Latest / The DEX Show: A Show for IT Change Makers / 🎙️ Reality Bytes: Beyond the Shiny DEX Tool (w/ Monica Filak)
Transcript
- 0:01Speaker 1: Welcome it, change Makers to the Deck Show with Tim
- 0:05Speaker 1: Flower and Tom McGrath.
- 0:07Speaker 2: Let's get into it.
- 0:09Speaker 3: Hello, change Makers, welcome back to the Deck Show. Show
- 0:12Speaker 3: within a show within a show. We will never run
- 0:16Speaker 3: out of fantastic Next thinkers to talk to. Today, we
- 0:20Speaker 3: welcome for the first time Director of Customer Success Monica Felak.
- 0:25Speaker 3: How are you, Monica, Welcome to the show for the
- 0:27Speaker 3: as I say, for your debut guest on Reality Bides.
- 0:31Speaker 3: I'm very happy.
- 0:31Speaker 2: To have you.
- 0:33Speaker 4: Thank you so much. I'm glad to be here.
- 0:35Speaker 3: Okay, I should also mention I often forget this when
- 0:38Speaker 3: I'm introducing, but you know it is the Reality Bites
- 0:41Speaker 3: panel in miniature. Today we have may man, Tim Flower,
- 0:44Speaker 3: and we have Oriana as well. Hello to you both
- 0:48Speaker 3: and Monica, and they have questions for you. I have
- 0:51Speaker 3: questions for you, but to begin with, maybe if you
- 0:54Speaker 3: start with a short introduction for our audience about your
- 0:57Speaker 3: role and responsibilities at Next Think and in the Deck
- 1:00Speaker 3: sector more broadly.
- 1:02Speaker 4: Sure, so, I'm the leader for our Next Thing customer
- 1:06Speaker 4: success team here in North America. In short, my customer
- 1:10Speaker 4: success managers lead and guide our customers through their journey
- 1:13Speaker 4: with Next Thing. Really to just ensure that they're achieving
- 1:17Speaker 4: their strategic objectives and realizing value in the way that
- 1:21Speaker 4: matters most of them.
- 1:23Speaker 3: Souper up, and you've been a Next thinker for about
- 1:26Speaker 3: a year now. How has the experience shaped your understanding
- 1:31Speaker 3: of DECKS and how has that differed a little bit
- 1:33Speaker 3: from say, your expectations going into the role.
- 1:37Speaker 4: Yeah, I actually really liked this question. The concept of
- 1:41Speaker 4: DEX for me was well understood coming into Next Thing.
- 1:45Speaker 4: Quite frankly, it's what led me here. I feel that
- 1:48Speaker 4: it's the right time for companies to be thinking about
- 1:51Speaker 4: how their technology investment is actually impacting their organization and
- 1:55Speaker 4: understanding the reality of the results that it's driving for
- 1:58Speaker 4: them or not. But when I got into Next Thing,
- 2:02Speaker 4: I had previously seen decks as a tool, and I
- 2:07Speaker 4: learned that it's something much more than that. It's not
- 2:09Speaker 4: something that you buy and execute like so many enterprise
- 2:12Speaker 4: technologies that you buy and execute. The reality is that
- 2:15Speaker 4: it's an entire methodology. There's a whole process that goes
- 2:19Speaker 4: beyond just the technology, and this is what really drives
- 2:22Speaker 4: the reshaping of an organization and true transformative success.
- 2:28Speaker 2: So, Manica, you and I actually have something in common.
- 2:31Speaker 2: When I came over ten years ago. One of the
- 2:34Speaker 2: hats that I wore of the many. It's why I
- 2:36Speaker 2: don't have much hair left. I kept swopping hats around
- 2:39Speaker 2: was as a director of customer success for North America.
- 2:42Speaker 2: So it's awesome to have you here carrying that mantle forward.
- 2:46Speaker 2: One of the things as a customer we knew early
- 2:48Speaker 2: on was we didn't want to just buy the shiny tool.
- 2:50Speaker 2: We wanted to operationalize and get the most out of it.
