Latest / The DEX Show: A Show for IT Change Makers / The DEX Value Engine: Inside Nexthink Professional Services | Bryan Hunter

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The DEX Value Engine: Inside Nexthink Professional Services | Bryan Hunter · The DEX Show: A Show for IT Change Makers

0:02
Speaker 1: Hey it change Makers, and welcome to the Deck Show
0:05
Speaker 1: with Tom mc grath. Let's get into it. Hello, change Makers,
0:13
Speaker 1: Welcome back to the Deck Show. You know, one of
0:16
Speaker 1: my favorite things on the show is is getting a
0:20
Speaker 1: next thinker on the show that we've never had before, because,
0:23
Speaker 1: as I'm sure you've heard me say before, we live
0:27
Speaker 1: in a truly inexhaustibly interesting company or a company with
0:32
Speaker 1: an inexhaustible resource of interesting people to talk to, and
0:36
Speaker 1: I've to say illustrative at this point. It's not only
0:39
Speaker 1: that we've got a brand new guest today from Next Thing,
0:43
Speaker 1: but we have a next thinker. In all my seven
0:45
Speaker 1: years here, I've never had a chance to properly speak
0:48
Speaker 1: to before. He's Brian Hunter. I'm consulting senior manager at
0:51
Speaker 1: Professional Services. How you doing, Brian, I'm doing real again.
0:55
Speaker 2: I'm excited to be here.
0:57
Speaker 1: Excellent, excellent, And I was just saying to Brian before
1:00
Speaker 1: we started recording, I was we haven't actually met before.
1:03
Speaker 1: How have we not met though, Brian? How has that
1:05
Speaker 1: not happened? How has that not happened? How long have
1:08
Speaker 1: you been in Next Thing? Maybe it's just a.
1:10
Speaker 2: Little over two years. It's been a whirlwind time too.
1:14
Speaker 2: I joined June of two thousand and four.
1:23
Speaker 1: Four goodness, my mask might not be up to it's
1:28
Speaker 1: a little longer than I and I thought. Where are
1:32
Speaker 1: you based, Brian?
1:33
Speaker 2: I'm based in Minneapolis, Minnesota in the US. My office
1:37
Speaker 2: is out of the Boston office.
1:39
Speaker 1: Though. Nice, Well, we probably both you slightly more often
1:43
Speaker 1: than me occasionally passed through the Boston office.
1:45
Speaker 2: Man, But I think I've done it like once.
1:49
Speaker 1: Okay, I did it a few times a year, so
1:52
Speaker 1: I might might I see you out there? Maybe maybe?
1:55
Speaker 1: Maybe not? Maybe not? But what were you doing before
1:58
Speaker 1: you came to the Next Thing, Brian?
2:00
Speaker 2: To a background, I actually worked for Next Think customer,
2:02
Speaker 2: So I was working for one of the Fortune one
2:05
Speaker 2: hundred companies for twenty two years prior to coming to
2:08
Speaker 2: the Next Think. I did a lot of things over there,
2:13
Speaker 2: from end user all the way up to I ended
2:16
Speaker 2: up running their Next Think for their organization for seven years.
2:20
Speaker 2: As actually how I found out about the company gotcha.
2:23
Speaker 1: Like many such cases, like my previous co host in Flower,
2:28
Speaker 1: you know, people come out of come out from being
2:31
Speaker 1: customers to full time Next thinkers, and you do you
2:35
Speaker 1: do encounter them in professional services? Most of well, it
2:37
Speaker 1: think it is interesting you have had Next Thinkers from
2:40
Speaker 1: Professional Services join us before, but I thought, look, I
2:45
Speaker 1: thought we could focus in a little bit on this
2:48
Speaker 1: sometimes under sometimes it's undersung, you know, heroes of Next
2:53
Speaker 1: Think the PS team is there known around here. Maybe
2:57
Speaker 1: you could begin, Brian, just give people a little bit,
3:00
Speaker 1: a little bit of the lay of the land of
3:02
Speaker 1: what it is that professional services do and why indeed
3:05
Speaker 1: there's such sort of such value partners by customers and
3:08
Speaker 1: Next Thinkers are like.
