Latest / The DEX Show: A Show for IT Change Makers / DEX SHOW LIVE FROM BOSTON (w/ Toyota Motor North America & Honeywell)

Transcript

DEX SHOW LIVE FROM BOSTON (w/ Toyota Motor North America & Honeywell) · The DEX Show: A Show for IT Change Makers

0:01
Welcome it change Makers to the Deck Show with Tim Flower and Tom McGrath.
0:07
Let's get into it. Hell yeah, Hi everyone, nice to see you
0:12
all. Welcome to the second ever Deck Show Live. My name is Tom
0:16
McGrath. I'm joined as ever by my the main man, Tim Flowers.
0:21
It's great to see you two times and live in person together. We're usually
0:25
across the pond from each other, right, and it's so great to have
0:28
everybody join us in our studio today. Welcome as we hit the third event
0:32
on Experience Everywhere and the second chance to do this live in front of everyone.
0:36
And if you're wondering who on earth we are, we present world leading
0:40
DEX podcast. It's also the only dex podcast, but don't take that too
0:44
cynically. And we recently hit the incredible milestone of our one hundredth episode.
0:48
Now what's fascinating about that is it's actually one episode for every year of Tim
0:53
Flower's IT career. Now it's a lot funnier in London when he didn't see
0:59
it was coming. When it was funny. So the truth be, the
1:02
truth of the matter is, I'm only a third of the way through that
1:04
journey thirty five. But as you can imagine thirty five years in it,
1:11
I've had my chance to go to my fair share of conferences as well.
1:14
Back to SMS and Win two, k Alteriras Managed Fusion Semantics, Vision,
1:19
the Microsoft MMS, all of the world's Deck World, VM World, Dell
1:25
World. There's a whole solar system of conferences out there to go visit.
1:29
The one thing that I enjoyed from all of the conferences, though, is
1:32
the vendor content is great. Ours today is no exception, but it's about
1:37
all of you and your ability to pick the brains of other customers who are
1:41
experiencing the same problems that you are steel shamelessly from them. It is the
1:46
sincerest form of flattery. So flatter as many people as you can today and
1:53
make sure you flatter Tom and his nice scarf to please. So if you
1:57
don't have a format of the show's weekly show, the Deck Show and every
2:01
other week approximately, we have a leading a fantastic IT leader who comes on
2:07
the show talks about their company, their achievements. But it's the Deck Show
2:09
life, you know. So we have two fantastic IT leaders from two fantastic
2:14
companies for you today. Let's introduce our first guess he's a Mohammad. He's
2:20
manager of AI and Automation. What a fantastic title that is for Toyota Motors
2:25
North America. K, come on there, you're on you welcome, Thanks
2:34
for coming man, it's great to see. Yeah, first and foremost welcome.
2:40
I think we all know Toyota, but maybe a good start would be
2:45
to hear a little bit more about your specific area you own and you oversee
2:49
absolutely, I'm good. Yeah, thanks for having me many minutes of kid.
2:53
Mohammad, Stem and Tom mentioned I'm the manager at Toyota Toward and more
3:00
North America. As you all know, Toyota is a global company, one
3:04
of the largest core sell company selling company, and in North America, Toyota
3:13
IT Systems or IT environment is very complex. We have one hundred and fifty
3:19
we call field offices or remote sites, and we have data centers, and
3:23
we have manufacturing plants around sixteen MANU production plants in North America. And my
3:30
area of responsibility is observability anti en observability of all applications supporting Toyota's business infrastructure,
3:38
network servers and day made and debt automation and debt user experience. So
3:46
we have around forty thousand plus endpoint devices and one of my responsibility is to
3:53
provide them all some world class experience to them. And with the next thing,
3:59
I think we'll just started the journey. You know, we are hoping
4:01
to see more and more value we should be able to provide. As you
4:05
said, you have just started the journey. But it has been a really
4:09
really interesting year year and a half. Right, But before we get into
4:13
that and why specifically we wanted to talk to you so much, tell us
4:16
about the circumstances before the journey began. What were you looking to achieve?
4:20
What challenges were you confronted by? Yeah, it's a good question. So,
4:26
as I mentioned, you know, our IT is a very complex environment.
4:30
We have world class, best in the market tools for application and infrastructure
4:34
monitor but we don't have a good tool our technology, a way to monitor
4:43
how our users are performing, how you know, what pain points are there
4:46
going through, how their endpoint devices are performing, are they getting what they
4:53
need from from the IT right? So so then we started thinking, you
4:58
know, I talked to many IT leaders in the industry, I attended many
5:02
conferences and you know, talked to our market research partners like Gardner, and
5:09
then we decided we need a tool, one of the world class tools to
5:14
not only monitor our infrastructure application, but also the core assets of our company,
5:19
which our users. So then we started saying that we need to have
5:24
this text tool. Then you know, we did POCV, evaluated multiple tools.
