(electronic music) >> Live from Bellevue, Washington, it's theCUBE, covering Smartsheet Engage 18. Brought to you by Smartsheet. >> Welcome back to theCUBE. I'm Lisa Martin with Jeff Frick, and we've been here all day at Smartsheet Engage 2018 in Bellevue, Washington. We have had lots of great conversations, Jeff, with some of the executive team at Smartsheet, some analysts, and now we're excited to welcome a customer of Smartsheet to the show. We've got Latonia Lewis, the senior director of program management at Sodexo. Latonia, it's great to have you on the program. >> Thank you all for having me. >> So, Sodexo, I'm familiar with it as, you know, being in the tech world, and I go to a client's cafe, and I will usually see branding on boxes or maybe on the chef's gear. But this is a much bigger company than I thought, 437,000 employees globally. But, for those who might not know what Sodexo is, give us a little bit of an overview. >> Sure, Sodexo is a global company. Pretty much we focus on providing quality of life services. And you might ask yourself, "What does that mean?" So, Sodexo really recognizes people as being important and feel that, in a company as well as in the environment, that people should be the main focus. And, in doing that, we focus on providing services that enhance the quality of life for people. For us, the people could be our clients, they could be our consumers, or they could be our employees. So, we pretty much center that around the services that we offer. We have our on-site services that focus on facilities management. So that's basically providing a healthy environment for people to work in, or live in, or operate in. It could be across our food services platform where we're providing healthy meals or a healthy way of living. In addition to that, we provide support for rewards and recognition programs. And, in addition to that, we also provide personal and home healthcare services. >> That's far more diverse than I ever thought. >> Yes. >> Yeah, it is diverse, and we operate across a lot of different industries. We support corporate. We support energy, education that includes both schools as well as universities, seniors, and then sports and leisure. >> Wow. >> So what's your area of focus? That's a broad scope of services. Hopefully you're not delivering all of those to every customer in the United States. >> No, no, no, no. >> Okay, good. (laughter) >> I do work in the North America, and I work for the North American service operations organization, and, pretty much, we are the internal organization that provides support across all of our different segments. We're charged with providing synergies and centers of excellence in the servicing that we do, pretty much to try to bring out the best that Sodexo has to offer its customers and its clients, as well as its employees. >> So your customers are the Sodexo folks that are delivering the services to the end customer. Is that accurate? >> That is accurate. We are internally-faced organization, pretty much focused on making sure that we're providing a safe environment for people to work in. We're enhancing our services and our service offerings in facilities management, as well as across our food service platform, and then also focusing on our growth and support. >> So you are, obviously, a Smartsheet user. That's why you're here. I imagine, though, with as cross-functional as the services you deliver are, you have a lot of stakeholders, a lot of projects, a lot of programs to manage. Tell us a little bit about, prior to your Smartsheet implementation, how were you managing projects, programs, collaborating with stakeholders. Tell us about the before scenario. >> Okay, well, pretty much, I joined Sodexo to, basically, stand up a project management office for the North American service operations organization. When I came into the role, did a little bit of analysis, did a little bit of investigation, and pretty much found that people were doing things a myriad of different ways, right? From a project management maturity perspective, there was not a lot of, what I'll call standardized process and procedures, so I was faced with really figuring out how to, basically, get our arms around the work and the projects that we were doing across our service operations organization. So, Smartsheet was being used in-house already. They had used it in the prior year, basically to try to get their arms around the work that was being done, but that ended up being an exhaustive list. So I looked at how we could leverage Smartsheet and how we could use it more effectively to track the initiative or project work we were doing across service operations. So, in doing that, I found a way to be able to harness standardization in the way that we collect data to be able to do the reporting across the portfolio. And started using dashboards, which was something new. And, of course, you know, using digital transformation from a reporting standpoint is something new. It invokes change. So it was driving a lot of transformational type of, you know, activities that were going on, but it did enable us to be able to get a strategic view of the work that was taking place in service operations, which was something that was needed in order to be able to figure out how to best utilize the resources. >> You sound so calm. It must've been a rat's nest when you walked in, between so many offerings across so many types of facilities as a global company with 400,000 people. You're still calm. I can't believe it. You can laugh. It must've been bananas. I mean, where did you start? Where do you start? Is it the data collection? Is it the reporting? I mean, where did you start? >> I think the first thing that we really had to do was, I hate to say it, go back to basics. And we had to figure out what was our roadmap and how we were going to grow from a project management maturity perspective, and then align that growth with how we were going to, basically, identify a tool to use, and how we were going to, basically, scale that tool. So we started out very, very simple. It was like, "Guys, we need to get our arms around "the key initiatives that are helping us move forward and, "basically, that are aligned with our regional priorities "at the time." So we took that approach and, in FY 18, we pretty much focused on, "Let's get the key initiatives into a format "where we can do reporting on "and we can actually create a reporting cadence "that takes place every month "to be able to bring visibility to leadership "about the projects and the work "that was going on to help them "more effectively make decisions." As we looked at the planning for FY 19, I said, "Well, okay. "I spent a lot of time standing this up, "doing a lot of manual work, you know. "It's becoming unbearable, unmanageable." So we looked at Smartsheet control center, and I kind of, like, jumped, shouted, you know, did my little happy dance, but privately. But, then, made a business case to say why I felt that, you know, we strongly needed this to be able to, not only become more effective and stop doing so many things repetitively, but also to help us foster better project management practices through the use of the standardized, what I call project assets or project templates. >> So what were some of the KPIs that you could immediately grab onto, measure, report, to show, you know, the success and why this is such an important project strategically? >> Strategically, I think the first thing was, one, just being able to get our arms around what were the key projects in the portfolio, and then being able to report out to our internal customers, which were the market segments, what was the work that we were jointly doing to help them meet their strategic objectives. So that was, basically, transparency that they did not have before, and we really weren't reporting at that level. So, if I'm a market segment, I can pretty much say, "You're going to have seven projects "that are impacting you, "and here's the status of those projects. "Here's the health of the projects. "Here's where we need your support." So that was what I call phase one. This year, fast forward, we have control center. We have more visibility. We now have dashboards pretty much at the project level, and we can roll up data a lot more dimensionally. I can do it at the project level. I can do it at our S-O professional family level. I, in turn, can now give segments more detailed at their level, and then I can roll it up at a regional level. >> So you've got, you mentioned, sorry, Jeff, you mentioned, you know, reporting. Sounds like starting small with a focus on what are all the initiatives. I imagine leveraging a tool like Smartsheet to then stack, rank, and prioritize those. You talked about visibility, and that's key. We've heard that all day. Everybody needs visibility within organizations. Were you able to give these program, these initiative teams visibility where before they had none? Was this like a dramatic opening of the curtain whereas they've got 100% visibility into all of the core components of these initiatives that they're involved in? >> That's what's happening this year in FY 19. And, to your point, yes, we are opening up the curtains. And the projects teams, which, primarily, a lot