Cloud Wars Live with Bob Evans

The Big Themes:

• The "cradle to grave" approach: Pat and Pam worked together for many years to develop creative, advanced programs for talent acquisition and retention. One of their initiatives was to increase the collaboration between talent acquisition and talent management teams.
• Planning a culture vs. letting one happen: Companies should be in the driver's seat when it comes to HR and company culture. This requires focused, pointed culture development.
• Assessments and candidate data: The information gathered about candidates through formal assessments or otherwise should be shared throughout the organization to help develop their training and path.

The Big Quote: "I think a lot of organizations think of assessments as being punitive, but in fact, the data is so rich and can really help you think about somebody's career plan, somebody's career growth opportunities, and help to align that with somebody's own aspirations." - Pam Seplow



This episode is sponsored by BMC Software.

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The Big Themes:

• Netflix's disruptive start: Tony had an "inside baseball view" of the early disruptions Netflix made to the entertainment industry in the early 2000s, and he reminds us of just how innovative the company was
• A myopic focus on customers matters more than ever: when companies start to "over manage the equity markets" and fail to put the customer at the center of everything they do, that's when things go south
• Let's talk about business growth at Cloud Wars Expo: join us in San Francisco June 28-29-30 to explore critical questions about how to unlock, manage, and accelerate growth in today's world.

The Big Quote: "Somehow, one of the world's most valuable and and most scalable companies ever created lost touch with customer sentiment and customer needs. And I think that's the real story here."

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Episode 20

The Big Themes:

• Change management and change agility are often overlooked: Raven Intelligence research shows that customers' most frequent regret after completing digital transformation projects is that they didn't dedicate enough time and resources to change management processes.
• The Six Es of Operationalizing Change: From a presentation by Josh Bersin, these six steps are absolutely essential to change management, Bonnie says.
• Change agility: With how fast technology evolves, change management is always an ongoing project, so companies need to commit to cultivating a culture within their organization that is change-agile.

The Big Quote: "It's not just an idea, it's something that you need to budget for during a digital transformation. It's sort of a box that you need to sort of put around all of these things. And I will tell you, it's not a cheap box."

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This episode is sponsored by BMC Software.

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The Big Themes:

• How silos impede product innovation: Ray describes "a chasm" that has traditionally existed between product teams and their counterparts working in sales and marketing. Given that every person in those departments has a hand in bringing a product to market, closing that gap is necessary to make better products, and make them faster.
• Industry-specific solutions are the future: Customers' expectations are higher than ever before, and they expect their vendors to understand their specific needs, pain points, and goals. As such, companies like Propel need subject-matter experts to help design software and solutions tailored to customers' industries.
• The tailwinds driving growth for Propel: The way businesses work is changing rapidly and in countless ways. As leaders rethink their business and revenue models, internal structures, and more, Propel is the perfect partner to help them design a "whole office" solution for product development.

The Big Quote: "It used to be that we as product people and product managers thought, 'We understand what the customer needs. We're gonna design it. If we build it, they will come.' It was kind of a Field of Dreams mindset of how products were designed and launched. But it's not the case today, because people have way too many choices."

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This episode is sponsored by Propel.

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The Big Themes:

• How Ulta grew 40% amid Covid-19 disruptions: Omar talks about the company's innovation department and the remarkable 4-week turnaround it achieved for introducing curbside pickup at all physical locations.
• Merging the physical and digital: Ulta aims to dazzle customers with a seamless experience, no matter where they're shopping. Omar describes what that would look like from the customer's perspective and what Ulta's doing in terms of increasing personalization.
• The power of data and Redis: In addition to making Ulta's backend systems faster and more efficient, Redis has helped simplify the entire process of upgrading Ulta's technology platform. 

The Big Quote: "What we don't want to do is just put something out there because Omar wanted it, but millions of customers don't even care about it. So data is key. Data helps us make the right decisions, data helps us to make the right investment. With data we can be sure that we're actually delivering what our customers are looking for."

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This episode is brought to you by Redis.

