>> Announcer: Live from Las Vegas, it's The Cube, covering IBM Think 2018, brought to you by IBM. (lively music) >> Hello everyone, welcome back to The Cube. We're here live in Las Vegas for IBM Think 2018. It's where all the action's happening. Third day of three days, wall to wall coverage, I'm John Furrier, co-host of The Cube, we have two great guests here, Paul Papas, Global Leader of Digital Strategy at IBM's iX, new digital agency, and his cohort Matt Candy, European leader of IBM iX, a new agency within IBM specifically developed for expanding the digital services to their customers, to create the best experiences, using technology, data, and other analog and digital capabilities. Wimbledon and among others. Guys, welcome to The Cube. >> Thank you, thank you, and thanks for that great introduction. >> So Paul, so take a minute, this is a novel concept. When I think of agency I think ad agency, buy some keywords, PR firms, you know, more of an adjunct to a core organization, kind of a service provider. >> Yeah. >> You guys have it a little bit different agency focus, more like management consultants meets World Economic Forum, meets, you know, UX UI design, because you are building this company. Take a minute to explain what iX is, and what's different about it in context what people might think it is. >> Sure, and thanks, a great set up in there it's like you melded a lot in there of what we do. So you can think of us as a combination of strategy consultancy, digital agency, consulting systems integrator. So we do three things with our clients, we help them design, well we help them define, their digital strategies, really their business strategy in a digital world. We help them design world-class customer experiences. Experiences that are going to be personalized, and have an impact. And then lastly we help them implement the technology. Implement the customer platforms that they use to engage with their customers in a personalized, meaningful, omni-channel way, all of those things that we do help drive a measurable business impact so nothing we do is hypothetical, everything we do is real and drives a real business impact for our clients. So, where if you might look at an agency a lot of people think of agency as marketing communications agencies, and the world has changed so fast around digital, >> Or ad agencies. >> Or advertising agencies, you know, in that vein, we're on the more transformational side. In fact we consider ourselves a business design partner. So what we're trying to do with our clients around the world is help them redefine, redesign their businesses, so that they're fit for purpose, so that they can survive and thrive in this modern world. >> Yeah, I want to get your thoughts on this, because you know looking back as a historian if you will of evolution, technology used to be slower, so agencies added value on something complex, ad agencies would create ad campaigns and some glam, glamour around something. And we even saw it in some of the lead gen side of the business, where this beautiful micro-site and the graphics are amazing, it looked great but actually didn't scale there's no tech behind it. Now fast forward, you have the requirement for cool, relevant, and glamorous, but actually having tech involved. Cloud computing has really enabled this, and the role of data has really enabled it, so this is now the new normal, the new normal for these higher-end functionalities is actually having a tech stack, technology stack, combined with business engineering logic, >> Paul: Yeah. >> And real business outcome, like profit, money outcome objectives that people might want. How do you guys explain that story because, you know, I would just call a consultant up in the past, are you guys combining it to make it easier? What's the purpose that customers call you guys in for? What are they asking for from you guys? >> So I'll start off and then Matt, you can add color commentaries, so, the way we describe what you just, what you just brought to life there, was, we have multi-disciplinary teams, so we have a combination of business strategists right, so when our clients are engaging us, they could be working with a business strategist who's really comfortable showing up for work and wearing a suit and tie, and he could be sitting next to, in our studio, sitting next to one of our creative designers who's tattooed from his wrist to his neck. >> The hoodie guy building everything. >> The hoodie guy, right, sitting there building there, next to one of our data scientists who's popping open his Lenovo laptop, it's got the latest chip in it, and he's so pumped 'cause he's going to run some crazy data analytics on it, applying AI on top of it. And all of these people work together using Design Thinking so we have an approach we call IBM Design Thinking, they've all been trained, we've trained over 16 thousand people on Design Thinking, and they all work together and come together to solve our clients' ploblems. They work in a studio environment, and we've opened up 38 studios around the world. Studios are places where we co-create with our clients, or we invite our clients in to ideate, innovate and co-create >> So it's agile on the format, on the projects, not like Waterfall, hey now you pass the ball to the other guy, it's all integrated team. >> Yes, and what you end up having is, you end up having the view of understanding the business and the client's business challenge, which is where we start when we define the strategy, when we do the design work, it's underpinned with an understanding of the technology that's going to bring this to life. So we like to say that we don't do creative for creative's sake or creative just for the beauty of the art, we do creative that can actually be made real. >> Yeah, you guys put a relevant package together. So I got to ask you now, the beauty of cloud computing was, is that you don't have to provision a data center if you don't need it. Now you see people needing a data center for privacy reasons they store their data, hence the hybrid cloud strategy, et cetera et cetera, but if I want to do something like what you guys are doing, it's going