 From the CUBE studios in Palo Alto in Boston, connecting with thought leaders all around the world, this is a CUBE conversation. Hi everybody, this is Dave Vellante and welcome to this episode of CXO Insights. As you know, we've been grabbing the perspectives of leaders throughout this pandemic and assessing their tips for managing in a crisis and of course managing in good times as well. But now as we enter the post-isolation economy, we really want to look at not just the how you manage through the crisis, but how you manage beyond the crisis. And I'm really excited to have Chris Riley here. He's the newly minted Chief Revenue Officer at Automation Anywhere. Chris, my friend, how you doing? I hope you and the family are well. Thank you, Dave. I wish the same for you. I think getting by, as most folks are, it's the new normal. We're all getting used to it, but happy to be here and happy to be at Automation Anywhere. Yeah, yeah. We'll talk about that in detail. Eddie Walsh calls it the new abnormal, but so congratulations on the new role. I want to start with your career. I met you in 1987, which ironically was the same year I met Dave Donatelli, the same year I met Moschig and I. And so, boy, talk about great timing. And then, you came into the industry at a time, really different time. It was when IBM, people don't remember this, but IBM was the dominant player and you guys unceded them. Amazing 12 year career at EMC. And then you kind of went to, you went to the dot-com boom. That was amazing. We lived that ride, did a stint at HP and really turned that business around and then came back to Dell. Top, go-to-market executive, one of the top in the industry that I know. And now, of course, at Automation Anywhere, we're going to talk about it. My first question to you is, a lot of changes have occurred since 1987. What has changed the most? I mean, we're talking diversity. We're talking all kinds of different sales models from your career looking back. What's changed the most? I think everything's changed and candidly for the better. Dave, you just led with one of the key areas in an area I'm deeply passionate about and that is diversity and inclusion. And I think there's no stronger time, at least in our country's history, where the inequalities that exist have been so exposed. So I view this as an opportunity, as I did at Dell, to make a difference, right? Lead from the front and make this a destination and a company whose culture really supports and drives diversity and inclusion. So I'd say that's one area and I know it's very passionate for you as well. The others, it was a time before laptops, desktops, I think Ken Olson once said who would ever need a laptop in their home. And boy, the world has changed. So I think some of the things though that haven't changed and this is why I'm so excited about automation anywhere, the manual processes we have our workers doing. And I think there is a real opportunity. I've lived through explosive growth at EMC, top company performing stock during the 90s. I got to see VMware firsthand. I've seen what's happened with ServiceNow and I believe this RPA space, as do you, is in its infancy. It's seeing 30% compounded annual growth and we're just at the beginning and I think it's going to change the way people work and really lead to that digital transformation that so many of us have been talking about for the last decade. Yeah, and you know kind of my position as a quick aside, I don't know if you saw the Netflix announcement this morning and I've been wondering as a small business, what can we do? What more can we do for inclusion and diversity? Netflix announced they're going to take 2% of their cash and put it into banks, financial institutions that support black causes and I just talked to our CFO. I said, look, why don't we take some of our cash? Let's take 2% and stick it into banks, community banks. I mean, there's 30 million small businesses in the United States and just 1% puts 10 grand in each. That's $3 billion that go into black community. So I'm going to start a mission and I just thought I'd share that because I know it's a passion of yours. Yeah, and we all need to be in a position to provide equal opportunity for employment, right? And that is reaching out into those communities and starting early on and creating the opportunities for advancement professionally, mentorship and just a path forward. And I'm excited to see what Netflix is doing. I'm sure you'll come up with the right answer for your company and I think all of us are searching what's the right answer for our respective companies. Yeah, so now let's get into it. You're a month in, right? And I want to talk about this product. I've learned a lot about not only RPA, but about automation and just had a deep dive with your team and really brought some things into focus. Guys, if you bring up the first slide, I want to get some thoughts on the table here. So this is a chart that sort of came into my focus with a friend of mine, Dave Michela, who really big thinker on this stuff. And he pointed out this is data from the US Bureau of Labor and Statistics and the EU. And it shows the lackluster productivity that's going on in the past decade. So you can see, you know, we had the boost in the 80s and the 90s, we had this sort of