deal architect

Analyst Cam: Strivr - the White Collar Metaverse

As we have moved to virtual briefings, I have increasingly been excerpting short video segments (with permission) as part of my Analyst Cam series.

This time it is Derek Belch, CEO of Strivr, which positions itself as a platform to elevate employee performance through virtual reality-enabled immersive experiences. I was introduced to him by the Workday Ventures team.

Derek played football at Stanford from 2003 to 2007. He went back to Stanford as a graduate assistant for the football team in 2013 and simultaneously worked on a Master’s thesis on training football players using virtual reality. “The whole premise was here's a VR device, a headset. The quarterback puts this thing on their face. Their body is off the field, but their brain thinks they're on the field. It's a much more realistic way to see what's going on during a play. And you can get an infinite number of reps in a short amount of time.”

The quarterback simulator was their first application and he says it was reasonably successful (I think he is being modest – Tom Brady used the tool for reps when he arrived in Tampa in 2020 and went on to win his 7^th Super Bowl). Importantly, it led to an introduction at Walmart and a foray into enterprise applications. He says “six years later we have over 20,000 headsets out in the field at Walmart, Bank of America, Verizon and FedEx among others.”

Classroom and keyboard-based learning are ineffective, he says. “Goes in one ear and out the other.” “We're building a flight simulator for any job from quarterback to janitor to CEO and everyone in between…we want the VR headset to be part of every employee’s starter pack along with a phone and a laptop”

He walks through various front line and knowledge worker use cases. The ROI is pretty compelling. “we've had customers take three-hour long lectures and e-learning (content) and boil them down to 20 minutes on a headset. Some of our customers are cutting their on-boarding times in half. And the outcome is the similar in terms of proficiency. So that is a major ROI opportunity when you add up 10s of 1000s of people. Some of these are very high churn roles.” He says there may be focus on augmented reality and blue collar roles down the line. Plenty of white collar opportunities to focus on for now.    

He walks through his platform and the content creation ecosystem he is growing. Very nicely done in about 20 minutes. There is plenty of sports talk, quotes from Confucius and use cases for the white-collar Metaverse.

BTW I think I have found another recruit for my Technology and my Passion series. He has 264 golf balls and growing in his “stamp collection” from courses from around the world.

Analyst Cam: Wellthy

As we have moved to virtual briefings, I have increasingly been excerpting short video segments (with permission) as part of my Analyst Cam series.

This time it is Lindsay Jurist-Rosner, Co-Founder and CEO of Wellthy, which provides a caregiving support solution. I was introduced to her by the Workday Ventures team.

Lindsay starts with her personal experience. She supported her mother through a chronic condition for 28 years (it started when she was a kid) and found the healthcare system in the US (and most other countries – they also service Canada, UK and Ireland)) assumes aging care is the responsibility of family members. She says families take on 90% of long-term care in the US.

They have since diversified beyond the focus on aging parents to also cover kids with special needs, spouses with chronic conditions, and during the COVID pandemic expanded into child care. About the last, she says “it remains a crisis. We've seen daycare shutdown, a reduction in the number of folks who are taking jobs as nannies or in-home aides. Families are really struggling to set up care as many companies have returned to more hybrid work environments, encouraging people to come into the office.”

The solution broadly consists of 3 components

• Care Dashboard – digital tools such as medication trackers, document storage
• Care Concierge – a dedicated coordinator and shared access to other team members who help advise on Medicare, insurance, other funding sources, care nuances etc.
• Wellthy Community

They started the business in 2015, supporting families and started working with employers in 2016. Business exploded through the pandemic. Today they support 1.1 million covered individuals. And expect to be closer to 2 million by the end of the year. Lots of big brand employers and 4 of the top 6 companies on the Fortune 100 Top Places to Work list.

They can show quantifiable outcomes like lowered absences and attrition at employers which offer their service as a comp benefit. The best endorsement she says comes from employees moving companies who say to their hiring person, “you know, I would like to retain access to this very important benefit”.

She says it is a  “very sticky benefit.”

Very nicely done in 20 minutes.

Analyst Cam: Salesforce Verticals – Health and Life Sciences

As we have moved to virtual briefings, I have increasingly been excerpting short video segments (with permission) as part of my Analyst Cam series.