of them are actually driven by service operations, but we have to do them in conjunction with our segments who are really responsible for the actual deployment within their different lines. It's opening up the curtains. It's allowing them to have visibility at a very detailed level than they, they haven't had that before, right? We're using standardized project schedules. We're using resource allocation sheets. We're using, what we call CCT, which is change management, communication, and training plans. So bringing that visibility at a much granular level, but at the same time being able to roll it up to the appropriate stakeholder. So I'm excited about FY 19 for what control center is going to provide for us. >> And so what happened when that happens in terms of, I mean, I'm sure the individual project people around a particular project have, probably, pretty good knowledge about what they're working on. But when you open it up to the senior teams, and now they've got this portfolio of projects and now, suddenly, they have this visibility. How did it change the way they look at things? How did it change the way that, suddenly, they make decisions and they allocate additional resources once you, basically, like you said, kind of opened the curtain and showed them what's going on? >> I think, last year when we started out, when I had just started, it was more retroactive type of reporting whereas, as we started in this new year and planning for FY 19, we had more visibility into the projects, what the projects were about, what was their financial benefit, if applicable, as well as their impact in terms of the scope and the number of units that were going to be involved. So, we do a lot of our planning on an annual basis, what we call during our budgeting or planning cycle, and, this year, there was a lot more visibility into the work that's being planned for FY 19 at a much granular level, down to what we call the unit level. So, being able to share that information and have the teams realize that we're able to track that this year, was very surprising. People like the transparency. I think it's driving a lot of collaboration between the service operations and the market segments, so I think people are going to be very happy. If I come back next year, I can really tell you how the fiscal year went and what we really saw with the turnaround in leadership, but I think they're looking forward to it. >> You're giving a talk tomorrow. What's your talk on? Give us a little preview. >> Preview. I'm going to be talking about control center and, actually, the experience with implementing control center, what was the thought process for, basically, implementing control center, how I went about it, doing a little bit visualization with seeing some of the dashboards that have been created, and then just giving some lessons learned on the implementation itself. >> That's always helpful, you know. Especially with a technology like Smartsheet where, often, like, you kind of found it osmotically through your organization. I know people love to hear how did you do this, what worked. I am curious, though. You mentioned FY 19 a couple of times. Has this technology enabled you to get to planning FY 19 faster, more effectively? What's been the impact there? >> I think it's being, it's having more data up front than we had last year, understanding what it's really going to take to implement these initiatives, being able to have an understanding of the resources from a human resources that's required, as well as understanding, "Okay, if we're going to implement "these initiatives, this is what the impact is going to be." Because every project that we work on doesn't necessarily have a financial benefit. Some of the projects are required. We have to do it, and this is why we must participate in on it. I think it's opened up the door for a lot more collaboration between leaderships and understanding, "You know what, guys? "We definitely have to put more prioritization." Because what may be a priority to one segment may not be a priority to the other, and we're working with the segments in being able to do that prioritization, if possible. >> And the configurability of Smartsheet tool enables you to move projects around in terms of priority much faster, much more easily. >> Oh, you can, it's, how shall I say it? It's a very nimble tool. It's a very agile tool. You can move things around. You know, if a project, we may think that it's going to be what we deem to be a traditional project, but after discussions we're like, "No, it's not really a traditional project "in the sense that it has a defined start and end cycle. "It's more of what we've done, "and we're tracking that as a business as usual." We have the flexibility to change that on a dime. We have the flexibility to change what our key KPIs are, and still be able to incorporate that into the reporting. So it's been great having that flexibility. It's been great not having to do and create dashboards manually. Everything is based off of standardized templates and it is wonderful. I mean, literally, I've been able to create the portfolio, delete the portfolio, and re-implement it just because of some changes that we did, and that took less than a couple of days to do. >> And before it used to take how long? >> Oh, I gave way too many personal hours to stand it up, but I had a passion about it because I loved the tool I could see the ease of use with the tool, so I just gave a lot of hours to initially doing it. But now that I'm working with a lot of the project teams, making a lot of progress. And Smartsheet, it's infectious. I mean, I think one of, I was just speaking with one of your counterparts and I was explaining to him about the fact that I just worked with one of our VPs who's been there for over 20 years, and actually taking the way that he was reporting in one system and transferring it into Smartsheet, working with him. And he's able to realize now that he can do a lot more reporting. He can get more KPIs. He's excited. I've, you know, thrown up sample dashboards of how he can track in FY 19. He's got his team on board. They're looking at it, and, every time I turn around, the Smartsheet is now growing. But it's such a success story, because there is that resistance to, sort of, like, changing the way that you do things. >> Especially for an organization as large as Sodexo is. >> Absolutely >> And, I imagine, as historical it is as well, right? >> Absolutely, and to see him embrace the tool and he's like, "I get it. "I love it." His team is off running with it. Those are the types of things that, you know, really, really make me happy. >> It's funny, because you just, you basically answered the question I just wanted to ask you, which is, you know, in the keynote there's a lot of talk about empowering everyone to do their job better. >> Yes. >> And you're a trained professional project manager. It's what you came in for. You know the tools. You're a sophisticated power person in this space. But I'm curious, have you seen, you know, kind of, project management, kind of, capabilities that flows out to the no-code, low-code, everybody with the Smartsheet, kind of, implementation and, kind of, proliferation within the organization? And how has that, you know, kind of, taken what used to be, kind of, a side load, super professional specialty into a broader, you know, kind of, use-case to take advantage of this thing? >> I think the more people see Smartsheet and start to understand its capabilities and that it's not just a project management tool, right. It's a facilitator of project management. So, in the case that I was just talking about, they're tracking a whole process that's really around facilities management. So it's not necessarily tracking your traditional type of project, but he's able to leverage that to save time. The administrative burden that, you know, he used to have to deal with, with reporting in a different system, bringing information into another system, then creating reporting. Now it's all in one system. He's like, "Latonia, I'm going to use dashboards. "That's how we're going to do our reporting." So he's getting back time. Not only him, but his team is getting back time so they can really focus and go out and do the work where they had the expertise. And that's the beauty of it. It's about people, as you said, being empowered to do what they were hired to do, understanding that you still have a responsibility and are accountable for doing the reporting. But it's giving them that level of empowerment and them seeing that, "You know what, "I can actually design what I need to see "in this application. "It's not Latonia, project management, "or it's not IT, or it's not somebody else. "It's me defining what I need to see in this tool "to get what I need to get out of it to service my clients." >> So I can imagine, as Jeff was saying, you have a lot of experience in program management. Sounds like this is, I don't want to say this is making your job easier, because I think that would be unfair, but it sounds like it's really helping make it much more efficient. >> I would definitely say it's definitely doing that. I think it's helping people, also, understand what project management is all about. You say