3:10
Speaker 2: Absolutely so professional services as a whole. We offer paid
3:15
Speaker 2: for and also annual services to customers that help them
3:20
Speaker 2: actually realize their goals with the platform. Next thing is
3:23
Speaker 2: a very capable platform. It has a lot of different
3:26
Speaker 2: moving parts to it, and it can be very complicated
3:28
Speaker 2: for people to take on. So that's where professional services
3:31
Speaker 2: thankfully is there for customers. We help them understand how
3:36
Speaker 2: they can translate the ideas or the use cases or
3:38
Speaker 2: the value they're trying to receive into reality and then
3:41
Speaker 2: present that information back to their stakeholders. So it really
3:46
Speaker 2: is where the rubber hits the road, and we help
3:49
Speaker 2: bridge that gap for a lot of customers.
3:51
Speaker 1: One hundred percent. And it's actually something that correct me
3:54
Speaker 1: if I'm wrong. If it's been singled out by Gartner
3:58
Speaker 1: in more one Magic Quadra and as a kind of
4:00
Speaker 1: one of the kind of distinguishing strength of nexte software.
4:05
Speaker 2: I believe you're correct. You'll have to check and validate for.
4:08
Speaker 1: We're just going to make it. We're going to make
4:09
Speaker 1: that assumption together. Gotten half my number, They've got my
4:13
Speaker 1: number if I need to correct for record, and I
4:15
Speaker 1: will correct it internalisten as I'm sure, but I'm pretty
4:17
Speaker 1: sure that's the case. But what But certainly we live,
4:22
Speaker 1: we live in an era where that kind of operationalization layer,
4:27
Speaker 1: as it were, is increasingly sought after, talked about important
4:34
Speaker 1: to customer.
4:34
Speaker 2: I can actually give you, I can give you a
4:36
Speaker 2: real life example. My last organization I was with, they
4:40
Speaker 2: had next Think We like I said, I managed it
4:42
Speaker 2: for seven years with them, from the time period I
4:45
Speaker 2: took over until the time period that we had at
4:47
Speaker 2: fully operational and we were on a regular cadience realizing
4:50
Speaker 2: regular value from the product was about four years.
4:53
Speaker 1: Wow, that's crazy.
4:56
Speaker 2: Yeah. And then when I joined professional services, having a
5:00
Speaker 2: some of the customers I was with one of them,
5:01
Speaker 2: we realized the same degree in movement in about seven months.
5:07
Speaker 2: It is because we have the experience of what's come along,
5:11
Speaker 2: what works, what doesn't work, how to bridge those gaps
5:14
Speaker 2: inside your organization, and so we can definitely help accelerate
5:18
Speaker 2: that path to value for customers.
5:21
Speaker 1: Guys, they are extremely interesting statistics and you hear the
5:27
Speaker 1: same over time. People will recognize the same story from
5:30
Speaker 1: We have a lot of customers come on the show
5:32
Speaker 1: and they say, oh, actually our background next with Decks
5:36
Speaker 1: goes back a lot further than this successful kind of
5:39
Speaker 1: project or you know, but first time around, you know,
5:42
Speaker 1: we didn't do it right, you know, and it took
5:45
Speaker 1: this approach with more guidance on that sort of dex
5:49
Speaker 1: shops layer to be successful. And of course the professional
5:54
Speaker 1: services you're in quite a privileged position in being so
5:58
Speaker 1: embedded inevitably with custom and those but also very close
6:01
Speaker 1: to the technology and the people who are building it. Right,
6:03
Speaker 1: you're you're right between the two. What do you think
6:06
Speaker 1: you take from that privileged position that would be difficult
6:10
Speaker 1: for the rest for company to learn by itself.
6:15
Speaker 2: Yeah, so it's actually interesting because you do see how
6:19
Speaker 2: different organizations operate. So, like I said, next Thing has
6:23
Speaker 2: a lot of capabilities and a lot of complex interactions,
6:26
Speaker 2: and every other customer is different and so what might
6:30
Speaker 2: work for one definitely doesn't work for everyone else. And
6:33
Speaker 2: so from the professional services side, you have to learn
6:35
Speaker 2: to think on your toes and you learn how you
6:38
Speaker 2: can almost bend the platform to meet what your customers
6:42
Speaker 2: are looking for. And so I think that would be
6:44
Speaker 2: something even if you go like talking to the product team.
6:47
Speaker 2: There's been many times where I've talked to them and
6:49
Speaker 2: they're like, I never thought of how you guys use that,
6:51
Speaker 2: and like, well, we have to because we have to,
6:54
Speaker 2: like I said earlier, make the rubber meet their own
6:56
Speaker 2: and help drive that value to our customer. So we
6:58
Speaker 2: have to bridge that gap for them.
