>> Announcer: Live from Miami Beach, Florida, it's theCUBE, covering UiPath Forward Americas, brought to you by UiPath. >> Welcome back to Miami, everybody. You're watching theCUBE. We're at UiPath Forward Americas. Dave Vellante with Stu Miniman. TheCUBE is the leader of, what are we the leader of? (laughs) >> Live tech coverage, Dave. >> The leader in live tech coverage. I've been blowing that line every week. Thanks for watching, everybody. We've got a great segment here. Jean Younger is here. She's the vice president, Six Sigma Leader, Security Benefit. She's to my near left, and Donna O'Donnell is here, director of key accounts at UiPath all the way from New York. Donna, thanks for coming on. >> Thank you. >> Dave: Great to see you guys. >> Thank you for having us. >> Thank you. >> All right, so we're well into day one. We're getting the Kool-Aid injection from customers and UiPath constituents, but Jean, let's start with you. Talk about your role, what's the company do, fill us in. >> Our company is an annuity company. We sell financial products for life insurance and annuities. We have about 30 billion under management, so it's a fairly large company out of Kansas. So, my role there is as a Six Sigma leader. We go in and we look at areas that need improvement or across the company, and one of the things I found, I'd been with the company almost five years now, and what I found is a lot of times, we're really good about putting manual processes in and never getting rid of 'em. We have day two issues of a tech. A tech goes live and you got a list of day two stuff that didn't get fixed, never gets fixed. It's just easier to do it, and cheaper, to leave it manual. So we have a lot of that in the company. With my job, seeing the various processes throughout the company, I was like what can we do to get rid of some of this stuff, get rid of that, get knowledge work back on the worker's plate instead of manipulating a spreadsheet or creating a report that they do every morning and it takes 'em the first 30 minutes or the first seven hours of their day is creating this one report every single day. We started looking at technology and came across UiPath. >> See, we call it GRS, getting rid of stuff. >> Jean: Yep. >> So, Donna, your job is to make these guys successful, right? >> Absolutely, so basically I just facilitate the smart people within the company. I listen to the business needs that Jean and other large clients have. We bring the resources, the products, and if we can't find it, we will absolutely find it and do everything we can to meet the needs. >> So, what's your automation story? When'd you get started? Paint a picture for us, the size, the scope. >> Okay, so last year about this time is when I started looking into it. I had just rolled out of another area that we had completely destroyed and built back up, and I was on to my next escapade in security benefit. >> Dave: Are you a silo buster, is that the new-- >> Yeah, I kind of go in and fix things. I'm kind of a fixer is basically what my job is. We'd rolled out and came back into Six Sigma to start looking and this came up. I'd seen the technology and I was like I wonder if it could work in our company. And so, we started doing kind of dog and pony show. We'd pull the different silos in, talk to 'em and say hey, here's what RPA can do for you. Is that something that you have some processes that might work? And we knew that there were processes in there, but we brainstormed with 'em for about 30 minutes. And out of that 30 minute, hour long conversation, we came out of there with about a hundred processes that people had already identified. And we kept going through there, I took that information, I built a business case, 'cause I knew to get the money, I needed to show them that there would be cost out potentially, and/or that I could take resources and move 'em into more critical areas that we didn't have the staffing. And so I had instances where, one of them that we're doing is out of our HR department. During the raise and salary time, they had two individuals that spent 60 hours a week for four months doing the same thing, same report over and over, and that's one of the processes we're actually going to implement here pretty soon. So, I came up with 'em and put the business plan together and asked for the money, and after kind of a long journey, I got the money. >> Long journey. (Jean and Donna laugh) >> It's never short enough is it? Jean, I mean, one of the things, Six Sigma is really good at measuring things. I mean, that's how you understand everything. You want to reduce variation. There was a line that really jumped out at me at the keynote is I want to go from pretty accurate to perfectly accurate, and when you were describing that there were a lot of things that were manually done. I mean, I lived in engineering for a lot of years and it was anything that somebody had to manually do, it was like oh wait, how can we change that? Because we didn't have RPA 10 years ago when I was looking at this, but how are you measuring these results? You talked about people doing repetitive tasks and the like. What other things are you finding to help get you along those reducing the variation inside the company? >> You know, it's interesting because I also teach the Six Sigma courses there, and one of my slides I've had for years teaching that class is most business processes are between 3.2 and 3.6, 3.8 sigma, which is like 95 to 98% accurate, and I said that's all the better we can usually do because of the expense that it would normally be to get us to a Six Sigma. You look at the places that have Six Sigma. It's life threatening, airplane engines. You hope they're at least Seven Sigma, those type of things, but business processes? 