Latest / The DEX Show: A Show for IT Change Makers / Digital Adoption & DEX: Nexthink and AppLearn's Digital Experience Vision (w/ Andrew Avanessian)

Transcript

Digital Adoption & DEX: Nexthink and AppLearn's Digital Experience Vision (w/ Andrew Avanessian) · 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. Tim, we recently saw each other, of
0:12
course, in Barcelona for the Next Thing kickoff, and now we're back on
0:16
other sides of the world to record this very special Deck Show episode. But
0:20
I realized as I was preparing for the show that I had a weird memory
0:25
hold Tim, and the memory hole was I couldn't remember what you were wearing
0:30
for the fancy dress party with which we closed. I had zero recollect I
0:36
was racking my brain. What was Tim dressed up? And I had no
0:40
sense of it? Do you remind me? Or were you not dressed up?
0:43
And this is why I couldn't think of it, I was I had
0:47
a very accessorized Tom. I actually had to donate my cast and one got
0:52
lost in the mail, so I donated mine to a colleague so they could
0:56
participate, and mine was mine ended up being a a hippie peace sign left
1:02
side earring that this is why I couldn't remember it. This was a very
1:07
very low res costume. I have to say it was my own. I
1:12
just went around in a bury for the night and I don't ask why it's
1:18
a long story, but you know, there you go. The deck show
1:19
at the next Thing, Fancy dress Ball was basically rocking pretty pathetic outfits.
1:25
I think it's fair to say, but but it was. But it was
1:29
The participation was off the charts. Everybody was all in on that thing.
1:33
It was really cool. I know, I felt very very bad. I
1:38
done a very poor job considering the efforts many people made. But it was
1:41
a wonderful It was a wonderful fancy dress Ball and it was a wonderful kickoff.
1:45
I thought it was great to be in Barcelon. It was great to
1:49
see everybody. I r L and listen. One of the one of the
1:53
you know things that featured in the presentations and in the discussions was very pertinent
1:59
to today is a very special episode and that was next Think's very recent acquisition,
2:05
the first acquisition in our history of Manchester based DAP vendor which sounds for
2:12
Digital Adoption Platform APPLAN and we are really really privileged to have the app learn
2:17
CEO of us today. His name is Andrew Avanessian and Andrew, it's lovely
2:24
to have you. Yeah, hi guys, thanks for having me. It's
2:28
it's a pleasure and welcome to next thing. Because what I would add,
2:31
how how the last few weeks been, and you can include the fancy dress
2:36
ball in your in your overall assessment. Yeah, look, it's it's been
2:40
amazing. It's been a little bit of a whorldwind, to be honest.
2:43
The obviously the GTM kickoff we hardy Barcelona last week was phenomenal. The team
2:47
that we took over from from Applearn really enjoyed it. You know, it's
2:52
great for I think both sides of the fence really for the app learn guys
2:55
to see, you know, how we fit into the Decks whole, you
2:59
know story and how you know, the DAP part of the world kind of
3:02
extends, you know, Decks into that next natural stage, which is the
3:07
application. So you know, it's brilliant and the atmosphere was amazing. So
3:10
really enjoyed the first few weeks. But as you can imagine, it's been
3:14
a very hectic kind of six seven months for us, and you know,
3:17
it's been a very hectic couple of weeks as we've been figuring out how we
3:20
integrate these two businesses. Yeah, extraordinarily busy, I'm sure. And thanks
3:24
for making the time for the show and on that count, but out of
3:29
interest has been the next thing. Company culture struck you so far. I
3:31
mean you would have had a particularly you know, strong strong drink of it
3:37
in Barcelona, so to speak. Yeah, sure, so you know,
3:39
look, one of the things that would say is that both app Learn and
3:44
Next Think are very aligned on a number of different levels. On at visionary
3:47
level, you know, ultimately the problem we're trying to solve the same thing,
3:51
but from different lenses. From a cultural perspective, super similar. You
3:54
know, we had at app leer and this acronym a maze which stood for
3:59
you know, all for all, so we win and lose as a team.
