>>The Cube Presents UI Path Forward five. Brought to you by UI Path. >>Hi everybody. We're back. David Ante with David Nicholson. This is UiPath Forward five from Las Vegas. We're live, you know, the customers here, they're automating all the time, sucking work and the cube. We're sucking all the information out of the experts and the customers. A bar Toban is here. He's the global business, Shared services, leading automation and AI at PepsiCo. And Para Colan is back is the chief, He's the chief product officer, UiPath longtime Cube alum. Great to see you guys. Thanks for coming on. Great to see us all day. So you guys keynote today, you know, excited to have PepsiCo on. I'm not sure I've ever interviewed PepsiCo in the Cube, but tell us about your role there. >>Absolutely. So I'm part of a PepsiCo global business shared services team. I lead automation and AI capabilities. GBS has, you know, we started GBS portfolio back about three and a half years ago, and we have a six hubs across PepsiCo. And as, as a part of my role, we deliver transformational capability across the PepsiCo. >>When did it all start? >>About three and a half years ago, 2019. So >>Prior to the pandemic. Yeah. You know, versus the pandemic was a catalyst for this. Yeah. But it was at the catalyst, but maybe it sped it up a bit. Yeah. >>PepsiCo journey started with, if, if you look at the PepsiCo, you know, the automation journey, it started back in 2017, but the GBS portfolio took shape back in 2019. So prior to that, you know, PepsiCo was definitely, you know, working on lot of, you know, the automation capabilities and automation product across, you know, PepsiCo. But with the introduction of PepsiCo global business shared services team, we are, you know, centralizing a lot of transformation capability, you know, across the functions that, that we support within the >>PepsiCo and, and UI path. Was going to part of that journey all along? Or was there sort of other activities beforehand or how >>No, no, absolutely. Starting from 2017, if I, you know, remembered, you know, with the vision of our, you know, some of our senior leadership team and recognizing the value of, you know, automation in the core, you know, capability as a transformation at that time, you know, we started with just like anybody else, right? We started with, you know, proof of concept, showed some, you know, early wins and the value back to the business, start setting up some, you know, business processes and capabilities, stood up the platform, build a complete, you know, ecosystem around that, you know, platform and partnership with, you know, UI bot team. And you know, from there, here we are five years. I mean, it's, it's a, it's a, it's a, it's a very critical component to our digital transformation capability and, and yes, leverage across >>Let's talk platform. So you, you guys have made some announcements this week. You talk about the business automation platform. I remember our first forward was, you know, RPA tool. Okay. Yeah. And then you guys made acquisitions. I was there for that. So the process process cold and then people started to really expand it and it's really come in amazingly long way in a short time. So what did you guys announce today? What'd you talk about on stage 20, 22, 10? Tell us more about it. >>Absolutely, Dave. So you've seen the journey, you've been with us since the early days. You know, we were in 2017 and RPA tool that could automate a representative task that happened over and over again in the environment. And then three years ago you were here when we announced the automation platform, we said, it's not just about a task, it's about involving humans in bots to manage end to end processes. It's about discovering what automation opportunities exist. It's about using ai. Pepsi Co was actually the pioneer of using AI along with automation. You know, we were in stage together with them in, in 2019. And where we are now is we're essentially seeing people want to take the next step with automation. They're saying that it's no longer just an automation tool, It's the way we operate. It's the way we innovate in the organization. So they're really making sure that it becomes a part of their digital transformation journey that they're on. >>And they're saying that we can do the digital transformation by consolidating multiple DRP systems and CRM systems. And that'll take us seven years to do, or we can go with UI path and we can leverage the core that we can leverage the GL system that exists today. We can leverage inventory tracking system that exists today and start to build processes on top of that that can adapt to what customers are trying to do in this digital age. And that's where, you know, we've made announcements today is, is really pivot the platform to be a business automation platform. And there's sort of three layers, you know, unique but you know, connected layers of the platform. The first one is discover. And Discover is all about finding your processes, identifying the opportunities, making sure that you are managing the return on investment. What is the process? You know, how are you getting ROI on it? >>The second one is automated, and that is really where we're applying semantic automation to identify the digital building blocks of an enterprise, which is your data, your document, your screens and communication. Like putting all of that together and saying you can automate our processes, leveraging a lot of intelligence that exist in how business processes are done. And the last one is operate, which is if you're trying to execute a business process at scale, you're processing not just, you know, a task thousand times, but you are fulfilling millions of transactions. You're, you know, you're looking at trillions of records to identify what processes you need. A scalable enterprise platform that's able to ingest a lot of data, report on metrics, reporting efficiency. So that's what we've announced today is an automation platform that companies can use to put at the center of the digital transformation >>Journey. So I about the interesting thing about PepsiCo, you guys started in 2017. Yeah. So kind of early, early on. Yeah. Yeah. And you kind of been there with the progression platform. So my question to you is end up, it was, you know, we've seen the e from primarily on-prem, now it's cloud first. Yeah. How disruptive or non disruptive was that for you? Did you have to rip and replace? Did you have to sort of retool or migrate? What was that like? >>No, I mean, significant disruption, right? I mean, I mean, as, as we started our journey back in 2017, just like, you know, PRM mentioned, right? With simple rule based, you know, the automation from then now to our journey where our continue to, you know, infuse, you know, AI capability, document understanding, conversation ai, right? As a part of our end to end portfolio. At the same time, I think the cloud is providing a fantastic opportunity for us to continue to scale, right? You know, scale at, at a large. So that I think is a fantastic, you know, fantastic platform and fantastic, you know, the opportunity that we are looking forward >>To know. So how do you affect adoption inside of the organization? Can you talk about that? What's working? What's, >>It's always value driven as you know, right? I mean, the business business has to see the value. It it, it was, I mean, I would, you know, admit it was not as easy as before, but as the mindsets have started to shift, right? As the people have started to realize the value that, you know, the automation brings to, you know, the, I mean, you know, not just the, the value for the business, but actually transforming the entire portfolio, right? And, and people have started to see now that not every automation project is going to be transformation product, but for every transformation project you will find the automation at the heart and the core of it. So I, I, I think that's what has started to shift the mindset of, of uniforms. >>So how do you know when you have end to end? What are you wake up one day and say, Wow, we've achieved it. You know, is it pieces that come together? Yeah. What do you say? >>Yeah, You know, we wanna look at customers from, you know, from an end to end perspective. It's not just about piecemealing mealing finding a problem, solving it, really what does it deliver from, from an end to end perspective. Did you actually, you know, because a lot of times companies will say, we wanna automate X number of processes, and, and they do that and they're like, Well, we've automated a lot of processes. We're not sure what value we're getting out of it. It's the ability to measure like, what impact is this automation having on your business from an operational metric, but from a business metric as built. But then going back and saying, Well, where is the biggest pain point? Where do we have the largest value that we can give to the business back? So one of the things we actually announced today is the ability to take at an look at an idea and look at what was the estimated benefits of that idea, and then map it all the way through execution to say, what are we getting? >>We estimated we were gonna save a million dollars by doing those automation, or what have we achieved till now? Have we achieved a million dollars? Have we achieved half a million dollars by having achieved? That's true. That never happens. That, and, and, and, and it's hard to do that, like the data existed, but it's really hard for people to pull that data out. So we build out the box dashboards that give you the ROI bag, and that's why it's really important to, to make sure that, you know, you look at it not just as a technology project, but more as a investment from a business side. And so you can making a business more efficient. Yeah, >>That's, I just, I know you were jumping in, but that's super important. Cause you know, you run a lot of projects. Yeah, absolutely. And each of those projects has zone roi, then you jam it into the application portfolio. Exactly. And then everybody sort of forgets about it. You can't really track what impact it had because there's always, you know, some things that are benefit, some things are sometimes a negative. And so it's that holistic picture that you >>Trying to achieve, extremely critical point, what you hit on, right? From it's measuring the benefit and measuring the continuous benefit across, and not just from start and end, Okay, what I promised I delivered or not, but, but you have to have this continuous mindset. And so I think Yeah, definitely that that's a very, very critical to our finance team and our cfo, >>They organic mechanisms. It's constantly >>Evidence. Absolutely. Yeah. So abar, yeah. Global business shared services. Yeah. When you think of PepsiCo, yeah, of course people immediately think of Sure, Pepsi. But PepsiCo is a multi tentacled absolutely beast of a company. Absolutely. In a good way. Yeah. For organizations that are in that same category, holding companies, companies that have all sorts of different entities that are working together under one umbrella, how shareable is this idea of automation and business automation process moving forward? How, how shareable is that on the share oter? Yeah. Yeah. As far as, as far as, as far as you're concerned, are you, are you talking to some people where you're saying, Hey, I'm here, I'm here from GBS and I'm here to help, and they look at you like you're crazy because you don't understand their business? Or is this something that relatively easily applies across businesses >>That No, to your point, I mean, very valid point, right? I mean, it's, that's, that's the gbs, global business shared services mindset, right? As you move the functional areas into the Pepsi, into the Pepsi, gbs, like hr, procurement, commercial sales, supply chain, right? That's where you wanna start to find those, you know, the optimization, you know, opportunity. You wanna start to ize your processes, and that's where you will, you know, as you transition this processes within the gbs, that's what create those, you know, opportunities for you. So >>What, >>What about automation opportunities? Not in the sh I know you're in the shared arena. Yeah, yeah. But each of those business units has processes that could probably be optimized and automated. Sure. Is that something that's under your purview? We've heard, we've heard a lot about citizen developers. Yeah. I don't know if that, if that >>Applies to No, that definitely. I mean, you cannot just have focus on end to end, you know, automation. I mean, that's, that's a huge portfolio for gps at the same time supporting, you know, automation through the citizen development capability. That that's where, once again, you know, you have not provided a lot of capability and solution tools that we use, right? To continue to empower the folks who are part of our, you know, GBS team inside or outside gbs, right? It, it, it's, I think it's very, very critical. It, it, it helps people transform their career even in one ways, right? And, and, and, and you have that muscle, you have that resource, and you have the power. You definitely want to utilize that. >>So let's talk about metrics for a minute. So more data, the better. Usually I like data. Yeah. But, but if you're trying to optimize for 15 metrics, I feel like you're not gonna optimize on any, So how do you deal with that from both, as par was saying, an operational standpoint and a business standpoint? What are the things about how do you sort of get the, the teams focused on the right things? >>B business, functional leadership team drive those alignment for us as a part of a global business, shared services, we, we are hip to have connected with our business, you know, functions, right? They, they have to help us prioritize those. And to your point, I mean, yeah, you cannot attack 15 metrics at once. You have to prioritize, you have to make sure that you bring the focus to the product, you know, project, right? So, so definitely, I mean, it's, it's, it's not often 15 metrics, but top three metrics, let's, let's focus, let's zoom in and ensure we are driving it. But, >>And if you think about the system, I mean, at the end of the day, the p and l manager, he or she cares about ebit, let's say. Sure, okay. But there are so many factors, you know, in that complicated organization that are gonna affect ebitda and they're gonna be different. But somebody's gotta figure out, okay, how do they fit together in a system? And can, can UiPath help me understand that, those relationships and those dependencies? >>Absolutely. I mean, I think there's a, there's an aspect of human relationships and, and making sure that you get the right level of sponsorship from the business and, and there's a business stakeholder and, and looking at every investment and, and outcomes that you're driving based on that. But, but that is something that we, from a tools perspective, we're trying to make sure that you can measure the value throughout the entire value chain. But then getting the business sponsorship, like where we've seen automation scale is always because there's a business sponsor that's essentially saying, Here's what I'm trying to achieve and here's the, here's my goal, here's a North star and go get it and let me know how you're tracking against it. And, and our job is to make sure that we can provide the visibility, the people that are operating the, the programs to make sure they get that level of visibility. >>What's the scope of automations in your, you know, organization? Is it dozens, hundreds, >>Huge. >>That is thousands. >>We are getting there. Okay. No, definitely. I mean, we have definitely, you know, realized that it's, it's a core component to our digital transformation, right? So, so there is no, there's no stopping on it. There, there, there, there's plenty of support from top down and you know, it's a fantastic time to be at PepsiCo. Right? Especially at the PepsiCo gbs. Right, >>Right. Thanks for sharing your story. Congratulations on all the progress you guys have made. It's actually quite remarkable to see where you guys have come from. So I really appreciate it. Thank you, Dave. Thanks. Thank you Dave. Okay. Thank you for watching. This is Dave Ante for Dave Nicholson. We are right middle of day two at forward five from Las Vegas. We're live, we're right back.

