(upbeat music) >> Welcome back to Supercloud22. This is an open community event, and it's dedicated to tracking the future of cloud in the 2020s. Supercloud is a term that we use to describe an architectural abstraction layer that hides the underlying complexities of the individual cloud primitives and APIs and creates a common experience for developers and users irrespective of where data is physically stored or on which cloud platform it lives. We're now going to explore the nuances of going to market in a world where data architectures span on premises across multiple clouds and are increasingly stretching out to the edge. Paula Hansen is the President and Chief Revenue Officer at Alteryx. And the reason we asked her to join us for Supercloud22 is because first of all, Alteryx is a company that is building a form of Supercloud in our view. If you have data in a bunch of different places and you need to pull in different data sets together, you might want to filter it or blend it, cleanse it, shape it, enrich it with other data, analyze it, report it out to your colleagues. Alteryx allows you to do that and automate that life cycle. And in our view is working to break down the data silos across clouds, hence Supercloud. Now, the other reason we invited Paula to the program is because she's a rockstar female in tech, and since day one at theCube, we've celebrated great women in tech, and in this case, a woman of data, Paula Hansen, welcome to the program. >> Thank you, Dave. I am absolutely thrilled to be here. >> Okay, we're going to focus on customers, their challenges and going to market in this cross cloud, multi-cloud, Supercloud world. First, Paula, what's changing in your view in the way that customers are innovating with data in the 2020s? >> Well, I think we've all learned very clearly over these last two years that the global pandemic has altered life and business as we know it. And now we're in an interesting time from a macroeconomic perspective as well. And so what we've seen is that every company in every industry has had to pivot and think about how they meet redefined customer expectations and an ever evolving competitive landscape. There really isn't an industry that wasn't reshaped in some way over the last couple of years. And we've been fortunate to work with companies in all industries that have adapted to this ever changing environment by leveraging Alteryx to help accelerate their digital transformations. Companies know that they need to unlock the full potential of their data to be able to move quickly to pivot and to respond to their customer's needs, as well as manage their businesses most efficiently. So I think nothing tells that story better than sharing a customer example with you, Dave. We love to share stories of our very innovative customers. And so the one that I'll share with you today in regards to this is Delta Airlines, who we're all very familiar with. And of course Delta's goal is to always keep their airplanes in the air flying passengers and getting people to their destinations efficiently. So they focus on the maintenance of their aircraft as a necessary part of running their business and they need to manage their maintenance stops and the maintenance of their aircraft very efficiently and effectively. So we work with them. They leverage our platform to automate all the processes for their aircraft maintenance centers. And so they've built out a fully automated reporting system on our platform leveraging tons of data. And this gives their service managers and their aircraft technicians foresight into what's happening with their scheduling and their maintenance processes. So this ensures that they've got the right technicians in the service center when the aircrafts land and that everything across that process is fully in place. And previously because of data silos and just complexity of data, this process would've taken them many many hours in each independent service center, and now leveraging Alteryx and the power of analytics and bringing all the data together. Those centers can do this process in just minutes and get their planes back in the air efficiently and delivering on their promises to their customers. So that's just one of many examples that we have in terms of the way the Alteryx analytics automation helps customers in this new age and helping to really unlock the power of their data. >> You know, Paul, that's an interesting example. Because in a previous life I worked with some airlines and people maybe don't realize this but, aircraft maintenance is the mission critical application for carriers. It's not the booking system. Because we've been there before, we show you there's a problem when you're booking or sometimes it's unfortunate, but people they get de booked. But the aircraft maintenance is the one that matters the most and that keeps planes in the air. So we hear all the time, you just mention it. About data silos and how problematic they are. So, specifically how are you seeing customers thinking about busting the data silos? >> Yeah, that's right, it's a big topic right now. Because companies realize that business processes that they run their business with, is very cross-functional in nature and requires data across every department in the enterprise. And you can't keep data locked in one department. So if you think of business processes like pay to procure or quote to cash, these are business processes that companies in every industry run their business. And that requires them to get data from multiple departments and bring all of that data together seamlessly to make the best business decisions that they can make. So what our platform does is, and is really well known for, is being very easy for users number one, and then number two, being really great at getting access to data quickly and easily from all those data silos, really, regardless of where it is. We talk about being everywhere. And when we say that we mean, whether it's on-prem, in your legacy applications and databases, or whether it's in the cloud with of course, all the multiple cloud platforms and modern cloud data warehouses. Regardless of where it is, we have the ability to bring that data together across hundreds of different data sources, bring it together to help drive insights and ultimately help our customers make better decisions, take action, and deliver on the business outcomes that they all are trying to drive within their respective industries. And