4:01
You know, we've got culture of we, not me, make it
4:03
happen. So we've always had this kind of mantra of almost boxing above our
4:08
weight and being a you know, having that David in a life challenge of
4:12
you know against much bigger, better hundred businesses. You know, then we've
4:15
got always learning. So the idea behind that was that you know, we're
4:18
defining a space, we're building a space. We don't have all the answers,
4:21
and you know, sometimes we've got you fail fast and learn from learn
4:25
from failure. Zealous approach was, you know, was what the Z stood
4:29
for. And that was all about having the passion and people could feel and
4:31
sense the passion when we're working with them that we not only wanted to sell
4:34
them a piece of software, bultimate delivering a solution. You know, don't
4:38
knows used to say this, and I started still do appose, no one
4:41
buys software. What they buy is a solution to a problem. And you
4:46
know that's what we that's what we delivered to our customers. Was that that
4:50
and that outcome. And then EGO at the door was what they ease did
4:54
for, which was you know, look, no one's got a monopoly on
4:56
good ideas. Just because I'm a CEO or just because someone's SVB, VP
5:00
of X, Y and Z doesn't mean you know, it doesn't mean them
5:01
right. You know, it's often the case that somebody closer to the problem
5:05
has the answer, so that that cultural set of values you know, aligns
5:10
very well with with the next thing world. And you know, it felt
5:13
like, you know, we're you know, on day one almost of that
5:15
kickoff felt like we're all one big family. So you know, it's super
5:20
super smooth. I suppose if you look at it nice, it's a cool
5:24
acronym. And before we go into a little more detail into Apple and and
5:28
the acquisition and what it means for our sort of respective technologies going forward and
5:32
the decks at large, would love to know something more about yourself, Andrew.
5:36
I mean, I have to say, but you know, but I
5:39
sort of assumed that a you know, a vendor like like Apple and wouldn't
5:43
necessarily have a local CEO. But as soon as I heard you on the
5:46
stage, I was like, you're a man Union, right, is that
5:48
right? You're born and bred there? Yes, yeah, I have been
5:54
to other places in the world, so I believe. I believe. Yeah,
6:00
So obviously you can tell about my accident Manchester born and bred individual.
6:03
But you know, I suppose I started my career in deep technical roles,
6:09
so I did a computer science degree. For the first portion of my career
6:13
was in deep architecture network design roles, designing complex Microsoft and for such a
6:18
solutions, networking solutions, all that kind of good stuff. But kind of
6:21
I really moved into customer facing positions when I kind of moved into sales engineering
6:29
roles, really pre sales roles, sales engineering roles in that intersection between you
6:34
know, understanding the customer's problem and delivering a solution for them was really what
6:41
excited me, and that that led me into various different tech positions. And
6:46
prior to app Learn, I grew a cybersecurity business based out of Manchester called
6:50
the Vecto that we scaled to three hundred and fifty people. We had offices
6:55
in Boston in the US, we had an office in Frankfurt, we had
6:58
an office in Melbourne, we had office in the no Adics and then we
7:00
had about a thousand customers and we exited that business for a couple of hundred
7:04
million. And then, you know, post leaving, their joined app Learn
7:08
to help them transition from a family run services business delivering digital transformation advisory services
7:15
to enterprise customers in the HR space and pivot that company of this company into
7:21
a product lad software business, So developing a product, developing an ICP and
7:26
good product market fit, scaling the business and bringing on some of the world's
7:30
largest customers. A lot of our customers aligned very nicely with the next thing's
7:33
ICP, but we've got a lot of joint customers as well, and you
7:36
know, we've ended up in a situation where some of the largest businesses in
7:41
the world trust learned to deliver their DAP capabilities. So very passionate about technologisty
7:46
still pretty pretty technical obviously as a CEO, you don't spend much time dealing
7:53
in you know, deally deep in the weeds of tech, but still enjoy
7:56
technology, but ultimately understand that whole commercial piece, that intersection where technology solves
8:03
the problem. And that's kind of what led me, you know, where
8:05
to where I am today. I suppose and you mentioned Appland's origins as a
8:11
family business, which is relatively unusual for a tech company. It's father son
8:16
arrangement, wasn't it? Is that right? Yeah? It was? Yeah,
8:20
you know, credit to those guys. They had a great idea but
8:22
had no experience in skin intech business. Right. So, you know,
8:26
what I don't profess to be is an entrepreneurial ideas person that wakes up at
8:31
three o'clock in the morning with ten ideas, you know, and then goes
8:33
off and you know, sets up ten companies. But what I am is
8:37
someone that can understand or spot a good idea and then understand the roadmap,
8:41
you know, be two years into the future. As to what you need
8:43
to do to build a business basically and actually create a professional outfit. And
8:48
that's kind of where I joined the company to help them make that transition.
