Good morning.
I'm thrilled to be here
kicking off the Envision Conference.
At GSK our purpose around protecting life and
fighting diseases never been more
important these last 16 months,
it has been crazy.
For everyone that works in Tech and especially at GSK,
where life saving and doing it at the scale
of mankind has meant everything to us.
Unprecedented, the most overused
word of 2020 and now 2021.
But that's the right word for us.
Tech has been the headlights
at GSK and in most companies around the world.
We started our transformation journey at GSK in 2018.
Agility, product alignment,
technology that was future-focused.
All of those have been our themes,
but let me tell you,
they have been massively amplified during the pandemic.
Everything has felt like it's taken five years in terms
of just a few months and yet
the acceleration digitally has been crazy.
At GSK, not only if we've been delivering the medicines,
making sure with agility that we can
both manufacture and get things to our patients,
we've also been in the process of splitting
our company into two great companies,
which is going to happen in first quarter of next year.
Tech has been in the middle of all of
that to incredible partners of
ours and I say that very carefully with regard to
strategic partners have been Accenture and Microsoft.
I'm joined today by Judson Althoff,
the EVP of Microsoft's Worldwide Commercial Business.
Congratulations, new title, and Julie Sweet,
the CEO of Accenture,
somebody I greatly admire,
who has an equal to me
need for speed around these types of things.
There are a lot of challenges and
opportunities that our audience and
my fellow business leaders are interested in
and so let's just start off Judson,
looking at future, what's your outlook?
>> Hey, thanks Karenann, and thanks for hosting
Envision for us here.
It's fantastic to be able to spend
some time with you and Julie.
Look, I think the first thing I
have to just say is a huge thank you
to you and the entire team at
GSK for everything you've done throughout the pandemic.
As you've said, it's been
a really a slog frankly for
the last 18 months and we had been
working together as an ecosystem to
help so many around the world and GSK's really
been on the front lines and so we're all grateful for
the work you've done and
grateful to have been a partner to you.
As I look into the future here for us,
we're finishing up a fiscal year here at Microsoft,
starting a new one in July and
the overarching theme that I have
for us here is one of digital optimism.
I say that first being
grounded with humility and being humble
for the fact that there are so many
that are still struggling around
the world to come out of the pandemic.
But there is this sense of optimism
that we will come out of it.
We will come out of it stronger
and technology will have a role.
If I think about it in many ways.
Over the last 18 months,
we've been investing in technologies across the board,
across every industry around
the world that will actually propel us into the future,
they'll enable us for hybrid work,
they'll enable greater resiliency in our supply chains,
they'll allow us to get back on track for some of
our big earthly goals around sustainability.
We'll get on top of cyber
and the threats that we see around the world.
I have this overwhelming sense of optimism.
At the end of the day, humanity will prevail.
Technology will have a role and if
technology has a role essentially
Microsoft will team together to
empower our customers to reach their potential.
Look, I'm excited about what the future holds for us.
>> Awesome. Julie, there has been a lot of
really interesting things that
have been going on and I know that you've
done some research in your area
around this topic as well on the outlook.
Any insights you would share.
>> Great. Fast of all,
it's fun to be together to think about
not the task in hand in your transformation,
but lift up and I would tell you that it's
the tale of three worlds right now, three worlds.
There's optimism in this Judson, its leaders,
laggards, and leapfroggers and
that's where the optimism is.
Pre-COVID and fall of 2019,
we measured the performance of
companies based on
technology depth, breadth, the leadership,
and culture, and looked at their financial performance,
the top 10 percent,
the leaders were performing 2x,
twice the bottom 25 percent.
Twelve months after the pandemic,
we just published this research we're now
18 months in that 2x is going
to 5x so great if you were a leader,
and by the way, the research shows the leaders are just
continuing to invest which is what we're seeing.
Now, the optimism comes from the lead for floggers.
This was a category that
was not statistically significant
back in 2019 and it's companies that are saying,
we see the urgency,
we need to do things differently.
They're characterized by three big things.
By first of all, systems,
maturities are really investing in
the Cloud and building the digital core.
Second, they're touching twice the amount of processes,
something we talk a lot about end to end and how
much are we taking on we
sometimes call that compressed transformation,
and third, they're expanding the reach.
In other words, they're breaking out of
silos to really do end to end.
Digital optimism, you too can be a leapfrogger.
>> Well.
>> If you're a lag.
>> Person, if you're
a laggard stay tuned for version four of Envision.
It is really insightful.
As a manufacturer, somebody
who's working in supply chain world that has
never taken a more left turn disruption
than it has during these days.
The panic sales that we had in order to
fill the pipeline on
medicines as well as our consumer health care businesses,
Air freight shut down overnight,
borders closed,
crazy things that were happening in supply chain.
Just to have essential workers get to work in
70 of our factories and across
the world for all of the colleagues that are watching.
Data analytics is the only thing that saved
us and I would tell you is agility in our analytics,
huge partnership to both Microsoft and Accenture in that.
Julie, I think there's a lot of
thought leadership at Accenture around this topic.
How are you actually
helping organizations when it comes to
this crazy time of
agility in manufacturing and supply chain.
>> Well, first of all, there really is
an acceleration and we've been investing in
digitizing supply chain and
including manufacturing for a decade,
but we didn't actually
anticipate it being huge for a couple more years.
It's like there were leaders of course.
But post-COVID, because of
the reasons whether it was health and safety,
the need to change to build resilience,
they need to change manufacturing.
There's been a massive acceleration,
but it's a lot like digital was in
2013 when we first started seeing it.
There are leaders who are now quickly moving
to do fast experimentation and scale.
The work we're doing together at Mars,
for example, where if you eat skittles,
you'll be excited because we're helping
fill in a much more productive and efficient way,
skittles bags.
It took us 12 weeks together with Mars to get that going.
It'll now scale and I know another theme for
the sessions today is sustainability,
so it's cutting down on waste.
But what is different then back in 2013,
2014 when people started on a digital journey is
the ability to use Cloud, digital twins,
existing technologies to go much faster,
use the data, as you said,
and get to outcomes and scale at a speed if you're
willing to do it and take it
on and go work across the organization,
that is really breathtaking and that is very exciting.
>> I want to build on one of
your points and just unpick it
Judson around climate and water crisis.
I know that we've been really consumed as a species,
working on survival around COVID-19 and
making that COVID the long game.
But climate and water crises are upon us as well.
At GSK, we launched healthy people,
healthy planet goals around this decade,
getting to zero impact on climate
and net positive impact on nature.
Tell me about the role that you think
technology is going to play there.
Because I think that is the next frontier
of this ecosystem of all of
us pulling together. Your thoughts.
>> Yeah, I couldn't agree more Kurt and look
we're actually excited about our opportunity here.
Just to ground in reality, you're absolutely right.
I mean, look, the last 18 months has been
about survivability and frankly,
we're not out of this until all of us are out of this.
So we still have a great responsibility to help
people get out and emerge
from the pandemic and thrive in the future.
That has actually placed in
a greater burden on sustainability
because most sustainable tech comes with a premium.
If you want to run your operations in a sustainable way,
there are a lot of companies out there looking
to bill you for services or
products that add to the cost of your bottom line.
Frankly, that's just not been tenable throughout
the pandemic to consider as
most people have just been trying to work through it.
What I love about this though is just
as no business is 100 percent resilient.
But those that are digitally
fortified are more resilient than those that are not.
The same is true about sustainability and
so much of the supply chain tech that Julie
talked about in her example with
Mars and the digital twins work that we're doing at
large with many companies across industry
can be leveraged to drive sustainable outcomes.
Not only do your business processes improve,
your carbon footprint reduces,
your waste goes way down,
and your consumption of water,
which is frankly our most scarce resource,
goes way down as well.
In fact, Christophe Beck,
who's the CEO of Ecolab.
He and I lead a Sustainability Forum a week ago.
We shared how Ecolab's water reduction capabilities
can effectively fuse
onto the digital twins that we've built across
manufacturing to bring down
the cost of water consumption.
So in effect, all of the work that
we've done over the last 18 months to
build resiliency in our supply chains
to get lights out factory operations will actually,
to borrow from Julie's analogy,
leap frog us forward on sustainability.
I'm really excited about it because Accenture
and Microsoft have fast pilots.
We can execute frankly with everyone to get people off
the ground so that this is a cake and eat it too moment.
You can build resiliency into your supply chains,
drive down your cost of operations,
and reach your net-zero
sustainability goals at the same time.
>> I love the way he said doing that
together because I think that that's
what it's going to take as we actually move this world
of work from the pure remote back into productive hybrid.
If tech isn't going to be the leading edge on doing
that because we were the leading edge
on getting us to remote.
In some ways that is going to be the easy part because
productivity in the office work environment
it's going to be it.
It's not just about the tools.
It's going to be about process reinvention.
It's going to be about the guidance that we get.
I honestly, I'm tremendously excited about what Accenture
and Microsoft are going to be able to do because you'll
both figure it out at scale for your companies,
and you're both going to come to us
as partners in that world.
Julie, tell us there's
some hope that we're actually going
to get the productivity that
we want in this hybrid environment.
>> I'm actually really optimistic about it.
We use my analytics for Microsoft,
so we're the largest teams user,
we bid at things.
It's really fun because I get to
say to Judson as a client like,
''I need this'', which is really great.
But I use the mine Alex,
myself where it says things like
you've had zero focus time.
That was my first report.
Zero focus time.
It changed my behavior and what I'm super-excited
about now is how
you get the productivity because as you said,
it's not the tools that companies are trying to
change behaviors to do digital acceleration,
and they need to change the culture.
For years, how many times it's said,
it takes years to change culture.
We're at Accenture ourselves in with
their clients using this data to do interventions like,
we were trying to create one
solution isn't it interesting.
These groups are talking to each other.
How's that going?
So when you think about
the collaborations that needed
in the new ways of working,
when you think about the fact that people need
to actually have thinking time.
That's been a real challenge in
the remote world with everybody at home.
This is where I think technology can
really help CEOs, CHROs,
business units make real-time interventions and not
wake up later with burned out
are saying why did not strategy.
The idea that we're going to set
12-month strategies and check them
later when there are ways you can
get more productive, more insights.
I think it's really tremendous and I'm using it myself.
It's not just what we're doing with our clients,
but literally how I'm moving with my leadership team,
our own work on behalf of clients.
I think it's super exciting as you can probably tell.
>> Awesome. Well, I don't think that you can
actually end a keynote without
acknowledging the craziness of
the environment that we live in with regard to security.
So Judson, I'm going to end it here
with maybe a couple of words from you and
insights around security because
I think that that is hyper
important coming through and then
maybe just your final thoughts.
>> Yeah. Thanks so much Karen.
Sadly, one thing that hasn't slowed down in the pandemic,
is the threats from bad actors.
There's been a lot of opportunistic attacks
that we've seen across industry.
We've been working really hard to
invest not only at Microsoft in terms of R&D,
but working with Accenture to help
customers adopt a zero trust platform from
endpoints to identity to the backplane that drives
Cloud application security as well as
the event and incident management.
The sad reality is, is that
digital businesses are in fact more
vulnerable than those that
are otherwise physically based.
But the good news is,
is that there is a technology foundation
that allows us to create
a real sound business environment for
operating against the cyber attacks
and warding off the threats that are out there.
So look, you should trust that
Microsoft and Accenture can help you-all frankly,
build a cyber protection strategy
that allows you to thrive in the coming era.
>> Awesome. Thank you both.
This was a terrific opportunity
just to hear your thought leadership
and actually to see the ecosystem
that we rely on in action. So thanks.
>> Thank you.
>> Thanks for everything you guys are doing
for all of us. Thanks Karen.
>> Thank you both. Great to see you.
>> Goodbye.
>> Thanks.