productivity uptick from laptops. But now look what's happened since 2007. And the point that Michela made on the right hand side is we have all these huge issues that we face, whether it's climate change, we have this massive debt, healthcare and aging population feeding everyone, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. And his point was there's no way we're going to be able to solve all these problems by throwing humans at the problem. So I've really begun to sort of think about this just in terms of, you know, machines and the roles that machines will play a place. I think overnight, Chris, we've gone from, wow, I'm afraid that machines are going to take my job to you can't operate if you're not digital. Yeah, well, I mean, digital transformation is not a new term. I think it's meant something different, you know, each year for the last 10 years. You know, and I look at this as an opportunity, right? The world economic forum projected that IA and RPA will create 58 million new jobs, right? It's an astounding number. What COVID-19 has exposed is this work from home phenomenon that really exposes the risk of manual processes within the enterprise. So I think those two things combined is almost a perfect storm. And I think what it'll do is accelerate the adoption of RPA and IPA. So something that might've taken years or decades to really be adopted and forced in this new normal, I think is going to be accelerated quite dramatically. So, I mean, the combination of your go-to-market execution, you've managed complex, you know, sales motions before, automation anywhere obviously has some great product capabilities. Guys, I want to bring up the next slide. Chris, you might have seen this in some of the stuff that I wrote, but this is data from DTR, Enterprise Technology Research. They're a data partner of ours. Now, it's clear that Automation Anywhere has the right product market fit. And you can see on this chart, this is a methodology that we use. ETR goes out and they ask people, are you adopting a platform new? Are you increasing spending relative to last year? Are you flat and decreasing or replacing? And you can see here, there is zero churn in the Automation Anywhere base. And so, obviously you got product market fit. Churn is the silent killer, obviously, of SaaS companies. And so, you've picked a winner. And I'm learning more about this. You know, at first I thought the TAM, obviously were quite large. I sized it. I actually think it's bigger than I originally thought. Chris, I thought this was going to be a winner take all type of market. I'm really rethinking that after, especially the deep dive I've had with your team, in terms of how you guys go to market with an end to end sort of life cycle approach, as opposed to sort of putting point products in. So I wonder if, you know, if those, you know, that narrative that I just laid out resonates with you? Is it sort of consistent with what you're seeing? And there may be some of the reasons why you joined Automation Anywhere? You know, see the most aggressive software growth that I've seen in the last decade or so, and two companies stand out for me, that's VMware and ServiceNow. They don't have a point product. They have a platform. And that's what attracted me to Automation Anywhere is this platform approach. And Dave, as you know, I've spent most of my career calling on the enterprise strong relationships with those types of companies. And they aren't looking, you know, to develop a point product solution and then cobble together lots of disparate islands of solutions, right? They're looking for a platform that can grow as they grow. They can extend from the back office to the front office, but all centered around, you know, workforce transformation, productivity, and just as importantly resiliency. And as we start to develop more and more capabilities, you know, that will be delivered through this platform approach, I think we're going to see explosive growth as the industry goes through as explosive growth. Well, I know your approach and your approach is to stay very close to customers. So as you would do when you do diligence on Automation Anywhere, and as you enter your sort of first part of your first year hundred day journey here, I'm sure you've talked to a lot of customers. You know, what are they telling you? What are the big takeaways right now that you're hearing? Yeah, so I think some of the data you pointed out with 4,000 customers and in essence, zero churn, right? The opportunity to upsell those customers with more products and solutions, you know, clearly is there. New account acquisition has been a tremendous source of growth for the company in a strong professional services organization that actually is able to deliver the outcomes that our customers expect. From an enterprise perspective, I couldn't have come into a better situation with 4,000 customers, you know, 50% of the Fortune 500, 2 million bots deployed, those types of strategic relationships are going to be more and more critical as this company continues to accelerate its growth. Most of the RPA solutions really got in through the back office and candidly really weren't even a component of an IT solution. Now as you go to the front of the house, you know, when you're looking at customer facing applications