project management, most people cringe because they think of paper. They think of, "I've go to do this." >> Gantt charts. >> Gantt charts, all of this other stuff. But when you think about it, it's really just a holistic approach to the way that you execute something. And that something could be a standard project, whether it's an IT project. It could be a process that you're rolling out. It could be you planning your wedding or your next family vacation. It's just all about managing work and the execution of work. And I think, once people realize that, they're starting to step back and say, "Oh, it's not as bad as we thought." Which, I'm happy as a project management professional that Smartsheet enables that type of empowerment and it's helping to facilitate that type of knowledge. >> Did you see that quote in the keynote this morning? It was an anonymous user. I'm getting this vibe where, one of the users told Smartsheet that Smartsheet made her the queen of the world. >> Yes. >> I'm getting a vibe here, Latonia. (laughter) >> You could be the anonymous-- >> Potentially. >> No, no. >> I won't put that on you, but that empowerment-- >> Top secret. >> Is impressive what you guys have been able to achieve. We want to thank you so much-- >> Thank you. >> Latonia, for stopping by theCUBE. >> Thank you very much for having me. >> Great luck in your presentation tomorrow. I'm sure a lot of people are going to get a lot of value out of the lessons learned and the best practices that you can offer. >> Thank you very much. >> Thank you. >> Thank you, bye bye. >> For Jeff Frick, I am Lisa Martin. We are live at Smartsheet Engage 2018. Stick around. Jeff and I will be right back with our next guest. (electronic music)

>> Live from Bellevue, Washington, it's theCUBE covering Smartsheet ENGAGE'18. Brought to you by Smartsheet. >> Welcome back to theCUBE, I am Lisa Martin with Jeff Rick and Jeff and I have been live at Smartsheet Engage all day Jeff, we're in not Vegas. >> Not Vegas. >> Bellevue, Washington, this has been a really electric event. They keynote kicked off this morning standing room only, they have doubled in only their second year they have about 2,000 attendees, 1,100 customer companies represented here, they had customers from 20 countries, they more than 50% female attendees for the second year in a row, but we've heard such great groundswell stories all day. >> Yeah, it's been a good day, Lisa. You know, there's a little bit of confusion in this space, I think there's a lot of tools around workplace productivity, we got to hear from a couple analysts and how they're reshaping the way that they define those tools and that's okay, and I get it, but there was no question about the three customers we had on and the passion that those three customers had, kind of old school shadow IT implementations, they brought the tool in from their prior work, plugged it in and are having tremendous success, even the last one, to the chagrin of the parent company that builds software to do the same thing, so there's really no substitute for that type of passion and you know, we've seen these kind of communities grow before, I remember early days at the ServiceNow, it kind of reminds me of that you know, a lot of passion, applause, applause at the new features which is is always an interesting one, so a really, really good day. >> And well, you talked about those three customers that we had on today, we had GE Renewable Energy which was our last guest, a woman from Sodexo, Sodexo is a massive, massive company and then we had a gentleman from the office of the CIO at PayPal. These are three massive companies and the interesting theme from each of them is that these were groundswell opportunities for Smartsheet to really go viral within these organizations and make massive business impact and it's interesting that it really, even from a sales perspective, when we talked to the V.P. of Strategic Accounts, this is not a top down sale, this is bottoms up. Even PayPal found it on their own and learned how to use Smartsheet from YouTube videos. >> I love that. >> That was fantastic. >> So I love, you know, everyone talks about the new way to work but what about the new workers, right? And both of those examples are really good. The PayPal one as great, office of the CIO and yet to figure it out they just watched YouTube videos which is how people learn things today, and they implemented it from that experience. They didn't call Smartsheet, they just put it in and it worked and then we just had GE on and his comment that he wanted something lightweight for his workers. Lightweight. Three click rule, he said he had a three click rule after we turned the cameras off and if he can't get it down to three clicks you got to go back to work and make the process a little bit simpler, so you know, these are real examples of real big companies implementing kind of at the departmental level where this is getting traction, and executing to drive differentiation. And that's pretty exciting regardless if you get confused about the messaging or this or that, those are real life examples. >> And there's nothing that's more validating, right? Than the voice of a customer who has used it and especially the voice of a customer who is not a developer, doesn't know what an API is or need to in their daily jobs. This is technology that was built from the ground up, back 12 years ago on the construct of a spreadsheet which so many people understand and they've really parlayed that you're comfortable here with these tools, there's going to be like, you were talking a lot about today very smart that you brought up, I've got so many apps open and I think Forrester said between 13 and 30 apps people have open every day, so you can't really compete for that mind share so in terms of differentiation we've heard from Smartsheet themselves that they collaborate with companies that you'd think would be their competition. >> Right. >> But they understand that how this is starting from this groundswell, they have to be able to collaborate, to integrate, to connect with Slack, Microsoft teams, Office365, CRM systems from Microsoft, Salesforce, because that's how the worker needs to see their information, and they're also giving users the ability to configure, I want to see this, my team might want to see something completely different, and we can do that while sharing the same information. >> Right, right. I think the thing that struck me as really the big competitive differentiator in this kind of, work-group management is the going outside your four walls. If you use Salesforce, if you use even G-Suite, every time I send you an email it says, Lisa's not in your G-Suite are you sure? Are you sure? Like, red flag, I'm doing something wrong, the fact that the Smartsheet licensing structure is set up that if I set up a project I can share it to people outside of my organization. They can participate in that project. A, it just makes a lot of sense 'cause more and more projects right? You've got contractors, you've got partners, you've got all these things. It's not just an isolated instance anymore but then, more importantly, for Smartsheet, it just gives exposure to the tool to a new group of people. So, I think that's a really key part of the story here, that again maybe count as under the covers in terms as some of the messaging, but a real key differentiator, we've seen this type of viral growth before. I used to work for an Atlassian Service Provider and Atlassian had a great, kind of, seed strategy. $10 for 10 licenses and the $10 goes for schools in Africa. Brilliant. Who doesn't want to pay 10 bucks to help such a worthy cause, and then to seed it in. And then people that had success with the tool, it goes with them. You know, we heard that here the last gentleman from GE used it at a prior company, brought it over, wanted a lightweight tool not a big ERP tool implemented, and now he's running, he said $100 million in assets more effectively than he could before. >> Exactly, but will you talk about in terms of that big differentiator, their ability to, if I'm a Smartsheet user and you're not, I can share something with you and we can collaborate. They've got, I think I read over the weekend, 650,000 active individual users, but they have about 3,000,000 people that are collaborators. And I think it was Mark Mader, the CEO, this morning, that shared with us. That's 40% of their business. They have a massive pipeline by just enabling this collaboration and the ability for a user who's paying license to share with a colleague that isn't. >> Right. And then this is always the small conferences, 2,000 people, still new, people are super passionate, it's not a big vendor show, it's not a big expo hall show, but people are super engaged and sharing information and you get that in kind of the early days of these conferences, which is a really neat thing to see and there's no substitute for passionate customers, at the end of the day that's all they can really hope for, and that's the validation you need to move forward. >> Absolutely and they had, I think, almost 50 customer speakers today and I know how incredibly difficult it is for a marketing team to find 10 customers. >> Yeah, you know that right? >> Right. To