>> From around the globe, it's theCUBE
with digital coverage of IBM Think 2021,
brought to you by IBM.
>> Welcome to theCUBE's coverage of IBM Think 2021.
I'm Lisa Martin.
Terrance Wampler joins me next,
General Manager at Workday Financial Management at Workday.
Terrance, welcome to theCUBE.
>> Well thank you for having me.
It's great to be here, I appreciate it.
>> Nice that we can still do these events virtually
even though we were quite socially distance.
So the last year has brought lots of changes,
one of them being IBM Think and theCUBE being virtual,
but I'm curious to get your perspectives
and your observations.
We've seen many finance organizations have to rapidly pivot
and accelerate their digital transformation
making it a priority.
What are some of the key priorities that you've seen
that the C-suite, the CFO are dealing with?
>> Yeah, well, I think what's happening is
what we've seen are new ways to work
and using remote access, having to do mobile technologies.
What's happening is that's actually driving more risk
for companies.
And so as companies get more risk
that's driving the needs to have more scrutiny
on those business processes
and that's forcing them to want to accelerate
what they're doing in terms of a digital transformation,
other stuff like that.
It's also forcing them to think more about
the data they have and the information they have
looking forward and how they're doing planning
and how they can do planning
in terms of bringing people back to work,
in terms of new business models,
in terms of what may be next,
in terms of opportunity for them
or even doing catastrophe planning
as they work through this stuff.
And as they start to look at that,
they're really thinking about
how to make their business profit
and much more agile.
And so it's kind of a complicated thread
that you start to pull
as people start to change how things work.
>> Yeah, that risk is a big factor
and that pivot was so quick for so many businesses
where suddenly so many of us,
and so many of us are still remote.
I'm curious what some of the things are though
that you're hearing with respect to organizations
looking to start opening things back up
and bringing some of their folks back on campus.
>> Yeah, it's a very interesting dilemma
because what's happening is people have learned
how to work remotely now.
And so they're trying to figure out
how they're going to bring people back
to be more collaborative.
But at the end of the day
the first and most important thing they've learned
is that especially for a finance function,
they no longer want to be transaction operators.
What they want to start doing is pushing that work
to more automated tools, to have that be done for them
and try to promote themselves to be more like analysts
or even advisors to the business
or even a partner to the business.
And as they go through that evolution
what they're really trying to do
is unlock all of the potential
of the people they have, of the processes they have
and of the data they have.
So it has really made companies do,
is look at everything in its entirety
and want to change all of it,
but they have to go at different paces.
>> Definitely, talk to me about what Workday
and IBM are doing together
to help customers tackle these challenges,
adjust their priorities and accelerate that transformation.
>> Yeah, certainly.
So one of the things that we've done
is gotten together and created
this go to market strategy called Enterprise Finance.
And what enterprise finance does
is it really tries to meet the customer wherever they are.
So while all of these customers
are looking to accelerate their digital transformation
they come from very different places, right?
And their journey to that transformation
is going to be very different.
And that means that some of them
are going to want to be able to do
a full transformation right away
and do it globally and make a big change
because they've just been hit very hard by this
and they see it as an opportunity to grow.
And others are going to come from a very complex environment
and that complex environment could include
complicated manufacturing components in their solution.
And they need to look at something like
just a corporate finance layer
that has kind of an integrated planning solution
and consolidation, close capabilities
for them to be able to run their business
and be a little bit more agile at the top line.
>> So a spectrum of you said meeting them where they are.
There's a lot of customers in different places.
I'm curious what some of the things are
that you've observed over the last year,
that really are kind of unique ways
that finance leaders are approaching
this new way of working.
>> Yeah, so there's probably two examples I can give you.
One is a generic example where we have customers
that have participated in merger
or acquisition activity over the past year,
as it happens to be
or customers that have even spun up new divisions
with new business models, trying to introduce new services
or think about things that they can take advantage of
or even shifting away from old this months
that have been impacted by what's happening.
And as they do that, they will look to do a transformation
around finance in that function only
or for that subsidiary or for that division.
And so that's probably the first example.
The second example that I'll give you
is companies having to do something
they never thought they would do before.
I'll give you a simple example.
We have a large number of insurance companies here
in the United States as customers.
(clears throat) And we all probably got our rebate check
from the insurance company for our automobiles, right?
So what happened is
most of the large insurance companies identified that,
hey, we actually don't have much risk
because people aren't driving
and they're paying us these big premiums.
And so the insurance regulatory bodies
put pressure on those insurance companies.
So they had to figure out it business process model
and a mechanism by which to go out,
forecast what the premium reduction should be,
what the business should look like,
what that risk should be, do all of that planning
and then think about it
for their future actually and all the old stuff
and then figure out a process by which to get those rebates
delivered out to customers.
So there's interesting things
like that happening in process.
And if somebody wasn't running a remote system
that didn't have good agility,
they wouldn't be able to make that quick pivot
and get us all those rebate checks
that we were so happy to have.
>> Yes, very happy to have that.
It sounds like that was done
in a pretty fast turnaround time.
So I imagine you're also dealing with customers
who have sort of a TBD time schedule
where there's still so much dynamics going on
in the market today.
>> Well, that's exactly right.
