deal architect

Burning Platform: The Workday Extend Platform blossoms

For the 123^rd episode of Burning Platform, we host Jay Wieczorkowski, GM Extend, and discuss many aspects of the Workday platform and the growing ecosystem around it  

The first 25 minutes are a presentation by Jay where he discusses platform features and use cases, the recent hackathon at their DevCon event, the GenAI impact on the platform, the growing user and partner developed applications

We then have a discussion around how Workday is managing the wide spectrum of users of the platform – end user and citizen developers and much more sophisticated partner and IT developers.

We cover the growing partner ecosystem (which Matt Brandt, Senior Vice President, Global Partners had also discussed in this episode) and the fact that developer productivity is shaping up as one of the most promising uses for Gen AI, and how Workday is balancing that with its goals of “responsible AI”.

We discuss the co-opetition with hyperscaler platforms. Jay says it’s “not a zero sum game” and discusses how they are leveraging AWS Textract and Lambda and Google Gemini among other capabilities.

I love his passion when he describes the energy and intensity of the hackathon

“We have 40 judges that go around to each table, and (project teams do) 10 rounds of rapid fire presentations where they have to literally present their project to people 10 times in a row, five minutes each time. The energy in the room between the judges scrambling to go to the next table and then learning about all these projects, and then real time judging on their phone, and then the teams, practicing and rehearsing and honing their presentations. They keep getting better with each round, and we use that process to create our top 10, where they present on stage, and then we choose the final winners. That energy truly encapsulates our community. These are folks that built their career on Workday, folks that we are committed to investing in. These are folks that are often behind the curtains, making change happen, and it's just really exciting to celebrate that and also celebrate that they are learning new technology, exploring and seeing the art of the possible…that brings it all together.”

Very nicely done in under 40 minutes.

Burning Platform: Turning Strategy into Reality with Business Architecture

For the 122nd episode of Burning Platform, we host Whynde Kuehn of S2E Transformation and discuss the critical role of Business Architects, alongside those of Enterprise Architects. She has a new book coming out July 11 titled The Execution Challenge: Delivering Great Strategy at Scale.

This episode is in 2 parts.

She leads off with a presentation around her approach to Business Architecture as a disciplining force for turning strategy into reality. She introduces her passion "is to help organizations (especially large ones) take really big ideas and move them into action. I've had the honor of working with organizations all around the world, from large corporations, governments, startups, and helping them to bridge the journey between the big ideas and being able to implement them across organizational units, products, geographies …how I'm able to make that possible is through the discipline of business architecture. I'm a long time business architecture practitioner, thought leader, educator. I live these ideas every day. I've led some of the largest transformations, ran my own team of business architects, and I'm a co-founder of the Business Architecture Guild.”

She then delves into the detailed and disciplined components of her approach

Next, we go back and forth on innovation projects and what I call “catch up” investments to reflect massive changes in industries, geographies and companion automation like robotics, drones etc. We also discuss the need for business architects to not just work with enterprise architects but to challenge and lead them so the end result is business objectives not just shiny new technology.

Fascinating presentation, followed by conversation of roughly 20 minutes each.

A must watch

Burning Platform: SAP Sapphire 2024 Sneak Preview

For the 121st episode of Burning Platform, we host Clare Henry who heads Analyst Relations at SAP.  She provides a sneak preview of Sapphire in Orlando this week, in Barcelona next week and other locations to follow. She provides a 360 degree perspective.

I ask her about the “Bring Our Your Best” theme for the event. “It fits into a brand campaign we've been running for a while. SAP’s purpose continues to be that we help the world run better and improve people's lives. That is a cornerstone of our identity. However, we've updated our vision to say bring out the best in every business. It connects to our heritage, of course, while still embracing our future to help our customers embrace their future. And it's very customer-centric. It's one of the real things that differentiates SAP and certainly what drew me to the company.”

