>>Live from Las Vegas. It's the cube covering UI path forward Americas 2019 brought to you by UI path. >>Welcome back everyone to the cube live coverage of UI path forward here in Las Vegas. I'm your host, Rebecca Knight, co-hosting alongside of it. Dave Volante, we're joined by Richard Fong. He is the it manager, finance delivery at Chevron. Thank you so much for coming on the show that you're having me. So Chevron of course is a household name, a big oil company, but tell us a little bit about what you do, what you do there. >>The it manager, and I'm responsible for software and application engineering. My team develops custom applications for Chevron and over the last couple of years we've actually started an RPA development practice. >>Okay. So what, what were the issues, the challenges that you were experiencing where you said, Hey, maybe maybe we could get a bot to help us do? >>Yeah, yeah. There are a plethora of opportunities in Chevron to automate many, many mundane tasks. What UI path and RPA brings to the table is a very easy way to automate tasks where these tasks, maybe building a traditional like.net application would be too expensive and take too long. Using the UI path platform, we're able to very quickly build solutions and deploy them much quicker than we would have done if we had to build a traditional, like a.net application. The bots aren't coding are they? Are the bots coding the you could. We found that you don't need to do a lot of coding for these, uh, for these solutions. So that was a big help in terms of being able to deploy and automate solutions very quickly. Like what's an example? What do you mean by a solution? So, believe it or not, we, we have many people who still go through and open up attack email attachments, their Excel files or PDF files or text files and that's their day job. That's what they do all day long, four weeks, usually maybe about two weeks of doing data processing. They spend the other two weeks doing error corrections. So we are able to use UI path to develop a solution. A bot that will call through your one's inbox, open up attachments, copy and paste that data automatically into like a flat file and then they would just upload that into the ERP system. So that was a big, big win for us. And that's just one example. So >>this is, was this an it limo is interested in how RPA gets into an organization? Was that it led, was it business led, is it, is it top down? It sounds like it was an it lead >>initiative in this example. It was an it. Interestingly, it came to Chevron. Chevron's a huge organization with many different it departments actually. And for Chevron it actually started with another it manager in our supply and trading department. I think that took a look at RPA and he just brought it out and socialized it with other it managers and the finance group said, Hey, this is, this has huge potential here. So then we took it and did some proof of concepts with it and just took off with it. >>So get it going back to those employees that you were describing, whose job it was to open up email attachments and then do that data looking for aberrations. What do they do now? I mean the, this has been built to us as we are freeing up your time. You can now focus on the more creative aspects of your job. How are they spending their time >>that, that actually that played out exactly like you mentioned, there was a little bit of nervousness what these employees like, Oh my God, what's going to happen to my job? I've been doing this for years. I am comfortable with it. I'm an expert at opening attachments. Yeah, exactly. Exactly. So there was definitely some nervousness, no doubt. Um, and but what eventually happened is that we were able to redeploy these folks onto other projects and have actually a cost avoidance situation because instead of hiring new folks having to hire new folks are high, bringing in contractors, we are able to redeploy them on to higher value projects. >>Yeah. I mean, I think we hear that a lot from customers, from the vendors you hear, Oh no, everybody loves it. Which is true. Once you experienced it, you love it, but you've got to be cognizant, I would think. And I wonder if you could sort of share your experiences as to how you dealt with that, that uncomfortableness. You got to be cognizant that it's going to affect people's jobs. So what did you guys do to get people more comfortable to educate them that you're not just trying to replace them with software robots. >>Yeah, yeah. No, that's, um, you do need to be sensitive to how people will react to, you know, potentially losing their job. And actually it's not, this story's not, you're losing your job. This is an opportunity to upskill and to, you know, to grow your career. Right. Not we, you know, just doing data entry is kind of like, yeah, it's a little bit career limiting. So, you know, you kind of approach it in that context. And the other thing is Chevron's a great company to work for. W we're not, we're not purposely trying to eliminate positions. We're still growing. You know, oil is still in big demand, so it's about upskilling and reallocating people to higher value work. >>I mean, everybody's hiring, I mean this is basically 0% unemployment. So absolutely. If you're like 98 90 97% of the people you'll, you'll have a job. So right now, be interesting to see if that changes, but even in bad times, you know 90% of the people are employed. So my question is how far do you see this going? Rebecca and I were talking at the top of the our segment. In many ways you're, you're basically, you're, you're automating mundane tasks that already exists. So they're known processes. Okay. It's important you're saving money, you're freeing up undifferentiated heavy lifting. You use Gavin's term, but how far do you see this going? Do you see an opportunity to really create an automation fabric across the company? Have you guys started to think about that? Absolutely. I think >>I see it going pretty far actually. We've kind of just scratched the surface. One of the reasons why I'm here at this conference is that look at what are the new products coming out, new products and features. We're at a juncture where we need to understand now how to scale all of these solutions across the enterprise and how do we ensure also not only that things are automated, but that we are following all our governance risk and compliance procedures so that, you know, when the comptroller, our internal controls group says, you know, you're doing these, automating these financial transactions, what are you doing to make sure you're protecting the integrity of the systems as well? So I'm excited to see that the UiPath has invested quite a bit in things like information protection, security, management of bots and things like that. So that's going to help us. Um, the other thing that we, the other area that we have not fully deployed is around artificial intelligence and machine learning. So those solutions will actually help us and will give us the capability to really further automate and leverage things and ease more easier than what we do today. Most of the solutions that we've deployed are more algorithmic based, rules-based. Um, whereas some of the things that we saw about extracting semi-structured data, tempted template lists, you know, data processing, that's gonna be the next big area that we need to look into. >>So scale