(upbeat music) >> Live from Las Vegas. It's the Cube. Covering, Boomi World, 2018. Brought to you by Dell Boomi. >> Hello everyone, welcome to the live Cube coverage here in Las Vegas, the Wynn Hotel for Dell Boomi World 18. So, exclusive coverage. We're here all day. Wall to wall coverage covering the impact of cloud native to application developers and owners and for businesses. I'm John Furrier with Lisa Martin here. We're here with Michael Dell. 13th time on the Cube. He's the founder and CEO of Dell Technologies. Continuing to defy logic. Growing leaps and bounds. Continuing to do more in the new era of IT and computing. Mike, great to see you. Thanks for coming. >> Great to be with you. Lisa, John, always fun. And here at Boomi World it's really exciting to see the ecosystem continue to grow. As people try to connect everything together Boomi is right there. Incredible business last quarter. Booking growth, 80%, 7500 customers. I still can't find a customer that doesn't need Boomi. The team continues to evolve what the capabilities. We've just had a great show here. 1000 customers showed up. Lot's of great customer stories about how they're integrating all their apps and data together. With the tsunami of data that is coming, it just gets more and more important and interesting and fun. >> You know, you mentioned on the key note stage with CEO Boomi, talking about some performance numbers that you always throw out, server growth. Continuing to grow, okay. The pundants were saying oh servers, that's cloud server-less. You still need compute, networking and storage but they do change with the cloud and SaaS has proven that business model of as a service is key. Boomi's got this little secret weapon around the unified platform that integrates a lot of these traditional components that is still going to be foundational but yet set up the next wave around AI, Edge, data tsunami that you mentioned. This is a key variable in the architectural shift. Can you talk about how you see that playing out? Because you got a couple big pieces on the chess board. VMWare, the continuous Dell Technologies portfolio kind of as the table stakes. This is kind of interesting new architecture. Explain how you see that. >> Pivotal, Dell EMC, VMWare. >> So a lot of pieces. >> Right. >> How does Boomi play into that? Because if it does be a glue layer if you will for lack of a better word, it can be very powerful. >> Yeah, so the challenge is when you go to Software as a Service, how do you connect the things together? Now, connecting 1 or 2 together is pretty straight forward. But when you start having 50 or 100 of these things, and then you've got on premise systems and now you want to have actions like an employee does something and based on their roll then something else happens, you have work flow. And then you get this, you go from a couple billion PCs to 5 billion smart phones to 100s of billions of connected things out there with this explosion in the edge. How you integrate and connect everything together with work flow and do it securely is super, super important. So we're seeing just an explosion of use cases. There was some great examples from a city digitizing and being able to detect leaks and when traffic lights aren't working. The used cases are pretty unlimited and Boomi and Pivitol play sort of at the top layer for us so the applications and integrating all the data and allowing customers to express their competitive advantage with software and data and AI and machine learning. And then of course we've got VM Ware to virtualize everything from the data center to the network and beyond. With NSX, what we're doing with NFE and software to fine win. And then of course we're the initial infrastructure company. Absolute number 1 in all aspects of the data center. And growing much faster than any of the competitors. >> And I want to also get your thoughts on VM Ware announced up to this morning, actually Barcelona time for VM Ware Europe, the acquisition of Heptio. >> Absolutely. >> Okay, Pat Kelson said in VM World, we're going in, we're going to make Kubernetes the dial tone. This is a key architectural component around orchestration. Containers certainly everyone knows, that's been standardized. People love containers. They're using them. As applications need to be more efficiently built out, out of the Boomi's value proposition, Kubernetes and these cloud native things are super important. What's your view on that? Great acquisitions, very young company? Not 34 billion dollars for a Red Hat like IBM bought but a small tuck in. How important is that trend for you? >> Well, think about what we've done with Pivitol and VM Ware together with the Pivitol container service and now adding Heptio with 2 of the 3 founders of the whole Kubernetes movement. We're going to be making Kubernetes just part of the dial tone of vSpheres. So for virtually all the customers out there, 600000 of them that use vSphere, it'll just be super easy to now have Kubernetes containers built into their vSphere environment. That's the vision. We've got a great team working on it across VM Ware and Pivitol and now the Heptio team. Adding to it. We're super pumped about all this. >> If your friend asked you at a party this weekend, hey Michael, why is Kubernetes important? What do you say to that? >> I guess it would depend on how much they know about this. >> They're a business owner responsible for application development. >> Yeah. >> They are owning to transform their organization. They realize clouds going to be a part of it. They here Kubernetes really popular, it's trending. But it's a technology. A lot of people are now getting this for the first time and seeing it as the early dopples have shown it. They try to want to know the impact and why it's important. Why is Kubernetes important as you start to get into this orchestration of apps and work loads across clouds. Why is it important? >> I think people don't want to get locked in to a particular place when it comes to their infrastructure. Kubernetes has clearly won the battle in terms of being able to be that abstraction layer. That's the simple thing that is super exciting. When it sort of went from cloud to hybrid cloud to multi cloud, people realized they wanted a 2 way street where they could move things back and forth. And now with the edge, they want to move it to the edge. With the distributed core. This explosion in data, this dat tsunami really requires a whole new set of tools in terms of the software infrastructure to be able to make it all work. >> So transformation is ... You're talking about Dell Technologies now. 34 years later you have 7 corporations under that. Done a lot to keep those brands, as they're very valuable. Dell Boomi as a business unit. Transformation is essential and Dell Boomi wants to be the transformation partner. It's also incredibly difficult. IT transformation. Digital, security, workforce. Dell Boomi works and Dell Technologies with a lot of large enterprise organizations that are still probably fairly not as well connected as they should be to find new value, new business dreams. How do you talk with customers, large enterprises that need to transform to stay competitive? Where do they start? And how dose the Dell transformation story in and of itself help those customers feel confident in what Dell Technologies can deliver? >> Right, well first thing I'd say is we actually work with customers of all sizes. We have an enormous business with small and medium and large customers. We're number 1 across the whole spectrum. We serve 99% of the Fortune 500. Since your question is about those types. They're looking at the digital transformation and figuring out this is really not an IT project. It's about technology becoming pervasive in everything that they're doing. From sells to marketing, to product creation to their whole fundamental strategy. So then it shows up in the office of the CEO and business line executives and they're having to reimagine. And so they look for a partner and Dell Technologies is very unique. 2 years and 2 months ago we put together all these companies and it's been fabulous. We've been growing double digits consistently and the response has been great because we can deliver a complete set of capabilities. Now you're right, change management, and how do I do it in my company, that's a big deal. So they're pulling on us to bring them more of a ... The don't want us to show up with a bunch of parts and drop em off. They want us to actually build them a solution that is specific to their needs. Help them implement it. In many cases, run it for them. So we do much of that ourselves with our own services organization. 60000 plus people in our services organization. And of course we have the best, all the great SIs out there that are helping customers implement and run and manage like I said, 99% of the Fortune 500. We're right there with them in this digital transformation. Of course we do the IT, the workforce, the PCs and of course security. Unbelievably important. Your whole brand trust is all based on that so we wrap the whole thing with security and no company has the breath that we have. I think we've kind of won the hearts and minds of the decision makers because of the capabilities that we have. Not that we take it for granted. We have to go earn that trust every single day. We have unbelievably talented people in our company. Over 20000 engineers. Scientists, PHDs. About 90% of them are software engineers. This is a very different company than it was 5 or 10 years ago. We're having a blast. It's a rocket ship, so. >> I had a chance to interview an IT leader and his name is Allen Bean. He's the global CTO and head of IT innovation at Proctor and Gamble. He brought the cloud to Coca-Cola. Has had a career all in IT going back to DHL in the 90s and 80s. So we were talking and I asked him, does IT matter. And Dave Alampi always brings up the book by Nick Carr. And we always talk about it. >> Love it. Such a fun topper, yeah. >> And so he says, quote, at that time some people thought it didn't matter, everyone was kind of complaining, but he says it does matter. It's a competitive advantage. And over the decades IT was outsourced. And now people are trying to bring that back in and make it a competitive advantage. This is now ... It's a mandate basically. So as people who have been kind of anemic with IT, they've got people running stuff but eventually outsource all the value. They got to bring that value in. Cloud is that opportunity. How do you respond to the leaders out there trying to figure this out. What are the keys to success around bringing back the competitive advantage and using the cloud for things that aren't core to the core competency but getting that core competency nailed down. What's your vision. >> Yeah, well, look, I mean, it's all about understanding what is your competitive differentiation and advantage as a business. And if you give that away to somebody else, you're going to be out of business in not too much time. Packers applications are great for things that aren't differentiated. But if you actually do something that's unique and valuable and special and you can't express that in software with your own data, you're going to have a problem, right? This is what companies are figuring out. This is what we're doing with Pivitol and Boomi allowing companies to build all this together. And look I think as it relates to cloud, customers have figured out it's multi cloud, right? It's a workload dependent discussion. Some workloads are great in the public cloud but in many cases, not so much, right? As we've modernized and automated the infrastructure we have customers that tell us hey our private cloud for our predictable workload, which is 90%, is 5, 6 times less expensive than AWS. We're building these converge, hyper converge, like the fast track to the automated modernized infrastructure. And look, you can decide. But we're seeing customers that want to move things back and forth and we're seeing a bit of a boomerang. Where customers have said oh everything you upload to the cloud, and no, not everything. >> And the digital transformation really is making IT a competitive advantage. So I had a long ranging interview. It's up on YouTube. I asked him a final question. I always said, okay, so you know, he's transforming Proctor and Gamble. I said okay, as you look ads and all those things what's the next mountain that you're going to climb? You're an IT pro, you said in the agenda. And I'll read you the quote. I want to get your reaction. He said, "I think we're looking forward. Latency is still an issue. We have to find ways to defeat latency and we're not going to do it through basic physics, we're going to have to change out business models, change our technology, distribution, change everything that we're doing. Consumers and customers are demanding instant access to enhanced information through AI and machine learning right at the point when they want it." So this is his next mountain. This is kind of what you were talking about on the stage here at the Dell Boomi event around the impact of AI and data. What's your reaction to that quote? >> Well to me this is all about the edge and 5G coming around the corner. And you look at all the big telcos. They're all piling in on 5G because it's 1000 times faster and 1000 times less latency. That's going to be a big turbo charge. The rocket ship. And it will just create an explosion in data and compute on the edge. And a lot of it's going to stay on the edge. Because you'll have these edge devices talking to each other. A whole new class of applications and capabilities because of that. That's super exciting. We're already seeing it with this build out of distributed core. And that's why we see so much growth in the data center business. >> So Michael, Dell Boomi, if you look at Boomi for a second, was named by the Gartner Magic Quadrant of 2018 as a leader in Ipads. Today they talked about ... >> Again, I think 6th or 7th year in a row. It's been there for quite some time. >> An established leader in an established market. But today they were talking about, hey we want to change the, we want to redefine the I in Ipads to intelligence. How is Dell Technologies and Boomi particularly starting to leverage terra bites and terra bites of customer meta data to make your systems smarter? To enable businesses to truly connect. Prim, edge devices as things continue to get more distributed and data becomes more critical? >> Yeah, so, the key to AI and all of its variance of machine learning, deep learning neural network is the data. The data is the fuel for the rocket ship of AI. And the challenge is, if you have your data spread out in 100 softwares of service providers and 3 public clouds and here and there and where's all your data? We don't really know. How do you fuel the rocket? It becomes a very difficult problem. This is the problem that we're beginning to address for our customers. We're going to have an event all about AI coming up I think next week. Where we're going to be talking much more about this. We got a number of offerings that we're rolling out. We've been helping customers for years build their data lakes and curate the data. And of course Pivitol and Boomi are essential to how you bring all of this together and make sense of it. Because if you just have all the data but you can't actually use it. If you're not already using AI and it's variance to improve your products and services, you're doing it wrong. We've identified over 450 projects just within Dell Technologies internally. As I mentioned on stage, we've sold about 700 million computers since I started in my dorm room. We have enormous telemetry data. Imagine, if you will, that something doesn't work exactly the