>>The Cube Presents UI Path Forward five. Brought to you by UI Path. >>Hi everybody. We're back. David Ante with David Nicholson. This is UiPath Forward five from Las Vegas. We're live, you know, the customers here, they're automating all the time, sucking work and the cube. We're sucking all the information out of the experts and the customers. A bar Toban is here. He's the global business, Shared services, leading automation and AI at PepsiCo. And Para Colan is back is the chief. He's the Chief product officer at UiPath, longtime Cube alum. Great to see you guys. Thanks for coming on. Great to see us all day. So you guys keynote today, you know, excited to have PepsiCo on. I'm not sure I've ever interviewed PepsiCo in the Cube, but tell us about your role there. >>Absolutely. So I'm part of a PepsiCo global business shared services team. I lead automation and AI capabilities. GBS has, you know, we started GBS portfolio back about three and a half years ago, and we have a six hubs across PepsiCo. And as, as a part of my role, we deliver transformational capability across the PepsiCo. >>When did it all start? >>About three and a half years ago, 2019. So >>Prior to the pandemic. Yeah. You know, versus the pandemic was the catalyst for this. Yeah. But it was at the catalyst, but maybe it sped it up a bit. >>Yeah. PepsiCo journey started with, if, if you look at the PepsiCo, you know, the automation journey, it started back in 2017, but the GBS portfolio took shape back in 2019. So prior to that, you know, PepsiCo was definitely, you know, working a lot of, you know, the automation capabilities and automation product across, you know, PepsiCo. But with the introduction of PepsiCo global business shared services team, we are, you know, centralizing a lot of transformation capability, you know, across the functions that, that we support within the >>PepsiCo and, and UI path was kind of part of that journey all along? Or was there sort of other activities beforehand or how did that >>No, no, absolutely. Starting from 2017, if I, you know, remembered, you know, with the vision of our, you know, some of our senior leadership team and recognizing the value of, you know, automation in the core, you know, capability as a transformation at that time, you know, we started with just like anybody else, right? We started with, you know, proof of concept, showed some, you know, early wins and the value back to the business, start setting up some, you know, business processes and capabilities, stood up the platform, build a complete, you know, ecosystem around that, you know, platform partnership with, you know, UI bot team. And you know, from there, here we are five years. I mean, it's, it's a, it's a, it's a, it's a very critical component to our digital transformation capability and, and yes, leverage across >>Let's talk platform probably. So you, you guys have made some announcements this week. You talk about the business automation platform. I remember our first forward was, you know, RPA tool. Okay. Yeah. And then you guys made acquisitions. I was there for that. So the process process cold and then people started to really expand it, and it's really come in amazingly long away in a short time. So what did you guys announce today? What'd you talk about on stage 2022 dot 10? Tell us more about it. >>Absolutely, Dave. So you've seen the journey, you've been with us since the early days. You know, we were in 2017 and RPA tool that could automate a representative task that happened over and over again in the environment. And then three years ago you were here when we announced the automation platform, we said, it's not just about a task, it's about involving humans in bots to manage end to end processes. It's about discovering what automation opportunities exist. It's about using ai. Pepsi Co was actually the pioneer of using AI along with automation. You know, we were in stage together with them in, in 2019. And where we are now is we're essentially seeing people want to take the next step with automation. They're saying that it's no longer just an automation tool, It's the way we operate. It's the way we innovate in the organization. So they're really making sure that it becomes a part of their digital transformation journey that they're on. >>And they're saying that we can to the digital transformation by consolidating multiple RP systems and CRM systems. And that'll take us seven years to do, or we can go with UI path and we can leverage the core that we can leverage the GL system that exists today. We can leverage the inventory tracking system that exists today and start to build processes on top of that that can adapt to what customers are trying to do in this digital age. And that's where, you know, we've made announcements today is, is really pivot the platform to be a business automation platform. And there's sort of three layers, you know, unique but you know, connected layers of the platform. The first one is discover. And Discover is all about finding your processes, identifying the opportunities, making sure that you are managing the return on investment. What is the process? >>You know, how are you getting ROI on it? The second one is automated, and that is really where we're applying semantic automation to identify the digital building blocks of an enterprise, which is your data, your document, your screens and communication. Like putting all of that together and saying you can automate in our processes, leveraging a lot of intelligence that exist in how business processes are done. And the last one is operate, which is if you're trying to execute a business process at scale, you're processing not just, you know, a task thousand times, but you are fulfilling millions of transactions. You're, you know, you're looking at trillions of records to identify what processes you need, a scalable enterprise platform that's able to ingest a lot of data report on metrics report and efficiency. So that's what we've announced today is an automation platform that companies can use to put at the center of the digital transformation journey. >>So like about the interesting thing about PepsiCo, you guys started in 2017. Yeah. So kind of early, early on. Yeah. Yeah. And you kind of been there with the progression of platform. So my question to you is, and it was, you know, Yeah, we've seen the e from primarily on-prem now it's cloud first. Yeah. How disruptive or non disruptive was that for you? Did you have to rip and replace? Did you have to sort of retool or migrate? What was that like? >>No, I mean, significant disruption, right? I mean, I mean, as, as we started our journey back in 2017, just like, you know, PRM mentioned, right? With simple rule based, you know, the automation from then now to our journey where our continue to, you know, infuse, you know, AI capability, document understanding, conversation ai, right? As a part of our end to end profile. At the same time, I think the cloud is providing a fantastic opportunity for us to continue to scale, right? You know, scale at, at large. So that I think is a fantastic op, you know, fantastic platform and fantastic, you know, the opportunity that we are looking forward >>To. So how do you affect adoption inside of the organization? Can you talk about that? What's working? What's, >>It's always value driven as you know, right? I mean, the business business has to see the value. It it, it was, I mean, I would, you know, admit it was not as easy as before, but as the mindsets have started to shift, right? As the people have started to realize the value that, you know, the automation brings to, you know, the, I mean, you know, not just the, the value for the business, but actually transforming the entire portfolio, right? And, and people have started to see now that not every automation project is going to be transformation product, but for every transformation project you will find the automation at the heart and the core of it. So I, I, I think that's what has started to shift the mindset of, of uniforms. >>So how do you know when you have end to end? What are you still wake up one day and say, Wow, we've achieved it. You know, is it pieces that come together? Yeah. What do you say? >>Yeah, You know, we wanna look at customers from, you know, from an end to end perspective. It's not just about piecemealing finding a problem, solving it, really what does it deliver from, from an end to end perspective. Did you actually, you know, because a lot of times companies will say, we wanna automate X number of processes, and, and they do that and they're like, Well, we've automated a lot of processes. We're not sure what value we're getting out of it. It's the ability to measure like, what impact is this automation having on your business from an operational metric, but from a business metric as well. But then going back and saying, Well, where is the biggest pain point? Where do we have the largest value that we can give to the business back? So one of the things we actually announced today is the ability to take at an look at an idea and look at what was the estimated benefits of an idea, and then map it all the way through execution to say, what are we getting? >>We estimated we were gonna save a million dollars by doing those automation, or what have we achieved till now? Have we achieved a million dollars? Have we achieved half a million dollars by having achieved? That's, that never happens. That, and, and, and, and it's hard to do that, like the data existed, but it's really hard for people to pull that data out. So we build out the box dashboards that give you the ROI bag. And that's why it's really important to, to make sure that, you know, you look at it not just as a technology project, but more as a investment from a business side. And so you can, making a business more efficient. You >>Know, that's, I just, I know you were jumping in, but that's super important. Cause you know, you run a lot of projects Absolutely. And each of those projects has zone roi, then you jam it into the application portfolio. Exactly. And then everybody sort of forgets about it. You can't really track what impact it had because there's always, you know, some things that are benefit, some things are sometimes a negative. And so it's that holistic picture that >>You trying >>To achieve, extremely critical point, what you hit on, right? From it's measuring the benefit and measuring the continuous benefit across, and not just from start and end, Okay, what I promised I delivered or not, but, but you have to have this continuous mindset. And, and so I think yeah, definitely that, that's a very, very critical to our finance team in our cfo, >>Organiza, they're organic mechanisms and it's constantly >>Absolutely. Yeah. So abar, yeah. Global business shared services. Yeah. When you think of PepsiCo, yeah, of course people immediately think of Sure, Pepsi. But PepsiCo is a multi tentacled absolutely beast of a company. Absolutely. In a good way. Yeah. For organizations that are in that same category, holding companies, companies that have all sorts of different entities that are working together under one umbrella, How shareable is this idea