 From San Francisco, it's theCUBE. Covering OSISoft, PyWorld 2018. Brought to you by OSISoft. Hey, welcome back everybody. Jeff Frick here with theCUBE. We're at OSISoft's PyWorld 2018 in downtown San Francisco. They've been at it for decades and decades and decades, talking really about OT and efficiency. And we're excited to be here, it's our first time and really want to talk to a customer. Excited to have an ex-customer, CJ Smith. She's a project manager for the city of Riverside. CJ, great to see you. Thank you, hi. So you represent kind of a whole slew of kind of mid-sized US city. So how big is Riverside for people that aren't familiar? We serve 120,000 customers, so we're not too small, but we're definitely not as big as some of the other cities. Right, and then as we said, before we turn on the cameras, you guys have a whole department for utilities. You have your own utility as well. Yes, we do have a public utility division within the city, also an IT and public work, parks and recs, like other cities as well. But we do have the utility, which is different than some of the standalone utilities, you know, like LADWP, for example. Right, right, but it's good you're saying off camera that that gives you guys a nice revenue source, so it's a nice asset for the city to have. Yeah, the utility is revenue-generating department. Okay, so what are you doing here at PyWorld? How are you guys using OSI software? So we started down in Py back in August 2016 as an enterprise agreement customer, and you know, at that time, we really lacked visibility into our system, so we needed something to help us kind of gather the data and make sense of it, because we had data all over the place and it was hard to answer simple questions, it was hard to find simple data, and so we started down the Py journey at that time, and we basically used it like a data hub to aggregate data, turn that data into information, and then we disseminated using like dashboards, so PyVision dashboards, which used to be PyCore site, and as well as reports. So what were some of the early data sources that you leveraged, that you saw the biggest opportunity to kind of get started, or you had even more importantly, kind of your earliest successes, where did your early success come from? Yeah, so our very first work group that we worked with was our water operations and our water skater team. Seems to be a pattern here, a lot of water talk here at OSI soft. Yeah, I'll talk about electricity too, but we started on water and the first thing we did was implement their data, it was called a water operations dashboard, and they were doing it manually in Excel, and it would take a staff person over eight hours to do it, and they would do it the next day for the previous day data. So imagine how opposite of real time that is, right? So we integrated that data with Py. And how many data elements? I mean, how big is the spreadsheet this poor person's working on? Yeah, this skater, so the water skater tax that we brought in were near 1,500 tax. So you imagine that much data and calculations with over 1,500 calculations behind it. So it was a ton of effort, you know, and a huge quick win for them. So it saved staff time, they now have actionable intelligence, real time data, the managers get alerts to their phones about the status of wells, and so it was really helpful to that work group. So that one was one of our first and earliest wins on Py. Was it a hard sell? So those people to use it? It wasn't because we did find a champion in that group, someone that would help us, actually the manager, he was very interested in technology and automation, and they understood that even though it would be a time investment upfront, it would save them a ton of time in the long run, you know, for the rest of the year. And so one of the things that helped us get buying early on is that we use an agile approach. So we would tell the manager, I only need you for five weeks. I mean, you and your staff for five weeks, and then you don't have to talk to us anymore. We will deliver the product in five weeks, we will do all the work, but if you could give us five weeks of your time, then you know, you could have all your time back the rest of the year and that helped us get, you know, buying from the managers and a commitment because they can identify with, okay, just five weeks. Right, so those are probably the operational folks. What about on the IT folks? How's getting a buy-in from the IT folks? So IT, the funny thing is, and the thing we did different is we have a great relationship with IT and we really forged a partnership with them early on, even from the very beginning when we were just reviewing the agreement. We got there buying early on to say, okay, this is what we're thinking about doing. We want you to be part of the team and we really built a partnership with this project so that it could be successful. So they work hand in hand with our pie implementation team every step of the way. They've been on this journey every step of the way with us. So we don't have some of the challenges that other companies that I hear talking a lot about here with IT and kind of being a bottleneck. We didn't have that same experience because we really worked hard up front to have the buy-in with them and really build a partnership with them so that they're implementing pie with us, you know? Another selling point with that is we're using pie as a data hub or like a bus, a data bus, essentially. So for them, it's good because we're saying, look, we're only going to have this one point to point system instead of having all of these individual points, we're only going to connect to one system which will be easier for them to manage and maintain and will instruct staff to go to pie to get the data. So that's a selling point for IT. It's more secure, it's more manageable. And did you use an outside integrator or did you guys do it all in-house? Our implementation team is a combination of in-house staff and a consulting firm as well. Okay, okay. And then it's curious, because then you said once you had all the data, it's kind of a data bus, how long did it take for somebody to figure out, hmm, that's pretty cool. Maybe there's data set number two, data set number three, data set number four. Right after our first six-week implementation, we rolled out a new implementation every four to six weeks. Every four to six weeks. Yeah, so we did a sprint cycle the whole first year and actually the whole second year we're currently in right now. And so we touched a different work group every single time, delivering a new solution to them. So we've picked up a lot of traction, so much that now other departments in the city want it. Public Works is asking for it, the city manager's office. So it's really picking up some good buzz and we're kind of working our way down discussion of smart city talks and seeing how pie can support smart city, big data, advanced analytic initiatives at the city. So what are some of the favorite examples of efficiency gains or savings that Department A got that now Department B sees and they want to get a piece of that. What are some of your favorite success stories? I would say two of mine. I shared one on the big stage yesterday about the superpower. I talked about our operations manager who started receiving action intelligence overnight and he got an alert around midnight and he called his operator and said, hey, what's going on with that well? And the operator said, very puzzled, how do you know that there's something going on with this