 Live from Las Vegas, it's theCUBE, covering AWS Executive Summit, brought to you by Accenture. Welcome back everyone to theCUBE's live coverage of the Accenture Executive Summit here at AWS re-invent. I'm your host, Rebecca Knight. We have three guests for this segment. We have Fang Deng. She is the big data and advanced analytics program lead analytics COE at Novartis. Thank you so much for coming on the show. Thank you, Rebecca. We have Loic Giro. He is Novartis head of analytics COE. Thank you so much, Loic. Thank you. And Vika Sindhwani. He is applied intelligence delivery lead at Accenture. Thank you so much. Thank you, Rebecca. So I want to start with you, Loic. Novartis, of course, is a household name. It's one of the largest pharmaceutical companies in the world. But I'd love you to just walk our viewers a little bit through your business and sort of the pain points you were looking to solve with this journey to the cloud. Yeah, thank you, Rebecca. So I think if we look at the company, I think we realize that it is more and more difficult to bring new drugs to market. So it takes about 12 years and around $1.2 billion to find a new drug. So at the same time, we see that there's more and more patients that need access to medicine. So in the last two years, I think we tried to create a new strategy where we're trying to re-imagine medicine for the use of data and technology. So in 2018, we've recruited a new CDO that came and tried to build our digital ambition, which is around free pillars, which is the innovation, the operation, and the engagement. On the innovation, what we are trying to do is to find new compound or application of existing compounds into our business to make sure that I think our patients can get access to drug much faster and earlier on. In the operation, we are trying to optimize the backbone of our day-to-day processes, be it in the manufacturing or in the supply chain or in the commercialization, to ensure that the patient also get access to drug much faster. In the engagement, we are trying to help the HCP and the players and the patients to better understand the drugs we produce, as well as the medication they need to have to receive their treatment. So if you look at these free pillars, the cloud strategy is an essential portion of it, because in all of these processes, we have a lot of data. And through cloud, I think we can make use of this data to help to innovate, operate, and engage. So as you said, it's really about re-imagining medicine, from the drug discovery process to how it's helping patients live longer, healthier lives. Fang, so talk about the vision for the Formula One platform. Yeah, as Loike mentioned before, we're trying to re-imagine our products for the patient, and we're trying to use more and more our data, history data, and also the public data, try to support our products. And the Formula One is our future enterprise data and X platform for our Novartis. So our objective is trying to leverage all the new technology, and also trying to consolidate all the data in on the cloud, and build up this platform for the whole Novartis users to support our business to better products for the patient. So when it comes to these new platforms, new technologies that are being introduced, we know that oftentimes the technology is the easy part, or at least the more straightforward part, I should say, but it's sort of getting people on board, the change management. What are some of the challenges that you at Novartis faced in terms of the culture and the skills for your workforce? So if you look at it, our industry is very traditional in nature, and when we embark in the digital transformation, I think the first thing we had to change is the culture of the company. So when you listen to our CEO, I think he tried to promote this inverse culture, where all of us are servant leaders, and then we work as an organization where we try to help each other and more and more collaborate. When it comes to digital transformation, when we started this, having this period, we've realized actually that our workforce was not trained. So the first few things that we did is, it tried to hire a new workforce, but also tried to actually identify the advocate or ambassadors that could go and then go into the digital transformation early on to be able to help and to guide the others to get through that. So it's actually, it's probably a multi-year journey, and then we are now in the second year, and we've seen already a tremendous progress, right? Can you describe some of the changes that you've seen? I mean, I'm really interested in what you talk about, the ambassadors, the people who are going to spread the good word, what are some of the changes that you've seen in your workforce? Yeah, we can mention that is, like you mentioned before, like talking about regarding overall culture perspective, try to leverage new technology, like the delivery perspective, we're trying to do more automation, and one side is trying to get more efficiency, and also another side, try to ensure the end-to-end responsibility for one product to be produced, and also at the same time, leverage more automation to think about the security side, the company side, help us a lot, improve in that part also. Maybe I can compliment that, so I think if you look at it, when at the initial starting point of our journey, I think a lot of people were reluctant to go and then try to work on the cloud and to work with digital technology, so we found few projects where we felt there's a good value for money, and that we can deliver a fast impact, right? And a few things like, how do we engage with the HCPs? How do we make sure that when our field force goes and talk to the HCPs, they know what to talk about, and often, and in which format? We also look at how we can reduce costs internally, and for different projects and product that we've established, we build credibility within the organization, and that helps to disseminate the cultural transformation. So once others are seeing the benefits that are captured, they're more likely to feel good about the cloud work? Yeah, that's true. And also, those of the new things, like our teams, they're all interested in about that. You see more and more people talking about our driveway, and also talk about DevOps, and how can we improve delivery efficiency, and at the same time, come back to say that the teams think about how to make themself to be a product owner and product delivery. That's a good thing for the whole team. Vika, so I want to bring you in here a little bit. So talk to me about how Accenture is helping Novartis, particularly in this AWS cloud initiative. So Accenture is a leader in business and technical IT transformation programs. So what we are bringing on the table is the expertise with not only the technology and the AWS elements, but also the business and technical transformation expertise that we have over the years in the firm. And additionally, I think it's not only about technology change, as you mentioned, it's all a lot about change and operating model, and also kind of working with a very blended team across, so that expertise and experience is what we bring to the table. A blended team, culturally, regionally, functionally, all of it. All of that, so we've, I mean, just to give you an example, we are working across teams in roughly about six geographies from various cultures, various countries, and