5:30
Finally we ended up by going with the next thing because that is one
5:33
of the top rated during our proof of concept. So you know, here
5:40
we are. We just started the journey. So sequire, let's get a
5:43
little philosophical for for a little while. I had a chance to come down
5:46
to your facility during the time where you were evaluating what you were going to
5:50
do, and what struck me was the just the amazing facility, all glass,
5:57
brand new. It had unfortunately sat empty for a couple of years because
6:00
of COVID, But when I was there, people were just coming back into
6:02
the office. The vibe was really cool, great forward looking modern vehicles in
6:08
the lobby, and even down to your genius bar that you call the pit
6:13
stop, which I think is really cool. You still remember absolutely it was.
6:17
It was one of the great things of visiting here. You really take
6:20
your brand and bring it out to your employees and make sure they're part of
6:24
that. Talk a little bit about how decks and what you want to accomplish
6:28
with decks fits into that corporate culture, maybe not so much from technology,
6:32
but from the human capital and the employee. Yeah, absolutely so Toyota,
6:38
you know, we have two pillars, right, just like any other company.
6:41
So one of the pillar is respect for people. So you know,
6:46
second pillar is continuous improvement. Of course, buying and selling cars is our
6:53
core business. That is our bread and butter, right, and Toyota believes,
6:57
you know, being that respect for people, Toyota leaves that one of
7:00
the most valuable assets of the company are people. So that is one of
7:08
the reasons Innatota is striving to provide a better and work class experience is to
7:14
our employees. And when we started the journey and going through our leadership,
7:18
and this exactly resonates with what company is looking for right in order employees the
7:26
assets of the company and providing great experience to improve their productivities no less than
7:32
building a car selling company. So that is one of the main goal of
7:38
my team and our leadership team is to improve the productivity so that they can
7:44
be more productive, they can do better job, not run around for it.
7:48
It help. So one of the interesting things for me coming to Next
7:53
Thing eight years ago was now being on outside looking into the process that a
7:58
customer perspective, custom like you takes to evaluate. Take us inside a little
8:03
bit of your journey of evaluating and trying to justify new technology. So it's
8:09
a good question, and I was expecting a more tough question. So this
8:13
is one of the challenges. You know, we had a great partner like
8:16
Next Thing, right. Our journey is very long, and I'm pretty sure
8:22
most of the DEXT leaders in this room have must have gone through the same
8:26
challenge. No matter what do what you do, no matter how how much
8:31
you know, how nice business case you you prepare. The question comes from
8:35
leadership is why why are we doing justifying them? You know it will be
8:41
easy. You know we are a car company, right, we need if
8:43
it'll be easy for me to say, hey, I you know, give
8:45
me in a you know, half a million or one million dollar too,
8:48
I can buy network gear, or I will buy server expand more storage or
8:54
more applications to cloud. That is easy self. They understand, Oh,
8:56
this is going to help to build more hearts and sell more cars. When
9:01
I say hey, give me money, I'm gonna build debts. I said,
9:05
what, so's it's a journey and we that's one of the reasons we
9:11
have gone through. We we believe one of the things car PDC a plan
9:15
to check and act. This is one of the Toota's terminologies. We take
9:18
time and you know, quality is one of the ingredients of Toyota vehicles.
9:24
We built into quality. So whatever we do when we are we don't rush.
9:28
We are not an IT company or any other company. So it's you
9:31
know, we know Toyota has been around for many, many years, maybe
9:33
a hundred plus a year, but in North America it's fifty plus years.
9:37
So it takes time. We do to thorough evaluation and you know plan do
9:43
you know, plan check, do act. So it took some time,
9:46
but eventually we were able to convince them why it is important when we say,
9:52
okay, this is what we want for employees, this is what we
9:54
are to achieved, and it was easy to convince them, but initially it
9:58
was plus TOLF. Yeah. So the next phase of that journey then,
10:03
which probably everybody in this room who's a customer has also been on, is
10:07
you've got that business case you've you've convinced them that it's money well spent.