7:01
Speaker 1: And how how often then does an engagement start as
7:05
Speaker 1: can you can you help us to do this and
7:08
Speaker 1: actually results in something next thing does or builds differently
7:12
Speaker 1: as a consequence.
7:14
Speaker 2: I don't have exact metrics, but like the anecdotal point
7:18
Speaker 2: of view all the time, there's many customers who are
7:21
Speaker 2: putting forth like ideas that we help them bridge up.
7:26
Speaker 2: I'll give you a perfect example, the most recent one
7:28
Speaker 2: where they put in the binary usage data for like
7:31
Speaker 2: CPU and GPU usage and stuff like that that came
7:35
Speaker 2: from an engagement that I was with with the customer
7:36
Speaker 2: last year where we actually met with the PM team
7:39
Speaker 2: and we said, hey, this is something that's really useful.
7:41
Speaker 2: These are the breakdowns is where she come to and
7:43
Speaker 2: they put on their backlog and they implemented it this year.
7:47
Speaker 1: And going back a little further, Brian correct me if
7:49
Speaker 1: I'm wrong, But the deck score itself, you know, you
7:51
Speaker 1: know that was a belief I came out of a
7:54
Speaker 1: customer's request or suggestion back in the day.
7:56
Speaker 2: I'm gonna believe you on that one. That's a little
7:58
Speaker 2: bit before my time.
8:00
Speaker 1: We're just going to go an assumption here, Brian across
8:03
Speaker 1: the board. Okay, no fact check us today. I believe
8:09
Speaker 1: it's true. I'm pretty confident. And we look at maybe
8:13
Speaker 1: another example of this. We were going to talk a
8:16
Speaker 1: bit more about hardware refresh. We had a very successful
8:20
Speaker 1: episode with Scott Pope recently kind of delving into hardware
8:23
Speaker 1: Refreshed a little bit, and we're going to go into
8:26
Speaker 1: it in a little bit more detail and from a
8:28
Speaker 1: different angle here today. But before we do, Brian, is
8:32
Speaker 1: is the Hardware Refreshed kind of story an example of
8:35
Speaker 1: something's come out of customer engagement.
8:38
Speaker 2: Actually it is, so the one that we're going to
8:41
Speaker 2: talk about came about from one customer that I then
8:45
Speaker 2: worked with another customer on. So I worked actually between
8:47
Speaker 2: two customers to kind of build out a solutions framework
8:50
Speaker 2: that worked for them, and so far it is now
8:53
Speaker 2: being implemented in something close to fifty professional service customers environments.
8:57
Speaker 2: Because it's resonated so well with with the customers and
9:00
Speaker 2: their needs, that.
9:02
Speaker 1: Must be a really satisfying part of your role.
9:05
Speaker 2: It is, It's led to a lot of conversations, so
9:08
Speaker 2: I've talked almost every one of those fifty customers. But yeah,
9:12
Speaker 2: it's definitely satisfying to see, like the people recognizing value
9:16
Speaker 2: out of what you've built and what the capabilities are
9:19
Speaker 2: and even so much though it's like maly just customers,
9:22
Speaker 2: but internally I've shown the product team it and there's
9:24
Speaker 2: been a lot of people on the product team that
9:26
Speaker 2: have been very interested in what we did and how
9:28
Speaker 2: we did it.
9:30
Speaker 1: And so, I mean, you know, the basic story on
9:33
Speaker 1: hardware refreshed, as most listeners will know by now, is
9:36
Speaker 1: that you know, simply making refreshed decisions based on device age.
9:40
Speaker 1: It's an increasing the outloaded way of going about it.
9:44
Speaker 1: What do we feel we have to sort of add
9:47
Speaker 1: to that story? What nuances do we have to add
9:50
Speaker 1: to that in terms of you know, okay, if I
9:52
Speaker 1: guess if age isn't enough, what is what do you
9:54
Speaker 1: want to be measuring? What does a genuinely data back
9:57
Speaker 1: refreshed decision, Like what is it you were able to
10:00
Speaker 1: extrapolate to those of a fifty customers specific Yeah, it's
10:03
Speaker 1: it's experience.
10:04
Speaker 2: Experience really is the key differentiator. Like it doesn't matter
10:08
Speaker 2: how old a device is. If if I'm trying to
10:11
Speaker 2: sweat a device for five years but the experience is terrible,
10:13
Speaker 2: I'm not doing my company any good. I'm trying to
10:17
Speaker 2: save in one area, but I'm discounting in another. So
10:19
Speaker 2: being able to take both of those measurements together, take
10:23
Speaker 2: age and experience together in a way that the company
10:25
Speaker 2: agrees with, and then be able to put together a
10:28
Speaker 2: plan of action on how to build off of that
10:31
Speaker 2: is super important.