She calls the event “one continuous keynote with multiple chapters”. CEO Christian Klein and CMO Julia White will kick it off Tuesday morning (EST) and weave in multiple C level roles, and how they can strategically work together and how AI can supercharge that collaboration. They will be joined by the new AWS CEO, Matt Garman and I am sure they will talk about RISE and the role of the hyperscaler. Matt is also expected to talk about Amazon’s internal use of SAP products. Other SAP partners will make cameo appearances. Tuesday afternoon, Muhammad Alam and Juergen Mueller will present a “demo heavy” innovation keynote. Wednesday morning, Russell Scott and Thomas Saueressig (in his new cloud focused role) will focus on customer success and finally, Wednesday afternoon, Academy Award winning actress Reese Witherspoon will deliver an inspirational talk.

She next talks about the Experience Center which will feature the Semiconductor supply chain. Last year it was “Farm to Table” and a hit with attendees as you ended with a scoop of personalized ice-cream. This year you may walk away with a personalized microchip. In the book I helped Thomas and Peter Maier write last year, Business as Unusual, we brought out the impact of chip shortages on the auto sector and the resulting genesis of Catena-X, an industry specific network. Jeff Howell had brought out in this Burning Platform episode the broad role SAP plays across the semiconductor sector.

I love how SAP is able to combine the physical and digital aspects of complex supply chains in such exhibits and effortlessly move them from one event to another around the world.  Andre Bechtold had presented on last year's exhibit in this episode

We next talk about some of the other news planned at the event including that of the expanding role of Joule, the SAP AI Copilot.  

I ask her if SAP will ever go back to the 3 day, “big tent” format. She explains how the time-concentrated but location-decentralized format is delivering a lot more engagement for attendees.  

Finally she turns the tables and asks if I have anything to say about founder Hasso Plattner as he retires from official duties after an amazing 52 years at the company. I share some snippets from my blog post where I described Hasso’s storytelling prowess, a facet not many people got to see.

It is impressive how much ground she covers. One area she was coy about was when I asked her for details of the Wednesday evening entertainment. Actually I know and I could tell you, but then...:)

A must-watch especially if you are not going to Sapphire – she summarizes in 25 minutes what you would need to invest days of travel and onsite time.

Very generous, Clare!

Burning Platform: Analyzing the Analysts

For the 120th episode of Burning Platform, we host John Taschek, Chief Market Strategy Officer at Salesforce.

We go through his two decades at the rocket ship called Salesforce and how he has handled industry analysts differently than most other vendor executives.  His humility through out the conversation is striking.

I ask him how he got comfortable with boutique firms and independent analysts when most others prefer to deal with institutional analysts like Gartner and Forrester. His philosophy is he prefers to rely on the knowledge and the curiosity of the individual. and not the firm.

“Instead of tiering the analyst firms, why don’t we tier the analysts? That opens up the world quite a bit when you get away from just Gartner or just IDC. You look at all the independent analysts who have really unique point of views. I did it when Salesforce was very young and we could learn a lot from individual analysts, but I have never shifted from that position.”

We discuss how he has benefited from being on the Product side of the business versus the Marketing side

“I pushed early on to be on the product side. Because being closer to the product gives you a whole bunch of benefits when you are talking to analysts. You have more collaboration with the product teams, which are developing the strategy. I was against being positioned in marketing or comms… because that’s much more outbound. I didn’t want to be a pitch factory, just saying stuff about what we did and how great we were.”

We cover the massive new opportunity around Generative AI and the huge growth in their Data Cloud. We also spend a few minutes on monetizing data and impact on trust, emerging global opportunities and my upcoming fiction book – a thriller where an analyst helps the FBI around the disappearance of a Silicon Valley AI billionaire.

We discuss improvements he would like at analyst firms (too many silos across analysts, the “walls” between the sales and research sides of the firms) and the fact that “the bigger firms have great analysts who are doing great research. But overall, they are seen as safety nets for decision makers.”

As I mentioned earlier, his humility shines throughout. It is a truly enjoyable 40 minute conversation with plenty for both vendor executives and analysts to learn.