- 2:53Speaker 2: So dig a little deeper into that concept of DEX
- 2:57Speaker 2: as a methodology. Gartner has said that dex is a
- 3:02Speaker 2: technology category and they kind of categorize us by vendors
- 3:05Speaker 2: who have tools. But go a little deeper into where
- 3:09Speaker 2: you kind of how you think about decks as a
- 3:11Speaker 2: methodology and talk a bit about where most organizations fall
- 3:16Speaker 2: a bit short when they try to put it into practice.
- 3:19Speaker 4: Yeah, so you know, for decades it has served the
- 3:23Speaker 4: needs of the business. And to really oversimplify this for
- 3:26Speaker 4: a second, it will look across the market at the
- 3:29Speaker 4: tools that they may need to best achieve their aim.
- 3:34Speaker 4: So for many customers, I find that they at first
- 3:36Speaker 4: look at decks in this way they need a technology
- 3:39Speaker 4: that can give them insight into their organization. They need
- 3:42Speaker 4: visibility that they can take action against, and so they
- 3:44Speaker 4: look as they're looking to buy many other applications. But
- 3:48Speaker 4: our most successful and most strategic customers really understand that
- 3:52Speaker 4: there's more. Next thing is an entire methodology that's focused
- 3:56Speaker 4: around five pillars. You do have the technology component, of course,
- 4:00Speaker 4: that's important, but there's also the people who within your
- 4:03Speaker 4: organization do you need to engage and be involved with
- 4:07Speaker 4: How are you thinking about this in terms of how
- 4:09Speaker 4: you're organized, How does it impact the way that you're structured.
- 4:12Speaker 4: What processes need to be created or modified in order
- 4:16Speaker 4: to take effective action against these insights that you've gained
- 4:19Speaker 4: with all of your visibility. Now, how are you communicating
- 4:23Speaker 4: these changes to your org? This is one that many
- 4:26Speaker 4: customers don't necessarily think of, but the way that you're
- 4:29Speaker 4: driving awareness can drive adoption and change can be hard
- 4:33Speaker 4: for organizations. So you really need to think this through
- 4:37Speaker 4: in a thoughtful manner. And then when thinking about value,
- 4:40Speaker 4: what metrics are valuable to you and to your leadership.
- 4:44Speaker 4: Some is cost reduction, perhaps through software reclamation. For others
- 4:49Speaker 4: it's ticket avoidance and so on and so forth. So
- 4:52Speaker 4: where do you want to focus? So my team works
- 4:55Speaker 4: with customers around this entire methodology really to help refocus
- 4:59Speaker 4: their thinking to create a solution that makes the most
- 5:02Speaker 4: sense for them. So it does differ by customer, and
- 5:05Speaker 4: does differ by industry, by size of company, and more
- 5:08Speaker 4: so we really work one on one with them, and
- 5:12Speaker 4: that's what my team helps with.
- 5:14Speaker 2: Yeah, it really is the combination of the concepts of
- 5:18Speaker 2: dex and dex ops right operationalizing the capabilities to get
- 5:23Speaker 2: the most out of them. When I was a customer
- 5:26Speaker 2: and even after coming over here and helping customers put
- 5:29Speaker 2: together plans, we talked a lot about the art of
- 5:32Speaker 2: the possible. We transition then from that art into calling
- 5:37Speaker 2: it this is our inspirational goal, this is it. It
- 5:40Speaker 2: kind of kept us flexible and saying it's inspirational. It
- 5:44Speaker 2: was a little bit of a cop out at the
- 5:46Speaker 2: time too, because it avoided making a commitment. We just said, well,
- 5:49Speaker 2: we're inspired to get here, but we're not going to
- 5:51Speaker 2: quite commit to it. Where do you see some of
- 5:55Speaker 2: the biggest gaps between people setting a vision of what
- 5:58Speaker 2: they want to do and the reac of what they
- 6:00Speaker 2: actually can do and what they can accomplish in most places.
- 6:04Speaker 4: Yeah, well, like I said, so many of our customers
- 6:07Speaker 4: are so different. So I already mentioned those that come
- 6:11Speaker 4: in thinking this is a tool and a plug in
- 6:13Speaker 4: play solution. We work through them with that methodology, so
- 6:16Speaker 4: their vision in reality is quite vast. Sometimes our customers
- 6:20Speaker 4: have a clear vision, they know what they want to do,
- 6:24Speaker 4: but they're just not sure how to do it necessarily,
- 6:29Speaker 4: So they may or may not know the big strategic goals.
