Cloud Wars Live with Bob Evans

The Big Themes: Do more with less: Finance is a highly volatile business environment where things are rapidly evolving. As a result, finance teams are challenged to work within their current processes, yet still need to respond to ongoing change. Arima proposes that a company should be aligned with its data model, data definitions, business drivers, and hierarchy structure.How Workday Adaptive Planning is changing the conversation: Cross-functional collaboration between Workday's finance and HR teams has enabled data and information to be shared across the entire company. Prior to migrating to Adaptive, teams were siloed as they had independent data models with independent information, creating less-productive conversations.How Adaptive establishes end-to-end digital processes: Arima says there are two ways this happens. First, the tool itself, which is very user-friendly. Secondly, Workday Adaptive Planning enables more users with greater access to the system, delivering actionable insights, connecting "upstream" and "downstream" processes.The Big Quote: "I think the word continuous can sound very daunting, if you really think about it, as you're always planning. We talk about continuous planning a lot at Workday. But the intent is not to be always planning and always adjusting your models. That idea is really to be agile, and to be able to have a plan that can adjust as your business adjusts. And so that's really the spirit behind continuous planning. And it, certainly, it helps to have the tools in place like our Adaptive Planning, and the data model that's aligned to that solid foundation. All of these things really help to build that agility and your planning muscle. And so once you have that capability, it really yields benefits in terms of less manual work."  Visit Cloud Wars for more.

Episode 14 | Lost Your Job? Here's What to DoThe Big Themes:Company names and personal networks: Pat suggests that new hires create two lists: one to list companies, and one to list personal networks. This is a simple and effective way to "do your research" and will help guide your job search. "The reality is your network is going to be your biggest avenue" for finding a new job, explains Pat.The importance of emotional EQ: Job candidates must demonstrate their emotional intelligence, personality, and value to a potential employer to differentiate themselves. Mark explains that when new hires possess the correct EQ, hiring managers will look to place the candidate in the company. Emotional EQ has become a bigger focus than what it used to be.Do your homework: Do proper research on the company, come prepared to ask the right questions, and connect with a hiring manager on facts, data, and information that relates to a company. Hiring managers will respond to what you know, and how much effort you put into your application and interview. The Big Quote: "Those of you like me that are introverts, know your facts, connect with the people on data on information on facts. Be knowledgeable about what their company is doing and what their role is, about what they personally have done. You don't have to be an extrovert, you can be an introvert, but people will resonate, will really respond to you, by you having the right knowledge, you know, to be able to ask those questions in the interview, that, to me, it doesn't matter what kind of personality you have. You've got to differentiate yourself... But people will respond to you by what you know, and frankly, how much effort you put into, before you go into the interview cycle or even before you even present your job, your resume, to the offering." Visit Cloud Wars for more.

The Big Themes:Creating room for innovation: Financial services companies spend 60-70% of their IT budgets on compliance, leaving little room for innovation. This is a critical area that the IBM Cloud for Financial Services, a solution that is co-created and co-built with the industry, addresses.Real-time compliance monitoring: IBM offers real-time, constant compliance monitoring to banks and financial institutions, reducing their time to implement a solution to 6-12 weeks, which is significantly faster than what they are used to.Bringing a unified approach forward: IBM supports its Financial Cloud customers with control frameworks and framework mapping, creating a faster deployment and implementation approach.The Big Quote: "I think, with our [IBM's] understanding, and what we now have built with the hybrid cloud approach and the underlying technologies, we really open up that you get the best of all worlds. 100% sure a lot of the banking workload will remain on the mainframe. But you need to have, let's say, part of the workloads most likely in platforms like IBM Cloud for Financial Services, but you still need to manage different providers. So you will always have multi-clouds in your IT shop. With what we are now building, and we've built over the last few years, we basically build a coherent strategy and platform to get the best of, let's say, the traditional mainframe workload and the future." Visit Cloud Wars for more.