10:32
Speaker 1: And then to.
10:33
Speaker 2: Take a step further from that. What we've done really
10:35
Speaker 2: good from are what the platform currently does is we
10:38
Speaker 2: give them that disability experience, we give them visibility experience
10:42
Speaker 2: in like a moment in time. So we can say,
10:44
Speaker 2: here's the users are having a bad experience, you should
10:46
Speaker 2: refresh them now. And the problem is is from an
10:50
Speaker 2: enterprise organization, you get your actual like you get your
10:55
Speaker 2: funding for measurements or funding for replacements like six months
10:59
Speaker 2: or a year ahead of time. So you need to
11:01
Speaker 2: be able to forecast what that's going to look like,
11:03
Speaker 2: which is very, very difficult. And that's actually what led
11:05
Speaker 2: to the type of implementation and use case that I built.
11:09
Speaker 1: And was that with the custom scores that I've heard
11:12
Speaker 1: about Prime specific.
11:13
Speaker 2: It was a combination of custom scores, and since I
11:16
Speaker 2: was able to build custom scores, I knew how I
11:18
Speaker 2: was able to build it. I was then able to
11:20
Speaker 2: extrapulate out and then forecast into the future how many
11:24
Speaker 2: months it would be until a given device, if everything
11:26
Speaker 2: remained the same, would then hit the threshold be replaced.
11:30
Speaker 1: That's that's extremely cool, And I think we're going to
11:35
Speaker 1: touch predictive elopment a bit. But first of all, what
11:37
Speaker 1: is it you're measuring and how is it you're able
11:41
Speaker 1: to turn lots of those individual signals into something you
11:43
Speaker 1: can actually make a decision based upon.
11:47
Speaker 2: Yeah, so as you as you said earlier, next think
11:49
Speaker 2: has the deck score. The deck score is already a
11:51
Speaker 2: great aggregate of those individual signals, and so for the
11:55
Speaker 2: customers I've worked with, we've we work with each customer
11:59
Speaker 2: individual and figure out like which aspects of the duck
12:01
Speaker 2: score really sing to them, which one really make it work.
12:04
Speaker 2: And so from my original two customers, we just went
12:08
Speaker 2: with the endpoint deck score. That's a great aggregate of performance,
12:11
Speaker 2: it's a great aggregate git of reliability, and it kind
12:14
Speaker 2: of shows gives you a single number that you can
12:16
Speaker 2: base off of for your overall experience. I've had other
12:20
Speaker 2: customers who have only wanted to go with device performance
12:23
Speaker 2: or device reliability, or combination of the two. And so
12:25
Speaker 2: because we have all that data inside of the platform,
12:27
Speaker 2: it makes it really easy to be able to take
12:29
Speaker 2: it and then manipulate it for our needs. So given
12:33
Speaker 2: the case of what I did is I took the
12:35
Speaker 2: device age, which was pulled from when the device was
12:38
Speaker 2: purchased from the vendor, utilizing our already existing library remote
12:42
Speaker 2: actions to get warranty information remote action I took that,
12:45
Speaker 2: I took the deck score and for dexscore that exists
12:47
Speaker 2: in the platform, and I brought them together inside of
12:50
Speaker 2: a flow inside of a formula where I brought them in,
12:54
Speaker 2: took them in the consideration of device personas, which is
12:58
Speaker 2: another key area of what I built off of, and
13:01
Speaker 2: I think we're going to talk a little bit about
13:02
Speaker 2: that later, but and I basically formulated that out into
13:06
Speaker 2: a score that gives me a number between zero and one,
13:09
Speaker 2: and then based on that, if you hit over the threshold,
13:12
Speaker 2: which is completely configurable by the customer, the device gets
13:15
Speaker 2: tagged for replacement, or if it's too new of a device,
13:19
Speaker 2: because you definitely don't want to replace advice it's a
13:21
Speaker 2: year old. You have minimum and maximum device ages. You
13:24
Speaker 2: can then flag devices for investigations, so then you can
13:27
Speaker 2: automatically deliver those proactively to your support teams and have
13:31
Speaker 2: them investigate what's going on and help get those fixed
13:34
Speaker 2: so they don't end up being replacement, so you can
13:35
Speaker 2: then hold off on costs from that perspective.
13:39
Speaker 1: And tell us a bit about this concept purchase personas.