to cost me money to build it out. One, where are the people? Skills of the people, salaries of the people, tools for the people, all that is expensive to build out. So it's natural to go to someone who's already got it. So I want you guys to talk about that dynamic, of buy versus build, what stays in-house that's core competency, and what's the scale leverage that the clients get from working with you guys, 'cause you have that advantage. >> Yeah, and actually what I like to tee up is, this cost effective approach that we use to help our clients jumpstart the work that they're doing, we call it an innovation garage, and Matt and the team in the UK and in Europe have really been champions of this approach. Why don't you share some of the work we do around innovation garages. >> Yeah, so, I mean, one example is our client BP who we've been working with in this space, and helping them drive a lot of the digital reinvention of their business. And so, teams of data scientists, designers, developers, working hand in hand with product owners from the client side but ideating, finding new different digital products and services that help improve advocacy of customers drive loyalty, drive new revenue streams but very quickly taking those ideas and turning them into prototypes right, paper prototypes, actual MVPs, minimum viable products, launching them into market right, choosing some target markets, but putting very measurable KPIs around each of those things >> What's the timetable on that roughly, ballpark? >> Probably getting those MVPs out at eight to 10 weeks right >> So, fast. >> Oh yeah, fast. >> It's not months, not eight months. >> No, no, there's no Waterfall. And so a radically different approach to getting things out there, in the hands of real users. And then testing and learning, iterating, and then based on the data, actual fact and data backed against those KPIs and measurements then starting taking the decision around whether we're going to scale that into a global product. >> Yeah before we go to drill down on that, what's the alternative to doing that? How many months would it take if I want to do it from scratch in-house? >> Spinning up large transformation programs right, and >> John: A year. >> Yeah, at least, multi-years >> John: At minimum. >> Multi-years, and I think the other thing John, that's kind of key about this way of working, is that you're starting to infuse new ways of working and new ways of thinking into the client's organization right, and so Design Thinking: lean, agile, dev ops, right all of these approaches to get things done in a more rapid way and so, you're kind of driving change and transformation through making and creating and doing, not through some big change management program. And so we've been, if I took BP for example, training and certifying their people in IBM Design Thinking, certifying them as product owners and so, through the act of making and creating these services, it's changing their culture and changing how they get stuff done and it's a bit like a fire, kind of a little fire that burns and spreads within the organization as people see what's going on and want to become part of it. >> And one of the ways we do that we actually co-locate in these innovation garages. So you take a company like BP, if you go to our South Bank office, we have a dedicated floor where you have a hundred BP people with the IBM iX team, working in this innovation garage model, >> So they're learning too with you it's not like you're doing all the work and they're integrating in. No, no, we're learning together and they're building new skills and we're building new skills, and we're coming up with new ideas and innovations we're doing it in a cost-effective way, to your point before, in the past companies would spend a lot of money to try to go down a big path and try to in essence, boil an ocean sometimes. >> Yeah and your one guy quits, you got to replace, skill gaps, massive challenges. >> But also I find that from the client's perspective the thing that they're most proud of, some of the things they're most proud of, is the bin, what they call the bin. And so it's all of those ideas that we've killed as far to the left as possible right, and taking an idea that traditionally may have turned into some big program, multi-millions spent on doing it to find that it actually didn't deliver the outcome for the end consumer. >> So Matt, talk about the example with Wimbledon 'cause obviously everyone kind of can recognize that brand, you guys have been working at Wimbledon, you have a relationship with them so they've known IBM for years. What's the current state of the art with Wimbledon? What are some of the things you're doing for those guys and how is iX team, your integrated design team, working with those guys? >> So we've been partnering with Wimbledon now for about 28 years, so relationship goes back to 1990, I mean Wimbledon's been around back since the 1870s, you know, the home of kind of tennis, tennis in an English garden, so complete with rain and drizzle and gray clouds and everything else. And so, probably over the last seven years we've been working with them to drive their digital transformation, and so, how they engage with fans, and so how they use data and analytics to drive insights to put very personalized experiences in the hands of fans. So if you think about an event like Wimbledon, runs for 13 days, and about 500 thousand people get to physically experience Wimbledon in the grounds. And so their whole strategy from a digital perspective is taking the beauty of the grounds and the experience, and how they can manifest that digitally to millions of people around the world. >> And that's more than live streaming that's more than highlights, that's replicating the vibe the buzz, the experience of being there. >> Completely, so if you look at the web channel right when you go to that website, you don't actually see tennis players and stuff on there. What you might see is a beautiful flower just wafting in the breeze right, so a lot of the technology and the experience that we put together is trying to bring to life the beauty of the grounds right, through