I mean, because you're looking at different business models
in different industries, I picked insurance there,
but you can pick other extremes
like how are retailers reopening?
What are they thinking?
You can look at hospitality places,
how are they going to reopen?
How are they going to generate revenue?
How are they going to do planning?
How are they going to account for things, right?
So it's a range.
So what's happened is everybody's looked at this as
it's now an opportunity to not think in terms of years
or even longer range plans.
It's really an opportunity to be much more agile
and think about being able to dynamically move in quarters
or half year kind of increments.
>> Yeah, we've been having a lot of conversations about
how that time table has shifted
and it's getting smaller and smaller
because there's been so much flux and so much change
that these organizations are really figuring out
how do we actually shift
and not just organizationally,
but culturally as well to be able to adapt to these changes,
that can be pretty sudden and pretty significant.
I am curious too, Workday has historically focused
its financial management solutions
on really very much people intensive industries
but you do have customers that are outside
of that in the services.
You talked about insurance getting value from Workday.
Talk to me about some of those other expansion
of opportunities there are
in the more services oriented industries.
>> No, that makes a lot of sense.
And so I'll call it product based industries
but you can think about it
as manufacturing your other components,
but is people that have systems around product.
And while they might have complex supply chains
that Workday isn't able to support for them right now
they are looking at doing either
that corporate transformation layer
or they're looking at a solution we have
around the Accounting Center.
What Accounting Center allows them to do
is bring in high volume of data
from those source transaction systems
and then generate accounting from it.
But it gives them the ability to mix that operational data
with that accounting data
to do exactly what you're describing,
be able to pivot more quickly and do more planning
because they have a better foundation
from their data accuracy and the consistency of that data.
So they may be running multiple ERP systems
and as they're running those
they can bring that data together through Accounting Center
kind of in a federated way
and get better insight into what they need to do
to plan more rapidly to roll things out.
So they can kind of keep that execution system
of record system,
and then they can basically promote this
to more of a operational, planning
and analysis type function.
>> Have you noticed in your conversations with customers
the financial management changing
in terms of being elevated up to the C-suite
or a board level conversation
with businesses now suddenly being very laser focused
on understanding that reducing risk.
Did any of that change and shift
in terms of visibility in the last year?
>> Yes it did.
And the primary reason
is because finance has always been
the stewards of that information,
and they curate the data, they do all of that work
and then other people take it and do analysis.
The finance department has taken more control
of not only being the curator of that information
but also being the team that does more of the analysis
and has engaged more with corporate strategy
or the chief revenue officers
and trying to bring forward the ability to do analysis
and have a voice
in terms of what are the business models we should be doing,
what are the strategic growth initiatives
we should be doing?
How should we be looking at running the business?
Not just doing a finance function
but really doing that advisory role.
And it really has become
because the data is so important to make those decisions,
everyone wants these data driven decisions.
And they are the curator of that data
or the steward of that data.
So they've kind of helped promote themselves to do that.
>> What are some of the things
that if you look out into your crystal ball
for the rest of 2021,
what are some of the things
that you think we're going to see
in some of the key industries
that are working hard to return retail, manufacturing,
the supply chain.
We just had that big traffic jam in the Suez Canal,
and a lot of challenges there.
What are some of the things that you think
are opportunities that we're going to see unfolding this year?
>> Yeah, so I think it's going to be
first, around getting back to work.
So it's back to office stuff,
which we'll start on the HR side,
but it's going to lead to facility costs.
It's going to lead to worker safety stuff and reporting,
and it's going to lead to how you manage a healthcare
or other tracking of things,
is going to lead to how you engage with customers remotely.
It's going to be a number of factors
that are related to how do we transition back
into real life?
Because what we've started to see
is in different parts of the country or the world even,
parts of retail open up
but we haven't seen mass return to lots of offices
like here in the United States.
And I think that will drive a lot of different processes
in terms of about how people do working shifts,
how they do meetings, how they do analysis,
and there will be a desire then
to have those business processes automated, right?
The results of the transaction
that comes from that, et cetera.
>> That's a good point that you bring up
that there's so many things that I hadn't really considered
in terms of what it's going to take for businesses to return
and have folks come back to campus.
The extrovert in me just wants to go back
but you bring up a great point
and there's so many other facets
that they had to deal with rapidly last year
that have to be reconsidered.
And so it makes sense that automation
is something that they're looking at
as coming in and really helping
to automate certain processes to help reduce risk,
reduce costs.
Last question for you, Terrance,
where can customers go
if they are looking to get back on the track?
How could they engage IBM
and Workday together to help transform?
>> Yeah, so the best and easiest way is
we have some joint blogs that we've worked together,
but first there's this CUBE.
And then there is the joint blogs
that we've worked together to talk about Enterprise Finance
and how we're going to market.
And then Enterprise Finance talks about
the spectrum of a full finance transformation to a division
to a corporate layer.
>> Excellent, and I did see your blog.
It sounds like you've been very busy in the last year
which is excellent.
But thanks so much Terrance for coming by
and sharing with us all the dynamics
that are going on in financial management and beyond,
and the acceleration of elements of transformation
that organizations have to look at now.
It's very interesting.
We appreciate your time.
>> Yeah, thank you for having me.
>> For Terrance Wampler, I'm Lisa Martin.
You're watching theCUBE.
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