8:52
And then you know, the father son founders took a step back as we
8:58
become as we became pe act and kind of went on that growth journey.
9:01
So Andrew, let me be the next in a long line of folks to
9:05
welcome you to the company. I'm really excited to have you guys here.
9:07
Thank you. It's as an IT guy, I love the prospect of,
9:13
like you said, going a little bit deeper into the application side. I've
9:18
lived kind of both sides of the equation, both adopting new software as an
9:22
employee, so I know the struggles there and learning something new, as well
9:26
as being an IT individual who brings software in and struggles with getting people to
9:31
adopt it. So one of the best ways that I've found to help people
9:35
understand what a product actually does is to wrap a story around it. What's
9:39
your go to example or or particular use case about what that app learn technology
9:46
can do. Yeah, So there's an analogy that I always like to use,
9:50
which is we are the Google Maps for enterprise software. So we direct
9:54
people on their journey through complex business applications. And you know, imagine you've
10:00
got a complex app like a workday or a salesforce or an ERP system,
10:05
and you're you know, there'll be cyclical processes, there'll be year end processes
10:11
in finance applications. The whole benefit and you know, the strength and weakness
10:16
of SaaS application sorry is that they change really frequently. So you end up
10:20
in a situation where you changes and new features get added. People need to
10:24
be retrained. The other really interesting statistic is seventy percent of learning is actually
10:31
done on the job or in the flow of work, and only ten percent
10:33
of learning is done in sort of classroom based training environments. And you know,
10:39
many enterprises we speak to spend their life in the ten percent, but
10:41
actually if you could enable the seventy percent, well that's an amazing outcome.
10:46
So what we deliver is a personalized training experience that we say is in the
10:52
flow of work. So just like maps, you won't you don't have to
10:56
learn to get anywhere anymore. You put your post codeing on your zip codeing,
10:58
you follow the R on screen, and you've got a traffic jam in
11:01
front of you, redirect you if you take a wrong turn it or redirect
11:05
you, and we do exactly that for complex business applications. There's a real
11:11
important point here as well, in that multi app or cross application journeys playige
11:18
enterprises. So if you've got hire to retire process or procurement to payment process,
11:24
you're hiring someone, you're in your recruitment application like smart Recruiters. You
11:28
then have to go into your HDM application set them up a profile. You
11:31
have to go into your payroll system and set up a profile. You then
11:35
have to go into X number of other systems. The business process straddles all
11:39
these different things. They've all got different UIs, they've all got different help
11:46
desks, they've all got different chatbots, they've all got different analytics, they've
11:50
all got different knowledge based articles. And what adapt does is bring a consistent
11:56
digital employer experience across all of them, corporately branded tailored for the role,
12:03
the language, the location of the individual. We can even do things with
12:09
AI to say we know what your experiences are on this particular application, and
12:13
we know what's worked well for other people in a similar role, So consume
12:16
this piece of guidance. So that's we essentially allow people to just log into
12:22
an app and then guide them through whatever it is they need to do without
12:24
having to be trained on how to do it. And that's that's the beauty
12:28
of DAP and that's why for me, it's that last piece of the puzzle
12:33
and arguable, well I'm biased, but argupled the most important piece in the
12:37
digital experience. And then the last thing I'd say around the tech is naturally
12:45
people say, well, how do I identify it where the problems are?