of automation and business automation process moving forward? How, how shareable is that on the share oter? Yeah. Yeah. >>As >>Far as, as far as, as far as you're concerned, are you, are you talking to some people where you're saying, Hey, I'm here, I'm here from gvs and I'm here to help, and they look at you like you're crazy because you don't understand their business? Or is this something that relatively easily applies across >>Businesses that No, to your point, I mean, very valid point, right? I mean, it's, that's, that's the gbs, global business shared services mindset, right? As you move the functional areas into the Pepsi, in, into the PepsiCo gbs like hr, procurement, commercial sales, supply chain, right? That's where you gonna start to find those, you know, the optimization, you know, opportunity. You wanna start to standardize your processes, and that's where you will, you know, as you transition this processes within the gbs, that's what create those, you know, opportunities for you. >>What, >>What, what about automation opportunities? Not in the, I know you're in the sharing arena. Yeah, yeah. But each of those business units has processes that could probably be optimized and automated. Sure. Is that something that's under your purview? We've heard, we've heard a lot about citizen developers. Yeah. I don't know if that, if that >>Applies to No, that definitely. I mean, you cannot just have focus on end to end, you know, automation. I mean, that's, that's a huge portfolio for gps at the same time supporting, you know, automation through the citizen development capability. That that's where, once again, you know, you have had, provides a lot of capability and solution tools that we use, right? To continue to empower the folks who are part of our, you know, GBS team inside or outside gbs, right? It, it's, I think it's very, very critical. It, it, it helps people transform their career even in one ways, right? And, and, and, and you have that muscle, you have that resource, and you have that power. You definitely want to utilize that. >>So let's talk about metrics for a minute. So more data the better. Usually I like data. Yeah. But, but if you're trying to optimize for 15 metrics, I feel like you're not gonna optimize on any, So how do you deal with that from both as Paramo saying an operational standpoint and a business standpoint? What are the things about how do you sort of get the, the teams focused on the right things, >>Bi business, functional leadership team drive those alignment for us as a part of a global business, shared services, we, we are hip to have connected with our business, you know, functions, right? They, they have to help us prioritize those. And to your point, I mean, yeah, you cannot attack 15 metrics at once. You have to prioritize, you have to make sure that you bring the focus to the product. You have a project, right? So, so definitely, I mean, it's, it's, it's not often 15 metrics, but top three metrics, let's, let's focus, let's zoom in and ensure we are driving it. But then >>If you think about the system, I mean, at the end of the day, the p and l manager, he or she cares about ebit, let's say. Sure, okay. But there are so many factors, you know, in that complicated organization that are gonna affect ebitda. Yeah. And they're gonna be different. Yeah. But somebody's gotta figure out, okay, how do they fit together in a system? And, and can, can UiPath help me understand that, those relationships and those dependencies? >>Absolutely. I mean, I think there's a, there's an aspect of human relationships and, and making sure that you get the right level of sponsorship from the business and, and there's a business stakeholder and, and looking at every investment and, and outcomes that you're driving based on that. But, but that is something that we, from a tools perspective, we're trying to make sure that you can measure the value throughout the entire value chain. But then getting the business sponsorship, like where we've seen automation scale is always because there's a business sponsor that's essentially saying, Here's what I'm trying to achieve and here's the, here's my goal, here's the North star and go get it and let me know how you're tracking against it. And, and our job is to make sure that we can provide the visibility, the people that are operating the, the programs to make sure they get that level of visibility. >>What's the scope of automations in your, you know, organization? Is it dozens, hundreds, huge. That is thousands. >>We are getting there. >>Okay. >>No, definitely. I mean, we have definitely, you know, realized that it's, it's a core component to our digital transformation, right? So, so there is no, there's no stopping. I mean there, there, there, there's plenty of support from top down and you know, it's a fantastic time to be at PepsiCo. Right? Especially at the PepsiCo ubs, Right. >>So, Right. Thanks for sharing your story, Pam. Congratulations on all the progress you guys have made. It's actually quite remarkable to see where you guys have come from. So I really appreciate it. Thank you Dave. Thank you Dave. Okay. Thank you for watching. This is Dave Ante for Dave Nicholson. We are right middle of day two at forward five from Las Vegas. We're live, we're right back.

>>The Cube presents UI Path Forward five. Brought to you by UI Path. >>We're back the cube's coverage of UI path forward. Five. And we're live. Dave Velante with Dave Nicholson. AJ Gupta is here. He's the Chief Digital Transformation Officer at the Motor Vehicles of California dmv. Welcome Jay. Good to see you. >>Thank you. >>Good to see you. Wow, you, you have an interesting job. I would just say, you know, I've been to going to conferences for a long time. I remember early last decade, Frank Sluman put up a slide. People ho hanging out, waiting outside the California dmv. You were the butt of many jokes, but we have a happy customer here, so we're gonna get it to your taste >>Of it. Yeah, very happy >>Customer, obviously transform the organization. I think it's pretty clear from our conversations that that automation has played a role in that. But first of all, tell us about yourself, your role and what's going on at the dmv. >>Sure. Myself, a j Gupta, I am the Chief Digital Transformation Officer at the dmv. Somewhat of i, one would say a made up title, but Governor's office asked me, Okay, we need help. And that's what >>Your title though? >>Yeah, yeah. So I'm like, well we are doing business and technology transformation. So that's, that's what I've been doing for the last three years at the dmv. Before that I was in private sector for 25 years, decided first time to give back cuz I was mostly doing public sector consulting. So here I am. >>Okay. So you knew the industry and that's cool that you wanted to give back because I mean obviously you just, in talking off camera, you're smart, you're very cogent and you know, a lot of times people in the private sector, they don't want to go work in the, in the public sector unless they're, unless they're power crazy, you know? Anyway, so speaking with David Nicholson, the experience has gone from really crappy to really great. I mean, take >>It from here. Yeah. Well, am I gonna be, I'm, because I'm from California, I was just, I was just, you know, we >>Got a dual case study >>Eloquently about, about the, the, the change that's happened just in, just in terms of simple things like a registration renewal. It used to be go online and pray and weed through things and now it's very simple, very, very fast. Tell us more about, about some of the things that you've done in the area of automation that have increased the percentage of things that could be done online without visiting a field office. Just as an >>Example. Yeah, what's the story? >>Yeah, so first of all, thank you for saying nice things about dmv, you as a customer. It means a lot because we have been very deliberately working towards solving all customer po pain points, whether it's in person experiences, online call centers, kiosks, so all across the channels. So we started our journey, myself and director Steve Gordon about three years ago, almost at the same time with the goal of making Department of Mo no motor vehicles in California as the best retail experience in the nation across industries. So that's our goal, right? Not there yet, but we are working towards it. So for, for our in person channels, which is what you may be familiar with, first of all, we wanna make sure brick and click and call all the customer journeys can be done across the channels. You can decide to start journey at one place, finish at another place. >>All that is very deliberate. We are also trying to make sure you don't have to come to field office at all. We would welcome you to come, we love you, but we don't want you to be there. You have better things to do for the economy. We want you to do that instead of showing up in the field office, being in the weight line. So that's number one. Creating more digital channels has been the key. We have created virtual field office. That's something that you would become familiar with if you are not as a DMV customer. During Covid, the goal was we provide almost all the services. We connect our technicians to the customer who are in need of a live conversation or a email or a text or a, or a SMS conversation or chat conversation in multiple languages or a video call, right? >>So we were able to accomplish that while Covid was going on, while the riots were going on. Those of your, you know about that, we, our offices were shut down. We created this channel, which we are continuing because it's a great disaster recovery business continuity channel, but also it can help keep people away from field office during peak hours. So that's been very deliberate. We have also added additional online services using bots. So we have created these web and process bots that actually let you do the intake, right? You, we could set up a new service in less than four weeks, a brand new service online. We have set up a brand new IVR service on call centers in less than a month for our seniors who didn't want to come to the field office and they were required certain pieces of information and we were able to provide that for our customers by creating this channel in less than less than four. >>And the pandemic was an accelerant to this was, was it the catalyst really? And then you guys compressed it? Or were, had you already started on the >>Well, we were >>Ready. I mean you, but you came on right? Just about just before the pandemic. >>Yeah. Yeah. So I came on in 2019, pandemic started in 2020 early. So we got lucky a little bit because we had a head start at, I was already working with u UI paths and we had come up with design patterns that we gonna take this journey for all DMV channels with using UiPath. So it was about timing that when it happened, it accelerated the need and it accelerated the actual work. I was thinking, I'll have a one year plan. I executed all of the one year plan items in less than two months out of necessity. So it accelerated definitely the execution of my plan. >>So when you talk