- 6:33Speaker 4: We really help them break that down into smaller parts.
- 6:36Speaker 4: Which ones do you prioritize first, second, and third? So
- 6:39Speaker 4: we can help here by leading with early wins that
- 6:42Speaker 4: drive the most value or processes that would be easiest
- 6:45Speaker 4: to adopt for them based on how they're already structured today. Well,
- 6:50Speaker 4: we look at the typical IT organization. You know, it's
- 6:53Speaker 4: been structured kind of in the same way for a
- 6:55Speaker 4: really long time, and the way that technologies are purchased
- 6:58Speaker 4: hasn't changed that much over time. How they score their
- 7:02Speaker 4: applications is one good example. Tracking up time is kind
- 7:06Speaker 4: of the same. But we uh, and next thing, we
- 7:09Speaker 4: we challenged a lot of these status quo assumptions, and
- 7:14Speaker 4: we challenge our customers to think differently and to rethink
- 7:17Speaker 4: their organ their organizational structure. We're tracking across various applications,
- 7:24Speaker 4: so we're not looking at the individual level, how is
- 7:26Speaker 4: A doing, B doing C doing? But really, as a
- 7:29Speaker 4: holistic UH solution, how is your entire organization doing and
- 7:33Speaker 4: meeting the needs of your business? So we have a
- 7:38Speaker 4: lot to unpack with our customers, but I would say
- 7:41Speaker 4: in short, their vision coming in is often oversimplified and
- 7:47Speaker 4: is often missing the bigger component of the full methodology
- 7:53Speaker 4: aligning with their organization and communication and people and processes
- 7:57Speaker 4: and so forth.
- 7:59Speaker 2: I found over the years is it's very easy for
- 8:03Speaker 2: IT to sit down and say we're going to put
- 8:05Speaker 2: together on IT strategy and focus only on IT. Here's
- 8:09Speaker 2: where we need to contain our costs, Here's where we
- 8:12Speaker 2: need more IT capabilities, here's how we're going to develop
- 8:15Speaker 2: people to take on AI. And it becomes very IT
- 8:18Speaker 2: centric and bringing that IT strategy and connectivity with business
- 8:25Speaker 2: strategy and bringing those kind of in harmony, if you will.
- 8:30Speaker 2: It's easier said than done because there's different goals, there's
- 8:33Speaker 2: different realities, there's even different knowledge and different terminologies. What
- 8:39Speaker 2: have you learned along the way about making the alignment
- 8:43Speaker 2: with IT strategy and business strategy more real and where
- 8:47Speaker 2: does DEX play in that and bridge in that gap.
- 8:52Speaker 4: You know, I've been working to bridge the gap between
- 8:54Speaker 4: IT and business my entire career. And when you said
- 8:57Speaker 4: it's easier said than done, this is an understand for sure.
- 9:01Speaker 4: I think many times the two groups IT and the
- 9:04Speaker 4: business can be so divorced, and it's often because there's
- 9:09Speaker 4: kind of an US versus them mentality. The requests of
- 9:12Speaker 4: the business can make life and IT harder and sometimes
- 9:15Speaker 4: more challenging. The asks keep building, and then the rollout
- 9:19Speaker 4: for it can sometimes be an impediment to how the
- 9:21Speaker 4: business is doing things today, and change can be disrupted
- 9:25Speaker 4: to them. But what I love about decks is the
- 9:28Speaker 4: beauty of the foundation is the goal is making employees'
- 9:31Speaker 4: lives easier and better and really making them better able
- 9:35Speaker 4: to do the jobs that they were hired to do,
- 9:37Speaker 4: spending less time feeling frustrated or confused, in some cases
- 9:41Speaker 4: helpless because of the technology that's standing in their way.
- 9:45Speaker 4: And the next thing, our product really unlocks that real potential.
- 9:49Speaker 4: So once implemented, there's so much that happens in the
- 9:51Speaker 4: background that the issues that used to prevent the business
- 9:55Speaker 4: from doing what they needed to do just go away,
- 10:00Speaker 4: and the issues they were struggling with, well, they realize, gosh,
- 10:04Speaker 4: I haven't struggled with that in a few months.