3.5, 3.2. But now, I get to change that because with RPA, I can make them Six Sigma very cheap, very cheaply, because I can pull 'em in, I got my bot, it comes over, pulls the information, and there's no double-keying. There's no miskeys. It's accuracy, 100% accuracy. >> So, what's the ripple effect in terms of the business impact? >> Cost savings, efficiency, customer experience. I mean, think about it. You're a customer, you get your policy, your name's wrong. How happy are you? You're not real happy. You send it back. So, no more of that. I mean, that's huge. So anything touching the customer going out of our business should be exactly how they put it on the application, especially if it was typed. Now, if it was handwritten, all hands are down on that, but if it was typed, it should be accurate. >> Donna, that's really powerful. I worked in a large corporation, we had a Six Sigma initiative and we know how much time and effort and people we were going to put in to have this little movements. >> Incremental change. >> An incremental change here to say. >> Donna: Pretty amazing. >> Blown away to tell you, Six Sigma and it's cheap. Well, what are you seeing? >> And I absolutely see. So, in addition to cost savings, it makes her more agile. But the big thing is, it makes it error free. The robots work 24 hours a day, seven days a week. Runs on itself, and Jean's going to get those efficiencies that she needed. >> How about let's talk more about the business case? I'm interested in the hard dollar piece of it. I've talked to a number of people at this show and others, and they tend not to just fire people. They got to redeploy 'em. Sometimes the CFO goes well, where's my hard dollars come from? So, where did your hard dollars come from? (laughs) >> From the CFO. (laughs) And right now, I have to prove that out yet. We're just in its infancy. We're just starting to bring up processes. In fact, yesterday and today we're dealing with several processes coming up, and so realistically, right now I've got about 300 processes. We haven't timed 'em all out yet, but I know right now that's between probably 12 and 15,000 hours of time savings that we will get on an annual basis. >> Okay, what one of the customers said today is, one example they used is they actually put it in next year's budget >> Correct. >> Which I loved. In other words, we're going to do more revenue for the same headcount, or less cost or whatever it is. That's a reasonable justification, maybe even better, right? Because it's got some forward motion to it. Is that kind of discussion and thinking come up? >> Headcount is under discussion right now. We're going through budgeting right now, and so yeah, that was part of the way that we justified the less headcount. Instead of hiring to fill another position, we would remove jobs from a certain person and be able to shift them into another role. And so that savings, non-hiring, as well as one of the processes we're doing is in our investment area. They couldn't afford to get another person. They couldn't get another headcount, so I gave them a headcount with a bot. I'm doing all their processes that they've only been able to do on a monthly basis, we're doing 'em every day. It's 52 processes they're going to do every day. It's an amazing, I gave 'em a head right there, bam. >> But we're also finding that the folks that were doing the mundane and repetitive tasks can focus on more creative work, more interesting work that they believe in and that they're motivated to do. We see that happening all the time. >> What does that mean for culture inside your company? Was there resistance at first? I have to think it's got to improve morale that it's like oh wait, I'm not getting in trouble for making mistakes now and I can go focus on things that fit better. >> You know, I think ultimately it will. Initially, there was a feeling gosh, the bots are going to take my job. But that was one thing we were pretty careful about initially going out and just saying what is it that you can't do? We all work 50, 60, some of them people are working 70 hours a week, and if I can take 10 or 20 hours away from them, they are lovin' us. There's individuals that are saying come here. I'll show you what I need. They also realize the ability of the bot to do it right all the time takes a little stress off of them, because they know they're going to get the right numbers, then, to analyze, 'cause that's a big thing. In the finance area, in the close, in the accounting area, what we're doing there is we're taking a lot of those simple process that somebody has to do and do them for them so then guess what? We can close earlier, get our books closed earlier in the month, as well as allow them longer time to analyze the results. So instead of the book's closed and then we go uh-oh, found a problem. Got to reopen the ledger and make an entry, we have less and less of that. Those are expectations that are set right now for our teams is that hey, let's get rid of the stuff that we can, and then let's see what's left. >> And Dave, I used to meet with clients and they used to say wow, this is a really interesting technology. Tell me about it. And now they're like holy crap, I'm behind the eight ball with my competition. How do we get this going quick? How do we get it going fast? In 2016, it was a $250 million industry, and by 2021, it's going to be a $3 billion industry we learned today. So it's pretty powerful. >> I think those numbers are low, by the way. >> I think they're low, too. What they said today, it's going to be a $3.4 billion industry. >> I think it's a 10x factor, probably by 2023 to 2025, I think this is going to be a $10 billion business. I've done a lot of forecasting in my life. That's just a gut feel swag, but it sort of feels like that. I think there's some pieces that are, there's some blind spots in terms of use cases and applications that we can't even see yet. Culturally, the light bulb moment, just listening to you, Jean, was the, first of all you're saying, you want your weekends back? Yeah! And then the second is it sounds like the employees are involved in sort of defining those processes, so they own it. >> And that's how we're scaling. I mean, we already realized we're a bottleneck. Our COE is a bottleneck