deal architect

New Normal: A conversation with Amit Shah of Excelitas Technologies

I have been doing video interviews with a number of CIOs, software executives and practitioners about acrobatics they have been seeing in various vertical sectors during the COVID-19 crisis and the "New normal" they can expect as the economy wakes up.

This time it is Amit Shah, who is CIO of Excelitas Technologies, a spinoff from PerkinElmer. As he describes it, they are "light people" with products which "create light, sense light and bend light".

Since they make components for avionics, imaging, temperature sensing and many other applications considered essential, the majority of their global locations remained open. Amit describes the hygiene and other protocols for their plants and other physical sites that most companies which shut down are having to factor now as they re-open. Several of their product classes like thermometry have seen significant demand during the crisis. 

They are an SAP ECC shop, moving to S/4HANA for financial applications which will run in the SAP NS2 cloud (since they do government aerospace and other contracts, they cannot operate in the public cloud). He describes how they handled their work-from-home situation. He also describes their use of Microsoft Remote Assist and HoloLens for field service applications.

When asked about likely changes in global manufacturing, he describes how they were already insourcing more and that their approach of controlling more of the supply chain has been validated during the crisis

I particularly enjoyed his description of their Advanced Manufacturing journey where they have applied Industry 4.0 concepts - robotics, digitization of shop floor, analysis of yield and scrap and work cell structures.

I also like his comments on pushing the pedal on R&D spend (a philosophy his CEO endorses) as that allows you to emerge even stronger when the economy improves.

He likes to paraphrase Churchill "a crisis is terrible thing to waste". His team clearly did not waste much during this crisis.

New Normal: A conversation with Seth Ravin of Rimini Street

I have been doing video interviews with a number of CIOs, software executives and practitioners about acrobatics they have been seeing in various vertical sectors during the COVID-19 crisis and the "New normal" they can expect as the economy wakes up. Here is the index to the growing list of interviews. 

This time it is Seth Ravin, Chairman and CEO of Rimini Street which provides third party support for enterprise software.

Seth is very widely traveled and when asked about acrobatics, he makes a striking observation on how Japanese business is going through a fairly dramatic digital transformation.

He sees customers seeking a fairly significant "cost realignment with their new revenue realities". He sees a focus on revenue-centric applications, and a de-emphasis of ERP "refreshes". He sees accelerating "lift and shift" moves of applications to cloud infrastructure as different from moving to SaaS. He also believes Rimini's virtual support model is timely in a world with travel restrictions. Broadly, he expects a gradual recovery spread over 2 to 3 years.  

I liked his comments towards the end where he says he is respectful of those who build software. "We would not have anything to support if these great companies did not innovate." As he says "We are all trying to help the same customers. It's time for all of us to pitch in."

Sure would be nice if Oracle, SAP and other large enterprise vendors adopted a similar attitude and respected the customer need for choice in this tough economy.

While they talk more about their other innovations, not third party support, also check out my interviews with SAP, Unit4, Salesforce, Infor, Workday, VMWare and other executives in this series. I have invited Oracle, Microsoft and other vendor execs and hope they join this growing gallery.

Work Boldly!

Even though I call myself a glass half-full optimist, like everyone, I have mood swings during this wild phase. I had a roller coaster of a day yesterday,  but did two calls in the evening and went to sleep very encouraged.

The first call was with Jason Blessing, CEO of Model N. He rattled off example after example of his life sciences and high tech customers who are running like crazy to come up with vaccines, therapeutics and other products to help fight COVID-19.  As I was listening to him - watch the video here, I was thinking about the intensity at which these executives are working. Like all of us, they have elderly parents, children running around while working from home, and they are working on unprecedented projects and products. I worry about burnout - is their pace sustainable?

I got a calming answer in the second call which ended about 9 pm my time. It was a call with Cassandra Long at the Taronga Conservation Society in Australia. It was a call SAP facilitated and I hope to post an interview with her in the near future. What was striking was COVID-19 was actually the second "shock" they had to adjust to after the one of brush fires that tormented the country late last year. Burnout? She was high-energy on the Zoom call.

