>>Yeah, yeah, >>Hello. We're back with Today's the last session in the creating engaging analytics experiences for all track breaking down data silos. A conversation with Snowflake on Western Union Earlier today, we did a few deep dives into the thought spot product with sessions on thoughts about one. Thoughts were everywhere on spot. Take you to close out this track. We're joined by industry leading experts Christian Kleinerman s VP of product at Snowflake and Tom Matzzie, Pharaoh, chief data officer at Western Union, for a thought provoking conversation on data transformation on how to avoid the pitfalls of traditional analytics. They'll be discussing in key challenges faced by organizations, why user engagement matters and looking towards the future of the industry. No Joining Thomas and Christian in conversation is Angela Cooper, vice president of customer success at Thought spot. Thank you all for being here today. We're so excited for what is what this conversation has in store. Handing it over now to Christian to kick things off. >>Hi. So, a few years ago, when when someone asked about Snowflake, the most common answer, it was like, what is snowflake and what do you do? Hopefully in the last couple off months, things have changed and and here I am showing a couple of momentum data points on, uh, where we have accomplished here it Snowflake. So we we have received Ah, a lot of attention and buzz. Recently, we were listed in the New York Stock Exchange And we even though we still think of ourselves as a small start up company, we have crossed the 2000 employees mark. More important, we count with 3 3000 plus amazing customers. And something that we obsess about is the a satisfaction of our customers. We really are working hard. The laboring technology that having a platform for better decisions, better analytics and then the promoters course off 71 depicted here is a testament of that. And last, but certainly not least about snowflake. It's very important that we know that we succeed with our partners. We know that we don't go to market by ourselves. We actually have Ah, fantastic set of partners and of course, thoughts. But it is one of our most important partners. >>Good morning. Good afternoon. Eso Amman Thomas affair on the chief kid officer here at Western Union. It's gonna be a background of a Western union and what we, uh, what we do and how we service our customers. So today we are in over 200 countries and territories worldwide. We have a 550,000 retail Asian network to service all of our customers, uh, needs from what he transfer and picking up in a depositing cash. We also have our digital transformation underway, where we now have educate abilities up and running and over 35 countries with paled options to accounts in over 120 countries. We think about our overall business and how support are over our customers and our services. It really has transformed over the past 12 months with Cove it and it's part of that We have to be able to really accelerate our transformation on a digital front to help to enable in the super those customers going forward. Eso as part of that, You know, a big, big help in a big supporter of that transformation has been snowflake and has been thought spot as part of that transformation. If you go the next to the next slide are our current, uh B I in our illegal tools right to date, uh, have been very useful up until the last one or two years. As data explodes and as as our customer needs transform and as our solutions and our time to act in our time to react in the overall market becomes faster and faster, we need to be able to basically look across our entire company, our entire organization and cross functionally to visit to leverage data leverage our insights to really basically pivot our overall business and our overall model to support our customers and our and to enable those services and products going forward. So as part of that, snowflakes been a huge part of that journey, right, allowing us to consolidate over our 30 plus data stores across the company on able to really leverage that overall data and insights to drive, uh, quick reaction right with the pivot, our business offered to enable new services and improve customer experiences going forward and then being able to use a snowflake and then being put the applications on top of that like thought spot, which allows, uh, users that are both technical and nontechnical to the go in and just, um, ask the question as if the searching on Google or Yahoo or being they can just ask any question they want and then get the results back in real time, made that business call and then really go forward through these is this larger ecosystem as a whole. It's really enabled us to really transform our business and supporter customers going forward. >>Wonderful. Thank you, Tom. Thank you, Christian, for the overview of both snowflake and Western Union. Both have big presence in Denver, which is where Tom and I are tonight. Um, I'm here. I'm the vice president of customer success for Thought spot, and I wanted to ask both of you some questions about the industry and specific things that you're facing within Western Union. So first I was hoping Christian that you could talk to me a little bit about Snowflake has thousands of customers at this point, servicing essentially located data sets. But what are you seeing? Has been the top challenges that businesses air facing and how it snowflake uniquely positioned to help. Yeah, >>so certainly the think the challenges air made. I would say that the macro challenge above everything is how to turn data into a competitive differentiator, their study after study that says companies that embrace data and insights and analytics they are outperforming their competitors. So that would be my macro challenge. Once you go into the next level, maybe I can think of three elements. The first one Tom already perfectly teed up the topic of of silence and the reality For most