I lead both kind of the strategy across all of IPS and then the new industry and functions platform group. >> Got it. All right. So you're here to talk to me about composable technology. First of all, define that for the audience so they understand what you're talking about. >> Yeah, you bet. So, you know, at Accenture, we're talking a lot about this is the age of compressed transformation, meaning, you know, change is only going to speed up and the need to change and so our clients are really struggling with not only kind of moving fast but that pressure around having to change as dynamics around the world change. So in the age of compressed transformation, we were really talking about how our clients should be kind of reorienting the way they think about their tech stack. And because, you know, historically a lot of us grew up in kind of monolithic implementations with, you know one software provider. But today it's really about composing technology to create new industry, new ways to solve industry problems, functional processes, customer experiences, right? And so composable technology we think about it in three parts. One is a cloud foundation that is, you know, the hyperscalers are a critical part of that. Secondly, our digital core and these are the kind of the historic software packages at the center of a lot of the industry and functional business processes. So you think about SAP and Oracle and Salesforce and things like that. But then around that digital core you have composable elements to be able to plug in. And that could be things like other software packages but it's also kind of industry IP or you know, edge devices, you know think IOT, think smart appliances, think and when you put, pull all those things together you need to be able to not only configure it once but configure and reconfigure as the dynamics of the marketplace change. >> So composable technology isn't necessarily new but has the pandemic been an accelerator of some of the things that you're seeing now in terms of why it's important, what's different about it now as being a foundation for competitive differentiation? >> Yeah, for sure. And it's, you know, I, anybody who's in technology say, you know, you tell them about this idea, they're like, well this isn't new, we've had service oriented architectures for 20 years. >> Right. >> You know, we've been talking about integrating things forever, but the you know, much like we all five to seven years ago we knew that we'd be using our phones to pay for pretty much everything but the tech hadn't caught up, right. Not every restaurant or store that you went to had the point of sale set up, right. So we all kind of knew that was coming. And the same thing has kind of happened around this idea of about composable technology and the three things that are new are one is that the cloud foundation is here, right. >> Yes. >> Where, you know, you now have not only kind of hyperscale high speed compute in at the core you actually have at the edge as well. And the same thing with high speed network, you know you have Starlink, you have 5G rolling out. So you have that cloud foundation that really wasn't there before. The second thing that's happening is the posture of a lot of the ecosystem, major ecosystem players has changed, right. And this started, you know when Satya Nadella took over Microsoft where Microsoft was very much a kind of a closed environment. >> Right. >> Where Satya under his leadership has really kind of changed the posture of being able to integrate into that. And we've seen that really pretty much across the entire landscape. And then lastly, it's become, you know, cheaper and, you know, quicker to be able to integrate with platforms like MuleSoft and others where there's kind of full scale integration platforms. So those are, those are the kind of the things that are new that allows for composable technology to be here in the real world. >> So it's something that's tangible, it's real organizations need to be on this bandwagon I imagine or they're going to be left behind. Gartner had some interesting stats that your team sent over and they were talking about these stats that were very compelling in terms of a seismic shift which always, you hear seismic living in California I think earthquakes, but something substantial. And they said, this seismic shift is going to happen by 2023. And I thought, hang on, that's less than a year away. >> Yeah. >> And they talked about by 2023, organizations that have adopted an intelligent composable approach will outpace competition 80% in the speed of new feature implementation. So if an organization hasn't started on that now is it too late? >> I would say not necessarily too late but they need to look for ways to change their disposition, right. And one of the ways that we've been helping clients do this is through pre-integrated solutions, right. So you know, in the past, the motion would be we would work with a client, they would work with our kind of strategists and consultants and say, what does the the future of supply chain look like for example. And if the client liked it, they would say, okay, I love it, what do I do next? Right. Then there would be another consulting engagement, another