way it's supposed to. Okay? What's the chance that has never happened before? >> Zero. >> The answers almost zero, right? Our job is to take all this data that we have, use all this intelligence and actually prevent it from happening. So we're building all kinds of intelligence and AI and preventative technology into all of our solutions from the data center to the desk top to the edge, to the multi cloud so that all these systems are just self healing and auto magically way more reliable. >> Auto magically, I like that. It just sounds like what you're saying is Dell Technologies articulating it's value and it's differentiation because you're using that data. >> You have to. >> To identify insight, to take action immediately. >> And to your point about the big companies, they have an advantage but it's a bit of a time value expiring advantage. They have the data that the new entrance don't have. >> Right. >> But they have to activate it quickly with this new computer science or else they'll be dinosaurs, right? Nobody wants to be a dinosaur. >> Michael, what's the business drivers, and you talk to customers all the time, that they're seeing and that matter most to them. Is it agility, is it transform the customer employee experience, compliant security? How would you view the pattern around the most important business driver for your customers that are trying to put the business transformation together with digital. Could you comment just anecdotally what you see? >> I think every customer is a little bit different in their journey. Some customers, security is number 1. Because of the kind of business that they're in and it just has to be that way. For other customers it's how do I increase my speed to the solution. It used to be we need a new feature. We'll get it in a year or 2. How about never. Does never work for you? That's kind of the old IT. Now with agile development you've got, what we're doing with Pivotol cloud foundry, you've got companies implementing, these are giant companies. Biggest companies in the world. They're implementing new things like in 2 or 3 weeks. It's amazing how fast. Speed and as a chief executive, that's what you crave. How can I take this new requirement that I heard from the customer and turn it into a feature that I can go offer very, very quickly? That's what you want to be able to do. It's what we used to be able to do when we were little tiny cubs. How do you do it with 200000 people? >> I want to get your thoughts on a trend that you popularized early on in your career, the direct business model, you also had the just in time manufacturing kind of ethos of build it, build to order, really streamline efficiency. So I want to kind of take the leap to now a new generation with cloud native where you have workflows and efficiencies. You have integration. So in a way the customers are now going direct to their customers and wanting to compose and build solutions. As you said on stage, these are going to be new problems that not yet have been identified. New solutions. So that customers have to be what you did. They got to build their own. So they got to build their own, they got to have the suppliers, they got to have the code. How do you see customers being successful if they want to take that efficiency approach? Kind of be 5 nines if you will in this new modern era. Because this is the challenge that they have. They have to build their own. They need suppliers. They need you guys. How do you see the customers being successful in that scenario? >> Yeah, I think what they're trying to do is shrink the time from when at that point of customer interaction, they can use the data to make the service and the product better and if it's like this lengthy value chain with all these different intermediaries and it takes weeks or months or never, that's just way too slow. They want it to be like instantaneous. How do they create that direct relationship with their customers? I only had 1000 dollars when I started so we couldn't really afford much so each dollar you invest very carefully. We just kind of out of necessity came up with some ideas that ... >> You were efficient because you had to be. >> We didn't have any choice, right? >> So when we talk about integration, we talk about it's the foundation of digital transformation, we've talked about IT, security, workforce. One of the things that you mentioned earlier that I'd like to get your perspective on, a different view of transformation is cultural. An enterprise organization as you mentioned has a huge advantage of a tremendous wealth of data. With that amount of data and the need for speed as you just talked about, where, in your opinion, and your experience, is cultural transformation as an enabler of an enterprise to really be able to react that quickly to develop new products, new revenue strengths? >> Yeah, I think it's a big challenge. And a lot of customers struggle with change management. You never want a good crisis go to waste. We sort of grew up in the business where it was change or die, quick or dead. If you don't do it you're gone, right? This was just the way our business, this was just how we had to compete. It's what we grew up in. And I think what's happened is more and more businesses are that way now. It requires the business leaders to say hey friends, we've got a real challenge here and we've got to move faster. It is change or die, it's quick or dead, I think for all businesses because this is the fastest time ever but it's the slowest time relative to the future. It's just going to get faster and faster. If companies ... The only way you get good at change is to do it more frequently. And so if you've never changed anything for 80 years in your company and all the sudden you start trying to change, it's really hard. You just have to start. >> How do you inspire say employees at Dell Technologies who've been with you for a very long time to be able to be open and agile themselves to help facilitate this transformation? >> I believe we built it into our culture that they understand that change is good as opposed to change is bad. If you fear something well then it's bad, right? We precondition people to say okay we're going to change something. Not to say every time we change something it works perfectly. We make mistakes, we learn, we trial and error. That's all fine. Fail fast. But you need a culture where you can embrace change. No question about it. I think a lot of companies that didn't really have that are figuring that out and either by crisis or by leadership or by some combination they're then forced into it. For me, it's what we grew up in. Because hey it's a tough world out there. >> Mike, I want to ask you a final question. Thanks for coming on and spending the time with us. Great interview here. Good length. Recently in the news with a lot of commentary from us as well as the industry around IBM buying Red Hat. I made a comment around the innovation piece of this and I want to get your thoughts on that because when you bought EMC, it was a merger of equals. You integrated that and the growth that you've been successful since then, I want to get your perspective. I want you to take a minute to explain to folks watching, when you did the merger equal with EMC, what happened? You've been successful integrating the organization. What innovative things have you done since the EMC merger of equals? Take a minute to explain, again, there's a lot of moving pieces on the table. You got VM Wares, you got Pivitol, you got Boomi. A lot of moving parts in your plan. You've been successful with the numbers. Financial performance shows it. Take a minute to explain what happened, where's the innovation coming out of Dell Technologies? >> So in hind sight, it looks pretty obvious, right? You take the leader and servers and the leader in storage and you say hey infrastructure hardware goes together. And by the way, if you have the leader of infrastructure software, VM Wares, you put that all together. Wow, that'd be really great. And turns out it was. It was actually much better than we thought. And so customers have really bought into that and then with Pivitol and Boomi and Rsave, Virtustream, Secureworks etc., we have such a complete set of capabilities that customers have said, hey, why do I want to buy from 20 smaller less capable companies and integrate it myself versus you guys will just do all this for me. If they were buying from 2 or 3 or 4 parts of Dell Technologies they'll say, well, why don't we just take the others, right? We been picking up huge amounts of share across the whole business. I'm talking about like 10s of billions of dollars of growth here. There's clearly a consolidation going on in the kind of existing parts of the industry but we've also got massive investments in the new cloud native parts and software defined, and security. It's been a real blessing to be able to pull all of these teams together. We had this relationship with EMC going back from 2001. We were very early supporters of VM Ware. We had a theory of victory and it's played out very well. The teams have really gelled enormously well and the customers have continued to give us their trust. >> I think, first of all servers, storage, networking is never going away. It's the holy trinity of anything in computing. Just looks different and consumes differently. But I think people underestimate the execution innovation that you guys have done. You didn't skip a beat. VM Ware didn't skip a beat. So things have happened, so that was a challenge of the integration. >> Not everybody predicted that it was going to go that way. It's actually gone much better than even we had planned. The revenue synergies have been much larger. >> Well congratulations and thanks for taking the time on the Cube. Michael Dell is here inside the Cube here at Boomi World 18. Dell Boomi World. It's the part of Dell Technologies. We think of them being the power engine for data processing, data growth, powering AI, integrating all the application workloads. I'm John Furrier with Lisa Martin. Stay tuned for more coverage after this short break. (upbeat music) >> Since the dawn of the cloud, the Cube has been there. Connected.

(upbeat music) >> Narrator: Live from the Wynn Hotel in Las Vegas, it's theCUBE, covering Magento Imagine 2018. Brought to you by Magento. >> Hey, welcome back to theCUBE. We are at the Wynn, Las Vegas with Magento at their Imagine 2018 Conference 3000 plus people here, really cool day we've been talking about all things commerce and digital commerce innovation. Excited to be joined by Peter Sheldon, the VP of Strategy from Magento, thanks so much for joining us. >> Thanks for having me, yeah. >> So this has been really fun, there's a lot of merchants behind us here in the marketplace, we've been talking to some of your customers who, a direct consumer, we just had Coca-Cola on. But we also see a lot of businesses here. Talk to us about what you guys are doing to help, not just the retailers, you started, right, being building this reputation as Magento, helping retailers to target online shoppers, but there's a lot more opportunity that you guys have been successful in, in the business, B2B space. Talk to us about, the vision, the strategy, on both sides. >> Yeah, so I think what's fascinating about Magento is their diversity of our client base, and I think it's a little bit of a testament to the flexibility and agility of the platform, but you're absolutely right, we started out primarily serving the B2C market, working with retailers, CPG firms, branded manufacturers and so forth, luxury goods. But commerce has really evolved and moved on, and I think what we see today is a lot of opportunity in B2B, and so when I think about B2B, these are typically manufacturers and distributors wholesalers who are looking to digitally transform their businesses, and really make the buying process more efficient. So whether it's a distributor who's buying products from a manufacturer, or an end-buyer might be a contractor, especially in home improvement, or something, who needs to buy tools and materials from either a manufacturer or distributor. Traditionally, it was a very traditional sort of, retail based buying experience. You would go to a branch, a distributor's branch face to face, engagement over sales person, or the sales rep would come visit you, and you would through a paper catalog. >> Relationship based. >> Relationship building. >> Exactly. >> And so forth, and that's a high cost of acquisition channel, and so I think what a lot of B2B firms are realizing is there's significant, first of all, there's demand from the buyers because all buyers have their consumer life as well, e-commerce is so mature and the B2C space with Amazon, that buyers are incredibly frustrated if in their business life they don't get that great ease of e-commerce experience, and instead they're still faxing and picking up the phone or even if it is a digital order entry experience, it's really terrible, and it's not intuitive to use, it's not easy to use. So, there's a real demand to digitize that ordering process, but more importantly, I think for B2B firms, there's some real operational savings and putting margin back into the bottom line by creating a lower cost of doing business and serving customers, and it's e-commerce and so I think we see one of the areas where a lot of firms first start out is in the spare parts business, so we work with a lot of manufacturers. It just makes so much sense to move their spare parts and warranty business online, so it's very easy to re-order spare parts, I don't need to pick up and call my sales rep to do that, I can do it in a digital manner. But I think what's really fascinating us is just the diversity of different B2B clients, their backgrounds, there's not a vertical that's immune to this. We see pharmaceutical companies, we see agriculture, we see traditional heavy manufacturing, light manufacturing, life sciences, you name it. And so the diversity of clients we see wanting to use our platform for digitizing their selling relationship that they have, it's really fascinating. >> We've heard a lot today that commerce is limitless, and it sounds like that's kind of what you're talking about, is that this day and age, every buyer is a consumer at some point, right, or everyday. We have these expectations, Amazon set the bar really high and every company to be successful has to be a technology company. So, from your standpoint as the VP of Strategy, some great exciting things have been announced at this year's Magento Imagine Conference. Share with us some of those, and especially I'm curious what you're seeing in the mobile space. >> Yeah, so mobile's really fascinating and I think it actually continues on to what we were talking about a moment ago in B2B. So, if we think about that B2B buyer, often the B2B buyer is an engineer, a contractor, a field service representative. They don't live in an office, they don't have ready, convenient access to either a laptop or desktop. They are out on a site, they are, if it's agriculture, they're out at a farm. >> In a field, yeah. >> Or in a field, or they're in a construction site, or they're inside a plant, and their primary means, or their only means of digital access is their smartphone. And typically they're having a slightly larger screen, phablet type smartphone, probably in a hard case if it gets dropped and so forth. But the way that they're going to engage with a brand digitally and to make a B2B commerce order, to look up the status of their order etc. It's not, we often talk about mobile first, it's not mobile first, it's mobile only. They don't have easy access anymore to desktop, laptop. If you're not serving them through mobile, they're not able to buy from you and they're going to