10:11
What's your roadmap and your journey to actually track and demonstrate and to show that
10:16
you're living up to that commitment. How do you make sure that they know
10:18
you're getting the value you said you're going to deliver exactly. So we are
10:22
going into two phases, Approach one and approach to Our short term is we
10:30
see, you know, when we pull the tickets data right anything, when
10:33
we do we pull the ticket data majority of the tickets, maybe around twenty
10:37
percent of the tickets kind of you know, your GP updates or driver updates
10:43
and all the good stuff, right, we can easily automate achieve yous in
10:48
next thing which we saw that in our pocough concept. I think that is
10:52
our short term goal to eliminate twenty percent of service desk tickets l to level
10:58
two tickets. Then our long term goal is again this is a this is
11:03
a high bar we raise ourselves using this. You know, somebody says this
11:09
morning, don't use AI, but you know, if you look at my
11:13
title manager AI and Automasion, there is no way I cannot not use it.
11:18
So using greatest and latest technologies and where the market is going, where
11:22
the technology is going today. Using AI and generative AI, we wanted to
11:28
build an agent less desk. What it means is, you know, when
11:33
we say agent less desk doesn't mean we will eliminate all the people. Right,
11:37
So software, I believe a software has a power, right know,
11:41
think about we all know that software can launch rockets, right, why can't
11:46
it solve use the problem. So that is my firm believer. Using these
11:50
great tools, our goal, our long term goal is, you know,
11:54
build an agent less desk, use triach and identify what the issues. Why
12:00
people are still calling service tests? They should not be calling service desk for
12:03
small things? Right, So then you know, our long term goal is
12:07
to at least reduce eighty percent of service desk load that is a huge and
12:13
fifty percent of level two issues. And we have next thing. We have
12:18
other partner which we use for eleven issues. And these two marry together pretty
12:24
well. I think with these two technologies and with my desk teams, you
12:28
know we have automation teams in our portfolio, I'm pretty sure we'll be able
12:33
to achieve those goals. But we raise ourselves high bar. What do you
12:37
feel resonated most with leadership out of all of those value propositions in terms of
12:43
procuring that investment. So we are able to show the results right now.
12:50
So for example, one of the things I'll show in we just concluded a
12:54
hackathon Global hackathon and we presented these two next use cases and moves us next
13:01
thing. You know, marrying with movers can really provide some great value.
13:07
So we were able to build some use cases. We were able to show
13:11
the results to the judges, right. So we didn't win the contest,
13:16
of course, but participation is important. I think with those reserves small wins,
13:20
I think we should be able to see the value and I hope that
13:24
our leadership will recognize and help us for future investments. Yeah, it's amazing.
13:31
Well stay there because we want to bring into the conversation a little more,
13:35
a little later. We want to introduce now our second guest. Yeah,
13:37
so great keynote from last year. We had them on stage. We
13:43
had them at our live taping last two weeks ago in London. Always has
13:48
great insight and always great to invite them back up on stage. The VP
13:54
of Information Technology at Honeywell, mister Darren Wright. There are only we're becoming
14:09
a trio Darren on this show permanently. I think it's lovely, lovely to
14:15
have you here in Boston. And if anybody didn't see last year's show,
14:20
Darren was one of the absolute stars. Tim was going on about his his
14:24
data and his presentation for months, talk of the town. He can he
14:26
can recite his figures. I guess a good place to start, though,
14:31
would be to hear like an update, right, like, not only those
14:35
metrics which impressed us all so much a year ago, but where they are
14:39
now and how you've updated them and what you've achieved since. Sure, so
14:43
great to be back. So a couple of things, I guess is his
14:48
one. We are keep doing this. We keep doing the basics. We
14:52
call it the basics, looking at the data, looking at the opportunities,
14:56
looking at the use cases. So I think when we talked last year,
15:00
we were on the journey to avoid. The target was nine hundred thousand productivity
15:05
overs. We achieved that, But what have you done since? Yeah,
15:09
and so this year, So this year our journey is one point two million?
15:13
Is the target? Oh, we're going after So we're doing the basics.
15:18
I think we are We've had a relationship with next Thing for a long
15:22
time now five six years. So we're on the infinity journey, moving from
15:26
cloud to infinity. So that's something that we're very focused on. CMDB integration
15:35
an another big goal for us this year. Another one is around our software
15:41
metering. We've done some really good achieved some really good things with our Microsoft
15:48
targets. We've taken out or managed to take out about half a million of
15:52
costs there, so lots of different things, lots of opportunities, lots of
15:56
use cases. We keep looking at all the progress. A lot of what
16:02
you talk about in terms of savings is related to time right, employee productivity
16:10
and so on. I know how I reacted to it, I know how
16:12
our audience reacted to it. Got a lot of feedback on on the value
16:17
of that. How is it perceived internally when you talk about saving time versus
16:22
ticket reduction and software savings. How did your execs when they start to see
16:26
the benefits piling up in time saved? Because one point two million is a
16:29
lot of hours. What's the internal reaction? Maybe not as good as I
16:33
would like it to be. So I think someone was talking about it earlier.
