you live from Las Vegas it's the cube covering you I pat forward America's 2019 brought to you by uipath welcome back everyone to the cubes live coverage of UI path forward here at the Bellagio in Las Vegas Nevada I'm your host Rebecca night co-hosting alongside Dave Volante we are joined by Gavin Jackson he is the senior vice president and managing director amia at uipath thanks so much for coming you are brand spanking new to brands thanking you AWS for four years yeah joined UI paths in September yeah I want to start this conversation by having you talk a little bit about what what appealed to you about UI path and what more do you want to make the leap after four years at AWS yeah so I had the privilege to be west of really having a really close proximity to enterprise customers and getting the opportunity to listen to what they really wanted when they were talking about their digital transformation journeys and as it turns out the sort of cloud first in the automation first eras if you will are operating models at to two sides of the same coin if you think about what the that the cloud proposition has been over the last number of years it's really been about sort of reducing or eliminating the undifferentiated heavy lifting so that builders can build and then that turned into an operating model principle and it became sort of cloud first it's the same thing for the automation world you know we are reducing and eliminating the undifferentiated heavy lifting of Tata a product of business processes and tasks and everything else whether they're complex tasks or simple tasks removing that so that builders can build and business people can innovate and given them the freedom to do what they need to do as business owners think about AWS we obviously follow them very closely yeah anybody but it strikes you didn't thank you such are filters yeah what's the analog so what I think we again I would say that we are we are providing tools so the builders could build but at the same time our our products that works across the entire business stack whether that is sort of automation first as an operating principle across all businesses or whether it's across a business persona whether it's a CFO or somebody in accounts or a salesperson or whatever might be we're building tools that take the mundane tasks away from those users so that they have the freedom to go and serve their customers or or innovate within finance or do the do the job that they really love doing and that's really important for the business it turns out there's not a lot of value and a lot of the work that people do every day so if we can remove some of that then innovation will have an exponential curve of progress and that's what we're focused on today yes yeah again there are similarities there so if I understand the you're shifting one date asked allowing people freeing them up to do so that they can have a strategic impact in their business yes yeah yeah I think it is so if you look at even the technology paradigms and how cloud and AWS evolved and then also the layer on how uipath is evolving in the same way so you have computing and compute power started really with the mainframe and went to distributed servers and then to virtual machines and then from virtual machines it went to hosted virtual machines in the cloud and then from then it went to containers and now we're in this world of server lists we're in the cloud right so effectively the logic lives in server lists and the infrastructure sort of disappears and that provides massive scale in the automation world you started off with big monolithic processes you then had sort of network processes with software and data in the middle of all of that networked RPA really came in as an early sort of tool to help automate a lot of that a lot of processes and now in the realms of sort of automation as a function where in the end like the end game really is where automation is the application and the the applications themselves the data sources the processes really disappear so that the best done analogy I can come up with a metaphor acting um up with is I'm a Marvel fan I'm a geeky kind of Marvel fan of my favorite character is his Iron Man or Tony Stark and more specifically the Jarvis AI so what's happening all the time with with Tony Stark in the Jarvis a is he's interacting with his AI user interface all the time and what's happening in the background is that Java she's working with probably you know a hundred different applications and a hundred different data sources and everything else and rather than having you know a human go and do what the integration work that robots are doing that for him and it's just coming back as a as an outcome yeah I'm gonna keep pushing on this yeah similarities and differences because where it seems to break down is where our PA is focusing on the citizen developer the the end-user I'm afraid of AWS I won't go near it I see that console I call it my techies hey you know AWS is you know you got to be you know pretty technical to actually leverage it at the same time I'm thinking well maybe not maybe my builders are building things that I can touch but help us square that circle yeah so I think you the world is trending towards as much automation as possible so if it can be automated or if you can reduce the the burden to get to innovation I think you know technology is moving that way even in coding I think the transit we're seeing whether it's AWS or anyone else is low to no code and so we we occupy a world within the RPA space or the intelligent automation space where we're providing tools for people that don't need a requirement or or a skill set to code and they can still manufacture a few world their own automations and particularly with a release that we're just announcing today which is Studio X