The Big Themes:Purpose-built solutions centered on people: Managing resources to deliver for customers can be a challenge for companies with large services organizations. Certinia's solutions are purpose-built, focusing on the people and the service economy business, rather than product ID, which was formerly considered to be the "center of the universe."Synchronous process flows: When looking at process flows, most companies find that they have silos of automation, and the "as quoted" verse "as delivered" aspects generally are not in alignment. "By having a system that runs all the way from opportunity to renewal, we [Certinia] bring those things into alignment with each other and have the "as quoted" and "as delivered" very much in sync with each other," notes Brown.Automation to enhance opportunity: When speaking with service economy workers, it is clear that "low-value work makes them crazy." Automating this work enables service economy workers to do more of what they love, like being in front of customers and providing "intellectual horsepower." Certinia applies automation as a means of optimizing the employee experience, too, and having a "great, enriched career journey." The Big Quote: "We are, kind of, starting a new chapter in our company's history with the rebranding to Certinia... and everything that we've developed up to now is widely increased the aperture of who we are. If you look at it across the spectrum of all those different products, we now are a full end-to-end provider. And hence, Certinia, as our new name. And we think it probably reflects not only the company we are today, it's the company we aspire to be. And so working with the large customers and the mid-tier customers that we have, we listen very carefully to what they need to get certainty in their environment, how to manage the very large and complex services organizations, and ultimately to have success. So we think the rebranding is the next chapter of our history, we think it's a really important thing to do, because it reflects the nature of who we are. But more importantly, we see big things in our future." Visit Cloud Wars for more.

The Big Themes:Be intentional about the use of generative AI: Christian advises that when bringing generative AI into the workforce — or any technology, for that matter — that humans must ensure they remain the "master" and the technology remains the "servant."Consider trust: Christian encourages everyone to "get smarter on these things" but within the context of their companies. Business employees must trust that the leaders of their organizations won't use generative AI technologies to get rid of their jobs.Creative destruction: Christian proposes that there is a whole lot of "creative destruction" that will take place as a result of generative AI getting smarter. "That's the trajectory we are on...we have to be conscious of it," he notes. The Big Quote: " I think there are great challenges ahead. And I think they're fascinating challenges. And I think they're important challenges. And some are going to do well. And a lot are going to do very, very poorly. Let's hope though that for the sake of, you know, the company's colleagues, you know, all over the world, that we start looking at how we run our businesses and employ these really potent technologies in a way that actually gives our employees a fighting chance. Yes, to sort of climb the capability ladder and find their next place in this changing world." Visit Cloud Wars for more.

Episode 44 | How Partners Ecosystems Drive the Acceleration EconomyThe Big Themes:The four types of partners: Value-add re-marketer (VAR), independent software vendor (ISV), implementation support consultants, and co-creation partners. Each of these partner types multiples a businesses ability to deliver.How partners are changing the game: Gone are the days where partners roles are limited to just fulfillment. Now, businesses need partners through every stage of the customer lifecycle "helping build systems that touch every aspect of my business."How do we work better with partners?: As tools become more flexible, the way we engage with partners has dramatically changed. "It's also the business demand is changing our need to implement quickly."The Big Quote: "In the acceleration economy, it's about getting stuff from here to there more quickly, within our four walls, and across of our entire partner ecosystem. And so a vendor, and a co-creator that knows the industry, and has the clout to have people say,' yeah, they probably know what they're doing,' encourages people to then build the connection into them. So I think that's the direction you're gonna see a lot more partnerships go, if the vendors are willing to extend themselves and think 'I'm not just in the software business, I'm in the letting customers use my software more creatively business,' and a customer of theirs steps up and says, 'my secret sauce is not so secret,' not 'I don't want to sell it to other people to help us all improve our business.'" Visit Cloud Wars for more.