buy from one of your competitors. And we see this thing across the board. Perhaps less so here in the US, but in some of the merging markets where we operate and where we have great success, markets like India. They again, it's very much a mobile only society now, and certainly in mainland China and other sort of emerging markets. So I think we're rapidly going down a path where if you think even in our day to day consumer lives, as we're thinking about making purchases, we're sitting on the couch, we're multitasking or watching television, but it's our phone that we're interacting with. >> Right. >> And if we think about the challenge today about buying through a phone, traditionally commerce purchase experience, it's really not that great. In fact in some cases it's pretty awful. Typical sort of page load time on a mobile can be five, six seconds, and as you want to navigate around using your thumb and scroll through and do some product research, every time you make an action, every time you touch that screen, the page reloads again, and it's actually frustratingly slow. If you actually get to the point of buying, obviously you've got to enter your shipping address, and that's just- >> Can imagine that conversion rates, and things and attrition. >> Exactly. And so- >> What have you guys done to change the game? >> Right, right exactly. So, those conversion rates on the mobile web today are pretty bad. They're about sort of, 1.7% and on a traditional desktop, it's 3.5% but yeah 70% of all traffic and visitors are coming on mobile devices, it's actually quite a profound sort of issue in the marketplace around us. So what are we doing about it? Well there's a really exciting new, and I call it technology, but it's really just a set of standards around open web technologies, Javascript, CSS, HTML, called PWA, or Progressive Web Apps. Now, Progressive Web Apps is not a proprietary technology, it's just open web technologies, but what's changed and evolved are the browsers themselves, so Chrome and Safari, Firefox, they've evolved and they now support what we call service workers, which is the ability for the browser to do more backbone processing. And the end result of all of this are a lot of brands are now rebuilding their websites away from responsive websites, which is the big investment we've had over the last five years to now building Progressive Web Apps. And a really nice thing about Progressive Web Apps is that they perform like a native app, they're very very fast, the page load times are typically around a second or so, and there's no refresh. Every navigation and action is almost instant gratification, so very fast, very slick to use. It feels like you're using an native app, but you're not, you're actually using a web experience in a browser. And so there's a couple of really important things for merchants around that. One, much, much better conversion rates. So all of the KPIs that a VP of e-commerce is ultimately responsible for, they're measured by there's a conversion rate, average order value, bounce rates. They all see significant improvements. And I never say there's some merchants always sort of facing a little bit of a dilemma, should we build native apps, or what should our native app strategy be? And the problem with native apps is they're incredibly expensive to develop, incredibly, a lot of maintenance with all the updates to iOS and Android. And many merchants really didn't see success because consumers will only download and give you real estate on their phones for an app that you really engage with on a very frequent, on a multiple times a day basis. Most of our customers are retailers that perhaps only have two or three transactions a year with their clients, with their end shoppers, and so a native app strategy just doesn't work. So the real exciting thing I think with merchants are, you can actually almost put the need for an app strategy to bed, they don't need one anymore. They invest there in PWA. So here at the conference we announce Magento's support for Progressive Web Apps. We've launched a new development toolkit we call the PWA Studio, and it's really a native capability for our merchants and our system integrators to be able to build Progressive Web Apps on the Magento platform. So we're super excited about it. >> Yeah, sounds super exciting and also really the consumer, the convenience is that consumers are demanding, and you're really reacting to the mobile only experience there. >> That's right. >> Has a huge potential, upside, for the merchants. How are you seeing that being used or use cases for that in the B2B space? >> Yeah, so if anything, it's almost kind of, more applicable in B2B than it is in B2C, although they're both going to adopt PWAs. So what's interesting about B2B is that there is a much more frequent transaction or interaction with the end buyer. B2B buyers are frequent purchasers, they are buying in bulk and they're making purchases perhaps multiple times a day, perhaps multiple times a week. And so they are power users and they do have a great deal of engagement with the brand, with their distributor, so again, it's starkly, I think the B2B firms have built native apps and have done so on top of Mangento, it's very easy to build a native app and integrate it into our Rest APIs etc. But again it's expensive and often it can be a seven figure front sum to initially develop an app strategy and to continue to maintain it, so there's a real there's a real TCO advantage of actually switching that strategy to do a PWA. The adoption can be higher because you don't need to install the app, and just the cost and support of building and supporting a PWA is significantly lower than a native app, and so again there's a lot of use cases for using PWAs in the B2B commerce space as well. >> Awesome. So besides what you announce with Progressive Web Apps, what are some of the exciting announcements you guys have made at Imagine? >> Yeah, so I think product announcements, we got an exciting new product we're calling Page Builder, it's a content management and page building tool. So what this really does is it allows the marketer merchandiser the real control over building and maintaining the pages on their site, and that's mobile web, mobile desktop and building able to do that, and it really alleviates any dependency on having to a front end developer where there's a true wiz with drag and drop capability, gives them complete creative to build very sophisticated content pages, but to do and have complete control over their publishing schedule, being able to preview that. So we're very excited about that. I think it empowers the marketers and merchandisers to be more creative and to get more done in the day, we're empowering them to be, act independently of needing to work with a front end developer. >> Awesome, and you guys speaking of developers, have a very large community. >> We do, we do. >> Of 300,000+ developers. >> It's quite incredible, I mean here at the conference, it's sort of their main annual get together of what we call the community. I'll come here to Las Vegas every year and to the Wynn and the community is here, and a lot of that community is made up of developers, and those developers, many of them work for our merchants, many of them work for system integrators, many of them work for other technology partners, and some are contractors, self-employed specialists and so forth. But as you say, that community is over 300,000 developers strong, that's 300,000 people who make a livelihood doing development on Magento. So it's really an amazing community, and they're incredibly passionate about Magento, and they contribute back to Magento. We are, have our roots as being an open source platform, one of the great differentiative benefits of that is that our community help us innovate and they help us, they contribute code, they contribute features and capabilities back into the platform that means that we can extend our R&D team to be this much, much greater force where we can develop new capabilities and deliver value to our clients at a far faster pace than any competitors do. So it's a really interesting aspect of our business. >> Well Peter, thanks for stopping by theCUBE and sharing the great announcements that you guys have made today and this week, and the direction you're able to go in and help take best practices and things learned in the consumer space, and apply it to businesses. We wish you the best of luck, and we look forward to being back at the Magento Imagine next year. >> Yeah, great. Love to have you back. Thanks so much for chatting with me today. >> Our pleasure. We wanted to thank you for watching theCUBE again, we are live at the Wynn in Las Vegas with Magento at Imagine 2018. I am Lisa Martin, stick around, we're back with one more guest after a short break. (upbeat music)

(upbeat music) >> Narrator: Live from the Wynn Hotel in Las Vegas, it's theCUBE, covering Magento Imagine, 2018. Brought to you by Magento. >> Welcome back to theCUBE, I'm Lisa Martin. We've had a really informative day talking all things commerce, open commerce, and digital commerce innovation at Magento Imagine 2018. I'm joined by Amanda Batista, who is the head of content marketing for Magento. Amanda, thanks so much for all your help in coordinating this. We've had a really educational day with your folks, with your customers and partners. >> Yeah, we've had a really great community. It's been wonderful to have theCUBE here, and I'm so thrilled to be able to be here with you closing out the show. >> So this is the eighth Imagine event, There's over 3000 people here. You guys had some great speakers on stage today. I'm always very excited to see female leaders on stage. >> Absolutely. >> We talked about Baked by Melissa, she was our first guest today sharing her story. You've been growing this event year over year. What is it about #LeadingTheCharge, your hashtag and message for this event, that really differentiates this eighth event from the last several? >> Well #LeadingTheCharge is a really exciting message for us because ultimately we're focused on empowering merchants and developers and really allowing them to not worry about the technology component of things. Whatever you can dream, you can do on Magento. So, #LeadingTheCharge for us here today is really about bringing people together, making connections, and really thinking about, How do you use this community? How do you tap into all these resources? How do you see people that you haven't seen in a while? It's kind of our coming out party, our big coming together. You know, #LeadingTheCharge I think means different things for different folks, but I think for us we're really aiming to empower individuals to do the work that they do really well but also come together. So I actually heard a gentleman say that part of Leading the Charge for him is a matter of making connection. It's almost stepping out as a leader and allowing other people to come together. I think #LeadingTheCharge has been a really nice message for us today and I think our speakers have really brought that to life. >> I agree and with the sentiment that we've heard. Magento started reputation-wise, helping retailers to target the online shoppers and the experiences there. We talked with Peter Sheldon today about what you guys are doing in really formalizing how you're helping businesses, B2B organizations. There's so much opportunity that's really being driven by all of us as consumers and we have this expectation that we can get anything, anywhere, anytime. >> That's right. >> And have it delivered day or night. Amazon sets the bar really high. You guys had Amazon on main stage this morning talking about the fact that there's now 100 million Prime subscribers and how half of Amazon's revenue doesn't come from products they sell, this third-party marketplace just kicks open the doors of opportunity- >> Amanda: Right. >> for businesses from small to large alike. >> Yeah, I think it's really exciting, too, because, you know we can't all compete on price. We can't all be Amazon, but I think as we're really encouraging merchants to think about, What are you offering that's special? What are you doing from a content standpoint? Obviously, content is near and dear to me, that's my bread and butter and what I've been doing for a long time, but we really think about, what are we offering people that's value-add? Is it an added catalog, is it a manual? Is it something that helps you do your job better? Is it something that helps you go back to your organization and feel celebrated and feel excited?" I think when it comes to how we're empowering people, we're really focused on, from a content perspective, enabling you to, again, not really worry about the tech component, but think about how you can innovate your business. That's really important to us. >> Well, that's one of the things that Melissa Ben-Ishay, she's product officer at Baked by Melissa Cupcakes and how- >> Amanda: Sweet it is. >> I still want, it is, and I still want a cupcake. >> Amanda: Yes! >> It was very evident when we were talking with her that she gets, because of technology, that makes things simple for folks like herself, it allows her not to just grow the business, to open more stores, to reach hundreds of thousands of people, but to do so in a way that she doesn't have to worry about the technology. >> Amanda: Right, right. >> And that really- >> That's a great example, really, for us. I think when we look at who we're looking to enable, you know, Melissa started a business ten years ago, was let go from her job and said, Let me take a passion and bring it to life with business. They had e-commerce even before they had stores. They had e-commerce before they were up and running. I think using that as a linchpin, as a springboard to really bring her business to life, delivering a hundred cupcakes on foot on the New York City subway. I'm from New York, I ride the subway, I wouldn't want to do it with a hundred cupcakes, frankly, but these are the sort of bootstrap methods that she was enabled to do not worrying about that sort of tech component, right? She's bootstraps, she only had about five founders, five people around her with her business. Really great to hear from her and I don't see any cupcakes anywhere but I'm dying for one. >> Me too! >> Or five. >> We need to get some. One of the things that you mentioned, content, earlier, in being a content marketer, look at media as an example, with Netflix and Spotify and Amazon, and what's happened to traditional media. It's now that the way a service is delivered is as important as the content >> Absolutely. >> and what we've heard a lot from your customers that have been on the program today is they have the opportunity to deliver services in a responsive way, and in a way that's really personalized, which is really key, right? As consumers, we all want to have an experience that's tailored to us, and we've heard that as sort of an enabling capability that Magento is helping. We had a gentleman from Coca-Cola on, talking about the Share a Coke experience and how that started as a program in Australia. >> Amanda: Right. >> With one bottler, then went to Europe, then became something that was focused in store, and then the consumers are going, Hey, Coca-Cola, I can't find a bottle with my name on it. And it became this really big program for them, that they had to figure out, How do we do this in the U.S. with 70 bottlers? They needed technology that would allow them to identify and have this visibility of inventory, which you guys allow them to do, but to enable their customers to have an experience with a personalized bottle of Coca-Cola. >> Right. >> Amazing how the technology opens up doors like that, and allows these businesses, whether