(upbeat music) >> We're back at VeamON 2022, at the Aria in Las Vegas. You're watching The Cube. My name is Dave Vellante, and I'm here with my co-host, David Nicholson. Danny Allan here is the Chief Technical Officer at Veeam. And he's joined by Ope Bakare who's the Chief Technical Officer at HBC Dave. One of the few companies that's older than my home. >> Unbelievable. >> Ope. >> That's right. >> Danny, great to see you. Thanks for coming on. It's true by the way. 1670, we're going to learn more about HBC. But I wonder, Danny, if you could set it up. The kind of topic of this discussion here is hybrid cloud, we've got a pretty interesting use case, give us the high level, what should we be focused on here? >> So lots of customers today focused on digital transformation and moving into the cloud, everyone talks about that, I can take my workload and move into the cloud. And one of the interesting things that we saw originally was, you know, I'll just lift it and move it over there. That's not necessarily the best model for the cloud. So you see people doing that. What I actually think is really interesting, and I know Ope has been very focused on is actually transforming the application so that works most effectively in the cloud model. >> So Ope, maybe give us the background on HBC, for folks who aren't familiar with the company and your role there. >> Sure, so HBC is 350, somewhat years old. It's the oldest corporation that's continually existed in North America. I have the privilege to serve as the chief technology officer there. And, you know, HBC is a company that has innovation kind of baked into its core DNA. We have to keep reinventing ourselves, otherwise, we get stagnant and we get left behind. Clearly, we're still around so--. >> So far so good. >> We must be doing something right. But kind of pivoting to what you were saying earlier, you know, our journey to the cloud was multifaceted. Some of it was to improve the pace of innovation, some of it was to improve on quality. So you know, we have typical data center technologies, and, you know, we had some of the typical issues you would have, right, so some older equipment, you know, failures, etc, etc. When you're in the cloud, a lot of that is just managed for you. Again, it's about what I talked about this morning, it's about moving your team up the value chain, towards creating value, right? So you start with the managing of core basic infrastructure, and you start consuming them as services. The interesting thing is, as you mentioned, for the vast majority of people, your first foray into the cloud, is pick up all those virtual machines that you had on-prem, and put them in the cloud. And that's great, you get, immediately you get a better, possibly a better or more available under a cloud platform there. But you're just barely scratching the surface. You don't really get into cloud until you start consuming cloud native services, until you go serverless, you go stateless with containers in Kubernetes, you can use platforms like, you know, Kafka for streaming your data, as opposed to, you know, constructing cumbersome, easy to break data pipelines and all that. So it's a very interesting pivot. And I think a lot of people sometimes struggle with going past that first step, they have the VMs, it's familiar to what they're used to. But for us, we had a digital transformation in the works. We were replatforming from a legacy platform, some of you may know, Blue Martini. But we were moving to a more modern, more flexible platform that was really suited to accelerate our omni channel strategy. Thank goodness we did because the pandemic came around and proved it exactly correct. >> Good timing. >> Yeah, so that's really what happened for us, that actually forced us forward in the cloud journey. >> So Alan Nance, who was at the time, he was like a CIO slash CTO at Philips. And he said to me, if you just lift and shift to the cloud, this is early days of cloud, he said, he's not going to change your operational model. The company, if you want to save billions, you got to change that operational model. But listening to what Ope just said, Danny, what does that mean, from your perspective, I mean, cloud native, and what does that do for your business? >> Well, cloud native,. The benefit of the cloud, of course, makes completely portable, and it's elastic, you can scale almost infinitely, and you don't have to build it. However, the hard part is not the technology. I always say the hard part is the process, you actually have to rewrite your applications to take advantage of all the things in the cloud. And that is not an easy thing. So what we're seeing a lot in the industry across our customer base, is when they have a greenfield opportunity, a new project, they always start in the cloud. We're not seeing a lot of, hey, am going to completely modernize my applications, because that's expensive. It's already built. And so customers will sometimes pick that up and move it to the cloud. And sometimes they'll actually move it back on premises, because the cost model isn't there. But I do think in the long term, if you're looking at four or five years, all the new applications will be designed for a cloud native experience. What that means is written in containers, with container orchestration, you know, seamlessly orchestrating the entire portfolio and data lifecycle. >> So Ope. >> Spot on. >> Translate that into what actually happened at HBC. So as Danny said, we're not going to just going to move everything into the cloud, we've got a hybrid setup, maybe some of the new stuff. What did you do? You have the, your back end systems, your database kind of protected that? How did you go about this omni channel journey? >> So, you know, for us, you know, by the way, that was completely spot on. You know, it's not a fallacy to really examine some cost, because we all have to, we'll have to live in the real world, right? We understand that there are budgets, and there are limits to what we can accomplish within a fiscal year. So you look at an application that's already built, that's already fulfilling the business purpose for which for which it was built. What's the value in immediately going and taking it all apart and containerizing it? If there is a small or easy lift, sure, it might be worth it. But if it's a major system that you have to rewrite, the ROI is just not there, right? So a lift and shift model in that scenario, kind of makes sense. But what you said earlier is exactly what we did. When we had an opportunity again, with the omni channel strategy, we're looking to strengthen our digital arm. And so we were moving from our legacy platform to this new one. And that required us to do a bunch of work. So we had to modernize some of our services, we had to change some of our data, our data process, how we stream data into and out of the e-commerce platform. And all of that actually provided sort of almost a groundswell of support for all of this transformative works. Apologies, for all this transformative work we had to do. So it totally made sense in that case, we actually were able to kill two birds with one stone, really transform and go cloud native, at the same time as deprecating a bunch of legacy technologies that to be perfectly frank didn't really have much of a place in the cloud. >> So many questions. I hope, go. >> Yeah, so it's interesting, because when you talk about that sort of journey to cloud that you're on, sometimes people will ask the question, well, how long before everything is in the cloud? And often the answer is, if you look at what's called the vanishing point, where the two sides of the highway come together, off in the distance, it's like, that's, that's when it'll happen. But as you get closer to that point, it gets further away. So if you had to categorize it in terms of a percentage of where you are now, and then an aspiration over time, how would you categorize that? >> So I have the pleasure of telling you that we are probably at about, I'd say 90% in the cloud? >> Oh, wow, okay. >> We were very aggressive about it. And frankly, I think, you know, first of all, I have the privilege to lead an amazing team. And they did everything possible to make this real. We had a goal, and it was focusing on our customers, being customer obsessed, really. And for us, data centers just didn't make sense in that world. So all we did was work towards how do we deprecate these legacy technologies? How do we consolidate and then move them to the cloud as quickly as possible? So for us 90%, and we're going even even further. Is that last 10% worth it, to go for that? I mean, you know, what's the, you know, you get to that marginal return? >> I really think the next 5% will be worth it, the last five we're not going to pursue and here's why. So think about, you know, we talked about really low latency things that need to be physically in the building. So