deal architect

Utmost: Software for a clover-leaf talent economy

Five years ago, as part of my research for the book on automation, Silicon Collar, I coined the term "Alt-Job". I saw millions of workers and small businesses in franchises like those of McDonald's or the UPS Store, selling products using the Amazon Fulfillment platform, developing applications for the iOS store. Of course, companies have long used staffing firms, but unlike for employees where they have moved to a single book of record, they have multiple systems for contract labor. Often, those are managed by procurement, not HCM so there is even less enterprise-wide visibility. Many of those systems also date back to the 1990s.

Companies  have even less visibility to talent in suppliers, digital agencies, law and accounting firms etc. As I have written, we have moved to a "Clover-Leaf talent economy" but our systems provide little visibility to most of those leaves. BTW   clovers can have many more than 4 leaves. Guinness World Records says one was found with 56 leaves and that range may be even larger for talent sources. 

So, I was pleased to spend some time with Dan Beck and Annrai O'Toole, ex-Workday execs at the Rising event last October. They have started Utmost to bring more visibility to this growing, extended workforce. I advised them to not just focus on the staff augmentation component, but to also factor franchise, platform and other more recent and growing talent bases.

Of course, the world of work has turned upside down during the pandemic with so many people working from home, travel restrictions etc.

Given all this, it was nice to get a presentation from the growing executive team on their progress so far. I have extracted 15 minutes in the video below of a much longer session we had. I left out customer case studies - they are not public yet - and a few other sections.

It is a great start, and they are very global in reach for a startup. Their timing is fortuitous given they can now factor massive changes in the workplace in the last few months. They are also benefiting as an early player on the Workday Extend platform. As I wrote last week, the platform has grown even more in importance for Workday in the last quarter. 

I look forward to seeing how what Dan calls their "global work graph" keeps evolving. 

Workday's Solid Pandemic Performance

Workday had a solid quarter - listen to the earnings call here. Actually given the state of the economy, you could call it a blowout quarter. On the heels of Salesforce's earnings report this week that I commented on yesterday, I looked for similarities and differences with other vendor performance during the pandemic.

Workday clearly benefited from a dramatically increased focus on employees during the pandemic. As Aneel Bhusri, the CEO had indicated in this interview I did with him in May  and said on the earnings call "I've never had so many CEO conversations on the HCM product line. And I think the issue of employee health, mental health, physical health, how are they doing working remotely, how are they working on new projects. This new world of skills and a different world around talent become a number one priority for the CEOs." I was particularly glad to hear Aneel say : "We are not an ERP vendor...We are quick to implement HR and finance systems, really oriented toward employees and running the business in a very agile environment." I have told Workday for a couple of years now they have opportunistically been using the ERP term when they don't have much in the way of industry-specific operational capabilities 

Workday has benefited from its growing portfolio of smaller applications like Workday Adaptive Planning, Prism Analytics and Spend Management and around workplace reopening protocol applications in partnership with Salesforce and IBM. Bite size applications with quick payback, and ability to be implemented remotely are selling in this market. Even SAP is finding its Amplify set of bite-size applications, not big honking S/4 projects are doing well. 

Workday's Extend platform is gathering steam. Pete Schlampp -- Executive Vice President, Product Development said "I think we have about 100 different applications live today. One of them that just went live this quarter was a company that had built a self-assessment capability inside of Extend so employees could self-assess as they were getting ready to return to work and determine whether they were ready. So Extend is about any type of use case just extending the surface area of Workday." Workday has been careful to focus its platform at customers, not to open it up to a broad ecosystem of vendors like Salesforce has. It may need to consider doing so now. As we have seen during the pandemic, vertical "edge" applications have taken off - telemedicine, last mile logistics, PPP loan processing, digital mortgages and many more (see more in my comments on edge apps in this video here ). If Workday had some of those on its platform, its quarter would have been stratospheric. Workday could itself be using its platform to deliver industry applications. IFS is reporting field service traction in its asset intensive customers, ServiceNow is starting to see similar in financial services and healthcare.