12:48
You know, how do I establish where I need to put guidance? How
12:52
do I create the guidance? All that kind of good stuff. So that's
12:54
where the analytics come in. So we've got the most advanced analytics in the
12:58
space. We can put the product in an experienced mining mode or discovery mode,
13:01
whatever you want to call it, and it will identify for you the
13:05
applications, the business processes, the stages in those business processes, the groups
13:11
of demographics of users that are struggling, and then you can use AI capabilities
13:15
to create and automate the creation of the guide. So we're not quite there
13:18
yet, but imagine a you know, inerative circle around that loop. You
13:22
discover the problem, you create the guides automatically, you implement the guides,
13:26
and then you watch the analytics. You see the problems go down, and
13:30
then if there's any more iterations around that lead, you can continuously go around
13:33
it. You know, we're not too far away from that panacea of a
13:37
solution, but we've got all the components in place, just need to kind
13:41
of plug them together a little bit. I love that concept of the multi
13:46
disparate applications and business process discovery. In my previous life in it at an
13:52
insurance company, one of our most common commonly used applications was nopad because employees
14:00
were using it as a scratch pad to keep common data to copy and paste
14:03
to all of their different applications. Either a because they didn't know how the
14:07
applications actually worked and there was there were actually internal workarounds to that, or
14:13
be the developers didn't realize that that was needed and they were in the dark.
14:16
So the ability to discover a process flaw like that, to either educate
14:22
employees or developers is just is a game changer. I can't wait to see
14:26
it in action. But when did you kind of think about or discovered the
14:33
alignment with DEX right. Dex is a relatively new IT discipline. It feels
14:39
like a perfect fit for the apple ear and outcomes. What's the history of
14:43
your kind of engagement and connection with the DECKS space. One of the things
14:48
that you know, what I try to do is the CEO is be two
14:50
three years ahead of where we are today. You know what we're trying to
14:54
achieve, and how do we kind of work back from that. So one
14:56
of the things that I'd always always struggled with was that I wanted to solve
15:03
for I suppose And that's where the next thing comes in is that DAP has
15:07
a stand alone category I personally don't think will exist in five years time.
15:11
Because you're talking to line of business owners about a specific problem within the application,
15:18
but you need to deploy a piece of technology, so you need to
15:20
deploy browser extension right, and then you need to be looking at the analytics
15:24
and be creating the guides and all the rest of it. So the application
15:26
always care about the problem, but in lots of organizations don't have the technical
15:31
capabilities, don't have the awareness, don't sit within it to actually deploy the
15:37
technology out there. So you go to it and you have to get it
15:39
involved, and then it isn't necessarily it's top priority, so then you know
15:46
it might not happen. So you know, clearly we've sold a lot of
15:48
organizations and we've sold a lot of challenges for a lot of companies. But
15:52
what I wanted to do is try and bring those two things together because if
15:54
we could have the technology deployed everywhere, and then it was a case of
16:00
saying to the line of business owners, look, it's already in place.
16:04
You're the tech to solve these problems are already out there. It have deployed
16:08
that for you. All it needs, all you need to do is turn
16:11
that on. Then you know, if you're in a golden scenario. And
16:15
that's where my thoughts around kind of moving into this whole deck space came about.
16:19
And you know, I was introduced to Pedro and then we had a
16:22
conversation about how these two things fitted together, and you know, the vision
16:26
of what we're trying to solve is exactly the same. You know, you
16:30
could have the best laptop network, you know, spodify your team's applications,
16:37
care running smooth, all your drivers are up to date, proactively identifying system
16:41
crashes and you're get ahead of it and fixing it and all that good stuff.
16:44
But if the users don't have to use the applications and they're scratching the
16:47
head or you know what they do, they still is losing thousands of hours,
16:51
so, you know, and being extreme to make a point, but
16:53
what what next thing's doing is pointless if the users can't use the application,
16:59
and that I don't believe that an extreme example, right, but you know,
17:03
you guys do a great job. No, it's it's an extreme example.
17:11
But if the users are struggling and confused, that's where all the time's
17:14
being lost. And what I think what this does, this story is joined
17:18
up story. I think what it does is it allows it to be an
17:22
a neighbler for the line of business owners, and it allows a line of
17:25
business owners not to have the headache of trying to deploy technology out into the
17:29
environment because it already have that capability. You know, it's already deployed out
17:33
there and the two fit nicely together. And then from a next thing capital
17:37
perspective, it allows the conversation to be just strategic across the organization because you're
17:42
not only talking to it you're talking to line of business owners, and then
17:48
what happens is Next Things becomes this strategic part of the organization which cares end
17:52
to end everything digital in the environment. And I think that's super powerful.