consulting engagement and then there would be a blueprint and architecture and at some point there was an implementation and a run. We've actually said we're investing heavily with our ecosystem partners to be able to pre-integrate solutions. So when that supply chain strategist says this is what the post COVID supply chain should look like and the client says, I love it what do I do next, that strategist can turn around and say, well, we've got a pre-integrated solution with SAP at the core sitting on a Microsoft Azure stack integrated with Coupa, wrapped with AI and machine learning and we can drop that and configure it for an environment. So that's how we're working with clients who are in that position that really need to kind of change their disposition is to bring these pre-integrated solutions and drop them in. >> Where are your conversations at the C- Suite level? Because this is, I hear many things in what you just said. Part of it is change management, which is very challenging. There's, people are very resistant to that. >> Brian: Yeah. >> One of the things that we've learned in the last two years is if it's going to come it's going to come but where are your conversations within that executive suite in terms of getting buy-in and going this is the direction we have to go in. >> Brian: Yeah. >> Because our business needs to be not just survive but thrive. >> Yeah. Yeah. These are, I mean, there are certainly of course in kind of traditional channels of tech whether it's, you know, the CIO or the CTO, but increasingly we're seeing this is a CEO discussion and, you know, our CEO Julie Sweet, is very, very market pacing and is having top to top conversations talking about compressed transformation, talking about composable technology because it's no longer just a, you know, a back office function as you know, right. I mean, this is really core to how companies you know, are, change their business models, make money, right. And it's a constant evolution. And that's why we talk about that kind of configuring and reconfiguring, it's not just coming in, implementing once, run it for five years and then when it's time to upgrade, we come back. >> No. >> We really want to be the partner with our clients to basically move in and, you know, across the patch whether it's specific industry processes, specific functional processes, specific customer experiences, we want to be the partner that is constantly tuning and configuring and reconfiguring and composing these solutions from across the ecosystem. >> And helping those businesses in any industry evolve as you talked about this compressed timeline, compressed transformation, such an interesting way of describing it but it's really true, it's what we've been living the last couple of years. >> Brian: Yeah. And so I want to get into Accenture's technology vision. You touched on this a little bit but there was some stats that your team provided that I thought were really, really interesting, a survey that Accenture did, 77% of executives, and we were just talking about the C-suite, state that their tech architecture is becoming critical to the overall success of the organization. So that awareness is there for sure en masse. Another thing that, stat that was interesting was 90% of business and IT execs agree that to be agile we always talk about agility, right, be resilient, organizations need to fast forward this digital transformation at the core. There's that compressed transformation. >> Brian: Yeah. >> Those are very high numbers. >> Brian: Yeah. >> In terms of where organizations say we see where we need to be. What's the vision at Accenture to help organizations get there fast? >> Yeah. Well, I think it's, you know, the thing that came to mind as you were talking is that we have, you know, major clients that have had this had in the, you know consumer packaged goods and apparel space that have had one way that they've done business is directly through retailers, you know, for pretty much their whole existence. Suddenly they need to shift to a direct to consumer model both in terms of marketing, in terms of commerce and that's not, you know, you don't just flip a switch in the back office and, you know, call IT and say hey, hey, can you change around a few things? It's actually shifting the entire core, it touches everything, it touches point of sale, it touches the customer experience, it touches supply chain, it touches employee experience even, right. >> Yeah. >> And so that's why I think it's so important for, you know technology leaders and business leaders to continue to kind of integrate themselves more tightly. >> Yes. >> To be able to make these business model transformations not just, you know, the tech that supports things. >> It's essential. >> Yeah. >> You know, we often in so many shows, Brian, we talk about alignment of business and technology, but it's not trivial. >> Yeah, yeah. >> It's absolutely fundamental to the success of every organization. And they've got to do so and as you said, I'm going to use your, your word, the compressed transformation. >> Yeah. >> A compressed timeframe. So talk to me about some customer examples where you really feel that Accenture and Coupa have helped