it really kind of reduces the friction from a business user where's zero understanding of how to code to build their own automations whether it's kind of recording a process or just dragging and dropping different components into a process even like even I could do that and that's saying something I can tell you yes exactly yeah this idea of democratizing the the automation the building that you said yeah very much so what will this mean I mean what what does what does that bode for the future of how work gets done because that is at the core of what you're doing is typically understanding how and where work gets done or the bottlenecks where the challenges and how can our PA fix this so I think ultimately like a lot of technologies it's really about the the exponential curve of productivity and whether you're looking at a national level a global level a company level a human level every level productivity has declined really over the last number of years and technology hasn't done a great job to improve that and you can say that some technologies have done a good job again I'd use a TBS is a good job in terms of the proliferation or the how prolific you can get more code out and more more progress there but overall productivity has declined so our sort of view of the world is if you can democratize automation if you can use or add a digital workforce to your to your to your teams then you'll have an exponential curve of productivity which a human level is important company level is important a national level is important and probably at global level is important you know you guys might be right place right time as well yeah because I remember you know all the spending in the 80s said receive growth everywhere except the Nobel prize-winning economist Robert Solow yeah [Laughter] [Music] you guys are hitting it right at the right time yeah you be able to take credit for a lot of it but yeah your thoughts on that in terms of productivity depending yeah I think it is pent up I think that is where where we're at right now and it's ready to be unleashed and I think that these technologies are are the technologies that will unleash it I think really what's happened over the last number of decades probably is that the six trillion dollar IT industry they exist today has largely kind of increased productivity or performance of other technologies it hasn't really increased output so whether it's sort of you know the core networking when Cisco started core networking there was a big increase I would imagine in connectivity and outputs then the technologies that were laid on top of that maybe less so and it was just really kind of putting bad band-aids on problems so it was really technology solving technology problems rather than technology solving human output problems and so I think that this is now the most tangible technology category that really is turning technology into value and productivity for technology really unlocking a lot of value one of the things that your former boss Jeff Bezos said was bet on dreamy businesses that have unlimited upside these these dreamy businesses customers love them they grow to very large sizes they have strong returns on capital and they can endure for decades I wonder if you could put you iPad in that context of a dreamy business what does he know right I mean nobody right I mean so and this is one of the reasons I was attracted by the way to DUI path because I think I think that the robots themselves if you can just kind of look at the subcategory of the robot I think it's on a similar curve to how Gordon Moore was talking about the Intel microprocessor in 1965 and the exponential curve of progress I think we were on that similar curve so when I sort of project five years from now I just think that the amount the robots will be able to do the cognitive kind of capabilities it will be able to do are just phenomenal so and customers customers give us feedback all the time about to two things they love and they value what we do the value is important because it's very empirical for the first time they can actually deploy a technology and see almost an immediate return on their technology whether it's a point technology solving one process or a group of processes they can see an immediate empirical return the other thing that I like to measure I quite like is that they value it so they think they love it they love and value it so they love it meaning it actually induces an emotion so when you when you watch the robots in action and they watch something that has been holding your team back or there's been stifling productivity or whatever it is people get giddy about it it's quite fascinating to see comment about Gordon Moore and Ty that's a digital transformation when I think of digital transformation I think of data yeah what's the difference in a business in a digital business it's how they use data yeah they put data at the core and four years we march to the cadence of Moore's law and that's changed its that that's not what the innovation the engine is today it's it's machine intelligence it's data and it's cloud for scale where do you guys fit I mean obviously AI is a piece of that but but maybe you could add some color to where our PA fits in that equation so I think that's an important point because there's a lot of miscommunication I think about really what it means when you talk about digital transformation and what it means to be digitally transformed and really to see transformed you're really talking about a category of customers which are large more institutional enterprises and governments because they have something to transform what they're transforming into is more of a digital native sort of set of attributes more insurgent mindsets and these companies are to your point they're very data hungry they harvest