we have a bunch of, we have a whole lot of fulfillment and distribution centers, right? Those, in some cases, we have automation equipment that really requires low latency connectivity to physical equipment. Moving that to the cloud, is not really a high value proposition. If you think about, you know, large corporate presences, there are some pieces of technology that you could move to the cloud. But again, latency in the customer, the users experience might be compromised as a result. If there's no value, really, to moving that into the cloud, why would you do it? >> And wouldn't you have to freeze the application in order to move it into the cloud or not for these 10% or 5%, or not necessarily? >> Not necessarily. In many cases, we have applications that are built in a distributed fashion so that you can take, you know, some percentage of it, move it to the cloud, validate it over there, and then move the rest of it-- >> You could build some kind of abstraction layer, okay. So the million dollar question is, what does Veeam have to do with all this? >> Well, so Veeam has been for quite some time now, our data protection engine. You know, when I talk about moving people up the value stack, I don't take that lightly. For me, you know, having engineers do things like and please forgive me for a second here, but do things like backups, to me that's, it's a hard requirement, but it's not really high value for me. So if I can get a platform that can use policies, can use tags can operate natively in the cloud. And once you have it running, you can set it and forget it, other than your periodic, you know, business continuity to DR Tests. You know, that's the dream scenario. And we've achieved that largely. We still have some legacy systems that are not on vignette. But that's something that's going to change over the next, let's call it 18 or so months. >> So did you evolve as Veeam evolved? How long have you been in this role? I apologize-- >> I've been with HBC for three years now. >> Okay, so now, Veeam goes, well, I remember I first saw Veeam at a VMUG. I'm like VMware, I was just brilliant, right? Of course, we all say that. Now, but you saw Veeam's ascendancy through virtualization, and then it took a while, but then all of a sudden, bare metal, the first in SAS, great cloud strategy. Now the first in I don't know if I can say that. Scratch that. We will talk to you about that tomorrow. Someone will come here. >> Someone else will come here. At VeeamON. So, from what you know, about HBC, did you kind of follow that Veeam strategy, they were just sort of there as you migrate it to the cloud, SAS, you know, Microsoft 365, etc? >> Yeah, so we actually started using Veeam in a very limited capacity quite some time ago, mostly to protect on-prem virtualized workloads. And that was, you know, that was really the limit. And, you know, my team had been used Veeam, in my previous role when I worked for a large healthcare provider, health care company in the states. So I was pretty familiar with Veeam as a platform, I was very familiar with the journey. I think that you know, more than many other, most of their competition, they've made the transition into the cloud first world, far more successfully. If you think about the policy engine, the automatic tearing, by age, as well as some of the cloud tagging, and the full integration with the native capabilities in AWS and Azure, it's been a dream scenario for us. >> You and I have talked about this Danny, and a lot of your competitors, especially early on the cloud, they wrap their stack in, you know, to container, or Kubernetes, it's shoved it in the cloud, which is really hosted on prem app. You guys didn't do that. I mean, I pushed you on this a number of times. What did you do? >> Every time there's a modern infrastructure, we say, how can we actually apply data protection, modern data protection to that infrastructure, specifically. We don't try and take what already exists. And Veeam started at this. If you think back when we first started, everyone was doing agents. And if you took an agent, put it on a hypervisor, and you'd 100 of them running at the same time, you would kill your production system. So we said, we'll take a snapshot at the hypervisor level. And then when storage arrays came up with snapshots, let's take advantage of that. When we went to the cloud, we said let's take advantage of the API's rather than trying to put an agent in there. And so every time we encounter a new infrastructure, we say, how do we take advantage of what that infrastructure is bringing? >> We're going to dig into more of this tomorrow. But I don't want to steal from the HBC story. Let me ask you about, you talked about, we talk a lot about digital transformation and modernization. And, of course, COVID was like a force march to digital, we all sort of realize this. What do you see Ope, that's now permanent? Whether it's, you know, security, data protection, and how you're thinking about modernization? What are those practices that are now best practices that will become permanent? >> Well, the obvious one that kind of hits up hits us all in the face is remote work. For the past, let's call it two ish years, my team has been almost completely remote. And as a result, you know, we've been able to show that, for us, it worked just fine. There were some teething pains as we all did >> It was like Y2K. Wasn't it? Hey, the world didn't end. >> It became a non factor very quickly, why? Because for most technology organizations were too used to working outside of normal hours. So it wasn't a stretch really to extend a logic to just working, you know, working remotely permanently. That said, you know, one of the things that for us, and I'm going to deviate away from the technology side for a second, one of the things that is really critical for us is we're trying to make sure that we respect people's work-life balance. As we have colleagues who work from home, you know, today, it's very easy to roll out of bed in the morning, you know, put your zoom suit on, and you know, where you're wearing your shorts, and all that and just work the whole day and then around like five to 7 P.M. or whatever, you sign off and you just realized, I just spent way more time working than I probably would have if I were going to the office. That's you know, it's a great productivity-- >> With no breaks. >> With no breaks, right? And there's no button, no water cooler moments or whatever. But, you know, we're trying to, we're trying to come up with various ways to respect people's, you know, work-life balance. Interestingly enough, we actually have a law that is going to effect in early June, in Ontario, where there will be a right to disconnect. So outside of normal working hours, you will be required to disconnect from your employees unless it is an operational issue, or some other pertinent emergency that requires them to engage. So, I think that's going to become the new norm as we go forward. Coming back to technology, I think just looking at the last two years, I don't know if you've noticed the same thing, but the pace of innovation seems to have picked up a tick. And I think that is going to become the new normal. You're going to see a lot of people challenging status quo a lot of sacred, a lot of sacred cows are going to get, you know, get, you know put out to pasture. And I think that's a good thing for our industry, it's going to quicken the pace of innovation. And it's also going to make people more thoughtful about where they place their bets, I think. You know, the other thing, this is the last one, dollars and cents. If you think about the pandemic, when it first started, we all had to take a breath, because instantly, a whole lot of industries just paused, right? And when that happened, you know, you had no revenue coming in. You had, it was whoa, what are we doing here? And I think that also sharpened our focus, when it came to making some some decisions. You know, we all had to deal with, you know, in some cases, furloughs and some cases reductions. Thankfully, we're all back to back to normal now. But where you place your bets financially, it's going to drive a lot of technology decision in investing, right? So I think that's going to be a larger part of our kind of landscape going forward. >> So that last point about innovation, Danny, it's got to be music to your ears, because your, the premise, you're saying, behind Veeam, is you look at the next trend and then modernize, you put meaning behind modern data protection. It's not just a tagline. You gave a couple of good examples. But talk a little bit more about, you know, what Ope just said and what that means to you guys? >> Well, at a technology level, I always talk about three things being part of modern data protection. One is, around the security, everyone working from home, there's intellectual property going into the home on the