(bright upbeat music) >> Welcome to The Cube. We're here for the AWS Executive Summit part of Reinvent 2021. I'm John Farrow, your host of the Cube. We've got a great segment focus here, Art of the Possible is the segment. Jas Bains, Chief Executive at Hafod and Jamie Smith, director of research and innovation and Laetitia Cailleteau who's the global lead of conversational AI at Accenture. Thanks for joining me today for this Art of the Possible segment. >> Thank you. >> So tell us a little bit about Hafod and what you guys are doing to the community 'cause this is a really compelling story of how technology in home care is kind of changing the game and putting a stake in the ground. >> Yeah, so Hafod is one of the largest not for profits in Wales. We employ about 1400 colleagues. We have three strands a service, which practices on key demographics. So people who are vulnerable and socioeconomically disadvantaged. Our three core strands of service are affordable housing, we provide several thousand homes to people in housing need across Wales. We also are an extensive provider of social provision, both residential and in the community. And then we have a third tier, which is a hybrid in between. So that supports people who are not quite ready for independent living but neither are they ready for residential care. So that's a supportive provision. I suppose what one of the things that marks Hafod out and why we're here in this conversation is that we're uniquely placed as one of the organizations that actually has a research and innovation capacity. And it's the work of the research and innovation capacity led by Jamie that brought about this collaboration with Accenture which is great in great meaning and benefits. So thousands of our customers and hopefully universal application as it develops. >> You know this is a really an interesting discussion because multiple levels, one, the pandemic accelerated this needs so, I want to get comments on that. But two, if you look at the future of work and work and home life, you seeing the convergence of where people live. And I think this idea of having this independent home and the ecosystem around it, there's a societal impact as well. So what brought this opportunity together? How did this come together with Accenture and AWS? >> We're going for Jamie and Laetitia. >> Yeah, I can start. Well, we were trying to apply for the LC Aging Grand Challenge in the U.K., so the United Kingdom recognized the need for change around independent living and run a grand challenge. And then we got together as part of this grand challenge. You know, we had some technology, we had trialed with AGK before and Hanover Housing Association. Hafod was really keen to actually start trying some of that technology with some of the resident. And we also worked with Swansea University, was doing a lot of work around social isolation and loneliness. And we came together to kind of pitch for the grand challenge. And we went quite far actually, unfortunately we didn't win but we have built such a great collaboration that we couldn't really let it be, you know, not going any further. And we decided to continue to invest in this idea. And now we here, probably 18 months on with a number of people, Hafod using the technology and a number of feedbacks and returns coming back and us having a grand ambitions to actually go much broader and scale this solution. >> Jas and Jamie, I'd love to get your reaction and commentary on this trend of tech for good because I mean, I'm sure you didn't wake up, oh, just want to do some tech for good. You guys have an environment, you have an opportunity, you have challenges you're going to turn into opportunities. But if you look at the global landscape right now, things that are jumping out at us are looking at the impact of social media on people. You got the pandemic with isolation, this is a first order problem in this new world of how do we get technology to change how people feel and make them better in their lives. >> Yeah, I think for us, the first has to be a problem to solve. There's got to be a question to be answered. And for us, that was in this instance, how do we mitigate loneliness and how do we take services that rely on person to person contact and not particularly scalable and replicate those through technology somehow. And even if we can do 10% of the job of that in-person service then for us, it's worth it because that is scalable. And there are lots of small interventions we can make using technology which is really efficient way for us to support people in the community when we just can't be everywhere at once. >> So, John, just to add, I think that we have about 1500 people living in households that are living alone and isolated. And I think the issue for us was more than just about technology because a lot of these people don't have access to basic technology features that most of us would take for granted. So far this is a two-prong journey. One is about increasing the accessibility to tech and familiarizing people so that they're comfortable with these devices technology and two importantly, make sure that we have the right means to help people reduce their loneliness and isolation. So the opportunity to try out something over the last 12 months, something that's bespoke, that's customized that will undoubtedly be tweaked as we go forward has been an absolutely marvelous opportunity. And for us, the collaboration with Accenture has been absolutely key. I think what we've seen during COVID is cross-fertilization. We've seen multi-disciplinary teams, we've got engineers, architects, manufacturers, and clinicians, and scientists, all trying to develop new solutions around COVID. And I think this probably just exemplary bias, especially as a post COVID where industry and in our case for example public sector and academia working together. >> Yeah, that's a great example and props to everyone there. And congratulations on this really, really important initiative. Let's talk about the home care solution. What does it do? How does it work? Take us through what's happening? >> Okay, so Home Care is actually a platform which is obviously running on AWS technology and this particular platform is the service offered accessible via voice through the Alexa device. We use the Echo Show to be able to use voice but also visuals to kind of make the technology more accessible for end user. On the platform itself, we have a series of services available out there. We connecting in the background a number of services from the community. So in the particular case of Hafod, we had something around shopping during the pandemic where we had people wanting to have access to their food bank. Or we also had during the pandemic, there was some need for having access to financial coaching and things like that. So we actually brought all of the service on the platform and the skills and this skill was really learning how to interact with the end user. And it was all customized for them to be able to access those things in a very easy way. It did work almost too well because some of our end users have been a kind of you know, have not been digital literate before and it was working so well, they were like, "But why can't it do pretty much anything on the planet? "Why can't it do this or that?" So the expectations were really, really high but we did manage to bring comfort to Hafod residents in a number of their daily kind of a need, some of the things during COVID 'cause people couldn't meet face to face. There was some challenge around understanding what events are running. So the coaches would publish