18:00
Like I couldn't agree more. Where do you see you talked a little bit
18:04
about the future of that particular market in the next five years. Do you
18:10
see this as kind of integrating as a natural part of decks that eventually it
18:15
kind of becomes that must have capability, especially for large complicated enterprises. Or
18:21
is it a required extension of it that you add on at a later time.
18:25
What's the kind of what's where do you see it? We talk a
18:26
lot about proactive it in terms of a journey, and you map out that
18:30
journey a lot like that GPS. You need to know where you are and
18:33
where you're going and map your course. Do you see it kind of where
18:37
do you see it fitting along that journey? I think, and you know,
18:41
we're happy to be proven wrong, but I think that DAP becomes almost
18:47
a table stakes requirement in the desk space. I think you know, when
18:51
you look at next Thing's competitors, if you don't have that capability, I
18:55
think, you know, they'll really struggle. I think the DAP market it
19:00
self will get you. If you dur a ven diagram, there's two circles
19:03
overlapping. I think you've got DEX players moving into the DAP space, maybe
19:07
acquiring some of the other DAP players. You've got DAP players being acquired by
19:11
learning and development platforms as well, like L and D teams. I think
19:15
there'll be a little bit of over that there, and then I think some
19:18
of the larger DAP players will probably think, well, what do we do
19:22
now? Do we move into the DECKS space. That's the kind of way
19:26
I sort of see it planning out. But for me, you know,
19:30
the product over the next twelve months is going to be integrated into Infinity.
19:33
It's going to be application experience. It's going to be an extension I think
19:37
of application experience. It's great from a single pane of glass perspective because everything's
19:44
in one place and you can do things like you delegate visibility to like business
19:49
owners over specific application experiences, and it key parts of the reporting and all
19:53
that kind of good stuff. But you know, for me, I think
19:56
it gets integrated into the Infinity platform and and DAP just becomes part of the
20:02
capabilities of the deck suite. I really don't see GAP existing as a standalone
20:07
market on I think it'll be swallowed up by decks. They might be there's
20:12
always point solutions for you know, niche niche scenarios, and there'll be some
20:18
small play. I don't think it will be a big a big space in
20:22
the future because I think it'll get consumed by adjacent spaces. So you obviously
20:27
are drinking through the fire hose around The next thing, capability is what we
20:32
do, how we do it. As you start to see things like engagement
20:37
with employees and process workflows and the future of AI that we're going to be
20:44
bringing to the to the market, what excites you about how those capabilities augment
20:48
and make this product even better? What's what excites you about the integration?
20:53
Yeah, so I've always had it. I was actually talking to Pedro when
20:56
it was a manster about this. I've always had a vision of being a
21:03
self healing, fully all autonomous platform. So the analytics identify the problem,
21:07
AI build guides, automates the creation and implementation of those guides, and then
21:15
all you're doing is asking the line of business owners or the user, are
21:18
you happy? And then we use that data, and we use the data
21:22
from how they interact with the guide, how they interact with the application,
21:26
where they entered the wrong data in a particular field and where it's needed to
21:30
be corected. We've got field validation and things like that. So we collect
21:33
all that information and then we tweak and tune and refine those guides. So
21:37
with your you know, your solution flow where you're actually automating, you know,
21:41
remediation of things within the IT world. That's the way I those capabilities.
21:47
I see it hand in hand with the DAP capabilities around the creation and
21:52
continual improvement of the guidance within an application in the same exactly the same way
21:57
Google Maps is real time in terms of that was traffic and things like that.
22:03
And that's the way I see the two things kind of plugging plugging together.
22:06
I mean, wouldn't neither of us are there yet, right, but
22:10
you know that's you know, that's where I wanted to go. And and
22:12
it's that point I made before nobody wakes up in the morning to buy software.
22:17
They wake up in the solve a problem. So I always talk about
22:21
this big green easy button. If you could just turn something on it finds
22:25
the problem, fixes it, well, then that's that's you know, that's
22:27
and that's golden. And you'll you know, it's super easy for people.