as much data as they can from from value from data they're very customer centric they focus on the customer experience they use other people's resources oh the cloud being one great example of that and the missing point from what you said is they automate everything they've to meet it so part of the digital transformation journey is if it can be automated it will be automated and anything that's new will be born automated so let me ask a follow-up on that is there a cultural difference in amia versus what you're seeing in North America in terms of the receptivity to automation I mean there are certain parts of of Europe which are you know more protective of jobs do you see a cultural difference or are they kind of I mean we do see even some resistance here but when you talk to customers they're like no it's it's wonderful I love it what are you seeing in Europe so I don't I don't see much of a cultural difference there and I see don't I don't see yet I haven't seen any feedback yes Peres I'm very new still but I haven't seen anybody talk about really that this technology is a technology to take jobs out I think most people see this technology as a way of getting better performance out of humans you know pivoting them towards more so I would say like in some markets in my in my in my prior life in in many prior lives I would say that there's some countries like France for example that would have been a little bit more stayed within their approach to new technologies and adoption not so with regards to automation they see this as a real and game productivity increase thank you I think that's true for people who have tasted it yeah but I do think there's still some reticence in the ranks until they actually experience it that's why we'll talk to some customers about it they'll have bought a Thon's and just a yeah to educate people and what's possible to let them try to build their own robots and then people then the light bulbs go off that it's taking away the aggravations the frustrations the mundi the drudgery and then you said people get giddy about those things you don't have to do that yeah but then the question is also so so what creative things are you doing now so how are you spending your time what are you doing differently that makes your job more interesting more compelling yeah and and and I think that's the real question - so what is the okay yes receiving some money and people aren't having to do those mundane tasks but then what are what is the value add that the employees are now bringing to the table yeah so in actually sit and it takes made the right point as well in terms of the mechanism for doing that is the the part of the battle here is to spark the imagination just like anything really just let you like it back in the Amazon wild it's all of our spark in the imagination if you can if you can imagine it you can build it it's the same thing really with within our world now is figuring out with customers what think what tasks do they do that they hate doing either a user level or a downstream level what are the things that they really want to do that they need our help to harvest and so we do the same sort the same sort of things that we would have done with AWS where we did lots of hackathons and you bought lots of technology partners in with us and we would sort of building all of this we do exactly the same thing with the RP a space it's exactly the same this is really important because creativity is going to become an increasingly important because if productivity goes up it means you can do the same amount of work with less people so it is going to impact jobs and people are gonna have to be comfortable to get out of their comfort zone and become creative and find ways to apply these technologies to really advance but you know drive value to their organizations and actually I look at this as well as a long term technology whereas a long term technology is something that's important for my children I've three and they're still very young so twelve ten and six but eventually they will go into the workplace with these skills embedded they will just know the how you get work done is you have your robot do a whole load of tasks for you here and your your job is to build and to be creative and to harvest data and to manipulate data and and serve customers and focus on the customer experience that's really what it's all about the real brain works I've been a pleasure having you on the show at uipath thank you so much appreciate it i'm rebecca night for j4 day Volante please stay tuned for more from the cubes live coverage of uipath coming up in just a little bit

>> From San Francisco, it's the Cube, covering Girls In Tech Catalyst Conference. Brought to you by Girls in Tech. >> Hey welcome back everybody, Jeff Frick here with the Cube. We're at the Girls In Tech Catalyst event in downtown San Francisco about 700 people coming together, mainly women, two day single track event, where people are getting up and giving like 15-, 20-minute overviews of their story. Really sharing insights and how they got to where they were. Most of them had no idea that they were going to end up where they are now. So there's really a lot of great stories. And we're excited to be back for our second time. And our next guest we're excited to have is Lawdan Shojaee and she is the CEO of Axosoft, Lawdan welcome. >> Thank you, thanks for having me. >> So, what is Axosoft for people who aren't familiar? >> Axosoft builds tools for developers, mainly product management tool, a gate goi, a issue tracker. >> Okay. >> Yeah. >> And then, how long have you have you been involved with Girls In Tech? >> With Girls In Tech, about five years. We were the top sponsor and brought the Catalyst Conference to Phoenix when the first year they had it and this was back in I