This time it is Amit Khanna, SVP and GM, Health and Life Sciences at Salesforce.

The health and pharma markets have gone through an extremely challenging last couple of years. How will they emerge from the ups and downs? Amit presents on some of the trends they are seeing:

• 42% of the members say they're frustrated by the experience they get from their health plans/providers
• 77% of the providers say that non-traditional care revenues, such as retail health, care anywhere, are becoming more important
• 93% of the pharma companies are still not using AI effectively because they believe it's too complex or are unsure where to start.
• Almost a third of the $3.5 trillion the US spends on healthcare (nearly 20% of its GDP) is in administrative costs, much of it waste.

He explains where Salesforce plays – around the areas where EMR and ERP vendors play. Salesforce is more focused on longitudinal care outside the hospital, multi-channel engagement and the entire chain to provide personalized care.

He covers a lot of ground around vaccine management, telemedicine and other trends which accelerated during the COVID-19 pandemic.

But, over and over it comes back to making the patient the center of the universe. I like his closing “Simple concepts (we are used to in other sectors) don’t seem to apply to healthcare. Providers ask you the same questions over and over…my date of birth doesn't change. Knowing about me is a concept (which seems foreign to) healthcare. If we can solve that, through the lifecycle of the consumer, we will reduce tremendous amount of waste in the system.”

Very crisply done in about 15 minutes.

Analyst Cam: Buday Thought Leadership Partners

As we have moved to virtual briefings, I have increasingly been excerpting short video segments (with permission) as part of my Analyst Cam series.

This time it is Bob Buday of Buday Thought Leadership Partners. For over 3 decades, he has been helping organizations think big at CSC Index, Bloom Group and now at the firm he leads.

We have a really invigorating conversation around “blockbuster” ideas which have influenced so many of us including Michael Hammer’s reengineering, Clayton Christensen’s disruption, CEB’s Challenger Sale concepts and several others.

He shares techniques which work (and do not work) when it comes to developing what he calls “momentous” ideas. Many of the ideas he has helped up shape end up as management books and influential articles in publications like the Harvard Business Review.

Nicely done in under half an hour. It is a nice primer to his new book Competing on Thought Leadership.

Analyst Cam: IFS Verticals - Manufacturing – Part 2

As we have moved to virtual briefings, I have increasingly been excerpting short video segments (with permission) as part of my Analyst Cam series.

This is part 2 of the conversation with Maggie Slovic and Andy Burton, Global Directors for Process and Discrete Manufacturing, respectively for IFS

In Part 1 yesterday, they provided highlights of 6 sub-verticals that falls under their definition of Manufacturing – Automotive, High-tech, Industrials, Food & Beverage, Chemicals and Life Sciences. They talked about the circular economy, servitization trends in product companies, industrial robotics and COVID’s impact on manufacturing.

Today they cover functionality in the IFS Cloud, discuss a few of their customers and some of the supply chain and other threads they picked up at the Hannover Messe, which is always a trailblazer of industrial trends.

Analyst Cam: IFS Verticals – Manufacturing – Part 1

As we have moved to virtual briefings, I have increasingly been excerpting short video segments (with permission) as part of my Analyst Cam series.

This time it is Maggie Slovic and Andy Burton, Global Directors for Process and Discrete Manufacturing, respectively for IFS

In Part 1 today, they provide highlights of 6 sub-verticals that falls under their definition of Manufacturing – Automotive, High-tech, Industrials, Food & Beverage, Chemicals and Life Sciences. Aerospace and Defense, an area IFS has long been strong at, is treated as a separate vertical.  They talk about the circular economy, servitization trends in product companies, industrial robotics and COVID’s impact on manufacturing.

Tomorrow in Part 2 they will cover functionality in the IFS Cloud, discuss a few of their customers and some of the supply chain and other threads they picked up at the Hannover Messe, which is always a trailblazer of industrial trends.

Nicely done – this one is only about 15 minutes long.

Analyst Cam: Reveal Value

As we have moved to virtual briefings, I have increasingly been excerpting short video segments (with permission) as part of my Analyst Cam series.

This time it is Martin Rowan, Managing Partner of Reveal USA, based in Chicagoland.

Their website says “Our mission is to use our knowledge of the supply chain as an indispensable link toward commercial success and social good.”

