>> (Announcer) From the Bellagio hotel in Las Vegas. It's theCube covering UiPath FORWARD IV, brought to you by UiPath. >> Good afternoon. Welcome back to theCube's live coverage of UiPath FORWARD IV. Lisa Martin here with Dave Vellante. We're on day two of our coverage. We've been talking a lot about automation, all of the opportunities that it's uncovering across industries. We're now going to be talking about a big company undergoing its own automation-led digital transformation. Joining us next, Mariesa Coughanour, head of Automation Advisory Services at Cognizant. Mariesa, welcome to the program. >> Thank you for having me. I'm excited to be here today. >> So let's talk. So Cognizant is a part, both a partner and a customer of UiPath. >> Yes. >> We're going to talk about you in the customer realm today. Cognizant is undergoing its own automation-led digital transformation. Let's talk about that. Talk to me about some of the business outcomes that are, that you're expecting, how it's going to transform the employee experience, the customer experience. >> (Mariesa) Sure, absolutely. We actually started working with automation ourselves back in 2018, where we just put in a CoE, we said we want to drive it into our business operations. But about a year ago, we said, let's go further. I really wanted to play with all of our employees. We wanted to empower them. We talk about citizen development, of robot for every person. And we know that that's really the future. That's where we're going. We're digitally transforming our organizations. And so what we did is we sat down and we worked really closely with UiPath on how do we do this? What kind of training do we need? We're going to need some process, some governance in there. And so we put that in place and, you know, we said, let's get this going this year. So we went out, we did, our first Hackathon, went really well. It was Bring Your Own Bots. So BYOB, so, fun themes. And we got some good savings. We actually drove over 10,000, close to 20,000 hours back into the organization. And we said after that, let's go a bit bigger though. And we did what's called Game of Bots. So obviously we know where that came from, right? And we said, we're going to go a little bit longer and we want to go bigger. So we went and had 2,500 people participate over eight weeks. We built over a thousand bots. And guess what? We drove over 200,000 hours back into the organization in just eight weeks. So super big success story. People loved it. Our teams were excited. We recognized over 200 people out of that with team awards, who submitted the most ideas. And even our top leadership said, let's do a presentation. So the guys and gals who had the top, biggest impact automations got to meet with our top senior leaders and present out to them. It's been awesome. And now we're starting to move that force. We're scaling bigger. We're actually going pretty big in Cognizant. We have some big goals right now. >> That's a gob of hours. Game of Bots, get it? GOB. >> (laughs) >> Come on, with me. >> It is a gob of hours. >> How do you measure the hours? Is it a back of napkin kind of thing? We ask people, Hey, how much, how what, how do you actually measure it? >> No, we actually track it. We could see how many hours people were doing a certain tasks and things that they do every day, whether they're running reports, submitting claims for a customer. And so we're able to see that that time is actually going down. We're faster. We get better quality. People were also able to get hours back in their day so they could do more value added work in the organization. So we actually do track it. And we're able to really measure those tangible outcomes for the teams. >> Sounds like you guys have been moving pretty quickly on this. >> We are. >> So the appetite at Cognizant was there, the culture was there to embrace it. Those are probably, I imagine, two big facilitators of being able to move at the speed and the scale, >> Yeah >> that, with what you're doing. >> Culture was there. We're really digitally savvy. I would say we're digital at heart in Cognizant. We are, we're really a tech company and we really focus on how to be at the forefront of all things when it comes to technology. But we said, we also want to transform how we work. So starting to shift the conversation from, you know, do you want to automate, to why not? How do we actually start talking about, you know, I have this to do list, but you know what, actually, we can improve if we did some of this other stuff instead. So let's free up that time, but use automation there and we can actually grow things. We can add more value. We do all that stuff on your to-do list that I think everybody has and they want to get to, but you get caught up in your day-to-day job all the time. So we're actually getting people to be more excited about and have a real voice. And I actually think that's important. Is that, it's not just about giving people the tool, it's about shifting our culture to really embrace digital, embrace this technology, because we're trying to transform how we all work. And we want to lead by example. >> So we talk about BPO. Business Process Optimization, right? It was kind of the buzz word of the '90s and early 2000s. A lot of times it meant putting in SAP. (chuckles) >> (Mariesa) (laughs) Yeah. >> So that's evolved. And there's some companies that would say, "Hey, we specialize in that," technology