Most cloud applications are benefiting from an overall annoyance with on-premise systems. Besides their age and expense, on-prem applications took companies way too much effort compared to cloud applications as they moved employees to WFH. SaaS applications have a massive opportunity ahead of them - in industry and geography reach. Us analysts recently had a fun time around the "funeral" of on-premise applications, but I resurrected "Mr. OP" for now.  As I said, unless SaaS applications expand their functional reach and automate migrations, customers will lift and shift on-prem applications to hyperscalers and move to cheaper third party maintenance and support.

To, the last point, it is nice to see Chano Fernandez promoted to Co-CEO. It should free up Aneel to focus on product and strategy. It will be good to see him expand the Workday footprint.

Salesforce's acrobatics

Jim Cramer at CNBC pointed out the irony that ExxonMobil, a major carbon contributor as an oil and gas company is being replaced by Salesforce in the Dow Jones Industrials Index. Salesforce is a major supporter of the WEF's 1T.org initiative to plant a trillion trees by 2030 to offset the effects of climate change.

The official communication said it was related more to Apple's recent stock split and the need to add more tech to the index. However, to me it is another example of CEO Marc Benioff willing to take positions where most other corporate executives fear to tread - on diversity, homelessness in San Francisco and so many other causes - and increasingly being recognized for it. I have been impressed how many other executives mention Marc as an inspiration in the "acrobatics during the crisis" Zoom series I have been running. They have been doing so, unsolicited. 

Of course, it is not just his leadership around "purpose". Salesforce has deftly pivoted its product mix during the pandemic. I could see it in the interview I did with Neeracha Taychakhoonavudh, EVP, Industries in May.  She was talking about Salesforce's work helping various verticals including public health officials and with partner nCino helping community banks process thousands of PPP loans

The Work.com launch has been brilliant. One executive after another has told me site re-open protocols are turning out to be much more complex than lockdown processes - which themselves were not easy as thousands were being moved to WFH. Schools, college campuses, sports teams, amusement parks are facing even more urgent and complex reopening scenarios. 

As part of my recent interview with Tony Prophet, the Chief Equality Officer I wrote "Salesforce is a company which elevates equality as a core value and has been widely recognized as a company which is leading conversations on moving to a broader stakeholder, not just shareholder, focus. Given how well it has done for shareholders, the stakeholder goals are even more ambitious and Tony is clearly a key player in that effort and as he advises "aim high".  

I know of customers who think Salesforce tries to be "woke" and support too many social causes. Well, after their product and financial performance (they just reported a blowout quarter) during the pandemic, I say - if they can walk the tightrope, let's just watch in awe.

New Normal: A conversation with Charles Phillips of RECOGNIZE

I have been doing video interviews with a number of C-level execs 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 Charles Phillips. He has had an amazing career in the Marines, on Wall Street, then as President of Oracle, as Chairman of Infor (which was sold to Koch Industries earlier this year), now as an investor, philanthropist and as board member of several public and private sector institutions.

He has been spending a lot of time thinking about next-gen business processes. He sees a breakdown of jobs into tasks and a lot more automation at that component level. He sees the process re-think as both an opportunity and a threat to today's enterprise vendors.  We also discuss the likely impact on the job market. He discusses a Business Council project he in involved with which is looking at next-generation jobs in construction, advanced manufacturing, healthcare and tech. They are looking at "mid-skill" jobs that don't need 4 year college degrees. We have 'over-credentialed" too many jobs requiring such degrees in the recent past.

I have always been impressed with how Charles, as a person of color, has navigated his way around so many organizations. He humbly credits his upbringing in a military family and moving around every couple of years. That taught him to get along with people of every stripe. I particularly liked his views and advice to younger folks and civic leaders starting around 8:25. He is optimistic the conversation around diversity in business and society this time "has legs".

We also discuss Wall Street, its highs when Main Street is hurting, the coming market for vertical applications, the Fed's performance in the last few months, revving up the New York City economy post-pandemic and making it safer and more attractive to visitors. (BTW, he talks about the Fed's acrobatics - you can hear more of their policies in this unprecedented live webcast today at 9 am from Kansas City)

He is also very involved in party politics, but we stayed away from that. I liked the positive end when he talks about his son returning from a deployment in Okinawa. Having been "outside the bubble" for 4 years, he comments positively and optimistically about the state of the country. Charles says "someone that age saying that, I hope they are all saying that"   

An uplifting conversation at many levels.

