 From San Mateo, California, it's theCUBE, covering SnapLogic Innovation Day 2018, brought to you by SnapLogic. Hey, welcome back, Jeff Frick here with theCUBE. We're at the Crossroads 101 in 92. You've probably been there. You're probably stuck in traffic. Look up, you'll see the sign, SnapLogic. That's where we are. We're talking digital transformation. You've probably heard us talk about digital transformation on theCUBE, but not that many people, or excuse me, companies actually have an executive who's in charge of digital transformation. That's not the case here at SnapLogic. I'm really excited to have our next guest. She's Deletta Denaforio, and she's the head of digital transformation for SnapLogic. Welcome. Thank you, thank you for inviting me. Absolutely. So why does SnapLogic have a head of digital transformation? I've never heard that for a company, and you are not really running digital transformation inside the company. You're helping your customers digital transformation journey. Yeah, absolutely. Because integration is at the core of many transformation that we see led by our clients. And it's not about implementing a software for the most part. It's always the people, process, and technology. So what we are trying to do is to insert ourself in the strategic discussion so that the implementation is more solid and stickier. And so that's the intent of our practice. Right, and as you said, people, process, technology, we hear it all the time. And we hear a lot too. Best practices in digital transformation is you have to make a commitment to that process change. You have to make a commitment to the people change. That's actually the hardest part. I think integration usually, nobody really wants to talk about integration up front because that's that hard little piece that we have to worry about down the road, but let's just stop pretend that we have to do that. But as you said, that's a really important piece. It's tying all these systems together. So you've been helping people with digital transformation here and in some of your prior jobs. So when you sit down with someone who's never heard that term, what do you tell them? What is digital transformation? So typically, we're pretty fortunate because I think especially in ITEC here in the Valley, there are many clients that have a role which is equivalent to mine and is focused internally on digital transformation. So they are the head of digital transformation, the chief digital officer. And what we typically do with them is to try to figure out what their plans are and participate to their journey by obviously helping from an integration perspective both on the application and data side. And where do they usually report up? It's always an interesting conversation because we go to chief data officer events, we go to chief analytics officer events. So you've got kind of these new evolving roles that are really built around data and enabling data and becoming a data driven enterprise, but does it report to the CIO? Does it report to the CTO? Does it report up through the CEO? And then now you've got this role of people kind of heading up the digital transformation. Where do you see them reporting through and what's kind of the most effective? Maybe that's a better question. What's the more effective place for them to report through? It's a little bit all over the map. There is not a standard. For example, a couple of clients at Qualcomm, our equivalent in digital transformation is head of application and your reports to the CIO. So that's pretty traditional. Often the CIO is chartered with digital transformation for obvious reasons. He has the skillset, he has the team, he has the capability. But I've seen cases where he actually reports, he or she reports to the CEO, which is even more interesting I think because then he put an emphasis on the importance of the program and importance of the target associated with this program. So another client of ours, airborne in Texas, is actually the CMO and Edo Sales reports to the CEO and he's also in charge of digital transformation and we are helping him with some customers. It has the hat of also sales and marketing. Absolutely, three jobs. So that's pretty interesting, which is good because those are the things that are kind of leading edge, front edge to the client as opposed to digital transformation just on your back end processes. System integrators, in both those companies you just listed are big companies. The system integrators have been building transformation businesses for a long, long time. How do they fit? How do you work with them? How does that kind of all come together on the project? Yeah, so Qualcomm for example, you can see pretty much any single system integrator that you can imagine of and they all have a portion of the transformation. None of them covers the entire scope. And the interesting portion as well is that because they're all competitors so that often there is not a lot of collaboration and that we are a little bit kind of agnostic but obviously we have an interest in penetrating the account in terms of making use of our technology. So is in our interest what I'm trying to do, obviously I come from the system integrator world so I do speak their language and what we are trying to do is to work with them to make sure that we understand what the use cases what the business cases and we kind of work together across a different objective to enable the client hopefully to be digitally transformed. So it's such a big word and the CEOs are talking to the boards about it and the public companies are talking to the analysts on the earnings call, we're going to digitally transform and these are big organizations that are complex and have many, many pieces and parts. How do you get started? What are some best practices for people that have a board edict or have a CEO edict we need to digitally transform. I'm afraid of the competition I don't even know who's coming. Where should people get started? How do they slice and dice this thing so they're not trying to eat the whole elephant in one bite? Yeah, the only cases that I've seen success on are the one where hopefully the leader has done that before in some kind of shape or form. If he's a brand new chief digital officer there are more challenges but the most important thing is kind of keep the momentum and you tend to keep the momentum through some sort of quick way. So if the scope is too large and the roadmap is too fixed over three or five years given the speed of changing technologies very difficult to achieve those goals. So it's much better to have a more agile mentality and maybe plan a year ahead with some very tangible deliverable in the way and mobilize everyone around there so that the momentum is kept and it's not just a nice word that a company has because they need to talk about digital transformation. And then what do you look at? You obviously have a specific point of view. You have your background and you've been a system integrator and a transformation leader but in terms of coming from the snap logic point of view and integration and that opportunity what do you look for as opportunities for those early wins either based on prior experience or just you just know there's some really inefficient ugly things that you can make big difference on relatively easy. What do you look for as kind of those first wins in a digital transformation project? Yeah, ideally we love to be involved with everything to do with