companies, obviously, >> (Mariesa) Yep. >> you know, SI's as well. How do you think about the difference between end-to-end enterprise automation and, and sort of traditional BPO? >> I think it has to come together a bit, is one thing. So when you do the BPO, or you do shared services, or you outsource some of the work. We actually put into those contracts, because we do a lot of that for our customers. And we put in automation. The step we took further was we actually started to empower people to actually build the automations themselves, which meant we actually had to work with customers too. So they knew we were doing this. We wanted to make sure they understood, they were comfortable. We put any controls in place that they also needed, to make sure that, you know, we didn't impact any of their services. We want to make it better. We want them to feel nothing but bigger, better results in outcomes. And then as you think about the enterprise side, we have to compliment, because a lot of those processes do feed back into how you run a business. And so we focus on how do you bring both of those stories together so that you're driving synergies across the board. And actually some good lessons learned along the way because some of this stuff becomes reusable. You have best practices you could share across the board. And we want to make sure that we are connecting the dots from the shared services BPO work, back into the enterprise because really a process is end to end, an organization. And we want to help people think that way and also get the results that way too. >> Is that end to end automation, at enterprise automation, more tech heavy, or, or maybe it's tech light in a way, whereas BPO is maybe a lot more, sort of, lean thinking, a lot more chalkboard. Are we deep into the, so I, sometimes, you're saying they have to come together. >> They do yeah. >> But from, from where I guess is, is what I'm trying to better understand. >> So I would think about it this way. When you think about a process, right, from when you even placed an order, the whole way through when you fulfill it for a customer. There's work that we, we do outsource all the time, right? So maybe it's the, the PO process, some of the order transactions from the payment, but you also have the pieces is actually touching the customer, too. You have the pieces that are fulfilling the order. So we say end to end, that is really thinking about that beginning, from a conversation with the customer, the whole way to when we're delivering. And I do think there's a lot of technology. That is something I think everyone gravitates to because there is a lot. Especially if you're going to go end to end, you have to be able to take in documents. You have automation. You're not going to know all the rules, no matter how many times you ask, you're going to need machine learning to be able to help figure it out and get smarter as what, as you go along the way. But as you're putting this into place, what's important is: as you're thinking about, kind of, transforming that business so that they're feeling the results the whole way through, because if you just focus on one, you might create a bottleneck, right? You might've got super fast, but the guy who's going to get the work from you, they're going to feel like, oh my goodness, there's all this work on my plate. So we really want to make sure that we create that seamless experience for everyone across the board, as we put it in. >> And how does UiPath, help facilitate that? >> Across the board, I mean, we were sitting down, we were laying out our program. 'Cause we're actually trying to get to 60,000 strong. So we have 7,000 trained today. We're going to get to 60,000. That's our plan. So we're working very closely with UiPath on what does that training that you need to have in place? What's that model? How do we get people comfortable? Because one thing you'll find is not everyone's in the same spot. Some are going to jump in, dive right in, give me the tool. I want to build. I love this. Others might need a little bit more confidence boost. They might need more handholding. And I think that's really important. And it's probably the one thing I would add too, as you do talk a lot about the technologies, we put it in, but it's the people at the end of the day, it's how you help them adopt, feel comfortable with this technology and really embrace it. That's really going to be the difference on whether, how fast you get down that line for transformation. >> Is it a classic bell curve? You got your 10% early adopters, you got a big fat middle, and then you've got some laggards who come along. >> It kind of is. And I think what's important is that middle is all up in how you do it because 10% are always going to love it. You're always going to have a few people, they're a little extra nervous maybe. But in the middle, if you really think about it, and you're able to put in that culture, you're able to put in your leadership is engaged. You're putting us in gamification, make it fun. That's what we found is, if we got people really having fun up front with it, it gives people a reason to be a part of it. And also, why don't we let people partner up? We can give them the technology, but if someone's not as comfortable, let us do teams. Let's meet people where they're at and then move them along this journey. And let's try to accelerate the best we can. >> How did you gamify