Bonnie, an expert in generative AI, discusses the impacts and effectiveness of generative AI on software selection and implementation. She highlights the revolutionary nature of generative AI in organizing and synthesizing mass amounts of data. However, she also acknowledges its limitations, such as not being comprehensive in understanding customer needs and lacking directionality for creating roadmaps. The podcast emphasizes the importance of human involvement in successful projects and cautions against overestimating AI capabilities.

How Workday Adaptive Helps ENMAX with Forecasting CapabilitiesThe Big Themes:Workday Adaptive Planning helps ENMAX discover a single version of the truth: With this software, everyone in the company is working off the same data set and can be used for whatever purpose is necessary.A single view across three applications: ENMAX utilizes Workday Adaptive Planning, Workday HCM, and Workday Financials in congruence, which has removed constraints associated with effective planning.Flexible solutions that empower users: Workday Adaptive Planning can be easily edited or updated and provides users with the information they need, when they need it, to do their jobs effectively.The Big Quote: "Adaptive, that was a real game changer for us, because nobody really questioned the data anymore. There was one source of truth, it didn't matter if you wanted to know what was going to happen next month, or in 2024. You went to the same place, the same version, and everyone edited a single version. So that was really key to us, because now we're able to take all that information disseminated out to the different business areas, and they can use it for whatever purpose they need. The second change was, we have the same characteristics on the data for both our actuals and our plan. And that's one of the benefits of being on Workday for both planning and financials. So the data that's actually reflective of historicals plus board looking looks and feels the same. And so it's a little bit easier to interpret. And so that's been very helpful for us as well." Visit Cloud Wars for more.

Episode 27 | Employee Centric-Culture and the Future of the WorkforceNote: this episode contains explicit language.The Big Themes:Layoffs at Salesforce: Salesforce recently cut about 10% of its entire workforce which suggests a big shift in performance culture. Business leaders are now looking for a culture that is employee-centric and produces tangible results.A choice for listeners to make: How do we have a legendary culture that produces massive results and is a great place to work?Women have gained more jobs than men for four months straight: The Wall Street Journal recently reported that women now hold 49.8% of all non-farm-related jobs. A massive amount of "prime-aged men" aged 25-54, are out of work, leading to a massive hole in the economy.The Big Quote: "What it means is we need to have a conversation. What's the society we want to have? What's the work world we want to have? What's the work culture we want to have? And how do we create true equality of opportunity, and a meritocracy based on, you know, what the people who do well do well, because they produce results, and the people who don't, don't. And we want equality around access to opportunity based on real meritocracy. I think, I think... here's what I know, I think we need to have this discussion." Visit Cloud Wars for more.

The Big Themes:Forget the headlines, what's in this product? Is generative AI and ChatGPT truly the "next big thing," or is this something that has been around for awhile and is just now starting to get popular? When starting college in 1970, Wayne was encouraged to study computing programming because experts were predicting that by 1975, artificial intelligence (AI) would be "writing all the programs in the world."The future of generative AI: Wayne suggests that this tool is going to either be the biggest augmentation of human abilities, or it's going to be the biggest disruption... or it's going to be both.National Cybersecurity Strategy: The government's strategy outlines the need to "rebalance responsibility." Rather than holding the company that got attacked by malicious actors accountable, the responsibility is now on the vendor to ensure that customers aren't getting "ransomwared." The Big Quote: "That's how they [generative AI and the National Cybersecurity Strategy] tie together. We're at the beginning of AI broadening into general use. Think about the Internet of 50 years ago. That's where AI is today. A great tool that's starting to reach commercial scale. And so, again, I share your fear when the government gets involved. It often doesn't go well. But this is where we as an industry, the CISOs, the vendors, the CIOs that buy it, have got to be out there with their voices heard. I'm not so interested in anybody suing Microsoft, Oracle, SAP, Cisco and everybody else, as I am in a standard that says, in two years, the product you sell me should have the standards, or else somebody's going to sue... and cyber is becoming existential for a lot of industries, the ransomware attacks, we got to do something. And clearly, as an industry, we have not taken the leadership position." Visit Cloud Wars for more.