well? And he replied and said, because I have superpowers. And so his superpower was pie and that's one of my favorite stories because it's just simple and it resonates with people because he is receiving alerts and push notifications that he never had before to his mobile device at home. So that's a huge win. Was the operator tied into that same notification or did that person know before the operator? The manager knew before the operator. So the operator didn't know about pie at the time and we had just rolled it out. And so the manager was just kind of testing it and adopting it. And so it was kind of like, he had a leg up a little bit and they were confused like, how do you know you're at home? He's like, I have superpowers. It's probably my funniest and best story and one that I always tell because it helps everyone, no matter if it's an executive to a field person really understand the power behind pie. I think another one, if I had to pick another example of a win that I think was powerful is our work order and field map. So we have our field crews right now that have a map that's powered from our work order and asset management system pushing data to pie, which then pushes it to Esri through the pie integrator and they're out using it in the field and it helps them route their work. They can see where their workers are. They can see customer information and that map is really changing the way the field crews work. So like imagine a day before the system where they would go in and have to print every work order from the system. And not all asset management systems are really user friendly. They're kind of archaic, a little clunky. So I want to say the name of our system. And it doesn't work well if there's a change, right? Yeah, and they're not really mobile friendly, you know? So that's part of the challenge. But because of that, now public works wants that map, parks and recs. You know, every department that has field forces, they want something similar so that they can be, get all the data from all the other systems in one app, in one location on their device. And do you find that that's kind of a consistent pattern where often department A needs very similar to what department B needed with just a slight twist. So it's pretty easy to make minor modifications to leverage your work across a bunch of different departments. Yeah, absolutely. A lot of work groups are similar, maybe a little different like you said, but especially those that have field forces. It's, sometimes it makes it easy to sell it to the next group. You know, it's like, look, this is what we've done. Is this something that you kind of need? Or what would you need differently? Like we've developed, you know, field collection tools. That's easy to replicate. Once you see it, it's easy to say, you know what, that works, but I need it to say this and I need to say this. If you just show them a white paper, it's hard for them to say, this is what I need. Right. You know, most people just don't know, but it's easy once you see a suit to say, oh, I don't like that tie, I don't like that shirt, I don't like those pants. But something close. Yeah, but something like that, right? Right, right, right. So that's the benefit of once you start having a solution to easily modify and really reproduce and then the good thing about agile, you're running sprint, so you're learning every sprint. You know, you're kind of learning as you go and you're able to refine it and refine it in, make the process that much better, you know? Right, just on the superpower thing, it just, you know, customer, or not customer, but employee retention is a challenge. You're not getting good people as a challenge. I'm just curious how that, you know, kind of impacts the folks working for you that now suddenly they do have this new tool that does allow them to do their job better. And it's not just talk, it's actually real and gave that person a head up on the actual operation of the person sitting on the monitor devices. So, you know, as it proliferates, what is the impact kind of on morale and are more people kind of rising up to say, hey, you know, I want to use it for this. I want to use it for that. Yeah, we are getting a lot of interest and I think people, you know, the challenges, and I talked about this a little bit during my session, is like change management and culture, right? Some people see automation and technology as sometimes a threat because of job security or, you know, the I've always done it this way type of mentality. Never a good answer. Right, but once you kind of get them to see that, we're just automating your process to make it better so that you could do more cooler things, like better things so that you can actually analyze the data instead of inputting data, you know, so that you can actually solve problems versus spending all your time trying to, you know, identify the data and collect the information. So, we're definitely, staff are starting to see the value and after the first year and a half, we've gotten a lot of traction. I don't really have to sell it as much. It's now such a huge part of our culture that the first question is like, when we want to implement a new system, is does that integrate with pie? I mean, that's the first, so I don't even have to ask them. Everyone else is asking, well, have you thought about using pie for that, or can pie, so we always kind of look to pie first to say, can we create the solution in pie? And then, if not, okay, then we look at other solutions and if we're looking at other solutions, we say, does that solution integrate with pie? So, that's become part of our norm to make sure that it plays nice with what we're calling our foundational technology, which is pie. Right, so you've talked a lot about kind of departments. Is there kind of a cross department city level play that you're rolling data and or dashboards into something that's not, you know, that's a higher level than just the department level? Yeah, so far, the only thing that we have done that's kind of cross-divisional, not just in one division, is our overtime dashboards. So, we recently created overtime dashboards throughout the entire city so that, you know, executive level department heads have visibility into overtime, which just gives them trends so that they can know, you know, at what departments are receiving the most overtime. Is that overtime associated with, you know, what type of cause? Was it something outside of our control? Was it unplanned overtime? And then most importantly, where are we trending? You know, where are we on track to be by the end of the year, given our current rate so that they could be proactive in making changes? You know, do we need to do something different? Do we need to hire more people in this department? Do we have too many people in this department? Can we make shifts? So, it's giving that level of visibility and that's a new rollout that we just have completed but it's something that we're already seeing a lot of interest in doing more of cross-divisional things so that the city manager's office in that level has more view into the whole city. Right, right. Well CJ, it sounds like you're doing a lot of fun stuff down the river side. We are, we are. And you can never save enough water in California so that's very valuable work. That's true. Well, thanks for taking a minute and sharing your story. Really enjoyed it. Thank you for having me. Absolutely. She's CJ Smith. I'm Jeff Frick. You're watching theCUBE from OSISOF PI World 2018 in San Francisco. Thanks for watching.