endpoint in Microsoft Teams, in all the collaboration tools, that needs to be protected. And actually, we're seeing because of the rise in ransomware, cyber insurance is actually requiring data protection for that. So a big part of modern data protection is all about the security of the environment. The second is cloud acceleration. We want customers to move to the cloud. I love sitting here quietly listening to him tell the story of what they're doing, because it's perfect. That is the story that we want from our customers moving to the cloud. And we don't want to stop that in any way. In fact, all of our licensing models go to market, support set cloud acceleration. And then the last thing is, of course, data protection. If they're going to do that, you own that data, you need to protect it on any cloud and on every cloud. And so our focus around modern data protection is those three things. Ransomware protection, cloud acceleration and modern data protection >> In an environment that is not bespoke, I presume, we're going to talk about Supercloud tomorrow. But right, but this idea that instead of going to, I don't know, if you run on Google, AWS, Azure, whatever, but instead of going there and doing your thing, and going over here and doing your on-prem, but you want a consistent experience across all your estates, whether it's on-prem and the cloud, eventually out to the edge, we're going to talk about that tomorrow, too. Is that a fair premise? >> It is. I mean, operational consistency is absolutely crucial for my team to succeed. I mean, think about running multiple different tools for data protection, it just creates a whole lot of interaction, let's call it that has friction. And ultimately, with anything and technology, wherever there's friction, you're going to have problems eventually, and you're going to have varying levels of skill in the team. Suppose you have part of your data protection team, you lose one or two people to COVID for a week, right? And you have a DR test. And it's so happens that these are the experts at FUBAR software, that is your data protection platform. The people that you may have on-prem, available may not have the right skills. I mean, unifying that stuff and actually running them out of the same ethos, really. I think that creates operational consistency that is so valuable for us to be successful. There was one thing I wanted to bring up, just hearing what you said earlier. Zero trust, I think is going to become part of our industry baseline as well. Zero trust approaches to network connectivity to tooling so that you stop dealing with traditional VPN. >> Tho nication >> Tho nication It just, that's where we're going as well. So apologies but-- >> No, not at all, it was a buzzword before the pandemic. >> It was but it's actually-- >> Now, it's a mandate. >> It's kind of, it's come back and become actually useful. >> If people are trying to, okay, what does this really mean? What does this mean to our organization? Exciting times, you know, the thing is, there's a lot of unknowns, right? And we certainly saw that with COVID. So how do you as a technologist deal with, you know, it used to be we would automate the known. This industry is built on that, right? How are you approaching what you don't know, from a technology, infrastructure and process standpoint? >> So I'm going to, everyone watching, everyone turn their videos off, when it's, I'm going to give them a secret, it's the people. The people are the secret sauce. If you surround yourself with amazing people, curious people, you can solve any problem. I again, like I said, I have the privilege of leading this team. And we have some amazing thinkers and problem solvers. If you set them to task and give them the right support as a leader, they will accomplish anything. And so for me, having a robust and just really diversely skilled team allows us to attack any problem, I have zero, I have zero worries about the future of state of technology, I have absolute confidence, we'll be able to engage, master and exploit whatever technologies come our way or any other challenges that actually happened to you know, be in our path as well. >> We hear this a lot in The Cube people process technology. Technology, figure itself out and get the good people you can get the right process and win. >> Absolutely. >> Ope, Danny, thanks so much for coming on The Cube. Danny, we'll see you tomorrow. Tomorrow afternoon Danny's coming back and we're going to dig into a lot of this stuff and double click on it. Appreciate your time. >> Absolutely. >> Thank you. >> This is Dave Vellante, for David Nicholson. You're watching The Cube's coverage VeamON 2022. From the Aria, in Las Vegas. This is day one. Keep it right there. (enchanting music)

(upbeat music) >> From our studios in the heart of Silicon Valley, Palo Alto, California, this is a CUBE conversation. >> Hello everyone, welcome to Palo Altos Cube Studios for CUBE Conversation. I'm John Furrier, co-host of theCUBE. We're with Kevin Ackroyd, CEO of Cision, CUBE Alumni. He's been on before. Building one of the most compelling companies that's disrupting and changing the game in Comms, advertising, PR, with Cloud technologies. Kevin, great to see you again, thanks for coming in. >> Likewise John, It's really good to be back. >> So, we haven't chatted in two years. You've been busy. Our last conversation was the beginning of 2017. Cision's done a lot of interesting things. You've got a lot of M and A under your belt. You're putting this portfolio together with Cloud technologies. Really been interesting. I really got to say I think you cracked the code on I think a new reality, a new economic reality. Also new capabilities for comms folks. Congratulations. >> Thank you, it's been a fun ride. >> So give us the update. So two years since we talked, how many deals, companies have you bought? What's the headcount, what's the revenue? Give us an update. >> In the four years, 12 acquisitions, seven of which have happened since I've been here. Up to 4,500 employees in over 40 countries. Customer count has grown to over 50,000 customers globally. Revenue's kind of gone from 500s to just shy of 800 million. A lot of leadership changes, and as you just mentioned, pretty seismic change, finally. We've certainly been the catalyst and the cattle prod for that seismic change around tech, data, measurement and analytics finally becoming mature and adopted inside this line of business like the Chief Communication Officer, the earn media folks. To say that they were not tech savvy a few years ago would be an understatement. So, a lot's been going on. >> Yeah, and certainly the trend is your friend, in my opinion, for you. But I think the reality is not yet upon people's general mindset. It's coming quickly, so if you look at some of the big trends out there. Look at fake news, look at Facebook, look at the Google effect. Elizabeth Warren wants to break up Big Tech, Amazon. Cloud computing, in that time period that you were, prior to just going to Cision, you had Oracle Cloud, done a lot of great things on the Marketing Cloud side. But the timing of Cloud computing, the timing of how media has changed. There's not many journalists anymore. We had Andy Cunningham, a legendary industry veteran, formerly of Cunningham Communications. He did the PR for Steve Jobs. You said, there's no more journalists, a few left, but you got to tell your story direct to the consumer. >> You do. >> This is now a new marketing phenomenon. This is a tailwind for you at Cision because you guys, although put these cubbies together, have a unique vision around bringing brand value advertising at PR economics. >> Yeah, that's a good way to put it. >> Tell us the vision of Cision and specifically the shift that's happening. Why are you guys important? What wave are you riding? >> So, there's a couple shifts, John. You and I have talked about this in previous programs There's this shift of the line of business, having to work in a whole bunch of non-integrated point solutions. The CFO used to live in 17 different applications from 17 vendors. That's all squished together. Now I buy from one Cloud platform, right, from Oracle or SAP. Same thing happened in Human Capital Management. 