think five years ago. That's when I got involved with the board and loved the mission and couldn't stop. >> Awesome. >> I wanted to be involved in every way I could. >> Yeah, so we were there is Phoenix in 2016, I guess so a couple years ago. >> Okay, okay. >> So that's great. So it's such an important organization. What do you see some of the benefits, how are you guys really participating and helping take the advantages beyond the participation events? >> So I'll go just for today, right. And some of the things that I've listened to just this morning, just talking and re-familiarizing yourself with how important culture is. If you don't create a space for females in your corporation, they don't belong. So by creating spaces where they belong, then you automatically help them have voice. And the sessions today have all talked around that and I really am excited that I brought one of my employees with me here too. So she's definitely learning that and together we're going to take it back to the company, so. >> No I'm just curious how old is she in terms of... is she kind of young-- >> I think she's 27. >> and getting started in her career or (mumbles)? >> No, no she's 27 and she's a director of her departments. She the marketing director. >> That's great. Yeah, it's so important to have role models. And that's the other thing that keeps coming up over and over and over again. You know, they need to have the young girls. Young women need to have, >> Yeah. >> like looking people, women, >> Right. >> in women in senior executive positions, so they can envision themselves going there. >> Yes. >> So I know one of your passions is basically, obviously, your business is built around development and coding. >> It is. But having people have the knowledge, girls specifically, get some basic overview-- >> Yes. >> of what is coding, what is software development. So it's not this mysterious, this mysterious thing that's out there in the ether. >> Right. >> I know that's something that you've been putting a lot of time in. >> So here's how I view our education program right now. What we do with our kids is we put them in there, and we say go. And we educate them on how to become industrial workers. In the future, is everything software. All companies, if they're going to stick around, somehow are going to be software. From the person you get your sandwich from at a fast food place to everywhere else. So we're sending these kids to school. They're going and learning how to become industrial workers. We never introduce them to programming at all until they hit college. And then we say, pick a career path. How do they even know that they want to go into programming if during high school, or lower years, they haven't touched it. >> Right. >> And as we heard it, one of the other speakers yesterday say, she wanted to be an actor and singer and on a whim she took a computer science class, fell in love with it and she's the VP of Engineering at Birchbox now. So, on a whim. >> Even though she had lots of examples to look at on the music and entertainment side. >> Yeah she went into the other side. You know she just tried one class and from there, >> Right. >> you know, she fell in love. If you don't know what it is, if you're intimidated by it, then you don't try it and I think that waiting until college when it's career time, it's too late. You got to introduce kids to it earlier. >> So there's a lot of things are trying to help, that obviously, changing the public school system is not easy and we were talking offline about what Brenda Darden Wilkerson has done in Chicago with part of the school district there, getting basic CS, >> Yup. >> into the program. But it's really not easy. >> It's not. It's very grassroots, so my company's based out of Scottsdale, Arizona and our state is not doing very much as far as putting computer science into the schools. And, which means in 10 years, when I'm trying to look for developers, I'm not going to have enough. Not only am I not going to have enough developers period, I'm not going to have enough diverse developers, right, because, we're not even introducing it to girls at all. So a few years ago, actually in combination with Girls In Tech, I put a campaign together called, "It Was Never A Dress." With "It Was Never A Dress", we started a program where we took 15 to 16 year olds, sometimes 18 and we taught them programming. And we turned them into Ambassadors of anything STEAM. And we took 50, put 'em back into the public schools and they're now actually now creating their own clubs with sponsors in their own schools and we taught them skills like how to fundraise with, ya know, Go Fund Me-- >> Right, right. >> to come up with this and there's actually working. I mean it was very grassroots, it was very small. >> And how old were they, when you grabbed 'em? >> So our youngest was probably 12. >> Okay. And the way we found them was we went to the schools and we said, who's your smartest, ambitious, who do you think is motivated, who wants to do something different, send them to our conference. And we took 'em for two days. We taught 'em programming, basic programming. We taught 'em, wearable technology and we made sure that they were in different districts, sent them back into the school system. (Jeff laughs) >> That's great. >> Grassroots right? >> That's the way to see it. >> A little guerrilla-style. >> Right, right, right. Well, ya know, we see that more and more. Like I know LinkedIn does-- >> Yeah. >> weekend Hackathons all the time. So there is kind of the grassroot corporate effort from people who that are paying attention. >> Yup. >> And do the investment, but as you said the schools are lagging way behind on the CS (mumbles). >> They are, they are, but ya know, I feel like if each company took a small amount of time and created