Burning Platform: Workday’s Rapidly Expanding Ecosystem

For the 119th episode of Burning Platform, we host Matt Brandt, Senior Vice President, Global Partners at Workday. He is a very articulate West Point graduate with a long tenure in various roles at Workday.

I wrote recently about Workday’s Innovation Summit and how they are spreading their wings in multiple directions. Not surprisingly, Matt presented there an expansive view of how Workday’s ecosystem is evolving and I invited him to elaborate below.

“If you look at Workday, a roughly $7.5 billion dollar revenue company, we have had a relatively small services partner ecosystem (about 50 firms globally). We've always been known for prioritizing the quality of our service relationships over the quantity of our relationships.”

That is rapidly changing.

“As Workday transitions from an application company to a platform company, the needs of our partner ecosystem changes. And so that's what my organization is charged with - transitioning how the partner ecosystem will support the company as it transforms into a platform company.”

“We have operations in every theater globally and we operate in just about every industry globally. Instead of piece mealing this market by market and partner by partner, we've taken a really simple approach…if we focus on 3 things - building, growing and delivering, then long term we will have great outcomes for our partners, and for our customers. And then ultimately, for Workday. That’s how we've chosen to communicate with our partners, and align the investments that we're both making in our respective businesses”

He drills into examples of innovations from partners like Huron, Accenture and KPMG specific to the healthcare vertical. I particularly liked his description of Kainos, a partner in Ireland (but widely represented across the EU) which works on multiple dimensions with Workday. They have built new applications on the Extend platform and “they have influenced hundreds of sales opportunities and they're one of our best deployment partners”

When asked about new vectors, he cites Insperity, a Texas based PEO (professional employer organization). And ‘there are more opportunities like that, than we have time for. I'm not sure what the future will look like. But I think whatever it looks like it's going to be pretty exciting.”

We will just have to bring him back every few months to describe new frontiers he keeps exploring, In the meantime, enjoy this fast-paced State of the Ecosystem conversation.

Burning Platform: Reframing the Concept of Aging

For the 118th episode of Burning Platform, we host Chip Conley,  author of “Learning to love Midlife” and a founder of MEA (Modern Elder Academy). He defines midlife broadly as “from 35 to 75”. The common word association for midlife is “crisis” and he says that is a shame because life actually gets better with age.  

He was an owner/operator of a chain of boutique hotels. After selling them he joined the much younger founders and execs at Airbnb in the formative stages of its explosive growth. They called him a ‘modern elder” – “as curious as he is wise”.

Building on those experiences, he started MEA – Modern Elder Academy which is dedicated to “reframing the concept of aging” and helps professionals get ‘unstuck” in their careers.  “We have been around now for over six years, we've had 5000 People from 48 countries come to our Baja campus to go through our week long programs, and we now have a new campus in Santa Fe”

He walks through 12 nuggets from his book including the one below

“If you're a 63 year old man like me, and you hear that the average man in the United States dies at age 74, you might think I have 11 years left. But the truth is the average age of 74 includes everybody who might have died at age 10, 20, 30 or 50. So if you've gotten to 63, number one, you're in good shape, you will live longer than 74 as a man. Number two, depending on your socio economic background, the more educated you are, the more prosperous you are, the healthier you are, the longer you will live.”

It is a very optimistic perspective on the core of our workforce which falls into his definition of midlife “from 35 to 75”

We then talk about the bookends of the range. The aging or recently retired worker and how they are a relatively untapped talent resource. Next, we discuss the other end and the perception that they are entitled, disloyal workers

Lots of great thoughts about all 5 generations of employees in today’s workplace. HR folks in particular will benefit from what his thoughts on “reframing the concept of aging”

Burning Platform: Workday Verticals – The Evolution of Service Based Organizations

For the 117th episode of Burning Platform, we host Patrice Cappello, Managing Director of the Professional and Business Services vertical at Workday.