22:33
If people think it's hard to deploy your technology or our technology, then you
22:37
know you're going to have some barriers there. Cool. Yeah, it's it's
22:44
going to be really exciting to see how the dynamic between the two technologies develops.
22:48
Interesting, Andrew, you mentioned your early conversations with Pedro. What's the
22:53
inside baseball on this sort of acquisition, on this merger? How long of
22:59
conversation has been going going on? How do this start out? And where
23:02
do you think that natural respect and understanding between organizations comes from? Yeah,
23:07
I mean that. Yeah, I mean I used to look like the picture
23:08
they showed that they go to market kickoff on the slides from ten years ago
23:12
before we started this conception. No, I think they've been plus twelve months,
23:22
I mean off and on for you know, maybe fifteen months or something,
23:26
but being really started to heat up in the second half of twenty three,
23:32
so you know super time twenty three through to December is when they really
23:36
started to heat up. These things always take twice as long and costs twice
23:41
as much as you know, people you know, people envisited you at the
23:45
start have been through four acquisitions now and you know they they do take their
23:52
toll on you. But you know, look, it's it's it's been a
23:56
long time in the making because you need to get these things right. I
24:00
think, you know, I think we got there at the end, absolutely
24:03
did. And looking ahead now to the rest of the year, say what
24:07
what what excites you about it? From his perspective, what milestones do you
24:12
hope to see pasted and achieved over the next twelve months or so. Big
24:17
number one priority over the next twelve months is getting the products integrated. That's
24:22
super important. You know, I really want to see the vision that app
24:26
learn had in the infinitive platform. I want to, you know, want
24:30
to see that come to life. You know, I'm passionate about and proud
24:33
of what the team app Learns built actually, and I want to see see
24:37
it come to life. So that's the top priority from a dead point of
24:41
view, you know, from an operating go to market perspective, you know,
24:45
we're going to operate standalone for probably the next three quarters, maybe till
24:51
Q four this year, maybe to the end of the year in terms of
24:55
selling Apple and standalone as it exists today. And then, you know,
24:57
as Pedro was saying in his side chat, probably once we've got the product
25:02
integrated, then we'll cross pollinate the knowledge around DAP, the ability to sell
25:07
DAP to the broader, you know, next Thing sales team, go to
25:11
market teams, and then maybe first to January twenty five that the out Learn
25:15
brand will be retired, but it will be labeled as a next Think company
25:21
from now forwards. If we get there soon. I'd love to get there
25:25
tomorrow. It's not going to happen. But if we get there sooner and
25:27
ifing you know, endy Q two we can deliver something end Q three we
25:32
can deliver something, then let's retire the out Learn brand. Then let's join
25:36
the go to market teams together. You know, let's let's cross pollinate that
25:40
knowledge. But you know you can sometimes you need to go slow to go
25:44
fast, and I think if we try and do all that on day one,
25:45
we'll end up in a situation where everything's confused and a mess. So
25:48
the focus is get the products integrated, operate stand alone for a period of
25:52
time. You know, if we can shorten that from twelve months, brilliant.
25:56
You know, if we can't, then at least we've got a line
25:59
in the sand that we're in. And so that's how I see it panning
26:02
out, and I think that's broadly how Petro sees it panning out. But
26:04
you have to keep reassessing these things a month and month and months to see
26:07
if you need to course correct. Yeah, fascinating. I mean, it's
26:12
so exciting to see next thing and Apple and basically expanding this category of days.
26:18
It's going to be amazing to see how things stand in a year from
26:22
now. And if anybody wants to read a little more about the acquisition about
26:26
Apple and we will put some links in the show notes and listen. Andrews,
26:32
thanks so much for making the timement note. It's a busy moment for
26:33
you and it was nice to meet you in person in Barcelona. And hopefully
26:38
in a year's time come back on the show and see how things have developed.
26:41
Sound good? Yeah, yeah, thanks guys, appreciate it. Thanks
26:45
having me on. Thanks to make sure that you never miss an episode.
26:51
Subscribe to the show in Apple Podcasts, Spotify your favorite podcast player, and
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27:03
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27:06
employee experience, head over to nextthink dot com. Thank you so much for
27:10
listening, Until next time.