it? Crypto. No. (chuckles) >> (laughs) >> (laughs) No, no crypto. But I will say we have some really cool prizes and people were super excited to get to do the presentations because they got to show their, their bots live, their creations, to the team. And I think that was important. Not everyone always is able to capture all the results, but we wanted to actually talk about like, what were the ideas, share it across the board. Cause it also generated ideas. because what you'll find is, when you hear something like, you know what, that's kind of what I do. Wonder if I could do some automation too. At least submit an idea, and then, maybe they're moving down the line, they're getting their hands on the technology. And I think that's how we all push the needle forward and move this along faster. >> One of the most important things about automation is letting people be able to move away from the mundane, the repetitive tasks, that they probably don't enjoy. And being able to focus more on their core competencies or more strategic initiatives that really make them more relevant to themselves and to their company. And it sounds like you guys have achieved that pretty quickly and, and you have an aggressive plan >> (chuckles) We do. >> to go from 7,000 to 60,000. >> Yes. And that's really the power of automation, if you think about it. We all have things in our job we don't like to do. I don't know about you guys, but there's things that I'm like, oh man, like, can we please automate this? Expense reports, for example. All about automated expense reports. (laughs) But it's really about freeing people up. Think about it. These people went to school, they often have degrees and things, and they do get caught in a lot of the manual things, downloading reports, consolidating data, you know, submitting spreadsheets and forms. Imagine if we're able to make that easier for people, we give them what they need to do their job. So that all that stuff you would like to do, that you know would improve things. You know would make the company better. The culture better. Heck, maybe it's a new product that people know would be really awesome to go build, but everyone feels like they're so busy. They don't have the time to do it. I mean, that's one of the big values of automation. Is this value creation conversation that you get to have with people. And you get to start asking 'why not' a little bit more. >> You've mentioned a couple of times the IDC presentation this morning. And we were talking about earlier, and the pie chart of, of, of value benefits was cost savings, which was very large, new revenue, which was very large. And then I think 15% was quality improvements. And that, I think that's an underappreciated slice of the pie. Somebody, I think years ago, of the UiPath FORWARD said to me, I can very inexpensively apply Six Sigma to business process. >> (Mariesa) Yeah. >> And I could never afford to do that before RPA. And, and so I wonder if you could talk to the quality impacts that you're seeing. >> Absolutely. I actually spent a lot of time in Lean Six Sigma in my early career days. And one of the things about it too, is when you're doing automation, we actually asked that question upfront, can we just simplify, can we just stop doing this? Because you don't want to automate a bad process either. So you want to ask some of those questions. >> (Dave) Yeah. >> But you're spot on. There's a ton of quality benefits that you get from automation. And one of the things I've actually seen is if you focus on some of the quality upfront, process gets better. Get better impact, as when you get faster. If you have better quality, and get faster, you also get your cost out targets. And I, that really matters because quality also, beyond being able to drive the cost out, it also helps a lot with the experience that people face. Customers are frustrated if they have poor quality, something doesn't work the way it's supposed to, a site's not working the way it should. And also even employees, they go, how many times, if you try to do something and you try to follow a process and something's hung up or who knows what happened, right. It's frustrating. So if you're able to improve the quality in the process, not only do you get the cost savings, but you get these, it's softer tan, there's still tangible experiences that get better and actually motivates people to want to do more. >> And those motivated people are probably dealing with customers much, much better. >> Yes, yeah. >> I mean, it's, I always think the employee experience is so, is, is a critical component. >> It is. >> But the customer experience. So how has the customer experience improved at Cognizant as a result of building in automation and enabling all these people? >> Yeah, they're loving the results because we're giving them back efficiencies in their process immediately by putting this automation in. These are quick impacts they're feeling and we're able to do more for them as well. So we're actually having conversations now on how do we drive more efficiencies for you and also, you know, how can we do more? Is there more volume of work? Is there more we could be doing to add value back to your organization? And that's what you want to talk about with customers is we're able to give you this value. And by the way, we actually did X for you now as well, because we knew you needed it. And we have the capacity to do this for you. So it's a really positive