She has been focused on deploying technology to drive business outcomes in this sector for 25 years. She is a true student of the industry, having seen it evolve over time.

We start with a discussion on our wide service-based economy and Workday’s target markets in that sector. This includes organizations where people are driving the revenue: management & IT consulting, accounting, marketing services, business process outsourcing, and staffing firms among others.

We discuss the Workday feature set for this vertical. The professional services automation (PSA) category is well-trodden and covers project management and accounting, resource management, time sheet analysis among other functionality. Their services-focused configure price quote (CPQ) capabilities increasingly differentiate Workday from other PSA vendors.

She talks about how her customers are using Workday Extend to solve for unique business challenges. One company enhanced their “proposal engines” by facilitating inclusion of CVs of proposed staffing. It is common in the sector to shuffle proposed staff rather than keep them on the bench and that often takes plenty of manual effort to revise proposals.

She covers the launch of their Professional and Business Services Innovation Awards (last year the awards were announced at their Rising user conference), and discusses one of the winners, CrossVue, which created individual dashboards for billable workers.   

We discuss, of course, AI and how Workday is developing use cases specific to her vertical, especially those related to resource management. As she says they are bringing “all the dimensions of data that they have to factor in to put together a perfect team for delivery for a customer.”

Very nicely done in 25 minutes by a seasoned veteran of the sector.

Burning Platform: The massively changing World of Work

For the 116th episode of Burning Platform, we host Jason Corsello and Thomas Otter, partners at Acadian Ventures which focuses on investments in the rapidly changing World of Work  

It is a wide ranging conversation and they start by explaining their investment thesis and why they chose that market category. As Jason explains “Thomas and I have been operators in the HCM space for decades now. I thought, there's an interesting opportunity to create something specialized, where entrepreneurs want to come to us, because we have that knowledge of market, and other VCs want to co-invest with us, because we do something different from them. A lot of them are more generalist investors.”

They go through the many dimensions of how, where, when and why work is changing and how regulations are evolving to keep up. Jason summarizes “it's a very huge market (3.3 billion global workers) that's very broken. And we think that technology can be an equalizer at making work better for workers. And in doing so, making workforces way more efficient and ultimately, way more profitable. It's a pretty simple equation.”

In addition, their fund brings another significant differentiation – a global perspective. They are a young fund and they already have investments in startups in 13 countries and are constantly scouring the world . We discuss how hyperscalers and mobile telcos have democratized technology talent around the globe. As Thomas nicely summarizes “talent is distributed equally but opportunity isn't.” We elaborate on how the cost of global expansion also has dropped dramatically with digital channels,  yet remains largely unexplored.

Starting around 28.02, we spend a fair amount of time on Gen AI from a HR perspective. Thomas explains 4 AI  angles for the fund

We then discuss the Air Canada bereavement fare chatbot incident and data plagiarism and the OpenAI/New York Times lawsuit and impact on how it will affect AI rollout across the industry

Jason summarizes it well “there's a lot of similarity between how AI will play out as we have seen with SAAS. We didn't have any sort of governance or data privacy; everyone was kind of doing it uniquely. And then something meaningful happened halfway through the 20 year SaaS journey. SOC 2 set the rules for all of the things that are very important in the SAAS world today but it took us 10 years to get there. I think something similar will eventually emerge in the AI world. But it will take a period of iteration and trial and failure and big flameouts. We will eventually get to a point with industry standards, regulation, whatever you want to call it, that will drive the industry forward.”

Great conversation with two pros (and good friends) who are the top of their game

 

Burning Platform: Strategic Insights on Zoho Finance & Operations Platform

For the 115th episode of Burning Platform, we host Sivaramakrishnan "Siva" Iswaran, who heads the Finance and Operations Suite at Zoho globally

At the recent ZohoDay24 event, I saw Siva present on Financial and Operational capabilities they have been investing in. Much of that was under NDA so I invited him to present below a shorter version. He showcases Zoho’s growing ambitions across several dimensions: localization for many fast growing countries, its growing ecosystem, expanding beyond its SME focus to the Enterprise Market and eCommerce, Payments and other financial services which are allowing them to branch into many verticals.