13:44
Speaker 1: What is one? First of all, I have a mention
13:46
Speaker 1: of it. I don't know what it is. And why
13:48
Speaker 1: does knowing who is using the device matter as much
13:51
Speaker 1: as knowing the condition of the device itself. When you make.
13:57
Speaker 2: Device personas is probably actually, I'll say phone in general
14:00
Speaker 2: is probably one of the most difficult conversations for a
14:02
Speaker 2: customer to be able to give, you, provide and answer.
14:04
Speaker 2: For a lot of times, when we think of personas,
14:06
Speaker 2: we think about the user who's using the device. Are
14:09
Speaker 2: you a road warrior? Are you a high performance user?
14:13
Speaker 2: And those sorts of things. But for a lot of customers,
14:16
Speaker 2: being able to convert on to real actual data has
14:18
Speaker 2: been very difficult. So in order to help bridge that
14:21
Speaker 2: gap and make it easier for the customers I've been
14:23
Speaker 2: working with, I just ask them a simple question. When
14:26
Speaker 2: you go to purchase a device, you don't purchase a
14:28
Speaker 2: single device for everybody, correct, And they said, yep, I
14:30
Speaker 2: go what decisions do you use to make when you
14:33
Speaker 2: purchase those devices? And then you figure out what those
14:36
Speaker 2: decisions are, those naturally become your device personas. So I'll
14:39
Speaker 2: give you example one of my customers, they purchased specific
14:42
Speaker 2: devices for their VIP users, They purchase pecific devices to
14:46
Speaker 2: their high performance users. They purchase specific devices for their
14:51
Speaker 2: shared devices or KIOSK devices or standard devices, and so
14:54
Speaker 2: you take all of those different persona device personas, and
14:58
Speaker 2: that's really where the suite sauce comes out of this
15:01
Speaker 2: because I may have a VIP user who I want
15:04
Speaker 2: to make sure they always have latest and greatest, so
15:06
Speaker 2: their devices will only last them three years. That doesn't
15:09
Speaker 2: mean I have to get rid of the device if
15:11
Speaker 2: that device is no longer meeting the needs of what
15:13
Speaker 2: is current usage is if one of my other personas
15:15
Speaker 2: could easily consume that device, I just move it to
15:17
Speaker 2: the other persona as long as the experience is good
15:21
Speaker 2: and it's still within the thresholds of that PERSONA. Congratulations,
15:23
Speaker 2: you've now been able to extend that device in your
15:25
Speaker 2: organization longer term.
15:28
Speaker 1: Can you give some real, real world examples of the
15:31
Speaker 1: kind of transitions between rules which have made this kind
15:36
Speaker 1: of efficiency viable concept easily?
15:40
Speaker 2: One Probably the most easy to understand ones are your
15:43
Speaker 2: design users. So design users need some very powerful machines.
15:47
Speaker 2: Those very powerful machines you need to run very powerful
15:49
Speaker 2: software like the Adobe Suites and things like that. Well,
15:52
Speaker 2: what happens if the device no longer meets what the
15:55
Speaker 2: newer software needs? Well, do you throw away the device? No,
15:59
Speaker 2: you replace the device to give them the ones that
16:01
Speaker 2: they need to fulfill their roles. But now that devices
16:04
Speaker 2: consider to be very powerful for a user who just
16:06
Speaker 2: does standard work. So you can then pass it on
16:08
Speaker 2: to that user, and now you're not you're not replacing
16:11
Speaker 2: the device for the second user. You've only paid for
16:13
Speaker 2: a place one device and you're extending the life of
16:15
Speaker 2: the original one.
16:16
Speaker 1: What about what about the line when it comes to
16:23
Speaker 1: extending useful device life you're getting more more value from
16:29
Speaker 1: them without eventually paying for it an employee experience. Where's
16:33
Speaker 1: the art in getting that balance right?
16:37
Speaker 2: Yeah, the art is really going to come down to
16:39
Speaker 2: the organization and the actual usage of the devices. So
16:42
Speaker 2: that was one of the other key things that we
16:44
Speaker 2: built into the solution is that every one of those
16:47
Speaker 2: purchase personas could have a different threshold, and so you
16:52
Speaker 2: figure out what matters for your team. Like if I
16:55
Speaker 2: talk about my high performance devices, to me, the performance
16:58
Speaker 2: of the device matters more so than the age of
17:00
Speaker 2: the device. So I may weight my uh weight my
17:04
Speaker 2: replacement on the performance of the device. But if I
17:07
Speaker 2: have a standard device or maybe a shared device, maybe
17:11
Speaker 2: the performance doesn't matter as much because it's only utilized
17:13
Speaker 2: in small bursts by certain people. So it's really going
17:16
Speaker 2: to come to understanding how the how those specific personas
17:20
Speaker 2: are used and then tweaking the threshold on an individual basis.
