 The Cube presents UiPath Forward 5, brought to you by UiPath. Welcome back to the Cube's coverage of UiPath Forward 5 from Las Vegas. We're inside the, formerly it was the Sands, now it's the Venetian Convention Center, Dave Nicholson, Dave Vellante Devin. Never seen it set up like this before. UiPath is a very cool company, so of course the setup has to be cool, not like tons of concrete. James Furlong is here, Vice President of Supply Chain Management and Projects at Puma and Derek Weinheimer. There's the CEO of Roboyo, who's an implementation partner, expert at intelligent automation. Folks, welcome to the Cube, good to see you, great to have you on. Thank you, it's a pleasure. So what's happening at Puma these days? I love your sneakers, but you guys probably do more than that, but listen, tell us about, give us the update on Puma. Yeah, absolutely. Puma is one of the world's leading sports brands, so we encompass all things sports, we do footwear, we do apparel, we do accessories, Cobra Puma Golf is underneath our umbrella as well, so we get the added benefit of having that category as well, and yeah, trade all over the world, and it's an exciting brand to be with. And Derek, Roboyo Atlanta-based, really specialists in intelligent automation, it's pretty much all you do, is that right? Yeah, we are a pure play intelligent automation for professional services firm, that's all we do. We're the world's largest firm that focuses only on automation, headquartered in Germany, but with a large presence here in America. So we hear from a lot of customers, we've heard from a lot of us on the journey, it started mid last decade, Puma, James is just getting started. We are. In April you mentioned, so take us through that, what was the catalyst as you're exiting the pandemic, the isolation economy, we call it, what was the catalyst? Take us through the sort of business case for automation. Sure, absolutely. So Puma, our mission is forever faster. It's our mantra and something we live and breathe. So naturally we have an intense focus on innovation and automation. So with that mindset, the way this all kicked off is that I had the opportunity to go into some of our distribution facilities. And I was unbelievably impressed with the automation that I saw there. So how automation augmented the employee workforce, and it was just very impressive to see at some of our state of the art technology and automation. At the same time, then I went back to the office with that excitement and that passion, and I saw that we had the opportunity to take that to our employee base as well. We sort of lacked that same intense focus on how do we take automation and technology like I saw at the distribution facilities and bring it to our employees because picture a large workforce of talented, dedicated employees and they just couldn't keep up with the explosive growth. Whom has seen explosive growth over the last couple of years and they just couldn't keep up with it. So I said that we need to take that same passion and innovation and enter in hyper automation. So we went to the leadership team and no surprise, they were all in, we went with them with the idea of bringing hyper automation starting with RPA to our office employees and they were in, they support innovation and they said, great, what do you need? Go for it. The first question wasn't how much. Actually the first question I will say, the funny part is, is they said, well, I like this, it sounds too good to be true. And because it really does, if you're new to it like we were and I'm pitching all the benefits that RPA could bring, it does sound too good to be true. So they said, all right, we trust you and go for it, what do you need? Resources, just let us know. So sure enough, I had a good concept, I had an idea, but now what? I didn't know where to go from there. So that's where we did some intensive research into software suppliers, but also implementation partners. Because now we knew what we wanted to do, we had excitement, we had leadership buy-in. Now what do I do? So this is when we entered our partnership to figure out, okay, help Kuma on this journey. How'd you guys find each other, you know? Just intensive research and I spoke with a lot of people here. There's a lot of great organizations, but at the end of the day, they really supported everything that Kuma stood for, what we're looking to do and had a lot of trust in the beginning and darkened his team and how he could help us on this journey. Now, James, your job title says supply chain management, but I understand that you have had a variety of roles within the organization. Now, if we're talking about another domain, artificial intelligence machine learning, there's always this concept of domain expertise and how when you're trying to automate things in that realm, domain expertise is critical. You have domain expertise outside of your job title. So has that helped you with this journey, looking at automation, being able to have insight into those other organizations? Absolutely and I think when we were pitching it to the leadership team in the beginning, that enabled me to look at each one sitting at the table and saying, all right, I'm on the commercial side. I was a head of sales for one of the trade channels. I could speak directly to him and the benefits it could have with tribal knowledge and with an expertise. So it wasn't something that it was just, oh, that's the supply chain. I could sit with our CFO and talk to him about the benefits for his group, merchandising and legal. So on, I was really able to kind of speak to each one of them and how it would support because I had that knowledge from being blessed of 15 years experience at Puma. So yeah, I was able to take all of that and figure out how do I make sure not just supply chain benefits from RPA, but how does the whole