it's something as an establishment like Coca-Cola, or a Baked by Melissa, to be able to deliver this relevant, personal experience, at the touch of a button. It's Amazing. >> Well, listen, and it's non-negotiable, right? Think about your own experiences as a consumer. Who are you shopping with? I'm shopping with brands that understand me, that know what I need, that are offering value-add. You know, you might also revolutionize the way that we view our experiences, and we really don't have patience. Like you said, we have digital, everything is very quick, and I think the experience is the differentiator. We're really focused, again, on taking the technology out of your planning equation so that you can focus on what are you offering? What are you delivering? How are you delighting? That's a big, big area of opportunity and I think what you do to delight and engage and if you're using data intelligently, and not just the nitty gritty of data, but also simple things, the way that you welcome people via email, the way you engage on Instagram. There's a number of ways to do things that don't really require a lot of planning, a lot of cost, and so in our content efforts, we're really encouraging merchants to think about that. How do you do things in a sort of home-grown way without spending a lot of time or money? We have to be agile, we have to be quick as marketers, I certainly know that, that's the world I live in, and again, it's non-negotiable. I think as a consumer, if I don't feel that you understand me, if I don't feel that you're paying attention to the things that I'm buying or not buying, I'm going somewhere else. I'm going to go to a place that makes me feel as though I'm going to be fulfilled and delighted. I think delight is such an understated thing, but we're here at the Wynn which does a wonderful job with experience and everywhere you go it's so delightful and wonderful. >> Lisa: It is delightful! >> I came back to the room last night and my computer cord was just rattled up ever so gently, and I thought, That's delightful! You know, I Instagrammed that. That's a perfect example of providing experience that is superior. >> Speaking of experience, we just had the gentleman from the Accent Group on, Mark Teperson. It was so interesting how they've taken this company down in Australia and New Zealand, with multiple, many, many, many brands of footwear. And, you know, the online and the physical world have been merging in retail for a while now, but what they're wanting to do, to click and collect, and to create this in-store experience. It was such an interesting way of thinking about and hearing from a Chief Digital Officer say, We want to be able to enable people, especially mobile first, we're sitting on the couch with these things often, but to enable them to be able to come into my store and have an experience. That word is, we heard that referenced in many different times today, the Accent Group was a great example of that, as well as when we had your V.P. of Strategy on saying, A lot of cases depending on the, whether it's B2B or B2C, it's not mobile too, it's mobile only. It's not just leveraging technology and data and analytics to understand what I want as a consumer, but it's how I want to consume it. So it's what I was saying earlier about we're seeing this level playing field of how services are delivered, equally as important as the content that you're going to deliver to me. >> Yeah, absolutely. Again, non-negotiable, right? This idea of an omni-channel experience bridging the gaps between online and in-store, like you said, we're on the couch. I almost never shop on a computer any more, right? I'm mobile, we're enabled, we have PayPal, we our credit cards saved. I think to keep that momentum going, you want it to be a seamless experience. How many times have you gone online and found that an item is supposed to be available in the store. When you go, it's not there, right? I've even done due diligence as a savvy shopper who works in retail and says, Let me call the store and make sure it's there. There's really no margin for error there, because when we talk about experience, if you do go in store, and if you do take the initiative to make that purchase and take time out of your day, right, we're all busy people. I think mobile and digital has made it easy, especially Amazon Prime revolutionized that. (mimics beeping noise) Two days, it's on your doorstep. I think as we look to see who's sort of mimicking that experience, I think an easy way to do it, is simply put, have your systems connected, ensure that things are integrated, ensure that your inventory visibility is on point. It's a non-negotiable experience, really. >> Well, Amanda, we've had a blast at Magento Imagine 2018. Our first one, looking forward to being back next year. Thank you for putting together a great array of guests. I know we've learned a ton about this. I won't look at online shopping again the same. We want to thank you for helping us have a really enlightened and delightful conversation. >> And likewise, we've loved having theCUBE. You guys have been wonderful. I've learned a great deal and it's been really nice spending this time with you. So thanks for having me, Lisa. >> Absolutely. We hope you've had a delightful experience today with us on theCUBE. We've been live at Magento Imagine 2018. Check out theCUBE.net where you can find all the replays of the segments that we filmed today. You can also find the editorial components on SiliconANGLE.com. I'm Lisa Martin for theCUBE. We'll see you next time. (upbeat music)

>> Narrator: Live from the Wynn Hotel in Las Vegas. It's theCUBE. Covering Magento Imagine 2018. Brought to you by, Magento. >> Welcome back to theCUBE, our continuing coverage of Magento Imagine 2018. We're at the Wynn in Las Vegas. You can see it's happy hour behind me. I'm Lisa Martin, we are joined by Mark Teperson the Chief Digital Officer of Accent Group, customer of Magentos'. Thanks so much for stopping by theCUBE and having a chat. >> Thanks Lisa, great to be here. >> So you are an award finalist, the Imagined Excellence Awards are what, in just about an hour and a half. But this is really cool, you are a finalist in several categories. The best in class fulfillment with Platypus Shoes. The best mobile experience with Athlete's Foot. And you yourself are up for Commerce Leader of the Year, wow. >> Yeah. >> I feel like I should be asking for your autograph. >> No please, please, look it's really humbling to have been nominated for so many awards. I think, the thing for me is that it's a huge acknowledgement of the work of the entire team that makes this happen. You know, I have the privilege of being the face of it. But it is an extraordinary team that I get to lead and work with across the organization that really kind of makes all of the magic happen. So, I'm representing them tonight as well. >> Awesome. So tell our viewers who Accent Group is. Where you're located. All that good stuff before we kind of get into all the magic. >> Yeah sure. So the Accent Group Limited is a publicly listed company in Australia. We own and operate nine different retail formats and about 13 different wholesale distribution licenses. We are the largest footwear retailer in Australia. We have 445 stores across both Australia and New Zealand. We turn over in excess of around $800,000,000. So a big business in Australia. >> A big business, many many brands as well from Doc Martens to Timberlands to Sperry Top-sider. So quite a diverse set of brands as well. >> Yeah, look it's, one of the great things about my role is I get to work across the continuum of kind of consumers. And the way I describe it is, is I get to work, that we see everything from first walkers to last walkers and everything in between. And so, from a digital perspective that gives us a really unique opportunity to track and observe the behavior of consumers and their adoption rates of different technologies and different consumer patterns. Which allows us to perhaps be a little bit more responsive and a little bit more considered in our investments of technology. >> That's what we want as consumers right, we want a personalized experience. Mobile, huge. Mobile, pointing at the wrong thing, tablet whatever. We want that, we want, wouldn't we be marketed to but we want to have an experience that's relevant as that's seamless as well. How did you go about, well talk to us about the digital transformation of Accent Group. You've been there a long time. >> Mark: Yeah. >> How are you leveraging technology over the last few years to transform and be able to facilitate a true omni-channel business. >> Yeah look its a great question, it's been a long journey for us. You know this didn't happen overnight. This has been a very long journey. It was initially really backed by our board and we started on this journey five years ago. I've had fantastic support from our CEO, through the transformation process. And that really set the path for us to be able to start transforming ourselves. I think lots of retailers get it wrong when it comes to technology. They make the cardinal sin of building monuments to themselves. You know they build things that they think are great representations of their brand. But if they just stopped and considered you know, what does the consumer really want, what is that unmet need of the consumer or what is that problem that I'm trying to solve? I think we'd all make better investments and deliver better experiences for consumers. And, so we've been really diligent in kind of thinking about and understanding what our consumer was looking for, from us. And, really prioritizing, you know, the million things that we could be doing to a really strong set of, of foundation building blocks, that would set ourselves up for a digital transformation and hopefully a very prosperous future. >> So we mentioned the awards that your a finalist for. Talk to us about what you're doing with Magento, from your seat as the Chief Digital Officer. What were some of the key criteria that you said, you know we don't want to fall into the same trap that we've seen a lot of other retailers fall into and build a monument to ourselves. We're going to listen to consumers and be able to create this responsive experience for them that obviously reaps a lot of financial rewards for us. What were some of the key criteria that you set out with, saying we've got to be able to have technology that enables A, B, C. >> Yeah look, so when we were thinking about how to bring our strategy and our vision to life, there were a couple of things that we were really looking for. One was flexibility and the ability to, realize, I suppose, re-imagine a consumer experience. So we needed that flexibility and because we have so many brands that we retail and we represent, we needed something that could be multi-site, multi-platform as well. So that was some of the key considerations that we came to. But when we were thinking about the consumer experience it was really about the delivery of that front end experience. So, how do you deliver a really great click and collect experience for a consumer. How do we deliver, ship from store, with a high level in degree of accuracy for the consumer so that we don't disappoint them. And now as we kind of look forward, we're looking at how we can deliver same day delivery in three hour delivery, not just in a single city but across the entire country of Australia and even New Zealand. By re-imagining our stores not only as experience centers for consumers to really touch and feel the product but as distribution centers to be able to get product to customer much faster. And Magento has really enabled us to transform and realize that experience that we re-imagined for our customers. >> So I was telling you before we went live that I watched the video. The video testimonial that you guys have done with Magento and with the case study. And, I am a stats person. I love stats because it's really the voice of the customer is the best brand validation any vendor can get. But being able to show a positive business outcome that is quantitative, is huge. >> Mark: Yeah >> You guys achieved with one of your brands, a 10X increase in sales growth, in 10 months. >> Mark: Yeah >> Tell us a little bit about that. >> Look that was unexpected. I think it blew everybody away. We took a great brand and a great business, Platypus Shoes. And this brand is really geared up for the Millennial consumer. Really deeply ingrained in the culture of Millennial life. We sell fantastic brands, Nike, Addi, Vans and Timberlands through that business. And we have a fantastic in-store experience. And so our digital experience was just really kind of dragging the chain. It wasn't living up to that expectation that the consumer had, once they've experienced our physical retail. So we took an old platform and we decided to take the plunge into M2. We were one of the very first enterprise customers on M2. And in the delivery of that platform we launched and very soon after, followed up with click and collect. And ship from store, to really enhance and connect the consumer experience. Lots of people talk to this vision of omni-channel. It's much harder to execute. It's much easier in theory than it is in practice. >> Of course, yeah. >> But what we learnt in a very short period of time was that the consumers really wanted to transcend our channels. And they loved the experience that they were getting in each of the channels, separately but together as well. And so this halo effect, we had so much brand equity with our Platypus business that as soon as we were able to deliver on that unmet need that the customers were telling us that they wanted, they came to us in droves. And so we had a 10X increase in sales in 10 months which is a pretty staggering outcome. It's been fantastic for the whole business. >> It's interesting that you talk about the in-store experience. What are some of the other benefits that the stores are getting? I imagine if you can do like ship to store, there's going to be more store traffic as a result of having this seamless experience for the customers. >> Yeah. In the whole strategy when we think about omni-channel strategy, the best, the very best channel for a consumer to actually engage with us in and purchase is click and collect. And I'll tell you why. Because in click and collect, what you've done is you have captured that online demand that exists for products and they've said to you that I actually want to come and pick it up in your store. And when they come and pick it up in your store, by doing that the 12 other retailers that they have to walk through in the mall to kind of get to you. There not going to shop there because they have committed money, they've committed funds to your business. And so that gives us a fantastic opportunity when that customer walks into your store, you know that they are a serious consumer. And that gives us great additional opportunities to introduce new products or experiences to that customer. So by capturing that demand online and driving them into that in-store experience, we get to showcase the best of both environments. That really savvy fast, fun, content lead digital experience and that sensory experience in-store. Where you get to feel and touch the product and talk to our awesome team members. And really have a fun experience buying shoes. You know the wonderful thing about footwear is and I always joke about it, is that unlike the apparel space and fashion, shoes don't make you feel fat or thin. They just make you feel good. >> That is true. I feel really good in the shoes I'm wearing today. >> There you go. >> So, huge success with launching this with Platypus. Like you said, it even kind of surprised you guys. Do you have a