conversation, but we did have to upfront talk to them about it, to make sure that we, everyone was on board. They're comfortable. And we're continuing to have those conversations because you know, sometimes you're in a regulated business and we did put a little extra control in. Absolutely okay. But we want to be able to drive these efficiencies back for them. So they feel it in their own operations internally too. And it hits their bottom line and oftentimes helps their employees too, because we interact with them. So those downstream benefits and sometimes even upstream get some nice returns there as well. >> We've heard from, well, we're going to have Daniel on soon. He's the CEO. We've of course heard from CFOs. We've, that's kind of one of the main springs of RPA in the early days. We've heard a lot more CIOs at this event and we have a CTO coming on later. Are these C suite executives totally aligned in their objectives? Do they have they have different agendas? What are you seeing in terms of serving the C suite? >> Yeah. They're all going to have a little bit different agendas, right? Cause that's, their roles have different objectives, but they all align back to the strategy, obviously, for their company. But they're going to have portions of it that they're trying to drive and deliver. What we do see is that there's still some merging that needs to happen between the operations, the more business focused side and the more technical side. But we do, we're starting to see that convergence happen. Because what happens is, is that, you have these technologists, who really are going to have to help move you forward. We're, you know, we're applying AI, ML. Very technical technologies, and we want to make sure we do it right, that we put the right governance in. And we think about the security that we have to have in place for this too. And but we also have the business outcomes and coming together is where you really see the results. If you look at all of those that have reached true maturity, it's where you see these agendas aligning a bit more because you also have to shift the culture too. And it's a collaboration point. You need to be able to have the tech savvy folks. It helps bring them along this journey, but you also have to have the business depth as because you're looking at a process and you're going really deep into it to apply the technology. So it's when people partner is when we really see the results become more exponential. >> So digital transformation, you know, we hear that term a lot. And automation-led digital transformation. >> Yep. >> I hear a lot of data led digital transformations are those parallel tracks, or they can talk a lot about convergence. >> Yeah. >> Are they? I mean, they're not competing. They're obviously very much related. How do you see the data agenda and the automation agenda coming together. >> They have to. Because you really need good quality data to be able to enable your automation at the end of the day. And, but they actually play nicely together. You can actually use automation to help go back and improve your master data management too, which is the core of your information because that's actually where a lot of the struggle sometimes comes, is in the quality of the data that everyone has to work with. So you see the data agenda working on, "How do I clean this? How do I get more insightful, predictful information?" And then from an automation standpoint, how do I then use that to go take action? So all we see is you bring it together, to be able to identify where do you need to get in the process? How do I get the right information? So the automation also is proven data behind it, that we drove the outcomes, because that's where you take it to the bank at the end of the day. Is that you see it in the data itself. But I think one of the things I've seen with automation that helps drive the digital transformation conversation is, the business and IT teams are coming together and having a joint conversation now. People are excited. They're understanding it. I think that's why people jumped on with RPA so quickly, was because they're like, I get this, this is rule-based, this is my business process. I just tell it what to do. I'll take that. I want to do that. And so people got excited about that. And then they said, let's do more. How do I make it more intelligent? How do I help it do things in my process that it's harder for me to explain because there's just so much information here. There's so many nuances. Well, we have the technology can help make it more intelligent, smarter, and learn, so that we're able to drive that back into the business itself to transform. >> You mentioned Master Data Management is, is the data agenda as it relates to automation, primarily reporting, is it moving? Is it transcending reporting into the building of data products, for example, data services that can be monetized either within Cognizant or in your customer base? >> So it's really evolving. I would say some start with reports. That's easy. That's where we'll start, but I'll just kind of give you maybe a little example. So we have a customer and we work with them. So they have customers where they need to, when they call in, the sales folks and the contact centers, they have to upsell. So they work with a lot of different restaurants and different, maybe, bars and, you know, different companies that have different type of like beverages and