makes sense. Cause if you can take something that one person is saving some money on and you can scale it across the organization, I don't know how many employees Chevron has. It's a lot. Absolutely. >>Oh yeah, yeah. Miss benefit to 160 countries. You know, there's folks still the, the automation that we ran for the finance department has been mostly for the central finance groups, corporate finance, but there's financial groups all over the world with Chevron that are looking that also doing similar data processing. We haven't even gone out there yet as much as we want to. Um, but I think what we want to do is go out there this time with artificial intelligence and machine learning features of the, of the platform. So I want to double click on this. So this insecurity piece makes sense. If you're gonna scale it across, you know, 160 countries, et cetera, you got to make sure it's secure and complies. The iPad talks about a path to AI. Why is RPA a path to AI? Can you help us understand that better? Well, I think it's my connection to that. >>I was, I actually was, I was hearing, I'm hearing this talk this morning about that it good marketing and it's, you know, catches your ear. But yeah, and so I had about 20 minutes to think about it since then. I think the easy connection is that it seems, while the way they've deployed AI and ML, it's using the current UI paths UI studio, and it's a drag and drop operation for what they've, the way they're deploying AI and ML. So if you're currently using UI path studio to develop your algorithmic based automations, it's not a great leap to just bring in the AI and ML modules of UI path. >>I want to ask about that. This, this two ideas of introducing AI and ML also declining deploying bots really across the enterprise. We're really talking about change management here. And we scratched the surface a little bit saying that some employees have been happier and saying, okay, I can move over here and I can focus on these higher value areas of my career, grow my career. But there's also a great skepticism within the public about bots. I mean, we've had, we've seen the malevolent bots that really had a real effect on our election and we're seeing that in other areas of technology. How do you bring people along and say that this is a force for good and they'll trust us? Link arms with us. Bots are the future. And there, I mean, do say it, >>it's a valid point that, um, you do need to address the things where, you know, bots could go wrong, things could go rogue. You know, how did we make sure we still have control that incorrect decisions are not being automatically made. So that is a valid, that is a very valid point. And I, so I kind of go back to the whole thing about we have to have good governance risk and compliance processes supported by, uh, the flatform UI path. Um, I'm glad to hear that they made it a priority to continue invest in the platform and include governance, risk and compliance into it. Um, the other aspect from a developer, individual developer perspective is that we need to encourage the developers to put in very good checks and balances in their code to the, to develop for, you know, worst case scenarios about something happens, something goes bump in the middle of the night that your bod is able to recover or alert, you know, and, um, so, and for everything to be very transparent and audible. >>So, um, those things, I think if you do a combination of those things, I think you'll put people at ease about these solutions. How important is the SAS announcement today? Uh, in terms of a deployment model? Is that something that you know, struck a chord with you, that resident? Yeah, so, um, actually before the conference I actually, uh, registered myself for the SAS. An instance of the SAS platform and just like what, uh, they said that it takes a minute. Actually took me a minute. I wanted to say, yeah. Hey, it was just a minute. And I had, I was, you know, it was very seamless to, to develop the RPA using their SAS solution. Great. New features. So I think that has also the potential for organizations like ours that have it on prem to maybe move to a hybrid solution to so we could leverage all the new features and in the 2019 version in hybrid, because you want to maintain some kind of level of GRC compliance, that's, yeah. >>Chevron and not just sort of cookie cutter cloud and, and you know, say, and also to just to, uh, uh, we've invested a lot in the on pram and we're gonna, you know, uh, look for the, you know, get our ROI out of everything that we've done on prem, but I think maybe eventually everything's moving to the cloud. Um, so we'll probably start a journey at some point to, to their cloud version. But I think there's also, um, some, some other companies that I talked about, they do need to know how secure is the cloud version of the, of the UI path. Did you evaluate other companies besides UI path before you took on? Ah, yeah. Why are you I-PASS? I'd love to hear home. So definitely we evaluated other vendors. Um, I think the, the advantage with UI path is it's easy to use. >>Um, you know, it was a fairly, it's a fairly robust tool. Um, the, the, uh, so the concept of the studio and the orchestrator to manage your portfolio of solutions, uh, we felt that it wasn't a, it, it was a stronger product overall. When you go, you know, we've heard a lot about citizen developers and low code or no code as RPA permeates through the organization. Do you see that continuing to be an it service led? I mean, kind of an interesting role for you guys? I mean, I was saying to Rebecca before, it kind of reminds me of service now. I don't know if your service now customers that we are started on it and then you know, I don't know if you have gone into the lines of business, but it was kind of it bringing it two lines of business. Is there a similarity there and do you see RPA as pretty much? >>Very much. And I'd been in it for a really long time. So I went through the days of citizen developers doing access databases or Excel macros and then they throw it over to the fence to it to support. And these things are like, they're not compliant, you know, they're there. So we've had, I was like, we were really worried about what are we going to do with all these RPAs that these folks are going to do, you know, develop on their own. Um, I think the reality is is that we need, we are trying to push innovation out to everyone. So the reality is, is that there will, there will be citizen developers and we actually just need to embrace that and let them develop. And, but the challenges as far as an ID it department is how can we set up the processes, the infrastructure, everything else to receive all these new solutions and manage it and be, be stewards of all these new solutions. >>So I think that's going to be the challenge for our it department. And I think that's going to be something that we need UI path to help us figure out is how do we scale to have thousands of these solutions without having to hire whole army of it, support folks to leverage the tools. Maybe we need RPA for it just as much as we're doing it, RPA for the business, getting the whole house in order. Absolutely. That's going to be, that's, I think that's the key to survival. Thank you so much for coming on the cures. Great. Thank you for having me. I'm Rebecca stay tuned for more into cubes live coverage and the U AIPAC.