events, you know, through the skills and people would be able to subscribe and go to the event and meet together virtually instead of physically. The number of things that really kind of brought a voice enabled experience for those end users. >> You know, you mentioned the people like the solution just before we, I'm going to get the Jamie in a second, but I want to just bring up something that you brought up. This is a digital divide evolution because digital divide, as Josh was saying, is that none about technology,, first, you have to access, you need access, right? First, then you have to bring broadband and internet access. And then you have to get the technology in the home. But then here it seems to be a whole nother level of digital divide bridging to the new heights. >> Yeah, completely, completely. And I think that's where COVID has really accelerated the digital divide before the solution was put in place for Hafod in the sense that people couldn't move and if they were not digitally literate, it was very hard to have access to services. And now we brought this solution in the comfort of their own home and they have the access to the services that they wouldn't have had otherwise on their own. So it's definitely helping, yeah. >> It's just another example of people refactoring their lives or businesses with technology. Jamie, what's your take on the innovation here and the technical aspects of the home care solutions? >> I think the fact that it's so easy to use, it's personalized, it's a digital companion for the home. It overcomes that digital divide that we talked about, which is really important. If you've got a voice you can use home care and you can interact with it in this really simple way. And what I love about it is the fact that it was based on what our customers told us they were finding difficult during this time, during the early lockdowns of the pandemic. There was 1500 so people Jas talked about who were living alone and at risk of loneliness. Now we spoke to a good number of those through a series of welfare calls and we found out exactly what it is they found challenging. >> What were some of the things that they were finding challenging? >> So tracking how they feel on a day-to-day basis. What's my mood like, what's my wellbeing like, and knowing how that changes over time. Just keeping the fridge in the pantry stocked up. What can I cook with these basic ingredients that I've got in my home? You could be signposted to basic resources to help you with that. Staying connected to the people who are really important to you but the bit that shines out for me is the interface with our services, with our neighborhood coaching service, where we can just give these little nudges, these little interventions just to mitigate and take the edge of that loneliness for people. We can see the potential of that coming up to the pandemic, where you can really encourage people to interact with one another, to be physically active and do all of those things that sort of mitigate against loneliness. >> Let me ask you a question 'cause I think a very important point. The timing of the signaling of data is super important. Could you comment on the relevance of having access to data? If you're getting something connected, when you're connected like this, I can only imagine the benefits. It's all about timing, right? Knowing that someone might be thinking some way or whether it's a tactical, in any scenario, timing of data, the right place at the right time, as they say. What's your take on that 'cause it sounds like what you're saying is that you can see things early when people are in the moment. >> Yeah, exactly. So if there's a trend beginning to emerge, for example, around some of these wellbeing, which has been on a low trajectory for a number of days, that can raise a red flag in our system and it alerts one of our neighborhood coaches just to reach out to that person and say, "Well, John, what's going on? "You haven't been out for a walk for a few days. "We know you like to walk, what's happening?" And these early warning signs are really important when we think of the long-term effects of loneliness and how getting upstream of those, preventing it reaching a point where it moves from being a problem into being a crisis. And the earlier we can detect that the more chance we've got of these negative long-term outcomes being mitigated. >> You know, one of the things we see in the cloud business is kind of separate track but it kind of relates to the real world here that you're doing, is automation and AI and machine learning bringing in a lot of value if applied properly. So how are you guys seeing, I can almost imagine that patterns are coming in, right? Do you see patterns in the data? How does AI and analytics technology improve this process especially with the wellbeing and emotional wellbeing of the elderly? >> I think one of the things we've learned through the pilot study we've done is there's not one size fits all. You know, all those people are very different individuals. They have very different habits. You know, there's some people not sleeping over the night. There's some people wanting to be out early, wanting to be social. Some people you have to put in much more. So it's definitely not one size fits all. And automation and digitalization of those kinds of services is really challenging because if they're not personalized, it doesn't really catch the interest or the need of the individuals. So for me as an IT professional being in the industry for like a 20 plus years, I think this is the time where personalization has really a true meaning. Personalization at scale for those people that are not digitally literate. But also in more vulnerable settings 'cause there's just so many different angles that can make them vulnerable. Maybe it's the body, maybe it's the economy position, their social condition, there's so many variation of all of that. So I think this is one of the use case that has to be powered by technology to complement the human side of it. If we really want to start scaling the services we provide to people in general, meaning obviously, in all the Western country now we all growing old, it's no secret. So in 20 years time the majority of everybody will be old and we obviously need people to take care of us. And at the moment we don't have that population to take care of us coming up. So really to crack on those kinds of challenges, we really need to have technology powering and just helping the human side to make it more efficient, connected than human. >> It's interesting. I just did a story where you have these bots that look at the facial recognition via cameras and can detect either in hospitals and or in care patients, how they feel. So you see where this is going. Jas I got to ask you how all this changes, the home care model and how Hafod works. Your workforce, the career's culture, the consortium you guys are bringing to the table, partners, you know this is an ecosystem now, it's a system. >> Yes John, I think that probably, it's also worth talking a little bit about the pressures on state governments around public health issues which are coming to the fore. And clearly we need to develop alternative ways that we engage with mass audiences and technology is going to be absolutely key. One of the challenges I still think that we've not resolved in the U.K. level, this is probably a global issue, is about data protection. When we're talking to cross governmental agencies, it's about sharing data and establishing protocols and we've enjoyed a few challenging conversations with colleagues around data