little grassroots movements, we could make a pretty large impact. We're not organized right, because you know, someone's doing it in San Francisco, someone's doing it in Arizona. If we kind of got together as just major corporations and said, let's do this, let's just... Because tomorrow we have to hire these people and if there's enough then we can't have the equality we want if we're not teaching girls early enough, then maybe we can make a difference. >> So I'd just love to get your perspective since you've been involved in Girls In Tech so long is trying to be one of the catalysts for that type of, you know, activity cross. >> Yup. >> Not only cross-state, but cross-country and around the world about the growth of this organization and how Adriana has taken it from... >> Yeah. >> I mean how big was it when you joined five years ago to where it is today? >> I mean the growth in numbers, I can't tell you what those are. But I can tell you the impact is huge. Every year I'm part of the Girls In Tech events and corporate boards. Seeing the impact and the feelings that it leaves for these woman is amazing. You now can talk internationally to woman and they know what Girls In Tech is, and they're familiar. And they're taking the Hackathons, they're taking the programs that this organization offers and they're learning and their getting jobs. And now I've been in it long enough where someone I met a couple years ago, who was just at a conference, kind of dabbling, took a course from Girls In Tech and is now in the career field, and they're kind of introducing Girls In Tech to others. So it's amazing. It's no longer grassroots. This is actually making a difference. >> Right, that's great. Well Lawdan, thanks for taking a few minutes. >> Thank you. >> And thanks for your longterm support of the organization, clearly you're not the only sponsor anymore and there's a lot of people-- >> Yes. >> that have jumped onto the bandwagon and that's all a good thing. >> Thank you. >> You're welcome. >> You have a great day. >> You too. (laughs) Alright, she's Lawdan and I'm Jeff. You're watching the Cube. We're Girls In Tech Catalyst 2018 in downtown San Francisco. Thanks for watching. (upbeat music)

>> From San Francisco, it's the Cube, covering Girls In Tech Catalyst Conference. Brought to you by Girls in Tech. >> Hey welcome back everybody, Jeff Frick here with the Cube. We're at the Girls In Tech Catalyst event in downtown San Francisco about 700 people coming together, mainly women, two day single track event, where people are getting up and giving like 15-, 20-minute overviews of their story. Really sharing insights and how they got to where they were. Most of them had no idea that they were going to end up where they are now. So there's really a lot of great stories. And we're excited to be back for our second time. And our next guest we're excited to have is Lawdan Shojaee and she is the CEO of Axosoft, Lawdan welcome. >> Thank you, thanks for having me. >> So, what is Axosoft for people who aren't familiar? >> Axosoft builds tools for developers, mainly product management tool, a gate goi, a issue tracker. >> Okay. >> Yeah. >> And then, how long have you have you been involved with Girls In Tech? >> With Girls In Tech, about five years. We were the top sponsor and brought the Catalyst Conference to Phoenix when the first year they had it and this was back in I think five years ago. That's when I got involved with the board and loved the mission and couldn't stop. >> Awesome. >> I wanted to be involved in every way I could. >> Yeah, so we were there is Phoenix in 2016, I guess so a couple years ago. >> Okay, okay. >> So that's great. So it's such an important organization. What do you see some of the benefits, how are you guys really participating and helping take the advantages beyond the participation events? >> So I'll go just for today, right. And some of the things that I've listened to just this morning, just talking and re-familiarizing yourself with how important culture is. If you don't create a space for females in your corporation, they don't belong. So by creating spaces where they belong, then you automatically help them have voice. And the sessions today have all talked around that and I really am excited that I brought one of my employees with me here too. So she's definitely learning that and together we're going to take it back to the company, so. >> No I'm just curious how old is she in terms of... is she kind of young-- >> I think she's 27. >> and getting started in her career or (mumbles)? >> No, no she's 27 and she's a director of her departments. She the marketing director. >> That's great. Yeah, it's so important to have role models. And that's the other thing that keeps coming up over and over and over again. You know, they need to have the young girls. Young women need to have, >> Yeah. >> like looking people, women, >> Right. >> in women in senior executive positions, so they can envision themselves going there. >> Yes. >> So I know one of your passions is basically, obviously, your business is built around development and coding. >> It is. But having people have the knowledge, girls specifically, get some basic overview-- >> Yes. >> of what is coding, what is software development. So it's not this mysterious, this mysterious thing that's out there in the ether. >> Right. >> I know that's something that you've been putting a lot of time in. >> So here's how I view our education program right now. What we do with our kids is we put them in there, and we say go. And we educate them on how to become industrial workers. In the future, is everything software. All companies, if they're going to stick around, somehow are going to be software. From the person you get your sandwich from at a fast food place to everywhere else. So we're