what's- >> You know- >> Go ahead. >> Please carry on. >> Well, I was just going to say that what I do think has really sort of a tipping point in the last six months in particular is that executives themselves are really demanding of their organizations, this democratization of data. And the breaking down of the silos and empowering all of the employees across their enterprise regardless of how sophisticated they are with analytics to participate in the analytic opportunity. So we've seen some really cool things of late where executives, CEOs, chief financial officers, chief data officers are sponsoring events within their organizations to break down these silos and encourage their employees to come together on this democratization opportunity of democratization of data and analytics. And there's a shortage of data scientists on top of this. So there's no way that you're going to be able to hire enough data scientists to make sense of all this data running around your enterprise. So we believe with our platform we empower people regardless of their skillset. And so we see executives sponsoring these hackathons within their environments to bring together people to brainstorm and ideate on use cases, to share examples of how they leverage our platform and leverage the data within their organization to make better decisions. And it's really quite cool. Companies like Stanley Black & Decker, Ingersoll Rand, Inchcape PLC, these are all companies that the executive team has sponsored these hackathon events and seen really powerful things come out of it. As an example Ingersoll Rand sponsored their Alteryx hackathon with all of their data workers across various different functions where the data exists. And they focused on both top line revenue use cases as well as bottom line efficiency cases. And one of the outcomes was a use case that helped with their distribution center in north America and bringing all the data together across their various applications to reduce the amount of over ordering and under ordering of parts and more effectively manage their inventory within that distribution center. So, really cool to see this is now an executive level board level conversation. >> Very cool, a hackathon bringing people together for collaboration. A couple things that you said I want to comment on. Again, one of the reasons why we invited you guys to come on is, when you think about on-prem data and anybody who follows theCube and my breaking analysis program, knows we're big fans of Zhamak Dehghani's concept of data mesh. And data mesh is supposed to be inclusive. It doesn't matter if it's an S3 bucket, Oracle data base, or data warehouse, or data lake, that's just a note on the data mesh. And so it should be inclusive and Supercloud should include on-prem data to the extent that you can make that experience consistent. We have a lot of technical sessions here at Supercloud22, we're focusing now and go to market and the ecosystem. And we live in a world of multiple partners exploding ecosystems. And a lot of times it's co-opetition. So Paula, when you joined Alteryx you brought a proven go to market discipline to the company. Alignment with the customer, playbooks, best practice of sales, et cetera. And we've seen the results. It's a big reason why Mark Anderson and the board promoted you to president just after 10 months. Summarize how you approached the situation at Alteryx when you joined last spring. >> Yeah, I think first we were really intentional about what part of the market, what type of enterprises get the most benefit from the innovation that we deliver? And it's really clear that it's large enterprises. That the more complex a company is, most likely the more data they have and oftentimes the more decentralized that data is. And they're also really all trying to figure out how to remain competitive by leveraging that data. So, the first thing we did was be very intentional that we're focused on the enterprise and building out all of the capability required to be able to serve the enterprise. Of course, essential to all of that is having a platform capability because enterprises require that. So, with Suresh Vittal our Chief Product Officer, he's been fantastic in building out an end to end analytic platform that serves a wide range of analytic capabilities to a wide range of users. And then of course has this flexibility to operate both on-prem and in the cloud which is very important. Because we see this hybrid environment in this multicloud environment being something that is important to our customers. The second thing that I was really focused on was understanding how do you have those conversations with customers when they all are in maybe different types of backgrounds? So the way that you work with a business analyst in the office of finance or supply chain or sales and marketing, is different than the way that you serve a data scientist or a data engineer in IT. The way that you talk to a business owner who wants not to really understand the workflow level of data but wants to understand the insights of data, that's a different conversation. When you want to have a conversation of analytics for all or democratization of analytics at the executive level with the chief data officer or a CIO, that's a whole different conversation. And so we've built very specific sales plays to be able to have those conversations bring the relevant information to the relevant person so that we're really making sure that we explain the value proposition of the platform. Fully understand their world, their language and can work with them to deliver the value to them. And then the third thing that we did, was really heavily invest in our partnerships and you referenced this day. It's a a broad ecosystem out there. And we know that we have to integrate into that broad data ecosystem. and be a good partner to serve our customers. So, we've invested both in technology integration as well as go to market strategies with cloud data warehouse companies like Snowflake and Databricks, or RPA companies like UiPath and Blue Prism, as well as a wide range of other application and all of the cloud platforms because that's what our customers expect from us. So that's been a really important sort of third pillar of our strategy in making sure that from a go to market perspective, we understand where we fit in the ecosystem and how we collectively deliver on value to our joint customers. >> So that's super