The morning had started with HP Enterprises CEO Antonio Neri describing acrobatics at his customers including the Nightingale pop-up hospitals which were set up in a mere 9 days at the UK NHS. 

The afternoon continued with Bret Taylor, President/COO at Salesforce describing acrobatics during an analyst session. He talked about a banking customer as they handled the crush of emergency PPP loans and public health agencies as they tried early forms of contact tracing of infections.

These examples always inspire me.

I was a bit discouraged before my evening calls. Media and social media were highlighting the rise in infections in several US states which are opening up. Of course the numbers are discouraging, but they were not pointing out the June COVID-19 positives are very different from the March positives. They are much younger and likely much healthier and our hospitals have learned to change assortments of rooms and handle better surges in critical cases. I hate to be uncharitable, but I am reminded of Madame Defarge, the knitting lady who spends her day at the guillotine in The Tale of Two Cities.  

Give me time instead with hard working people any time. They, in turn, are working their butts off to bring the large unemployed pool back to work again.       

Which is why I was encouraged again this morning by Workfront's LEAP event with its theme of "Work Boldly". CEO Alex Shootman (see my interview with him about resilience during a crisis here ) and his team presented other examples of customer acrobatics. Particularly striking was the John Paul Mitchell "stimulus package" for beauty salons. This sector has been especially hurt by distancing requirements and they are offering a bundle of their products for free to stylists. We cannot forget those who work in brick and mortar settings.

That is why I am looking forward to a Cognizant webinar next week which will feature Harvard Public Health professor Joseph Allen talking about "Healthy Buildings" - register here. As I wrote recently, we cannot just talk Digital Transformation. The really smart companies are thinking Omni Transformation, including re-imagining their brick and mortar. 

For eons humans have found dignity through our work. Many of our family names continue to honor our occupational legacy. In all our doom and gloom, I am finding many heroes that are showing us proudly the joys of work and work ethic. 

New Normal: A conversation with Jason Blessing of Model N

I have been doing video interviews with a number of CIOs, software executives and practitioners about acrobatics they have been seeing in various vertical sectors during the COVID-19 crisis and the "New normal" they can expect as the economy wakes up.

This time it is Jason Blessing, President and CEO of Model N which helps life science and high tech companies with revenue management software.

He describes heroics at many of his customers - 24 out of 25 of his largest customers like Stryker and Gilead have worked on some life-saving COVID-19 related products or services. He also talks about others like Seqirus which is ramping up flu vaccine production for the Fall.

I liked his empathy and comments about commitment to his team during the crisis. And his comments about "focusing on the horizon". He has kind words for Marc Benioff and one of his mentors, Mike Gregoire. And for his customer executives - he has taken advantage of their increased accessibility during this WFH phase.

We also talk a bit about his passion for drone photography. He credits his Zoom background of the West span of the Bay Bridge, to his Mavic 2 Pro launched from Yerba Buena Island.

Wide ranging, very enjoyable conversation.

New Normal: A conversation with Grant Halloran of Planful

I have been doing video interviews with a number of CIOs, software executives and practitioners about acrobatics they have been seeing in various vertical sectors during the COVID-19 crisis and the "New normal" they can expect as the economy wakes up.

This time it is Grant Halloran, CEO of Planful (formerly Host Analytics) which describes its Continuous Planning platform as "marrying finance’s need for structured planning with the business’ need for dynamic planning,"

You can feel in his voice the intensity of planning, re-planning and even more re-planning during this wild phase. He calls it "high-frequency decision making".  He describes that at customers whether business is going up, down or moving into adjacent and new markets.

Abbott has seen huge demand for its ID Now molecular point-of-care COVID-19 testing technology, and in products like Pedialyte. The Boston Red Sox have, in contrast, had to deal with cancellation of baseball and likely a shortened season. Bose has had to adjust to its stores being closed and more ecommerce activity. Breville, a maker of appliances like coffee makers is adjusting to significantly more work-from-home.

We discuss likely opportunities as companies in every sector revisit their supply chains. We look at how pandemic modeling is likely to evolve. We also discuss how the market for data scientists and other analytical talent is likely to grow.