things like that. So we worked with them to show, how are they performing today with all their sales reps? And then we started to use some automation to be able to get them more helpful information the moment the customer's calling in. And we also did some semantic analysis on a voice, how people were, how were they sounding? How was their tone? Were they happy? Were they upset? Were they sad during the call? And we fed that information back to those teams, back to those managers, and went back even to their training programs. What they actually saw was a ton of top line growth. They saw all of their metrics starting to get better, and they also start to get more predictive on ways that they can use more data to drive the support for those teams and their customers. Like for example, if you know holidays are coming up or a certain time of year with weather, we're able to actually put that type of information in and helps those sales reps better serve their customers. >> Last question, some of the announcements that came out yesterday and some of the news today about UiPath, what excites you about the technology and how it's going to continue to enable you to, to foster this new culture that you've shifted? >> I think, so one thing about UiPath that we've always loved to be able to partner with them as we're still customer centric. And you see that in every announcement that they're doing, and also they're focused on this true process transformation, intelligent end to end thinking, because I think a lot of times when we've had conversations most get stuck in kind of point solutions. And that's just because people are trying to solve today's problems. But with where UiPath is moving and where we want to move to, is how do we help you to really transform how people work? We know automation is a part of our future. We know it's going to be how we work in the future. And we love about UiPath is to really think about how do we integrate it? How do we make those connections? So we can drive the bigger results, we can make it easier for people to adopt and really embrace it because we need to bring the people along this journey and we need to be able to actually impact our processes too, so we can transform them. So I think that's one thing that's been really exciting is just watching them in general. Involved with the announcements the last couple of days, we really see them continue to push that needle. >> Excellent. Well, Mariesa, thanks for joining us. Talking to us about the automation-led digital transformation at Cognizant. Good luck raising your trained individuals from 7K to 60K. It sounds like the momentum is there. The culture's there. We can't wait to hear what happens next! >> Awesome. Thanks again for having me today. >> Our pleasure. >> Good to see you. >> Thank you. >> For Dave Vellante, I'm Lisa Martin live in Las Vegas at the Bellagio. UiPath FORWARD IV is the event we're covering. We'll be right back with our next guest. >> (bubbly outro music)

(upbeat music) >> Live, from Las Vegas, it's theCUBE, covering UiPath Forward Americas 2019. Brought to you by UiPath. >> Welcome back to Las Vegas, everybody. You're watching theCUBE, the leader in live tech coverage. We go out to the events and we extract the signal from the noise. This is day two of UiPath Forward III, the third North American conference that UiPath-- The rocket ship that is UiPath. Clemmie Malley is here. She's the Enterprise RPA Center of Excellence Lead at NextEra Energy. Welcome. Great to have you. And Mariesa Coughanour, who is the Managing Principal of Intelligent Automation and Technology at Cognizant. Nice to see you guys. >> Nice seeing you. >> Nice to see you. >> Thanks for coming on. How's the show going for you? >> It's been great so far. >> Yes. >> It's been awesome. >> Have you been to multiple... >> This is my third. >> Yep. >> Really? Okay, great. How does this compare? >> It has changed significantly in three years, so. It was very small in New York in 2017 and even last year grew, but now it's a two-year event taking over. >> Yeah, last year Miami was-- >> I don't know. >> It was nice. >> Definitely smaller than this, but it was happening. Kind of hip vibe. We're here in Vegas, everybody loves to be in Vegas. CUBE comes to Vegas a lot. So tell me more about your role at NextEra Energy. But let's start with the company. You guys are multi billion, many, many, tens of billions, probably close to $20 billion energy firm. Really dynamic industry. >> Yeah, so NextEra Energy is actually an awesome company, right? So we're the world's largest in clean renewable energy. So with wind and solar, really, and we also have Florida Power and Light, which is one of the child companies to NextEra as a parent, which is headquartered out of Florida. So it's usually the regulated side of power in the state of Florida. >> We know those guys. We've actually done some work with Florida Power and Light. Cool people down there. And we heard, one of the keynotes today, Craig LeClaire, was saying, "Yeah, the Center of Excellence, "that's actually maybe asking too much." But there are a lot of folks here that are sort of involved in a COE and that's kind of your role. But I was surprised to hear him say that. I don't know if you were in the keynote this morning, but was it a challenge to get a Center of Excellence? What is that all about? >> So I think there's a little bit of caution around doing it initially. People