Zoho has been growing core accounting capabilities since 2011 when it introduced its Books product. Today in addition it has Expenses, Billing, integration with Contracts, Subscriptions, Inventory, Payroll,  Practice Management for services firms and other capabilities in its growing portfolio – see complete listing here He adds their platform allows for even more breadth by being customizable, extensible, automatable and increasingly AI-powered.

Starting at 11.44, he talks about their global footprint even as many other vendors are retrenching. He talks about eInvoicing in India, Saudi, Mexico, corporate tax support in UAE and other localizations.

At 15.30, he presents on the exploding ecosystem around Zoho – see image below

At 18.27 he talks about plans for the Enterprise Market and candidly acknowledges the very different approach they will need to deliver to a much larger scale, to the segment’s expectations of “solutions”, their comfort with a direct sales model etc.

I especially liked the section starting at 21.50 where he talks about global disruptions around financial services to include Payments, eCommerce and Credit. He highlights alternate payment “rails” like UPI maturing to challenge the Visa/Mastercard duopoly and their eye popping economics and about Zoho’s plans for a Unified Payment Solution. He discusses ONDC - Open Network for Digital Commerce - in India which is aimed to challenge proprietary eCommerce players and also include ride-share, food deliveries and other services.  He also discusses OCEN – Open Credit Enabled Network - which enables micro-loans and other lending markets.

Around 41.00 I ask him when the extremely ambitious vision will start to be publicly fleshed out.  As if that is not challenging enough, I also talk to him about opportunities in “servitization” in capital intensive sectors that are moving to long-term, outcome-based business models.  

Is Zoho biting off too much? As he discusses, they are used to low margins, they are adapting their SME focused digital channel to very different enterprise selling, and I have written plenty about their unique culture, their curiosity and willingness to continually experiment.  

As I tell him at the end, I look forward to hosting him every few months to get an update on many of these initiatives. It is already a fascinating conversation and future ones will be even more so as they share their product and market expansion. 

 

Burning Platform: Raising the bar for Analyst Summits

For the 114th episode of Burning Platform we host Sandra Lo, Global Corporate Communications Head at Zoho and Mariana Nino, Manager of their new McAllen, TX office, which represents their ethos of global expansion in many growing markets but also encouraging rural renewal in each.

They discuss the packed agenda and complex logistics of assembling 200 analysts, customer and company executives from around the globe to their analyst summit, ZohoDay24 in the Rio Grande Valley, at the US/Mexico border.

As I have written before the analyst day is my favorite vendor event. And vendors have become increasingly creative with the format, location, participants etc. since Workday pioneered the concept in 2010.

Zoho had taken a small group of analysts to HQ in Chennai last year. And that week required incredible planning and I thought that would stand as a high watermark for a long time, but this session came close because it had 8 times more analysts and 3 times more customer executives to coordinate and a wide set of social events.

Several folks have posted on sessions (see the 16 page agenda of panels, sessions, 1:1 meetings and social events here) and I shared live from the event and I am starting to gradually interview several Zoho and customer execs. Be sure to catch many of those.

This session with Sandy and Mariana focused more on the intricate planning, the coordination with local vendors over a wide swath of real estate, travel into 3 local airports and a lot more.

It is particularly interesting to listen to them talk about why they picked the sites for activities outside the convention center.

Some of the experiences they describe include

• Mariachis at the Opening Ceremony at the Oval Park
• The historic Spanish mansion and the path for migratory birds and butterflies at Quinta Mazatlan
• The spectacular BBQ, music and dance at The Grove in Rio Grande citrus country
• The visit to the SpaceX launch facility in Boca Chica – the "Gateway to Mars"

Watch the 40 minute video in awe - then take a nap. You will be exhausted when you listen to how much they packed in!

Definitely raised the bar once again for Analyst Summits!