- Welcome to The Shiproom
where we learn from tech leaders
at some of the world's most successful companies.
I'm Brad Anderson, I'm the vice president of Microsoft 365.
Today we are joined by the CIO of Polaris, Matt Emmerich.
Matt, welcome to the show.
- Hi, glad to be here.
- Polaris is synonymous with all-terrain vehicles,
you know, I grew up riding Polaris snow mobiles.
In between the 12,000 employees that you have,
and the constant R&D, and the factories
and dealerships all over the world,
there's a lot of infrastructure that, probably,
people don't realize is required to make Polaris work.
- We have about 14,000 employees at Polaris.
And they're spread out in many different geographies,
doing many different types of jobs.
We actually have put a really big focus
on communication and collaboration.
- What was it like when Polaris had to, you know,
because of the pandemic, go to work from home,
shelter from home.
- We started seeing restrictions and knew that our employees
were gonna have to work from home.
We immediately turned on and immediately activated
all of the capabilities that we had for them.
So really, in the matter of about two days,
we went from having 4,500 office employees
working in our buildings, to having those people remote
and we didn't miss a beat.
I don't know that we would have been able to make
such a seamless transition to work from home,
without the investments and the partnership
that we've had with Microsoft
over the last two to three years.
Our employees are running purely on Office 365,
our files, our shares, are in One Drive and Azure.
To be frank, as I spoke with my CEO through this,
he actually gave us a ton of credit
and commented about how seamless and how effective
the transition from office to working remote has been.
- Hey it looks like we're getting a call on the Teams phone.
Welcome to The Shiproom, you're here with Matt.
- Ha, ha!
- Hej Venner!
Break out your finest barrel of wine,
Tycho Brahe has arrived.
I know what you're thinking,
this is all a little bit random.
And when I was 20 I lost my nose in a duel with my cousin
because we were fighting over who was better at math
during a friend's engagement party.
So I had to wear this metal prostetic the rest of my life.
- Obviously.
- Brad, don't rush my intro,
it takes a minute for me to set up the joke
we're working towards.
Brad.
Since you have someone there
who literally works for the North Star.
- You mean Polaris? - Yes!
Who knew such a thing was possible?
I just want to double check
some of my own measurements,
so I'm going to show you a list of common constellations
along with their traditional name
and you tell me if these are true constellations
of the night sky.
Or something that no good Kepler came up with.
Aquila, The Thunderbolt Eagle.
- True.
- The Golden Hair of Queen Bernice.
- No way, that can't be right.
- For the record, my grandmother's name was Bernice.
- Yes, Brad, that's who this was named after,
and it is indeed real.
The Glorious Metallic Nose.
It's a hint, I named this one.
- If you named it, yes, it must be a true constellation.
- Nope, that was comedic deceit from me to you.
I fooled you!
The Fiery Porcupine.
- No way.
- The Half-fish, Half-mammal, AKA Goat of the Sea!
- Real.
- Limax, the Slug.
- Fake.
- What's a slug look like?
Is this like a group of stars that all group together?
- Yes, it's a line of stars, but that line right there,
the one you see, it is unmistakably slug-like.
Truly, brilliant work.
And this kind of knowledge is worth its weight in gold!
One last question, one of the things the quarantine
has really wreaked havoc on is a supply chain
for most manufacturers.
How can technology help close these gaps
with things like automation, AI and cloud-based tools?
- We, of course, used a lot of technology
as we were trying to figure out where our supply chain is at
and our distribution channel.
A lot of those tools, frankly, ended up for us
to be low-code and automation-based tools.
So we were using RPA, we were using bots, really,
to figure out, not only what's open
and which suppliers are going to be able to provide parts
to our factories.
But what do we actually need to build?
And what do we need our suppliers to build?
So, all of those tools helped us substantially.
Of course the data analytics was the other piece.
You know, using Azure, using Power BI.
We took a lot of the bricks
and a lot of the analytical models that we had.
Tweaked them and are using those now
to help us with sensitivities,
using those to help us with variances
and really, new predictions in this COVID environment
that we're going through.
- Yeah, that low-code, no-code option
that the Power platform brings,
I think it's been a life-saver for many of us
because it's just so rapidly,
you can reinvent, if you will,
or re-optimize your entire processes.
And I think there are two big meta trends
that we're gonna see coming out of the pandemic,
you know, the one that's remote everything.
I think the other one is all about optimization
of everything that we do.
And I think most of us have seen
that there are certain place,
where we've had constriction points,
and we got to figure out how we optimize that
and these low-code, no-code solutions,
I think are gonna be core to that.
- I think the other thing that's coming out of this is that,
whether you were doing agile and being iterative,
the pandemic and where we're at right now
has really forced all of us to go there,
you have to work in smaller increments.
You have to be able to learn rapidly
and be able to, frankly, zig and zag your way to success.