speak. >> To speak. >> Let alone what multiplier you need to have to get 50, four x? Maybe not here. It seems like these people that are users, PayPal, and Cisco, and Sodexo, and GE Renewable Energy, have found this on their own and are really kind of creating this virality that is, it was very infectious, contagious. >> Yeah. >> By the day. >> Which is amazing to me because there's, again, there's so many applications out there, and they don't all do the same thing and they all have pros and cons. But, to be able to find it to be able to deliver success and again another important piece at any rate in with those existing systems that already are in play. Mark was very clear, we're not expecting you to throw out the apps that you have, you may or may not be able to display some with Smartsheet, but we really want to work with them, right. We want to play together, not necessarily play separate. And again, you have to do that to be successful in 2018. >> And they're listening to their customers. They have to do that to be successful, that's driven by the customers, it's clear that, there's a push pull effect and it's going to vary based on the enterprise and their overall objectives, but their collaboration with customers to develop and prioritize all of the enhancements that people have been asking for for the last year since the first Engage was really, you felt that, you heard it. There was a lot of applause during the product announcement session this morning. They are listening, they're taking that feedback in and ultimately, what their VP of customer success talked about is they're driving change management and that is extremely difficult, culturally, to be able to do. >> It's people, right? I mean, they said it right out the top. Empower everyone to improve how they work, connect, innovate, and execute. I've said it time and time again, we do a lot of shows, I think that's a pretty straightforward path to give more people more data, the tools to manipulate the data and get the answers, and then most importantly, the authority and power to execute those decisions, especially when you're close to the customer. That's where good things happen. That's where the organization moves forward and you can't be centralized command and control everything 'cause it's moving way too fast. >> Right, right. >> Way too fast. >> Well, Jeff, I had a blast hosting with you all day today. Learned a lot, my perspective is really opened up about Smartsheet and what it is and how it can really drive a lot of transformation and accelerate digital transformation. >> I can't help but again go back to the line from Google Cloud, right? People want to move to judgment, less drudgery more judgment. That's what they're enabling here at Smartsheet and we're excited to be here and cover it and can't wait until next year. >> Awesome, thanks Jeff. Again, Lisa Martin with Jeff Rick. Thanks for watching our coverage of Smartsheet Engage 2018, from Bellevue Washington, we'll see you next time. (upbeat music)

>> Live from Bellevue, Washington it's theCUBE covering SmartSheet ENGAGE '18. Brought to you by SmartSheet. >> Welcome back to theCUBE, we are continuing our coverage live from Bellevue, Washington. We're at SmartSheet ENGAGE 2018. I'm with Jeff Frick here. This is the second annual ENGAGE event. Huge, doubled from last year. We've had a great day so far, Jeff, of execs from ShartSheet, customers. We're now excited to welcome an analyst from the 451 Group, Chris Marsh, the Research Director for WorkFresh Productivity and Compliance; welcome to theCUBE! >> Thank you very much. >> So we have, as I was saying, this is the second annual event, some of the stats that Mark Mader, our CEO, shared in the keynote this morning, there are over 1100 companies represented here at the event, a couple thousand people, 20 countries. We've had some very enthusiastic SmartSheet customers, SmartSheeters themselves talking about this tool that's designed for the business user, that's not designed for the citizen developer, people that don't even need to know what API stands for. So talk to us about your role at 451, but then we'll kind of get into project management, program management, and some of the trends and the changes that you're seeing there. >> Sure, yeah, so, so I've had the workforce productivity compliance research practice in 451, so as a team of analysts, we cover, essentially, productivity software, right? So the different tools that members of the workforce are using to get work done. So in addition to work management companies like SmartSheet, we also look at collaboration tools, digital workspaces, we cover the content management landscape, and we cover content creation, asset creation tools as well, so, really the focus for my team is to give perspectives on how the future of work is evolving, but really what those technology and dependings of that are. >> Such a busy space. You've picked a good area to specialize in. So how should people think of it? How should they categorize it, because from the outside looking in, a lot of the tools are very similar, you know, there's some overlap, some not overlap, there's some places where they can work together. Ya know, how should leaders be thinking about approaching this opportunity, 'cos you talk a lot about, you know, that's a great place to find untapped competitive advantage, but it seems to be very, kind of, confusing to the outsider. >> Yeah, it's a super interesting space, and it's probably more interesting than it's ever been. I think for many of us, it was, to be frank, kind of not interesting, right? There's lots of kind of legacy tools that people were struggling to figure out how to do new kinds of work with. >> Beyond email! (chuckles) >> Exactly, yeah, yeah. >> Was there anything beyond email 10 years ago? Yikes! >> Exactly, I mean we as a, I think, a research team find ourselves looking as much of intersections of those five areas that we cover as much as we go deep in them, for the very fact that, you know, it's a space that's going through a lot of innovation, a lot of disruption, and vendors and segments are learning from one another. Then, of course, we have, you know, broad, kind of transversal trends brought by technologies like AI and machine learning. Beginning to have more conversations around things like Block Chain, people beginning to talk about what may be some of the use cases are around AR, VR, and the kind of mixed-reality type technologies. So, you know, lots of innovation, lots of disruption. Um, in terms of what business leaders should be looking for, it obviously depends on what they're trying to do in their workforce. I think one of the big shifts that we're seeing is, um, you know, the sort of decentralization of ownership over more complex types of work to business users, right, whereas, I think, in a lot of companies, traditionally there are centralized teams of process specialists or project management folks, and, you know, tools have kind of mediated the relationship between those centralized, you know, teams and business users; where increasingly those tools are appealing to those business users. So in the panel moderation I did this morning, I showed some statistics around, you know, users of tools like SmartSheet, and it's not the type of people we would have seen using this type of tool four or five years ago. It's leaders were then legal teams, finance teams, HR teams, marketing teams, operations teams-- so that's sort of reflective of a broad shift in productivity software of, you know, virality in terms of how these tools enter businesses, right? Lots of organic adoption and it kind of runs contrary to how a lot of enterprise technology gets sold into enterprises, which is gone a little bit more top down or into specific buying centers. Increasingly, it's going in sort of the grass roots. People are finding new use cases for technology, and it sort of spreads from there, so, yeah, it's a super hot space right now. >> So one of the things we talk about is every place we go, right? Digital transformation and innovation, everybody wants more. And it seems pretty simple to say, but hard to do, that if you get more people more data, the tools to process it, and then the power to do something, that that just can unlock a tremendous amount of untapped innovation and execution and efficiency out of a company. That said, that's easier said sitting here than done. So are you seeing, you know, kind of a continual trend towards, you know, pushing down the data, pushing down the tools, and pushing down the authority to execute decisions? >> Yeah, I think so. And actually, the work management space is a very good example of that, right? So, um, you know, for some companies culturally that's not going to come very easy, because they just culturally may have a more sort of top-down kind of culture. But I think digital transformation for everyone, essentially means more agility, more speed, you know, more quickness in how work is executed and how it's designed. And that almost inevitably means that those closest to the delivery of the work are the ones that actually have the power to design the work in the first place and can, rather than sort of relying on IT for everything and/or central teams somewhere. So, it is a