organizations, data is fragmented across different database systems. Even filed systems in some instances transactional databases, analytical data bases and what customers expect is to have, ah, unified experience like I am dealing with company extra company. Why? And I really don't care if behind the scenes there's 10 different teams or 100 different systems. I just want a unified experience. And the Congress is true. The opportunity to deliver personalized custom experiences is reliant on a single view of the day. The other topic that comes to mind this is the one of data governance, Um, as data becomes more important than a reorganization, understanding the constraints and security and privacy also become critical to not only advanced data capability but do it doing so responsibly and within the norms off regulation and the last one which is something court to tow our vision. We are pioneering the concept of the data cloud and the challenge that that we're addressing there is the problem around access to data, right. You can no longer as an organization think of making decisions just on your own data. But there's lots of data collaboration, data enrichment. Maybe I wanna put my data in context. And that's what we're trying to simplify and democratize access and simplify connecting to the data that improves decisions on all three fronts. Obviously, we're obsessed. That's no bling on on tearing down the silos on delivering a solution that is very focused on data governance. And for sure, the data cloud simplifies access to data. >>Wonderful. Now, I know we we really focused on those data silos is a business challenge. But Tom, going through your digital transformation journey are there specific challenges that you faced with Western Union That thought spot and snowflake have helped you overcome? >>Yeah. So? So first off fully agree what Christian just said, right? Those are absolutely, you know, problems that we faced. And we've had overcome, um, service, any company right being able to the transforming to modernize the cloud. Um, for us, one of the biggest things is being able to not just access our information, but have it in a way that it can be consumed, right? Have it in a way that it could be understood, right? Have it in a way that we can then drive business business decision points and and be able to use that information to either fix a problem that we see or better service our customers or offer a product that we're seeing right now is a miss in the marketplace to service in a underserved community or underserved, um, customer base. Also, from our standpoint, being able toe look, um um, uh and predict in forecast what's going to happen and be able to use that information and use our insights to then be proactive and thio in either, You know, be thoughtful about how do we shift our focus, or how do we then change our strategy to take advantage of that for that forecast in that position that we're seeing into the future? >>Wonderful. I've heard from many customers you could not have predicted what was going to happen to our businesses in the year 2020 with the traditional models and especially with what did you say? 30 plus different data silos. Being able to do that type of prediction across those systems must have been very, very difficult. You also mentioned going through a digital transformation at Western Union. So can you talk to me, Tom? A little bit about kind of present day? And why? Why is it important to enable your frontline knowledge workers with the right data at the right time with the right technology? >>Yeah, so? So you're spot on, by the way. But, uh, no one predicted that that we would have a pandemic that would literally consume the entire globe right And change how consumers, um uh, use and buy services and products, or how economies would either shut down or at the reopening shut down again. And then how different interests to be impacted by this? Right. So, uh, what we learned and what we were able to pivot was being able to do exactly what you just said, right. Being able to understand what's happening the date of the right time, right then being able to with the right technology with the right capabilities, understand? what's happening. I understand. Then what should our pivot be? And how should we then go focus on that pivot to go into go and transform? I think it's e. It's more than just just the front lines. Also, our executives. It's also are back office operations, right, because as you think through this, right as customers were having issues right, go into retail locations that were closed. It end of Q one Earlier, Q two. We obviously had a a large surplus right of phone calls coming into our call centers, asking for help, asking for How can we transact better? Where can we go? Right? How do we handle the operationally? Right? As we had a massive surge onto our digital platform where we were, we had 100% increase year over year in Q one and Q two. How do we make sure that our platform the technology can scale right and still provide the right S L A's and and and and the right, um uh, support to our internal customers as well as our extra customers in the future? Eso so really interesting, though, you know, on on on the front line side, our sales staff, right? And even our front line associates with our agent locations A to retail side, you know, for us, is really around. How do we best support them? So how do we partner with them to understand? You know, when a certain certain governments or certain, uh, regions were going toe lock down, how do we support them to keep them open, right. How do we make them a essential service going forward? How do we enable them? Right, the Wright systems or technology to do things a bit differently than they have in the past to adopt right with the changing times. But, you know, I'll tell you the amount of transformation in the basement we've done this year, I think you know, has a massive and actually on Lee, you know, created a