22 things squished into the Cloud, one from Workday, right. Same thing happened, you had 25 different things for sales and service. That all squished together, into one CRM in the Cloud, I buy from Salesforce, right. And our last rodeo, the early part of this stack, it was me and Adobe battling it out for the right to go squish the entire the LUMAscape into a marketing cloud, right, so there could be one ring to rule them all for the CMO. So, it happens in every single category. It just hasn't had over here, happened on the earned media side and the Chief Communications Officer. So, bringing the tech stack so that now we are for the CCO what Adobe is for the CMO what Salesforce is for the CRO, Workday is for the CHRO. That has to happen. You can't do, you can't manage it this way without sophisticated tech, without automation, without integration, you can't do it. The second thing that had to happen, especially in marketing and advertising, they all figured out how to get revenue credit. Advertising was a slow single-digit CAGR industry for 50 years. And then something happened. After 5% CAGR for 50 years, and then something happened over the next 10 years. Digital paid went from like 15 billion to 150 billion. And what happened is that old, I know half my advertising is wasted on this one half. That went bye-bye. Now I know immediately, down to the page, down the ad unit, down to this, exactly what worked, right. When I was able to put Pixels on ads, John, you'd go to that page, Pixel would go on you, It would follow you around If you ended up putting something in the e-commerce shop that ad got credit. I'm not saying that's right, I'm just saying that's how the entire-- >> But that's how the infrastructure would let you, allowed you, it enabled you to do that. Then again, paid advertising, paid search, paid advertising, that thing has created massive value in here. >> Massive value. But my buyer, right, so the person that does the little ad on the most regional tech page got credit. My buyer that got Bob Evans, the Cloud King, to write an article about why Microsoft is going to beat AWS, he's a credible third party influencer, writing objectively. That article's worth triple platinum and has more credibility than 20,000 Microsoft sales reps. We've never, until Cision, well let's Pixel that, let's go figure out how many of those are the target audience. Let's ride that all the way down to the lead form that's right. Basically it's super simple. Nobody's ever tracked the press releases, the articles or any of the earned media content, the way people have tracked banner ads or e-commerce emails. Therefore this line of business never get revenue credit. It stayed over here in the OpEx pile where things like commerce and advertising got dumped onto the revenue pile. Well, you saw the crazy investment shift. So, that's really the more important one, is Comms is finally getting quantified ROI and business's attribution like their commerce and advertising peers for the first time ever in 2018 via what Cision's rolled out. That's the exciting piece. >> I think, I mean, I guess what I hear you saying is that for the first time, the PR actually can be measured, similar to how advertising >> You got it. >> Couldn't be measured then be measured. Now PR or communications can be measured. >> They get measured the same way. And then one other thing. That ad, that press release, down to the business event. This one had $2 million dollars of ad spend, this one had no ad spend. When it goes to convert, in CRM or it goes to convert on a website, this one came from banner ad, this one came from credible third party content. Guess which one, not only had zero ad spend instead of $2 million in ad spend. Guess which one from which source actually converts better. It's the guy that chose to read credible third-party article. He's going to convert in the marketing system way better that somebody who just clicked on the ad. >> Well certainly, I'm biased-- >> So all the way down the funnel, we're talking about real financial impact based on capturing earned media ID, which is pretty exciting. >> Well, I think the more exciting thing is that you're basically taking a value that is unfunded quote by the advertising firm, has no budget basically, or thin budgets, trying to hit an organic, credible outlet which is converting in progression to a buyer, an outcome. That progression is now tracked. But let's just talk about the economics because you're talking about $2 million in spend, it could be $20 million. The ratio between ad spend and conversion to this new element you mentioned is different. You're essentially talking about the big mega trend, which is organic content. Meaning connecting to sources. >> That's right. >> That flow. Of course, we believe and we, at the Cube, everyone's been seeing that with our business. Let's talk about that dynamic because this is not a funded operationalized piece yet, so we've been seeing, in the industry, PR and comms becoming more powerful. So, the Chief Communication Officer isn't just rolling out press releases, although they have to do that to communicate. You've got medium posts now, you've got multiple channels. A lot of places to put the story. So the Chief Communication Officer really is the Chief Storyteller Officer, Not necessarily the CMO. >> Emphatically. >> The Martech Stack kind of tracking. So talk about that dynamic. How is the Chief Communication Officer role change or changing? Why is that important and what should people be thinking about, if they are a Chief Communication Officer? >> You know, it's interesting. There's a, I'm just going to call it an actual contradiction on this front. When you and I were getting out of our undergrad, 7 out of 10 times that CCO, the Chief Communication Officer, worked for the CEO and 30% of time other. Yet the role was materially narrow. The role has exploded. You just said it pretty eloquently. This role has really exploded and widened its aperture. Right now though 7 out of 10 of them actually do work for the CMO, which is a pretty interesting contradiction. And only 30% of them work for the CEO. Despite the fact that from an organizational stand point, that kind of counter intuitive org move has been made. It doesn't really matter because, so much of what you just said too, you was in marketing's purview or around brand or around reputation or around telling the story or around even owning the key assets. Key assets isn't that beautiful Budweiser frog commercial they played on Super Bowl anymore. The key assets are what's getting done over in the communications, in part. So, from a storytelling standpoint, from an ownership of the narrative, from a, not just a product or a service or promotion, but the whole company, the whole brand reputation, the goodwill, all of that is comms. Therefore you're seeing comms take the widest amount of real estate around the boardroom table than they've ever had. Despite the fact that they don't sit in the chair as much. I mentioned that just because I find it very interesting. Comms has never been more empowered, never had a wider aperture. >> But budget wise, they're not really that loaded up with funding. >> And to my earlier point, it's because they couldn't show. Super strategic. Showing ROI. >> So, showing ROI is critical. >> Not the quality of clippings. >> It was the Maslow of Hierarchy of Needs if you can just show me that I put a quarter in and I got a dollar out. Like the ads and the e-commerce folks do. It simply drives the drives me. >> So take us through some of those analytics because people who know about comms, the old school comms people who are doing this, they should really be thinking about what their operation is because, can I get an article in the Wall Street Journal? Can Silicon Angle write about us? I've got to get more clippings. That tend to be the thing. Did we get the press release out on time? They're not really tied into some of the key marketing mix pieces. They tend to be kind of a narrow scope. Those metrics were pretty clear. What are the new metrics? What's the new operational playbook.? >> Yeah, we call those Vanity Metrics. I cared about theoretical reach. Hey, Yahoo tells me I reached 222 billion people, so I plug in 222 billion people. I reached more people than there are on the planet with this PR campaign. I needed to get to the basic stuff like how many people did I actually reach, number one. But they don't, they do theoretical reach. They work in things like sentiment. Well, I'm going to come up with, 100 reporters wrote about me. I'm going to come up with, how many of them I thought were positive, negative, neutral. Sentiment analysis, they measure number of reporters or hits versus their competitors and say, Proctor and Gamble rolled out this diaper product, how did I do this five days? How much did Proctor and Gamble diapers get written about versus Craft diapers versus Unilever's. Share a voice. Not irrelevant metrics. But not metrics the CEO and the CFO are going to invest in. >> Conversion to brand or sales, those kind of things? >> They never just never existed. Those never existed. Now when we can introduce the same exact metrics that the commerce and the ad folks do and say, I can tell you exactly how many people. I can tell you exactly who they were, demographic, firmographic, lifestyle, you name it. I can tell you who the audience is you're reaching. I can tell you exactly what they do. When those kind of people read those kind of articles or those kind of people read those kind of press releases, they go to these destinations, they