New Normal: A conversation with Rich Karlgaard of Forbes Media

I have been doing video interviews with a number of C-level execs 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 Rich Karlgaard, former Publisher, now Editor-at-Large and Futurist at Forbes Media. He writes a regular column for Forbes Asia. He is also a bestselling author including that of a book he released last year, Late Bloomers. Even though he writes plenty about tech and innovation, I have always found his views on public policy very incisive, so we had a broad conversation about political leaders, enterprise software and the state of media.  

We spent the most amount of time on his views on enterprise software and he is generous to Bill McDermott, Satya Nadella, Diane Greene, Tom Siebel, Hasso Plattner and many other industry leaders. 

We discuss the Federalism trend in the US - 50 states approaching COVID-19 and managing economies in their unique ways. He is balanced and talks about governors in both red and blue states but is particularly generous to Doug Burgum in N. Dakota. Internationally, he spends a lot of time on what he admires about Singapore and how it is likely to benefit from the current issues in Hong Kong.

We spend time on his book and discuss ageism in Silicon Valley. He thinks enterprise software, as different from consumer tech, should continue to leverage "grey hair". I enjoyed his description of how he considers himself a late bloomer, and also how the great pitcher, Sandy Koufax benefited from advice he received mid way through his career.

We spend time on the state of media and whether we will see a "correction". He describes his own reading preferences and how he focuses on properties that keep him optimistic including TechCrunch and Seeking Alpha.

An amazingly positive, wide ranging conversation

 

New Normal: A conversation with Evangelos Simoudis of Synapse Partners

I have been doing video interviews with a number of C-level execs 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 Evangelos Simoudis. His firm, Synapse Partners, which he co-founded in 2016, invests in early stage startups developing enterprise artificial intelligence (AI) applications, and advises global corporations on AI and big data strategies, next-generation mobility, and startup-driven innovation. Prior to founding Synapse Partners, he was a managing director at Trident Capital and Apax Partners. He earned a Ph.D. in computer science (machine learning) from Brandeis University, and a BS in electrical engineering from Caltech.

He recently released his second book titled Transportation Transformation. While the book looked at how autonomous vehicles and mobility services will reshape economies, he has since also looked at how the pandemic has affected the sector.

We talk about how some segments of the sector have been vibrant - trucking to meet the increase in eCommerce demand, lot more interest in electric vehicles (EV), bikes and recreational vehicles (RV)s; others are not doing so well - mass transit given WFH trends, airlines, cruise lines, rental cars, ride sharing down given travel restrictions and consumer fears.

We discuss why there has been a spike in interest in EVs during the pandemic - he credits regulatory push, evolution of battery/digital tech, age of traditional auto industry architecture as drivers. In contrast, there is a much more realistic perspective on viability of autonomous vehicles (AV). He describes likely use cases for early adoption of AVs. 

He also presents a very realistic pov on the state of AI - from his advisory work with large companies and from his investment portfolio.

Finally, it is also good to hear his global pov on how economies, especially in Asia, are bouncing back from the crisis. He brings a data scientist perspective to macroeconomics citing commuting and other patterns.

Wide ranging, stimulating conversation.   

New Normal: A conversation with Sue Fellows of Workfront

I have been doing video interviews with a number of C-level execs 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 Sue Fellows, Chief Customer Officer at Workfront. She is a passionate customer advocate and the whole conversation is a celebration of customers. She describes several customer acrobatics in healthcare and life sciences but one of my favorites is her description of John Paul Mitchell Systems. They re-purposed their 40 year anniversary celebration budget to create a fund for hair care salons - so many mom and pop businesses which have been badly hurt by lockdowns. Given the uneven impact of the pandemic, it is nice to hear her describe how Workfront has worked with both ends of the spectrum - customers which are rocketing like one which helped process stimulus checks the government mailed out to hundreds of millions of homes and also those which are struggling.

The pandemic has forced every business to adapt to new WFH and site re-opening protocols and those around new products and revenue sources. We discuss how Workfront has always helped customers with unfamiliar and unstructured processes.  I wrote recently about their scenario planner as customers look to navigate wild swings in macroeconomic signals. 

