>>The Cube presents UI Path Forward five. Brought to you by UI Path. >>Welcome back to The Cube's, continuous coverage with day two of UI Path forward. Five. My name is Dave Ante. I'm here with my co-host Dave Nicholson. And you are watching The Cube. It's all about the robots, the automations, the transformations and beyond. Audi Gana is here. She's group executive at Vodacom and Niva is back. She's senior director of telecommunications industry for UiPath. Ladies, welcome to the Cube. >>I thank you very much. >>So Vodacom a leading telco in in Africa across the continent. Tell us more about the company. >>The company is a traditionally telecommunications company, but our vision 2025 is first to transition from being a telco to a technology company. So you'll find that a lot of the use cases that we've actually started embarking on, combined the combination of telco and FinTech. And we've got a lot of RPA bot also supporting the FinTech platform, which is quite a major step in our strategy. >>So, you know, it's interesting Mark Andreessen's famous comment, Every company's a software company. I like to think every company's a technology company, technology driven. So what does that actually mean for you? Is it like a split brain between FinTech? Cuz it's pretty clear that FinTech is always a highly, you know, technology oriented and telecom. Are they sort of together driving a, a technology business? How does that >>Work? It's, it's a, it's a converge use of the technology to add value to the customer. So what we wanna do is to get to the point where we have converged services where the Telecommunicate, cuz at the end of the day in the African market, you'll find that there's a lot of markets that are unbanked. So you find that a cell phone is a means of communication and a a mobile platform for the users. So it's a natural progression for our company to actually play in both spaces. And I think one of the things I find quite interesting is the levels of trust that a lot of citizens have in our financial platform. In that even some of the governments are paying social grants using the platform. And so it almost becomes, without the phones a lot of people cannot function type of scenario. >>Nevas is your role a global role? >>Yes, it is a global role. >>Okay. So it's interesting cause you're I think based down under, right? I am. Is that true? Okay. Obviously spent some time in, in, in the African continent. How are you, what are you seeing in terms of the, the trends in, in telecommunications that, and are you noticing there's gotta be differences across different regions? You know, a lot of times you hear, oh no, there's really kind of a global world out and I know it is, but telco seems to be one of the industries that has some uniqueness within the different breaches. What are you seeing? >>Look, we are privileged to work with more than 200 telecoms around the world. But clearly from a technology perspective, there are some regions that have embraced technology sooner than the others, particularly when it comes to automation. Now we do have use cases with all of them that we are, you know, the 200 we are working with. But the extent to which they become strategic partners, Varie is, you know, what I find is in, in the US we are doing a lot in the customer experience space with the telecoms in aj it's more back of house. And with telecoms like Vodacom, it's really strategic. You know, automation is being applied practically in every facet of work. And you know, sometimes that could be because the demand is just so great for connectivity, you know, at times there's a skills gap, but it does vary. But what's reassuring is that there is a journey and you know, at this event what I have seen is telecoms wanting to learn from other telecoms. And I must say Artie has been in huge demand. We did about 22 meetings yesterday with others wanting to know, which again is that strategic trend. >>Artie, my understanding is you've been at this for a while, this automation journey for quite some time and p i pass. Interesting. I mean it's a company that's founded in 2005 and kind of did sort of its own thing for a long time and then realized it had lightning in a bottle Yeah. For a mid last decade. But my understanding is you've seen it all. You've seen the, the legacy platforms. And so tell me about your personal journey with automation and then the companies. >>Okay, so there's the automation pre rpa, which was strangely enough, I come from banking, got a finance degree, did automated ations in one of the bigger banks. And somehow I transitioned. And I mean from a history perspective, the one of the previous platforms, which was the biggest one at the time, that's where I got to learn about rpa. And then there's another vendor that we then use in another company. So this is almost my third vendor that I'm experiencing in the RPA space. Having joined RPA space in 2015, apparently I'm kind of a veteran, >>So, So what are you seeing is what's the difference between, I mean let's call UI path, that was sort of a modern focus on simple to deploy. That's really how they get started when I first found them. How do you compare what UiPath has? And there are others, there are other modern platforms to sort of the legacy platforms. What's the >>Difference? I think it's the diversity and the applicability of the technology across multiple industries is something that still amazes me up until today. Because the kind of customers I've been meeting today, I, I would not, I met a guy who owns an ice cream company and I'm like, where would automation come in here? But he's actually quite a big customer of, of UiPath, you know. So I think that's one thing I appreciate. I think the ease of use, it has actually allowed for a lot of people to be part of the digital transformation. I think in the his, in the past technology has been seen as something that was a bit elite and that you needed to have X amount of skills and level of education. Whereas the RPA industry has