take these behaviors. And because I can track that all the way down to whatever that success metric is, which could be a lead form if I'm B2B for pipe. It could be a e-commerce store from B2C. It could be a rating or review or a user generation content gourd. It could be a sign up and register, if I'm trying to get database names. Whatever the business metric is. That's what the commerce and the ad people do all day every day. That's why they are more funded than ever. The fact that press releases, articles, tweets, blogs, the fact that the earned media stuff has never been able to do those things is why they just continue to suffer and have had a real lack of investment prices going on for the last 20 year. >> Talk about the trend around-- >> It's simple stuff. >> I know, if you improve the ROI, you get more budget. >> It really is that simple. >> That's been the challenge. I think PR is certainly becoming, comms is becoming more powerful. People know I talk about it all the time. I think comms is the new CMO I think command and control and organic content work together in the organic. We've seen it first hand in our business. But, it's an issue of tech savviness and also vision. A lot of people just are uncomfortable shifting to the new realities. >> That's for sure. >> What are some of the people tech savvy look at when they look at say revamping comms platform or strategy versus say old school? >> I'll give you two answers on that, John. Here is one thing that is good for us, that 7 out of 10 to the CCOs work for the CMO. Because when I was in this seat starting to light that fire under the CMO for the first time, which was not that long ago, and they were not tech savvy, and they were not sophisticated. They didn't know how to do this stuff either. That was a good 10 year journey to get the CMO from not sophisticated to very sophisticated. Now they're one of the more sophisticated lines of business in the world. But that was a slog. >> So are we going to see a Comms Stack? Like Martech, ComTech. >> ComTech is the decision communication Cloud, is ComTech. So we did it. We've built the Cloud stack. Again like I said, just like Adobe has the tech stack for marketing, Cision has the tech stack for comms, and we've replicated that. But because the CCO works for the CMO and the CMO's already been through this. Been through this with Ad Techs, been through this with MarTech, been through this with eCommerce, been through this with Web. You know, I've got a three or four year sophistication path this time just because >> The learnings are there >> The company's already done it everywhere else. The boss has already done it everywhere else. >> So the learnings are there from the MarTech so it's a pretty easy leap to take? >> That's exactly right. >> It's just-- >> How CommTech works is shocking. Incredibly similar to how MarTech and AdTech work. A lot of it is the same technology, just being applied different. >> That's good news >> So, the adoption curve for us is a fantastic thing. It's a really good thing for us that 70% of them work for CMOs because the CMO is the most impatient person on the planet, to get this over because the CMO is sick of doing customer journeys or omni channel across just paid and owned. They recognize that the most influential thing to influence you, it's not their emails, it's not their push notifications, It's not their ads. It's recognizing which credible third-party content you read, getting them into that, so that they're influencing you. >> It's kind of like Google PageRank in the old days. This source is more relevant than that one, give it more weight. >> And now all of a sudden if I have my Cision ID, I can plug in the more weight stuff under your profile. I want to let him go across paid and owned too, I materially improve the performance of the paid and owned because I'm putting in the really important signal versus what's sitting over there in the DMP or the CDP, which is kind of garbage. That's really important. >> I really think. >> I thinks you've got a home run here. I think you've really cracked the code on this. I think you are absolutely right on the money with comms and CommsTech. I see it all the time. In my years of experiences, it's so obvious. Then again, the tailwind is that they've been through the MarTech. The question I have for you is cultural shift. That's a big one. So, I'm out evangelizing all the time about the CUBE Cloud and some of the things we're doing. I run into the deer in the headlights on one side, what do you mean? And then people like, I believe, I totally understand. The believers and the non believers. What's the cultural shift? Because some chief comms op, they're very savvy, progressive, we've got to make the shift. How do they get the ship to turn? What are some of the cultural challenges? >> And boy is that right. I felt the same thing, getting more doing it with the CMO. A lot of people kept their head in the sand until they got obsoleted. They didn't know. Could they not see the train coming? They didn't want to see the train coming. Now you go look at the top 100 CMOs in the world today. Pretty different bunch than who those top 100 CMOs were 10 years ago. Really different bunch. History's repeating itself over here too. You've got the extremely innovative CCOs that are driving that change and transformation. You've got the deer in the headlight, okay, I know I need to do this, but I'm not sure how, and you do have your typical, you know, nope, I've got my do not disturb sign and police tape over my office. I won't even let you in my door. I don't want to hear about it. You've got all flavors. The good news is we are well past the half point where the innovators are starting actually to deploy and show results, the deer in the headlights are starting to innovate, and these folks are at least opening up the door and taking down some tape. >> Is there pressure on the agency side now? A lot of agencies charge a lot of monthly billings for these clients, the old school thing. Some are trying to be progressive and do more services. Have you seen, with the Cision Cloud and things that you're doing, that you're enabling, those agencies seem to be more productive? >> Yes. >> Are the client's putting pressure on those agencies so they see more value? Talk about the agency dynamic. >> That's also a virtuous cycle too, right? That cycle goes from, it's a Bell Curve. At the beginning of the bell curve, customers have no clue about the communications. They go to their agencies for advice. So, you have to educate the agencies on how to say nice things about you. By the time you're at the Bell Curve, the client's know about the tech or they've adopted the tech, and the agencies realize, oh, I can monetize the hell out of this. They need strategy and services and content and creative and campaign. This is yet another good old fashioned >> High gross profit. >> A buck for the tech means six bucks for me as the service agency. At the bottom, over here, I'll never forget this when we did our modern marketing experiences, Erik, the CMO of Clorox said, hey, to all you agencies out there, now that we're mature, you know, we choose our our agency based on their fluency around our tech stack. So it goes that violently and therefore, the agencies really do need to try to get fluent. The ones that do, really reap rewards because there is a blatant amount of need as the line of business customer tries to get from here to here. And the agency is the is the very first place that that customer is going to go to. >> So, basically the agency-- >> The customer has first right of refusal to go provide these services and monetize them. >> So, the agency has to keep up. >> They certainly do. >> Because, if the game gets changed by speed, it's accelerated >> If they keep up, yup. >> Value is created. If they don't have their running shoes on, they're out. >> If they keep up and they stay fluent, then they're going to be great. The last thing back in the things. We've kind of hit this. This is one of those magic points I've been talking about for 20 years. When the CFO or the CEO or the CMO walk down to the CCOs office and say, where are we on this, 'cause it's out in the wild now, there are over 1200 big brands doing this measurement, Cision ID, CommsTech stuff. It's getting written about by good old fashioned media. Customer says, wow, I couldn't do this for 50 years, now I am, and look what I just did to my Comms program. That gets read. The world's the same place as it always has been. You and I read that. We go down to our comms department and say, wow, I didn't know that was possible, where are we on this? So the Where Are We On This wave is coming to communications, which is an accelerant. >> It's an accountability-- >> Now it's accountability, and therefore, the urgency to get fluent and changed. So now they're hiring up quantums and operations and statisticians and database