I particularly liked his empathy for CFOs at his customers. Not only are they furiously revisiting plans, they are having to deal with write-downs, renegotiated leases, workforce adjustments and a long list of other new projects while balancing their own personal stresses.

New Normal: A conversation with Paul Greenberg and Brent Leary on Sports

I have been doing video interviews with a number of CIOs, software executives and practitioners about acrobatics they have been seeing in various vertical sectors during the COVID-19 crisis and the "New normal" they can expect as the economy wakes up. The full index of interviews is here. 

This time it is Paul Greenberg of The 56 Group (named in honor of the NY Yankees' amazing season of 1956) and Brent Leary of CRM Essentials. We don't discuss much CRM, which they analyze in their day jobs. We talk about their coverage of the business of sports.

They discuss shortened seasons, how various leagues have handled diversity concerns around the George Floyd protests and the future of sports, digital and with fans in stadiums. They cover US football, baseball, basketball, hockey, soccer - lots of passion and humor around each. We even throw in the Olympics, cycling, cricket and NASCAR.

It was fun...I had another session coming up and hated to cut them short. Who knows we may have even discussed golf, rugby and much else.

Enjoy!

New Normal: A conversation with Bob Stutz of SAP

I have been doing video interviews with a number of CIOs, software executives and practitioners about acrobatics they have been seeing in various vertical sectors during the COVID-19 crisis and the "New normal" they can expect as the economy wakes up.

This time it is Bob Stutz, President of SAP's Customer Experience unit. He is Mr. CRM with a long, storied career at Siebel, Microsoft, Salesforce and now back at SAP for the second time.

Asked about heroics during the current crisis, he singles out supermarkets and grocery chains for staying up and running nearly 24x7. What used to be a routine, boring shopping experience has become a lifeline for people. He points out how much volume has moved to eCommerce - "every day has been like Black Friday" (SAP's commerce engine handles 561 GMV - Gross Merchandise Volume - that's larger than at Amazon and other online retailers).

He sees a resurgence in CRM with a focus on multiple ways - true omni-channel thinking - to get to your customers. "Simple phone calls are being appreciated". "How do we service customers when our stores are closed?" (BTW - see my related post about focusing on Omni, not just Digital, transformation based on my C level interviews during the crisis )

He also says the debate between on-premise and cloud has been settled once and for all. "Early adopters of cloud have weathered the crisis better" Of course, in a challenged economic environment, the migration to clouds will have to be done very differently at much lower cost, and with much more remote support.

I particularly enjoyed his comments about how he leads and stays calm during a crisis this deep.  He credits 22 years in the military for having taught him to deal with any crisis. "You need peripheral, not tunnel vision during a crisis".

I also appreciated his empathy for his people - points out the challenges of work from home that few executives acknowledge. He is generous to Marc Benioff - points out his Zen Buddhist influence in the meditation he does every day. He also says it helps to look at the world from a child's eyes. It's the Beginner's Mind - the Zen concept of shoshin - that I had written about in The New Polymath.

Very calming and very generous to "unsung" supermarket heroes, his employees and to Marc.  

SapphireNow Keynote: Professional, but in synch with the times?

I listened to Christian Klein's keynote from the virtual Sapphire event today - watch replay here.  It was his first as CEO and he came across very well. Energetic, professional and very comfortable in a digital setting. His keynote focused on 3 themes - resiliency, profitability and sustainability. He established credibility by saying in his previous role, he had lead SAP's digital transformation. He established empathy by invoking his new baby, Emma when he talked about sustainability and how that generation will judge us by our actions in the next few years.

Here are some comments on each of his 3 themes:

Resiliency - Given the turbulent times we live in, Christian could have hit it out of the park if he had focused mostly on resiliency, re-imagining broken supply chains and business continuity. He could have presented on heroics and acrobatics in his customer base as they massively scaled volumes up or down, as they delivered innovative new products or services in weeks, as they pivoted their business model or customer channels. In the lead up to his keynote, Alicia Tillman, the Global CMO did present some public health and emergency application examples.