sending these kids to school. They're going and learning how to become industrial workers. We never introduce them to programming at all until they hit college. And then we say, pick a career path. How do they even know that they want to go into programming if during high school, or lower years, they haven't touched it. >> Right. >> And as we heard it, one of the other speakers yesterday say, she wanted to be an actor and singer and on a whim she took a computer science class, fell in love with it and she's the VP of Engineering at Birchbox now. So, on a whim. >> Even though she had lots of examples to look at on the music and entertainment side. >> Yeah she went into the other side. You know she just tried one class and from there, >> Right. >> you know, she fell in love. If you don't know what it is, if you're intimidated by it, then you don't try it and I think that waiting until college when it's career time, it's too late. You got to introduce kids to it earlier. >> So there's a lot of things are trying to help, that obviously, changing the public school system is not easy and we were talking offline about what Brenda Darden Wilkerson has done in Chicago with part of the school district there, getting basic CS, >> Yup. >> into the program. But it's really not easy. >> It's not. It's very grassroots, so my company's based out of Scottsdale, Arizona and our state is not doing very much as far as putting computer science into the schools. And, which means in 10 years, when I'm trying to look for developers, I'm not going to have enough. Not only am I not going to have enough developers period, I'm not going to have enough diverse developers, right, because, we're not even introducing it to girls at all. So a few years ago, actually in combination with Girls In Tech, I put a campaign together called, "It Was Never A Dress." With "It Was Never A Dress", we started a program where we took 15 to 16 year olds, sometimes 18 and we taught them programming. And we turned them into Ambassadors of anything STEAM. And we took 50, put 'em back into the public schools and they're now actually now creating their own clubs with sponsors in their own schools and we taught them skills like how to fundraise with, ya know, Go Fund Me-- >> Right, right. >> to come up with this and there's actually working. I mean it was very grassroots, it was very small. >> And how old were they, when you grabbed 'em? >> So our youngest was probably 12. >> Okay. And the way we found them was we went to the schools and we said, who's your smartest, ambitious, who do you think is motivated, who wants to do something different, send them to our conference. And we took 'em for two days. We taught 'em programming, basic programming. We taught 'em, wearable technology and we made sure that they were in different districts, sent them back into the school system. (Jeff laughs) >> That's great. >> Grassroots right? >> That's the way to see it. >> A little guerrilla-style. >> Right, right, right. Well, ya know, we see that more and more. Like I know LinkedIn does-- >> Yeah. >> weekend Hackathons all the time. So there is kind of the grassroot corporate effort from people who that are paying attention. >> Yup. >> And do the investment, but as you said the schools are lagging way behind on the CS (mumbles). >> They are, they are, but ya know, I feel like if each company took a small amount of time and created little grassroots movements, we could make a pretty large impact. We're not organized right, because you know, someone's doing it in San Francisco, someone's doing it in Arizona. If we kind of got together as just major corporations and said, let's do this, let's just... Because tomorrow we have to hire these people and if there's enough then we can't have the equality we want if we're not teaching girls early enough, then maybe we can make a difference. >> So I'd just love to get your perspective since you've been involved in Girls In Tech so long is trying to be one of the catalysts for that type of, you know, activity cross. >> Yup. >> Not only cross-state, but cross-country and around the world about the growth of this organization and how Adriana has taken it from... >> Yeah. >> I mean how big was it when you joined five years ago to where it is today? >> I mean the growth in numbers, I can't tell you what those are. But I can tell you the impact is huge. Every year I'm part of the Girls In Tech events and corporate boards. Seeing the impact and the feelings that it leaves for these woman is amazing. You now can talk internationally to woman and they know what Girls In Tech is, and they're familiar. And they're taking the Hackathons, they're taking the programs that this organization offers and they're learning and their getting jobs. And now I've been in it long enough where someone I met a couple years ago, who was just at a conference, kind of dabbling, took a course from Girls In Tech and is now in the career field, and they're kind of introducing Girls In Tech to others. So it's amazing. It's no longer grassroots. This is actually making a difference. >> Right, that's great. Well Lawdan, thanks for taking a few minutes. >> Thank you. >> And thanks for your longterm support of the organization, clearly you're not the only sponsor anymore and there's a lot of people-- >> Yes. >> that have jumped onto the bandwagon and that's all a good thing. >> Thank you. >> You're welcome. >> You have a great day. >> You too. (laughs) Alright, she's Lawdan and I'm Jeff. You're watching the Cube. We're Girls In Tech Catalyst 2018 in downtown San Francisco. Thanks for watching. (upbeat music)