line out the door of the next, from a strategic vision perspective, the dominoes all lined up. Ready to just launch this thing. >> Yeah, absolutely. So I think one of the things that's led us to be really successful is the discipline that we have around how we roll out strategy. And supported by a phenomenal team across the entire Accent Group. I think what's really important to kind of acknowledge is, is that it's not one person, it's not one division that makes this stuff possible. It's an entire organization. And it's entire groups of people that come together to really make this possible. So some of these initiatives involve more than 50 people across the entire organization representing every facet of the business. And so through the discipline that we bring to our strategy process, we've got a really, well planned pipeline of product and innovation that comes over the next 12 months. In fact our pipeline feels pretty full at the moment. Some of that looks like endless aisles. So what we've done was ship from store for our digital business in terms of driving and fueling sales, is in reverse. So endless aisle gives stores that same capability. So our regional store that might not have the full assortment of product can now tap into $110,000,000 worth of inventory across our entire business. >> Lisa: Find it anywhere. >> Find it anywhere and we can get it to that customer and not only will we get it to them free of charge. We'll do that next day. And that's a pretty amazing proposition for a consumer. In addition to that we're looking to roll out same day and three hour delivery again across the entire country. Both Australia and New Zealand. That requires a huge amount of coordinated effort a lot of integration, a lot of sales process. To make sure that we can, I'm not even sure if it's a word, systematize you know, how you do this because it's all very well to have this capability plugged into a business, but you've got to be able to deliver that fantastic experience for the consumer. When they un-box that product or when they come in-store to pick up that click and collect order, that it doesn't feel like a foreign experience for the sales team who are serving those customers. And the customer feels like it's a really well thought out process. >> So as we look back at your last question. The digital transformation that you're on with the Accent Group and the time that you've spent there, what excites you about you know the rest of 2018. Is it being able to take on advanced technologies like machine learning and Artificial Intelligence to make that experience transcendent across digital and physical stores, even better? >> Yeah you know, I often get asked the question, "What keeps you awake at night?" And they're two things. The first one is, the competition that doesn't exist today. And that includes technology so the rapid evolution and adoption of technology and how that can disrupt the market. And the second thing is, what the customer wants tomorrow. Those are two very salient things that keep me awake at night. So what keeps me excited I suppose is looking at the success and the way in which we adopt and roll technology and strategy through the business. It's not technology for technology sake. It's really easy to get caught up in the hype around some things so I've been following the A.I. trend now for three years. It finally feels like it's reaching commercialization in the market. And I think in the next 12 months we certainly will see a much greater adoption of parts of Artificial Intelligence in how it can power better consumer experiences and perhaps even better intelligence in decision making in our organization. It's a very humbling thought to think that, you know whilst I know a lot about the industry and space, there a 1,500 things that happened yesterday and the day before that and you just can't keep up. And nobody has the monopoly on good ideas so events like this and getting out and talking to people and figuring out you know, what is that next big idea. What is that trend that's riding you know in the market. That's how we try and figure out what the next big thing is going to be. >> And we've felt that all day with commerce is limitless, opportunities are limitless as well. Mark, thanks so much for, >> Not a problem. >> stopping by and telling us about what guys are doing down in A (mumbles), it sounds, pretty awesome. >> Fantastic, thanks for having me. >> Absolutely our pleasure. We want to thank you for watching theCUBE, we are live at Magento Imagine 2018, in Las Vegas. I'm Lisa Martin. Stick around, we'll be right back to wrap up the day. (light music)

>> Announcer: Live from the Wynn Hotel in Las Vegas, it's theCUBE, covering Magento Imagine 2018. Brought to you by Magento. >> Hey, welcome back to theCUBE, I'm Lisa Martin, live at the Wynn, Las Vegas at Magento Imagine 2018. We've had a really cool day here talking about lots of facets of commerce, e-commerce, and really talking about commerce as a center of gravity around digital transformation. If you drink Coke like I do, you're going to be pretty excited to hear our next guest. We've got Todd Skidmore, the manager of eCommerce from Coca-Cola. Todd, thanks so much for joining us. >> Thanks for having me. >> So I'm super thirsty now, there's probably some Coke bottles behind us. >> (laughs) Yeah, exactly. >> So everybody knows the iconic Coca-Cola brand and the Share A Coke branding that you guys have been using a long time. As retail, and really as consumers, as we've really started to change the way, not just that we buy, but the experience that we want to have, I'd love to hear the journey that you guys are on at Coca-Cola to make a product that's been around for how long, really personal. So talk to us about what the Share A Coke journey is, and let's start with why you even started it. >> Perfect. Yeah, so the campaign actually started really as an opportunity to connect with consumers in a more personal way, and it was an in-store campaign. It started in Australia, actually, in 2011, and was hugely successful, so it moved its way across the world and made it to the U.S. in 2014 and of course, you can imagine the U.S. as big as it is, and we have the distribution, and complexities, and manufacturing, took a few years to bring it, but it was hugely successful in 2014, but of course, success breeds opportunities, and with that, people started going, "Well, I can't find my name on a bottle "in the store, how can I get my name?" Posting on social media, et cetera, which is great exposure, but we had an opportunity, so when we brought the program back for the next summer, the campaign in-store as well, we also brought in our first foray into direct-to-consumer e-commerce where you are able to go onto the site, personalize a bottle yourself, and get any name on a bottle. You weren't restricted to what was in the store, or even if it was in the store and you couldn't find it, now you had an opportunity to bring that to life. So that's kind of been the journey, and that was three years ago when we launched the site, and now we've gone from just basically selling one skew, which was a Coke bottle, infinitely customizable one skew, but one skew, to now we have over 6,000 skews on the site, including licensed merchandise, lots of different bottle options, all kinds of stuff, so. Really, the whole thing has been about connecting with consumers, listening to what consumers want, and then bringing those experiences and the brand in a really special and unique way. >> I love that you're listening and taking that consumer feedback and identifying by doing so, I imagine, using big data and analytics, to then identify additional business models and revenue streams for Coca-Cola. >> Yeah, so, the crazy thing is we started it and the big thing was you can get your name on a bottle. Well, then we started realizing by looking at the data that people were using it for weddings, and events, and all kinds of things, and reunions, and graduation parties, and so being able to customize it and have it for an event like that brings really a special, you know, the Coca-Cola to those occasions, which is exactly what we want as a company, is to be a part of the communing and occasions like that, so being able to use that data to drive our products and also drive our marketing. So now we don't just talk about getting your name on a bottle, we talk about these occasions and marketing. We have a whole wedding page, talking about weddings, et cetera, so. >> Wow! That's cool. So you guys are a award finalist here at Magento Imagine 2018 for the Imagine Excellence Awards in the Customer Insights category, and it's kind of (mumbles) with what you were just saying in terms of listening to customers, but also from a data-driven standpoint, you mentioned marketing, and I'm a marketer, and marketing is now a science because there is so much data available, but as consumers we want that. We want an experience, whether its Coca-Cola or some other retailer, we want them to know enough about us, to not steal our data, but to be able to deliver a seamless experience regardless of channel, that's relevant to me as a person, as a human. And that's something that you guys will find out, I guess tonight at the awards ceremony. >> Yeah we'll see what happens tonight, but yeah. So we definitely try to use as much data as we can to inform where we're going to take the next program, marketing campaign, et cetera. So it's listening to what people are buying or even saying in the reviews, et cetera, so. >> So in terms of the genesis done in Australia, and then brought it to the states as an in-store program seasonal, a few years ago you've launched the online direct-to-consumer, I imagine, mobile, tablet, any way that they want to consume it. >> Yep. >> Talk to us about opening up this channel, direct-to-consumer and what that is helping achieve from a business perspective. >> Well, I think it's another way to sort of certainly learn more about what our consumer wants, and we certainly get probably the best data that you can get on an eCommerce site than you get even compared to almost any other type of platform or way we've had in the past. We've had rewards programs in the past which was also another way to get great consumer data, but this is one where you absolutely know if someone makes a purchase they're making an investment in your brand, which means you know that's a valuable customer, and that's a valuable consumer that you can then understand that's the type of people that we want to be associated with, market to, and have them be a part and connected to our brand. >> So the responsiveness to your consumers is quite clear. If we take a look at, you said 6,000 skews now? >> Todd: Yeah. >> So it's expanded beyond the actual Coca-Cola bottle. So many different opportunities. How are you using technology to help manage and track all these different skews and ensure that supply and demand is in sync. >> So, we do the best that we can while-- we are, I will be honest with you, we're a pretty scrappy bunch within Coca-Cola, and we have an analytics team, or person I should say, a 'team', person, and we rely on that to pull that data down and analyze it and take a look at what's happening. We're of course reviewing that and reacting to it as quickly as can. I talked about an example in my speaking session earlier today where, at Coachella, TeenVogue picked up one of our outfits and took a picture of a model there. It started trending on Instagram, and it was only offered in-store, in our brick and mortar stores. We were able to get it up online within 24 hours so we could start reacting, so of course that just happened days ago. >> Right. >> So, we're really trying to be progressive and fast and agile about reacting to what consumers are interested, because they were on Instagram going, "Hey, where can I buy this?" et cetera, and so being able to sort of react and do those things is exciting. >> Absolutely. One of the things that I find interesting, and we've talked a lot about this today with out guests, is the conveniences that we expect as consumers, right? We want to be able to go to any device wherever we are and buy whatever we want, and expect that it's going to show up in a little brown box on the doorstep two days later. How are you seeing trends in the consumer space spill into the corporate space? >> Maybe reword that again so I... >> So you're selling to consumers, and you're doing a lot of pivoting, "Hey, they want this, they want that." >> Todd: Oh, okay, so like corporate orders? >> Exactly, exactly. >> Yeah, I mean, I think really we all know that the whole business world and everybody's lives are coming together. It used to be traditional, it was like work was my work and personal was my personal. That's not the case anymore, and also with e-commerce sites, b to b sites now are becoming more like d to c sites. People are expecting much more of it, expectations are much higher from what you're going to deliver on a b to b site. So I think all these worlds are sort of merging, and I think from a corporate perspective, they see an opportunity with a Coca-Cola brand, and we want to be able to deliver that on the corporate side as well, so. >> So is that business growing then, in terms of companies coming to the website to, like you see with, you said weddings and other occasions, is corporate buyers now kind of at that level? >> Yeah, so we even have hotels buying for events on our site now, so we have some relationships there that we've tapped in to, which is the great thing about Coca-Cola is we have all these partnerships with properties, entertainment, et cetera, and we try and bring all those things. That's been a big focus of mine, is taking advantage of the things that Coke already has in place, and bringing them to a new way, and a new way to sort of participate in those partnerships via the bottles basically. >> So the website is by... >> Well, you can go to cokestore.com, that's the easiest way, or shareacoke.com. The reason we've sort of moved to the cokestore.com, think about it, it was kind of a program to begin with, now Share A Coke is just a piece of sort of an overall direct-to-consumer offering that we have. >> So, exciting opportunity tonight with being a finalist with this award, what are some of the things that you're looking forward to as 2018 continues in terms of, maybe some of the next iterations of products or opportunities based on what you're hearing from your consumers? >> Yeah, I think the next year or so is really going to be interesting and where we go in terms of direct-to-consumer and what things we can push into further, I mean we know we've got a really good, solid, we know that we need to to be able to offer something that is special and unique so we will continue to follow that path of, we're not going to try and compete in selling something that you can get everywhere else. It just doesn't make sense. But we want to be able to offer things that we can truly offer that are unique from what you can get elsewhere. >> And continue that personalization, and relationship. >> Yeah, that'll be driving our roadmap forward will we always be unique, special, personal, exactly. >> Awesome, well Todd, thanks so much for stopping by and sharing about Share A Coke. >> Yeah. >> Now I know where to go to order a bottle since you didn't bring me bottles that say Lisa on them. >> I should've brought you a bottle, yes. >> That's okay, next time. >> Yeah, alright, perfect, thanks. >> Thanks so much again for your insight, really interesting conversation. >> Alright, thanks for having me. >> We want to thank you for watching theCUBE. I'm Lisa Martin, live at Magento Imagine 2018. I'm going to go get myself a Coke. I'll be right back with my next guest, see you then.