Profitability - That theme and the presence of Porsche CFO, Dr. Lutz Meschke was likely meant to evoke the sentiment that better days are ahead. I thought Dr. Meschke did a very nice job talking electrification and digitization, but the reality is a Porsche EV starts at $ 100K today. Personally, I am a glass half-full optimist so enjoyed that, but I can see how folks hurting in this economy would not. BTW SAP did a nice job by weaving in Industrie 4.0 shop floor concepts and navigation/parking mobile apps in that segment.

Sustainability - this to me was the riskiest portion of the presentation. In today's turbulent energy markets, it's not just hydrocarbons which are hurting. Renewables have to compete at much lower price points and even after decades of subsidies they have struggled to do so. Let's face it EVs are only as clean as the power that comes from your local utility, and many moved to gas in the last decade. Many will be encouraged to continue with that fuel at today's price points. Also, renewables have not done much in wide swaths of the global economy from shipping to aviation. Finally, SAP tried its sustainability message a decade ago under Peter Graf. Back then, it mostly focused on SAP's internal efforts not much about how SAP was helping customers reduce their carbon footprint. Hopefully, this time it will focus on operational systems and helping customers monitor as an example, methane leaks or wind turbine performance not just on broad carbon reporting.

SAP has had technical difficulties broadcasting this event. Honestly, I am empathetic after doing a bunch of Zoom, Google Meet, ON24 and other interviews/presentations in the last few weeks. As an industry, we are all trying out one giant experiment with relatively immature video broadcasting technology and watching it on spotty last mile bandwidth while competing with our spouses and kids for that pipe. It did make me wonder how Apple will fare with WWDC next week. Over 23 million have registered from over 150 countries. I expect blinking lights and brownouts on some continents!

New Normal: A conversation with Brad Keywell, CEO of Uptake

I have been doing video interviews with a number of CIOs, software executives and practitioners about acrobatics they have been seeing in various vertical sectors during the COVID-19 crisis and the "New normal" they can expect as the economy wakes up.

This time it is Brad Keywell, a serial entrepreneur who has built a variety of companies including Groupon and is now CEO of Uptake. Uptake leverages sensory data and machine learning to help asset-intensive customers like the US Military and in industries like Mining and Railroads operate complex assets like locomotives and turbines with more precision and predictability.

He talks a different language than most enterprise software executives. He talks "ready built", "time series data", calls "operators" his customers, terms his software as "doctors for machines" which generate "health scores" 

We also talk about why so many supply chains broke down during the crisis and why pandemic modeling was chaotic, and how we should be able to improve them in the future. He says we face "clarity of need" and promises "assurance of maximum productivity and reliability".

I particularly liked the respect he shows to Sam Zell, a mentor for over 3 decades. 

It's certainly not time for "business as usual" with long projects and large teams in an age of restricted travel. It may be a much better time for what he calls an "entrepreneurial driven platform" that "delivers outcomes to industry"

New Normal: Conversation with David Watson of Health2047

I have been doing video interviews with a number of C level executives, VCs and practitioners about acrobatics they have been seeing in various vertical sectors during the COVID-19 crisis and the "New normal" they can expect as the economy wakes up. See the full list here.

This time it is David Watson, an Executive in Residence at Health2047, the innovation and venture arm of the American Medical Association. I met him when he was CTO at Kaiser Permanente. Before that he had been at Allergan and Baxter Healthcare. After Kaiser, he was at Oracle, then several healthcare startups.

He describes the explosion in telemedicine after being "in experimental mode" for two decades. During this crisis, the UC San Francisco health system saw 50% of outpatient visits move to telemedicine. It was 2% prior to that.

He presents a couple of sobering perspectives - in the middle of a pandemic, we are seeing healthcare layoffs, and 30 million citizens with no healthcare insurance as they lose their jobs. We discuss likely changes to healthcare economics and funding models.

We discuss potential new entrants. He says mobilizing for a crisis is very different from being a market entrant with long term aspirations. We discuss the slow move to cloud computing in the healthcare sector. We also discuss the state of Public Health infrastructure and the future of pandemic modeling.

He covers a lot of ground - not a surprise given he has seen the industry from so many angles and for so long.