JACK NORRIS: And to take an accountant and make them
a financial strategist, that's what upskilling is all about
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JUSTIN FEMMER: Hi, I'm Justin Femmer.
I lead PwC's data automation consulting practice.
JACK NORRIS: And I'm Jack Norris, SVP of Strategic
Partnerships at Alteryx.
JUSTIN FEMMER: So today we're going
to talk a little bit about automation
and some of the things that we're seeing in the barriers
need to be overcome to achieve automation at scale.
One of the things that we're seeing
across a lot of enterprises is big investment in ERP systems
not getting the ROI and returns they
expected from these big enterprise programs.
Part of that reason is, with approaches
like fit-to-standard, less customization in ERP systems
for purposes of business simplification,
a lot of the end-users' needs aren't actually all being
solved alone with ERP systems.
Hence, magnifying the need for downstream automation
and citizen automation.
So then we move forward.
We have many companies realizing that and going down
the path of citizen automation.
Problem with that is they're not achieving scale
or they're not achieving material results
in a short enough time.
A couple of the reasons for that are not establishing governance
on the front end.
So Wild West, you get some bespoke pockets
of citizens achieving some success
but not in coordinated fashion.
Or you have a very centralized model
where everything goes through a COE,
and that doesn't scale because all the users submit
their business cases.
You have a bottleneck, and as their needs change,
it's hard to keep up with the current state of flow.
So what we're seeing companies really
move forward now is a hybrid-operating model.
Getting support for users at the beginning
so that they can move from just getting
through the day-to-day things in order to get
to more strategic use cases.
And Jack, before talk maybe a little bit about some
of those strategic use cases we're actually
seeing achieved through automation,
maybe I could let you weigh in on what I said,
challenge me, or add on.
JACK NORRIS: Yeah.
I think what we're seeing is there's a business process
focus that UiPath is doing extremely well.
And Alteryx complements that with a data process.
So it opens up the types of use cases that are possible.
Use cases that provide context on what actions should
be taken, opens up the types of automations that are possible,
and really is core to achieving digital transformation.
JUSTIN FEMMER: Yeah.
And we've seen that.
We have seen UiPath and Alteryx combined,
as you mentioned, the data and the process to tackle 85% of,
call the data use cases that a lot of departments
have within a company.
What's even more exciting to me these days
and what we're now seeing is, as companies are really
launching and democratizing automation with these tools,
getting through the backlog of the things that they do today,
they're now moving into more strategic things like business
forecasting under who would have predicted COVID and all
the different scenarios and variables
that might impact the economy and our business performance.
We're seeing these tools be a big part of that.
ESG is another huge initiative.
Our firm, and I know a lot of other firms are really big on.
And how are we predicting our results or the decisions
we should make around alternative energy
as an example, or investments, what
does that do to our business performance
relative to all these other factors?
To get to that level, you've got to have a good handle
on your data and processes.
In the companies that have already been down this path
using UiPath and Alteryx and these types of tools
to automate their data, are in a far better position to layer
on scenarios and forecasting and all those other things.
JACK NORRIS: That's a great point.
And it's not just about the technology.
We tend to kind of focus on the technology,
but the people and processes that
surround that to kind of identify
the low-hanging fruit of productivity savings
that then you can free up those important employee resources
and address the more transformative top line,
bottom line risk-mitigation efforts, that's key
and I think that's where PwC is so core.
JUSTIN FEMMER: Thank you for that softball.
I'll take the basketball for the alley-oop.
That's a great point, Jack.
And I would say what we've seen is, obviously
when we talk about citizen automation it requires
upskilling of people.
And we've seen companies go through periods of training,
learning a new technology, but without sort
of that consistent opportunity to continue
to upskill for continuous reinforcement,
some of these programs have stalled out or gone flat.
So one of the things that we're working with a lot of companies
is access to our ProEdge site as an example.
It's got a lot of curriculum to really reinforce
that initial surge of training, keep it moving forward.
We have a lot of content on UiPath.
We have a lot of content on Alteryx.
That's been a really big complement
to a lot of the companies we're working with having success.
JACK NORRIS: When we talk about upskilling,
sometimes that's equated with technical training.
And to take an accountant and make them
a financial strategist, that's what upskilling is all about.
Hey, Justin, it's great seeing you,
it's been great here at the conference.
It's just hard to replace being live.
JUSTIN FEMMER: It is.
Thanks Jack, great seeing you.
Really appreciate everyone's participation
in the conference.
We've had a great time and really
look forward to seeing all these companies move forward
in the future in automation.
JACK NORRIS: And thanks to the Ui team.
Fantastic conference.
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