about the chat channel, is that bots, is that humans or a combination? Yeah, >>It's a, it's a combination of it. I would say more AI than bots. Bots to the service fulfillment. So there is the user interaction where you have, you're saying something, the, the chat answers those questions, but then if you want something, hey, I want my, my registration renewed, right? It would take you to the right channel. And this is something we do today on our IVR channel. If you call in the DMV number in California, you'll see that your registration renewal is all automatic. You also have a AI listening to it. But also when you are saying, Yep, I wanna do it, then bot triggers certain aspects of the service fulfillment because our legacy is still sitting about 60 years old and we are able to still provide this modern facade for our customers with no gap and as quickly as possible within a month's time. How >>Many DMVs are in the state? >>Okay, so we have 230 different field locations out of which 180 are available for general public services. >>Okay. So and then you're, you're creating a digital overlay that's right >>To all of >>That, right? >>Yeah, it's digital and virtual overlay, right? Digital is fully self-service. Bots can do all your processing automation, can do all the processing. AI can do all the processing, but then you have virtual channels where you have customer interacting with the technicians or technicians virtually. But once a technician is done solving the problem, they click a button and bot does rest of the work for the technician. So that's where we are able to get some back office efficiency and transaction reduction. >>When was the last time you walked into a bank? >>Oh man. >>I mean, is that where we're going here where you just don't have to >>Go into the branch and that is the goal. In fact, we already have a starting point. I mean, just like you have ATM machines, we have kiosks already that do some of this automation work for us today. The goal is to not have to have to, unless you really want to, We actually set up these personas. One of them was high touch Henry. He likes to go to the field office and talk to people. We are there for them. But for the millennials, for the people who are like, I don't have time. I wanna like quickly finish this work off hours 24 by seven, which is where bots come in. They do not have weekends, HR complaint, they don't have overtime. They're able to solve these problems for me, 24 >>By seven. And what's the scope of your, like how many automations, how many bots? Can you give us a sense? >>Sure. So right now we are sitting at 36 different use cases. We have collected six point of eight point, well, we have saved 8.8 million just using the bots overall savings. If you were to look at virtual field office, which bots are part of, we have collected 388 million so far in that particular channel bots. I've also saved paper. I've saved a million sheets of paper through the bot, which I'm trying to remember how many trees it equates to, but it's a whole lot of trees that I've saved. And >>How many bots are we talking about? >>So it's 36 different use cases. So 36 >>Bots? >>Well, no, there's more bots I wanna say. So we are running at 85% efficiency, 50 bots. Oh wow. Yeah. >>Wow. Okay. So you, you asked the question about, you know, when was the last time someone was in a bank? The last time I was in a bank it was to deposit, you know, more than $10,000 in cash because of a cash transaction. Someone bought a car from me. It was more of a nuisance. I felt like I was being treated like a criminal. I was very clear what I was doing. I had just paid off a loan with that bank and I was giving them the cash for that transaction as opposed to the DMV transaction transferring title. That was easy. The DMV part was easier than the bank. And you're trying to make it even easier and it shouldn't, it shouldn't be that way. Yes. Right. But, but I, I have a, I have a question for you on, on that bot implementation. Can you give us, you've sort of give it us examples of how they interact. Yeah. But as your kind of prototypical California driver's license holder, how has that improved a specific transaction that I would be involved with? Can >>You, so well you as a Californian and you as a taxpayer, you as a Californian getting services and you as a taxpayer getting the most out of the money Okay. That the DMV spending on providing services, Right. Both are benefits to you. Sure. So bots have benefited in both of those areas. If you were used to the DMV three years ago, there was a whole lot of paper involved. You gotta fill this form out, you gotta fill this other form out and you gotta go to dmv. Oh by the way, your form, you didn't bring this thing with you. Your form has issues. We are calculated that about 30% of paper workloads are wasted because they just have bad data, right? There is no control. There's nobody telling you, hey, do this. Right. Even dates could be wrong, names could be wrong fields, maybe incomplete and such. >>So we were able to automate a whole lot of that by creating self-service channels, which are accelerated by bot. So we have these web acceleration platforms that collect the data, bots do the validation, they also verify the information, give you real time feedback or near real time feedback that hey, this is what you need to change. This is when you need to verify. So all the business rules are in the bot. And then once you're done, it'll commit the information to our legacy systems, which wouldn't have been possible unless a technician was punching it in manually. So there is a third cohort of Californians, which is our employees. We have 10,000 of those. They, I don't want them to get carpal tunnel. I want them to make sure they're spending more time thinking and helping our customers, looking at the customers rather than typing things. And that's what we are able to accomplish with the bots where you press that one button, which will have required maybe 50 more keystrokes and that's gone. And now you're saving time, you're also saving the effort and the attention loss of serving the best. >>Jay, what does it take to get a new process on board? So I'm thinking about real id, I just went through that in Massachusetts. I took, it was gonna be months to get to the dmv. So I ended up going through a aaa, had to get all these documents, I uploaded all the documents. Of course when I showed up, none were there. Thankfully I had backup copies. But it was really a pleasant experience. Are you, describe what you're doing with real ID and what role bots play? >>Yeah, sure. So with real id, what we are doing today and what I, what we'll be doing in the future, so I can talk about both. What we are doing today is that we are aligning most of the work to be done upfront by the customer. Because real ID is a complex transaction. You've gotta have four different pieces of documentation. You need to provide your information, it needs to match our records. And then you show up to the field office. And by the way, oh man, I did not upload this information. We are getting about 15 to 17% returns customers. And that's a whole lot of time. Every single mile our customer travels to the DMV office, which averages to about 13 miles. In my calculation for average customer, it's a dollar spent in carbon footprint in the time lost in the technician time trying to triage out some other things. So you're talking $26 per visit to the economy. >>Yeah. An amazing frustration, Yes. >>That has to come back and, and our customer satisfaction scores, which we really like to track, goes down right away. So in general, for real, id, what we have been, what we have done is created bunch of self-service channels, which are accelerated by workflow engines, by AI and by bots to collect the documentation, verify the documentation against external systems because we actually connect with Department of Homeland Security verify, you know, what's your passport about? We look at your picture and we verify that yep, it is truly a passport and yours and not your wives. Right? Or not a picture of a dog. And it's actually truly you, right? I mean, people do all kind of fun stuff by mistake or intentionally. So we wanna make sure we save time for our customer, we save time for our, for our employees, and we have zero returns required when employees, where customer shows up, which by the way is requirement right now. But the Department of Homeland Security is in a rule making process. And we are hopeful, very hopeful at this point in time that we'll be able to take the entire experience and get it done from home. And that'll give us a whole lot more efficiency, as you can imagine. And bots are at the tail end of it, committing all the data and transactions into our systems faster and with more accuracy. >>That's a great story. I mean, really congratulations and, and I guess I'll leave it. Last question is, where do you want to take this? What's the, what's your roadmap look like? What's your runway look like? Is it, is there endless opportunities to automate at the state or do you see a sort of light at the end of the tunnel? >>Sure. So there is a thing I shared in the previous session that I was in, which is be modern while we modernize. So that's been the goal with the bot. They are integral part of my transition architecture as I modernize the entire dmv, bring them from 90 60, bringing us from 1960 to 2022 or even 2025 and do it now, right? So bots are able to get me to a place where customers expectations are managed. They are getting their online, they're getting their mobile experience, they are avoiding making field off his trips and avoiding any kind of paper based processing right? For our employees and customers as well. So bots are serving that need today as part of the transition strategy going from 1960 to 2022 in the future. They're continue gonna continue to service. I think it's one thing that was talked about by the previous sessions today that we, they, they're looking at empowering the employees to do their own work back office work also in a full automation way and self-power them to automate their own processes. So that's one of the strategies we're gonna look for. But also we'll continue to have a strategy where we need to remain nimble with upcoming needs and have a faster go to market market plan using the bot. >>Outstanding. Well thanks so much for sharing your, your story and, and thanks for helping Dave. >>Real life testimony. I never, never thought I'd be coming on to praise the California dmv. Here I am and it's legit. Yeah, >>Well done. Can I, can I make an introduction to our Massachusetts colleagues? >>Good to, well actually we have, we have been working with state of New York, Massachusetts, Nevara, Arizona. So goal is to share but also learn from >>That. Help us out, help us out. >>But nice to be here, >>Great >>To have you and looking for feedback next time you was at dmv. >>All right. Oh, absolutely. Yeah. Get that, fill out that NPS score. All right. Thank you for watching. This is Dave Valante for Dave Nicholson. Forward five UI customer conference from the Venetian in Las Vegas. We'll be right back.