17:24
Speaker 2: That doesn't mean that you have to tweak the threshold
17:26
Speaker 2: to figure it out. You could just set up and
17:29
Speaker 2: run as default and then see what works and what
17:31
Speaker 2: doesn't work and adjust it. It's all about learning. So
17:35
Speaker 2: one of the things that I tend to follow through
17:37
Speaker 2: with is an agile methodology of you don't let your
17:42
Speaker 2: progress stop because you're trying to reach perfection. You start
17:45
Speaker 2: working on it, you start measuring, and then you start
17:47
Speaker 2: adjusting as as a management goes, and so then you
17:50
Speaker 2: continue to move the needle forward every time.
17:53
Speaker 1: Very cool. What do you reckon how much of how
17:57
Speaker 1: much of professional services is literally innovation? Like on a
18:03
Speaker 1: customer by customer basis? Is it is it ever wrote?
18:07
Speaker 1: You know? Is it almost always kind of require a
18:10
Speaker 1: degree of creative kind of engagement?
18:13
Speaker 2: It does if you're going to be like a successful
18:15
Speaker 2: person professional services. So if you if you're coming in
18:19
Speaker 2: expecting that you're just going to be able to follow
18:20
Speaker 2: some guides and then deliver it, you're not going to
18:24
Speaker 2: really like excel very very far. So what you want
18:30
Speaker 2: is to be able to really think through problems and
18:34
Speaker 2: come up with creative solutions, Because if all you're telling
18:35
Speaker 2: customers is like, oh, I'm sorry, the platform doesn't do that,
18:38
Speaker 2: how likely are they going to continue to continue to
18:41
Speaker 2: invest in next thing? If all they're being told is no,
18:43
Speaker 2: I can't do that. But if you can think of
18:45
Speaker 2: a creative way to solve their problem that helps solve
18:47
Speaker 2: them and then you can help take that back to
18:49
Speaker 2: the platform and help build the platform up, They're going
18:52
Speaker 2: to love that. They're going to love us, and they're
18:53
Speaker 2: gonna stick with us as long as as long as
18:55
Speaker 2: they can because they know that regardless of what comes
18:58
Speaker 2: out of what the platform does, we'll find solution that
19:00
Speaker 2: helps at least meet the need of what they're looking for.
19:04
Speaker 1: We hear it a lot. We hear it a lot.
19:06
Speaker 1: You guys do amazing work. Any other areas of work
19:10
Speaker 1: which you are really exciting at the moment you collaborate
19:12
Speaker 1: with customers on you're able to highlight them a little bit. Uh.
19:16
Speaker 2: Yeah, we're working on all sorts of things. I'm not
19:18
Speaker 2: going to call it for me, I'm a call for
19:20
Speaker 2: one of my other consultants. They actually built a solution
19:24
Speaker 2: that utilizes Adobe's webportal to pull in all of the
19:26
Speaker 2: licensing information for all the Adobe products and maps it
19:29
Speaker 2: across all the users in an instance, so you can
19:32
Speaker 2: identify what is being used and what isn't being used
19:35
Speaker 2: based on what they're licensed for versus what we typically
19:38
Speaker 2: do for Mexinc. Which is what's installed. Because sometimes you
19:41
Speaker 2: may be license for software and you may not actually
19:43
Speaker 2: have it ever have it installed on anything. So being
19:45
Speaker 2: able to map that out has been incredibly useful and
19:48
Speaker 2: I think one of those customers he has also I
19:51
Speaker 2: think has assigned it in two different customers. One of
19:53
Speaker 2: them is saving about ten thousand a months in Adobe
19:55
Speaker 2: licensing and the other one saving about fifty thousand a
19:57
Speaker 2: month in Adobe licensing.
19:58
Speaker 1: It's like the sam Ho grail, isn't it?
20:01
Speaker 2: This is a huge basically, it's it's been a huge thing.
20:03
Speaker 2: And again this is another creative way of using it,
20:06
Speaker 2: and he's utilizing multiple capabilities inside of next Ink. In particular,
20:10
Speaker 2: Flow has enabled a lot of these unique UH capabilities
20:14
Speaker 2: to happen because we can do these creative ideas inside
20:17
Speaker 2: of the sandbox type environment where we're not worrying about
20:20
Speaker 2: setting off credentials, we're not worrying about risking things. We're
20:23
Speaker 2: just building everything and then reaching the data inside. Next
20:26
Speaker 2: with next.