almost bridged that gap in actually bringing along as many people in the journey in terms of digital transformation. And the fourth industrial revolution is now starting to become more inclusive >>Horizontal across industries. >>Yeah. >>So Vodacom headquartered in South Africa. Okay. But presence throughout the continent. Yes. I imagine that various geographies have various twists and quirks to them and different needs. But as a general premise, the African continent has led the rest of the world in terms of embracing these little mobile devices for the most mission. Critical from a personal perspective things, right? Yeah. So if you, if you're already trusting all of your finances and even interaction with your government from a financial perspective. Yeah. When you say technology platform technology is moving forward, what's more critical from that? Or how do you, how do you, how do you branch off from that? What are some of the other things that you can share with us that you're looking towards in the future that may, that that may trickle over here eventually? >>So I think what one of the things we started playing around with quite well is actually the convergence of machine learning, AI and rpa. You would find that a lot of research will tell you that this is the future of the automation and for us, we are actually living the future in that we have civil use cases that are actually extracting a lot of business value. Where we've realized that RPA in of itself, and this is obviously oversimplifying the technology is almost the unlimited hands on keyboards that you could ever have, right? And then machine learning and AI almost the becomes the unlimited brains. So when you then combine the tool, you almost have this strong technology that can revolutionize how we operate and service our customers. >>Well how do, how does that translate? Can you translate that into a user experience at this point? So I mean, we're talking about people who they, they have a motor license, they don't have a desktop computer at home. Yeah. This is their portal into the world. >>So you find that if you're speaking pure telco, and I'm obviously over simplifying there some nowhere an engineer, right? But I think at, at a very simplified level, there's a lot of legacy technology that is used in the telco space and you'll find that because of that, there's a lot of lack of integration. And you'll find that the reasons why a lot of customers call corners is because there's poor integration in a lot of instances. And it's, it's, it's, it's ad hoc. So it's not as if the system is failed completely. So what we've now done is to try and see how do we use machine learning to pick up on those anomalies on the network, right? And because each time something breaks, right, it's almost a fixed way to fix it and therefore the machine learning picking up there normally almost the hands over to the RPA bot to fix the problem within the network element. But that means is that from a customer experience perspective, instead of you actually realizing there's a problem, we've fixed it before you even know that there's a problem. And therefore, and as you can imagine, it means that you then call the course into less because now you don't have the reason to complain because we've proactively identified the problem and we proactively use RPA then to fix it. So we almost have the almost like a self-healing element in within the, the, the RPA AI space. >>You know, I think of, we don't talk about the data, we haven't talked about the data much this week. I think in many respects this industry is, is data industry. Our automation is all about what you can do with the data. You said unlimited hands, unlimited brains. Cuz to me you have unlimited data and a lot of times you just can't handle it. Yeah. So what's the data angle on all this? >>So firstly, I know a lot of people will say data is the new oil. No, >>Right? So I would never >>Say that. I always though, I think I always ask people if I give you a bucket of brain crude oil, right? What are you gonna do with it? Right? Right. And similar to data, right? So I want to almost equate data to that crude oil element, but if you don't know how to refine it, process it, get it to be reliable, it's very useless in of its natural sense. So I think one of the things we've realized is that leveraging of the analogy of the, the machine learning in the brain, if you are in the sales space, you forever trying to push new sales, right? And then chances are when a customer leaves you, you are almost in a reactor state. So, and I imagine a world where you could proactively identify a customer with the propensity to leave your company because a lot of customers don't just, they are situations where they'll be walking down the street competitor calls them, they leave, not because they were unhappy, but a lot of customers actually had several engagements with us that were not pleasant, whatever the definition is. >>So we then saw there was almost five types of attributes that resulted in customers leaving us. So what then that said was imagine if you are an account manager, right? And you got told UiPath P two I limited has experienced 1, 2, 3, 4. Right? Actually, please go engage with them because something is happening. It means that as an account manager, you are then equipped to have a meaningful engagement with the customer because you're saying, hi UiPath, I see you've had X amount of job calls and you've had x amount of complaints in our call center. What is happening is it could be, could be your network, maybe the tower where you are, do you, And then the conversation becomes so meaningful. And I think even during covid what we found is lot of customers started using less of our data, not because they were unhappy, but it became an affordability thing, right? >>Because this is a thousands and thousands of, of data elements and pieces around Yeah. About customer transactions. There's no way one human would be able to go through all of the