>>The Cube presents UI Path Forward five. Brought to you by UI Path. >>Hi everybody. Welcome back to Las Vegas. You're watching the Cube's coverage of UI Path Forward. Five. We reach cruising altitude on day two. Christina Seacrest is here. She's the process Artificial intelligence and automation GPS automation leader at ey. And Bob PCIs, executive director for Intelligent Automation for the state of Tennessee. Folks, welcome to the cube. Thank you for Adam. >>Good >>To have you. Okay, I don't know if I messed up that title, Christina, but it's kind of interesting. You got process, you got ai, you got automation, you got gps. What's your role? >>I have a lot of rules, so thank you for that. Yeah, so my focus is first and foremost automation. So how do you get things like UI path into our clients, but also I focus specifically in our government and public sector clients. So sled specifically. So state local education. So that's why I'm here with the state of Tennessee. And then we also like to take it beyond automation. So how do you bring an artificial intelligence and all the technologies that come with that. So really full end to end spectrum of >>Automation. So Bob, when you think about the sort of the, the factors that are driving your organization of, how did you describe that, Those sort of external factors that inform your strategy. What, what's, what are the catalysts for how you determine to deploy technology? >>Well, it was primarily that we know tendency has a tendency to provide good customer service, but we want to get to a great status best in class, if you will. And we had an external advisory review where it said, Hey, you know, we could make automation to improve our customer experience. And so that was like a directive of the, the state leaders to go across the board and automate all processes statewide, starting with the 23 executive agencies. >>So where's the focus from that standpoint? Is it on just providing better interfaces to your constituents, your customers? Is it cutting costs or you actually have more budget to invest? Kind of a combination of >>Those? Yeah, so it's, it's really both qualitative and quantitative, right? So quantitative is where we're able to reduce hours and therefore we can redirect people to more less mundane work, if you will. And then qualitative is where we're able to reduce the errors, improve data quality, reduce cycle time for our citizens, you know, when they're making requests, et cetera. So it's, I think it's a combination of both of those quantitative and qualitative metrics that we are mandated in, in micromanaged, quite frankly to, to bring, make those >>Numbers. So I'm from Massachusetts, when I go to a a mass.gov website, I say, all this was done in the 1990s and you could just see where the different stovepipes were, were. But then every now and then you'll hit one and you'll say, Wow, okay, this is up to, it's such a great experience. And then the flip side of that is you want your employees to be happy and not have to do all this mundane work so you can retain the best people. You don't have to. So you're living that in, in state and, and local. So where did you start your automation journey? What role did EY play? Let's go. Yeah, >>Sure. So I, I, I think the thought for process automation was probably three or four years ago, but then we started the program about 18 months ago and there was a lot of, let's say behind the scenes work before we could bring EY in, you know, like what resources was I gonna have in, in the state that were gonna help me address all of the agency simultaneously, right? Cuz normally you'll see a project that'll do be more siloed across the state and say, we're gonna do this agency, we're gonna do this division. Well, you have 40 other agencies that are, you know, the momentum is it's just gonna fall, it wayside. So how we looked at it was let's blanket it and go across all 23 agencies at the same time, you know, identify common processes that are used across 40 divisions, for example, right? >>So, so what we basically did is we procured the software, you know, did the contracts, and then it was really about, I designed, I'm gonna say a multistream approach where they were, we could run multiple work streams, independent define all the architectures, required dev tests, production, the disaster recovery at the same time in parallel developed the center of excellence, the operation model, the processes, methodologies. And the third one was, let's go out to a few divisions, business administration, health, you know, health, human resources, and be able to do a process inventory to see what was there. And then based on that, there's all this theory of well let's do a proof of concept. Let's do a proof of technology, let's do apply. Well, the bottom line is rpa technology's been around for a long time. It's proven there's nothing to prove. But really what was important to prove before we decided to go, you know, full tilt was, you know, develop a proof of perceived business value. >>Are we gonna bring in the, the business value, the hours and the qu qualitative metrics that is expected by our ex executive team, The leadership, we were able to do that, you know, with the help of help of ey, we built out the prototypes and we got the green light to go forward, got ey to start, and then we just basically went pedal to the metal. We had our foundation already defined. We built up the architecture in less than one to two months. Now, in, in a public sector or private sector, it's just not heard of, right? But we have a tendency with EYs technical team, myself, we look around the, the road around the rock instead, the rock in the road, right? So we ended up coming up with a very unique, very easy to easy to handle architecture that was very scalable. And then were able to hit the ground running and deploy in production by December where head of >>Was EY involved in the whole, you know, dev test production, dr. Center of excellence, the, the process inventory or did you bring them in? Did you kind of do that internally then bring EY in for the proof of >>Value? EY was actually awarded the contract for soup to nuts, basically the first phase, which was those four work streams I told you about. And they worked with myself and the state of Tennessee infrastructure architecture teams. We needed to get these things defined and signed off the architecture so we could expedite getting them built out. And then they, and they basically ran all four work streams, you know, the process, inventory, the prototype, the, the proof of perceived business value, the building out the center of excellence, working with myself. And, and this wasn't just us in a, a vacuum, we ended up having to, I mean, I could do the strategy, I could do the technology and I could said the roadmap and all the good stuff, but we had to actually meet with a lot of the state or tendency organizations on change management. How do we end up putting this process or an automation in the middle of the, the normal traditional process, right? So there was a lot of interaction there and getting their feedback and then tweaking our operational model based on feedback from the state of Tennessee. So it was all very collective collaborative. I think that would be the keyword is collaborative and then building out everything. So then, and then we ended up going to the next way where they knew so much and we were, we had such a tight timeframe that we continued with ey. >>So Christina, Bob mentioned center of excellence a couple of times in the state of Tennessee, but then beyond state of Tennessee, other organizations you've worked with in this space, what's the relationship between center of excellence and this thing we've been hearing about over the last couple of days, the citizen developer has that been, has, has, has that been leveraged in the state of Tennessee? Bob, have you seen that leveraged in other places? Christina? What's that relationship look like? >>Yeah, so we don't leverage that, that model yet we have centralized model and there's reasons for that. So we don't end up having maverick's, runoff runoffs have one off, have, you know, have a a UI path version or down this division or have another RPA tool in another division, right? So then all of a sudden we're, we have a maintenance nightmare. Manageability nightmare. So we basically, you know, I I I negotiate an ELA with UI path, so therefore if anyone wants to go do another automation on another division, or they would basically follow our model, our design, our coe, our quality gates. We we're the gatekeepers to bring into production. >>Got it. Now, yeah. Now Christina, what's your perspective? Because I can imagine Nashville and Memphis might have very different ideas about a lot of things. Yeah. Little Tennessee reference there, but what, what, what about what, what about other places are you, are you seeing the citizen developer leveraged in, in some kinds of places more than others or >>What? Yeah. Yeah. And that's part of, because of the foundation we're building. Yeah. So we laid, you know, when, when Bob talks about the first phase of eight weeks, that was amazingly fast, even in that's ridiculous. Spoke about it to say you're gonna lay these four foundations. I was excited, like, I was like, wow, this, this is a very serious client. They wanna go fast and they wanna get that momentum, but the AUM was laid out so we could propel ourselves. So we are at 40 automations right now. We're in the works of creating 80 more automations in this next year. We'll be at 120 really quickly. The AUM is critical. And I will say at a client, I've, I've worked with over 50 clients on automation programs. The way state of Tennessee treats the aom and they abide by it, it is the living document of how you go and go fast. Got it. And the one thing I would say is it's also allowed us to have such immense quality. So I always talk about you put in forward, you put in another 80, we're at 98% uptime on all our automations, meaning they don't go down. And that's because of the AOM we set up. And the natural progression is going to be how do you take it to citizen developer? How do you take it to, we call, you know, process automation plus, >>But methodically, methodically, not just throwing it out at the beginning and, and hoping the chaos >>Works. Exactly. Exactly. And >>The ratio of of bots to automations, is that one to one or you have automation? Oh no, the single bot is doing multiple. So how many bots are you talking about? >>We're doing, Bob, you're gonna answer this better than I will, but the efficiency is amazing. We've been pushing that. >>So our ratio now, cause we have a high density architecture we put in is four bots, excuse me, four processes. The one bot and four bots, The one virtual machine EC two server. Right? So it's four to one, four to one. Now what we're going to get by next summer, we'll do more analysis. We'll probably get the six to one, six to one that's made serious shrinkage of our footprint from a machine, you know, management perspective from 60 down to seven right now we're gonna add the next chunk. We add another 80 automations in FIS gear 24. We're only gonna add two more bot, two more servers. Right? So that's only 10 running like close to 200 bucks. >>And, and is doing this on prem in the cloud? >>No, our, the architecture's fully >>Oh, cloud based >>Ct. Yeah. So we use UiPath SAS model. Yeah. Right. So that handles the orchestrator, the attended bots, all the other tooling you need automation hub, process minor et etc. Etc. Cetera. And then on the state side in aws we have, we use unattended bots, cert bots that have to go down into the legacy systems, et cetera. And they're sitting on EC two instances. >>Was there, was there a security not hole that you had to get through internally? What was that like? >>No, actually we, we, we were lock and step with the security team on this. I mean, there are some standards and templates and you know, what we had to follow, you know, but they're doing an assessment every single release, they do assessments on little bots, what systems it's activating or are accessing, et cetera. The data, because you have fedra data of FTI data, you know, in the public sector to make sure we're not touching it. >>Do you guys golf? >>I do, yeah. Not Well, yes, >>If you mean I I like golf but not don't golf well, but so you know what, what a mulligan is. If you had a Mulligan right, for the state of Tennessee, what'd you learn? What would you do differently? You know, what are some of the gotchas you see maybe Christina in, in other customers and then maybe specifically state of Tennessee, >>Right? I would say, you know, it is the intangibles. So when we talk about our clients that go fast and go big, like state of Tennessee, it's because that, that we call it phase zero that gets done that Bob did. It's about making sure you've got the sponsorship. So we've got executive sponsorship all the way up. You've got amazing stakeholder engagement. So you're communicating the value of what we're trying to do. And you're, you're showing them the value. We have been really focused on the return on investment and we'll talk a little bit about that, but it's how do you make sure that when you do, you know, states are different with those agencies, you have such an opportunity to maximize return on investment if you do it right, because you're not talking about automation in one agency, you're talking it across multiple agencies. We call that the multiplier effect. And that's huge. And if you understand that and how to actually apply that, the value you get is amazing. So I, I don't, I can't say there's a mulligan here, Bob, you may think of some, I know on other clients, if you don't line up your stakeholders and you don't set the expectations early on, you meander and you may get five, six automations in over the year. You know, when I go to clients and say, we're doing 40, we're doing 80, they're like, >>Wow, that's the, but that's the bottom line. Gotcha. Is if you, if you want to have an operational impact and have multiple zeros, you gotta go through that process that you said up front. >>Exactly. A >>Anything you do differently, Bob? >>Well, I I what I do differently, I mean, I think, I mean we, we did get executive sponsorship, you know, and in one area, but we still have to go out to all the 23 agencies and get, and bring awareness and kind of like set the hook to bring 'em in, right? Bring 'em to the, to the, to the lake. Right. And, and I think if, if it was more of a blanket top down, getting every agency to agree to, you know, in investigate automation, it would've been a lot easier. So we're, we're, we're getting it done. We've gone through 13 agencies already and less than a year, all of our releases are sprinkling across multiple agencies. So it's not like a silo. I'll look at that. Everyone at every agency is being impacted. So I think that's great. But I, I think our, our Mueller now is just trying to make sure we have enough backlog to do the next sprints. >>Is it, you know, the ROI on these initiatives is, is, is so clear and so fast. Is it self-funding? Is there gain sharing or do you just give business, give money back to the state and have to scramble for more? Do you get to, you know, get a lick off that cone? >>Unfortunately we don't, but I, I, I try to see if we could get some property like, nah, we don't do that. It's all cost, cost based. But, but our ROI is very attractive, I think for, for doing a whole state, you know, transformation. I think our ROI is three and a half to four years. Right. And that's pretty mind blowing. Even if you look at private sector or, I, I think some of the, the key things which people are noticing, even though we're in public sector, we're we are very nimble. This project is extremely nimble. We've had people come in, exactly, we need this, so we're gonna get penalized. Okay, knock it out in four hours, four days. Right? So it's that nimbleness that you just don't hear of even in private sector or public sector. And we're just able to do that for all the collaboration we do across ey, across myself and across all the other organizations that I, that I kind of drag along or what have, >>What do you, what do you, do you see any limits to the opportunities here? I mean, is this a decade long opportunity? Is you have that much runway >>Or that's just not my dna, so we're gonna, we're gonna probably do it like in four years, but Well, when >>You say do it, I mean, will you be done at that point? Or do you see the weight, >>Look at, you know, we could boil the ocean and I think this is one of the reasons why we're successful is we could boil the ocean and and be, it will be 10 attended 20 year program. Yeah. Okay. Or we looked at it, we had some of EY guys look at it and say, I said, what's the 25 80 rule? Meaning, you know, give me, So if we had 500 processes, tell me how many processes will gimme 80% of the hours. And it was 125, it was a 25 80 rule. I said, that's what we're doing it, we're doing, we're gonna do the 80% of the hours quantifiably. Now when we're done with that pass, then we'll have those other ones that are bringing 20% of the hours, that's when we might be bringing citizens in. That's what we're bringing state workers in. But at that same time, we will be going back in the wave and doing advanced ai. Right. Or advance ia, in other words. So right now we do rpa, ocr, icr, but you know, there's NL ml nps, there's virtual agents and stuff. So that's like the wave we're gonna do through the ones we've already gone through. Got it. Right. So it'll probably be a two or three wave or iterations. >>Cool. Guys, thanks so much for coming into the cube. Great story. Really appreciate you taking us through it. Thank you so much for having us. You're very welcome. All right, keep it right there. Dave Nicholson. The Dave ante. We back at UI path forward five from the Venetian in Las Vegas. Keep it right there.