broad shift, but again, it comes, to your point, it comes more easily for some companies and some industries than others. >> And we talked about that with a number of the people from SmartSheet as well as users, that this is a massive cultural shift. I think Mark Mader, the CEO, this morning was telling us a quick anecdote of a 125-year-old oil and gas company, >> Yeah. >> That is, talk about, you know, probably really married to a lot of legacy processes and ways of thinking, not just tools, and how SmartSheet probably started in, you know, one function within the organization, probably, you know, quite low, and it started, to your point before, go viral, and we started, we started to hear a number of stories from PayPal, Sodexo, how this virality that you talk about is really kind of transforming from the bottom up. But that cultural change is essential. >> The cultural change is essential, I mean, in some cases it's just being led by the fact that that's happening anyway, right? Because, you know, gone are the days when IT chooses the tools, provisions them, and, you know, there's an awareness of what's going on in the environment. There are, and it's not just the work management space, we also look at sort of, workflow automation tools. A lot of these tools are, you know, going into a company grass roots, there are then potentially hundreds if not thousands of work processes or workflows that are created on these tools before IT even figures that out, right? Which is not necessarily an ideal scenario, but it's increasingly, you know, one of the patterns that we're seeing in enterprises, so. It's a big cultural shift, but um, there's a certain amount of push and pull here. Some companies that realize that are looking proactively to give effect to it. Other people are going to be pulled, to be frank, to the fact that there are tools that enable new kind of work patterns, new styles to happen, and they almost have to get on board with that, so. So obviously you want to strike a balance, I think, somewhere in between of being the catalyst for those kind of new things to happen whilst making sure there is still the kind of centralized oversight that's required for you to maintain control over your overall technology estate, but also so that you can make sure the technologies are aligning to your strategic goals. So it's a delicate balance. >> And there's these pretty big forces at play here. There's a term that 451 Group has recently coined called a liquid enterprise. >> That's right, yeah. >> Liquid; I think of fluidity, you mentioned agility, we've heard nimbleness today, um, talk to us. What, by definition, is the liquid enterprise, and how are you helping customers to embrace it and maybe not fight the force, because the forces of pull are stronger and better; but what does that mean? >> Yeah, so liquid enterprise, I mean, you've encapsulated it very well, right? So it's all about, you know, when we speak of digital transformation, you almost always end up to about business agility. So in some ways, liquid enterprise is just our way of giving a little bit more flavor to what business agility looks like in the kind of digital age. So our kind of view is that, you know, a lot of the companies that we kind of laud now as those really interesting companies like the AirBnB's and the Uber's, those with kind of, massively scalable infrastructure and then a very simple UI. We think that whole pattern of what the, kind of, digital enterprise will look like is one that's much more able to fluidly marshal it's different resources in a way that allows them to respond much more rapidly to changes in their own market conditions, right? Because one of the things, obviously, that digital is doing is changing user behavior to user requirement. So your ability, as a company, to respond very quickly to that is becoming, you know, a primacy in most companies, and a big part of how we think about the liquid enterprise is the fact that companies will actually be able to change their own organizational structure. Not just what they offer to a market, not just the tools that enable them to do that, but actually, they'll begin to sort of re-tesselate their own organizational design, to enable that to happen. So, you know, we see early indicators of technologies that are beginning to allow companies to think in that way. I think for most companies, liquid enterprise is aspirational right now, but I think, certainly, it's a pattern a lot of companies are trying to tact towards. >> So, I'm just curious, you talk about culture as a competitive advantage. And how much of these tools are culture enablers to make that possible? How much of it are just critical, because if you don't have that culture you're going to lose? How much of it is tied to, kind of, the consumerization of IT, where again, your workforce has an expectation of the way apps work based on their interaction with Amazon and their interaction with Google and those types of things? >> Very much driven by the consumerization of IT trend. I mean, often, increasingly what we see happen in the consumer realm ends up happening in some kind of expression in the enterprise realm sooner or later. So, yeah, that's very much it. One of the other things we talk about in our research is the kind of hierarchy of employee motivation, right? So we kind of have this way of thinking about, you know, what companies need to do and what technologies need to enable to really satisfy that end user experience. I think in the productivity software space, you know, it's probably not hyperbolic to say that most tools really only satisfy end users, right? We have lots of tools, including lots of modern SAAS tools, that actually, you know, may have good usability, but aren't particularly flexible. There sort of better, more scalable versions of a lot of legacy tools. So we see this kind of passage towards tools actually doing things like, you know, decentralizing the ability to create workflows, so that, you know, business users, including non-managerial folks, can actually design work, and how that work actually happens, right? So there's a big element there in terms of motivation in your role, you know, actually making an impact, having that recognized and all of those kinds of things, which is driving a more, sort of, engaged relationship between people and technology, so we only see that continuing. And, the work management space in SmartSheet's very good examples of that. There's lots of conversations you can hear and engage where people are discussing, you know, what they're doing with their tool that they created themselves, some kind of local business team that has redesigned a certain process that is allowed better business value to be created; and they're the ones that are going to take credit for that. I think that trend is only going to accelerate. So again, from an enterprise perspective, embracing that, helping catalyze that, but again, having the ability to have central oversight over that kind of local team-based execution, it is obviously very important. >> What about just kind of the competition from my desktop? You know, what apps are open while I'm working all day, and you know, we all wish if you're driving an app company that it's your app that is on top, but the reality is many, many apps open all the time. So do you see that evolving, do you see that aggregating, do you see a couple of kind of uber apps over the top of these integrations that you'll be doing your primary workplace, or is it just kind of horses for courses depending on the types of things that you do in your day-to-day job? >> Really good question, I mean, I think one of the background trends we've seen, especially with SAAS, is just the growth and the overall enterprise application estate. Right, so just more apps. And obviously catalyzed also by end users having positive experiences in consumer apps, and then being used to choosing the way that they do things, like that, that is transitioning into the enterprise environment, as well, so. I don't envisage that the total number of apps is going to decrease, but very good question as to, you know, whether we get consolidation. Time will tell, but I think, you know, to my point earlier, we spend a lot of time looking at intersections that cross existing segments, because, each segment is really transforming. And you see lots of examples of customers here at ENGAGE using SmartSheet as a displacement tool for other ones that they previously were using. They find the automation of SmartSheet a way to sort of disintermediate other tools that they were using. We're certainly seeing some of that, whether that means the total number of applications decreases, I don't know, because we're still yet to see play out lots of cool, new, innovative technologies that will obviously give rise to new kinds of applications. Question is out as to whether it will mean further apps, but we certainly seeing a changing in the, in the sort of preference for tools based on what new ones we're enabling. >> And I would imagine in very short order, the application of AI and machine learning behind the scenes in all these apps, is also going to change the UI experience dramatically, as more and more and more of the processes are automated on the