16:37
I think our company, like many others, they go after the hard
16:42
dollar save. So what does that really mean me personally? I mean the
16:47
productivity I think is fantastic. If we can give people time back, if
16:51
we can really be and use it as really an enablement rather than just a
16:56
cost saving, that's where we want to be. So so i'd say we
17:00
get we get good response from it, but I guess it's not as it's
17:06
not as good as when we're saying we're taking some money out right. A
17:11
lot of folks who have heard me talk over the years know that in my
17:14
travels to field offices when I was in enterprise at you always hear people talk
17:18
about the helpless desk, right, it doesn't have the best reputation in the
17:22
enterprise. How do you see that all the value that you're delivering, in
17:26
the benefits that you're bringing improving the value of it, and how can leaders
17:29
like you help that alone? Yeah, I think from my perspective, there's
17:33
some business leadership that really get it. I mean I talked about this example
17:40
before. Is you know if I talk if I talk to our engineer in
17:44
leadership, they you know their engineers their time is money you know, they
17:48
charge it out. So the more enabling we can be, the better it
17:53
is for them, and you know, and the better they can they can
17:56
perform. So so so really I think this we've got to keep spreading the
18:02
world. We've got to keep passing that message along that you know, this
18:06
time and this productivity is really important. And I think the more we can
18:11
be proactive rather than reactive, I think that helps our reputation as well.
18:15
If we're able to say we've seen this problem and we've already taken care of
18:19
this for you, I think that really helps our reputation versus waiting for somebody
18:25
to call the service desk and telling us about something. And reputation breeds more
18:29
value. Right, do you see now starting to see a change in how
18:33
it is perceived moving to a business value partner versus just a cost center.
18:41
I think we're beginning to go that way. I think it's tough when it
18:47
comes to certain technologies, certain tools. So you know, if we're making
18:52
a business case for a you know, an end customer facing you know,
18:56
solution or something it's relatively easy to perceive, then it as that really enablement.
19:03
When we're talking about technology tools that really are kind of moral in the
19:07
back office. It's tough, and I think, you know, so we
19:11
keep trying to show the benefit in the ways that people are used to see
19:15
in it, which is cost take out, you know, in the IT
19:19
side. So I think we're getting there, but maybe not as fast as
19:25
I would like us to get there. It's okay when you hear nine hundred
19:29
thousand hours, which is actually one hour for every year of TIMS with those
19:38
kinds of productivity savings, did you was that Did you quantify that hypothetically with
19:45
your leadership as was as part of the investment conversation. Is it something you're
19:48
going to return to and tabulate in the years in the years ahead, Yes,
19:52
that is definitely part of our business. Gise. We did some math,
19:56
you know, one of my product owner, my lead here, who
20:00
did all the heavy lifting when we create. When we did all the math
20:04
each ticket, how long it takes to solve the problem and out of the
20:08
twenty percent, how much how bunch money it saves may not be nine hundred
20:12
hours, but we did take into consideration in account because that is one of
20:18
the things we want to give back to the team members. Either productivity again
20:22
may not be hard or saving productivity again, it means something, Yeah,
20:27
it means and and Darren, what about your future plans or honeywell, what's
20:33
what's the main focus going ahead over the next year or so? So few
20:37
different things. I mean, you know I said before, I'll say it
20:41
again, is like, keep doing the basics. I mean, we hear
20:44
from we have perception surveys of of our people that you know, tell us
20:49
what they I was going to say what they do like and don't like.
20:52
It's more about what they don't like about it. But anyway, there's opportunities
20:56
there obviously that the you know, the day are inside next thing, and
21:00
the opportunity within infinity. So you know that for me is keep looking at
21:04
those three things, keep doing the basics, keep creating those use cases,
21:08
and that's going to help us drive that more and more of that more and
21:12
more of that productivity. We've got an initiative called Digital Drive, which is
21:19
where we're looking at kind of our standardization or maybe lack thereof in terms of
21:26
you know, our drivers and our images and everything out across the population.
21:30
So you know, we see that as a really big opportunity to kind of
21:33
understand what good looks like and get everybody to the same you know, to
21:38
the same same level. So that's a that's a big one. You mentioned
21:45
move Works. We we use move works as well. There's a there's a
21:48
big opportunity there to to integrate that beta together. So that's another of our
21:53
another of our focus areas really, so so that's that's the main ones.