>>The Cube presents UI Path Forward five. Brought to you by UI Path. >>Hi everybody. We're back at UI path forward to five. This is Dave Ante with Dave Nicholson. Derek Mu is here. He's automation product line lead for Merck. Thank you, by the way, for, you know, all you guys do, and thank you Dave for having in the, in the, in the vaccine area, saving our butts. And Bill Engel is back on the cube. He's the director at cgi. Guys, good to see you again. >>Good to see you. Thank >>You. So Merrick, Wow, it's been quite a few years for you guys. Take us through Derek, what's happening in sort of your world that's informing your automation strategy? >>Well, Dave, I mean as you know, we just came out of the pandemic. We actually have quite a few products like Gabriel Antiviral Pill. Obviously we worked, you know, continue to drive our products through a difficult time. But, you know, is during these can last few years that, you know, we've accelerated our journey in automation. We're about four years plus in our journey, you know, so just like the theme of this conference we're we're trying to move towards, you know, bigger automations, transformational change, continue to drive digital transformation in our company. >>Now Bill, you've been on before, but CGI tell people about the firm. It's not computer graphics imaging. >>Sure. No, it's, it's definitely not. So cgi, we're a global consultancy about 90,000 folks across the world. We're a, we're both a product company and a services company. So we have a lot of different, you know, software products that we deliver to our clients, such as CGI Advantage, which is a state local government EER P platform. And so outside of that, we, my team does automation and so we wrap automation around R IP and deliver that to our clients. >>So you guys are automation pros, implementation partners, right? So, so let's go back. Yep. Derek said four years I think. Yep. Right, You're in. So take us through what was the catalyst, how did you get started? Obviously it was pre pandemic, so it's interesting, a lot of companies pre pandemic gave lip service to digital transformation. Sounds like you guys already started your journey, but I'll come back to that. But take us back to the Catalyst four years ago. Why automation? We'll get into why UI path, >>Right. So I, I would say it started pretty niche in our company. Started first in our finance area. Of course, you know, we were looking in technology evaluating different companies, Blue Prism, ui P. Ultimately we chose UI p did it on-prem to start to use automation in sort of our invoice processing, sort of our financial processes, right? And then from there, after it was really when the pandemic hit, that's when sort of we all went to remote work. That's when the team, the COE continued to scale up, especially during pandemic. We were trying to automate more and more processes given the fact that more and more of our workers are remote, they reprocesses. How, how do you do events? You know, part of our livelihood is, is meeting with engaging with customers. Customers in this case is, are doctors and physicians, right? How do you engage with them digitally? How do you, you know, you know, a lot of the face to face contact now have to kind of shift to more digital, digital way. And so automation was a way to kind of help accelerate that, help facilitate that. >>You, you, I think you mentioned COE as in center of excellence. Yep. So, so describe your approach to implementing automation. It's, that sounds like when you say center, it sounds like something is centralized as, as opposed to a bunch of what we've been hearing a lot about citizen developers. What does that interaction >>Look like? We do have both. I would say in the beginning was more decentralized, but over time we, over the few years as, as we built more and more bots, we're now at maybe somewhere between four to 500 bots. We now have sort of internal to the company functional verticals, right? So there's an animal health, we have an animal health function. So there's, there's a team building engaging with the animal health business to build animal health box. There's human health, which is what I work on as well as hr, finance, manufacturing, research. And so internally there's engagement leads, one of the engagement leads that interact with the business. Then when there's an engineering squads that help build and design, develop and support and maintain those as well as sort of a DevOps team that supports the platform and maintains all the bot infrastructure. >>So you started in finance common story, right? I'm sure you hear this a lot Belt, How did you decide what to target? Was it, was it process driven decision? Was it, was it data oriented? Like some kind of combination? How did you decide, Do you remember? Or do you, could you take >>Us back to Oh yeah. So for, for cgi how we started to engage with MER is, you know, we, we do a lot of other business with Merck. We work on all their different business lines and we, we understand the business process. So we, we knew where there was potential for automation. So we brought those ideas to Merck and, and really kind of landed there and helped them realize the value from automation from that standpoint. And then from there the journey just continued to expand, you know, looking for those use cases that, that, you know, fit the mold for, for, for RPA to start. And now the evolution is to go to broader hyper automation. >>And, and was it CFO led into the finance department and then, or was it sort of more bottoms >>Up? Yeah, so, so I think it started in, in finance and, and, but we actually really started out in the business line. So out in regulatory clinical, that's, that's where we, we have the life science expertise that are embedded. And so I partnered with them to come up with, hey, here's a real solution we could do to help streamline, say submission archiving. So when, when submissions come back from the fda, they need to be archived into, you know, the, their system of record. So that's, those are the types of use cases that, that we helped automate. >>Okay. Cause you're saying a human had to sort physically archive that and you were able to sort of replicate that. Okay. And you started with software robots, obviously rpa and now you're expanding into, we we're hearing from UI this the platform message. How does that coincide Derek, with what you guys are doing? Are you sort of adding platform? What aspects of the platform are, are you adding? >>Yeah, no, I mean we are, we are on-premise, right? So we have the platform, but some of the cool things we just had, another colleague of mine presented earlier today. Some of the cool things we're, we're doing ephemeral infrastructure. So infrastructure as code, which essentially means instead of having all these dedicated bot machines, that that, you know, cuz these bots only in some cases run 10 minutes and they're done. So we're, we're soon of doing all on demand, you know, start up a server, run the bot when it's finished, you know, kill the server. So we only pay for the servers that we use, which allows us to save a whole >>Lot of money. Serverless bots. So you, but you're doing that OnPrem, so you >>No, >>No, but >>That's >>Cloud. We, >>We, we we're doing it OnPrem, but our, our bot machines that actually run the, let's say SAP process, right? We spin that machine up, it's on the cloud, it runs it finish, Let's say it's processed in one hour and then when it's done, we kill that machine. So we only play for that one hour usage of that bot machine. >>Okay. So you mentioned SAP earlier you mentioned Blue Prism when you probably looked at other competitors too. You pull the Gartner Magic quadrant, blah, blah, you know, with the way people, you know, evaluate technology, but SAP's got a product. Why UI path mean? Is it that a company like SAP two narrow for their only sap you wanted to apply it other ways? Maybe they weren't even in the business that back then four years ago they probably weren't. Right? But I'm curious as to how the decision was made for UiPath. >>Well, I think you hit it right on the nail. You know, SAP sort of came on a little later and they're specific to sort of their function, right? So UiPath for us is the most flexible tool can interact by UI to our sales and marketing systems, to, to workday, to service Now. It's, it cuts across every function that we have in the company as well as you're the most mature. I mean, you're the market leader, right? So Right. Definitely you, you continue to build upon those capabilities and we are exploring the new capabilities, especially being announced today. >>And what do you see Bill in the marketplace? Are you, are you kind of automation tool agnostic? Are you more sort of all in on? I >>Would say we are, we are agnostic as a company, but obviously as part of a, as an automation practice lead, you know, I want to deliver solutions to my clients that are gonna benefit them as a whole. So looking at UI path, you know, that this platform is, it covers the end to end spectrum of, of automation. So I can go really into any use case and be able to provide a solution that, that delivers value. And so that's, that's where I see the value in UI path and that's why CGI is, is a customer as well. We automate our internal processes. We actually have, we just launched probably SALT in the, in the market last week, expanded partnership with UiPath. We launched CGI, Excel 360. That's our fully managed service around automation. We host our clients whole UI path infrastructure and bots. It's completely hands off to them and they just get the value outta >>Automation. Nice, nice. Love >>It. Derek, you mentioned, you mentioned this ephemeral infrastructure. Yeah. Sounds like it's also ethereal possibility possibly you're saying, you, you're saying you have processes that are running on premises, right? But then you reach out to have an automation process run that's happening off pre and you're, and you're sort of, >>It's on the cloud, so, so yeah, so we have a in-house orchestrator, so we don't, we're not using your sort of on the cloud orchestrator. So, so we brought it in-house for security reasons. Okay. But we use, you know, so inside the vpn, you know, we have these cloud machines that run these automations. So, so that's, that's the ephemeral side of the, of the >>Infrastructure. But is there a financial angle to that in terms of when you're spinning these things up, are you, is it a, is it a pay by the drink or by the, by the CPU >>Hours, if you can imagine like we, you know, like I mentioned where somewhere between four to 500 bots and every bot has a time slot to run and takes a certain amount of time. And so that's hundreds and hundreds of bot machines that we in the old days have to have to buy and procure and, you know, staff and support and maintain. So in this new model, and we're just beginning to kind of move from pilot into implementation, we're moving all, all of bots this in ephemeral infrastructure, right? So these, okay, these machines, these bot machines are, you know, spun up. They run the, they, they run their automation and then they spin >>Down. But just to be clear, they're being spun up on physical infrastructure that is in your >>Purview and they spun up on aws. Yeah. Okay. And then they spin down. Okay, got >>It. Got it. Interesting. Four >>To 500 bots. You know, Daniel one point play out this vision of a bot chicken in every pot, I called it a bot for every employee. Is that where you're headed or is that kind of in this new ephemeral world, not necessary, it's like maybe every employee has access to an ephemeral bot. How, how