it's various time zones which makes it quite challenging to make it all work together. So we started that journey, I hope we'll succeed in it, and it's working well so far. So cloud is really a mega trend right now. What are the differences that you're seeing across regions, countries, industries? So I think there's many answers, many parts of the answers to the question. So I think if I talk about industries, so initially when cloud started, we had seen a major uptake of the cloud technology in the companies that manufactured the cloud technology and the telecommunications, and where all the infrastructure and technology aspects were. Whereas companies like healthcare and media and metals and mining were kind of behind the curve in adoption rates because of their respective concerns around compliance and security of data. But I think that trend is slowly shifting as companies are becoming more open. I think they've seen how the public cloud has matured, the security models are speaking for themselves. People can understand the benefits from moving to the cloud in terms of cost rationalization, from reducing maintenance costs and focusing their co-teams on things that they were not able to divert their core attention on. If I could add, I think I will say for me, and where I've seen a Novartis, I think it's access to innovation. So I think cloud brings a lot of innovation at a rapid pace, that's one hand, and also access to external collaboration. So when you're inner or inside focus, I think there's reluctance from others that wants to work and collaborate with you. But when you work on the cloud, everybody goes on the cloud. So that's really a streamline and facilitate the collaboration with external partners. So how is that changing the culture of Novartis itself in terms of there are more opportunities to collaborate and it also is maybe changing the kinds of workers you attract because it is the people who want to be doing that in their day to day. Yes, I feel if you look at it, in the past I think we used to have all our own workforce and then we tried to do a lot of things with our own workers. But I think in this environment, you work a lot for others. So we have more and more partnership being announced and this partnership has been used actually to help the company to reinvent themselves. So that's actually on one hand. On the other side, as you said, I think that to attract those talents, I think you also need to have a different culture, right? But you need also to be able to give them the flexibility to work and do the things they like and we have a context and a framework. One of the things that we hear about so much at these technology conferences, this buzzword of digital transformation and Novartis is obviously embarking on its own digital transformation as well as its journey to the cloud. They're powering each other, they're accelerating each other. How would you describe what is happening to the industry and to Novartis within the pharmaceutical industry? Yeah, I think based on our knowledge to see Novartis, maybe it's the first company currently trying to build this kind of enterprise level data and also analytics platform. And based on that, we will be able to consolidate all of the history data, internet data and public data and even industry data and they try to help us to produce the better products for the patient. At the same time, give also the team a chance as you mentioned before and look at more opportunities and trying to leverage a new technology put those together, yeah. It's also changed the way that we work every day. So if you look at it now, we work with virtual assistant. We, I think we use machine learning advanced analytics to be able to talk to our HCPs. We actually monitor our clinical trial real time. I think using common centers. So every single day, I think the use of digital artwork and atom is a common thing. And I think we have seen that the adoption has increased since we were able to launch successful products. And I think one of the things which I really like about working at Novartis is also, I think there's an ambition to drive business value quickly. So you take a very agile use case based approach on things rather than having to wait for very long periods of time. Plus the company kind of encourages a culture which is based on mutual cooperation and sharing knowledge, which is great. Because Novartis is really on the vanguard of companies in terms of how much it's embraced the cloud and how much it's using it. What do you think other companies, pharmaceutical companies but maybe even in other industries as well could learn from the Novartis example? I think one thing people really shy about is, when they move to the cloud is the security aspect. I think what people probably had failed to realize in the past that there's been so much developments on security in the public cloud, which has been one of the key focus areas. So I think Novartis has taken that challenge and has understood that very well. And I think companies can learn from all the different aspects of security that we've built into our entire transformation work, starting from ingesting data, the user management to access and all of that. So that's kind of one thing. Similarly, compliance related aspects as well. So we've, GXP compliance is at the core of, how we are building our solution. So I think, and if you understand how we build the rules around the compliance bit in architecture, I think companies can learn from that as well and build that as integral part of your, not only technology solution, but the process that goes along with it. Loic, we started our conversation talking about Novartis and its quest to reimagine medicine. How do you think that your industry is going to look five, 10 years from now? I mean, the drug discovery process is slow on purpose. I mean, we need to think of patient health and safety foremost. But how do you think it really could change the course of how we treat people? So if you look at it, there's more and more treatment that actually are used and required data as a service or are being actually processed through data. So when I, when we look at, I think, the way that the industry is changing, I think the times to develop drugs, yes, it takes longer, but I think for the use of the data that you have, I think you can try to reduce that cycle. So one of the objectives is to reduce the cycle by one third, which means that we could bring that there is a new drug to market in eight years versus 12 years today. The other thing is that with the use of data, you can monitor the patient and you can recommend the treatment. So 80% of our patients, they don't go and they don't finish the treatment. So I think if we can show the adherence to treatment, then there's a lower risk of readmissions to those diseases and sickness that they have. So it's not even not just Novartis seeing the value of the data, it's the patients themselves. The patients see and the payers see as well, right? Because I think if you, if obviously the patient is not sick, then I think the insurance doesn't have to pay. So I think all the value chains is being transformed. Well, Fang Loic, Vikas, thank you so much for coming on theCUBE. It's a really fascinating segment. Thank you so much, your Vikas. I'm Rebecca Knight, stay tuned for more of theCUBE's live coverage of the Accenture Executive Summit coming up in just a little bit.