protection. So I think those need to be set out in the context of the journey of this particular project. I think that what's interesting around COVID is that, hasn't materially changed the nature in which we do things, probably not in our focus and our work remains the same. But what we're seeing is very clear evidence of the ways, I mean, who would have thought that 12 months ago, the majority of our workforce would be working from home? So rapid mobilization to ensure that people can use, set IT home effectively. And then how does that relationship impact with people in the communities we're serving? Some of whom have got access to technology, others who haven't. So that's been, I think the biggest change, and that is a fundamental change in the design and delivery of future services that organizations like us will be providing. So I would say that overall, some things remain the same by and large but technology is having an absolutely profound change in the way that our engagement with customers will go forward. >> Well, you guys are in the front end of some massive innovation here with this, are they possible and that, you're really delivering impact. And I think this is an example of that. And you brought up the data challenges, this is something that you guys call privacy by design. This is a cutting edge issue here because there are benefits around managing privacy properly. And I think here, your solution clearly has value, right? And no one can debate that, but as these little blockers get in the way, what's your reaction to that? 'Cause this certainly is something that has to be solved. I mean, it's a problem. >> Yeah, so we designed a solution, I think we had, when we design, I co-designed with your end-users actually. We had up to 14 lawyers working with us at one point in time looking at different kinds of angles. So definitely really tackle the solution with privacy by design in mind and with end users but obviously you can't co-design with thousands of people, you have to co-design with a representative subset of a cohort. And some of the challenge we find is obviously, the media have done a lot of scaremongering around technology, AI and all of that kind of things, especially for people that are not necessarily digitally literate, people that are just not in it. And when we go and deploy the solution, people are a little bit worried. When we make them, we obviously explain to them what's going to happen if they're happy, if they want to consent and all that kind of things. But the people are scared, they're just jumping on a technology on top of it we're asking them some questions around consent. So I think it's just that the solution is super secured and we've gone over millions of hoops within Accenture but also with Hafod itself. You know, it's more that like the type of user we deploying the solution to are just not in that world and then they are little bit worried about sharing. Not only they're worried about sharing with us but you know, in home care, there there's an option as well to share some of that data with your family. And there we also see people are kind of okay to share with us but they don't want to share with their family 'cause they don't want to have too much information kind of going potentially worrying or bothering some of their family member. So there is definitely a huge education kind of angle to embracing the technology. Not only when you create the solution but when you actually deploy it with users. >> It's a fabulous project, I am so excited by this story. It's a great story, has all the elements; technology, innovation, cidal impact, data privacy, social interactions, whether it's with family members and others, internal, external. In teams themselves. You guys doing some amazing work, thank you for sharing. It's a great project, we'll keep track of it. My final question for you guys is what comes next for the home care after the trial? What are Hafod's plans and hopes for the future? >> Maybe if I just give an overview and then invite Jamie and Laetitia. So for us, without conversations, you don't create possibilities and this really is a reflection of the culture that we try to engender. So my ask of my team is to remain curious, is to continue to explore opportunities because it's home care up to today, it could be something else tomorrow. We also recognize that we live in a world of collaboration. We need more cross industrial partnerships. We love to explore more things that Accenture, Amazon, others as well. So that's principally what I will be doing is ensuring that the culture invites us and then I hand over to the clever people like Jamie and Laetitia to get on with the technology. I think for me we've already learned an awful lot about home care and there's clearly a lot more we can learn. We'd love to build on this initial small-scale trial and see how home care could work at a bigger scale. So how would it work with thousands of users? How do we scale it up from a cohort of 50 to a cohort of 5,000? How does it work when we bring different kinds of organizations into that mix? So what if, for example, we could integrate it into health care? So a variety of services can have a holistic view of an individual and interact with one another, to put that person on the right pathway and maybe keep them out of the health and care system for longer, actually reducing the costs to the system in the long run and improving that person's outcomes. That kind of evidence speaks to decision-makers and political partners and I think that's the kind of evidence we need to build. >> Yeah, financial impact is there, it's brutal. It's a great financial impact for the system. Efficiency, better care, everything. >> Yeah and we are 100% on board for whatever comes next. >> Laetitia-- >> What about you Laetitia? >> Great program you got there. A amazing story, thank you for sharing. Congratulations on this awesome project. So much to unpack here. I think this is the future. I mean, I think this is a case study of represents all the moving parts that need to be worked on, so congratulations. >> Thank you. >> Thank you. >> We are the Art of the Possible here inside the Cube, part of AWS Reinvent Executive Summit, I'm John Furrier, your host, thanks for watching. (bright upbeat music)

(bright upbeat music) >> Welcome to The Cube. We're here for the AWS Executive Summit part of Reinvent 2021. I'm John Farrow, your host of the Cube. We've got a great segment focus here, Art of the Possible is the segment. Jas Bains, Chief Executive at Hafod and Jamie Smith, director of research and innovation and Laetitia Cailleteau who's the global lead of conversational AI at Accenture. Thanks for joining me today for this Art of the Possible segment. >> Thank you. >> So tell us a little bit about Hafod and what you guys are doing to the community 'cause this is a really compelling story of how technology in home care is kind of changing the game and putting a stake in the ground. >> Yeah, so Hafod is one of the largest not for profits in Wales. We employ about 1400 colleagues. We have three strands a service, which practices on key demographics. So people who are vulnerable and socioeconomically disadvantaged. Our three core strands of service are affordable housing, we provide several thousand homes to people in housing need across Wales. We also are an extensive provider of social provision, both residential and in the community. And then we have a third tier, which is a hybrid in between. So that supports people who are not quite ready for independent living but neither are they ready for residential care. So that's a