- A few minutes ago, we talked about
how technology can support innovation.
I think culture is also a massive driver of innovation, so,
how do you, and how you lead, and how your team,
you know, brings technology to the organization.
How do they do that in a way
that helps accelerate the culture
that then helps accelerate innovation?
- If you and I would've been talking about culture
four, five years ago,
I think I would've described our culture
with the words that we wanna get it right.
And we wanna make sure that we're hitting the mark
and even words like perfection.
And I think, fast forward to where we're at now,
we've really pivoted our culture within the IT department
to be thinking a lot more about speed and agility.
What that's meant is that, hey,
let's talk about how do we do things in smaller increments.
How do we make sure that we're listening,
not only to the customers, and to the stakeholders,
but then progressing in smaller increments.
And frankly, when you add the technology tools on top of it
that allow us to work in smaller increments,
that's really transformed how we can do our work.
- This is a time, I think,
in how technology can impact culture
like it never has before.
Especially in this environment today,
most of us are working from home.
But it's technology that, I think,
now has more impact on culture than it's ever had before
and I certainly, I take a look at culture
in a completely different way than I did prior to Satya
becoming the CEO of Microsoft 'cause his primary focus
internally has been on the culture
and how the culture and this concept
of a growth mindset drives innovation.
Back in college, you basically paid for school
by running a vegetable stand, right?
- Yes, I did, that's exactly how I paid for college,
I ran a roadside vegetable stand
out of the back of a pickup truck.
- I'm gonna put all of your knowledge in that market
to the test, so I'm gonna show you here,
I'm gonna show you a real piece of produce
and there's gonna be a price on it.
What I want you to tell me,
is the real price higher or lower
than the price you see on the picture.
- Let's do it.
- The first one is called Dekopan oranges.
This is a hybrid of a mandarin and an orange,
and it dissolves when you bite into it.
Are these higher or lower prices than $200 per a half-dozen?
- They're lower, Brad.
- Yep, you're right, they're $79 for a half-dozen,
but still, $79?
Alright, next is a Ruby Roman grape.
Each grape is a size of a ping pong ball
and it has an 18% sugar content.
Are these higher or lower than $17 per grape?
- I think they could be higher.
- Man, you're good.
$225 per grape.
- Wow.
We didn't sell Ruby Roman grapes out of the pickup truck,
no one would've bought 'em.
- This is a premium Densuke watermelon.
They only grow 100 of these per year
on Japan's northern most island.
Are these higher or lower than $5000 each?
- I'm gonna go higher.
- That, you're right.
$6100 for a 17 pound watermelon.
- I bet it tastes good.
- Last one here, a still life painting
of some apples and pears.
Painted by French impressionist Paul Cezanne,
and it is title Pitcher and Fruit.
Was this sold higher or lower than $33 million?
- I don't have any Cezanne's in my art collection,
but I'll say it's higher.
- You're right, it sold for $59 million.
You hit a perfect score,
and that's the first time that's ever happened
on The Shiproom, so hats off.
Now, I also saw a really interesting way
that you've been using technology
to support the people working outside of the office.
It's a PowerApp that you created to schedule who's in
and who's out of the building.
Can you tell us a little bit more about that?
- As the restrictions were happening with COVID,
we quickly knew that our employees
were gonna be working remote.
We also knew that as an essential business,
we're gonna have some employees
that need to come into our offices.
We focused on employee safety and health.
And what we decided is that we needed an app.
And what we were really looking for, through this app,
was the ability to know who has to come into the office.
When are they going to be in the office?
Are they healthy?
Can we help that employee actually understand
some of the best practices and what they're looking for.
And then ultimately,
the information that we're using out of the app,
is allowing us to understand building occupancy,
deploy the right social distancing measures,
just helping our employees stay safe and healthy.
- One of the things we do in The Shiproom
is we have AI listening into our conversation.
And the AI actually comes up
with the 12 most pertinent questions
that's related to the topics
that you and I have spoken about.
Alright, so which of these two remodels
would you rather do to your house?
Building a larger closet?
Or putting in a hot tub that can actually do time travel?
- Hot tub, for sure.
- Who's the first celebrity that comes in mind
when you say snow mobile?
- Levi LaVallee.
- Polaris specializes in power sports,
what's the weakest sport?
Does all-terrain really mean all-terrain?
I'm thinking like, lava.
- Do it.
What's your favorite Prince song?
- Purple Rain.
- It's been so great having you here,
thank you for taking the time to do this.
I admire what Polaris stands for,
I admire the work that you do there,
and the technology and the transformation,
the culture that you drive.
Now, people wanted to learn more about Polaris
or more about you, where would they go?
- www.polaris.com
- Thank you again for being with us, and for everybody,
we'll see you then next time on The Shiproom.
- Knowledge is worth its weight in gold!
Actually, contrary to popular belief,
this was made of brass, but you know,
whatever, tomato, tomad.