this organization transform its supply chain to be able to be, use composable technology. >> Brian: Yeah. >> To be a leader in its industry. >> Yeah. Well, one example of that is a major industrial client that we have that has global operations across the world. And they're on a journey to kind of upgrade their digital core ERP that they've been on for a long time. And that's a multi-year journey. But at, you know, today they have needs for sourcing and procurement solutions in specific geographies around the world like Japan, for example. So what we've been able to do and it's a relatively simple example but quickly work with the client and Coupa to identify the right Coupa solution that's born in the cloud that has a great kind of user experience and implement that quickly as well as integrated it into the digital core, right. So they're not separate things. And it becomes part of that architecture, right. It just starts to kind of show the flexibility of when you have, when you come with a kind of composable technology point of view, the way we can help our clients do that. And in some other cases it's even more, you know, more cutting edge. So think about a utilities client, for example that has IOT sensors on their wires and when the, when that wire swings too far they say something's wrong. Automatically it goes back to the digital core cuts a ticket and finds the closest worker. >> Lisa: Okay. >> To then dispatch. The worker then can put on their hollow lens, for example and climb the pole and get directions on how to solve the problem right then and there, right? That's another example of you know, multiple systems, edge devices things coming together in order to create that. And it's only going to get faster, you know, with the metaverse. >> Lisa: Right. >> You know, with web 3.0 coming, with blockchain becoming more and more mainstream, companies need to be thinking about in this age of compressed transformation how to do that composable technology that you can figure and reconfigure. >> Do you think that we're in an age of compressed transformation or is that how it's going to be going forward given the global climate the last two years? >> Yeah. It's definitely going to be that way going forward over the next, you know, probably for the large part of the, the remainder of our career. I mean, we're, our CTO, Paul Daugherty, talks about us being an mega cycle, right? There's so many things changing. And even without these externalities of, you know, political issues and pandemics, you know, the introduction of AI and machine learning, a lot of these technologies I just mentioned, it's, the change is happening in every industry, in every, you know kind of area of the marketplace and in a way that's, you know, that's really exciting, right. And we get to help our clients be able to kind of solve those things not just once, but continually >> There's a tremendous amount of opportunity that's come from compressed transformation, right. A lot of opportunity, a lot of potential. What are some of the things that you're looking forward to say in the next year, as we talked about some of those business and lines of business and IT folks understand we've got to move in this direction. What excites you about the potential that you have to help these organizations really transform? >> Yeah, well, I think, I mean, the, we just came out with our new tech vision which is about the metaverse. And I think that the things that excite me are there's brand new ways like we've lived in a world where transactions take place in a very predictable way with local currencies through a single channel. And that was, that's been sort of fixed for a long time. The fundamentals of the economy or actually in the marketplace are starting to change in terms of how do we transact with things like cryptocurrencies, things like non fungible tokens, you know, all these things that we didn't, you know, they weren't, even the metaverse these were not main line words, even six you know, months ago, 12 months ago. >> Lisa: Right, right. >> Now these things, you know, every it seems like every month there's something new that is, you know, seismic to use your word that is shifting the fundamentals of the marketplace. And I think that's what's really exciting. I mean, that's where, I mean, it's probably one of the most exciting times to be in business, be in the marketplace. It certainly has a lot of challenges. >> Lisa: Yes. >> But, you know, I think we're really about using, you know, the promise of technology to unlock human ingenuity and this is a great time to be able to unlock that human ingenuity. >> And that's such a great alignment with Coupa. I was just in the keynote and there was an Accenture video, Julie Sweet was talking to some other folks about that. Great alignment in the partnership. Brian, thank you for joining me talking about composable technology, what's new, why and the potential that organizations and every business have to use it to unlock competitive advantages. >> Brian: Yeah. >> We appreciate your insights and your time. >> You bet. Pleasure to be here. >> All right. With Brian McKillips, I'm Lisa Martin. You're watching theCUBEe from Coupa Inspire 2022. (upbeat music)