are you thinking about that? >>That's a good question. So obviously the, the four to 500 is a mix of unattended bonds versus attended bonds, right? That, that we also have a citizen developer, sort of a group team. We support that as well from a coe. So, you know, we see the future as a mix. There's, there's a spectrum of, we are the professional development team. There's also, we support and nurture the personal automation and we provide the resources to help them build smaller scale automations that help, you know, reduce the, you know, the mundaneness and the hours of their own tasks. But you know, for us, we want to focus more and more on building bigger and bigger transfer transformational automations that really drive process efficiencies and, and savings. >>And what's the, what's the business impact been? You mentioned savings and maybe there's other sort of productivity. How do you measure the benefit, the ROI and, and >>Quantify that we, you know, I, I don't, I don't profess I don't think we have all the right answers, but yeah, simple metrics like number of hours saved or other sort of excitement sort of in like an nps, internal NPS between the different groups that we engage. But we definitely see automation demand coming from our, our functional teams going up, driving up. So it's, it's continued to be a hot area and hopefully we, we can, you know, like, like what the key message and theme of this, of this conference. Essentially we want to take and build upon the, the good work that we've done in terms of rpa and we want to drive it more towards digital transformation. >>So Bill, what are you seeing across the, your customer base in terms of, of, of roi? I'm not looking for percentages there. I'm sure they're off the charts, but in terms of, you know, you can optimize for fast payback, you know, maybe lower the denominator, you know, or you can optimize for, you know, net benefit over time, right? You know, what are you seeing? What are customers after they want fast payback and little quick hits? Or are they looking for sort of a bigger enterprise wide impact? >>Yeah, I think it's, it's the latter. It's that larger impact, right? Obviously they, you know, they want an roi and just depending upon the use case, that's gonna vary in terms of the, the benefits delivered. And a lot of our clients, depending on the industry, so in in life sciences it may be around, you know, compliance like GXP compliance is huge. And so that may may not be much of a time saver, but it ensures that they're, they're running their processes and they're being compliant with, you know, federal standards. So that's, that's one aspect to it. But you know, to, you know, a bank, they're looking to reduce their overall costs and and so on. But yeah, I think, I think the other, the other part of it is, you know, impacting broader business processes. So taking that top down approach versus kind of bottom up, you know, doing ta you know, the ones you choose the tasks is not as impactful as looking at broader across the entire business process and seeing how we can impact >>It. Now, Derek, when you guys support a citizen developer, how does that work? So, hey, I got this task I want to automate, I'm gonna go write a, you know, software robot. I'm gonna go do an automation. Do I just do it and then throw her to the defense? You guys, you guys send me a video on how to do it. Hold my hand. How's that work? >>Yeah, I mean, good question. So, so we obviously direct them to the UI path Academy, get some training. We also have some internal training materials to how to build a bot sort of internal inside Merck. We, we go through, we have writeups and SOPs on using the right framework for automations, using the right documentation, PDD kind of materials, and then ultimately how do we deploy bot inside the MER ecosystem. But I, I, maybe I'll just add, I think you asked the point about ROI before. Yeah. I'll also say because we're, we're a pharmaceutical company. I think one of the other key metrics is actually time saved, right? So if, if, if we have a bot that helps us get through the clinical process or even the getting a, a label approved faster, even if it's eight days saved, that's eight days of a product that can get out to the market faster to, to our patients and, and healthcare professionals. And that's, that, that's immeasurable benefit. >>Yeah, I bet if you compress that ELAP time of, of getting approval and so forth. All right guys, we've gotta go. Thanks so much. Congratulations on all the success and appreciate you sharing your story. Thank >>You so much. Appreciate it. You're welcome. >>Appreciate it. All right. Thank you for watching this Dave Ante for Dave Nicholson, The cubes coverage, two day coverage. We're here in day one, UI path forward, five. We'll be right back right after the short break. Awesome. >>Great.

>>The Cube presents UI Path Forward. Five. Brought to you by UI Path. >>Welcome back to The Cube's coverage of UI Path Forward. Five from Las Vegas. We're inside. The formerly was The Sands, now it's the Venetian Convention Center. Dave Nicholson. David, Deb. I've never seen it set up like this before. UI Path's. Very cool company. So of course the setup has to be cool, not like tons of concrete. James Furlong is here, the Vice President of Supply Chain Management and projects at Puma. And Derek Weimer is the CEO of Robo, who's an implementation partner, expert at Intelligent Automation. Folks, welcome to the Cube. Good to see you. Great to have you on. >>Thank you. It's a pleasure. >>So what's happening at Puma these days? I love your sneakers, but you guys probably do more than that, but let's tell us about, give us the update on Puma. >>Yeah, absolutely. Puma's one of the world's leading sports, sports brands. So we encompass all things sports. We do footwear, we do apparel, we do accessories. Cobra, Puma golf is underneath our umbrella as well. So we get the added benefit of having that category as well. And yeah, trade, trade all over the world and it's an exciting, exciting brand to be with. >>And di Robo Atlanta based really specialists in intelligent automation. That's pretty much all you do, is that right? >>Yeah, we are a pure play intelligence automation professional services firm. That's all we do. We're the world's largest firm that focuses only on automation headquarter in Germany, but with a large presence here in Americas. >>So we hear from a lot of customers. We've heard from like with the journey it started, you know, mid last decade, Puma James is just getting started. We April you mentioned. So take us through that. What was the catalyst as you're exiting the, the pandemic, the isolation economy we call it? Yeah. What was the catalyst tell, take us through the sort of business case for automation. >>Sure, absolutely. So Puma, our mission is forever faster. It's, it's our mantra and something we live and breathe. So naturally we have an intense focus on innovation and, and automation. So with that mindset, the way this all kicked off is that I had the opportunity to go into some of our distribution facility and I was unbelievably impressed with the automation that I saw there. So how automation augmented the employee workforce. And it was just very impressive to see that some of our state of the art technology and automation at the same time. Then I went back to the office with that excitement and that passion and I saw that we had the opportunity to take that to our employee base as well. We sort of lacked that same intense focus on how do we take automation and technology like I saw at the distribution facilities and bring it to our employees because picture a large workforce of talented, dedicated employees and they just couldn't keep up with the explosive growth who's seen explosive growth over the last couple of years and they just couldn't keep up with it. So I said that that's it. We need to, to take that same passion and innovation and enter in hyper hyper automation. So we went to the leadership team and no surprise they were all in. We went with them with the idea of bringing hyper automation, starting with RPA to, to our office employees. And they were in, they support innovation and they said, Great, what do you need? Really? Go for it. >>The first question wasn't how much, >>Actually the first question I will say that the funny part is, is they said, Well I like this, it sounds too good to be true. And because it, it really does. If you're new to it like we were and I'm pitching all the benefits that RPA could bring, it does sound too good to me. True. So they said, All right, you know, we trust you and, and go for it. What do you need? Resources, just let us know. So sure enough, I had a proof of concept, I had an idea, but now what? I didn't know where to go from there. So that's where we did some intensive research into software suppliers, but also implementation partners because now we knew what we wanted to do. We had excitement, we had leadership buy-in now, now what do I do? So this is when we entered our partnership to figure out, okay, help Puma on this journey. >>How'd you guys find each other? You know, >>Just intensive research and spoke with a lot of people here. Is there a lot of great organizations? But at the end of the day, they really supported everything that Houma stood for, what we're looking to do and had a lot of trust in the beginning and Dirk and his team and how he could help us on this journey. Yeah. >>Now James, your, your job title system for supply chain management. It is, but I understand that you have had a variety of roles within the organization. Now if we're talking about another domain, artificial intelligence, machine learning. Yeah. There's always this concept of domain expertise. Yeah. And how when you're trying to automate things in that realm, domain expertise is critical. Yeah. You have domain expertise outside of your job title. Yeah. So has that helped you with this journey looking at automation, being able to, being able to have insight into those other organizations? >>Yeah, absolutely. And I think when we were pitching it to the leadership team in the beginning, that enabled me to look at each one sitting at the table and saying, alright, and on the sales, on a commercial side, I was a head of sales for one of the trade channels. I could speak directly to him in the benefits it could have with not with tribal knowledge and with an expertise. So it wasn't something that, it was just, oh, that's supply chain. I could sit, you know, with the, our CFO and talk to him about the, the benefits for his group merchandising and legal so on. I was really able to kind of speak to each one of them and how it would support, because I had that knowledge from being blessed of 15 years experience at, at Puma. So yeah, I was able to take all of that and figure out how do I make sure not just supply chain benefits from rpa, but how does the whole organization benefit from not only RPA but the hyper automation strategy. >>So what's an engagement look like? You start, I presume you, you gotta do some type of assessment and, and you know, of some upfront planning work. Yeah. What does that look like? How, what's the starting point? Take us through that >>Journey. Yeah, so exactly. So the, the key when you're trying to get value from Intel automation is finding the right opportunities, right? And you can automate a lot of things, but which are the things that are gonna drive the most value and, and the value that actually matters to the company, right? So where are you trying to get to from a strategic level, your objectives and how do you actually use automation to help you