organization benefit from not only RPA, but the hyper automation strategy. So what's an engagement look like? You start, I presume you've got to do some type of assessment of some upfront planning work. What does that look like? What's the starting point? Take us through that journey. Yeah, so exactly. So the key when you're trying to get value from intelligent automation is finding the right opportunities, right? And you can automate a lot of things, but which are the things that are going to drive the most value and the value that actually matters to the company, right? So where are you trying to get to from a strategic level, your objectives, and how do you actually use automation to help you get to there? So the first thing is, what are the opportunities going to help you do that? And then once you identify what we recommend is start with something that's going to be accessible, small, you're going to get a quick win, because then the important thing is once you get that out there, you build the momentum and excitement in the organization that then leads to more and more and then you build a proper pipeline and you get the engagement. So what was that discovery like? Was it you fly up there and do a chalk talk or did you already know, James, like where you wanted to focus? Yeah, I knew I had a solid proof of concept. With the disruptions in supply chain, we couldn't keep up with all the changes in supply. So right away I knew that could I have a very substantial impact on the organization and it would be a solid proof of concept. It was something that not only would supply chain steal, but our customers would feel that we would be servicing them better. Our sales team, the commercial team, marketing impacted everybody, but at the same time it was tangible. I saw two people that just physically couldn't get their work done, despite how talented and hardworking they were. So I was in on that proof of concept and then I just took that idea with some strong advice from Dirk and his team on, okay, well how do I take that, but then also use that to evangelize through the organization. What are some pitfalls to avoid? Because as a proof of concept, they just told me it's too good to be true. I believe in it, so it's so important to me that it was successful. You're sticking your neck out. Oh, I sure was, which is a little scary, but I had confidence that we would do it. But your POC, you had to have a systems view. Yes. Right, because you were trying to, I think I'm inferring that you had two people working really hard but they couldn't get their job done. Yeah, for sure. Because they were just sitting on their hands waiting. Okay, so you kind of knew where the bottlenecks were. And that's what you attacked and Dirk, you helped James and the team think through that? Yeah, exactly. So a couple of points here, you were asking about her domain knowledge earlier and I think that's really key to the proven success with it is that they've come at it from a business point of view. What matters to the business? And at the point, supply chain challenges, how do we use automation to address that? And then it's actually going to pick opportunities that are going to matter to the business. Yeah. At the same time, we knew this could be a scary thing, right? If it's not done right, automation definitely can take a wrong path. So what we relied on them for is tell us how to make this successful. We wanted structure. We wanted oversight. We wanted to balance that with speed and really developing our pipeline. But at the same time, tell us how to do this right. How do we set up our first ever center of excellence? They helped us set that up. Our STIRCO, our process definition documents, they really helped us add that structure to how to make this successful, sustainable, and make sure that we were standing things up the right way versus launching into a strong group of concept. But then it's not going to be scalable if we didn't really take their strong advice on how to make this something that had the right oversight, the right investment. So that was key as well for us. So when you looked at the POC, and James was saying there were potential pitfalls. What were those pitfalls like? What did you tell Puma, hey, watch out for this, watch out for that? What was sort of the best advice there? Yeah, so I think one is understanding complexity, right? So a lot of opportunities sound good, but you want to make sure that it's feasible with the right tool set. And also that you're not biting off too much in the beginning is really important. And so some of that is that bringing that expertise to say, okay, yeah, look, that does something to a good process. You're going to get value out of it. It's not going to be overly complicated. It's a good place to start. And then also, I guess the thing too to mention is it's more than just a technology project. And that's the thing that we also really focus on is it's actually as much about the change management. It's much about, you know, what is the right story, the business case around it. The technology actually in a way is the easy part and it's all the stuff around it that really makes the POC effective. Obviously the process has been the people, I presume, to adopt. And I think again, with our brand mantra Forever Faster, we get that support. The buy-in from the top is there from the beginning. So that's a benefit that some companies don't have, right? They have a little resistance maybe from the top or trying to get everyone's buy-in and we had that. So we had, you know, the buy-in, the engagement, we were ready to go. So now we just need someone to kind of help us. One more, if I may. Yeah, yeah. Six months in. Yes. What's the business impact that they can you tell you? That's tremendous. Really, already. Six months. Yeah, absolutely. The CFO's dream. Yeah. And again, and