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Apttus' Krappe on Launching 'Max' AI Sales Technology (Audio) · Bloomberg Intelligence

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  Speaker 1: This is taking stock with Gadlie Hayes and grim Box
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  Speaker 1: on Bloomberg Radio, changing the way businesses operate. While that
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  Speaker 1: is the focus of aptis, and here to tell us
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  Speaker 1: more about aptus and what it does and how it
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  Speaker 1: can help create value in a variety of industries, particularly
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  Speaker 1: using artificial intelligence. Kirk Crape is the chief executive and
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  Speaker 1: the co founder of Aptus. They're based in San Mateo, California,
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  Speaker 1: and he joins us now. Kirk, thank you very much
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  Speaker 1: for being with us. Thank you so much, very much
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  Speaker 1: appreciated to tell him thank you now. I also want
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  Speaker 1: to note that you are a noted author as well.
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  Speaker 1: The book is called Intelligent Quote to Cash, and maybe
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  Speaker 1: the best way to start is by you explaining the
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  Speaker 1: title of that book and how it connects with Aptus.
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  Speaker 1: I will, indeed so so netting it out. Quote to
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  Speaker 1: Cash is the business process that connects typically your self
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  Speaker 1: force automation tool to your financial tool. So you may
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  Speaker 1: use self force for selforce automation s a people your
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  Speaker 1: financial tool, and the process that connects them is called
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  Speaker 1: quote to cash. And historically quote to cash hasn't really
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  Speaker 1: been automated very much, and act as our business we
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  Speaker 1: began about ten years ago where we assemble the product
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  Speaker 1: footprint that does exactly that. So quote to Cash is
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  Speaker 1: a series of apps that essentially connect those two systems.
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  Speaker 1: The word intelligent has come about in the last eighteen
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  Speaker 1: months because we began to realize more and more that
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  Speaker 1: not only automating the process is of high value to customers,
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  Speaker 1: but in fact there's so much data and insights trapped
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  Speaker 1: in in this process that if you could have a
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  Speaker 1: machine learning or an AI official intelligence type tool to
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  Speaker 1: mind that data, you can dramatically improve the benefits ful
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  Speaker 1: for clients, not just automating the process, but giving giving
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  Speaker 1: insights and helping revenue much more significantly. So that's that's
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  Speaker 1: the genesis of the intelligent quote and the new book. Again,
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  Speaker 1: let's give the titless intelligent Quote to Cash by Kirk Krope,
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  Speaker 1: who is our guest, the co founder and CEO of Aptus.
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  Speaker 1: Very excited, of course, you are a dream Force this
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  Speaker 1: week and you are launching MAX Artificial Intelligence Technology. Dream Force.
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  Speaker 1: What there's over a hundred and seventy thousand people there
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  Speaker 1: from over eighty three countries. So tell us about MAX. Yes, So,
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  Speaker 1: so MAX is basically a female intelligent agents and what
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  Speaker 1: she does is your work for you, and we're not
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  Speaker 1: surprised that she's female, right, I know what to get
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  Speaker 1: those comments actually, but but so so she will basically
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  Speaker 1: execute anything you want. So, for instance, if you want
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  Speaker 1: to create a quote for a customer, instead of going
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  Speaker 1: inter application logging on selecting your products and going through
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  Speaker 1: sort of a laborious clickthrough, you'll simply talk to Max
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  Speaker 1: and say, Max, create a quote, and she will interact
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  Speaker 1: with you. She would say for which customer, which products,
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  Speaker 1: and she will go and do all the Monday tasks
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  Speaker 1: that typically a sales person and somebody else might do.
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  Speaker 1: So the whole concept of Max is to make your
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  Speaker 1: interaction with your application conversational as opposed to physical hitting keyboards,
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  Speaker 1: and have her really access to data the information performing
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  Speaker 1: your task in a much more intelligent way, and she
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  Speaker 1: is being unveiled to sweeps Kirk, I just wonder if
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  Speaker 1: we could put a name on the customer. I've looked
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  Speaker 1: at some of the examples, but you know, Trimble is
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  Speaker 1: an example of one company that you've done business with,
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  Speaker 1: or maybe you want to select another one, But just
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  Speaker 1: give us an idea of a of a customer and
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  Speaker 1: what you've done to help them change the way they
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  Speaker 1: do business. So I mean to point out a single
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  Speaker 1: name customer and talk about that would be probably very specific,
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  Speaker 1: but let me give you broadly what we do. The
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  Speaker 1: process we touch is revenue management. So if we perform
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  Speaker 1: the quoting process better, that is the process where you
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  Speaker 1: provide pricing to you customer. If we perform the contract
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  Speaker 1: management process better, which is ultimately the blueprint for your
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  Speaker 1: trading relationship. And if we perform the revenue management those
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  Speaker 1: three things are quote to cash. These these have dramatic
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  Speaker 1: impact to customers. If they reduced the cycle time, they
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  Speaker 1: increase the actual revenue, reduced revenue leakage, provide all sorts
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  Speaker 1: of other insights, So to pick one just top of
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  Speaker 1: head would probably do it a great injustice. But largely
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  Speaker 1: uh this revenue management process and small percentage improvements can
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  Speaker 1: result in tremendous games for formit and out such company. Now,
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  Speaker 1: you're looking to do an I p O potentially as
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  Speaker 1: soon as next year, and you have said recently year
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  Speaker 1: you think the elections, you selections, whether the US elections
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  Speaker 1: are hurting everything, including the I P O market, that's
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  Speaker 1: your view I'm originally from England, so I'm not as
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  Speaker 1: in with with this sort of politics of the US,
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  Speaker 1: but I will say we were actually at one point
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  Speaker 1: thinking about ipeering this year. Uh and then just generally
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  Speaker 1: election years typically end up not being the best years
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  Speaker 1: necessarily to do that, so we we did decide that
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  Speaker 1: we will delay our IPO to the first half of
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  Speaker 1: next year. But there's also other reasons for that. It's
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  Speaker 1: not purely election. That's one very small aspect. We're around
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  Speaker 1: a hundred and fifty million revenue company. We're growing roughly
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  Speaker 1: six year and years. We have great optics and great metrics.
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  Speaker 1: But but close half of next year will be in
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  Speaker 1: a poised position to really take advantage of all the
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  Speaker 1: other things that we're doing in the marketplace, and hopefully
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  Speaker 1: the cattle markets are are good at that point too. Well.
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  Speaker 1: Kirk Crupper, thank you for joining us today. CEO, co
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  Speaker 1: founder of Aptis. They have a new artificial intelligence technology Max.
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  Speaker 1: She's very intelligent. She's debuting Salesforces Big Dream Force event
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  Speaker 1: in San Francisco this week. Kirk's also debuting his new book,
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  Speaker 1: Intelligent Quote to Cash. I'm Cafe Hazel and PM Fox
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  Speaker 1: Sanks so much for joining us today. We'll see you
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  Speaker 1: back here tomorrow. This is Bloomberg