people just like the marketers did. The anatomy of a communications department is starting to like half science half art, just like happened in marketing. Whereas before that, it was 95% art and 5% science. But it's getting to be 50/50. >> Do you have any competition? >> We have, just like always. >> You guys pretty much have PR Newswire, a lot of big elements there. >> We do. >> You've got a good foothold. >> This is just an example. Even though Marketo is part of Adobe, giant. And Eloqua is part of Oracle, giant and Pardot is part of Salesforce. You've got three goliaths in marketing automation. Hubspot's still sticking around. PeerPlay, marketing Automation. You can just picture it. CRM giants, Microsoft and Salesforce have eaten the world Zendesk's still kicking around. It's a little PeerPlay. That equivalent exists. I have nobody that's even one fifth as big as I am, or as global or complete. But I do have some small, point specific solution providers. They're still hanging out there. >> The thing is, one, first you're a great leader. You've seen the moving on the marking tech side. You've got waves of experience under your belt. But I think what's interesting is that like the Web 1.0, having websites and webpages, Web 2.0 and social networks. That was about the first generation. Serve information, create Affiliate programs, all kind of coded tracking. You mentioned all that. I over-simplified it, but you get the idea. Now, every company needs a new capability. They need to stand up media infra structure. What does that mean? They're going to throw a podcast, they're going to take their content, put them into multiple channels. That's a comms function. Now comms is becoming the new CMO-like capability in this earned channel. So, your Cloud becomes that provisioning entity for companies to stand up capabilities without waiting. Is that the vision? >> You've nailed it. And that is one of the key reasons why you have to have a tech stack. That's a spot on one, another one. Early in my career, the 20 influences that mattered, they were all newspaper reporters or TV folks. There was only 20 of them. I had a Rolodex. so I could take each one of them out for a three Martini lunch, they'd write something good about me. >> Wish is was that easy now. >> Now, you have thousands of influencers across 52 channels, and they change in real time, and they're global in nature. It's another example of where, well, if you don't automate that with tech and by the way. >> You're left behind. >> If you send out digital content they talk back to you in real time. You have to actually not only do influencer identification, outreach and curation, you've got to do real time engagement. >> There's no agility. >> There's none. >> Zero agility. >> None, exactly. >> There's no like Dev Ops mindset in there at all. >> Then the speed with which, it's no longer okay for comms to call the agency and say, give me a ClipBook, I've got to get it to my CEO by Friday. That whole start the ClipBook on Tuesday, I've got to have the ClipBook, the physical ClipBook on the CEO as an example. Nope, if I'm not basically streaming my senior executives in real time, curated and analyzed as to what's important and what it means, I can't do that without a tech stack. >> Well, Andy Cunningham was on the Cube. >> This whole thing has been forced to get modernized by cloud technology and transformation >> Andy Cunningham, a legend in the comms business who did all Steve Jobs comms, legend. She basically said on The Cube, it's not about waiting for the clips to create the ClipBook, create your own ClipBook and get it out there. Then evaluate and engage. This is the new command and control with digital assets. >> Now, it's become the real-time, curated feed that never stops. It sure as hell better not. Because comms is in trouble if it does. >> Well this is a great topic. But let's have you in this, I can go deep on this. I think this is a really important shift, and you guys are the only ones that are on it at this level. I don't think the Salesforce and the Adobe yet, I don't think they're nimble enough to go after this wave. I think they're stuck on their wave and they're making a lot of money. >> You know John, paid media and owned media. The Google Marketing Cloud, that SAP Marketing Cloud, Adobe, Oracle, Salesforce Marketing Clouds. They don't do anything in earned. Nothing. This is one of the reasons I jumped because I knew this needed to happen. But, you know, they're also chasing much bigger pots of money. Marketing and Advertising is still a lot more money. We're working on it to grow the pie for comms. But, bottom line is, they're chasing the big markets as I was at Oracle. And they're still pretty much in a violent arms race against each other. Salesforce is still way more focused on what Adobe's doing. >> You're just on a different wave. >> So, we're just over here doing this, building a billion dollar cloud leader, that is mission critical to everyone of their customers. They're going to end up being some pretty import partners to us, because they've been too focused on the big arms race against each other, in paid and owned and have not had the luxury to even go here. >> Well I think this wave that you're on is going to be really big. I think they don't see it, in my opinion, or can't get there. With the right surfboard, to use a surfing analogy, there's going to be a big wave. Thanks for sharing your insights. >> Absolutely. >> While you're here, get the plug in for Cision. What's going on, what's next? What's the big momentum? Get the plug in for the company. What are you guys still going to do? >> Plugin for the company. The company has acquired a couple of companies in January. You might see, one of which is Falcon. Basically Falcon is one of the big four in the land of Hootsuite, Sprinklr, Spredfast. Cloud companies do this. Adobe has Creative Cloud, Document Cloud, Parking Cloud. Salesforce has Sales Cloud, Service Cloud, Marketing Cloud. Cision has just become a multi cloud company. We now have the Cision Social Cloud and the Cision Communications Cloud. And we're going to go grab a couple hundred million dollars of stuff away from Sprinklr, Hootsuite and collapse social into this. Most of social is earned as well. So, look for a wing spread, into another adjacent market. I think that's number one. Then look for publishing of the data. That's probably going to be the most exciting thing because we just talked about, again our metrics and capabilities you can buy But, little teaser. If we can say, in two months here's the average click through on a Google ad, YouTube ad, a banner ad, I'll show it to you on a Blog, a press release, an article. Apples to apples. Here is the conversion rate. If I can start becoming almost like an eMarketer or publisher on what happens when people read earned, there's going to be some unbelievable stats and they're going to be incredibly telling, and it's going to drive where are we on that. So this is going to be the year. >> It's a new digital advertising format. It's a new format. >> That's exactly right. >> It's a new digital advertising format. >> And its one when the CEO understands that he or she can have it for earned now, the way he's had it for marketing and advertising, that little conversation walking down the hall. In thousands of companies where the CCO or the VP of PR looks up and the CEO is going where are we on that? That's the year that that can flip switches, which I'm excited about. >> Every silo function is now horizontally connected with data, now measured, fully instrumented. The value will be there and whoever can bring the value gets the budget. That's the new model. Kevin Ackroyd, CEO of Cision, changing the game in the shift around the Chief Communications Officer and how that is becoming more tech savvy. Really disrupting the business by measuring earned media. A big wave that's coming. Of course, it's early, but it's going to be a big one. Kevin, thanks for coming on. >> My pleasure, John, thank you. >> So, CUBE conversation here in Palo Alto Thanks for watching. >> Thanks John. (upbeat music)