back-end, there's more kind of smart suggestions as to what to do or completely automated processes. So even the face of the most popular apps today, I would imagine you see significant change with the application of AI and machine learning. >> Yeah, I would think so. One of the, sort of, big trends here, listening to customers and listening to some of the key notes, is, you know, the shift that comes with companies trying to make from low value work to high value work, so all of that kind of granular and manual work we're having to do is so most existing applications; people just want to abstract their way. They don't want to be doing that anymore, they want to be focusing on, um, sort of resource management, team coordination, creative ideation, they want to focus on strategy execution, they want to focus on things like, you know, risks to the business, actions that they need to take, decisions that they need to make, they don't want to be doing the whole, um, who did this, when did they do it, what do I need to do now, they don't want to be sort of manually moving information from applications, they don't want to be doing sort of manual reconciliations of data, and that kind of thing. >> Right. >> So um, heh, so yeah, the kind of low value to high value work is only going to be accelerated by AI and ML, to the point where we're beginning to see much more contextual work. So the ML is the basis on which work can be surfaced contextually to end users. So that is sort of automating the abstraction of that low value work, and that's hugely exciting, because that offers a whole new paradigm for how we interact with applications, what that end user experience is. Imagine, you know, sort of going into your office loading up your computer, opening up an application, and it surfaces to you what you need to focus on that day. >> Right. >> That's where a lot of productivity application vendors are trying to get to. >> That's the dream, right there. >> Not here is the application, you decide where you need to focus, it's the kind of, these are the things you really need to put your time in. I mean, that's pretty exciting. And that's what a lot of the companies would want. >> Well even, a certain CRN company that's got a large tower in San Francisco, why do I have to put the city and the state and the zip code, I mean, we have so far to go, can't I just put the zip code in and it fills in the city and the state, and those little, you know, simple things that take a lot of time and these are the kind of data entry tasks that just drive people bananas, and discount the value, the fundamental value of the tool, because you just get stuck in a data entry mode, or a double entry mode. It's this crazy opportunity that we still have in front of us to make improvements. >> Yeah, I think, huge opportunity, obviously. But it's not quite so easy as that, I think, really it's kind of how I would talk about it. You know, AI and ML will inevitably have a transformative impact on enterprise software; I don't think anybody would dispute that. But it does rely on large data sects, against which you have to train your algorithms and your models, and that takes time for individual companies to build that data sect. They need enough work in there, they need enough people, enough workflows in there, to generate those data sects so that they will actually be useful, right? So, it's going to take a bit of time to play out. But yeah, it's going to be very impactful in the longer term. >> Well Chris, thanks so much for stopping by theCUBE and sharing your insights on this new, emerging term of the liquid enterprise, we appreciate that. >> Pleasure, thanks very much. >> For Jeff Frick, I'm Lisa Martin, you're watching theCUBE live from SmartSheet ENGAGE 2018. Stick around, Jeff and I will be right back with our next guest. (electronic music)

(upbeat music) >> Live from Washington D.C., it's theCube, covering Inforum D.C. 2018. Brought to you by Infor. >> Welcome back here on theCube, we are live at Inforum '18 in the nation's capital Washington D.C. Where these days there's never a dull moment and we'll just leave it at that. I'm with John Walls, Dave Vellante and Stuart Applebaum is joining us here. He's the EVP of North America Service Industries at Infor, and Stuart, thanks for joining us here. >> No, thank you, looking forward to it, you're right. >> You got your hands on a lot of pies, right. >> Yeah. >> The bank, you got a retail, you got healthcare, hospitality. >> Right. >> And you've had some wins in hospitality of late. First off, what's driving that? What do you think as being-- >> Yes, sure, well I mean whether you look at hospitality whether it's managed food service or hotels or restaurants a lot the technology that's out there is dated, right, and the technology is not upkeeping with the requirements and the demand for a really different customer service level. So, you take the look and feel of what we've been able to do as a company over the last 10 years and build up a lot of knowledge base and seniority around what it means to serve those markets, but then re-architect with new products, right. Cloud first approach type technology that really allows for us to deliver a, you know what I would say a much more better experience for the guest at a hotel, or at a front at a cash register at a restaurant, or in a managed food service environment in a hospital, right. All those environments are a lot of touches that go on and the more the technology is modern the better you can improve those technology and those interactions that go on. You also look at the idea that these guys trying to manage these, whether it's a hotel chain, or a company like Sodexo where they have managed food service entities all over. Business in industry, healthcare, it doesn't matter what you see, a cafeteria somewhere, there's high odds that it's either a company like Sodexo or another managed food service provider. The complexity of trying to maintain on premise solutions is just, is backbreaking for them. So for them to be able to now actually get to a level with a company like Infor who not only has the experience in the space, but also have invested into the next generation cloud based solutions, really allows us to kind of differentiate ourselves in the marketplace. And the marketplace has been pushing us for that as well. >> Are these typically, install based Infor customers that you're now moving to a cloud model? Is it, sort of new logos? I'm wondering if you could describe that dynamic? >> Yeah, I would tell you it's pretty mixed, right. Our customer base is fairly broad. We serve hotels for example, in over 100 countries and territories today. A lot of those customers came up through legacy applications much like we complete in a marketplace on. So we've done really great job of migrating those customers up into the cloud with the next generation technology. But what's also happened is, as you look at the area in which people serve the hotel space, a lot of them are really legacy applications that have been around for 20, 30 years, and while those companies have tried to encapsulate modern technology and move into some cloud level environment, only Infor has actually re-architect and built them from the ground up. So what we're finding is a lot of different style of companies and groups. One great example of this is Mandarin Oriental has begun to role out our company, or role out our products globally. So being able to take a brand that's as exclusive as that, that's so focused on "How do we make the guest, at the forefront of everything that we do to make them feel special?" Well, they couldn't do that with the technology that they have today, right. So in order to be able to make those differences and those changes in how they're going to service their guest, they have to move to a next generation technology. So we're seeing a lot of new logo business in that space. We're also seeing a lot of new logo space in the casino marketplace, right. You think about how massive and big these casinos are so most of these guys are very careful and concerned, just like our banking customers for example, in being able to move into the cloud, move to new technology, cause, can companies really scale? Can they bring that capability and put it in the cloud? Well we very much started to prove that with these large casinos to the point where we just recently announced about a year ago signing one of the largest, or second largest casino company in the world, and 40 hotels with over 50,000 hotel rooms, right. The idea to be able to take these kind of technologies at that scale and pace, is driving a lot of new logo new customer business being driven from our competition, which has not been able to keep pace with that kind of technology in the cloud. >> So what are the winning attributes? I'm hearing architecture, we heard this morning platform, we had Nunzio on, the design, the whole user experience. There's the cloud component. Are those the sort of key factors? What else? >> They're very much the key but it's how Infor OS which I think maybe people have talked a little about. We have this capability to create a model that allows for not only a free flow of communication and understanding between systems, whether