larger wave for us to actually ride into the future as we can, to base to innovate, you know, in partnership with both thought spot and with the snowflake into the future. >>Absolutely. I've seen many, many a industry analyst reports talking about how companies now in 2020 have accelerated that digital transformation movement because of current day. In current time, Christian What are you seeing with the rest of the industry and other global companies about enabling data across the globe at the right time? >>Yeah, so I can't agree more with with with with what? Tom said. And he gave some very, um, compelling and very riel use cases where the timeliness of data and and and and and at the right time concept make a big difference. Right? They aske part of our data marketplace with snowflake with deliver, for example, um, up to date low ladies information on, uh, covert 19 data sets where we're infection spiking. And what were the trends? And the use case was very, very riel. Every single company was trying to make sense of the numbers. Uh, all machine learning models were sort of like, out of whack, because no trends and no patterns may make sense anymore. And it was They need to be able to join my data and my activity with this health data set and make decisions at the right time. Imagine if if the cycle to makes all these decisions waas Ah, monthlong. You would never catch up, right? And he speaks to tow a concept that it that is, um, dear, it wasa snowflake and is the lifetime value data right? The notion of ableto act on a piece of data on an event at the right time and obviously with the slow laden see it's possible, makes a big difference. And and there is no end of example. Stomach gives her all again very compelling ones. Um, there's many others, but if you're running a marketing campaign and would you want to know five minutes later that it's not working out, you're burning your daughters? Or would you want to know the next day? Or if someone is going to give you you have a subscription based business and you're going toe, for example, have a model that predicts the turn of your customer? How useful is if you find out Hey, your customer is gonna turn, but you found out two months later. Once probably you are really toe action and change the outcome. Eyes different and and and this order to manage that I'm talking about days or months are not uncommon. Many organizations today, and that's where the topic of right technology matters. Um, I love asking questions about Do you know, an organization and customers. Do you run data, transformations and ingests at two and three in the morning? And the most common answer is yes. And then you start asking why. And usually the answer is some flavor off technology made me do it and a big part of what we're trying to do, like what we're pioneering is. How about ingesting data, transforming data enriching data when the business needs it at the right time with the right timeliness? Not when the technology had cycles. So they were Scipio available, so the importance can't be overstated. There is value in in in analyzing understanding data on time, and we provide technology and platform to any of this. >>That's such a good point. Christian. We ended up on Lee doing processes and loading in the middle of the night because that's what the technology at that time would allow. You couldn't have the concurrency. You couldn't have, um, data happening all at the same time. And so wonderful point that stuff like enables. I think another piece that's interesting that you guys a hit on is that it's important to have the same user experiencing user interface at the right time. And so what I found talking to customers. And Tom what? You and I have discussed this. When you have 30 different data sets and you have a interface that's different, you have a legacy reports system. Maybe you have excel on top of another. You have thought spot on one. You have your dashboard of choice on another, those different sources in different ways. To view that data, it can all be so disjointed. And the combination of thought spot with snowflake and all the data in one place with a centralized, unified user experience just helps users take advantage off the insights that they need right at that right moment. So kind of finishing up for our last question for today I'm interested to hear about Christian will go back to you quickly about what do you see from snowflakes? Perspective is ahead. Future facing for data and analytics. >>One of the topics you just alluded toe Angela, which is the fact that many data sets are gonna be part of the processes by which we make decisions and that that's where were the experience with thoughts but a single unified search experience for a single unified. Um automatic insects, which is what's para que does That is the future, right? I I don't think that x many years from now on, and I think that that X is a small number. Organizations are going to say I had some business activity. I collected some data. I did some analysis and I have conclusions because it always has to be okay, put it in context or look at industry trends and look at other activity that can help him make more sense about my data. The example of tracking they covert are breaking is ah, timely one. But you can always say go on, put it in context with, I don't know, maybe the GDP of the country or the adoption of a platform and things like that. So I think that's ah big trend on having multiple data sets. Contributing towards better decisions towards better product experience is for better services. And, of course, Snowflake is trying to do its part, is doing its part with vision and simplify answers today and the answer on hot spot simplifying blending the interface so that would be super useful. The other big piece, of course, is, um, Predictive Analytics people Talk machine Learning and AI, which is a little bit to buzz worthy. But it is true that we have the technology to drive predictions