and so we're like hey, right now, finance, it's not the end of the year. It's end of quarter, but those process are lighter than end of the year. So hey, can we get anything done? They're doing our documentation for us. They're actually taping themselves doing it, they're writing up the documentation. We come in and we look at it, and then we have a programmer doing it, but we're talking about how do we move that programming piece down to them as well, so we can get our scale up? Because I can't get through 300 processes in my small COE without a lot of help from the business. >> But Dave, most of our clients, the way that they scale very quickly is through partners. So, partners can do one of many things. They can be the developers, they can be the implementers, they could create the center of excellence, or they could pick which are the low-hanging processes. When we started off with Jean while she was going through the approval process, I brought out four partners, I gave 'em my own little mini RFP. They each had a four-hour time slot. They presented in front of Jean and we narrowed it down to two, and two of the partners are here at this event today. Most clients need to depend on partners. >> Well, that's key Donna, right? And I've said before, when you start seeing the big names that are around here, you know it's an exciting space. They don't just tiptoe and play around and games. They do some serious work for businesses. We got to turn the conversation to diversity, generally, but I also want to ask you specifically about women in tech. So, Stu and I were in a conference at Splunk earlier this week. The CEO of Carnival had a great line about diversity. He said, a big believer in diversity, of course. He's African American, and he said 40 years ago when I cracked in business, there weren't a lot of people I worked with that looked like me. I thought that was striking, Stu. I think there's always been women in tech, but not enough and a lot of stories about things that have happened to women in tech. It's changing slowly. A lot of women enter the field and then leave because they don't see a path to their future in things they like. What do you guys think about the topic, two women here on the panel today, which is our pleasure to have you. You can see, we need help. We have women working for us, (Jean and Donna laugh) but there's an imbalance there. >> You're right. >> What do you tell someone like us who's trying to find more women or more diversity and bring them into their-- >> Jean has many opinions in this space. Go ahead, Jean, I love your opinions in this space. >> I told the story at one of the UiPath events. I've been, as a lawyer, chemist, I've always been in pretty much a man's world. That's been my life in corporate America, and all along as I looked back, Donna was the first woman that sat across me to negotiate a contract. The entire time that I've been in the tech world, in the business world in corporate America, I had women working for me when I was at an insurance company negotiation very large contracts and stuff. They were on my side of the table. She was the first woman that I negotiated with on the other side of the table, and I think that's really sad, and I think we all have to look and say, how can we do better than that? How can we make us diverse? I look around here and you have all colors, all sizes, it's wonderful and it energizes you. And I am really a true believer in a really diverse workforce. I look at that and I think, 'cause they bring so many cool ideas, they think differently. Young, old, you put 'em all in a room and it's just amazing what they come up with, and I think if business leaders would hear that and think about that instead of hearing the same type of person, what's that same type of person that has your same background going to give you? He's not going to give you the transformation, or he or she. It's going to be kind of the same, what you're used to. You need that jolt, and I believe the more diverse people that we have around the table trying to solve the problem, it's amazing. I sat, last week, and I had a 22-year-old woman come into my office, Shirat, who's 30-ish and from India, and I had Amy who grew up in Topeka, hasn't left Topeka, myself. We were sitting around a table and another guy came and he probably 30. So you had a big, broad range. Somebody just out of college, me that's been out of college a long time, sitting around the table and we came up with, they thought they were dead in the water, and within 30 minutes of us just throwing different ideas out, we came up with a solution that we could continue going with. I mean, their faces were downtrodden and everything when they walked in, and when they left, we were excited, we were ready to go. Now, if we don't nurture that type of conversation, we're never going to get diversity. That's what diversity's about. If you think about it that way, wow. We went from having a problem that was a total dead stop and we weren't going to be able to proceed to 30 minutes later having a great solution and keeping running. And I truly believe it was because we had a diverse group of people around that table. >> Studies have been done of the clear value of diversity, the decisions that are made are better and drive business value. One of the challenges is finding the people, and it was pointed out to me one time, it's just because you're looking inside your own network. You got to go outside your own network, and it takes longer, it's more work. You just got to allocate the time, and it's good advice. It's hard work, but you got to do it to make change. >> And sometimes you got to take a chance. Sometimes, because it is outside of your network, you're not comfortable necessarily with the answers they give you or the way they approach a subject. I mean, you've got to feel comfortable, and CEOs and CFOs and the C-suite has to start thinking about that, because if you wanted to be transforming, that's how you transform. You don't transform thinking