it's for a hotel environment or a hospital environment so that information can be shared amongst systems and among resources to be able to collaborate and do something with that information. But equally as important, at the same time, we put all that information into a data lake. So that we can now use Birst and we can use Coleman, to really start to help people understand not only what does it look like or what's the interactions occurring at the hotel space, or might you want to tell this customer or say to this customer to, "Hey, we're going to give you this information up front instead of guessing what that might look like, or guessing what you might want to offer that client." It's a very different approach. >> Give me an idea, I mean specifically, you talk about Mandarin, we'll just use them as an example. >> Yup >> What are you helping them do better, that they couldn't do before? Because when I think of service, I think of Mandarin, they did things pretty well before. So what are you doing to help them improve their processes and what are they turning to you for future? >> Sure, well, I mean from a simplistic standpoint talk about how they're able to interact with you as a guest, right. If you're a Mandarin type of client you're probably very much a more affluent business traveler or a-- >> Dave Vellante >> Yeah, a Vellante example right. At the end of the day while you want all the level of service that you expect at that kind of property the amount of effort or work they have to do or you might have to do to make them understand what that is, is very taxing. And it's also very hard for you guys to interact and change that. By getting to, what we have, HMS, which is Infor's hotel property management system, allows them to really streamline not only understanding who you are, what your preferences are, how you like to interact with them, but then also be able to deliver that in a mode of interaction that you like. Whether it be through mobile, whether it be through text, whether it be through personal conference calls, or discussions or touchpoints. That kind of capability in their legacy systems took a whole bunch of manual intervention to make that happen. Now we're able to automate that, make that information realtime so it's not just a few people digging in to try to find this information to go back and try to make that guest fell like they understood it. It's every point, right, every contact that touches that customer who has access to our solutions, is fed that information realtime, which gives the customer a much different experience. At the same time, it allows you guys to interact in a much different experience. You may not want to talk to people you want to check in on your phone, show up at the hotel, go to your room, open your door. Well, legacy architectures and technologies with closed type of infrastructure don't allow for that open API capability. Versus our technologies allow it free flowing out of a cloud scenario, which is even a more complex thing, to give the ability for those hoteliers like Mandarin, to say "Hey, I'm going to give Vellante a unique experience that is exactly what he likes, with all the information that I know about him to be what I would consider the best way I can service Vellante. >> So self-service is an obvious one. I don't want to have to wait on the phone on hold to check out for example. Just give me a pad or something that I can just go boom. And there are numerous other examples, but you've got to get the user experience and the design right. Maybe talk about how you guys approach that. >> Yeah, well, you guys had a chance to meet with Nunzio on our Hook & Loop. Hook & Loop is very instrumental in what we do in the hospitality space as well, as well in the healthcare space. Anytime people are interacting, not only as an employee but as a guest, whether you're an invited guest you know from a doctor to get to a hospital to have some kind of treatment or acute care. Or if you're a hotel guest where you're coming to stay. There is some level of interaction that's going on that requires a very unique, specific kind of touchpoint between the two. And in that area and in that space, there's a lot of data and elements that go on that if you feed those and understand what those elements are, and start to really understand what it is that individuals require in terms of their personal care or their personal interaction or stay at a hotel, the more unique an experience and the better experience that they can have. >> Stuart we heard about the skills gap, the skills shortage this morning. How can Infor and it's software help close that gap? >> Right, well you can look at it in a couple different ways. If you look at it at the grassroots of some of the industries that we serve that we've talked about. Whether it's hospitality or retail, or even healthcare in some scenarios. Not talking about professionals in the healthcare industry, but people who are just working day to day operations. Simplifying the interaction on how they use the solutions that they do their jobs everyday, minimizes the training requirements and the skilled labor that has to go on that would occur in legacy solutions and architects. So being able to hire a front desk guest agent who's got a great personality who knows how to interact and talk to people but maybe has never used a hotel system before to be able to put them in front of that hotel system and act just like their phone or their iPad, it gives them the ability to be interactive and understand and be on board pretty quickly. So that's one side, is simplifying, working with Hook & Loop, designing, making sure the applications, the workflows make sense. So it simplifies the work effort and simplifies the ability for people who are maybe less skilled in a particular area to jump in really quickly with less training. The other side of it is trying to find the right resources. And, going through the process of having a skilled attribute level of understanding of what your successful people look like, we can help through our Talent Science solutions find similar type of people. That doesn't mean, now we'll get to the education enablement side of it, that doesn't mean day one, that maybe they have the exact training they have required but that we found that they are the perfect fit for the job. So if they are going to be interacting on an everyday basis with a guest for example, and they're a front desk manager, there's attributes around that are so critical important. Now, they may not understand all the facets of the job but once we find that right resource you bring them into the talent solution and then really start to understand where are their gaps, where are the training requirements, what are the certifications by the way, depending on if you're in a complex industry like manufacturing or healthcare where there are certifications and safety regulations you have to occur. How do you maintain all that into one spot and be able to identify and be able to give them and provide them the personal interaction on what is it that they need to maintain and grow in terms of their own abilities to be suitable for the next job or the job that they're being hired for, and how do they actively get the learning and the education, the e-learning that goes with it. So, we've been able to kind of formulate that into a comprehensive product set that we think is pretty much best of breed in the industry, right. So not only do we have a great learning management system, an unbelievable talent acquisition and science system, a fabulous way to hire, to promote, to retire structure on understanding employees, what their skills are and how to place them, but bringing all that together from a unified front, and then being able to standardize that into an experience that makes it a much more different approach from what you would traditionally have had in finding skilled labor in the workforce. >> In automation, in AI, it's now a layer on top of all this that you're bringing to the table with Coleman you started to role out some capabilities there. What's the reaction been of customers? Is there uncertainty? Is there fear? Is there doubt? Are they embracing it? What is the conversation like? >> Really instead of saying, it's better to think of it, it's not on top, right. This is the underpinnings of how we built our cloud suites. >> Injected into the-- >> So we've taken our cloud suites and everything we've opened from a technology perspective to inform every information and job that flows through, whether it's in personal intervention into a task or whether it's machine to machine, goes through that Infor OS. So all of that interaction and data whether it's from a person or from a machine gets captured so you can start to begin to build intelligence on top of that. Now, what that means is, wherever those interactions and communications occur, Coleman is sitting in there understanding and learning, sitting on top of our data lake to say, "You know what? This is a process that is repeated a hundred times a day, by 50 different people on a particular firm. Why don't we automate that process and why don't we make that known to the entity and then adjust our process to automate that so no one has to interact with