- 10:05Speaker 2: Now.
- 10:06Speaker 4: My day's gotten easier, it's gotten better. I can now
- 10:09Speaker 4: focus on my job and not trying to fix stuff
- 10:12Speaker 4: that I don't know how to fix. So if this
- 10:15Speaker 4: change is communicated in the right way within the organization,
- 10:19Speaker 4: and that organization understands why this is happening, why things
- 10:23Speaker 4: have gotten better it's because of the efforts of the
- 10:25Speaker 4: IT department, then for them it becomes the hero. And
- 10:29Speaker 4: I love that. I love seeing our customers package up
- 10:33Speaker 4: the success that they've had and broadcasts that broadly through
- 10:36Speaker 4: the organizations and really bringing those two groups together. So
- 10:39Speaker 4: now they're working together to help each other to make
- 10:42Speaker 4: things better, not seen as two disparate entities.
- 10:47Speaker 2: So let's bring it all together. Then let's talk about
- 10:51Speaker 2: actual accomplishments. What are some examples anonymized if you need
- 10:56Speaker 2: to use names where you can, but about what some
- 11:00Speaker 2: customers have actually where they've actually succeeded.
- 11:05Speaker 4: Sure, so I can start more broadly and then get
- 11:08Speaker 4: more specific, but really a lot of our customers have
- 11:13Speaker 4: used a lot of the same types of use cases
- 11:17Speaker 4: that have really helped, so license reclamation, decommissioning old hardware.
- 11:23Speaker 4: Those have direct impacted the business from a financial perspective,
- 11:27Speaker 4: but maybe not from an experience. But there are use
- 11:31Speaker 4: cases like security upgrade updates or application upgrades. So in
- 11:37Speaker 4: these cases, in the middle of the workdat these often
- 11:40Speaker 4: pop up at the worst times and disrupts the flow
- 11:44Speaker 4: of the users doing what they're doing. So customers can
- 11:48Speaker 4: use our solution to alert the user to update when
- 11:52Speaker 4: they want, when time permits, and schedule it at their convenience.
- 11:56Speaker 4: So campaigns are really a popular way to get quick
- 11:58Speaker 4: and easy feedback from the business. It's done in a
- 12:03Speaker 4: non intrusive way and in some cases have done correctly,
- 12:06Speaker 4: can be even fun. These are typical use cases, but
- 12:09Speaker 4: thinking outside the box a bit, We have one customer
- 12:13Speaker 4: whose businesses their resources, their people, their business members travel
- 12:17Speaker 4: all over the world meeting with customers and doing the
- 12:22Speaker 4: work that they do, and it was really important to
- 12:23Speaker 4: them that their resources are able to stay connected and
- 12:27Speaker 4: have a strong Wi Fi signal when they're traveling, so
- 12:30Speaker 4: they used our product to map out the Wi Fi
- 12:33Speaker 4: reliability of hotels around the world, so that when their
- 12:36Speaker 4: executives are booking travel, the Wi Fi strength and reliability
- 12:39Speaker 4: was a feature that was an input into deciding where
- 12:42Speaker 4: to stay. So that's one example that's a little different
- 12:45Speaker 4: than most that did have a very positive and immediate
- 12:49Speaker 4: impact on the business.
- 12:50Speaker 5: Manica.
- 12:50Speaker 6: One of the things that you mentioned that I absolutely
- 12:52Speaker 6: loved is this sort of importance of communication and the
- 12:58Speaker 6: complexity of process, but also the opportunity for it to
- 13:01Speaker 6: really be the hero of the story. So I'm wondering
- 13:04Speaker 6: if you can talk a little bit about how companies
- 13:07Speaker 6: are trying to get those messages out more effectively, right, Like,
- 13:12Speaker 6: are you seeing growth in internal branding around decks or
- 13:16Speaker 6: more proactive IT engagement? How do companies communicate successful dex implementations.
- 13:23Speaker 4: I love the idea of internal branding if it fits
- 13:27Speaker 4: the culture of the company, branding can really be an
- 13:29Speaker 4: important way to drive awareness and adoption of our tools.