are very aggressive. And we actually learned from this story. So when we started, it was more about showing value, building as many automations as possible. We didn't really care about having a COE. The COE just happened to form. >> Okay. >> Because we found out we needed some level of governance and control around what we were doing. But now that I look back on it, it's really instrumental to making sure we have the success. So whether you do a hybrid development to automation, which you can have citizen development, or you're fully centralized, I think having the strong COE to have that core governance model and control and process is important. >> Mariesa, so your title is not, there's not RPA in your title, right? RPA is too narrow, right? >> Yeah. >> In your business you're trying to help transform companies, it's all about automation. But maybe explain a little bit about your practice and your role. >> Sure, so Cognizant's been on the automation journey now for three years. We started back in 2014 and right out the gate it was all about intelligent automation, just not RPA. Because we knew to be able to do end-to-end solutions you would need multiple technologies to really get the job done and get the outcomes they wanted. So we sit now, over 2,500 folks at our practice, going out, working cross-industry, cross-regions to be able to work with people like Clemmie to put in their program. And we've even added some stuff recently. A lot of it actually inspired by NextEra. And we have an advisory team now. And our whole job is to go in and help people unstuck their programs, for lack of a better way to say it. Help them think about, how do you put that foundation? Get a little bit stronger and actually enable scale, and putting in all this technology to get outcomes? Versus just focusing on just the pure play RPA, which a lot of people struggle to gain the benefits from. >> So Clemmie, what leads you to the decision to bring in an outside firm like Cognizant? What's that discussion like internally? >> So, I'll just give you a little bit of backstory, because I think that's interesting, as well. When we started playing with RPA in late 2016, early 2017, we knew that we wanted to do a lot of things in-house, but in order to have a flex model and really develop automations across the company, we needed to have a partner. And we wanted them to focus more on delivery, so developing, and then partner with us to give us some best practices, things that we could do better. When we founded the COE we knew what we wanted to do. So we actually had two other partners before we went with Cognizant, and that was a huge challenge for us. We found we were reworking a lot of the code that they gave us. They weren't there to be our partners. They wanted to come and actually do the work for us, instead of enabling us to be successful. And we actually said, "We don't want a partner." And then Cognizant came in and they actually were like, "Let's give you somebody." So we wanted somebody around delivery, because we said, "Okay, now that we centralize, "we have a good foundation, a good model, "we're going to need to focus on scale. "So how do we do that? "We need a flex model." So Cognizant came in and they said, "Well, we're going to offer you a delivery lead "to help focus on making sure "you get the automations out the door." Well, Mariesa actually showed up, which was one of the best hidden surprises that we received. And she really just came in, learned the company, learned our culture, and was able to say, "Okay, here's some guidance. "What can you instill? "What can you bring?" Tracking, and start capturing the outcomes that she's mentioned. And I know that was a little bit more, but it's been quite a journey. >> No, it's really good, back up. So Mariesa, I'm hearing from Clemmie that you were willing to teach these guys how to fish, as opposed to just perpetual, hourly, daily rate billing. >> Yep. And that's really what our belief is. We can go in, and yes, we can augment, from resourcing perspective, help them deliver, develop, support everything, which we do. And we work with Clemmie and others to do that. But what's really important to get to scale was how do we teach them how to go do this? Because if you're going to really embed this type of automation culture and mindset, you have to teach people how to do it. It's not about just leaning on me. I needed to help Clemmie. I need to help her team, and also their leadership and their employees. On how do you identify opportunities, and how then do you make these things actually work and run? >> So you really understand the organization. Clemmie was saying you learned the culture. >> Yeah. >> So you're not just a salesperson going in and hanging out in theCUBE. So you're kind of an extension, really, of the staff. So, either of you, if you can explain to me sort of, where RPA fits into this broader vision. That would really be helpful. >> Sure, so maybe I can kick a little bit off from what I'm seeing from clients like Clemmie, and also other customers. So what you'll find is RPA tends to be like this gateway. It's the stepping stone to all things automation. Because folks in the business, they really understand it. It's rule-based, right? It's a game of Simon Says, in some ways, when you first get this going. And then after that, it's enabling the other technology and looking at, "Look, if I want to go end-to-end, "what do I need to get