customer and you know sales and revenue because obviously those are the biggest pain point for a client. Right. But often you need to be flexible enough to understand what the priorities are and currently I'm involved in a much more a traditional close activity accounting process. You will be thinking okay that's back office but actually fixing that problem first will create a lot of credibility within the company. So I think a company like ours has to be very flexible and we need to listen to the client and be very flexible in terms of what priorities to start with first to prove the technology and then progress maybe for higher value activities. So I would hope it's 2018 that people understand that they're not setting forth on a five-year SAP ERP implementation, are we hopefully past that that this is not new information that you need to take small bites, small victories and move quickly. Are we there? Yes but still I've seen a lot of strategy document and business plan that are two, three years of horizon and I think the horizon is way too long but also at the same time is a strategic function so you ask to picture a vision at least directionally. Right, right. So I think the vision has to be generic enough to then flex with the project and the activities that we're living on a two, three months quarterly almost a cadence. It's so funny that we continue to find these massive inefficiencies all over the place. You would think that most of it had been rung out by now between the ERP implementations and all the business process re-engineering I guess was the old process before digital transformation. So I just wonder if you can share some stories from the field about some of these relatively short duration projects and the yields that they are providing on this path to a more comprehensive digital transformation. Yeah so the first example that comes to mind, again going back to Qualcomm, when they talk about human capital management and re-engineering, what is interesting there is that you take the entire hire to retire and it's pretty overwhelming, right? From a moment you hire an employee to a moment you obviously retire the function or the role. And what they did quite interestingly was to come up with a few applications that will make the life of the employees and their manager easier. So we're biting the process by building application that for example, enable to facilitate the onboarding or application that LPHR with analytics and inquiries and gradually trying to automate that process which today even in a large company like a Fortune 100 company can be incredibly manual. And then another example that comes to mind to me is if you look at the entire order to cash cycle of a company from the moment a client are getting contacted with a company through a website to the moment they actually purchase the product. Again, there are many touch points and they're often disconnected and then another client of ours, airborne what we're doing with them is to just take one small bite which is figuring out from the time a client tried to configure a product on the website to the time they want to try the product. How the experience can be more automated so that there is not a lot of interaction necessarily with customer services which has a limited bandwidth but there is much more service. Right, right. And then gradually tackle the rest of the order to cash cycle. So both of those examples are really about automating manual processes as you just described them. So what are the KPIs that you're using to measure success? Is it total time duration, number of steps, calls back to a person? What are some of the metrics of success? Yeah, so you see on the customer side is kind of easy because you tend to very much require feedback from the customer. So if the customer satisfaction index goes up or revenue goes up or less return. So those KPIs we're kind of more familiar with. But when you look at the HR world, the human capital management world there are so many ramifications of being able to serve your employees better but much more intangible. Like for example turnover. Well there is good turnover and bad turnover. So if you're serving your employees better we better up by which they cancel service some other activities. Does it translate in less turnover? Maybe yes. So maybe actually does translate in more turnover because maybe the employees that stick around are the ones that are more technology savvy. So the human capital management side is harder in terms of defining KPIs and it's much more early stage than anything to do with customer. And then there is the other universal society with digitalizing product. Like for example, you know the world of IoT that we are involved with a few clients. And that is very measurable and tangible because you're actually coming up with new product and what we're doing is facilitating the ability to access data. And which is a very tangible element of the product development life cycle. So of all the transformation projects that you're involved in, how would you break them down in rough numbers of kind of cost savings on an existing process which is through automation versus kind of forward facing customer facing, let's just call it wrapped around a customer experience so ultimately you're getting higher customer satisfaction scores and revenue. Versus the third which you just touched on which is so, so important which is converting from a product based company or something that's more tangible into more of a services recurring revenue that's probably built around that product. And the example that gets thrown on all the time is when GE starts selling miles of propulsion versus selling engines, it's a very different kind of relationship. So in the things that you work on, how would you kind of break up the percentages in those three buckets? Yeah, so what we see still a lot and I would like to see less is the first bucket which is a reducing cost, so I would say more than 50%. Okay. Which is around reduced cost, drive efficiencies, better reporting, eliminating application because many clients have too many applications to perform some of these back office processes and they're very much associated with cost exercise. And so over 50% for sure. And that's logical because that's obviously an easy place to start. You're not changing the company per se. You're looking for efficiencies. All right, so Dilletta, I'll give you the last word before we sign off. If you get called in to a new project, it's a CEO, they're stressed out, they know they have to do this. What do you tell them about digital transformation? How do you kind of help them break it down so it's not just this overwhelming giant goal on high but actually something that they should get excited about, something they can have some success with and something that ultimately is gonna be a really good thing. I think there is no one recipe. It's about figuring out where the company wants to go. What is the primary objective? Is it sales? Is it a new market? Is it a new product? And then kind of break it down in a tangible chunk and that kind of makes sense to them. But you've got to go for the first priority item that the CEO I'm sure will be able to articulate. Yes, get that quick win. Well, Dilletta, thanks for spending a few minutes with us and good luck on transforming everybody. All right, she's Dilletta, I'm Jeff. You're watching theCUBE from SnapLogic headquarters in San Mateo, California. Thanks for watching.