helpful. What I'm taking away from this is you didn't come to it with a generic playbook. Frank Lyman always talks about situation leadership. You assess the situation and applied that and a great example of partners is Snowflake and Databricks, these sort of opposites, but trying to solve similar problems. So you've got to be inclusive of all that. So we're trying to sort of squint through this Paula and say, okay, are there nuances and best practices beyond some of the the things that you just described that are unique to what we call Supercloud? Are there observations you can make with respect to what's different in this post isolation economy? Specifically in managing remote employees and of course remote partners, working with these complex ecosystems and the rise of this multi-cloud world, is it different or is it same wine new bottle? >> Well, I think it's both common from the on-prem or pre-cloud world, but there's also some differences as well. So what's common is that companies still expect innovation from us and still want us to be able to serve a wide range of skill sets. So our belief is that regardless of the skill set that you have, you can participate in the analytics opportunity for your company and unlocking the potential of your data. So we've been very focused since our inception to build out a platform that really serves this wide range of capabilities across the enterprise space. What's perhaps changed more or continues to evolve in this cloud world is just the flexibility that's required. You have to be everywhere. You have to be able to serve users wherever they are and be able to live in a multi-cloud or super cloud world. So when I think of cloud, I think it just unlocks a whole bigger opportunity for Alteryx and for companies that want to become analytic leaders. Because now you have users all over the globe, many of them looking for web-based analytic solutions. And of course these enterprises are all in various places on their journey to cloud and they want a partner and a platform that operates in all of those environments, which is what we do at Alteryx. So, I think it's an exciting time. I think that it's still very early in the analytic market and what companies are going to do to leverage their data to drive their transformation. And we're really excited to be a part of it. >> So last question is, I said up front we always like to celebrate women in tech. How'd you get into tech.? You've got a background, you've got somewhat of a technical background of being technical sales. And then of course rose up throughout your career and now have a leadership position. I called you a woman of data. How'd you get into it? Where'd you find the love of data? Give us the background and help us inspire some of the young women out there. >> Oh, well, but I'm super passionate about inspiring young women and thinking about the future next generation of women that can participate in technology and in data specifically. I grew up loving math and science. I went to school and got an electrical engineering degree but my passion around technology hasn't been just around technology for technology's sake, my passion around technology is what can it enable? What can it do? What are the outcomes that technology makes possible? And that's why data is so attractive because data makes amazing things possible. I shared some of those examples with you earlier but it not only can we have effect with data in businesses and enterprise, but governments globally now are realizing the ability for data to really have broad societal impact. And so I think that that speaks to women many times. Is that what does technology enable? What are the outcomes? What are the stories and examples that we can all share and be inspired by and feel good and and inspired to be a part of a broader opportunity that technology and data specifically enables? So that's what drives me. And those are the conversations that I have with the women that I speak with in all ages all the way down to K through 12 to inspire them to have a career in technology. >> Awesome, the more people in STEM the better, and the more women in our industry the better. Paula Hansen, thanks so much for coming in the program. Appreciate it. >> Thank you, Dave. >> Okay, keep it right there for more coverage from Supercloud 22, you're watching theCube. (upbeat music)

>> Announcer: Live, from Orlando, Florida, it's theCube. Covering ServiceNow Knowledge17. Brought to you by ServiceNow. >> Welcome back to Orlando everybody, this is theCube, the leader in live tech coverage. My name is Dave Vellante, and I'm here with Jeff Frick, our cohost. This is Knowledge17, #Know17. Jim Hebb is here, the Advisory Director for People in Change at KPMG. And he's here with Nate Channel, the Enabling Technology Lead at JM Smucker and Company. Systems integrator, customer, gents, welcome to theCube. >> Thank you for having us. >> Thank you. >> So let's hear the story, JM Smucker, you told me off camera that you just started in November. Right? >> Nate: Right, we went live in November. >> Take us back to that decision point, where you said, "hey we need to do something here." What was that like? >> Well, I guess we were asked by the CHRO of Smucker to look into a current state assessment of their HR Organization. And from that, one of the things we discovered was that, the company is a family owned company, had grown organically over the years, had a very family type os environment, and while that is a big selling point for the company, it also resulted in a more relaxed approach to delivering HR services. >> Love the vocabulary. (group laughing) Relaxed approach. >> Relaxed approach, so essentially, if you were an employer manager and needed help from HR, you had to know who to go to. So you had to have a name, you had to go find them, if they weren't the right person, then you got passed to the next person. Certainly there was no way to record, track, have a collaborative, sort of tool to use for HR service requests. There was no way to report on information related to where things stand. Employees couldn't see where their service requests are it was email, phone call, stop by the desk. That was a gap that we thought, if you really wanted to transform the organization and really ratchet up the level of service, we needed to do something. >> A lot of tribal knowledge. But, now you're in IT, is that correct? >> I'm actually in HR. >> You are in HR. >> Is that where you