>> Narrator: Live from the Wynn Hotel in Las Vegas, it's theCUBE covering Magento Imagine 2018. Brought to you by Magento. >> Hey, welcome back to theCUBE. We are continuing our coverage live from the Wynn Las Vegas at Magento Imagine 2018. We've had a really exciting day talking about commerce and how it's limitless and changing dramatically. Joining me next is Sucharita Kodali, the vice president and principal analyst at Forrester. Sucharita, it's great to have you on theCUBE. >> Thanks for having me, Lisa. >> So commerce is limitless. We've been hearing this thematically all day. You primarily are working with retailers on their digital strategies. And you've been doing this for a long time. Let's talk about the evolution that you've seen in the retail space with everybody expecting to have access to whatever they want to buy in their pockets. >> Right, right, right. I would say, so I've been working in the retail industry for the last two decades. I've been an analyst for the last 10 plus years. I've really seen a number of changes. And if I had to just summarize the biggest changes, one is just the inventory across different retail channels. So, that's definitely been a huge huge one. It's like, how do you, how do you order online, but then fulfill the item from a physical store or fulfill the item from another store? So those are, that's basically the digital transformation of retailers. Those are investments that companies like WalMart and Target have really been doubling down on and focusing on. The second big change is Amazon. And they single-handedly have transformed the retail industry. They have increased consumer expectations. And what Amazon's also done is reinvented retail as a business model. Because it is no longer about just selling product and being profitable selling that product. Amazon actually is not profitable with a lot of the items that it sells. It makes money in other ways. And it is probably what I would describe as America's first retail conglomerate. And that becomes a really interesting question for other companies to compete, do you have to become a retail conglomerate? Then, the third big change is just brand selling direct to consumer. I remember when I started at Forrester, my very first project was with a large consumer electronics company that asked, Well, should we even sell directly to consumers? There's channel conflict and issues with our distributors. And now, that's not even a factor. It's sort of table stakes you have to sell direct to consumer. And that's probably where we'll continue to see a lot of retail sales in the future. >> So the Amazon model, we expect to be able to get whatever we want whenever we want it, have it shipped to us either at home or shipped to us so we can go pick it up at a store. It's really set the bar. In fact, they just announced the other day that a hundred million Amazon Prime members. I know people that won't buy something if it's not available through Prime. But I think this morning the gentleman that was on main stage from Amazon said at least 50% of their sales are not products they sell, they're through all of the other retailers that are using Amazon as a channel as part of their omni-channel strategy. If you think of a retailer from 20 years ago, how do they leverage your services and expertise and advice to become omni-channel? Because as today, you said essentially it's table stakes for companies to have to sell to consumers. >> Yeah, yeah. There are so many questions that really require, I call it destroying the retail orthodoxies. And retail has historically been about buyers and merchandisers buying goods. There's the old expression in retail, You stack 'em high and watch 'em fly. And that is just where buyers would, Take a company like Toys R Us, they would basically take what Mattel and Hasbro told them to buy. They would buy a ton of it, put it in stores. And because there was less competition back in the '80s, consumers actually would buy that merchandise. And unfortunately, the change for retailers is that consumers have so much more choice now. There's so such more innovation. There are small entrepreneurs who are creating fabulous products, consumer tastes have changed. And this old paradigm of Mattel and Hasbro, or kind of fill in the blank with whatever vendors and suppliers, pushing things is no longer relevant. So, there was just an article in the journal today about how Hasbro sales were down by double digits because Toys R Us is now going to go out of business. So those are the kinds of things that retailers who did not adjust to those changes, they are the ones that really suffer. They don't find ways to develop new inventory, they don't find new channels for growth, and they don't protect their own. They don't build a moat around their customers like Amazon has done, or they don't find ways to source inventory creatively. That's where the problems are. >> You think that's more of a function of a legacy organization; having so much technology that they don't know how to integrate it all together? What do you think are some of the forcing functions old orthodoxies that companies that don't do it well are missing? >> Yeah, it's a lot of it is just in the old ways of doing business. So, a lot of it is being heavily dependent, for instance, on buyers and merchandisers buying things. I mean, one of the biggest innovations that Amazon realized was that, look you can sell things without actually owning the inventory. And that is, their entire, what we call the third party marketplace, and that is just so simple. But if you were to ask a buyer at a major retailer a decade or two ago, "Why do you have to buy the inventory?" their response would be, Well, you have to buy the inventory, that's just the way it is. And it's like, well why? Why don't you try to find a new way to do business? And they never did. But it took Amazon to figure that out. And the great irony of why so many retailers continue to struggle is that Amazon has exposed the playbook on how to sell inventory without owning it. And so few retailers to this day have adopted that approach. And that's the great irony I think, is that that's the most profitable part of Amazon's business is that third party marketplace. And every retailer I've talked to is like, Oh, it's really hard. We can't do that. But, the part of Amazon's business that everyone is looking to imitate is their fast shipping. Which, is the most expensive part of their business. Amazon is only able to afford the fast free shipping because of the third party marketplace. Other retailers want to get the fast free shipping without the marketplace. And it just doesn't make any sense. And that's really the heart of the challenge is that they just don't think about alternative business models. They don't want to change the way that they've historically run their businesses. And some of this could mean that merchants are not as powerful in organizations. And maybe that's part of the pushback is that, there could be a lot of people who lose jobs. The future will be robo-buyers and financial services you have robo-advisors, why not robo-planners in retail? >> So one of the keys then, of eliminating some of the old orthodoxies for merchants is to be able to pivot and be flexible. But it has to start from where in an organization from a digital strategy perspective? Where do you help an organization not fall into the Toys R Us bucket? >> Yeah, I think a lot of it does have to start with merchandising and putting in some interesting digital tools to help merchants be more flexible. So, you want to flex to supply and demand. And some of that comes with integrating marketplaces into your own experience. Some of it can be investing in 3D printers that can make things that are plastic or metals based on demand. That's something that I always wondered why Toy R Us didn't, for instance, make Fidget Spinners on demand. Why did you have to get them with a six month leave time from China, it never made any sense. You can scale service, so use technology to match great store associates with a customer who may have a question. And you don't have to be in the same store. It can be a Facetime call with somebody who is far away. But very few retailers do that. And finally, the last bit is really to look at new alternative business models and finding new ways of making money beyond just selling inventory. >> That's really key because there are so many oppurtunities when companies go omni-channel of not just increasing sales and revenue, but also reducing attrition, making the buying process simple and seamless. Everybody wants one click, right? >> Right. >> Super seamless, super fast, and relevant. It's got to be something if you're going to attract my business, you need to be able to offer something where you know me to a degree. >> Absolutely. >> Or know what it is I might have a propensity to buy. >> Absolutely. And that's the entire area of personalization. And that personalization can be anything from a recommendation that I give you. It can be proactively pushing a recommendation. That's what companies like Stitch Fix do is I tell you what I want and then they send you a box in the mail of things I think you would like and oh, by the way are your size and within your budget. It can be customization. One of Nike's most successful parts of their business is their Nike ID program which allows you to customize shoes according to colors and different sort of embellishments that you may like. And that's exactly the kind of thing that more retailers need to be looking at. >> What are some of the trends maybe that a B2B organization might be able to love or some of the conveniences that we have as consumers and we expect in terms of-- Magento, I was looking on their website the other day and a study that they've done suggests 93 percent of B2B buyers want to be able to purchase online. So, new business models, new revenue streams, but it really is a major shift of sales in marketing to be able to deliver this high velocity low touch model. What are some of the things that a business like a Magento, could learn from say a Nike with how they have built this successful omni-channel experience? >> Well, interestingly I think one of the most important things to recognize is that every B2B buyer is also a B2C buyer. And their expectations are set by their experiences in B2C. So, if you have everything from all of the information at your fingertips, all of that information is optimized for mobile devices. You have different ways to view that information, you have all of your loaded costs, like shipping, or tax, or if there's cross-border. All of the information related to the time to ship, any customs and duties, all of that needs to be visible because in any experience that you have with say a site like Amazon, you're going to get that information. So, the expectation is absolutely there to have it in any situation whether it's B2B or whether it's buying components or kind of very long tail items. That's basically the cost of doing business at this point, is that you have to deliver all of the information that the customer wants and needs. And if you don't, the customer is just going to opt to go purchase that product at whatever destination offers it. >> Somewhere else. >> And somebody will. That's the challenge when you have 800 thousand Plus eCommerce sellers out there selling every product imaginable in the both B2B and B2C landscape. >> So, on the data side there's so much data out there that companies have any type of business to be able to take advantage of that. I know that there's, BI has so much potential. Are you hearing retailers start to embrace advanced analytics techniques, AI machine learning, Where are they with starting to do that? I know that some eyeglass companies have virtual reality augmented reality type of apps where you can kind of try on a pair of frames. Where are you seeing advanced analytics start to be successful and help retailers to be able to target buyers that might say, oh, I can't try that on? No, I want to go somewhere that I can touch and feel it. >> Yeah, well, it's emerging still. I mean, retailers have a lot of data. I think they're trying to figure out where is it most useful. And one of the places where it is incredibly useful is in the backend with fraud management. So, after retailers were forced to put in chip cards as a payment form, what you started to see was more of the fraud shifting to eCommerce. I just had two credit cards that had to be shut off because of E-commerce fraud. But that is where you see the fraudsters going to. And what you see as a result of that is some innovators in that space technology companies really leveraging machine learning, AI, other advanced data techniques to identify fraudulent transactions and to better help retailers eliminate or reduce the percent of transactions that have to then be charged back. So, that's probably one of the most promising areas. There are others that are emerging. We're seeing more visual recognition technologies. House for instance, is excellent at that and Pinterest too. If there's part of an image you like you can click on it or you can tap it and see other images like that. And that's incredibly difficult. And it was even more difficult 10-15 years ago, but it's becoming easier. There's the voice element, voice to text or text to voice. I think that the best applications they're often in customer service, there are so many interactions that happen anywhere in a consumer facing world. It doesn't even have to be within retail. You can think about the complaints to the airline industry or to a bank. And a lot of it falls into a black hole. You always hear that oh, This call may be recorded, but it is really difficult to go back and transcribe that. And to really synthesize that into major themes. And what ML in particular can do is to basically pull out those themes, it can automate all of that, and can give insights as to what you could be doing, what you should be doing, what are the opportunities that you may not have even known existed. So there are definitely emerging places. I mean even a visual recognition, so we talked about House and Pinterest. Another great example is the computer vision that you have in the Amazon Go stores. And there's a robot that the Wal Mart stores are now testing to go find if there are gaps in the inventory that need to be filled. Or if something is running low or out of stock. So there are definitely some interesting applications, but it's still early days for sure. >> So last question, we've got to wrap here, but, we're in April 2018, what are some of the, your top three recommendations for merchants, as they prepare for say Black Friday coming up in what, six or eight months. What are you top three recommendations for merchants to be successful and be able to facilitate a seamless online offline experience? >> Well, we always have kind of imbalances between supply and demand, and that's where I do think things like third party sellers, third party marketplaces are huge. So to be able to leverage that is certainly one opportunity. Another is to think creatively about promotions. In Japan they have these promotions called Fukubukuro promotions, and it's basically like grab bags of like all the left over inventory. But then they basically put it into mystery bags where you can buy it for half off. And consumers line up around the block at stores to go buy these grab bags. Because they also have also like a gamified approach where, you know, one of out 10 of the bags will have like an Ipad or some really high value item. So people really like these things, and they have trading parties. So just new ways of having promotions beyond just the typical door busters that retailers think about. And then kind of third I think is just try to pace out the demand. One of the big issues in E-commerce has been just the burst in demand that always happen in December. And that creates a lot of problems from the standpoint of actually shipping the orders. So the more that you can pull those transaction forward into November, the better off you are from a fulfillment and supply chain standpoint. >> Alright Sucharita thank you so much for stopping by theCUBE >> Thanks Lisa >> And sharing your insights on the trends and what's going on in the commerce and E-commerce space. Really enjoy talking with you. >> Nice to talk to you too. >> We want to thank you for watching. You're watching theCUBE live from Magento Imagine 2018, I'm Lisa Martin. Stick around, I'll be back with my next guest after a short break. (upbeat music)