She has helped build a very strong customer community around Workfront - I have felt the positive vibe during a customer advisory meeting and at their LEAP conferences. She describes how that has been carried forward in our increasingly digital, distanced world.

We also discuss leadership during this crisis. I had interviewed her CEO, Alex Shootman at the start of this series in April  - he had talked about resilience in a crisis. Sue adds her own perspectives on leadership. 

While I was editing the video, I noticed she is smiling or laughing in just about every frame. It is a very positive, uplifting conversation.

New Normal: A conversation with Tony Prophet of Salesforce

I have been doing video interviews with a number of C-level execs 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 Tony Prophet, Chief Equality and Recruiting Officer at Salesforce. Tony has had a remarkable career. I profiled him in one of my books optimizing HP's supply chain. He had also described China's meteoric surge in the early 2000s. I then profiled him in another book at Microsoft helping digitize the education sector. Now he is in an even more influential role at Salesforce, especially with the recent focus on BLM and other diversity issues.

Salesforce is a company which elevates equality as a core value and has been widely recognized as a company which is leading conversations on moving to a broader stakeholder, not just shareholder, focus. Given how well it has done for shareholders, the stakeholder goals are even more ambitious and Tony is clearly a key player in that effort and as he advises "aim high".

On Equality.com, Saleforce says "We aspire to have 50% of our U.S. workforce made up of Underrepresented Groups (Women, Black, Latinx, Indigenous, Multiracial, LGBTQ+, People with Disabilities, and Veterans) by 2023 and to continue building a workplace that reflects society around the globe." They are already at 43.9%. So, I was struck by his humility. He says a couple of times, Salesforce does not have all the answers and they still have a ways to go. But he names names of several colleagues and others who are leading the way when it comes to diversity awareness.

He has some great leadership advice - "in a crisis, the tendency for leaders is to be communicate less. Need to do just the opposite". He also advises more openness - not to be afraid to talk about race issues for fear of saying the wrong thing. He cites a colleague who quoted a version of "closed mouth gathers no feet"

Most of the videos in this series have focused on heroics around the health, operational and financial impacts of the pandemic, so I was glad to get a chance to talk to Tony about the diversity angle. It took a while for us to schedule the talk given so many other executives, panels and forums are also seeking his counsel in what he calls a "moment of reset".

Definitely worth the wait...very inspirational conversation.

Extra! extra! The dead has arisen!!!

As Brian Sommer and Ray Wang reported on Friday in this video I was one of the pall-bearers at the funeral for on-premise software. In that role, I was allowed to the grave site where no media followed - most were too busy tweeting about the demise. So I was one of the few who witnessed a miracle. We heard a groan and it was old OP. We helped him out, and I stayed the weekend with radio silence to see how he fared. I visited him in the hospital this morning where he is in stable condition.

Here is a condensed version of our conversation (and sanitized for the foul language he used in describing us analysts):

OP - Vinnie, you have not been too nice to me the last few years, but I get my revenge. You get to tell the world that the rumors of my demise have been greatly exaggerated.

VM - OP, first of all its good to see you so lucid. Hope you don't mind calling you OP. Impressive that you remember your Hemingway.

OP - And I hope you don't mind me calling you illiterate. It was Mark Twain from London in 1897

VM - 1897? so Brian was right - you are as old as the hills.

OP - is that Sommer you talk about? Tell the SOB, I saw his snarky eulogy. And tell him and Ray, I will be around long to torment them.  

VM - Now hold on OP, it's not just Brian and Ray. You are not too popular with customers. And you have gotten uglier by the day, and have all kinds of patches and band aids....

OP - this conversation is finished...

VM - the pandemic and work from home trend truly exposed your weaknesses. Most CIOs describe the extra VPN provisioning and other effort it took to keep you going. Cloud applications on the other hand were a dream.

OP - OK, smartypants, then why have they kept me around? Because cloud solutions cannot deliver all the complex industry and geography specific functionality. I delivered essential services just like healthcare and Amazon Prime workers did. And this is the gratitude you show me?

VM - well, cloud vendors are working on those industry solutions...