guys started? You started in HR or? >> I actually joined the company a little less than a year ago. So the project was was already under way, when I came in. Yes, I did start in HR, and I think that, just coming into the organization, kind of seeing it where it was when I came in, and how everything was kind of fractured because we had gone through a lot of acquisitions and that's how we grew, and we grew very quickly. Nothing was really consolidated, so seeing this transformation has really been fantastic. >> But did you guys have ITSM installed or no? >> No, no. >> Okay, so the company started at .. >> Which is unusual right. >> Yeah, I was going to say. >> It started with HR and from there they have now decided to adopt the IDSM platform, >> Right. >> And are going live in a month or so I think. >> Yes. >> It's really interesting that they started with HR. >> So tell us about the implementation, how did it go, I mean a lot of people will share with us, it's sometimes very complex to implement, you chose a partner, to obviously reduce the complexity, share the risk. >> Yeah, so it felt very fast for us. From an IT perspective, we're not prone to doing anything agile. I think having that agile development life cycle come in was a shock to the system. It put us into the position where we had to really focus on what wanted and needed, very quickly. And we were able to do that, and I think we were able to put something in place that will benefit us in the future. And I think, it's benefiting us now. We've transformed our organization. >> And how did you get it in? Were things just breaking or how did you get the opportunity to provide the initiative to bring in this agile new tool? >> So it was really part of a broader HR transformation that we were doing with the company. We were looking at everything top to bottom, their entire HR operating model, their HR org structure, all of their HR processes, all of the HR technologies that we were conturently doing, a Workday implementation with them. Building a new shared services center, looking at their entire North American models. As part of that, this was just a natural piece of the puzzle that needed to be added. >> So a lot of people are confused and ServiceNow's trying to constantly explain to people, we don't compete with Workday. Talk to the practitioner, where does Workday leave off and ServiceNow pick up, if I'm an employee of Smucker, what do I interface with, am I talking to ServiceNow, am I talking to Workday, both? >> Actually our design, we have the portal in place. We have the HR service portal and that's really our gateway for our employees. So it's part of ServiceNow, but it leads them into Workday, and a lot of our employees associate those two as one. They think that if they're having a problem, or anything like that they need to access something, they go through HR Home, but they're thinking they're going right into our deck. >> Dave: It's an HR portal to them. >> Right, exactly. >> Dave: They don't really know or care what's at the back end. >> Exactly. >> Nor should they really. >> Nor should they. And that was presumably the design point? >> Nate: Right, right. >> Again, not always common, right, you hear different stories of different stovepipes, but you seem to have some success with this approach. >> We have, we always try to take it from the perspective of what does the employee manager need, and how do they want to interact with HR. So it's not about, HR often has more of an insular approach to, well, we're thinking compensation or benefits, or providing this type of function. Employees and mangers come and say, I have an issue and I need help with it. They don't really need to know, if this is comp or benefits, they can say, I have an issue with my paycheck, it might be a benefit deduction, it might be an incorrect calculation from payroll, it might be something related to retirement plan, so they don't need to figure that out and have to find where they need to go, they should be able to come to HR and get help, right from the start. >> So onboarding is the classic example. How has that, as a relatively new employee, how has it affected the onboarding process? >> We are still kind of hashing through onboarding right now. We're really focusing on the Workday side to get everything kind of ironed out perfectly before we truly bring ServiceNow as a part of that into it. But from any perspective where there's any kind of problem, we're directing our future employees to utilize the tool, as possible. >> Take us through the project, when did it start and how long did it take? >> It actually started with an RFP process. So we facilitated that, so we had five different providers that we were helping Smucker evaluate. Methodology approach, functionality, technical alignment, business and cultural alignment, cost. And from that RFP process ServiceNow came out on top. That was the selection point that was earlier in 2016, first quarter 2016. Because we were doing an entire transformation, we staged everything in sequential order in terms of what we were doing with Workday, Shared Services, redesign of operating model, all of that good stuff, and we ended up, as Nate said, launching, doing a soft launch, right after Thanksgiving for the ServiceNow platform, full launch with Workday, ServiceNow, Service Center, everything on the December 14th. >> And the business impact, so far is early days, but so far, and what's expected? >> It was completely different than anything we're used to, >> Dave: In a good way. (laughing) >> Yeah, absolutely, it was fantastic. I think our employee population really jumped on board very quickly. Instead of following that traditional HR, you know, pick up the phone or send an email, they're calling a Service Center, and they're following up on cases, instead of following up on emails. >> Jeff: Total relief. >> Yeah, I think we've definitely consolidated all of that into the ServiceNow platform. >> Alright gents, we got to leave it there. Yet another happy customer. It actually doesn't get boring after a while, I love to hear the stories, because things change so much, it used to be ITSM, and now we're talking lines of businesses et cetera, so gents, thanks very much for coming on theCube, appreciate it. >> Thank you, appreciate it. >> Thank you, thank you. >> You're welcome. Keep it right there everybody, we'll be back with our next guest. It's theCube, we're live from ServiceNow Knowledge17. Be right back.