>> Announcer: Live from Las Vegas it's theCUBE covering ServiceNow Knowledge 2018. Brought to you by ServiceNow. >> Welcome back everyone to theCUBE's live coverage of ServiceNow Knowledge18 live from Las Vegas. I'm your host Rebecca Knight. We're joined by Raja Renganathan, he is the Vice President of Cloud Services at Cognizant Technology Solutions. I should say welcome back, it's not just welcome, it's welcome back to theCUBE. >> Thank you Rebecca. >> So tell our viewers a little bit about Cognizant Technology. What does your company do and what do you do there? >> I head the cloud services for Cognizant in the capacity of a vice president. Cognizant is a world-leading professional services company. Our objective is to help our clients to navigate the shift to digital. We have three pillars: go to market, we have Cognizant Digital Business which focuses on the user experience, data related, and we have the Cognizant Digital Operations which is predominantly a middle-office, back-end processing in an enterprise, and the third pillar is Cognizant Digital Systems and Technology which is basically modernizing the platform systems that is required to create the digital foundation. >> And you're also just this week been called a Certified Global Partner of ServiceNow so explain how that works. >> Our relationship with ServiceNow goes back six years. Today I think the ServiceNow line of business, which is under the cloud services, is one of the fastest-growing business unit for us. The key thing in any platform such as ServiceNow is the human intellectual capital. That is where we give a lot of importance. While technology is created by ServiceNow, someone has to go execute and implement the technology. So that's where we spent time and started hiring people, re-skilling the people, and then getting certified across different facets of what ServiceNow recommends as a part of their education system. So today we have about 850 plus certified people across the globe and we also do the delivery across our global operation centers, we also call it as RDCs, Regional Delivery Centers, we have one in Budapest, one in Phoenix, and one in Buenos Aires. So all these three centers caters to different service areas of ServiceNow. As a part of this RDC we're also adding, creating an experience zone, a ServiceNow experience zone, so when client walks in they not only see our associates working on projects, but they also get the panoramic view or the panoramic experience of how ServiceNow orchestration happens, how automation happens, how HR module works, and things like that. Because of the people we have, in terms of re-skilling and certification, we are being measured as the best overall global partner award yesterday in Knowledge18. >> Well congratulations. When you were searching for these people, as you said you had to so a lot of hiring, what were the kind of skills you were looking for when you were trying to find the top talent? >> If you look at Cognizant as a 265,000 plus organization we know the art of hiring people. >> And it is an art, it absolutely is an art. >> So our approach is, one we go to the campus, hire the fresh grads in all of the campus. If you look at of late the kids that are coming out of the campus, they are pretty smart in the sense of they come with the latest digital technologies, artificial intelligence, machine learning, natural language processing understanding, and things like that. So we take them and then we, within 30 days, we completely format them for ServiceNow. This is one approach. The second approach is we go to the lateral market and we hire and we bring them up to speed on the ServiceNow-related technologies. The third option is, with 265,000 people we have, the raw material is inside Cognizant, so we take people from other business units, other domain and then try to format them and to do that. But of late what we have started, especially within the U.S. footprint, is we go to all the community colleges and also we go to all the veteran's associations, those type of organizations and we hire them. So if you look at our Phoenix RDC, I'm proud to say that it is a woman-powered delivery center, when it comes to ServiceNow, with a pretty good mix of veterans. So these are the different approaches we use to hire people towards the ServiceNow practice. >> And they've been successful. >> They have been successful and if you look at how long can they continue in ServiceNow 'til they retire? No, so we do job rotation, every three years we give them opportunity. I have a unique advantage since I run the cloud services. I always rotate my people from ServiceNow to go to Amazon or to Microsoft as you're in different technologies every 24 to 36 months we do the job rotation. In that way I think I'm managing my retention well. >> So we know that the role of IT is really changing in so many organizations around the world. What are you hearing from customers, what are their pain points? What are the challenges that you're trying to solve? >> I think that's a great question now, Rebecca. We are in a very interesting time. The customers have a tremendous problem in their hand because they need to stay relevant in their business because business models are changing and if you look at for a retailer, the competition is not from the same industry. Similar for a pharmaceutical company, the competition is not from the same pharma industry. Everybody wanted to know, a pharma company wanted to know why Google is hiring 100 physicians. So the disruption is going to happen not in your industry, outside your industry. So that is the biggest challenge. The second thing is they need to continue to reinvent their business model. They cannot operate. We are hearing many stories like a lot of regional stores are closing because they didn't stay relevant to the business, to the customers. The third thing if you look at, let's take healthcare industry. Typically patients expect, historically, they were asked to maintain their prescription and medical records, but today