the job done? "What do I need around data intake? "How do I have the right framework "to pick the right OCR tool, "or put analytics on, "or machine learning?" Because there's so much out there today and you need to have the stuff that's right-fit to come in. And so it's really about looking at what's that company strategy? And then looking at this as a tool set. And how to use these tools to go and get the job done. And that's what we were doing a lot with Clemmie and team when we sat down. They have a steering committee that's chaired by their CIO, Chief Accounting Officer, and senior leaders from every business unit across their enterprise. >> So you mentioned scaling. >> Yep. >> We heard today in the predictions segment that we're going to move from snowflake to snowball. And so I would think for scaling it's important to identify reusable components. And so how have you, how has that played out for you? And how's the scaling going? >> Yeah, so that's been one really cool component that we've built out in the COE. So I had my team actually vote on a name and we said, "We want to go after reusable components." They decided to call them Microbots. So it's a cool little term that we coined. >> That's cool. >> And our CIO and CAO actually talk about them frequently. "How are our Microbots? "How many do we have? "What are they doing?" So it's pretty catchy. But what it's really enabled us is to build these reusable snippets of code that are specific to how we perform as a company that we can plug and play and reduce our cycle time. So we've actually reduced our cycle time by over 50%. And reusable components is one of the major key components. >> So how do you share those components? Are they available in some kind of internal marketplace? And how do you train people to actually know what to apply where? >> Right. So because we're centralized, it's a little bit easier, right? We have a stored repository, where they're available. We document them-- >> And it's the COE-- Sorry to interrupt. It's the COE's responsibility, and-- >> Exactly. So the COE has it. We're actually working with Cognizant right now to figure out how can we document those further, right? And UiPath. There's a lot of cool tools that were introduced this week. So I think we're definitely going to be leveraging from them. But the ability to really show what they are, make them available, and we're doing all of that internally right now. Probably a little manual. So it'll be great to have that available. >> So Amazon has this cool concept they call working backwards documents. I don't know if you ever heard this. But what they do is they basically write the press release, thinking five years in advance. This is how they started AWS, they actually wrote. This is what we want, and then they work backwards from there. So my question is around engineering outcomes. Can you engineer outcomes, and is that how you were thinking about this? Or is it just too many unknown parts of the process that you can't predict? >> So I think one of the things that we did was we did think about, "What do we want to achieve with this?" So one of the big programs that Clemmie and the team have is also around accelerate. And their key initiatives to drive, whether it's improve customer experience, more efficiencies of certain processes across the company. And so we looked at that first, and said, "Okay, how do we enable that?" That's a top strategy driven by their CEO. And even when we prioritize all the work, we actually build a model for them. So that it's objective. So if any opportunities that come in align to those key outcomes that the company's striving for, they can prioritize first to be worked on. I actually also think this is where this is all going. Everyone focuses today on these automation COEs and automation teams, but what you will see, and this is happening at NextEra, and all the places we're starting to see this scale, is you end up with this outcomes management office. This is a core nucleus of a team that is automation, there's IT at the table, there's this lean quality mindset at the table, and they're actually looking at opportunities and saying, "All right, this one's yours. "This one's yours and then I'll pick up from you." And it's driving, then, the right outcomes for the organization versus just saying, "I have a hammer, I'm going to go find a nail," which sometimes happens. >> Right, oh, for sure. And it may be a fine nail to hit, but it might not be the most strategic-- >> Exactly. >> Or the most valuable. So what are some examples of areas that you're most excited about? Where you've applied automation and have given a business outcome that's been successful? >> Yeah, so we are an energy company. And we've had a lot of really awesome brainstorming sessions that we've held with UiPath and Cognizant. And a couple of key ones that have come out of it, really around storm season is big for us in the state of Florida. And making sure that our critical infrastructure is available. So our nursing homes, our hospitals, and so on. So we've actually built automations that help us to ping and make sure that they're available, so that we can stay proactive, right? There's also a cool use-case around, really, the intelligent automations space. So our linemen in their trucks are saying, "Hey, we spend a lot of time having to log on the computer, "log our tickets, "and then we have to turn our computers off, "drive to the next