data and make me meaningful decisions out of it. So we then found that some customers were complaining about affordability. So we then built another model that says if an account manager is talking to a customer and they're struggling from an affordability perspective, what's the next best offer you can make to your customer while you're engaging? And then if in, if, if now your UiPath takes up that offer, then you'd find that the bot does the post engagement provisioning on the system. Because now if you then said, I've only, I can only afford 10 lines, but only pay 10 gigs, but not 10 lines and 20 gigs, that is at least better than us losing the customer. >>Yeah. Right? And we offering them almost a downward migration type of situation. Then the bot does that on the system. So you would find that we almost playing in the space of a human, human centered, intelligent automation where machine learning becomes the brain, the person is amplified in how they operate at the customer. And then the RPA bot becomes the hands that executes on that. And as the account manager you focusing on engagement and convincing, which is really what people are great and selling as opposed to going through all of the pro cause VOCA is a lot of products. So as opposed to having a person going through the products and trying to find the best product for you, you know, so we, we are using machine learning to assist the >>Humans. I I mean in every, every interaction is consistent in that case. I know I sometimes have to call three or four times to find a professional that knows enough that can help me. Yes. Such a frustrating thing as a consumer. So you are, are you, you're attacking churn with automation. So we haven't even talked about how you guys are working together, your journey and all that stuff, but, but how are you guys working here? What are you, what are you doing? You know, in addition to what you just described with with ui. iPad? >>So I think my portfolio's quite wide. So I am, my team is in every single vertical in the organization from customer care to the consumer enterprise business units to finance technology, network compliance. And we do all of this in about six countries, right? So one of the things we've actually realized is that if we are looking at customer service, we wanted to understand why do customers call us? And I think I came from a point of ignorance because I'm not from telco, so I actually realized that if we're talking billing and finance revenue assurance, customers call us because we build them arly. But technically speaking it's our systems that there's something that resulted in the customer calling us. So why do we not know about our own systems? Why are we waiting for the customers to call us? And literally those are the questions I was asking cuz I felt like why are we, why are we waiting for the customers to call us? >>So we then then found a way to try and see within the billing systems where do the breakages happen, right? So that we fix them before the customer has to call us again. So then again from a billing perspective, it means that cuz it the billing element can come in two ways where we are giving you a service and not charging you for it. We then have revenue leakage or we, you are consuming something and we are overcharging you. Then you call us and say, Whatcom is stealing my data. Yeah, you're right out there. I promise you nobody wakes up in the morning and wants to take one gig of your data. So it almost becomes a day integrity initiative that results in good customer service but then result in eradication of course. As opposed to us waiting for customers to tell us what the problem is and trying to help them fast. Cuz that's generally always been what I've picked up the energy around customer service. How do we help you fast? I'm saying why must you call us when our systems had fail that? So we almost trying to see how do we use the technology internally to give customers a better experience and then also have the financial benefits that we are now starting to see happening in the, >>What's the scope of, of your like how many automations, how many bots? Can you give us a sense >>Of this? So right now I think we over on with all of the four, five countries that we are in, we over 400 bots. Wow. Okay. So we started in 2004 years ago, this is my fourth year in Voca. We, and we are not using just one product with UiPath. It became a platform because as we became across more kinds of problems, I think what I've appreciated about part is how we've actually created a partnership. Instead of them trying to sell me products for the sake of consuming products, it became a, this is my problem, right? And then somehow they would whip out the product that solves my problem type of thing. So it became a ecosystem of solutions that >>You must love hanging out with Artie. >>I absolutely do and love, you know, I've spent a career in telecommunications myself and you know, the best days were when you could deliver an outstanding customer experience. And as you can see from what Artie has achieved when you were more proactive and predictive, you can serve your customers so much more effectively and that just lift the morale of the team because we all, you know, have this purpose in doing our jobs. But this is automation and AI built into every part of that customer journey. So end to end, you know, the customer's much happier. You know there's a problem before the customer knows you can solve the problem in most cases before they even know. And that's just what we are all in business to do to make things better. >>Great story. Thank you so much for sharing. Appreciate coming back >>In the queue. Thank you very much. Thank >>You. Thank you for watching. Keep it right there. Don't forget, go to silicon angle.com, all the news, go to the cube.net. You'll see me all these videos are available on demand as well as the other events that we do. Dave VTE for Dave Nicholson. Keep it right there. Right back at forward five UI.