in the new age patients are expecting the hospitals to manage everything because keep the data and intelligently apply the data because data is the new fuel or new oxygen, whatever you want to call it. >> Fuel, oxygen, one of those analogies. >> Data is going to play a critical role for any business. So every business is looking for how do I take the data and apply it intelligently? In the process how do I elevate experience? When I say experience it's both customer experience and also employee experience. So that's why if we look at, going back to the purpose of ServiceNow when John Donahoe was presenting in the keynote, he said, "We are in the world to make people's work better." The work is basically the experience. So we know about all the digital, every client is adopting the digital because of the advent of the cloud and the technologies around the AI, machine learning, et cetera, everybody is having a clear chatter of the digital transformation chatter as a part of their enterprises. So that is where we, companies like Cognizant, we go to them and then help them in truly being digital, how do you get there. That is where technologies like ServiceNow plays a critical role. >> And so it is the mission of ServiceNow, and it sounds like also the mission of Cognizant, to make the world of work work better for people. So give me some examples of ways that you are creatively solving employee headaches. How are you making the world of work better? >> I'll give a couple of examples. To start with, for a leading manufacturing company there are a lot of equipment dispersed across the field so we use IOT technology, sensors, and we collect the data, and the data gets analyzed and then we give a dashboard to our customers. When I say customers, the chief customer support officer, he or she can look at the dashboard and send the technician for evaluate it Imagine if the cloud was not there and moreover we use ServiceNow as a platform to do all the orchestration. If the cloud was not there, if products like ServiceNow was not there, this could have been a humongous task, but we are helping the problem for the customer. Today, with one click, the chief customer support officer can know which machine is giving which problem, accordingly dispatch a technician. This is one example. The second example is we are helping some agricultural companies where, in fact this came out during our hackathon, which I'll talk about you a little bit later, all this agricultural farms, the lands are there. When you wanted to grow something, you also need to know everyday what is the moisture of the soil, what is the temperature, et cetera. So we apply IOT technology and then collect the data and use ServiceNow dashboard to give it back to the customer. These are all real-time problems the customers are facing. There are so many examples, but if you look at most of the solutions and the outcomes what we give to the customer, it's all triggered by our innovation. So we are the only company, I can proudly say, conducted three hackathons with ServiceNow. When I say hackathon, all the people are put under one room and ideas were given and end of the day you'll get 100 plus ideas. Recently we did, about a month back, we did a global hackathon. First time we wanted to try India, three continents, seven cities, India, Budapest, Phoenix, 20 hours of continuous time. We generated about 115 ideas. Out of the 115 ideas, I think we are going to come with certain ideas and then put that back into ServiceNow app store. We have close to six plus apps already running on the ServiceNow store, now our plan for the next six months is to add another about 10 plus apps onto the ServiceNow store. >> That is the other questions that that begs. Are hackathons the best way in your mind to spark energy and innovation and creativity? >> Especially with the millennials. The millennials, yes definitely because they don't want to very mundane, routine work. They want a challenge, they are asking for challenge. So this hackathon is one of the ways to keep them happy. Because the future of workforce is changing with millennials coming in. And the jobs, they're also expecting, even in my team people wanted a change every 12 months. While we need to address our customers, we also need to take care of their expectations also. >> Let's think about the future a little bit now. What do you see your customers' future demands and where do you see Cognizant and ServiceNow being able to provide solutions to the problems they don't even know they're having. >> Right, right. So digital is the heartbeat. When I say digital is the heartbeat, the outcome is all about experience because if someone asks me, digital is not technology. Digital is all about experience so in order to give that experience, customers wanted multiple technologies, they wanted to reinvent, rewire, rethink their business models. So that is where we wanted to go as a Cognizant. For example, if you take ServiceNow, if you're taking that platform to them, how can I digitize your enterprise process, digitize your entire workflow and create automation, et cetera and then bring a collaborative work environment within your ecosystem. So this is what they are expecting. Nobody wants non-value add, mundane task, everything they want to get operated in an automation manner. That is where we are helping, basically anything that changes the experience, or pave a new way to the experience, that is where we at Cognizant we are constantly reinvesting on people, process, technology, and then taking that back to our customers. >> That's a great note to end on. Raja, we'll look forward to seeing you again at Knowledge19 next year. >> Thank you, definitely. >> I'm Rebecca Knight, we will have more of theCUBE's live coverage of ServiceNow Knowledge18 in just a little bit.