>> Live from Washington D.C, it's the Cube, covering inforum DC 2018 Brought to you by inforum. >> And welcome back to Washington D.C. I think you kind of guess where we are. [Mumbles] Over my shoulder there inforum 2018, along with Dave Vellante. I'm John Walls, we are live here at the Walter Washington convention center for this years show. We are joined by Martine Cadet, who is vice president of the educational arts program at Inform. Martine, good to see you. >> Thank you. >> And Jennifer Bucanan who is manger and head of the Inforum practice and CFO Solutions. Jennifer, good to see you. >> Thank You >> Let's talk about the program. Martine, ou can give us, first off, the inside scope of this. And then Jennifer you're on the other side of the fence. >> Right >> Because the very people, the individuals that Martine and her program are training, you're hiring. >> Absolutley. >> So I want to hear, first off lets talk about the program in general and then to you, Jennifer for about why. And what do you find really attractive about these people? >> Absolutley >> So the Education Alliance Program is 4 years old this year actually, so we're very excited about that. And what we really set out to do was build a talent pipeline that our company and our ecosystem of partners and customers can tap into. So there's been a lot of conversation about the fact that there's not enough talent to fill the positions that are in the industry. So we wanted to do something different where by we could actually grow that talent organically. So instead of going to the oricals and the SAP And having that revolving desk of okay we can leave this here and go to this competetor and work for them and be experienced. We need to find another way to be able to grow our talent so that as an organization, we can continue to be innovative and grow as we move forward. So EAP really kind of serves within that gap, but we do it a little differently than some of the other programs. We really focus on not just identifying talent, but really training them on the industry skill set. So what people `learn in school is amazing, but it is usually more theory. How do you take that theory and really apply it to what is really needed in the industry today, In a real job today? And that where the Education Alliance Program really kind of serves that niche. >> And generally speaking, the age group would be what? Of the trainees. >> The majority of the people that we train are more college age. So 18 all the way up to, I would say early 30's. So early in career talent is what we think about. >> Okay, are they in school? >> Some of, yeah. >> The majority of them right now are in school, but we also welcome people who are outside of school. We've kind of evolved our program where its not just partnerships with colleges and universities, but we train people who come from training organizations; like Yes We Code, and New York Urban League and things of that nature. And You're Up is another great partnership that we started having relationships with. So we do everything from the traditional integrate within a classroom setting, to more of a bootcamp model where talent gets trained over the course of a couple of months to meet this business needs that we have and are here now. >> Okay, and so Jennifer, then on the hiring side of this the advantage to you is what? >> Well for us, we are always looking for folks that coming out of school, whether it's a masters degree or a bachelors degree, that they have a little bit of a focus going into consulting and implementation services. There's a mix of skills that you look for. Some of it is that commitment to being a forthcoming service orientated person. Somebody with a little bit of perspective. And when we met the EAP students, that ambition just comes right out of those folks. And they have purpose in mind because they started to get a little bit of a taste of the real world of what they want to do. So they've got context and they've got direction and a lot of the folks that we've met with had some good accounting and finance knowledge, which we value. Plus they had the IT component, where traditionally if I just go to try to do some campus recruiting I might get one or the other, but it's hard to get both. >> So training that revolving door, that martine described which, there's still some of that going on, but you get a lot of viable knowledge. You know where the skeletons are buried. They can fast pass some of it. Trading that for excitement, diversity, maybe a different type of creativity. Certainly not as much well that's the way it's done in the enterprise. Right? Maybe discuss that a little bit. >> Yeah absolutley, the folks that, what we need coming in have that creative element and they're not just, ya know, crunching out and doing maybe the theory that you have mentioned. They've had a little bit of experience at a practical site of understanding how to apply technology and solve buisiness problems. Cause that experience that they go through in the EAP program is almost like a simulation and gives them a little taste of that. And when we talk about what we do and we introduce them to our business and try to look for a fit. They have a better understanding of what we are talking about and do. >> So Martine, in the 4 years since we've first met, what has changed? Has the scope, the goals expanded? What did you not forget that actually happened? >> Yeah Maybe you could share some of your experiences. >> Yeah, so in the four years we've gone deeper around world based training. So when we started, it was more around exposing students to different career opportunities, to what is EAP. I've been in the industry forever, but I was always more on the consumer side. So I didn't know what ERP was. [Laughing] Is this even professional? So helping students see the opportunities there, was kind of the initial focus and getting them to have kind of a toe in the water. We've gone much deeper this year, in particular going to role based training. So, what do you need? What skills encompanies you to be an amazing sales professional versus somebody who's going into the development space, or somebody who's going to manage kind of the cloud space, which is where our company is focused. So that's been one of the biggest evolutions in which we have done within EAP over the last couple years and were much more global than we were when we first started. So we are excited about that as well. And then in terms of things that surprised us. I think of of the areas that surprised us, it was a little bit harder to place students frankly, than we had initially had thought it would be. And so one of the ways that we've worked through that is we've worked with our talent science team, and they've been phenomenal at really helping identify fit. And so now we can have much richer conversations with the hiring managers around. Yes, I know that you would like an expereinced hire perhaps, but this is a reason why one of these more inexperienced hires is actually a great fit and will be your next superstar on you team. And on the flip side, we can have conversations with the talent around career opportunities that they might not have even thought about before. Cause now we've got kind of there fit for different roles. >> So were certainly seeing in many buisiness settings, that gut feel is being replaced by, you know, data and fact. When it comes to hiring people though, there's still that, well there's several things. There's gut feel, there's repor, there's biases, so are technologies like machines intelligence, and programs like this cutting through that? >> Yeah that's what we're trying to have happen. I mean it's hard, it's hard. Everyones trying to tackle these issues, but with technologies like talent signs, with having programs which address the feedback of well I don't know where to find a first talent. Well if you go to the same three schools that you always go to, that are by nature not diverse, then you're not going to find the diverse talent you are looking for. So if you can tap into a program where we go out of our way to make sure we're actually fishing in new ponds, and that we're bringing in amazing talent to the forefront that people can tap into. And we are really proud about that. >> Well, what's really key about that, and we were having this conversation earlier. Is that if you really want to bring diversity into your organization, you have to look beyond your inner circle. But it's a pain to do that, its time consuming. So what you've done, is you've fast passed that. Right? And give an opportunity for somebody to dive in. >> Yeah >> Yeah >> Sure, and some of those folks became part of our circle. Cause a year ago we met a wide group of the folks in the EAP program, and we were impressed by the broadness. Like I mentioned earlier, you've got some folks that are still sophomore, junior year that are just getting started. We've got relationships foudning with those folks. We have folks that are just getting ready to graduate, and we have folks that have been in the workplace, came back. So we've got a breath of experience, but folks from all over. And we were one of those folks who would go to the same school over and over. And you know, we would get good talent but, it's that breath, and that new perspective that comes in. And now that's our pipeline. We've got folks at different levels in their educational career that we stay in touch with. And a lot of the students reaching back to us is what helped us make connections for folks to bring on. >> So how do you find me? If I'm an interested student? >> Yeah >> Or how do I find you? >> Yeah >> If I am at a school. That's one question, and secondly once I'm in, is it like ROTC? Like I