20:27
Speaker 1: Think crazy, you guys come up with amazing, amazing stuff.
20:30
Speaker 1: Anything else, anything else, Brian, I was trying to think
20:35
Speaker 1: of if.
20:35
Speaker 2: There was anything else, like really cool.
20:38
Speaker 1: How about how about? How about how about AI specifically?
20:41
Speaker 1: Like where where well, unnecessarily where you're you're you're pulling
20:44
Speaker 1: innovations out of a product that's not necessarily but in
20:48
Speaker 1: terms of insight, you're able to share on like real
20:51
Speaker 1: well customer concerns, priorities, experiences with AI that the DECKS
20:57
Speaker 1: is able to kind of really make a difference at
21:00
Speaker 1: at the moment.
21:01
Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean, you're almost like painting a picture for
21:03
Speaker 2: AI tools capability where we can give them the visibility
21:06
Speaker 2: of the utilization of AI as well as the governance.
21:11
Speaker 2: But then we're gonna take another lever, another layer for it.
21:13
Speaker 2: Because in the US, Spark is becoming very very popular
21:16
Speaker 2: amongst our customers, and so we have a lot of
21:20
Speaker 2: ongoing Spark engagements where we're learning all the different ways
21:23
Speaker 2: that customers are looking to have their users engage with
21:27
Speaker 2: our tooling for Spark, and so we're figuring out working
21:30
Speaker 2: with the product team to help ensure that that is
21:33
Speaker 2: the best possible experience for our customers. I can tell
21:36
Speaker 2: you right now, Like in the US, agent agent is
21:38
Speaker 2: a very popular choice. They're trying to look at from
21:41
Speaker 2: a Spark perspective.
21:43
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, it's incredible amount a buzz around spark at
21:47
Speaker 1: the moment, right it just remarkable. I've got some bad
21:51
Speaker 1: news for you, Brian. You have a you have a
21:52
Speaker 1: guinea pig for a brand new feature. So we're gonna
21:57
Speaker 1: we're going to be trialing today. You know, look, Fewture
22:00
Speaker 1: guests at least if they listen to your episode, will
22:04
Speaker 1: will be pre appraised of this, will be forewarned of
22:07
Speaker 1: this new feature. It's a quick fire around, Brian, nothing
22:11
Speaker 1: too controversial, nothing to put you too much on the spot.
22:13
Speaker 1: But I think you're going to thrive. I think you're
22:15
Speaker 1: gonna do a great job of it. Five quick fire
22:17
Speaker 1: around questions and then one more before we let you leave.
22:20
Speaker 1: Starting now, Brian, what's the one workplace technology frustration you
22:25
Speaker 1: would love to eliminate forever? Obviously you've got that background
22:28
Speaker 1: as a customer and that you see trenches to draw
22:31
Speaker 1: from it.
22:33
Speaker 2: For me, it would actually probably be the performance impact
22:37
Speaker 2: of collaboration tools. Collaboration tools, especially in a remote workforce,
22:40
Speaker 2: has become so integral to everything that even from the
22:45
Speaker 2: next perspective that we do and all the collaboration tools
22:49
Speaker 2: literally destroy computers that they're running on. So if you're
22:53
Speaker 2: trying to share your screens like that, it definitely can
22:57
Speaker 2: block and knock the experience down quite a lot. For
23:01
Speaker 2: I'm a Thomas Circlear from a next Thnker perspective, we
23:03
Speaker 2: see it all the time on our own machines.
23:04
Speaker 1: Do no do best piece of career advice you've ever received.
23:10
Speaker 2: Never be happy with where you are?
23:13
Speaker 1: Oh oh, never be content. I don't know. In fact,
23:16
Speaker 1: it might be good career advice, might not be good
23:18
Speaker 1: spiritual advice prior.
23:20
Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean from from a yeah, from a career perspective.
23:22
Speaker 2: If if I was content with where I was, I
23:24
Speaker 2: would not be where I am today. I'm never never
23:28
Speaker 2: happy with just being in the same old, same old.
23:32
Speaker 2: I'm always looking for what the next opportunity.
23:34
Speaker 1: Is not treading water, you might say, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah,
23:37
Speaker 1: I feel that what emerging technology inside of inside the
23:42
Speaker 1: decks are you most excited about right now?