(upbeat music) >> Narrator: Live from the Wynn Hotel in Las Vegas, it's theCUBE, covering Magento Imagine 2018. Brought to you by Magento. >> Welcome back to theCUBE's continuing coverage of Magento Imagine 2018 from Las Vegas. I'm Lisa Martin, joined by Anita Andrews, the director of analytical services at Magento. Anita, welcome to theCUBE. >> Hi, Lisa. How are you? (laughs) >> Very good, excited to be here. This is a really interesting topic, commerce. We talk a lot on theCUBE about digital transformation in so many different contexts. But really, it seems that commerce is becoming the center of gravity for digital transformation. Data is everywhere. There's so much opportunity for B to B organizations, B to C organizations, to leverage that data to drive new revenue streams, et cetera. Talk to us about what Magento is doing with respect to BI and how you're enabling your customers to use it to better their businesses. >> Yeah, so, I'm so glad that you sort of asked this question because we're doing a lot of conversations at this Imagine as opposed to previous ones around BI, around analytics, the role of data. And it's because I think we have a conversation and a story to tell around this. It's actually been long in the making. So, what we've learned after working with thousands of clients, from the basics of KPIs and reporting all the way up to machine learning, is that the approach to how do you launch this aspect of the business, really, that powers the entire business, is so important. Because otherwise, you end up with a crazy Christmas tree of solutions and no one really is moving the KPIs of the business forward using data. So, what we are doing is, we've created an infrastructure that allows all kinds of data. Whatever data that you have. It could be in a spreadsheet or it could be an automated feed. To come together into the platform to cleanse it, because everybody has dirty data, cleanse it, sort of model it for your use, and then be able to leverage it for, of course, KPIs reporting, but also run advanced data science on it, and then use that to power the commerce. And not just cross-sales and up-sales on the website, that's a story everybody wants to do and many aren't even doing yet, but also for things like email marketing, for online advertising, for vendor management, for inventory management. I mean, there's so many use cases. So, it's really about bringing the data together into a single place and then using that all throughout the organization. >> So, this is the eighth Magento Imagine. >> Anita: It's my first! (laughs) >> Mine too, ours too, at theCUBE! But you were saying that this is, the topic of business intelligence, is relatively new. Tell us, the role of data, you mentioned a number of use cases and multiple lines of business in an organization that can benefit from this. Why is this something that you think now is becoming so critical when 'big data' as a term has been around for quite some time? >> For a long time, and data has been around for a long term, right, everybody has spreadsheets from years back. I don't think it's that the role of data is becoming more important, per se, but I think that a lot of businesses have tried a lot of things and had sort of spotty successes, so online marketing is a lot better now with data. Right, I mean, absolutely. But this notion that there's these silos across the organization and the whole, I'm sure you guys have talked about this either today or yesterday, the whole customer-centric view that is becoming so vital to the business >> It's essential. online, offline, multi-channel. Well, the only way you do that is if you don't have silos. Right, and so this question of how do we bring all of this together and create the customer-centric view, and, by the way, you know, apply AI to many aspects of the customer experience, it can only happen if we sort of elevate the usage, the consolidation, all of that, and so I think that's a bigger problem. It's easy to kind of have a team work with data on its own. It's much more, it requires a lot more thought to kind of bring it all together and also get going, right? This isn't a a four-year plan to get there. You need to get going soon. >> Exactly, or you risk falling behind and not being able to catch up. So, let's talk about this modern stack. >> Anita: Yeah. >> This modern technology stack to capitalize on the e-commerce opportunities. Give us an example of a B to B organization, what they have existing when Magento comes and how they're able to use your technology across that spectrum of BI. >> Sure, so, most B to B organizations have data. Let's list some common sources of that data, right. So, first of all, they're going to have, most likely, Salesforce or some other sort of CRM database. They're going to have some sort of vendor database, right, either using a third-party tool or something they've home-grown. So often, something they've home-grown. They certainly have online marketing data, they've got transactional data, all of these different things that need to come together. So, in that way, they can leverage the MBI product, Magento Business Intelligence, to bring those data sources in together. Also, they can bring in their spreadsheets or whatever. But you use MBI to bring it together and then there's a level within that stack, the transformation layer, that allows you to sort of edit that data, right. I mean, back to the point of dirty data, edit it so that it's clean. So, you know that, well, in March we were wrongly charging shipping or something like that. Whatever the issues were, cleansing. And then start to report on that within MBI and create whatever sort of analytics you need to. But then you can also incorporate machine learning algorithms to start doing things like predictive analytics. So, start doing this vendor management, et cetera and then use that to, actually, MBI comes with some pre-built B to B dashboards, which is a thing that we just launched in the past year, which is also proving very useful. I mean, businesses have never seen this sort of total view of their customers, their data. And then you take, sort of, some of the learning and some of the information that's in the MBI and then use that to configure personalization Magento 2 commerce or, again, some of these other channels which might be email marketing, which might be, you know, call center scripting. I mean, whatever it is, that's kind of how it comes together. The MBI stack powering Magento 2, whether it's cloud or enterprise, and then other third-party tools that make sense to the customer as well. >> So, the customer has an existing POS system or an ERP system or a web store. Is it a simple integration process? How do they go about integrating that with, especially with, an accent group is coming on later today that has a hundred thousand skews and three thousand products. >> Yeah, so, the aim and the aspiration of MBI is to be able to take any data source, right. So, there's a bunch of data sources for which we have automated integrations. Literally, you put in your credentials and it starts flowing right away. Another option is that you have an API that you can use to import data in, so, if you've got the resources to leverage that, that's an option. Sometimes, if we don't have an automated integration, a lot of third-party data sources now will allow you to put them in a MySQL database or something like that. You can just just connect that directly to MBI, as well. And finally, we're very much looking at, from a product standpoint, how do we leverage the incredible community we have around Magento to develop more integrations, right. Because we cannot keep pace with the thousands and thousands of data sources that are launching every day. So, this community can and they are so close to what customers need to be able to bring in from a data perspective, so, we're also exploring that possibility as well, which would completely change the game. >> Yeah, you've got a very active developer community of, what, three hundred thousand developers? >> Yeah, it's something phenomenal like that. >> Lisa: That is phenomenal. >> Yes. >> When we look at the spectrum of analytics and we get towards the, whichever end it is, the right side, the left side, looking at advanced analytics. >> Anita: Yes. >> Artificial intelligence, for example, can you give us an example of a Magento customer that's being able to utilize artificial intelligence to drive new revenue streams or reduce attrition. Anything that comes to mind that's a really strong hallmark of your capabilities? >> Yeah, so, one of the ones that I love the most is around inventory management. And that applies to B to B and B to C, right. So, one of the things that we're starting to see a lot of traction and results around is advanced analytics and machine learning that's predicting how much inventory you have. So, inventory is money. You don't have enough, you're going to lose your customers. If you have too much, that's dollars sitting on the shelf, right, or accounts payable to your vendors, I mean, whatever it is. So, it is so, traditionally, it's been very hard to predict what you're going to need and when you're going to need it. So, there is now capability within MBI that you can feed into your vendor management or other sorts of merchandising management systems wherein you can sort of say, if you have a two week lead time to be able to get new inventory, then it can predict which of your skews, which of your products, are going to be running out before that two weeks end. And what we've seen with customers that are leveraging that is incredible increase in customer satisfaction rates because that sort of mismatch of, I thought I was going to get this but no, I'm not getting this, is going down. But they're also able to not even have to say it's out of stock on the site, which is a such a disappointing factor. So, improvement in conversion rates and customer satisfaction rates and on the flip side, there's another aspect of that functionality that says, well, do you have more inventory than, let's say, you know, two months' worth? And that two months piece is configurable per business, because if you're an outdoor goods store, two months in March for winter stuff is too late, right? You need to get rid of that now. But at the start of winter, four months might be great. So, all of that is totally configurable to be customized to that business, who knows the particulars of their business so well. And so, what we're seeing there is the, sort of, cost of goods that are being sent into after-market channels or sale or discount channels, is going down dramatically. And that's just a great case that I love because it's applicable, like I said, to B to B and B to C. >> So, on a B to B front, we have a lot of businesses behind us here. >> Anita: Yeah. >> As consumers, we expect to be able to get whatever we want whenever we want. Amazon just announced a hundred million Amazon Prime subscribers >> That's a lot of people. And people will not buy something if it's not available on Amazon Prime. We just think, what? We have to wait a week? >> Must not be a thing. (laughs) >> Exactly, exactly. But also something that the gentleman that was on main stage this morning from Amazon said, that about half of what's purchased on Amazon isn't sold by Amazon. >> Anita: Yeah. >> So, in the consumer space, we have this bar set very, very high. As business buyers, business buyers are consumers in their daily lives, as well. >> Anita: Yeah. I wonder, what are some of the trends that you're seeing on the B to B side that are maybe spilling over or being influenced by the consumer side and how is Magento helping businesses to be able to create these seamless experiences for businesses to transact in a high-velocity, low-touch model? >> Yeah, that's a really good question. You and I were talking before we got started here about how the buyers in a B to B environment, they're not a corporation. They're individuals. They're humans that actually are bringing their B to C personal experiences and expectations into their workplace. I mean, they don't turn into another person, right. They're maybe harder for procurement, you know, channels and all of that, but they're bringing the same expectations into it. So, frankly, you know, while Magento has sort of a B to B focused technology commerce platform, as well, that we've launched and is growing, as does MBI, you know, that will be a growing aspect, a particularization of the Magento platform. On the flip side, what we're also doing is saying they're not different and we're setting high standards for our B to B customers to say, it may be more challenging for you to act like a B to C customer, but that doesn't mean you get to, it may be hard for you to act like a B to C business, but that doesn't mean you get to not act like one, right, because the expectations are there. So, things like, whether it's as simple as what is order management, right, what is order tracking, what are ship and delivery timelines look like? Do I have various payment mechanisms, right? Consumers expect that, right, and those are often geographically dictated. Well, in the business environment, there may be other sort of procurement things to be thoughtful of. So, the conversation we're having, whether it's from a services standpoint or from a technology and product standpoint is have the same standards. And that is, frankly, in the conversations that I have day to day, I get a lot of but buts. You know, but, that's hard for us. Yeah, but so? Right, so let's figure this out. And, of course, you have to prioritize and all of that, you're not going to sort of turn from one end to the other overnight, but really, the message that we are seeing successful B to B customers hear and act upon is meet those consumer expectations and you'll knock it out of the park. >> Lisa: And who doesn't want to do that? >> Right. >> So, let's kind of turn the tides here. Let's look at Magento and how you're using your own technologies. How are you using analytics across that spectrum to really change the entire model? For example, you know, we talked about before we went on, as well, marketing. I'm a marketer. Marketing is a science now because marketers and every line of business has the ability to leverage