have a three year commitment after that? [Laughing] [Mumbling] >> You're invested in me. >> That's a great idea. [Laughing] >> A lot of resource time is being put into me, developing me, so what am I going to give you back? >> Yeah absolutely. >> Take on both of those if you would. >> Its more about finding the member institutions and then finding me the right talent within those organizations. Right? And so we do a lot of research and analysis on where we want to go. So we do want to make sure we are building pipelines that fit the busininesses needs first and foremost. So where do we have a majority of our offices? Where do our partners and customers have a majority of their offices? Where are the hiring needs and the types of roles? Then based on that we look for organizations that actually have core programs that align to that. And those are the ones that we want to have relationships with first and foremost. And then we seek out the talent. We actually have marketing communications people who are out there and promoting the courses and the partnerships that we have in the classroom to hopefully get the talent to actually apply to the class itself.. >> Alright so once I'm in. >> Once your in. >> You've got me. >> Yeah. >> I'm a junior, I'm studying, I'm doing my thing. >> Yeah. >> You're training me. Well I'm going to graduate in a year. So am I on the hook, or will you place me? >> We investin their training, and we also try to provide wrap around support services. So we've got people on the team who are beyond passionate and focused on making sure they've got the soft skills, who are also focused on making sure they are introduced to hiring managers within our ecosystem and within our organization who might be interested in talking to them. We set up kind of meet and greets as well, where we have events around that so placements important to us. We can't commit and guarantee a role per say, but we can open up opportunities perhaps the students didn't have before. And give them the training so that when they are compared against their peer, they can come out ahead. >> So having that Charles several times and interviewing him a number of times, this is, it certainly feels more than optics. What are the success metrics that you look at, and can you share some with us? >> Yeah, so we do look at how many people we actually trained and made it through the program. We look at how many people have been placed within Inforum as well as our ecosystem. We are looking to see how many students will actually pursue a path to certification, and go through the deeper training and learning. And then we look and see how many people are actually liking the program. Like what they're getting out of it. We'd love to see, I'd personally love to see in a couple years that people will have gone through EAP are now future customers, your future partners. You know, placement is one piece, but its also how are we influencing the industry as a whole? And for competitors, hiring EAP students, that actually goodness. Like we are trying to really change what is going on in the injustry perspective on how we grow and change talents. Because the way its working today doesn't work for everybody. So we've got to do something different. And the fact that Inforum has stepped up to actually grow it organically, I think is you know, a testimony to Charles. >> Great mindset, I mean you're not trying to just hang on and you're certainly embracing this. But if when an individual leaves, to whether even a competitor, there's some pride in that. Like hey we trained this individual and we're changing the industry. And you know, sometimes those things just have a way of coming back around. >> Yes, yeah, yes >> Absolutely >> So Jennifer, from the clients side if you will, how big could this program be for you? Like how helpful has it been, and how much more do you need it in order to meet these employee gaps? Cause as we've heard, the numbers aren't adding up right now. >> Right, right. So for us we've been having some conversations about how do we grow together on this? They've offered to say hey, CFO Solutions, would you like to be involved in some of the teaching opportunities? So we've been having dialouge about how that might be. And we've been talking about particular skill sets. You know, they start out with kind of a broad skill set and we work with a very specialized component of that. So we've been talking about the product mix that they involve in their program and bringing something more direct to what we're working with. So that's a big. >> Personalized learning. >> Yes. So its helping us kind of refine our pipeline because we know what's going to be coming out of it and we know that is is getting that slice of this US and the world if necessary right? It gives us a little assurity that we can get folks at different levels of their career. We can start talking to them now and we can start working with these guys on honing the skillset that they'll be coming in with. The soft skills piece that you had mentioned earlier was on of the real standout skills that we saw come out of this. All these folks, I can't overemphasize the driviness, the commitment they had, the communicating with me over a year period. And they're boldness, cause that's one of the main things that we need out of the folks that we bring and put in front of our clients. >> So this is all awesome, touchy feely stuff too, but at the end of the day, I've read that it has a buisiness impact. >> Absolutely, absolutley. >> So what's your experience been in terms of the bottom line? >> Well, so buiness impact wise, when we take a risk and bring somebody fresh out of school, and we bring him to a porject where you require very specialized skills, we need people that we can take a risk on, who will hit the ground running. So if I go and grab somebody from anywhere, I don't know what I'm going to get. I don't know if they're going to like their career. I don't know if they're going to understand what we are doing. And there's a lot of ramp up time, time before I can bill for that source, just to be practical. And when we bring in Eap students, I know they've had a taste of it, and they're ambitious and driven for it. And I can get them billable more quickly. And then I can be proud to have them out in front, because they can tell a story. A lot of this is a relationship business. I can have them come to a project kickoff and they can talk about what they've come from. And that they've had an involvement with Inforum, not just hey I'm fresh out of school. I don't know what I'm doing here. It's hey, I've been working with a product for a couple years. Even now and they hit the ground running just so much more quickly. >> So faster time to value. >> Yes, faster time to value. We've seen internally for the folks we've hired, that we've got one hundred percent voluntary retention rate. >> That's amazing. >> For early retention rate. For early career talent, four years into the program, where that's about 20% better than the rest of the talent that we have, right? So we're looking at retention, cause we know if you lose somebody, that's nine months of salary probably to replace them and to retrain somebody else. >> That's right, yes >> Absolutely >> Much easier to hang onto somebody than go find somebody new. >> Okay so you're getting the billing faster, higher quality, I heard. Which means better customer retention and less employee turnover. >> Less employee turnover. >> Which means lower cost. >> Absolutely. >> And on the recruiting side of things too, the development of trying to find talent, there's a lot of time invested and we're a firm that has a very lean operations team. A lot of us wear many hats. So one of my hats is my recruiting and development, and this just streamlines things for me and makes it so much easier. I don't have to spread myself thin trying to find folks. I know I've got kind of a pipeline and I've been sharing it with my other leadership in the other practices to kind of share that along the firm >> And to put it in context, I mean so for the trainings that are around rules and careers, were looking at getting the students to have 200 plus hours of training over bootcamp experience. Now, put that against somebody else who has zero right? You're getting to faster productivity, you're shaving off anywhere from 3 to 4 to 6 months of on boarding time by hiring somebody through this program. >> Yeah. >> And minimizing on boarding frustration which would help. >> Yeah, yeah. >> Sympathize with. >> Makes perfect sense. Great sounding program, we appreciate the insight today. Thanks for being with us. >> Martini- Yeah, thank you. >> And you're wearing many hats, you'll need a rain hat out there today. >> I will, I will. [Laughing] >> Congratulations. >> One more, yeah. Great program, thank you ladies. We're back with more on Live. The Cube is in Washington D.C at Inforum 2018.