- 13:33Speaker 4: So my success managers will work with customers to share
- 13:37Speaker 4: ideas and best practices that we've gained from others on
- 13:40Speaker 4: the best ways to implement this, and then how to
- 13:43Speaker 4: identify the right process that fits the culture of their organization,
- 13:47Speaker 4: that piece is really important. One example of this is
- 13:50Speaker 4: a customer really took this to heart and branded their
- 13:53Speaker 4: next Think instance in its entirety. There's a logo associated
- 13:57Speaker 4: with it. They had lots of fun marketing and those
- 14:01Speaker 4: are widely distributed throughout the company to help drive awareness.
- 14:05Speaker 4: So the result is that when someone in the HR
- 14:08Speaker 4: department or the sales team is having you know, working
- 14:12Speaker 4: on their computer and then there's a little pop up
- 14:15Speaker 4: and they see that logo, they know, oh, I know
- 14:17Speaker 4: this is here to help me. Let me click on this.
- 14:20Speaker 4: And it's been really well received and has been a
- 14:23Speaker 4: great adoption driver within their company. So for many customers,
- 14:27Speaker 4: we advised, you know, let's explore this, let's see what works.
- 14:30Speaker 4: Other cultures might not be right for a sticker and
- 14:34Speaker 4: a fun logo, but we can do something that really
- 14:36Speaker 4: helps to communicate what this changes and to communicate why
- 14:39Speaker 4: it's important that others within the business lean in.
- 14:43Speaker 3: So I'm going to step in again, Monica and just
- 14:49Speaker 3: ask them if you think there can sometimes be a
- 14:51Speaker 3: tension between what it teams know is going to have
- 14:55Speaker 3: the biggest impact and what they want to deliver, and
- 15:00Speaker 3: if so, how do you navigate that and where does
- 15:02Speaker 3: that tension come from.
- 15:04Speaker 4: Yes, we see this tension often, and I wouldn't call
- 15:08Speaker 4: it tensions so much as getting distracted by what I
- 15:11Speaker 4: call the shiny things. So our tool can do lots
- 15:15Speaker 4: of really cool things. And once a company signs with
- 15:19Speaker 4: Netsthink and we have the executive buy in and we
- 15:22Speaker 4: understand what they're trying to achieve, once the work starts,
- 15:26Speaker 4: it's really easy to get distracted. So there are what
- 15:30Speaker 4: we're finding is the teams often don't realize all the
- 15:33Speaker 4: cool stuff that it can do. They become excited by it.
- 15:36Speaker 4: They say, all these issues or items that we're making
- 15:40Speaker 4: my job tricky before I can solve for them, and
- 15:43Speaker 4: this is left un checks.
- 15:44Speaker 3: You can.
- 15:45Speaker 4: Really it's like a runaway train in a good way,
- 15:47Speaker 4: because we're still building things that matter and make a difference,
- 15:50Speaker 4: but it might not be the big wins or meeting
- 15:53Speaker 4: the strategic objectives of the organization. So it's the job
- 15:57Speaker 4: of my team to make sure that we're prioritizing the
- 15:59Speaker 4: new of the business and ensuring that those strategic objectives
- 16:03Speaker 4: are met, and that the reason that the customer bought
- 16:06Speaker 4: in the first place, that we're achieving those aims, so
- 16:11Speaker 4: we're able to show value to the leadership in a
- 16:13Speaker 4: timely marrior, which is what we want. So we work
- 16:16Speaker 4: alongside our customer teams to make sure that the right
- 16:19Speaker 4: use cases are prioritized. First, we have benchmark data and
- 16:22Speaker 4: guidance that's built from doing this with customers all over
- 16:26Speaker 4: the world, and we can really guide them on quick
- 16:29Speaker 4: wins and those high value use cases. Our goal is
- 16:32Speaker 4: to build the plan that meets their needs, that prioritizes
- 16:36Speaker 4: thos high value cases, surfacing use cases they might not
- 16:40Speaker 4: have considered. We help them track progress too along the way,
- 16:44Speaker 4: and then we also do make sure they have time
- 16:46Speaker 4: to build the other cool stuff because that's fun too.