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The Big Themes:

• An update on the sale of Thomas to Xometry: Tony describes how the two companies are fitting together and creating a new kind of on-demand manufacturing marketplace.
• What's the true ROI of technology these days? Following the acquisition, Tony's been on a bit of a listening tour, having lots of conversations with other business leaders, and a theme that's emerged is uncertainty around the real impact that new technology can have on a business. Tony has some important ideas about this.
• The role of CXOs in tech implementation: It's essential that business leaders work to demystify new technology for employees, and help their teams understand how they fit into the new structure and processes it creates.

The Big Quote: "Technology is about growth. Yes, you might create something more efficient. But if that increased efficiency doesn't allow you to reallocate resources and push growth, then frankly, I don't know that your shareholders are going to be dazzled."

Want to be part of Tony's listening tour?

Connect with him on LinkedIn and fire away.

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The Big Themes:

• Data-first modernization: the return of the Chief Data Officer in many organizations goes hand-in-hand with an increasing effort to streamline data landscapes and eliminate technical debt.
• Opportunity at the edge: compute power at the edge has strengthened, allowing companies to push real-time analytics out of the edge with a relatively small footprint and transforming how businesses think about it.
• Industrialized data supply chains: like at a car plant, Matt says that end-to-end automation is needed in data supply chains, which means lots of new software and tools and lots of new skills training.

The Big Quote: "The early adopters have figured out that cloud is not a cost savings, it's an agility and velocity engine, right? It's profit centers. It's the ability to address our customers in new and different ways."

This episode is sponsored by Hewlett Packard Enterprise.

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The Big Themes:

• Modernizing without compromise: every customer is going to have vastly different needs and different use cases, but HPE is adamant about meeting the specific requirements of each one.
• Putting the platform next to the data: giving customers the ability to access their data in its native form helps them avoid running through hoops in terms of compliance, governance, operations, and more.
• What's next for HPE GreenLake: look for more in the realms of protected infrastructure, data set management, and exploring what it looks like to separate database administrator roles, the classic IT roles, from the data operation roles.

The Big Quote: "HP GreenLake's fundamental problem proposition is to bring in what you've been buying before... and then have our GreenLake managed services organization take care of it for you, so that you don't have to worry about it anymore. And it scales up and down based on your needs."

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The Big Themes:
• President Zelensky of Ukraine's heroic example: Leaders are force multipliers for the people that they lead, and to do that, they have to communicate, compel, and inspire. Zelensky is doing all of those things, while refusing to flee his country in the midst of war. It's inspiring.
• The sacrifices of leadership: Being a leader is an exhausting occupation. Because you are constantly having to put other considerations before you yourself. True leaders are always last in line, and that is difficult.
• We deserve better leaders in the U.S.: From both a business and political perspective, Christian says that the United States is really lacking in true leadership. "The great resignation" is as much about leadership as it is about anything else.

The Big Quote: "Yes, companies need to make money in a profit in order to continue, but that profitability does not need to supersede the demand the leader should have on them to ensure the longevity of the organization and the care and feeding of the people that work there."

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Explore more in the Cloud Wars series - https://accelerationeconomy.com/cloud-wars/
Listen to more episode of Cloud Wars Live - https://accelerationeconomy.com/tag/cloud-wars-podcast/

Connect with Christian on LinkedIn - https://www.linkedin.com/in/christiananschuetz/

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This episode is brought to you by BMC Software.

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Watch "Sadin on Digital," a monthly series that explores the fast-changing and high-stakes world of digital business and what approaches CEOs and boards must take to lead their companies successfully into the Digital Age. A series by Cloud Wars Live.

The Big Themes:
• The new Future CXO and Board channel from Acceleration Economy: Wayne is helping to lead a new content stream, and his tagline is "two minutes of tech talk for top executives." See more here - https://accelerationeconomy.com/future-office-of-the-cxo/
• Technical debt and what CXOs need to know: there are 3 main danger areas when it comes to technical debt and cybersecurity, and Wayne explains each of those and why non-technical CXOs need to understand them.
• "If it ain't broke, don't fix it" is wrong: in tech, being proactive is the only way to stay ahead. Ignoring problems you can't see in front of you is going to cause massive problems, so CXOs must invest now.

The Big Quote: "The acceleration economy is accelerating, whether you are or not. And that's the message I want to give to the CEO, to the CFO, to the CMO, to the board executive: you've got to understand what this stuff can do for you, or do to you."

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This episode is brought to you by BMC Software.

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