data to drive many new opportunities. Talk to us about, internally, how you guys are using this spectrum of analytics >> Yeah. to continue to expand in B to B and B to C. >> Yeah, so, I'm going to give you a couple of different use cases, but this will be interesting because we're sort of opening up the kimono here about what goes on, you know, in our offices. So, yesterday, I actually heard our head of development, Ramadass, talk about a use case for using Magento BI within his organization. All of his different many development teams were tracking their tickets and numbers and all of that in various different ways and he sort of came in and said, well, this isn't going to work. I can't measure my organization. And he decided to deploy Magento BI across the whole thing. That wasn't easy, he said it wasn't smooth, but he started with one group who sort of took to it, and then once the benefit started to be seen, started to deploy across all the organization and he said, you know, he had the foresight and patience to stick with it and now he's got, you know, consistent view of what's going on there in the organization. Another angle that we use it from is, for example, with Mangento BI, there's certainly, it's different than implementing Magento Commerce, where, well, maybe it's not that different, but one aspect that I think is different is you do a lot of work to launch Magento Commerce and then, yes, you can expand your use a bit. MBI is pretty quick to get going, but how much you're using it throughout your organization or even within the product takes time. So, we've leveraged our predictive analytics to understand, to track those customer behaviors, and understand, well, when might be a good time to talk to them about, you know, machine learning? When might be a good time to talk to them about, you know, inventory management, whatever those topics are. But we're looking at those customer attributes, how far along are they in MBI, to run our online marketing campaigns, but even our personal marketing campaigns. We're not so big that we can't call up in our own customer success experiences and say, we think you're in a good place where you might want to think about doing this, as well. And then a third place is around customer support, so, a couple years ago, we used the product to figure out how much time were we spending on our customers, right? And there's a notion of a rate per hour. Are we allocating our time properly? It's very easy for the squeaky wheel to get the most attention. Is that the right thing for the business? So, these are the ways that we've used it internally. We're B to B, right? (laughs) >> Right! Would it be fair to say that you're democratizing data within Magento? >> Yes, everybody, I can at least speak to it on the MBI side and I know this is true in development, et cetera, everybody has access to the data. And that's kind of where, watching, you know, an individual contributor take that and run with it and sometimes it's a little bit too eager for me, and then I have to kind of dial it back, and we can't make all those changes today, but it is so impressive to see what they think about asking, what questions they think about asking of the business and that they feel like will solve an actual problem. >> So, kind of allowing innovation. Well, Anita, thank you so much for taking some time >> Yeah, thank you. to stop by theCUBE. We wish you the best of luck in your general session presentation this afternoon and we look forward to hearing from some of your customers and some of your leaders on the program later today. >> Great, thank you, Lisa. >> We want to thank you for watching theCUBE. We are live in Las Vegas at Magento Imagine 2018. Stick around, I'm Lisa Martin. We'll be back with our next guest after a short break. (upbeat music)

>> Narrator: Live from the Wynn Hotel in Las Vegas, it's the CUBE, covering Magento Imagine 2018, brought to you by Magento. (upbeat music) >> Hey, welcome to the CUBE, we are live in Las Vegas at the Wynn for Magento Imagine 2018. I'm Lisa Martin with my co-host John Furrier, and John, we have a really exciting day planned, talking all things digital commerce innovation. What are you most excited about? >> Well Magento's one of those companies that people know about, but it's the rocket ship in eCommerce, mainly because they've cracked the code on a few things, Lisa, that I'm really impressed with. One is, they've modernized eCommerce. ECommerce has been around 25 plus years on the web, with internet, but you think of it like the old Amazon, eBay, database world, but now we're living in a cloud world, cloud native's big, and there's still money to be made in retail as everything goes online. The digital transformation is impacting retail more than ever, smart phones is over 10 years old, so the question I've always asked is, where's the modern stack? So these guys have cracked the code on that. Two, and they're powering a lot of impressive sites, and the growth is phenomenal, but they have an ecosystem partner network that you can see behind us, if you can look at the camera you'll see hundreds of partners. So I mean, eCommerce obviously isn't going away, look at the growth of digital, digital natives are coming online, people want to do things digitally, but also it's changing the offline consumer experience. So there's a gap, traditionally, between online, offline, that's coming together. This is only going to get more acute as cloud, mobile, decentralized, block chain, there's still eCommerce in our future, and it's just never going away, and these guys have a really interesting approach, so we're excited to find out more here on what they're doing, their success, and how eCommerce is going to evolve. To me, that's the number one story is, can people leverage turnkey, scalable digital technologies to do business? >> So Magento has built their reputation on helping retailers to target online shoppers. You talked about online and offline, but they're now moving into the B2B space. As consumers, we expect, Amazon set the bar obviously very high, we expect to be able to get whatever we want as consumers, we're channel agnostic, we don't care, we just want to be able to find whatever we want when we want it, have it shipped to us, have it shipped to the store, and that is spilling over into the B2B space. And Magento's data suggests that 93% of B2B buyers want to be able to buy online, which not only changes the sales model, it changes the marketing model as well. >> I mean, they're taking the charge, that's the slogan here, and the thing that's interesting is that it used to be nice little buckets, B2C, business to consumer, B2B, business to business, but really it's a consumer to consumer role, and one of the things that you see right now social media is consumers are directly involved in either the content development process, or the engagement process. And if you look at no further than the side effects of what we see with Facebook, the downside of this whole data conversation is that the users want to be in control, and they are in control. So you're seeing almost a blurring of the lines between B2B, B2B, and C2C, where people need to tailor the eCommerce experience and have the data insights, either realtime, and or intelligent wise to know that the consumer is participating offline, they're online, but also peer to peer. The consumer to consumer relationship is to me going to be the cutting edge forward innovation area that a lot of these companies are going to innovate on because a lot of referrals are going on organically now as it's not so much audience anymore, because the audience is online digitally, it's about the network connection. So as people have a network connection with their friends, and you're seeing Facebook proving this, and LinkedIn, and others, is that you're going to start to see that data be very important. So I see a future where eCommerce stacks have to support consumer to consumer in any context, business to business, B2C, business to consumer, consumer to consumer, this is the holy grail, and whoever can scale that, again at large scale, while creating a money making opportunity, value creation opportunity for ecosystems is the winning formula. >> One of the themes that popped up during the keynote this morning with a number of folks that were on stage, including their CEO, and the Pittsburgh Steelers, was personalization. That's something that we expect as consumers, and as well as business buyers, we want to be able to have something where we know they know us, but we don't want to be marketed to. So Magento has done an interesting job and we're going to have a number of guests on the show today talking about how they're enabling this more personalized customized, you mentioned the word tailored, experience as a consumer to be able to get what I want when I want it, but also, through a now omnichannel. We're going to hear a lot about omnichannel today and how that's enabling new revenue streams, reduction in attrition, they talked about one of their newest features, Magento did, with the instant purchase. We want to be able to click once, buy it, and have it, something that means something to us, be able to buy it again, and again, and again. >> I mean this is the challenge right, in eCommerce, is table stakes are some of these features like instant click buying, having the kind of personalization, but the real angle to me is bringing in the personalization so that the consumer's involved. So what you see with the Steelers for instance, they do realtime shooting of the game and incorporate the fan experience into the eCommerce experience really seamlessly and in realtime, and so what you have is a change of a methodology. And so, eCommerce used to be a very one directional monologue, you'd put content out there, people browse and consume. Now you have a realtime interactivity piece, which changes the content production perspective, and the Steelers pointed that out. In the tech world, we used to call this agile programming, when you write software development. So you start to see the concept of agile come into eCommerce where, whether it's an entrepreneur, Melissa, baking goods, or a business, they want to focus on the business at hand, not provisioning technology. So you've got to have a partner like a Magento or someone who can build all that tech turnkey so that people can focus on the business at hand and that's agile. So if they decide to incorporate something really fast, you can't have this waterfall process, and that's the problem with the content market, and that is a legacy baggage of eCommerce, where hey, we built it, we ship it, but we got to go back and decide what to change, and we got to push it through the code base. You're provisioning technology, that is an old way of doing things, that's not ideal for the modern era. You need to be very agile, very scrum like, to use that term, and content people need that to be successful because the difference between realtime and having that right experience is a matter of seconds and or context specifics. So agile content, can't be waterfall. >> Exactly, agile content that's data driven. You mentioned data earlier, we're going to actually be talking with Anita Andrews, who's going to be talking about what Magento can facilitate and deliver their users with respect to BI, the Steelers talked about that, they actually see when the Steelers aren't doing well, they see a reduction in merchandise, merch that's actually purchased on site. So they have the data to be able to make the decisions to deliver this personalized content in a way that they can see, how can we adjust our sales structure to be able to capitalize on revenue opportunities. >> I mean responding to data is really critical, so the Steelers example is great. When they lose, there's no sales, 'cause everyone's kind of bummed out. When they win, they sell everything out. So you know, in sports world, which is that big part of Magento's base, managing the assets of running the franchise, for instance, becomes a real big thing. Whether it's food, or apparel, or any kind of fan experience, they can adjust either dynamic pricing, these are the things that the content owners want. They want to be able to say, hey, we can understand sentiment from the data, and then adjust the marketing mix and content mix based on what's going on in realtime. That's a game changer, and if you can do that on a form factor for web, mobility, and future formats, whether it's cryptocurrency, that is going to be to me the tell sign of who's innovating. >> And speaking of innovation, this is the eighth event that Magento, the eighth Imagine event, our first time here, but you mentioned their partner ecosystem, there's 1150 solutions and technology partners you can see quite a few of them behind us here, a lot of people are needing this type of technology to be able to better merge the online and offline worlds, across consumers, across businesses. We have some great guests here who are going to talk to us about how they're doing that, enabling multi-retail, enabling multi-channel, and really enabling this true globalization of commerce to allow businesses to go, we actually have a guy from Coca Cola who's going to be on today, talking about the project that they are, where they're personalizing the Coke bottles, it's such an interesting topic of discussion because it's very personal and very relatable, and I think. >> Marketing's always, market to the persona of one, but now you have a brand relationship that's online and offline, and this is changing how companies are building their assets. So an offline retail outlet, whether it's a mall or a superstore, or whatever, that can be configured in a way that's complementary to the online, and then having the merging of the data, and then having that relationship with the consumer. To me, omnichannel is a huge retail challenge, it's super important, because at the end of the day, do you want to have that insight into the customer, but also have the great experience, that's key. >> Exactly, so we're going to be talking with the Accent Group, who's an award nominee for their awards here, and they're going to be talking about how they are merging multiple brands, hundreds of thousands of SKUs to be able to facilitate, and also give them the insight that retailers need on inventory, giving them fulfillment options, there's so much positive business outcomes that can be generated from this. We talked about reducing attrition, getting us faster check outs, we want to have something that's very simple, very seamless, and as you pointed out, really interesting to understand, what is the modern technology stack that can facilitate that? >> Yeah, great user experience, retail intelligence is something I think that's going to be something that's fascinating, and again, it's all about scale and the technology stack, and taking that complexity away from the customer, because at the end of the day, the digital storefront is what people are going to be interfacing with on a primary basis, that's also very complementary to the offline. So I'm super excited, I'm totally pumped to get into it. >> Me too, well looking forward to hosting with you all day John, and again, we are live in Las Vegas at the Wynn at Magento Imagine 2018. I'm Lisa Martin with John Furrier, we're going to be here all day, stick around. We're going to be right back with our next guest. (upbeat music)