- 16:50Speaker 3: Indeed it is. And just hearkening back to your mention
- 16:55Speaker 3: of internal branding initiatives, I haven't maybe told the story
- 17:00Speaker 3: on the pod before, but not for not for a while,
- 17:03Speaker 3: not for a couple of hundred episodes or say, you know,
- 17:07Speaker 3: but there was a French insurance customer of ours and
- 17:11Speaker 3: I got to speak to somebody there and an experience
- 17:15Speaker 3: of them many years ago, and he told me that
- 17:16Speaker 3: they'd they branded their proactive capability of the organization as
- 17:21Speaker 3: pre cogs using the terminology from Minority Report, you know,
- 17:28Speaker 3: the movie where they have the psychics being able to
- 17:31Speaker 3: tell who's who's about to commit crime and stuff. That
- 17:34Speaker 3: was definitely the most creative and enjoyable branding I'd come across.
- 17:40Speaker 3: But using that as a sort of a platform to
- 17:43Speaker 3: step into the future a moment Monika. Obviously, as AI
- 17:48Speaker 3: is becoming more embedded index, how are you seeing on
- 17:52Speaker 3: the ground teams adapt or begin to adapt or plan
- 17:55Speaker 3: to adapt, both technically but also culturally. And what's the
- 18:00Speaker 3: mood like among the IT professionals you're working with when
- 18:02Speaker 3: it comes to embracing AI into their data or integrating
- 18:06Speaker 3: AI into their daily workflows.
- 18:09Speaker 4: Yeah. I think at first when AI was coming onto
- 18:13Speaker 4: the market, there was a fear. There was this misnomer
- 18:16Speaker 4: that AI will take all of our jobs. But as
- 18:20Speaker 4: you know, AI has no conscience. It's very good at
- 18:23Speaker 4: sifting through large amounts of data and reporting back on
- 18:26Speaker 4: trends and insights based on the data that it has,
- 18:29Speaker 4: but it can't be creative, it can't be deeply insightful
- 18:32Speaker 4: in the way these humans can. Just a really, really
- 18:35Speaker 4: efficient tool that helps to address what I call noise
- 18:39Speaker 4: in any job, and I think that a lot of
- 18:42Speaker 4: IT professionals are seeing this. So if we take one
- 18:46Speaker 4: example of the support desk, you know, a typical day
- 18:50Speaker 4: and a support desk, someone's having a problem. They submit
- 18:53Speaker 4: a ticket. The support team gets that ticket, it says
- 18:57Speaker 4: System A doesn't work. Now this could be true, it
- 19:00Speaker 4: could be System ADE doesn't work, or it could be
- 19:02Speaker 4: a symptom of a real problem with System B. It's
- 19:05Speaker 4: hard for the agent to really know, so they spend
- 19:07Speaker 4: a lot of time digging around, investigating, doing research. This
- 19:10Speaker 4: can take a long time. Then they finally troubleshoot with
- 19:13Speaker 4: a person, they eventually come to a resolution, and then
- 19:16Speaker 4: they move on to the next ticket. Ticket says system
- 19:18Speaker 4: MADE isn't working, and it just continues on and on.
- 19:21Speaker 4: So what our customers are doing is embracing AI in
- 19:25Speaker 4: this way to reduce that noise, to remove the tedious
- 19:29Speaker 4: burden from in this case, a support desk. We can
- 19:33Speaker 4: report on these large scale issues, we can offer suggestions
- 19:37Speaker 4: real time for faster resolutions, and so on and so
- 19:40Speaker 4: on and so on. And what our customers are seeing
- 19:42Speaker 4: is in this example they're able to put off the
- 19:45Speaker 4: noise and allow their resources to actually focus on strategic
- 19:49Speaker 4: items that they may not have had time to get
- 19:52Speaker 4: to in a normal day. I have one customer that
- 19:57Speaker 4: signed about six or seven months ago really just got
- 20:01Speaker 4: it and he came in and I'm so excited to
- 20:02Speaker 4: work with these customers because they come and they have
- 20:04Speaker 4: the vision, they understand DEX as a whole methodology, they
- 20:08Speaker 4: have a strategy, and he wanted to go in with
- 20:11Speaker 4: his organization and say, reimagine your day at the support
- 20:15Speaker 4: desk as a way to drive adoption. And it was
- 20:18Speaker 4: really highlighting all the ways that AI can help make
- 20:21Speaker 4: their day easier, to help reduce that noise and unlock
- 20:25Speaker 4: their potential so that as people and as employees, they
- 20:29Speaker 4: can not be troubleshooting system a system a system ay
- 20:32Speaker 4: all day. They can actually be focusing on some really
- 20:35Speaker 4: strategic initiatives, in this case, upskilling his service desk agents,
- 20:41Speaker 4: getting them better prepared to handle L two and L
- 20:43Speaker 4: three tickets, allowing them all to think a little bit
- 20:46Speaker 4: more broadly, and his whole organization's benefiting as a result.