the same way every day. You're not going to transform. >> Let me ask you a question. You said you're a fixer, so I wrote down the adjectives that I would use to describe a fixer, and I want to know if this has been the way in which people have described you. You got to be smart, you got to be a quick study, you got to be a good listener, you got to be confident, self-assured, tough, decisive, collaborative. Are those the adjectives that have described you as a fixer over the years? >> Yes, I think those are you qualities, by the way. >> I don't doubt they're your qualities. Is that how people refer to you in business? >> Yeah, I think so. I mean, I've done the test where they say are you a collaborator or do you push? And I get the mix. I'm either a collaborator or I'm a person that's pushing her own belief, and I know exactly who said I was a person that was only pushing her own belief, and I know the ones that said I was a collaborator. But that is, you got to be collaborative. >> I believe you have those attributes, but the reason for my question is a lot of times when it's a woman fixer, those aren't the adjectives that they would use to describe you. It would be abrasive or combative. I mean, you hear adjectives like that. Same exactly attributes as a male fixer, just described differently. Has that changed in your view? >> I go about things probably a little bit differently than men do, and I've had to adapt. Like I said, I've been a chemist. What was I? 8% of the community of chemists is a woman, so I've had to adapt my style. And I do a lot of drive-bys, I do a lot of one-on-one discussions over the lunch, over hey, do you have a few minutes? I need to talk to you. So, I do a lot of that type of collaboration before I ever get into that big meeting where I'm pushing my one direction. I've got my buddies all lined up already, and so I don't think it feels like I'm abrasive or that I'm, because I've fought those battles privately already. So maybe I've adapted my style that I don't get those types of reactions, but that's what you got to do. You've got to learn how to work the system. >> At the same time, I think that, and this is a compliment, I think Jean on the outside, it's tough to earn her respect in the beginning, but if you do, there's nobody more fiercely loyal than Jean. So you got to earn your way in there, and that's got to be consistent, like a 15-step process to get there. (Jean laughs) >> Yeah. >> And you can't let go because if you let go-- >> Dave: They're hard to get, huh? >> She's going to make you think on number six day you're not good enough, and then you just got to keep on going. So I understand what you're stating, Dave. You have to keep on going, and if you get there there's nothing that Jean wouldn't do for you. As she's here, she's on the advisory board of UiPath. She is the most, once you prove yourself, that's it. It's going to be hard to change that, but it's not easy to get there. >> So this inherent bias, people are tribal in nature and they're biased. Does things like automation and RPA, AI, does it eliminate that bias or does it codify it? >> Wow, interesting question. I don't know, I don't know the answer to that. >> Dave: I don't think anybody knows. >> I don't know that either. >> I've never really thought about it. I mean, to me RPA is just another tool in my toolkit, you know? And if I can fix it with AI, great, or UiPath, if I can use that to fix it with RPA, great. If I need another toolkit, I'll go use that toolkit. But I do know that it's a way that individuals, you can get a lot of young people into your organization that have great ideas. I'm stocking up with interns and I'm using, like I said, woman we hired, she was my intern, graduated in May, and the next day she had a full-time job. And she's done a phenomenal job. And that's what RPA has done for our business, because it's an entree in that then they're in and they're doing this simpler technology, then people see how wonderful they are and they can go and move into bigger and better roles. And that's what I'm trying to encourage is get some really smart people in with this tool, and that's what UiPath has enabled, I think, people that maybe they're not the best coders, or maybe they're not the best BAs, but you put that together and they're knocking it out of the park. The young ones are knocking it out of the park on this technology. It's amazing. >> We did several blockchain and Crypto conferences this year, you want to talk about diversity, and I mean it's old money, it's new money, it's women, it's people in turbans, it's people with color. It's actually quite amazing, and one of the older investors, I asked him what's your secret? He said, "I surround myself with millennials." (laughs) >> Jean: Correct. >> That was good advice, but very diverse crowd in Crypto. You don't have to be Ivy League, Silicon Valley and white, Caucasian, to be successful, right? >> Dave, I was representing RPA at a Women in Tech conference last week in the FinTech environment, and I was talking, sitting next to Crypto and Bitcoin and at the end, the lines lined up for RPA. And I would say to the girls, why are you lined up for RPA? And they basically said you are the disruptor. RPA is the disruptor. There was a speaker here today that says RPA's the gateway drug to artificial intelligence, which is absolutely true. RPA is operational right now, it's working today, and there's elements of AI that are here today, but there's elements that are future technology. But RPA's completely ready to go, operational, mainstream in most enterprise companies. >> And I know we kind of went off topic there but it's relevant and it's important and it's a passion of ours, so really appreciate you guys coming on theCUBE. >> Thank you. >> Thank you, Dave. Thank you, Stu. >> All right, keep it right there everybody. Stu and I will be back with our next guest right after this short break. You're watching theCUBE live from UiPath Forward in Miami. Right back. (upbeat electronic music)