Their client base ranges from global companies like BP to local Chicago-based companies with two common threads - they run SAP and they run some kind of a supply chain. “So, they make, buy, sell, distribute something - whether it's minerals, petroleum, petrochemicals or consumer goods.”

With 160 projects over the last couple of decades. he says he can actually guarantee results for clients - inventory reductions, turns and service level improvements, process efficiencies and product production throughput increase.

I like the client maturity model and the operational use cases he shares. And the sherpa metaphor he uses to describe how they help clients scale mountains.

Nicely done in 20 minutes.  

Analyst Cam: Salesforce Verticals – Financial Services

As we have moved to virtual briefings, I have increasingly been excerpting short video segments (with permission) as part of my Analyst Cam series.

This time it is Eran Agrios, SVP and GM of Financial Services at Salesforce.

Vendors tend to have different ways of defining “financial services” - so, it's nice that Eran provides a historical perspective on how Salesforce’s definition has evolved

“Over the past 23 years, our financial services customers have trusted Salesforce to drive deeper relationships with their customers, through mostly front office digital innovation. Seven years ago, we launched our first purpose-built product, Financial Services Cloud and I was part of that small team. We did that starting with wealth management firms, then expanded into banking and insurance. Last year we launched our first corporate and investment banking solution. Notably, in 2020, we acquired Vlocity which allowed us  to bring automation capabilities to front, middle and back-office operations.”

She says speed was a huge driver for these customers during the pandemic “I've been at Salesforce for 15 years, and we stand up solutions quickly. But customers were doing it in in hours and days. It was incredible.”

She says for their financial services customers, the focus now has shifted to efficiency and productivity. “Making every investment dollar count is part of every conversation we have with customers today.” She provides examples “such as straight through processing of an insurance claim or the orchestration of customer address changes across multiple systems of record.”

She also shares use cases from Prudential and their life insurance, retirement planning and investment solutions: and from KeyBank around wealth management and their commercial banking operations.

It is a brisk presentation – under 15 minutes - and a nice set up for the Salesforce World Tour New York which kicks off today at the Javits Center. Prudential and others are presenting there. Register here to catch them on-demand.

And for a slew of other breaking Salesforce financial services news announcements check out this post

Analyst Cam: Salesforce - Consumer Goods

As we have moved to virtual briefings, I have increasingly been excerpting short video segments (with permission) as part of my Analyst Cam series.

This time it is Sunil Rao, VP and GM of Consumer Goods presenting on trends in that sector and an update on Salesforce’s offerings.  

I like his broad definition of consumer goods - “it's the washing machine. It's the detergent you put into the machine, and the clothes you put in, and probably the snack you're eating while you're watching the clothes get washed.”

He starts on with trends including one of margin pressure: “whether it's retailers continuing to double down on products that they're introducing that are white labeled and brands that are going direct to consumer”,  supply chain issues, consumer privacy concerns and several others.

He then covers several new product features – more in the announcement which went out today.

• Trade Promotion Management (based on some IP developed by Accenture)
• Offline “Penny Perfect”  Pricing – with all the inflation, they should have branded it “nickel perfect” 😊  
• MuleSoft Accelerator for this industry – to tie to consumer and product master data in other systems

Finally he covers projects at two big global brands – retail execution “re-imagination” at PepsiCo and operational excellence (including that for field reps and drivers) at ABInBev

Sunil does a really nice job covering all that in half an hour.

 

Analyst Cam: IFS Verticals - Construction and Engineering

As we have moved to virtual briefings, I have increasingly been excerpting short video segments (with permission) as part of my Analyst Cam series.

This time it is Chris Knight, Global Industry Director for Construction and Engineering presenting on trends in that sector and IFS capabilities.

He talks about global trends and how spend on infrastructure projects will overtake residential construction. How 50% of projects will be partly supported by modular or prefabricated construction within the next few years. How the industry is also blending with manufacturing models with technologies like 3D printing. Like many industrial markets and servitization trends, this sector is improving margins by learning to operate, not just building and handing over. He covers silos in the construction IT landscape and how IFS solutions are helping an industry through its significant productivity challenges.

Lots of coverage of a sector where most competitors largely focus on labor part and project management/PSA technology.

Chris does a really nice job in half an hour.