supportive provision. I suppose what one of the things that marks Hafod out and why we're here in this conversation is that we're uniquely placed as one of the organizations that actually has a research and innovation capacity. And it's the work of the research and innovation capacity led by Jamie that brought about this collaboration with Accenture which is great in great meaning and benefits. So thousands of our customers and hopefully universal application as it develops. >> You know this is a really an interesting discussion because multiple levels, one, the pandemic accelerated this needs so, I want to get comments on that. But two, if you look at the future of work and work and home life, you seeing the convergence of where people live. And I think this idea of having this independent home and the ecosystem around it, there's a societal impact as well. So what brought this opportunity together? How did this come together with Accenture and AWS? >> We're going for Jamie and Laetitia. >> Yeah, I can start. Well, we were trying to apply for the LC Aging Grand Challenge in the U.K., so the United Kingdom recognized the need for change around independent living and run a grand challenge. And then we got together as part of this grand challenge. You know, we had some technology, we had trialed with AGK before and Hanover Housing Association. Hafod was really keen to actually start trying some of that technology with some of the resident. And we also worked with Swansea University, was doing a lot of work around social isolation and loneliness. And we came together to kind of pitch for the grand challenge. And we went quite far actually, unfortunately we didn't win but we have built such a great collaboration that we couldn't really let it be, you know, not going any further. And we decided to continue to invest in this idea. And now we here, probably 18 months on with a number of people, Hafod using the technology and a number of feedbacks and returns coming back and us having a grand ambitions to actually go much broader and scale this solution. >> Jas and Jamie, I'd love to get your reaction and commentary on this trend of tech for good because I mean, I'm sure you didn't wake up, oh, just want to do some tech for good. You guys have an environment, you have an opportunity, you have challenges you're going to turn into opportunities. But if you look at the global landscape right now, things that are jumping out at us are looking at the impact of social media on people. You got the pandemic with isolation, this is a first order problem in this new world of how do we get technology to change how people feel and make them better in their lives. >> Yeah, I think for us, the first has to be a problem to solve. There's got to be a question to be answered. And for us, that was in this instance, how do we mitigate loneliness and how do we take services that rely on person to person contact and not particularly scalable and replicate those through technology somehow. And even if we can do 10% of the job of that in-person service then for us, it's worth it because that is scalable. And there are lots of small interventions we can make using technology which is really efficient way for us to support people in the community when we just can't be everywhere at once. >> So, John, just to add, I think that we have about 1500 people living in households that are living alone and isolated. And I think the issue for us was more than just about technology because a lot of these people don't have access to basic technology features that most of us would take for granted. So far this is a two-prong journey. One is about increasing the accessibility to tech and familiarizing people so that they're comfortable with these devices technology and two importantly, make sure that we have the right means to help people reduce their loneliness and isolation. So the opportunity to try out something over the last 12 months, something that's bespoke, that's customized that will undoubtedly be tweaked as we go forward has been an absolutely marvelous opportunity. And for us, the collaboration with Accenture has been absolutely key. I think what we've seen during COVID is cross-fertilization. We've seen multi-disciplinary teams, we've got engineers, architects, manufacturers, and clinicians, and scientists, all trying to develop new solutions around COVID. And I think this probably just exemplary bias, especially as a post COVID where industry and in our case for example public sector and academia working together. >> Yeah, that's a great example and props to everyone there. And congratulations on this really, really important initiative. Let's talk about the home care solution. What does it do? How does it work? Take us through what's happening? >> Okay, so Home Care is actually a platform which is obviously running on AWS technology and this particular platform is the service offered accessible via voice through the Alexa device. We use the Echo Show to be able to use voice but also visuals to kind of make the technology more accessible for end user. On the platform itself, we have a series of services available out there. We connecting in the background a number of services from the community. So in the particular case of Hafod, we had something around shopping during the pandemic where we had people wanting to have access to their food bank. Or we also had during the pandemic, there was some need for having access to financial coaching and things like that. So we actually brought all of the service on the platform and the skills and this skill was really learning how to interact with the end user. And it was all customized for them to be able to access those things in a very easy way. It did work almost too well because some of our end users have been a kind of you know, have not been digital literate before and it was working so well, they were like, "But why can't it do pretty much anything on the planet? "Why can't it do this or that?" So the expectations were really, really high but we did manage to bring comfort to Hafod residents in a number of their daily kind of a need, some of the things during COVID 'cause people couldn't meet face to face. There was some challenge around understanding what events are running. So the coaches would publish events, you know, through the skills and people would be able to subscribe and go to the event and meet together virtually instead of physically. The number of things that really kind of brought a voice enabled experience for those end users. >> You know, you mentioned the people like the solution just before we, I'm going to get the Jamie in a second, but I want to just bring up something that you brought up. This is a digital divide evolution because digital divide, as Josh was saying, is that none about technology,, first, you have to access, you need access, right? First, then you have to bring broadband and internet access. And then you have to get the technology in the home. But then here it seems to be a whole nother level of digital divide bridging to the new heights. >> Yeah, completely, completely. And I think that's where COVID has really accelerated the digital divide before the solution was put in place for Hafod in the sense that people couldn't move and if they were not digitally literate, it was very hard to have access to services. And now we brought this solution in the comfort of their own home and they have the access to the services that they wouldn't have had otherwise on their own. So it's definitely helping, yeah. >> It's just another example of people refactoring their lives or businesses with technology. Jamie, what's your take on the innovation here and the technical aspects of the home care solutions? >> I think the fact that it's so easy to use, it's personalized, it's a digital companion for the home. It overcomes that digital divide that we talked about, which is really important. If you've got a voice you can use home care and you can interact with it in this really simple way. And what I love about it is the fact that it was based on what our customers told us they were finding difficult during this time, during the early lockdowns of the pandemic. There was 1500 so people Jas talked about who were living alone and at risk of loneliness. Now we spoke to a good number of those through a series of welfare calls and we found out exactly what it is they found challenging. >> What were some of the things that they were finding challenging? >> So tracking how they feel on a day-to-day basis. What's my mood like, what's my wellbeing like, and knowing how that changes over time. Just keeping the fridge in the pantry stocked up. What can I cook with these basic ingredients that I've got in my home? You could be signposted to basic resources to help you with that. Staying connected to the people who are really important to you but the bit that shines out for me is the interface with our services, with our neighborhood coaching service, where we can just give these little nudges, these little interventions just to mitigate and take the edge of that loneliness for people. We can see the potential of that coming up to the pandemic, where you can really encourage people to interact with one another, to be physically active and do all of those things that sort of mitigate against loneliness. >> Let me ask you a question 'cause I think a very important point. The timing of the signaling of data is super important. Could you comment on the relevance of having access to data? If you're getting something connected, when you're connected like this, I can only imagine the benefits. It's all about timing, right? Knowing that someone might be thinking some way or whether it's a tactical, in any scenario, timing of data, the right place at the right time, as they say. What's your take on that 'cause it sounds like what you're saying is that you can see things early when people are in the moment. >> Yeah, exactly. So if there's a trend beginning to emerge, for example, around some of these wellbeing, which has been on a low trajectory for a number of days, that can raise a red flag in our system and it alerts one of our neighborhood coaches just to reach out to that person and say, "Well, John, what's going on? "You haven't been out for a walk for a few days. "We know you like to walk, what's happening?" And these early warning signs are really important when we think of the long-term effects of loneliness and how getting upstream of those, preventing it reaching a point where it moves from being a problem into being a crisis. And the earlier we can detect that the more chance we've got of these negative long-term outcomes being mitigated. >> You know, one of the things we see in the cloud business is kind of separate track but it kind of relates to the real world here that you're doing, is automation and AI and machine learning bringing in a lot of value if applied properly. So how are you guys seeing, I can almost imagine that patterns are coming in, right? Do you see patterns in the data? How does AI and analytics technology improve this process especially with the wellbeing and emotional wellbeing of the elderly? >> I think one of the things we've learned through the pilot study we've done is there's not one size fits all. You know, all those people are very different individuals. They have very different habits. You know, there's some people not sleeping over the night. There's some people wanting to be out early, wanting to be social. Some people you have to put in much more. So it's definitely not one size fits all. And automation and digitalization of those kinds of services is really challenging because if they're not personalized, it doesn't really catch the interest or the need of the individuals. So for me as an IT professional being in the industry for like a 20 plus years, I think this is the time where personalization has really a true meaning. Personalization at scale for those people that are not digitally literate. But also in more vulnerable settings 'cause there's just so many different angles that can make them vulnerable. Maybe it's the body, maybe it's the economy position, their social condition, there's so many variation of all of that. So I think this is one of the use case that has to be powered by technology to complement the human side of it. If we really want to start scaling the services we provide to people in general, meaning obviously, in all the Western country now we all growing old, it's no secret. So in 20 years time the majority of everybody will be old and we obviously need people to take care of us. And at the moment we don't have that population to take care of us coming up. So really to crack on those kinds of challenges, we really need to have technology powering and just helping the human side to make it more efficient, connected than human. >> It's interesting. I just did a story where you have these bots that look at the facial recognition via cameras and can detect either in hospitals and or in care patients, how they feel. So you see where this is going. Jas I got to ask you how all this changes, the home care model and how Hafod works. Your workforce, the career's culture, the consortium you guys are bringing to the table, partners, you know this is an ecosystem now, it's a system. >> Yes John, I think that probably, it's also worth talking a little bit about the pressures on state governments around public health issues which are coming to the fore. And clearly we need to develop alternative ways that we engage with mass audiences and technology is going to be absolutely key. One of the challenges I still think that we've not resolved in the U.K. level, this is probably a global issue, is about data protection. When we're talking to cross governmental agencies, it's about sharing data and establishing protocols and we've enjoyed a few challenging conversations with colleagues around data protection. So I think those need to be set out in the context of the journey of this particular project. I think that what's interesting around COVID is that, hasn't materially changed the nature in which we do things, probably not in our focus and our work remains the same. But what we're seeing is very clear evidence of the ways, I mean, who would have thought that 12 months ago, the majority of our workforce would be working from home? So rapid mobilization to ensure that people can use, set IT home effectively. And then how does that relationship impact with people in the communities we're serving? Some of whom have got access to technology, others who haven't. So that's been, I think the biggest change, and that is a fundamental change in the design and delivery of future services that organizations like us will be providing. So I would say that overall, some things remain the same by and large but technology is having an absolutely profound change in the way that our engagement with customers will go forward. >> Well, you guys are in the front end of some massive innovation here with this, are they possible and that, you're really delivering impact. And I think this is an example of that. And you brought up the data challenges, this is something that you guys call privacy by design. This is a cutting edge issue here because there are benefits around managing privacy properly. And I think here, your solution clearly has value, right? And no one can debate that, but as these little blockers get in the way, what's your reaction to that? 'Cause this certainly is something that has to be solved. I mean, it's a problem. >> Yeah, so we designed a solution, I think we had, when we design, I co-designed with your end-users actually. We had up to 14 lawyers working with us at one point in time looking at different kinds of angles. So definitely really tackle the solution with privacy by design in mind and with end users but obviously you can't co-design with thousands of people, you have to co-design with a representative subset of a cohort. And some of the challenge we find is obviously, the media have done a lot of scaremongering around technology, AI and all of that kind of things, especially for people that are not necessarily digitally literate, people that are just not in it. And when we go and deploy the solution, people are a little bit worried. When we make them, we obviously explain to them what's going to happen if they're happy, if they want to consent and all that kind of things. But the people are scared, they're just jumping on a technology on top of it we're asking them some questions around consent. So I think it's just that the solution is super secured and we've gone over millions of hoops within Accenture but also with Hafod itself. You know, it's more that like the type of user we deploying the solution to are just not in that world and then they are little bit worried about sharing. Not only they're worried about sharing with us but you know, in home care, there there's an option as well to share some of that data with your family. And there we also see people are kind of okay to share with us but they don't want to share with their family 'cause they don't want to have too much information kind of going potentially worrying or bothering some of their family member. So there is definitely a huge education kind of angle to embracing the technology. Not only when you create the solution but when you actually deploy it with users. >> It's a fabulous project, I am so excited by this story. It's a great story, has all the elements; technology, innovation, cidal impact, data privacy, social interactions, whether it's with family members and others, internal, external. In teams themselves. You guys doing some amazing work, thank you for sharing. It's a great project, we'll keep track of it. My final question for you guys is what comes next for the home care after the trial? What are Hafod's plans and hopes for the future? >> Maybe if I just give an overview and then invite Jamie and Laetitia. So for us, without conversations, you don't create possibilities and this really is a reflection of the culture that we try to engender. So my ask of my team is to remain curious, is to continue to explore opportunities because it's home care up to today, it could be something else tomorrow. We also recognize that we live in a world of collaboration. We need more cross industrial partnerships. We love to explore more things that Accenture, Amazon, others as well. So that's principally what I will be doing is ensuring that the culture invites us and then I hand over to the clever people like Jamie and Laetitia to get on with the technology. I think for me we've already learned an awful lot about home care and there's clearly a lot more we can learn. We'd love to build on this initial small-scale trial and see how home care could work at a bigger scale. So how would it work with thousands of users? How do we scale it up from a cohort of 50 to a cohort of 5,000? How does it work when we bring different kinds of organizations into that mix? So what if, for example, we could integrate it into health care? So a variety of services can have a holistic view of an individual and interact with one another, to put that person on the right pathway and maybe keep them out of the health and care system for longer, actually reducing the costs to the system in the long run and improving that person's outcomes. That kind of evidence speaks to decision-makers and political partners and I think that's the kind of evidence we need to build. >> Yeah, financial impact is there, it's brutal. It's a great financial impact for the system. Efficiency, better care, everything. >> Yeah and we are 100% on board for whatever comes next. >> Laetitia-- >> What about you Laetitia? >> Great program you got there. A amazing story, thank you for sharing. Congratulations on this awesome project. So much to unpack here. I think this is the future. I mean, I think this is a case study of represents all the moving parts that need to be worked on, so congratulations. >> Thank you. >> Thank you. >> We are the Art of the Possible here inside the Cube, part of AWS Reinvent Executive Summit, I'm John Furrier, your host, thanks for watching. (bright upbeat music)

>> Narrator: Live, from Washington, D.C. It's theCube! Covering Boomi World 19. Brought to you by Boomi. >> Welcome back to the Cube's coverage of Boomi World 2019, from D.C. I'm Lisa Martin. John Furrier is my cohost, and we're pleased to be welcome a couple of guests from Accenture, Boomi partner. To my right, we've got Pete Yao, Global Managing Director of Integration, and Laetitia Cailleteau, Accenture's Global Lead for Conversational AI. Welcome, both of you. >> Thank you. It's great to be here. >> Thank you so much. So, big news. You can't go anywhere these days without talking about AI. I mean, there's even commercials on TV, that, you know, any generation knows something about AI. But, Laetitia, let's start with you. Some big news coming out this morning, with what Boomi and Accenture are doing for conversational AI. Give our audience, kind of an overview of what you guys announced this morning. >> So, thank you very much. So, conversational AI is booming in the market. It's at the top of the agenda for a number of our C-Suites. It's a new way to make system more human. So, instead of having to learn the system you can actually speak. Ask them direct question. Have a conversation. And actually, what we are doing, what we announced this morning, is Accenture and Boomi are going to partner together to deliver that kind of services for our client. Much faster. Cause we have the expertise and the know how, of designing those conversational experience, and Boomi, obviously, integrates really fast with Beacon system. And the two, together, can really be accelerating, you know, the value delivered to our client. >> And the technology piece, I just want to sure of something. Cause, you guys are providing a front end, so, real technology, with Boomi. So, it's a together story? >> Yeah, it's definitely a together story. And as you say, we are quite expert in designing those experience on the front end. And Boomi, obviously, kind of powers up the integration in the background. >> So, this is going to be enabler of, something you said a minute ago, is, instead of us humans having to learn the tech the tech's going to learn us. Is that fair to say? >> Very fair to say. That's exactly how we want to see it. And I think we call that trend, radically human systems. So, systems are going to become more radically human as we go on. And conversational AI is one enabler of that. >> Is it going to be empathetic? Like, when, you were saying this morning something I loved, on stage. We've all had these interactions with AI, with bots, whether we're on a dot com site, trying to fix something for our cable provider. Or we're calling into a call center. You're starting to get, your voice changes, your agent! And you want that. Is it going to be able to understand, oh, all right, this person, maybe we need to escalate this. There's anger coming through the voice. Is it going to be able to detect that? >> On voice, you can definitely start detecting tone much better than on text. Cause on texts it's very small snippets. And it's quite difficult to define somebody's mood by one small interaction. Typically, you need a number of interactions to kind of see the build up of the person's emotion. But, on voice, definitely. You know, your intonation definitely defines your state of communication. >> You can tell someone's happy, sad, and then use the text meta data to add to it. This is fascinating, cause we all see Apple with Siri front end. That's a different system. They have a back end to Apple. This is a similar thing. You guys have a solution at Accenture. Can you explain how people engage with Accenture? Cause, the Boomi story is a great announcement, congratulations on that. But still, you can deploy this technology to any back end. Is that right? >> Yeah, to any back end. We have a number of live deployment running at the moment. I think the key thing is, you know, especially in the call center. Call center is an area that has not been invested in for, like decades, yeah. And, very often, the scripts are very inward driven. So they would describe the company's processes rather than think about the end user. So, what we do in Accenture, is we try to reinvent the experience, be much more user driven. And then we have a low code, no code, kind of interface, to be able to craft some of those conversation on all the variation. But, more importantly, we actually store all those conversation and can learn. And so we have assisted learning module to make a natural language processor cleverer and cleverer. And as you were saying, before we started to be on air, the user is contributing training data. Yeah, I was just sharing one of recent stories, of an ISP that I was trying to interact with, and frustrated that I couldn't just solve this problem on my own. And then after I was doing some work for theCube, a few months ago I realized, oh, actually I have to be calm here. I have an opportunity, as does everybody, to help train the models. Because that's what they need, right? It takes a tremendous amount of training data before our voices can become like fingerprints. So, I think, if more of us just kind of flip that, maybe our tone will get better, and obviously the machines will detect that, right? >> Yeah, no definitely. I think they key with conversational AI is not to see it as just plain tech, but really an opportunity to be more human centered. And, you know, obviously knowing who peoples are and how they interact in different kind of problems and scenario is absolutely critical. >> Pete, I want to get your thoughts on digital transformation, because we've done, I've done thousands of interviews on theCube, and many, many shows. Digital transformation has been around for awhile It all stops in one area. Okay, process technology, great areas, we've got visibility on that. Automation's excellent for processes. Technology, a plethora of activity. The people equations always broken down. Culture, has stopped dev ops. Maybe not enough data scientists or linguistic engineers to do conversational AI. You guys fill that void. Great technology. The people equation changes when there's successes. It all comes down to integration. Because that's where, either I don't believe in it, I don't want to do it, the culture doesn't want it. Time to value. The integration piece is critical. Can you guys explain how the Boomi Accenture integration works? And what should enterprises take away from this? >> Well, yeah, one of the key things when we started our relationship with Boomi more than five years ago now, really, Boomi was the leader, kind of the ones who invented iPad, right, the integration platform as a service. So, in the small and medium business, a lot of those companies had already moved a lot of the critical apps to the cloud. But, in the enterprise we see that it's taken a lot longer, right, so, certain departments may move certain pieces, but it's still very much a hybrid, right, between a cloud and on-prem based. So, taking a platform like Boomi, and being able to use that with the atomsphere platform has really allowed us to move forward. We've done quite a bit of work in Europe. And, now, in the last year, we've been focusing on North America, along with Europe. So, really, the platform has allowed us to focus on the integration. >> It's interesting, you bring up, you guys have been at Accenture for a long time, you've seen the waves. Oh, big 18 month deployment, eight years. Sometimes years, going back to the 80s and 90s. But now, the large enterprise kind of looks like SMB's because the projects all look, they're different now. You could have a plethora of projects out there, hundreds of projects, not one monolith. So, this seems to be a trend. Do you guys see it that away? Do you agree? Could you, like, share some insight as to what's going on in these large companies. Is it still the same game of a lot of big projects? Or, are things being broken down into smaller chunks with cloud platform? Can you guys just share your insights on this? >> Do you want to take that one first? >> You can do first, yeah. >> Okay. So the days of the big bang, big transformation, multi year programs, we don't see very many of those. A lot of our clients have moved away, towards lean, agile delivery. So, it's really being able to deliver value in shorter periods of time. And in that sense, you do see these big companies acting more like SMBs. Cause you really have to deliver that value. And, with Boomi's platform it's not just the integration aspect, and though our relationship started there, it's with some of the other pieces of technology, like flow and low code or no code as well, which has allowed Boomi customers and our clients and our teams to be able to get those applications out to production much quicker. >> Lisa: A big enabler, sorry, of the citizen developer. >> Yeah, absolutely. >> John: Thoughts on this trend. >> Yeah, so I guess my thought I will come with the innovation angle. So, obviously, we are in a very turbulent time, where company, you know, like a number of the Fortune 500 of 20 years ago, they're not there any longer. And there's quite a heavy rotation on some of the big corporation. And, what's really important is to size the market, and innovate all the time. And I think that's one of the reason why we have much smaller project. Because if you want to innovate you need to go to market really fast, try things up, and pivot ideas really fast, to try to see if people like it and want it. And, I think, that's also one of the key driver of smaller, kind of projects, that would just go much faster to like... >> We had a guy on theCube say, data is the new software. Kind of provocative, bringing a provocative statement around data's now part of the programatic element. And integration speaks volumes. I want to get your reaction to the idea of glue layers. I mean, people kick that term around. That's a glue layer. Basically integration layer with data. Control plane. This isn't really a big part of the integration story for Boomi but for other customers. What's your guys thoughts on this data layer, glue layer, that software and data come together? You're showing it with the conversational AI. It's voice, in terms of software, connects to another system. There's glue. >> Yeah, so, that's a very interesting angle. Cause