it, right. So being able to have that as an underpinning, not an overlay, right, cause a lot of businesses will come in and say "Hey we'll provide analytics and BI over the top." That's great, analytics and BI on the top is pulling information out of all different kinds of sources trying to make sense of all that data trying to make sense of all those sources. Versus what we're trying to do is every interaction that occurs between systems, we're not trying to identify right at that point what makes sense to store somewhere and put somewhere, it all goes into our data lake, and then the machine learning starts to tell you, "Here's some things you should understand about the data and the interactions. >> We've heard the theme about human potential, unlocking that. So, how does that translate in your world, I mean in your mind? How do you apply that in terms of the industries that you're providing services for? >> Again it goes back to, it also goes to our focus on bringing a diverse workforce to the table. To improve our capabilities and improve the way we approach things. But, it's understanding individual attributes of people and how they may interact and work within a company is a starting point, right. So they may not have a particular skill, but they have a capability or an ability to learn or they may have a personal interaction that is far excessive than what normal people would come in to interview first like a job. Well being able to do these type of talent assessments and understand as a baseline where they are, all of a sudden you're getting a more broader pool of skilled resources for what you're looking for, right. And then even if that skilled resource happens to be from a different part of the country than what your typical hiring manager is, or they look different, or their education background is different, it strips that out, right. It is giving you the personal attributes of that individual. So that allow a broader pool to look at. Then from that pool, then we can start to say "Okay, well here's a great candidate pool of people that may be able to quickly be skilled into a job or into a role, and then start to place those people into those positions. And then as the life cycle of that employee goes on so do their attributes, right. So what made them who they are as other roles and jobs as they build their resume within the company, they still have those capabilities so as a role in a management place comes up that has a good fit for this persons individual skills and their personal attributes, they're a natural fit for moving up into the world. And that's how we kind of continue to get that engine rollin in terms of how do we bring more people in without a prescriptive, only a prescriptive model, right. This is a scientific model of what is going to be the right fit for an employee for Infor, right. Or an employee for one of our customers or another company. And that's where we start with bringing in that ability to broaden our workforce and identify people who could be successful, without necessarily saying "You didn't punch this type of button for the last 10 years so you're not qualified for the job." >> So I'm hearing a lot of differentiation and I'd love to hear it more in your words from an executive of Infor. Every company out there, every software company says "Yeah, we have AI too." I'm sure you hear it: "Oh company A B and C, they have their new AI platform, everybody's doing AI." When you're talking to customers, how do you differentiate what Infor is doing, not with just machine intelligence, but across the board, from the competition? >> Well I would tell you to start with, one is the comprehensive set of our solutions, right. So by being able to go into an industry and have a cloud suite that we formulated that has the capability to manage a very significant portion of their operations already integrated together, already with the last industry model functionality built into it. It gives us a leg up in our competition. So when we walk into a healthcare, or a hospital, and they have challenges with nurse scheduling, they have financials they need to look at, they have general HR that they have to look at, and by the way, they're also trying to look at "Are we going to be profitable? And how do we become profitable? All these different touchpoints are a nightmare for us." Well as Infor, what we present to our customers and brought together was: "Hey we have that capability to do all your nurse scheduling, your workforce planning, your time attendance. We can manage your facilities, your assets, your expensive cost structures there." We have the ability to have a very complex set of financials that may serve 15 different hospitals that might also have different infused levels of ownership or investment or management. Being able to come to the table with that as a comprehensive system, eliminates a lot of the guesswork. Now, again, once you have that in there, someone coming in and selling AI, or BI, they still would have to, if it wasn't us, to come in over the top and say, "Well, if it's all Infor, that's good. At least we can connect all Infor. But if it's got Epic or it's got Cerner, it's got whatever solution's sitting out there, well all of a sudden you're not only having to connect those points but you're having to connect all over the place versus the way we built it is that cloud suite, all those points of connection are already prebuilt, right. And they're already dumping it into the data lake. So that now all you have to do is take some ancillary pieces of data to pull into that perspective. And with capabilities of clinical integrations that we have, to be able to follow and track those things. And we just actually announced not too long ago TrueCost. TrueCost is the ability to really understand down to a procedure level what something may cost to perform at a particular hospital. And that is, you would think that wouldn't be that hard but you're talking about people, you're talking about equipment, you're talking about what kind of room? What equipment's in that room that creates a certain cost per hour to do a procedure? All those things come to play in determining exactly what is profitable and what's not. So being able to really understand the true cost of care, not only at the hospital level, but by the way, how do we take into account what happened before? How do we take post care into that? And then how do we start to do predictive analytics on that kind of capability? Well, since we have this cloud suite healthcare, for example, building around all of these different components where we track the resources, we understand the rooms and the cost. We understand the doctor cost, we understand the facilities cost. We understand the care and the time that it take to go under the care. We can now start to really take and give hospitals an idea of saying: "Hey, maybe if we approach this a little differently." Or even with Coleman now, maybe you approach it this way. You can start to do and provide that specific care in a different way that will lower your cost to care, not only for your hospital but for your patients, and then hence you become more profitable as an entity. >> It's a real business impact. And the alternative would be, you would have to what? Develop custom modifications, or bring in an ISV who's got deep expertise there. Bring in another system. >> You could have a combination of it, right. Some of our competition would have to bring in a different workforce management and scheduling system. They'd have to bring in a different time and attendance system. They would probably have to bring in a different analytical engine and underlying platform to work with it. They would have to bring in a different talent assessment or talent management type of solution. They would have to bring in a different supply chain and materials management system for a healthcare environment for example. I mean, the list can go on and on. Where we've went out and built and looked for, whether it was through acquisition, where we then brought these cloud based products into our cloud suite, or we identified gaps or areas that we needed to build from scratch. And we talk about, you know, people don't really think about it, but as a percent of revenue, we outspend our competition 5x, right. And we talk about how much we've spent in the last several years in R&D. We do that because we know that if we can build a platform in the next generation for healthcare, for hospitality, for retail, then we can really be the leaders in the marketplace. And I think that's what's going to really differentiate us from our competition who's trying to either come in with a point area, start to broaden it a little bit. We've already broadened it, we integrated it, we built it together and we underpin it with the ability to do artificial intelligence and analytics from the box, right. That's a very different approach. >> And keep it simple. >> Right >> For me, right? At the end of the day-- >> Yeah, make it easier for the users. >> Stu thanks for the time. >> No, this was great. I appreciate it. >> Thanks for the run down. Stuart Applebaum from Infor. Back with more here from Inforum '18. We are live in Washington D.C. And you're watching theCube. (upbeat music)