those digital mediums. And also being very thoughtful and purposeful about the different channels, so when you think about the mobile app right people use that to get snack access to data they're on the move, they want to understand the scores, alerts, iPad, people tend to use that sat on the sofa in front of the telly, you know, second screen experience so there's a different set of use cases and demands. We launched the first Apple TV app for grand slam tennis tournaments. So again, people tend to be using that for catch up and replays and so, being very thoughtful and purposeful about the... >> And you got to keep track of the digital culture 'cause it's like fashion, you got to know what's state of the art, what's going to sell VR, AR, whole new creatives coming out >> You do but you also have to do it in a way that's authentic to the product. >> Tech fashion. (laughter) The latest and greatest. >> Hashtag new hashtag tech fashion But you also have to do it, what I was going to say, you have to do it in a way that's authentic to the brand that you're representing. >> John: And relevant. >> Correct, so we're expressing the brand of Wimbledon online through digital channels and mobile channels, it has to be consistent with the brand, the brand values, the brand purpose, the brand mission. >> And that goes in to the design side of it 'cause they're going to tell you look if we go off the brand, we're not... >> The beauty, the elegance, the elegance of the sport, the elegance of the All England Tennis Club, you have to capture all of that and represent it in a way that's genuine. >> Alright so this is where the melting pot between agency, creative, ad agency, where it's much more about experience, less about the tech, and tech come together. So I wanted to ask you, I did a panel this year at Sundance called the New Creative, with Intel and it was all about the emerging new creative artists that have tech behind it, and here's what we talked about, I want to get your reaction to it. Agile, which killed Waterfall development, made things less risky, the old days was, you build something, a lot of craftsmanship goes into it, but you ship it, you don't know if it's going to work, and you hope it works and sells. Then Agile de-risked that, but you're shipping code every day. But what we lost with Agile that's now coming back, and I think this is where you guys are hitting the mark, the idea of craftsmanship in the product is coming back. So you got Agile, that's good, but it felt boring, it felt, the products didn't feel great. Yeah, certainly they were successful and they used data to be agile and always be iterating, fail fast, et cetera, but now the users want craftsmanship, they want art, they want more experience in the tech product What's your reaction to that, what's your vision? Do you agree and, if you do, what's your opinion? >> Well I agree on the recommitment to craft, and the approach that we take to that is really starting with Design Thinking, and we view this a couple different ways. One, we think Design Thinking is a way to actually solve business problems in the modern world. Now design, we view as a craft. So we have very specific craftspeople that are pure designers, that's what they do every day for a living. Everyone in our organization practices Design Thinking. So I believe that the use of Design Thinking coupled with our design community and the world-class talent that we have there, has enabled to really get an underlying need, right. So when you're doing a design, you have to have the understanding of the underlying need of the customers that you're trying to serve. And that's what we really get at, so the craftsmanship that comes in through applying Design Thinking, applying your design principles to creating something that can then be made real and have an impact. If you ask our designers, in our 38 studios around the world what they love about being part of IBM iX and being part of IBM, it's the impact that they can have. That they can see their design scale, they can see it brought to life in a way that is far beyond anything they could've done at any agency >> Can't fake design, it's like security, you can't fake it, it either works or it doesn't. >> And the way we think about design right is about almost design with a capital D. And so it's not just about how things look and feel, it's about how they work, and so how you can apply design to help solve problems in a very different way right. And how you apply design to strategy because designers are problem solvers. And so actually having people apply a designer's mindset to problem solving, you end up with very different outcomes right, you end up with a lot more innovation driving into what you're building, and I think you end up with products and services that actually help make somebody's life a little bit easier right, you're taking friction out of their life you're delivering something meaningful and of value to them. >> You're doing empathy mapping, you're doing customer journey mapping, you're doing a persona development. I want to build on what Matt said though that designers are problem solvers. When we look at Design Thinking, we have a method called IBM Design Thinking, and the logo that we use for Design Thinking is actually an infinity loop. So what we do is we combine Design Thinking with Agile and I think of IBM Design Thinking as a 3-D printing of a solution to a problem. We're designing it, we're getting at an underlying need, we're prototyping something fitting a proof of concept, we're learning, we're now doing another iteration of Design Thinking and learning more about the underlying need, testing something, and as we keep testing and learning, we add more texture to the solution of the problem and it starts coming into focus for us. >> Yeah, and the key word's problem. I interviewed a Stanford professor on the cutting edge of innovation, design she said, "Don't fall in love with your product. Fall in love with solving problems." And I think that's kind of what you guys believe. >> And I think John, to the point that you raised, about Agile, you know, we see many organizations driving kind of