OP - good luck waiting for that. They have been promising them for a decade. Besides, even if they do, will customers have the massive migration budgets during the recession? Till cloud vendors automate the migration, they will continue to depend on their expensive SI partners

VM - not exactly, with travel restrictions, SIs are moving to remote delivery models...

OP - If you believe that one, then I have some swampland in Florida to sell you.

VM - OP, you really don't believe things have to change?

OP - With friends like Larry and Hasso, I am used to a certain lifestyle. Why should I change?

VM - because customers are talking to Google and Amazon and Microsoft about lifting and shifting you out of their data centers and moving it to their hyperscale ones.

OP - you mean I wont live in a suite any more?

VM - actually it gets better. They are also talking to firms like Rimini and Spinnaker to service you...

OP - Mercy... no more caviar - they will only serve me hot dogs? Can you do anything about it?

VM - I will see if Larry can move you into his infrastructure cloud, but even there you will be working pretty hard. You know Zoom ran 7 petabytes of video a day through his data centers a couple of months ago

OP - that sounds like way, way too much work...

VM - well I have a better idea. Why don't you announce your retirement?

OP - Hasso did exactly that and said I would be gone by 2025, but customers don't seem to believe him ...heheh

VM - no, you need to step up, teach cloud vendors all your unique industry and geography knowledge and I will see if we can get you a decent pension and a small place on the beach.

OP - Too hot...how about on a lake?

VM - OP, quit worrying. You have had a traumatic few days. Just work on a smooth transition, and we may even get you a customized bobble head

OP -  man the one you have looks ugly but I guess after decades I do look that way. Can you arrange a red hat for him?

VM - Red hat?

OP - No not that one, one which says OP

VM - you mean Opie? We will have to check with Ron Howard.

OP - who, what? Look, I am feeling rough. Just get me the best deal you can, Mr. Deal Architect and I will gracefully, gradually fade away in a few years.

VM - OK, but no trickery. Teach cloud vendors all your industry and geography knowledge and how to automate the migration. By the way, you really gave us a scare, but I am glad you are bouncing back and are as feisty as ever.

OP - and Vinnie, nothing will please me more than to see you grovel and be nice to me. Stay healthy, yourself.

Scenario Planning - the Workfront angle

I have long been a fan of long-term scenario planning and this Harvard Business Review article describes in a fair amount of detail the big thinking around such planning at Shell and other large companies and at government agencies.

I found this nugget particularly useful:

"But Shell-style scenario planning has never really been about predicting the future. Its value lies in how scenarios are embedded in—and provide vital links between—organizational processes such as strategy making, innovation, risk management, public affairs, and leadership development. It has helped break the habit, ingrained in most corporate planning, of assuming that the future will look much like the present. As unthreatening stories, scenarios enable Shell executives to open their minds to previously inconceivable or imperceptible developments."

Rightly or wrongly, the term is increasingly also being used for more tactical, near-term planning with scenarios reflecting chaotic macroeconomic signals. In the 50+ C level exec interviews in the series I have been running I have been asking them if they see a sharp V, a gradual U, a choppy W, or a dead L when it comes to economic recovery. Several had said they expect the Nike swoosh, others just honestly say they cannot even venture a guess. If I were to re-interview them a few weeks later, many would likely use a different letter.

In the interviews with operational executives I hear similar about physical site re-open plans. The planning horizons keep getting shorter and inputs from regulatory agencies, HR managers and facility managers keep changing. If you look at businesses which have partially reopened - like sports teams and theme parks - you see similar weekly even daily decisions on which activities to keep open, shut down, accelerate or decelerate.

Companies have been furiously planning and re-planning with their budgeting and forecasting tools. I recently had a chance to hear a very different presentation from Workfront. It was about features like Align and Scenario Planner they have recently launched. I have extracted below about 8 minutes of a much longer Zoom conversation with Scott Monroe, Director, Product Marketing and Michael Swan, Product Manager.

Workfront's Scenario Planner provides a nice bird's eye view on how projects, tasks, activities can be moved around as part of those frequent re-planning exercises and to factor rapidly shifting constraints so common these days.

I think every executive, no matter what their industry, would benefit from a similar conversation with them. It would give them a chance as the HBR article says to not just focus on dollars and cents but links between various organizational processes.

In the meantime, here is a cameo: