>> Live from Las Vegas.
It's theCUBE.
Covering Informatica World 2019.
Brought to you by Informatica.
>> Welcome back everyone to theCUBE's live coverage
of Informatica World 2019.
I'm your host, Rebecca Knight.
We are joined by Sanjeev Vhora.
He is the group technology officer
and global data business lead at Accenture.
Thank you so much for coming on theCUBE.
>> Thanks.
Thanks for having me here.
>> So we're hearing so much about AI lead data intelligence,
and the other buzz word of course,
that we hear so much about
is digital transformation.
I'd love to hear your thoughts on thiis data first approach
to digital transformation.
First of all, what does that mean?
>> I think what we are seeing is that, if you,
I think we do see that we are getting
into a post digital era.
Which means that in the last seven years,
most bigger companies and businesses have invested in
building a better customer engagement.
So what they did was they created properties,
like portals like mobile applications, you name it,
to just get better sense and touch their customers
better than they were touching earlier.
That was a whole investment that went
in the last six, seven years.
What they feel is that so what's next.
You do that, but does it really translate
into revenue growth?
Is it really translating into the experience
on a sustained basis?
Not one time, but on sustained basis.
Every time when you touch a customer,
they feel the same passion towards you.
They feel that they are still engaged with you,
and they want to come again to you
for whatever your offering, your services or goods.
They felt that that's not actually happening
and the reason why it's not happening is because
the underlying data is not complete or comprehensive
enough, or not accurate enough,
for giving that experience.
That realization is seeping up right now.
So they are asking for ensuring instead of looking
at a use-case base approach of solving one problem
for one business or one geography,
is there a way to do it enterprise-wide?
That a ask which is coming up.
Point which is coming out is
that they looked at that technology process
that's old tradition model of looking at new businesses.
Technology people processes and those three.
But now they're looking to fourth element,
which is foundation-call data.
That's what we are calling data-first approach.
You have to look at data as well,
while looking at reforming your business
services, and offers to the client.
>> I want to touch on something you said earlier,
and that is to make the customer feel passionate
about interacting with you.
I mean that's such a loaded,
and almost romantic word to
describe a customer interacting with a company.
Why is it that companies are trying to invoke passion,
and insight passion, inspire passion?
>> I think it's a way to differentiate yourself
with your competition, so I think that's what in
my view the businesses are doing right.
Let me give an example to you to make it real,
it may address your first question as well to some extent.
We are working with a cruise company,
one of the largest cruise companies North America based.
They obviously are trying to make
sure the experience of the customer
is much better than they had earlier.
Which can resinate to a much higher revenue
for them obviously, and inquisition of more customers.
The friends of friends, friends of customers if you may.
They had done a great job in creating that digital
property, and the transformation of the program.
But they also realize that they are now,
they realize that they really don't
have a sense of who's the customer?
Now that's a good question, after all
this investment you still don't know who's the customer.
That's where they came and talked about
can I get a single view of my customer?
The reason why they don't have a single view
of customer is because they actually don't own
all their individual customers.
They only own their own individual customers,
but they also work with their partners.
As you can see Experian and others
who actually own that same customer.
So they are not able to have a sense
of that customer, their habits,
and their behavior in one single place
so that they can really provide their accommodations,
saying well guest, if you're going to Italy
we can probably help you this summer.
>> So yes, exactly that's what I want to know
is what, if you do have a sense of who
your customer is, and that is everything from
their basic demographic information, to what
they do on Sunday afternoon with their families.
What kinds of things then can the cruise
company do to make that customer
more passionate toward the cruise.
>> They can do a lot, but I can tell you
another example of another cruise company.
Was looking at customer files and they
did a fantastic job, and I'm assuming
that you may have also experienced yourself.
This customer they had covered the single
view of customer obviously, but what
they did was use a lot of IoT or sensors in their ships.
They actually transformed the entire ship.
Like the entire ship has been transformed
to understand the customer movement,
and give that flawless and seamless
touch point to customers.
Which can help to have them a very great vacation
on their vessels if you may.
And that's what they did, from the day that you order
the tickets for this service
from that time onward they actually
send you a meridian.
That tracks you as a person moving into the ship,
and they can offer much more seamless services,
and also reduces a friction of the operations staff.
The staff is not in a hurry and hassle.
They're actually able to understand who's actually
the customer, what they want,
and they are able to provide that service.
So that's how they're using that feature
of knowing the customer, to better serve them;
being a better engagement with them.
Plus also eases the operational
friction in their own staff.
>> So the customer wins because they feel the company
gets them, and knows them, and understands them
and then the company wins because
then they're able to make more money
off that customer, because they already
have predicted what that customer
wants and needs at every moment.
>> And they can do more with less.
They can do more with less staff, less resources.
>> So one of that we are also talking
a lot about here on theCUBE it's the tenth
anniversary of theCUBE.
So we've had a lot of these conversations,
is how data is becoming a C-suite
discussion, and there's this growing
need to appoint a chief data officer
to drive data strategy.
What do you see as the evolving role
of the CDO, at your company
and then also at the companies
that you work with?
>> We see this is a very significant step in the future.
There are a lot of predictions from partner
and to our analysts saying that there will be more
and more roles, like three-fourths
large companies would have a CDO,
chief data officer.
But I think our point is likely,
you know, to augment that point I think
what we believe is that, we do believe
irrespective of who actually owns the agenda
whether a chief data officer or a CI, or a CO.
They definitely need a person at the C-suite,
not below C-suite.
To have that discussion at the table,
and then show that their data strategy is attached
to their business strategy,
and that's not true in many cases right now.
So the data is a topic which is two levels
down in many organizations and that's why it's not
getting that attention as a corporate asset
as a strategic asset from where
you can actually extract value
that you are looking at right.
That's what we see, so we see a very broadened role,
we see who so is in that role,
we think there are a few qualities
that person needs to have.
The first one the person has
to have a seat at the table.
The second, is that person should
be able to understand business quite well.
Should be more innovative, business innovation
he or she should have an insider
business innovation, and if the person
is tech savvy it's good to have,
but it's not must to have.
We do believe that person should
be able to prepare a strategy,
and the governance of data across his or her peers.
So they know that what value they
are able to get from that data,
and how they can share it across their functions
and that's where the value comes in.
Plus, beyond that the last point
would be making sure whatever
they do, they do responsibly.
Do they actually make things work
whether it's using A.I.,
whether it's using any machine learning
or anything else they have.
They make sure that it's responsible data,
and make it secure for themselves,
for their enterprise, and for their customer.
>> Well that is certainly a theme
that we're hearing a lot about
at Infomatica World.
Talk about about the relationship
between Accenture and Informatica.
>> It's quite good, it's been good for years.
We have been working together for years.
But the last two years, or two and a half years
I think it has really taken a different shape
within the two companies and that's largely
because we have really gone into
a strategic discussion within both the companies,
and seeing what is the future.
I think one thing that they are doing
very well with their leadership.
Anil himself is CEO and Amit,
and Tracy, and everybody else.
And with our leadership is that we do believe
that we are on the surface of un-tapping the value, one.
Second thing is I don't think that used
cases will draw the benefit which
large organizations are looking at.
It has to be something done at enterprise level.
So think about like I think there another
talk in the morning about enterprise data catalog.
Amit was talking about, you need that,
you need that to not do one used case
for one particular business,
for one particular country,
or one particular customer segment.
We need to do that for entire
businesses across the enterprise.
That can only happen if you have
a sense of data, and you know how
to do it effectively at scale.
That's what I think that people are looking.
Companies are going to be looking at
the solution base soon and I think
it's the right timing for having the discussion.
>> And there are going to be learnings
that you can derive from financial services,
and apply to retail and healthcare,
and all sorts of.
Is that what you're finding here at Informatica World?
Are you having those conversations
to learn the best practices?
>> Oh yeah, I mean I think we have our customers here
Accenture, as we have our customers here
we're presenting in different session.
We had Shumerjay present today morning
at 11.00 a.m. about how master data management
can actually help you drive a better
strategy on transforming your operations
system like ESPE.
That was never talked earlier,
two years back nobody talked about
saying how can MDM help you have
a better transformation of your ESPE systems.
Well that's where we are going.
We are saying that, okay you have
a trandiction systems, but you also
need a system of right governance.
Because all of your data, customer
data or other data may be sitting
in ESPE or may be sitting in sales force.
How would you connect the dots?
You need something to connect that dot
so you have a single source of truth,
and make sure that you know your customer,
or vendor, or you location,
or everything else in the right fashions.
>> Know your customer.
So another thing I want to ask you about
is the skills gap
and I know that workforce of the future
is something that you've worked passionately on.
Passion keeps coming up in our conversation
at Accenture.
Tell us your story first in terms
how you came to terms with this skill gap,
and then what you did at Accenture to remedy it.
>> So this is four years back,
and we were looking at our tech strategy,
and our strategy to rotate our business
going forward, or where do we invest?
And we are a people centric company
so we are 470,000 people,
that's a lot of people.
In my role, one of the things in my role
is to make sure that I look at all
the investment that we do on our people.
As CDO of our technology business,
I need to make sure that we are investing
in the right places.
So this came to me saying that okay,
will we be relevant as 470,000 people
ten years from now?
That's the question right?
Because of A.I., because machine in our name,
because human plus machine.
What happens to our work force?
So that's what I was trying to solve.
Instead he's saying, what do we do next,
and that was the whole point about
workforce of the future.
We will work more closely with the machines,
and how will that happen.
So what skills we will need as humans
to work with machines, and everything else
what's going to happen in terms
of automation going forward
and plus new talent which is required for the future.
So we worked hard on this we built a strategy
on what we need, then we did a very simple
thing, we actually went to a high speed execution,
and agile sprints.
We get it the few of principles actually.
I can say a couple of them to use to resinate.
One is came the principle saying there's already a lot
available in the market.
So don't spend creating stuff, but spend learning stuff.
The second thing the chains of mantra are
a vision of our people vision, employee vision.
It used to be saying,
that you need to preform and grow
something like that if you preform high
in our company, you will grow faster.
We changed the saying to learn and grow.
So we said learning is more fundamental
because performance will become automatic
when you learn more.
What we did was we changed,
we worked really hard on the cultural aspect
and one of the things Vijay used to always say
is that if in the past ten years back,
if you used to learn a day in a month,
well that may not be enough today.
Just because braked off technology and the change
of technology is much faster, it's 10X speed.
So you can learn at 10X level,
that doesn't mean you need to be learning
at deep level for ten things,
that's going to be hard for humans to do that.
But you can use some help,
that's what we do a two pronged approach.
One is what we call a skwasen training.
which means we make you more aware of everything
that's happening in the world,
and then we give you a chance to support people.
>> I mean how do you do that,
I mean that's a tall order.
>> So what I did was we went to the market,
and we looked at a lot of platforms.
Okay you need technology to do everything.
You get it right.
You will be sitting here talking
use of the right technologies, right?
Making sure that our what we're talking
is a little bit of a lot of people to watch us right.
But the same thing there when we were
looking at all the platforms
I looked at all things and I felt
everything was great
but it was a piece of engineering,
it was not something which is experiential.
So I had to build a platform off it all,
so I spent six months writing a whole platform,
it was a very smart team,
and thew whole logic I used was build a platform
which treats, employ a human in the center
of your developmental design.
So we made a very personalized platform,
where it helps a person to get there,
and attracts you to come back.
So it's very user friendly,
or a very experiential platform.
We call it Accenture Future Talent Platform.
We deployed it across our entire businesses,
we have 70 plus number of people who
are already being certified to their platform.
They feel good that they have gone
to the next stage of their career.
And now we are actually using
the same platform for our clients.
So we are giving them platforms
so clients can use that effectively.
>> From what I am hearing from you,
it's about having technology skills,
know how and expertise.
But then also having this mindset of learning
and a hunger for learning and wanting to know more.
How do you make sure that,
that culture is cultivated in the right way?
>> We did some of the campaigns, so a very simple principle
that we use is that like you do
a marketing campaign to attract a customer.
Whether he is selling a beverage
or he is selling a cruise experience,
or vacation, or whatever.
Use a similar principles for our own employers,
and use it as learning campaigns.
So marketing campaigns are learning campaigns.
So one of the campaigns that we ran was,
how important was it for you to be learning fit?
So just like we always measure ourselves on health everyday,
instead you measure yourself in learning.
So our app was actually given to everybody,
so you can see whether you are learning
enough or not.
We're in the culture of seeing how am I doing
against my own goals,
but how am I doing against Rebecca's goal.
>> Gameafying it, making it a little more fun.
Making it a little competition.
>> Plus we also did top down for it as well,
because we felt that people look
at their own models and say,
well this person is very sexist,
why would I want to be that person.
That's a normal human.
That's what people see so we made sure
that our leaders do what they are saying.
And they can buckle it down,
they should start learning faster itself,
from top management perspective
so that people see them learning,
they would say, I want to be like him.
So that means I need to have
the same behavior as this person.
>> No, those are critical people in companies.
Well, Sanjeev thank you so much for coming
on theCUBE, it's been a pleasure having you.
>> Same here, it was nice talking to you.
>> I'm Rebecca Knight.
You are watching theCUBE Informatica World 2019.
(techno music)