21:57
I think it came up when we were in discussions prior to these shows was
22:03
acquisitions, right, not not necessarily an obvious place to go when you're thinking
22:07
about decks, but I understand it's been quite constructive and useful at Honeywell,
22:10
where you have quite a few acquisitions. Now, yeah, absolutely, And
22:15
you know, and again when I talk to people, I kind of look
22:17
at next think a little bit as a Swiss army knife. You know,
22:18
what I'm going to talk about isn't really necessarily a dex use case. But
22:25
you know, when we're making an acquisition, there's a lot of time that
22:30
goes into filling out spreadsheets about you know, what hardware, what device is,
22:34
what software, et cetera. You know, what are we getting our
22:37
well, you know, what are we getting ourselves into? And there was
22:40
actually you know, someone suggested a use case that we actually use next think
22:44
to to get the collector out there, get a specific collector out there so
22:48
that it can bring all that data back use the service. Now API,
22:52
create a CMDB of exactly that that that integration we're making. We can see
22:59
exactly what we got. We can also begin to see the you know,
23:03
how, how that performance is going, what the you know, what the
23:06
experience is like as well. And then that gives us a little bit of
23:08
a head start with integration as well, because then we can start what we
23:12
may have done before is say, go buy or go lease a thousand new
23:18
PCs with a honeywell image and that's what you need. Well, now we
23:21
can actually say, well, you know what, we know what's out there,
23:23
that's good enough, let's leverage VDI. We can start doing some of
23:27
the integration with policy pushing and stuff like that. So so that was a
23:32
really neat use case, took you know, weeks of time really down into
23:37
inter minutes. But as I say, not not really a not a dex
23:40
one per se, but a great use case. Andrew can add it to
23:44
his slide for next Yeah, there you go. But so I know,
23:49
honeywell you're on the Flow PTP obviously was unveiled in London first, but obviously
23:55
mentioned by Pedro this morning. Not necessarily something you've got hands on yourself,
24:00
that you're a steam position. But what's the feedback you've had and what's the
24:04
feeling for flow. I'm glad you said it that way, I mean,
24:07
but probably my hands on it would be a dangerous thing. But it's easy
24:11
to use, I think, yeah, exactly so, so now our team
24:15
is leveraging it. They've they took about fifteen of our existing use cases to
24:19
put it in the flow. See what you know, seats right, it
24:22
went. We also created some new things with it. Feedback is great to
24:26
use, you know, great interface, really simple, I mean one of
24:30
the quotes I think I heard it in one of the breakout sessions as well
24:33
as actually, you know, my lead in this area said, you know,
24:36
it's so simple even I could do it. So I'm not sure about
24:40
it. You give it to me and yeah, you prove this, prove
24:42
it, prove it, Prove how easy it is. And what about in
24:45
a general direction of like where next think is going with how a technology is
24:49
developing? What stands out to you and something like Pedro's Quino, but we've
24:53
seen so far. Yeah, I mean, I mean, I really like
24:56
the direction the next thing is going. I mean, I think, you
25:00
know, Ai, it's easy to be the buzzword and you know, everybody
25:04
talk about it, but what we're hearing and what we're seeing is something that
25:08
is like a real you know, a real good use case to take us
25:11
to that next step. And I think every you know, being being an
25:15
Next Think customer five six years, it has been a journey and I think
25:18
it continues to be a journey that we can actually get you know, just
25:22
get better and better at this. Well, we really appreciate your passion and
25:26
support, Darren, and we really appreciate you joining the joining the journey to
25:30
is okay. And we really appreciate everybody for listening and for joining us here
25:34
today, don't we Yeah? Huge, Thank you love having people join us.
25:38
Like I said in our studio, this is great. We've got to
25:41
find a way to do this more often. Can't really add too much more
25:44
to what these two gentlemen gave you today, but find them, pick their
25:48
brains, steal from them, take things back, and with that time I
25:52
think we can wrap things up right, Yeah, just just to say if
25:55
you if you could bear this presentation. We do have a weekly show.
25:57
You find it just search for the Deck Show wherever you get your podcasts,
26:02
be it Spotify, Apple or anywhere like that. We have an addition where
26:04
we have a panel discussion with Next thinkers called reality Bites, and we have
26:08
a lot of shows like this where we talk to fantastic gentlemen like this.
26:11
And in a minute, we're going to have an amazing, amazing performer join
26:15
this stage in a video to introduce him. But before we show that,
26:21
let's just put our hands together and thank Darren thanks for join us. To
26:26
make sure that you never miss an episode, subscribe to the show in Apple
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Podcasts, Spotify, or your favorite podcast player. And if you're listening on
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over to Nextthink dot com. Thank you so much for listening. Until next time,