Agile transformation and shifting, and you know, I think our perspective is very much is you need this combination of design, of Agile and dev-ops together, because Agile allows you to pivot quickly, dev-ops allows you to kind of learn and get rapid feedback from production and putting things out there, and you've got to have this kind of design-led approach to doing stuff, because you've got to make sure that what you're building and putting out there serves a purpose and a real outcome for the end user. >> That's perfect, and most people think oh, we're Agile, check. No, whoa, hold on, stop, yeah it's not a silver bullet. >> You brought up a great point from a business leadership perspective that don't fall in love with your products, fall in love with the problems that you're solving, We are seeing that across every industry we work in, and I think this new digital age, with all these emerging technologies going mainstream so fast, AI, AR, VR, blockchain, it's allowing companies to, in some ways, reimagine their purpose, but in some ways, revisit their original purpose. So if you look at, Ford as an example, they've declared that they're going from pure car manufacturing, to mobility services. If you look at our clients in the life sciences industry, years ago they would've declared themselves as pharmaceutical manufacturers right? But now they would look at themselves as partners in health and partners in the health ecosystem. And every industry we're operating in, there's that re-imagining or revisit of the core mission. >> I think this is the only interview I haven't asked about blockchain, but I was just talking to Jesse Lund about blockchain and we talked about digital currencies, digital, and we observed, and we were talking about things are happening faster. So what's happening on digital it's a speed gain, across the board, with currency there's no clearing, it's digital, it moves instantly. So his banking side, that's his thesis, but here, your customers are challenged with looking down the barrel and being scared when, damn, this is going to be fast, what if I screw this up? I mean this is kind of how I see it happening, like it's accelerated in all aspects. >> And this is where I think, in terms of the business that we're in how we're different, and you've kind of raised the traditional agencies and stuff earlier, John. I think the difference for us is, you know when you think about the world of advertising, and companies driving their message out through shouting loudly and campaigns and building micro-sites, actually, our perspective very much is that these, most organizations need to look at how they digitally reinvent, right. And so therefore the scale of change needed as they look to reinvent their businesses, the business models, the skill pools within the organization, how they're going to use data and insights to drive different experiences you start to move to a very different level of change and transformation right, and one where these technology platforms, and becoming a platform business in these organizations, right, need a partner fundamentally who can help them scale and drive that change. >> And the data's critical, using data, using cloud, dev-ops, Agile, design, all rolled into a highly accelerated process, that's hard. >> It is hard but, >> You guys are doing it though. >> Well yeah, that's what we do for a living. It's what our clients are faced with right now. It's kind of a like a Dickensian-like challenge, right, it's A Tale of Two Cities. With all the emerging tech that we were talking about before there's never been a better time to create new innovations. To be innovative in some of the things that we're doing with BP was a great example of that. And some of the bigger things we're doing with some clients that are trying to reinvent their organization around a renewed purpose. But at the same time, there's never been a bigger threat to existing companies, in terms of there's never been more opportunity to be disrupted. So between these two poles of never been a better time to be in business, never been a tougher time to be disrupted, that's where our clients are operating. And this juxtaposition of core and new where our clients have mostly been in business for more than a few years. They have a core business that they need to grow and optimize, while they also need to expand into the new. And they can't do one or the other, they have to do both at the same time. >> And you know the customers I talk to in the industry, around this area, really look down, they look at three choices. Go for it, that's scary, need a partner to do that you guys are there for that. Don't do anything, put your head in the sand. Or three, create blockers and ban stuff. So you're seeing, you kind of walk in and you kind of figure out who's doing what. You see the blockers with all these excuses, no well we've got this other... And then the head, well we should be, they don't do anything, they're not moving. And then people who move. >> Yeah. >> I mean that's the reality right now. >> You know, what we see, we just published this research you know, a C-suite study, so we interviewed 12,000 C-suite executives, over 2,500 CEOs, and the title of this study's The Incumbents Strike Back, and that's what we're seeing now, so we're not seeing folks kind of sitting or putting their heads in the sand, they're looking at their legacy business, and the competitive advantage they have because of all the knowledge and incumbent advantage that they have, and now applying that. >> Well Paul and Matt, we don't have enough time to go into the impact of blockchain and cryptocurrencies, and initial coin offering's impact, to the token economics of how your business will change but we'll do that another time. >> Fantastic. >> Alright thanks for joining The Cube. I'm John Furrier here live in Las Vegas for IBM Think 2018. A lot of great conversations here in The Cube number one live tech coverage, extracting the signal from the noise. We'll be back with more after this short break. (techno music)

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

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