we had a CFO change mid-project. So the new CFO comes in, not new to Puma. The same thing, super smart guy and I had to sit and again pitch, you know, pitch what it is and the support that I needed by way of investment. And he saw the results and he was all in, you know, what do you need, what's next. And instantly it was challenging his departments. Why don't he got competitive, right? We're a competitive bunch. So why don't he, you know, he should have more in the pipeline and he was bought in. So there was that fear of a new CFO coming in and how do you show value? Because some of it is very easy to show. Right away, you know, we were able to refocus those two full-time employees on higher value chain activities. And, you know, they're doing a tremendous job and they're, you know, they have the bot in the automation supporting them. So he saw that right away and we can show him that but he also understands as does the whole leadership team the concept of downstream impacts that you can't necessarily, you know, touch and put on paper. So he sees some, but then he also recognizes all the other upstream and downstream impacts that it's had. And he's all in and supports whatever we need, yeah. New CFO is like George Seifer taking over from Bill Walls. Yeah, exactly, exactly. We have to keep showing results. And it has to be sustainable. So that's again, we'll rely on our partnership to say, okay, this is the beginning. You know, what's next? Keep us, you know, honest on oversight and any pitfalls that we should avoid because he's excited, but at the same time we need to make sure that we sustain those results and show what's next. Now they all got a taste of the apple and they're very eager to see what's next in Puma's hyper automation journey. Well, Dirk, you've partnered on this journey, this specific journey with Puma, but from your perspective in the broader marketplace, what would be the perfect low hanging fruit opportunity that you would like to have somebody call you and say, hey, we've got, we've got this perspective engagement with a client. What would be the like, oh yeah, that's easy. That's a huge ROI really quickly. What does that look like? Yeah, I think there's a few areas, right? You know, one task automation, RPA is a really good entry point, right? Because it's not overly complex, it doesn't involve a lot of complicated technologies. And I'd say the usual starting areas, your finance back office, you know, shared service, invoice processing, you know, payables is a very good opportunity area. HR is also an area I would look at, you know, new employee onboarding process or, you know, payroll, et cetera. And then supply chain is actually becoming more and more common, right? So those would be, I guess, top three areas I would mention. And then kind of follow on to that. What's the tip of this spear? What's the sort of emerging market for this kind of technology? I think there's two things. One, it's taking a holistic, end-to-end view and leveraging multiple, you know, technology, you know, beyond just RPA, right? You know, intelligent document processing, AI, ML, you know, bringing all those to bear to actually do a true digital transformation. That's number one. And then I'd say the second is going from focusing on cost and efficiency to actually get into the front office and how do you actually increase revenue? How do you increase margin? How do you actually, you know, help with that top-line growth? I think that's really, and that's where you're leveraging technologies, you know, like the AI is an example to really help you understand how do you optimize? So James, that becomes an enterprise-wide initiative. Yeah. Your vision, maybe lay that out for us a bit. Yeah, absolutely. The vision is, now that we've seen what it can do, how do we take it from being managed by just, you know, supply chain and this proof of concept because I manage projects, but now it's bigger than just a supply chain project and how do we sort of evangelize that through the whole organization? And, you know, they mentioned on main stage the creation of new jobs and roles and how a company might set up their strategic directive now is changing and evolving. So, you know, that's our idea now and what we'll need support next is how should we structure now for success and so that it's across the whole enterprise? But that's the vision, for sure. What worries you? Do you worry about it like taking off and getting out of control and not being governed? And so you have to be a little bit careful there. For sure. That was really important to us and we actually got to leverage a lot of heavy lifting that Puma Global had done at the same time that we were coming up and thinking of the idea of RPA. They were having the same thoughts and they did a lot of heavy lifting again about not only the software providers, but also what does the structure look like? The oversight, a center of excellence globally. So we were able to really leverage a lot of best practices and SOPs that they had set out and were able to kind of leverage those, bring those to Puma North America so that we didn't face that fear because that would be a limiting factor for us. So because we're so disciplined and we could leverage the work that they had done, that fear wasn't there. Now we have to stay on top of it and as people get excited, how do you kind of mirror the excitement and with it at the same time that the oversight and not getting too big, too fast. So that's the balance that we'll work through now. It's a good problem to have. Well, exactly. It is super exciting. A great story. Congratulations on the success and good luck. Thank you. Thank you very much. Thank you. All right, and thank you for watching. Keep it right there, Dave Nicholson and Dave Vellante, we're right back. The Cube Live from Las Vegas, UI Path Forward 5.