get to there? So the first thing is, what are the opportunities gonna help you do that? And then once you identify, what we recommend is start with something that's gonna be, you know, accessible, small, You're gonna get a quick win. Cuz then the important thing is once you get that out there, you build the momentum and excitement in the organization that then leads to more and more. And then you build a proper pipeline and you and you get that the, the engagement. >>So what was that discovery like? Was it you fly up there and do a, a chalk talk? Or did you already know James, like where you wanted to focus? >>Yeah, I knew I had a solid proof of concept with the disruptions in supply chain we couldn't keep up with, with all the changes and supply. So right away I knew that I have a very substantial impact on the organization and it would be a solid proof of concept. It was something that not only would supply chain steal, but our customers would feel that we would be servicing them better. Our sales team, the commercial team, marketing impacted everybody. But at the same time it was tangible. I saw two people that just physically couldn't get their, their work done despite how talented and hardworking they were. So I, I was in on that proof of concept and then I just took that idea with some strong advice from Dirk and and his team on, okay, well how do I take that? But then also use that to evangelize through the organization. What are some pitfalls to avoid? Because as a proof of concept, they just told me it's too good to be true. I believe in it. So it was so important to me that it >>Was successful. >>It get your neck out. Oh, I sure was. Which is a little scary, but I had confidence that we would >>Do it. But your poc you had to have a systems view. Yes. Right? Cuz you were trying to, I think you, I'm inferring that you had two people working really hard, but they couldn't get their job done. Yeah, for sure. They were just sitting on their hands. Right. Waiting. Okay. So you kind of knew where the bottlenecks were. Yes. And that's what you attacked and or you helped James and her the team think through that or, >>Yeah, exactly. So, so a couple points you were asking about her domain model of knowledge earlier, and I think that's really key to the puma's success with it, is that they've come at it from a business point of view, what matters to the business. And at the point, you know, supply chain challenges, how do we use automation to address that? And then, you know, and then it's gonna, it's actually gonna, you know, pick opportunities that are gonna matter to the business. Yeah, >>Yeah. At the same time, we, we knew this could be a scary thing, right? If it's not done right, you know, automation definitely can, can take a, a wrong path. So what we relied on them for is tell us how to make this successful. We wanted structure, we wanted oversight, we wanted to balance that with speed and really, you know, developing our pipeline, but at the same time, tell us how to do this right? How do we set up a center, our first ever center of excellence? They help us set that up. Our steerco, our process definition documents are like, they really helped us add that structure to how to make this successful, sustainable and make sure that we were standing things up the right way versus launching into a strong proof, proof of concept. But then it's not gonna be scalable if we didn't really take their strong advice on how to make this something, you know, that had the right oversight, the right investment. So that was, that was key as >>Well for us. So when you looked at the POC and James was saying there were potential pitfalls, what were those pitfalls? Like what did you tell Puma, Hey, watch out for this, watch out for that. What was sort of the best advice there? >>Yeah, so I think one is understanding complexity, right? So a lot of opportunities sound good, but you want to make sure that it's, it's feasible with the right tool set. And also that you're not bit off too much in the beginning is really important. And so some of that is that bringing that expertise to say, Okay, yeah, look, that does something, a good process. You're gonna get value out. It's not gonna be overly complicated. It's a good place to start. And then also, I guess the thing too to mention is it's more than just a technology project. And that's the thing that we also really focus on is it's actually as much about the change management, it's much about, you know, what is the right story, the business case around it, the technology actually in a way is the easy part and it's all the stuff around it that really makes the POC effective, >>Obviously the process. Yeah. Been the people I presume getting to adopt, >>Right? And I think, again, with our, our brand mantra forever faster, we, we get that support that the buy-in from the top is is there from, from the beginning. So that's a benefit that some companies don't, they don't have, right? They have a little resistance maybe from the top. We're trying to get everyone's buy in it. And we had that. So we had, you know, the buy-in the engagement, we were ready to go. So now we just needed someone to kind of help us. >>One more if I may. Yeah, yeah. Gabe, six months in. Yes. That's the business impact that, can >>You tell you? That was tremendous. Yeah. >>Really already six months. Wow. >>Yeah, >>Absolutely. Cfo, CFO's dream. Yeah. >>And again, and, and we had a CFO change mid, mid project. So the new CFO comes in, not new to Puma, the same thing. Super, super smart guy. And I had to sit and again pitch, you know, pitch what it is and the support that I needed by way of investment. And he saw the results and he was all in, you know, what do you need, what's next? And instantly was challenging his departments, Why don't he got competitive, right? We're a competitive bunch, so why don't you know, you should have more in the pipeline. And he was, he was bought in. So there was that fear of a new CFO coming in and how do you show value? Because some of it is, it's very easy to show right away, You know, we were able to refocus those two full-time employees on, on higher value chain activity and you know, they're doing a tremendous job and they're, you know, they have the, the bot and the automation supporting them. So he saw that right away. And we can show him that. But he also understands, as does the whole leadership team, the concept of downstream impacts that you can't necessarily, you know, touch and, and put on paper. So he sees some, but then he also recognizes all the other upstream and downstream impacts that it's had and he's all in and supports whatever, whatever we need. >>Yeah. New CFOs like George Seaford taking over for bill walls. >>Yeah, exactly. Exactly. We >>Have, we have to keep showing results and it has to be sustainable. So that's, again, we'll rely on our partnership to say, okay, this is the beginning, you know, what's next? Keep us, you know, honest on oversight and, and any pitfalls that we should avoid because he's excited. But at the same time, we need to make sure that we sustain those results and, and show what's next. Now they all gotta taste to the apple and they're very eager to see what's next in, in, in this hyper automation journey. >>Well, Dirk, you've partnered on this journey, this specific journey with, with, with Puma. But from your perspective in the broader marketplace, what would be the perfect low hanging fruit opportunity that you would like to have somebody call you and say, Hey, we've got, we've got this perspective engagement with a client. What would be the, what would be the like, Oh yeah, that's easy, that's huge roi really quickly, What does that look like? >>Yeah, I think there's, there's a few areas, right? You know, one task automation RPA is a, is a really good entry point, right? Because it's, it's, it's not overly complex. It doesn't involve a lot of complicated technologies. And I'd say the, the usual starting areas, you know, you, you finance back office, you know, shared service, invoice processing, you know, payables is a very good opportunity area. HR is also an area I would look at, you know, in new, new employee onboarding process or you know, payroll, et cetera. And then supply chain is actually becoming more and more, more common, right? So those would be I guess, top three areas I would mention. And >>Then, and then kind of follow onto that, what's the tip of this sphere? What's the sort of emerging market Yeah. >>For >>This kind of technology? >>I think there's two things. One, it's taking a holistic into end view and leveraging multiple, you know, technology, you know, beyond just rpa, right? You know, intelligent document processing, iml, you know, bringing all this to bear to actually do a true digital transformation. That's, that's number one. And then I'd say the second is going from focusing on cost and efficiency to actually getting into the front office and how do you, how do you actually increase revenue? How do you increase margin? How do you actually, you know, help with that, that top line growth. I think that's really, and that's where you're leveraging technologies, you know, like the, the AI as an example to really help you understand how do you optimize. >>So James, that's, that becomes then an enterprise wide initiative. Yeah. That's, that's, is that your vision? Maybe maybe lay that out for >>Us a bit. Yeah, ab absolutely. The, the vision is now that we've seen what, what it can do, how do we take it from being managed by just, you know, supply chain and this proof of concept cuz I manage projects, but now it's bigger than just a supply chain project. And how do we sort of evangelize that through the whole organization And you know, they mentioned on main stage this, the creation of new jobs and, and roles and how a, a company might set out their strategic directive now is, is changing and evolving. So you know that that's our idea now and that what we'll need support next is how should we structure now for success. And so that it's across the whole enterprise. But that's, that's the vision for >>Sure. What worries you do, you worried about it like taking off and getting outta control and not being governed and so you have to be a little bit careful there. >>Yeah, for sure. That was really important to us. And we actually got to leverage a lot of heavy lifting that Puma Global had done at the same time that we were coming up and, and thinking of the idea of rpa. They were having the same thoughts and they did a lot of heavy lifting again, about not only the software providers but also what does the structure look like, the oversight, a center of excellence globally. So we were able to really leverage a lot of best practices and SOPs that they had set out and we were able to kind of leverage those, bring those to Puma North America so that we didn't face that fear cuz that would be a limiting factor for us. So because we were so disciplined and we could leverage the work that they had done, that fear wasn't, wasn't there. Now we have to stay, you know, on top of it. And as people get excited, how do you kind of mirror the excitement and with it at the same time that the oversight and not getting, you know, too, too big, too fast. So that's the balance that we'll, we'll work through now. It's a good problem to have. >>Well, exactly. It is super exciting. Great story. Congratulations on, on the success and good luck. Thank you. Yeah, you very much for coming to the, Yeah. Thank you. Thank you. All right. And thank you for watching. Keep it right there. Dave Nicholson Andante right back, the cube live from Las Vegas UI path forward. Five.