I think, you know, in the old integration world people would just build an interface, and then it would go live, and they wouldn't necessarily know exactly what's going on the bonnet. And I think, adding that insight, of what you flow, or how often they use, when they're kicked off, is something that becomes quite important when you have a lot of integration to manage. I would remember, I was working for a bank, a major bank in the UK, where we trying to make a mainframe system go real time. But we had all those batch schedule, kind of running, and nobody really knew when, what, and the dependency in between each other. So, I think it definitely helps a lot. You know, bubbling up that level of visibility you need to transform truly. >> Yeah, and you're seeing lot of companies now have Chief Data Officers. Right, but data really is important. And with big data data links, unstructured data, structured data, tradional RDMS databases, being able to access that information. Is it just read only? Is it read and write? You're really seeing, kind of, how all of it has to come together. >> So, if we look at the go-to-market for Boomi and Accenture. Pete, talk to us about how that go-to-market strategy has evolved during the partnership. And where you see it going with respect to emerging technologies like conversational AI. >> Oh, yeah, we've got great opportunities. So, we've started off, really just, hey, there was integration opportunity. Are we doing much work with Boomi and the enterprise. Five years ago, we hadn't. And we started doing more work, kind of in AsiaPac, and then in Europe. Three years ago we entered a formal relationship to accelerate the growth. It was accelerated growth platform which started at Amia. And this last year we formally signed one in North America as well. And in the last three years we've done four times the amount of work. The number of customers, we've got more than 40 joint customers together. The number of trained professionals within Accenture. We have more than 400 people certified, with more than 600 certifications. Some of them may be a developer as well as an architect. And so, a lot of that is really that awareness and the education, training and enablement, as well as some joint go-to-market activities. >> Any of those in a specific, I was reading some US cases in healthcare and utilities? >> Yeah, we're definitely, we've seen quite a bit in utilities and our energy practice. We've seen it in transportation. Because Accenture covers all the different industry groups we're really seeing it in all of them. >> You know, I'm fascinated by the announcement you guys had with Boomi. The big news. Conversational AI. Because it just makes so much sense. But I worry people will pigeon hole this into, you know, voice, like telephone call centers only. Cause the US cases you guys were showing on stage was essentially like, almost like a query engine, and using voices. Versus like an agent call center work flow, which is an actual work flow. Big market there, I have no doubt about it. But, there's other US cases. I mean, this is a big, wide topic. Can you just share the vision of conversational AI a little further? >> So, meaning, I think the capability we have is to kind of go on any channel. Voice is an interesting one, cause it's, I think, it's very common still, you know, to have a call center, when you dip into challenges. And this is kind of the most emerging and challenging from a technology perspective. So, that's the one that was showcased. But there's a number of chat channels that are also very important. On the web, or a synchronous channel, like Whatsapp and Facebook and all of that kind of thing. So, it's really kind of, really offering a broad choice to the end consumer. So they can pick and choose what they want at the moment they want. I think what we see in the market is a big shift from synchronous kind of interaction, like on the web. You go on the web, you chat with something, and you just need to be there to finish it. To actually text. Because you can just send a text, get a response, go to a meeting, and on the back of the meeting, when you have five minutes, you just kind of do the reply. And you actually solve your problem on your own terms. But really when you have the time. So, there is a lot coming there. And, you know, with Apple Business Chat, you know, there's a number of mechanisms that are coming up, and new channels. Before company tended to be, you know, we do digital, we do call center, and maybe we have chat, but actually all of that is broadening up. You know, people want multi channel experts. >> So, synchronous is key. Synchronous and synchronous communication. So, is there a tell sign for a client that says I'm ready for conversational AI? Would I have to have a certain data set? I mean, is it interface? What are some of the requirements, someone says, hey, I really want this. I want to do this. >> Yeah, so, the way we deal with all of that, very often, is if you have call center recording or chat recording, we have a set of routines that we pass through. So, we transcribe everything and we do what we'd call intend discovery. And from that we can know, you know, what are the most, kind of critical, kind of processes kicked off. And from that, we know if it's transactional, or if it's an interaction, or an attendant's emotionally loaded, like people not happy with their bill. And then we have different techniques to address all of those different, kind of processes, if you want, and transform them into new experiences. And we can very easily, kind of look at the potential value we can get out of it. So, for instance, with one of our client, we identify, you know, if you do that kind of transformation you can get 25 million off your call center. You know, like, which is very sizeable. And it's very precise cause it's data driven. So, it's based on kind of, real calls, recordings and data. >> Can't hide from data. I mean, it's either successful or not. You can't hide anymore. >> Yeah, and I think one of the extra value add is very often call center agent or chat agent, they're not really paid to classify properly, so they would just pick up the most easy one all time. So, they will misclassify some of those recordings. Choose what's easiest for them. But when you actually go into what was said it's a very different story. >> John: Well, great insight. >> So, AI becoming, not just IQ, but EQ, in the future? >> Yes, definitely. That's the whole idea. That why we need our users to emrace it. (laughing) >> Exactly. And turn those frustrating experiences into I have the opportunity to influence the model. >> Last question, Pete, for you. In terms of conversational AI, and the business opportunities that this partnership with Boomi is going to give to you guys, at Accenture. >> Oh, definitely looking forward to joint go-to-market, taking this globally. We were named, earlier this week, yesterday, the worldwide partner of the year. Second time that Accenture's been awarded that. Which we appreciate. And that we look forward to working with Boomi and taking conversational AI to our joint clients. >> Awesome. Laetitia, Pete, thank you so much for joining John and me. Really interesting conversation. Can't wait to see where it goes. >> Great. Thank you very much. >> Our pleasure. >> Great conversational. >> Very conversational. >> Got some AI here, come on. >> Next time we give you a bot to sit in our seat. (all laughing) >> Cube conversations. >> Exactly. For our guests, and for John Furrier, I'm Lisa Martin. You're watching theCube, from Boomi World 19. Thanks for watching. (upbeat music)