and and do a better job of understanding behaviors off what's supposed to happen based on understanding the best and the last one. If if if I'm allowed one. Exco What's ahead for data industry, which sounds obvious, but But we're not all the way. There is both cloud the adoption and moving to the cloud as well as the topic of multi Cloud. Increasingly, I think we we finally shifted conversations from Should I go to the cloud or not? Now it's How fast do I do it? And increasingly what we hear is I may want to take the best of the different clouds and how doe I go in and and and embrace a multi cloud reality without having to learn 100 plus different services and nuances of services on on every car and this work technologies like snowflake and thoughts about that can can support a different multiple deployment are being well received by different customs, nerve fault, >>Tom industry trends, or one thing I know. Western Union is really leading in the digital transformation and in your space, What's next for Western Union? >>Yeah, so just add on Requip Thio Christian before I dive into a Western Union use case just to your point. Christian, I really see a convergence happening between how people today work or or manage their personal life, where the applications, the user experiences and the responses are at your fingertips. Easy to use don't need to learn different tools. It's just all there, right, whether you're an android user or an apple user rights, although your fingertips I ask you the same innovation and transmission happening now on the work side, where I see to your point right a convergence happening where not just that the technology teams but even the business teams. They wanna have that same feature, that same functionality, where all their insights their entire way to interact with the business with the business teams with their data with their systems with their products for their services are at their fingertips right where they can go and they can make a change on an iPad or an iPhone and instant effect. They can go change a rule. They could go and modify Uh uh, an algorithm. They can go and look at expanding their product base, and it's just there. It's instant now. This would take time, right? Because this is going to be a transformational journey right across many different industries, but it's part of that. I really see that type of instant gratification, uh, satisfaction, that type of being able to instantly get those insights. Be able thio to really, you know, do what you do on your personal life in your work life every single day. That trend is absolutely it's actually happening. And it's kind of like tag team that into what we're doing at Western Union is exactly that we are actually transforming how our business teams, uh, in our technology teams are able to interact with our customers, interact with our products, interact with our services, interact with our data and our systems instantly. Right? Perfect example that it's that spot where they could go on typing any question they want. And they instigate an answer like that that that was unheard of a year ago, at least for our business. Right being able to to to go and put in in a new rule and and have it flow through the rules engine and have an instant customer impact that's coming right. Being able to instantly change or configure a new product or service with new fee structure and launch in 15 minutes. That's coming, right? All these new transformations about how do we actually better, uh, leverage our capabilities, our products and our services to meet those customer demands instantly. That's where I see the industry going the next couple of years. >>Wonderful. Um, excited to have both of you on the panel this afternoon. So thank you so much for joining us, Christian and Tom as just a quick wrap up. I, you know, learned quite a bit about industry trends and the problems facing companies today. And from the macro view with snowflake and thousands of customers and thought spots, customers and Western Union. The underlying theme is data unity, right? No more fragmented silos, no more fragmented user experiences, but truly bringing everything together in a governed safe way for users. Toe have trust in the data to have trust in what to answer and what insight is being put in front of them. And all of this pulled together so that businesses can make those better decisions more informed and more personalized. Consumer like experiences for your customers in modern technology stacks. So again, thank you both today for joining us, and we look forward to many more conversations in the future. Thank you >>for having me very happy to be here. >>Thank you so much. >>Thanks. >>Thank you, Angela. And thank you, Tom and Christian for sharing your stories. It was really interesting to hear how the events of this year have prompted Western Union to accelerate their digital transformation with snowflake and thought spot and just reflecting on alot sessions in this track, I love seeing how we're making the search experience even easier and even more consumer like in that first session and then moving on to the second session with our customer Hayes. It was really impressive to see how quickly they'd embedded thought spot into their own MD audit product. And then, of course, we heard about Spot Ike, which is making it easier for everybody to get to the Y faster with automated insights. So I'm afraid that wraps up the sessions in this track. We've come to an end, But remember to join us for the exciting product roadmap session coming right up. And then after that, put your questions to the speakers that you've heard in Track two in I'll meet the Experts Roundtable, creating engaging analytics experiences for all. Now all that remains is for me to say thank you for joining us. We really appreciate you taking the time. I hope it's been interesting and valuable. And if it has, we'd love to pick up with you for a 1 to 1 conversation Bye for now.