and worker productivity, these are CEO, CFO, COO and IT initiatives. So I really believe we're coming into our own at the front of the house with senior executives that really want to create a better working environment for their employees and de-risk a lot of these manual processes that have existed for years. So I know why you chose Automation Anywhere. My question is why Automation Anywhere choose Chris Riley? I know your capabilities, but obviously when somebody hires an executive like yourself that says, hey Chris, we want you to help us, you know, get to the next level. But what does that mean? Are we talking about changes in the go-to market? Are we talking about your ability to recruit and coach, to manage complex sales motions? What is it that you want to bring to Automation Anywhere? I think it's all those Dave. You know, having built a reputation throughout my 30 plus year career around a people-centric focus, customer-centric focus and those two things kind of aren't interchangeable. When you look at customers, they put their faith and confidence in people and they put their faith and confidence in companies. And what I see here at Automation Anywhere is that the ability to kind of expand upon the great culture that the company already has but do it with someone who's grown a company at scale globally and can put a lot of the best practices and disciplines in place to do that, because it is difficult. But also, you know, how do we start to do larger, more complex deals and build relationships with the CIO, the CFO, the CEO? And I think a big reason why I'm here is, you know, that experience in doing that, doing large, complex, multi-year opportunities. But also being able to deliver upon the outcomes that we told our customers we could achieve and do that together with our customers. And again, we have a strong professional services organization and an incredible ecosystem of partners that have demonstrated year over year, you know, the company's ability to actually deliver upon its promise. That was my next question to you was the ecosystem. One of the big changes from when you started in this business was it used to be just belly to belly, you know, hardcore, direct sales. The importance and leverage that you get from a partner ecosystem, you point out, you know, VMware. In fact, service now, it's interesting, when we first started covering service now, one of the things we said is, we want to see as an indicator of success, the partner ecosystem evolve. And then sure enough, it exploded with the SIs and, you know, all kinds of developers. So maybe talk about AA's ecosystem, the partner system. You obviously have a lot of experience there in your career. How do you see that as a leverage point? Yeah, it's huge. I mean, this market is far larger than we can cover with a direct sales organization and requires substantial services engagements that go well beyond the kind of professional services organization we want to build out, you know, organically in the company. So when you look at that, the company today has 1,900 partners. You know, the global systems integrators are key, especially those with VPO type practices. The regional SIs and can't believe the regional VARs who've built out a strong service now practice, a strong VMware practice and have the professional services capabilities to do some of these complex automation or automation type work that have also built the trust and confidence of their customers. So in partnership with these types of companies, we believe we can expand our reach. We believe we can offer a more comprehensive outcome and solution to our customers. And we, you know, what I'm going to be looking at is how do we enhance our channel programs to be the kind of company that the channel partners want to engage with, built upon the reputation of the company, the leadership position we have in the technology, and also our willingness to go after this space together. So I got to go, but the last question is what can you share with us about your 100 day plan? Where are you going to focus? On the people, you know, there is a strong, strong culture here. There's incredible sales talent and there's talent throughout the organization. I think Dave, you've seen for me over the years, right? Clarity of our mission, keep things simple and try and drive a repetitive process to deliver results. I'm very, you know, accountability focused. So, you know, I think what I'm going to look to assess is where the organization is today, how to get more out of the great talent we have, build stronger and deeper relationships with our customers and really scale and grow through our ecosystem of channel partners. Well, Chris, I'm super excited for you. A great hire by Automation Anywhere. Obviously got my attention. I think it'll get the industries as well. Best of luck and of course we'll be watching. Good, always great to see you Dave, take care. Yeah, Ditto, thanks so much for coming on and thank you for watching everybody. Keep it here because this month we're going to be really digging into the ETR data. We've been reporting on that horse race between Automation Anywhere and UiPath. The ETR data is in the field and we'll be reporting on that. So, look for that. This is Dave Vellante for theCUBE and we'll see you next time.