site, "and we're not able to restore as much power "or resolve issues as quickly as possible." So we said, "How can we enable them?" Speech recognition, where they can talk to it, it can log a ticket for them on their behalf. So it's pretty exciting. >> So that's kind of an interesting example. Where RPA, in and of itself's not going to solve that problem, right, but speech recognition-- >> It's a combination. >> So you got to bring in other technology, so using, what, some NLP capability, or? >> Yeah, so that's one we're currently working on. But yes, you would need some type of cognitive speech recognition, and. >> So you sort of playing around with that in R&D right now? The speech [Mumbles]. >> Yeah. >> Which, as you know, is not perfect, right? >> It is not. >> Talk to us. We know about it all. Because we transcribe every word that's said on theCUBE. And so, there's some good ones and there's some not so good ones. And they're getting better, though. They're getting better. And that's going to be kind of commodity shortly. You really need just good enough, right? I mean, is that true? Or do you need near perfect? >> So I think there's a happy medium. It depends on what you're trying to do. In this case we're logging tickets, so there might be some variability that you can have. But I will say, so NextEra is really focused on energy, but they're also trying to set themselves apart. So they're trying to focus on innovation, as well. So this is a lot of the areas that they're focusing on: the machine learning, and the processing, and we even have chat bots that they're coining and branding internally, so it's pretty exciting. >> So NextEra is, are you entirely new energy? Is that right? No fossil fuels, or? >> So it's all clean energy, yes. Across the enterprise. >> Awesome. How's that going? Obviously you guys are very successful, but, I mean, what's kind of happening in the energy business today? You're sort of seeing a resurgence in oil, right, but? >> Yeah, so I think we had a really good boom. A couple years ago there were a lot of tax credits that we were able to grow that side of our company. And it enabled us to really pivot to be the clean energy that we are. >> I mean, that's key, right? I mean, United States, we want to lead in clean energy. And I'm not sure we are. I mean, like you say, there was tax incentives and credits that sort of drove a lot of innovation, but am I correct? You see countries outside the U.S., really, maybe leaning in harder. I mean, obviously we got NextEra, but. >> I mean, I think there's definitely competition out there. We're focused on trying to be, maybe not the best, but compete with the best. We're also trying to focus on what's next, right? So be proactive, and grow the company in a multitude of ways. Maybe even outside the energy sector, just to make sure that we can compete. But really what we're focused on is the clean renewables, so. >> That's awesome. I mean, as a country we need this, and it's great to have organizations like yours. Mariesa, I'll give you the final word. Kind of, the landscape of automation. What inning are we in? Baseball analogy. Or how far can this thing go? And what's your sort of, as you pull out the binoculars, maybe not the telescope, but the binoculars, where do you see it going? >> I think there's a lot of runway left. So if you look at a lot of the research out there today, I heard today, 10% was quoted by one person. I heard 13% quoted from HFS around where are we at on scale from an RPA perspective? And that's just RPA. >> Yeah. >> So that means there's still so much out there to still go and look at and be able to make an impact. But if you look, there's also a lot of runway on this intelligent automation. And that's where, I think, we have to shift the focus. You're seeing it now, at these conferences. That you're starting to see people talk about, "How do I integrate? "How do I actually think about connecting the dots "to get bigger and broader outcomes for an organization?" and I think that's where we're going to shift to, is talking about how do we bring together multiple technologies to be able to go and get these end-to-end solutions for customers? And ultimately go, what we were talking a little bit about before, on outcome-focused for an organization. Not talking about just, "How do I go do AI? "How do I go put a bot in?" But, "I want to choose this outcome for my customer. "I need to grow the top line. "I'm getting this feedback." Or even internally, "I want to get more efficient so I can deliver." And focus there, and then what we'll do is find the right tools to be able to move all that forward. >> It's interesting. We're out of time, but you think about, it's somewhat surprising when people hear what you just said, Mariesa, because people think, "Wow, we've had all this technology for 50 years. "Haven't we automated everything?" Well, Daniel Dines, last night, put forth the premise that all this technology's actually creating inefficiencies and somewhat creating the problem. So technology's kind of got us into the problem. We'll see if technology can get us out. All right? Thanks, you guys, for coming on theCUBE. Appreciate it. >> Thank you. >> Thank you for having us. >> You're welcome. >> Thanks. >> All right, keep it right there, everybody. We'll be right back with our next guest right after this short break. UiPath Forward III from Las Vegas. You're watching theCUBE. (electronic music)