- 20:49Speaker 4: So I think that as others are really seeing the
- 20:53Speaker 4: potential of AI and kind of letting go of those
- 20:55Speaker 4: early fears, I mean, I think success can be limitless. Yes,
- 21:01Speaker 4: and it's really exciting.
- 21:03Speaker 5: That is super exciting. I'm curious to know what you
- 21:05Speaker 5: think comes after that, right, So when these teams re
- 21:09Speaker 5: imagine it with these new tools, do you think that's
- 21:13Speaker 5: going to change what DEX looks like when AI is
- 21:16Speaker 5: more standard in organizations toolkits?
- 21:20Speaker 4: Absolutely? I mean I think that it's not just AI,
- 21:22Speaker 4: but it's decks as a whole. So when we're talking
- 21:26Speaker 4: specifically about AI, there's you know, as I said, the
- 21:29Speaker 4: real opportunity to reduce the noise of what any employee
- 21:34Speaker 4: is working with the day to day so that they
- 21:35Speaker 4: can spend more time doing more strategic things. But as
- 21:40Speaker 4: you said, DEX isn't just within the IT department, and
- 21:43Speaker 4: we're working more so with the business bridging that gap
- 21:47Speaker 4: to make the business's life easier. So be it, you know,
- 21:51Speaker 4: how do we engage in new applications? You know, we
- 21:55Speaker 4: have a great product that allows you know, really walks
- 21:57Speaker 4: a salesperson or an HR person or or some other
- 22:00Speaker 4: person within the organization through some of our technical applications
- 22:04Speaker 4: so that they're better able to do their job. I
- 22:07Speaker 4: think with AI, we can just automate that and make
- 22:09Speaker 4: that more intuitive and easier, and if it's not happening
- 22:13Speaker 4: in the background, then at least it can really tee
- 22:16Speaker 4: up the answer for someone. So instead of trying to
- 22:18Speaker 4: think through what is it that I need to do,
- 22:21Speaker 4: they're really just saying, oh, do I need to do
- 22:22Speaker 4: A or B? Yes or no. It becomes very simple
- 22:26Speaker 4: and the end of the day is faster, so that
- 22:29Speaker 4: they're able to keep going and keep moving and not
- 22:34Speaker 4: being weighed down by questions or uncertainty.
- 22:38Speaker 3: Phenomenal And I'm so glad We've had a bit of
- 22:41Speaker 3: technical difficulties listening today, principally afflicting Orihana, one of our
- 22:46Speaker 3: most valued panelists. So Orian has been in and out,
- 22:50Speaker 3: but we did manage to get I think to two
- 22:53Speaker 3: of my account's superb questions from Orihana. I'm very glad
- 22:57Speaker 3: we could, Monika, and I'm very very glad you were
- 22:59Speaker 3: able to join us today for the first time. You
- 23:02Speaker 3: have to be a returning guest maybe in twenty twenty six,
- 23:06Speaker 3: which is really around the corner now, isn't it. It's
- 23:09Speaker 3: really almost upon us, but a great pleasure to have
- 23:12Speaker 3: you on. Thanks so much for making the time.
- 23:15Speaker 1: Thanks Mama to make sure that you never miss an episode.
- 23:19Speaker 1: Subscribe to the show in Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or your
- 23:22Speaker 1: favorite podcast player, and if you're listening on Apple podcasts,
- 23:26Speaker 1: make sure to leave a rating of the show. Just
- 23:28Speaker 1: tap the number of stars you think the podcast deserves.
- 23:31Speaker 1: If you'd like to learn more about how next Thing
- 23:33Speaker 1: can help me improve your digital employee experience, head over
- 23:36Speaker 1: to nextthink dot com.
- 23:38Speaker 5: Thank you so much for listening.
- 23:39Speaker 1: Until next time.