23:45
Speaker 2: I mean AI of course, like uh, even beyond like
23:49
Speaker 2: just what next thank has from AI. AI gives our
23:52
Speaker 2: users the ability to understand data that's been very difficult
23:55
Speaker 2: for them to do in the past. A lot of
23:57
Speaker 2: what we've done in the past from a professional services
24:00
Speaker 2: of view is build dashboards, build queries, build things to
24:03
Speaker 2: help people interpret that data. Now that we have AI
24:06
Speaker 2: from like a workspace perspective, from your admins, or from
24:10
Speaker 2: a user perspective with Spark, it really helps bridge that gap.
24:14
Speaker 2: They don't have to know all the ins and outs
24:16
Speaker 2: have to do it. They just let the AI interpret
24:17
Speaker 2: it for them.
24:20
Speaker 1: On a personal note, Brian, what app or tool can't
24:23
Speaker 1: you get through the working day with that?
24:28
Speaker 2: Probably Nexus? I use it quite often. There's I don't
24:35
Speaker 2: know if I'm one of the most, but I'm probably
24:37
Speaker 2: one of the most prolific users of that tool. I've
24:40
Speaker 2: created like four or five different bots that the professional
24:43
Speaker 2: services team uses and a use on a daily basis.
24:48
Speaker 1: Amazing final, well, final quick fire around question. Then one
24:52
Speaker 1: more before you go, Brian, when you're not solving customer challenges,
24:57
Speaker 1: what's your preferred way to switch off?
24:59
Speaker 2: And it's a combination, so I if I'm doing anything
25:05
Speaker 2: in computer wise, actually like when I said AI is
25:08
Speaker 2: very useful for me. I'm building my own AI workspace myself.
25:12
Speaker 2: I have AI servers in my house that I'm running
25:14
Speaker 2: localized AI solutions on. But when I'm not doing anything
25:18
Speaker 2: with computers, playing disc golf. It's one of my favorite
25:21
Speaker 2: pastimes to just go out there and play a little
25:23
Speaker 2: bit of rounds of disc golf.
25:26
Speaker 1: Nice. Nice. This is a question we haven't asked anyone
25:29
Speaker 1: for a couple of months, but I'm bringing it back, Brian.
25:31
Speaker 1: It's not a quick fire, quick fire round question. You
25:34
Speaker 1: don't have to be as snappy in your response. But
25:37
Speaker 1: what's your favorite thing about being a Next Thinker?
25:40
Speaker 2: I mean, truly, it's gonna be This is gonna be
25:43
Speaker 2: a twofold question or twofold answer as well. First off,
25:46
Speaker 2: being able to be there and help shape the experiences
25:51
Speaker 2: of our customers, it's like no other I've been on
25:55
Speaker 2: the customer side, being able to help other customers get
25:57
Speaker 2: there has been superwarrying for me. But then on the
26:00
Speaker 2: other side, just the other Next thinkers you get to
26:02
Speaker 2: work with on a daily basis. Being able to meet
26:05
Speaker 2: and talk to people from all around the world and
26:09
Speaker 2: see everyone's different perspectives, it's not necessarily something you get
26:12
Speaker 2: to see in every company. So I really enjoy that.
26:15
Speaker 1: What I said at the top of the conversation, Brian,
26:18
Speaker 1: it's not can it's true inexhaustible source of interesting people
26:21
Speaker 1: to talk to of this company, Brian. If people are
26:25
Speaker 1: listening and they're you know, they they're having the kind
26:27
Speaker 1: of experiences you've described of, you know, struggling with that
26:31
Speaker 1: operationalization layer. What can they do? Who can they reach
26:35
Speaker 1: out to, how can they make a quick difference.
26:40
Speaker 2: So if they're having trouble struggling operational approvisational there, I mean,
26:43
Speaker 2: obviously look into the next thing. Professional services.
26:46
Speaker 1: There you get to help you.
26:48
Speaker 2: Yeah, but if truly, the deck slops framework and our
26:53
Speaker 2: Navigator framework have been incredibly helpful for customers being able
26:57
Speaker 2: to translate ideas into actions.
26:59
Speaker 1: So true, Brian, thanks for coming on the show, and
27:02
Speaker 1: thanks to your whole team for a great work they do.
27:06
Speaker 1: We really appreciate it, love it. That's it for this
27:11
Speaker 1: week's Deck Show. We'll be back next week, and if
27:13
Speaker 1: you don't already, be sure to follow the show so
27:16
Speaker 1: you don't miss an episode until next time.